St. Austin Review: Reclaiming Culture

September 8th, 2010The Beast Advances Part IIby Kevin O'Brien | http://www.thewordinc.org

It occurred to me what the thread is, not only in people arguing unreasonably on the internet, but on a number of things we encounter in our lives.

The thread is Bad Faith.

When a fellow becomes a Facebook “friend” only to post a nasty and superficial attack upon the Catholic Church on my Facebook “wall”, and then runs away when I point out the fallacies of his argument, he is not arguing in Good Faith.  When a teen-aged punk uses profanity on my youtube combox in an effort to claim that God is an immoral monster, he is not arguing in Good Faith.  When an unemployed transvestite rails against those filthy men who define things in life like gender, the oppressive males who  believe in the outmoded Western notion of the law of non-contradiction, he is not arguing in Good Faith.  Almost anyone you engage in debate who defends torture these days is not really open to reasoned arguments against torture from either a theological or a moral perspective; they are simply trying to rationalize their position and placate their fear.  Indeed, every torture supporter I have yet to engage is simply not arguing in Good Faith – though it may take a few hours to figure this out.

What do I mean by this?  I don’t mean that these people are arguing poorly or stupidly or in a bigoted or wrong-headed way.  I mean that they are not arguing at all.

To argue is to engage in a discourse of reason, through which the parties attempt to discover which party is closer to the truth.  Now even in arguments of Good Faith, people can become heated and their logic can be faulty and their ability to communicate imperfect, but a Good Faith argument is an argument where all of the parties are indeed open to discovering the truth, either by convincing the opponent of the wrongness of his position, or by being convinced of the wrongness of one’s own.

But I find myself frustrated on the internet because I defend my own faith and attacks upon it presuming that those attacking it are attacking in Good Faith and will be open to reasoned rebuttals.

Ha!

That’s right, ha!

But then, if you think about it so much of what we see in life has to do with people approaching things in Bad Faith.  I had actors who were supposed to be helping us evangelize through drama, but who had no interest in evangelizing and only wanted paid work.  I often negotiate with clients who poor-mouth me, not because they really can’t afford our services but because they’re simply jerking us around.   And, believe it or not, there are women who show an interest in famous Catholic actors not because they really like them but simply because they want to get them in their famous Catholic bedroom.  These are all examples of people dealing in Bad Faith.

And then there are the people who operate in Good Faith, but who are so incompetent that they appear to be operating in Bad Faith, like a client who books you and intends to return your contract and promote your show, but who simply never does either.

And then there are the people who argue in Good Faith, but who take more pride in scoring petty victories in argumentation than in an honest search for the truth; though if they can subdue their own competitive streaks, they indeed will be open to hearing a reasoned case.

Now why, in all of these things, do we use the terms Good Faith and Bad Faith?  Does any of this really have to do with Faith, that is to say the grace of Faith, theological faith in God?

I have just recorded for Ignatius Press Audio Books a brilliant sermon by John Henry Newman on the relation between Faith and Works.  What Newman says (and I may in fact expand on this in another post) is that Faith is the gateway, and the works that follow Faith are the works of co-operation with the Spirit dwelling in us, the gift of the Spirit purchased for us by Christ’s passion, and given to us once we assent to the grace of Faith, and therefore are Good Works leading to sanctification, sanctification being the prerequisite of life in Heaven; whereas bad works are those performed before passing through the gateway of Faith, works which are of the unregenerate man only, works which have no divine co-operation, and are therefore unavailing, such as the dead works of the Law of which St. Paul speaks.  Newman says both St. Paul and St. James are right: Works without Faith are dead; Faith without Works is dead; we are saved by both, our living Faith being the prerequisite for fruitful Works, Works which, inspired by the Spirit of Faith, become meritorious in God’s eyes.

And the same is true on the natural level.  Theologically meritorious works aside, let’s speak simply of the works men do, inspired or not – works considered from a merely human and temporal perspective.

All human things done in Bad Faith, which is to say without one’s heart being in the right place, are wrong, even from a social point of view and not a spiritual one.  In other words, things done for ulterior motives, done in some degree malevolently and not benevolently, done without the honesty and integrity and earnestness they deserve – things not done in Good Faith – are in some way or another always wrong and hurtful.

And we can see that if a person exhibits Good Faith in anything, it is much easier to cut this person some slack.   If, for example, a student writes an essay that is poorly written, but shows an honest effort, the essay being the disappointing product of a genuine attempt, a Good Faith attempt, we are liable to praise this more than a shoddy essay, or even a fairly good essay, written by a student off-handedly or lazily or dishonestly, the result of a Bad Faith attempt.

And when it comes to Faith, there are Good Faith attempts to approach Faith and Bad Faith attempts to approach Faith.  If a person really desires to understand the Gospel, but honestly struggles with Church scandal, shocking things in Scripture, the bad behavior of Christians, or the unwillingness to renounce sin, I think any of us would be willing to talk to such a person at length, for as long as it took to elucidate the truth.

But when a person is only playing games, ringing your doorbell and running, throwing stick and stones and throwing about nasty names, and simply spewing venom, then I think it’s time to shake the dust off of our feet as a witness against him.

But we must be careful.  I myself was a nasty little Bad Faith brat at one time, a vehement prophet of atheism and a vocal hater of the Church.

And yet it was not until I began to approach the whole issue of God – and life itself – in Good Faith that things began to change, and the gift of True Faith was eventually given to me.

So, in conclusion, I think we must assume everyone we meet is dealing in Good Faith, until he or she shows evidence to the contrary, at which point we need to exercise some prudence and wisdom about the ways of this world and the miserable darkness of the human heart.

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September 8th, 2010Two Holy Popes & Gregorian Chantby Susan Treacy

Friday, September 3rd, was, in the liturgical calendar, a kind of “double header” for those of us who love Gregorian chant. Two holy popes who have connections with chant happen to be remembered on this day. How can this be?

Well, it so happens that in the traditional calendar—that of the Extraordinary Form of the Mass—September 3rd is the feast of Pope Saint Pius X (r. 1903-14). In the modern calendar—that of the Ordinary Form of the Mass—September 3rd is the Memorial of Pope Saint Gregory I, “the Great” (r. 590-604). Both of these pontiffs are unofficial patrons, as it were, of Gregorian chant.

Although modern scholars doubt that Gregory the Great truly composed the chants, the legend still lives on, especially through the many medieval illuminations of Gregory with the dove of the Holy Ghost perched on his shoulder and imparting the chant into his ear while Gregory dictates it to a scribe. This apparently is where we get the expression, “A little bird told me.” The attribution of Gregory would seem to come from the Carolingians, who used the authority of his revered name to establish the Roman (i.e., Gregorian) chant as the uniform chant of their realm. Gregory was certainly a gifted pastor, administrator, and writer, in addition to being a very holy Pope, so his name will most likely continue to be associated with Gregorian chant in sæcula sæculorum.

Unlike with Pope Gregory the Great, there is copious documentation to connect Pope Pius X with Gregorian chant. Even though Giuseppe Sarto was born in 1835 to a poor family in rural Italy, he developed his personal love for Gregorian chant when he was a young boy. While still an altar boy, Giuseppe started a boy’s schola at his parish. As a young priest, Padre Sarto started a parish schola, a school of chant instruction, and encouraged his parishioners to sing the chant at Mass. In addition, he followed with great interest the vital Gregorian chant research being conducted in France at the Abbey of Saint Peter of Solesmes. In 1884 he was ordained Bishop of Mantua and he lost no time in starting a schola for the diocesan seminarians and even personally teaching courses in chant and sacred music at the seminary. In 1893 Bishop Sarto helped Pope Leo XIII with a document on sacred music. Bishop Sarto’s ideas would reappear in his later writings as Patriarch of Venice and then, ultimately, as Pope Pius X.

Ascending to the Chair of Peter on 4 August 1903, Pius X issued his famous motu proprio on sacred music on 22 November, the feast of Saint Cecilia. In the motu propio the Holy Father not only proclaimed Gregorian chant “the chant proper to the Roman Church”, he also urged that the faithful be instructed in singing the chant so that they could “take a more active part in the ecclesiastical offices, as was the case in ancient times.” Following the motu proprio, wherever pastors were receptive to the pope’s instructions, Gregorian chant began to flourish over time, only to be silenced after the Vatican Council II. Now, after so many years of liturgical and musical darkness, Gregorian chant is once again experiencing a revival, as many parishes are starting to introduce, or reintroduce it into Sunday Masses. Even more interesting is the number children’s “Chant Camps” and chant scholas that have been appearing. Ex ore infantium, Deus, et lactentium perfecisti laudem propter inimicos tuo!.

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September 8th, 2010The Best Advancesby Kevin O'Brien | http://www.thewordinc.org

Hilaire Belloc, in “The Great Heresies”, pointed to a disturbing feature of the Modern Attack on the Catholic Church: the attack upon Reason.

Nowhere is this more clearly displayed than on the internet - yes, on Facebook in particular, but also everywhere on the internet.  And though I have written about Facebook before and my on-again off-again love-hate relationship with her, I’m beginning to see that the enemy is not Facebook.  The enemy is us!

Let me try to categorize the problems I’ve noticed:

1. BEING FORCED TO EXPLAIN THE PUNCHLINE

A friend of mine on Facebook can not post even innocuous quotations such as Robert Louis Stevenson’s, “The Saints are the Sinners  who keep on trying,” without a barrage of comment box (combox) attacks nitpicking at all sorts of things the quote never intended to convey.   In this case, commenters insisted such things as “saints do not sin; they are not sinners”, or “it’s not the efforts of sinners ‘trying’ but God’s grace that does all”, or other such picayune objections that miss the entire point of the quotation and are willfully tone-deaf to its verve and its fun.

If I were to post my Facebook status update as Henny Youngman's "Take my wife, please!" I'd get the following comments ...

"Certainly by take he can't mean ravish, as that's simply the sin of adultery."

"Since in heaven we are neither married nor given in marriage, Youngman must be referring to our ultimate end, thereby longing for the absence of his wife as he gazes forever at the face of God."

"If he said simply, 'Take my wife', I'd go along with that. But the word 'please' implies free will, which, as a Calvinist, I find offensive."

"Take her where? To the Obamacare Death Panel?"

... and so forth.

I think we've come to the End of Civilization as We Know It - hence we must always find ourselves explaining the joke.

2. HIT AND RUN

A person I never knew “friended” me on Facebook, apparently for one reason: to post this on my wall:

“And what exactly is the church doing these days to keep priests away from little boys? ...or is it all just imaginary dust underneath a giant magick carpet?” (sic)

In a series of combox back and forths, I began by conceding that pedophilia is indeed a serious sin, and that the Church should be doing public penance, and that the Church has indeed done much to address this, most especially with Pope Benedict now creating bishops who are actually Catholic and not sympathizers of pederasty. 

This fellow responded derisively, and kept bringing up what a terrible scandal this was and began to make fun of the sacrament of Confession as a make-believe way of sweeping things under the “magick” carpet.  So I continued with this …

“By the way, may I remind you that it's the Catholic Church that condemns child molestation and perversion, not the culture at large.  If Church members do not live up to this standard, then by all means we should seek to repent - but you put yourself in an awkward position when you attack the Church with a weapon she herself endorses, the condemnation of sin.  If you're so eager to endorse the Church's teaching on the evils of child molestation and sexual perversion, I assume you also endorse all the other teachings of the Church, teachings which its members fail again and again to live up to.”

He then replied – astonishingly:

“I do not condone nor condemn the said priests (sic) actions. Pedophilia is merely a (sic) human nature, i.e. Greek traditions of initiation, that the church (and some conformists) oppose ... My apologies if I antagonized you.”

So I couldn’t resist:

“Wow.  Glad to know you don't condemn any actions, despite what you wrote on my wall and in the combox.   Consistency was never to be expected from this, I see.  … Meanwhile, keep focusing on sin.  It’s good for the soul.”

3. E. E. CUMMINGS WITHOUT SPELL-CHECK

Another mark of the abandonment of reason is indicated by all these “sics” above.  People who argue foolishly on the internet display and flaunt their foolishness not only by what they say but by how they say it.  Not only do they abandon any attempt at punctuation, as E. E. Cummings and many of the modern poets did, they also refuse even to use spell-check, apparently.

Take, for instance, someone who attacked me by commenting on a youtube video of mine, telling me that if I read the Bible cover to cover I would be “de-converted”, by which he apparently meant converted back to atheism, where I started.  When I replied that I have indeed read the Bible cover-to-cover, perhaps a dozen times, and asked him if in fact he had himself read it even once, he replied with …

“Yes I read it from cover to cover the first when I was 12. And thta was th eend of me believing in thta fairytale. My morals could not accept your god to be all loving and all that bs when he orders? genocide in men women and innocent childre  and at age 12 I was pretty sure I didnt need an invisible friend. Adults shred their imaginary freinds you know.. part of growing the f*** uo.”

I present this comment exactly as he posted it (it’s actually an amalgam of two of his comments), although I have put asterisks where he used letters.  The phrase was “part of growing the f*** up.”   He spelled the F word right, but not much else.  Not even “up”.

My only thought was, while God chose the foolish of this world to put to shame those who are wise, when the devil tries to use the foolish of this world, they only end up shaming themselves.

4. FOLLOW THE SIN.

One of my Facebook “friends” is in the midst of denying his own gender.  He uses a female name and is objecting to not being allowed to wear a dress to work.  So he won’t work; he sits at home (in heels and hose, I’m guessing) hopping on Facebook, praising Ayn Rand and Nietzsche and railing against something he calls “Christian Privilege” and the paternalistic oppressiveness of “definition” and “reason”.

He uses reason to attack reason because reason and definition are essential to understanding identity, and identity (a thing being what it is) is central not only to our being, but to God’s vocation for us and to our ultimate destiny.  But if we can re-define even “definition”, if we can deconstruct the most basic construct that we have – who we are – then by God we are gods!

Sad that we want to be gods not to live forever or to rule the world, but just so we can go to work with lipstick on.

But be that as it may, in the real world we hear the expression “follow the money”, which means find out where a person’s vested financial interest is and you can explain a lot, from the travesty of “climate change” to the protection of abortion mills.  By the same token, if you follow the sin, and see where the trail of disordered desire leads, you begin to sniff out just why we’re rejecting reason and just where such a rejection will lead.

It will lead to idiocy.  It will lead to men wanting to be first women, then children, then chairs and cows.  It will lead to hit and run attacks that really don’t care if they make any sense.   It will lead to a loss of humor and for the appreciation of literature.   It will lead to incomprehensible statements.  It will lead to the great big horrific abyss we call hell.

As Belloc says, “But that great Modern Attack, which is more than a heresy, is indifferent to self-contradiction.  It merely affirms.  It advances like an animal, counting on strength alone.”

And may we, with God’s grace, work to weaken its growing strength.

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September 8th, 2010Holding the Dream in our Heartsby Lorraine V. Murray

Some words change your life forever. Three simple ones --“I love you”-- top the list. There are also “You’re wonderful,” contrasted with “You’re fired.” But the saddest words of all, the most shocking, the hardest to bear, are “She’s dead.”

Of course, for Catholics death is a doorway, not a brick wall. We believe that, as poet Dylan Thomas reminds us, “Death shall have no dominion.” True, death means we never celebrate another birthday, see another sunrise, or behold another bird. Still, St. Paul assures us that on earth we see through a glass darkly. This means there’s another realm where we shall awaken from this valley of tears to behold more wondrous birds and sunrises, and perhaps enjoy a heavenly equivalent of birthday parties.

My thoughts run to death today because just yesterday we received a shocking phone call from my husband’s mother. I could tell something was seriously wrong by Jef’s expression as he listened. I couldn’t stand the suspense, so I waved my arms to get his attention. “What’s wrong?” I whispered, sure that someone was in the hospital, gravely ill.

Nothing could have prepared me for what I learned: His sister was dead. Lisa had walked down the stairs in the home she shared with her mother, sat down on the couch, had a convulsion and died. Just like that, a life was over.

Impossible, really, to understand, but then isn’t death always impossible? Secularists would say it’s the end of a series of biological functions. The brain stops working, the heart malfunctions, and that’s the end. But life, as Christians know, is much more than biological functions.

Who can explain love and compassion by pointing to a physical process? Oh, yes, scientists may one day isolate a particular neuron that lights up when someone acts charitably. Still, no one can explain the impulse, the desire, to perform that act.

As Catholic writer G.K. Chesterton so eloquently put it, "The center of every man's existence is a dream. Death, disease, insanity are merely material accidents, like a toothache or a twisted ankle.” He went on to add “That these brutal forces always besiege and often capture the citadel does not prove that they are the citadel."

When someone is gone, you immediately start to search your heart for the things you neglected to say and do. This is human nature, because, after all, if every time we gathered with people, we were to think, “I may never see this person again,” how much more careful we would be with our parting words.

And so I remember the last time I spoke with Lisa on the phone. She seemed happy, having just quit a job that had become horribly stressful. She was looking toward the future with hope. She was trying to figure out what the next phase of her life would be.

Her life was sad on the surface. She never married nor had children. She suffered through a series of painful relationships. She struggled with her weight. And yet, throughout it all, she was cheery and optimistic. She put on a brave face.

A few months ago, I wrote her a letter telling her about my belief in Jesus. A crisis in her life motivated me to take the risk. The risk, of course, is that the recipient of such a letter might angrily ask, “How dare she presume to preach to me?”

I took a risk with her, but I don’t know where it led. I do know that we remained friends -- sisters, really. And although we never discussed the letter, I hope it made some difference in her life.

Now that she it is gone, it would be tempting to conclude there will be no more interactions, no more chances of conversation. But as a Catholic who believes in the Communion of Saints, I know that we don’t stop praying and we don’t turn our backs on people just because they have moved their status from “living” to “dead.”

After all, as Chesterton reminded us, the citadel is the soul -- and the center of existence really is something death can’t take from us. It is a dream of immortality, a dream of love, a dream of Jesus Christ. Requiescat in pace, my dear sister!
__
Lorraine's latest book is "Death of a Liturgist" (Saint Benedict Press). Her other books include "The Abbess of Andalusia: Flannery O'Connor's Spiritual Journey" and "Death in the Choir."

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September 8th, 2010Speaking Engagements For Septemberby Joseph Pearce

I’m now back at Ave Maria University for the Fall semester which explains why there is a preponderance of Floridian speaking engagements this month:
 
Thursday, September 9th – “Unlocking the Catholicism of The Lord of the Rings” at 8:30 pm at the Queen Mary Pub, Ave Maria, Florida. Contact for details: Julie Cosden- Julie.Cosden@avemaria.edu.
 
Wednesday, September 15th – “Personal Conversion Story: From the Hell of Hatred to the Well of Mercy” at 6pm at St. John the Evangelist Catholic church in Naples, Florida. Contact for details: Michael Timmis – mtotimmis@me.com.
 
Tuesday, September 21st - “Personal Conversion Story: From the Hell of Hatred to the Well of Mercy” at St. Raphael’s Catholic church in Fort Myers, Florida. Contact for details: Catherine.Dailey@avemaria.edu.
 
Friday, September 24th – “The Quest for the Catholic Shakespeare” at St. John Bosco Catholic School in Rochester, New York. Contact for details: Lou Horvath – lou@launchsolutions.com.
 
Saturday, September 25th – “Small is Still Beautiful” at the annual Chesterton Conference in Rochester, New York. Other speakers at this day-long  conference will include Dale Ahlquist of the American Chesterton Society. Contact for details: Lou Horvath – lou@launchsolutions.com.
 
Tuesday, September 28th -  “Personal Conversion Story: From the Hell of Hatred to the Well of Mercy” at 6 pm at the Bean, Ave Maria, Florida. Contact for details: Patricia Fernandez – patricia.fernandez@avemaria.edu.

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September 8th, 2010One Extra Talkby Joseph Pearce

Matt Willkom has reminded me that I omitted a new talk that he has just added to those he has available for sale. As with the other talks, this is available for $8 from Matt: mwillkom@gmail.com.
 
Reclaiming Christian Culture: The Battle Begins in the Home
 
In this impassioned defense of Christendom and the civilization it spawned, Professor Pearce reminds parents that they have the most important job in the world: to hand on the priceless inheritance of Christendom to their children.
 
Professor Pearce offers a panoramic overview of the history of western civilization from classical Greece and the Early Church, through to the medieval period, the Renaissance and into the modern age. He then offers practical advice to parents, explaining how they can hand on the inheritance to their family. In his conclusion, he shows how the handing on of this inheritance will enrich future generations with a wealth beyond the reach of the world, teaching the new generation the power of reason, love and beauty so that they can think with the Church (changing minds); to love like the saints (changing hearts); and to see the beauty of God in Creation and creativity.
 
Those who would like to help their own children know the truth, love the truth, and see the truth, will find this talk invaluable.

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September 8th, 2010Talks for Saleby Joseph Pearce

I’m delighted to announce that several of my talks are now being offered for sale. These talks are available for $8 each on compact disc from Matt Willkom: mwillkom@gmail.com. Below are short descriptions of four of these talks:
 
A Matter of Life and Death: The Battle for a True Education
 
We live in perilous times in which the culture of death threatens to destroy the last vestiges of western civilization. In this lecture, Professor Pearce explains why a true education is essential to the defeat of the culture of death and the resurrection of the culture of life.
 
Commencing with a reiteration of Pilate’s perennial question, quid est veritas? (what is truth?), Professor Pearce answers with the words of Christ: “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” A true education is education as if truth itself matters, and, since Christ is the source of all truth, a true education must be an education as if Christ matters. An education that does not have Christ at its center is not a true education at all.
 
Having laid Christ as the foundation of a true education, Professor Pearce exposes the pernicious nature of modern secular education and illustrates the beauty of a true education rooted in the good, the true and the beautiful.
 
A Call to Catholic Responsibility in a Hostile Government
 
Commencing with a reiteration of the words of St. Thomas More that he was “the king’s good servant, but God’s first”, Professor Pearce argues that the saint’s words remain relevant to our own responsibilities as US citizens in the twenty-first century.
 
The lessons of history must be heeded if the momentous mistakes of the past are not to be repeated in the present or the future. Connecting the political philosophy of St Thomas More and Shakespeare to the papal encyclicals of Leo XIII, Pius XII, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI, Professor Pearce examines the secularist tyranny of Shakespeare’s England and compares it to the secular fundamentalism of the twenty-first century. The choice facing Christians today in the face of attacks on the family and the freedom of religion is the same as the choice that St. Thomas More faced six hundred years ago. This represents a challenge that modern Christians cannot afford to ignore.

The Orthodoxy of Shakespeare
 
William Shakespeare is perhaps the greatest writer who has ever lived. His influence upon modern culture is greater than that of any other writer. Yet few people are aware that Shakespeare was a faithful Catholic at a time when Catholicism was illegal in England. Professor Pearce presents the overwhelming evidence for Shakespeare’s Catholicism, the fruits of his research for his two bestselling books, The Quest for Shakespeare: The Bard of Avon and the Church of Rome and Through Shakespeare’s Eyes: Seeing the Catholic Presence in the Plays.
 
Professor Pearce shows how Shakespeare was brought up by a staunchly Catholic family, how he had to flee his home in order to escape the clutches of the anti-Catholic lord of the manor, how he retained his Catholic faith during the period in which he was writing the plays, how he knew the Jesuit martyr St. Robert Southwell, and how he purchased a house for the use of Catholic priests in spite of the anti-Catholic laws. These and many other exciting facts about Shakespeare’s life are given in this action-packed talk.
 
Personal Conversion Story
 
As an angry young man, Joseph Pearce was a radical activist who became involved with the Protestant terrorist organizations in Northern Ireland and served two prison sentences for publishing material likely to incite racial hatred. In this candidly heartfelt talk, Professor Pearce discusses his role as one of the leaders of a white supremacist organization in England, his two prison sentences, and his connection with the anti-Catholic terrorist organizations and secret societies in Northern Ireland. He also explains how discovering the works of great Catholic writers such as Chesterton, Newman and Tolkien helped him on the path from hatred to conversion. In this powerful talk, Professor Pearce confesses his race with the devil and his journey from the hell of hatred to the well of mercy.

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September 8th, 2010In Defense of Dancingby Sophia Mason

Saturday was one of those days.  The details would make a long story; suffice it to say that I left the house around a quarter of eight in the morning, and got back tolerably exhausted at a quarter of six.  I was contemplating something drastic.  I had been planning on going to a contra dance (a down-home version of what they do in Regency movies, or, conversely, an up-scale version of square dancing).  Now, after the ten-hour-day, I thought staying home with a book might be in order.

First inclinations triumphed, and I went to the contra dance; nor did I regret going, even the next morning when I awoke stiff and early for Mass.  Dancing is, after all, something that one may properly say grace over (or so Chesterton insists); and Saturday’s contra dance was particularly grace-filled—if not always graceful!

I’ve encountered over the years a number of Catholic objections against dancing—perhaps it is needless to add that the objections come mostly from young Catholic men.  The music is horrible; dancing is awkward, both physically and emotionally; dancing has been condemned by various saints.  (I believe the Cure of Ars was one of them, though I can’t say I’ve verified that citation.) That the music is often wretched I won’t attempt to deny; but that seems to be accidental to the art.  As for the moral condemnations of dancing, I suspect they have more to do with ways and kinds of dancing than with dancing itself.

My personal defense of dancing—the justification I use with myself—is that dancing is generally associated with joy in literature: think Dickens, Shakespeare, Jane Austen.  (Well, perhaps not always with joy; but at least the occasion of a ball ought to be joyful, even if the evening also brings pains essential to the progression of plot.)  There are the final chapters of Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday, where Sunday’s happy but bewildered guests are met by the sight of a dancing ship, a dancing windmill, a dancing lamppost, and a dancing apple tree.  There are the dances of the fauns and other Narnians, especially the snowball dance at the end of The Silver Chair.  There is Edith Tolkien dancing “in a wood where hemlock was growing, a sea of white flowers.”  Against these images, any objections against dancing on moral grounds take on a decidedly Puritan cast!  Certainly dancing can be awkward and embarrassing; another way to put the same objection would be to call it humbling—making the objection no objection at all.  To dance well is to dance self-forgetfully.

Most of my interlocutors are unconvinced by the literary evidence above.  That dancing can be a grand and glorious thing, they do not deny; that it often fails to be so grand and glorious on earth, I will not deny.  But I fancy that the party in favor of dancing holds trumps: we have no less a person than Dante Alighieri on our side.  Those who will not dance on earth will, metaphorically at least, be bound to dance in heaven, their minds and wills moved “like a wheel revolving uniformly—by the Love that moves the sun and the other stars.”

A thing to say grace over indeed!

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September 1st, 2010Toward a Definition of “Conversion” Part IIby Dena Hunt

To continue, “Why did you become a Catholic?” is a different question from “Why did you become a Christian?” What’s the reason for that difference? Well, here’s a clue: http://rainhadocanto10-evangelicalchristian.blogspot.com/2010/08/roman-catholic-church-is-not-christian.html

This is only one of many “Christian” anti-Catholic sites, of course. A friend sent it to me this morning; the title of yesterday’s post (“Christianity vs. Catholicism”) attempts to answer the exact question I asked.

Catholics scratch their heads over this sort of thing. Where does this stuff come from? Dutifully ecumenical-minded, they ask questions like, “My goodness, if these people don’t want to be Catholic, okay, but why do they hate us? We accept them, we acknowledge the validity of their faith. Shouldn’t all Christians want unity—if not in the same church, at least in the same faith in Christ.”

Well, the links on the sample blog cited above link love of country to Christianity. What kind of Christianity? Any of the 28,000 or so protestant denominations currently active. The only Christian denomination they hate is Catholicism. Why? Where does it come from? From the English Deformation—which had the same motive. All the lies—historical, (e.g., “The Inquisition killed and tortured millions of people because they disagreed with the Pope”), theological (the ever-popular “Catholics worship Mary”), even linguistic (“Call no man ‘father’”, and of course, “Jesus’ ‘brethren’”)—not some, but all the lies have their origin in 16^th century English anti-papal propaganda. American protestants inherited that ___. What was the English motive? Actually, American anti-Catholics can look at their own motive because it’s the same: concentration of power (and faith is the greatest power there is) in the state. What did England fear? Authority that supercedes the state’s. What do the patriotic American anti-Catholics fear? The same thing.

And the left-leaning folks, usually secular, humanist, atheist, or some combination of these, fear the same thing. Strange bedfellows for evangelical sorts, it may seem, but they actually have one binding aim that the evangelicals don’t recognize—kill the authority of the Church. Any pro-choice or pro-homosexual activist prudently expresses public approval of “Christianity”, keeping his more honest opinions to himself; it’s a policy that has borne good political fruit: “Christian” means “open minds, open hearts, open doors”, as the Methodists now advertise themselves. And American Episcopal bishop Gene Robinson says that rejection of homosexuality is “not Christian”. So, “Christian” is okay, they say, only “Catholic” is evil.

Catholics aren’t Christians, but Catholics. Ask anybody, including Christians. On either side of the Atlantic, on either end of the political spectrum.

What does the term conversion mean then? Does it mean love of country? Does it mean loyalty to one’s cultural or national identity above all other loyalties? Or perhaps it means a belief in one’s own judgment as supreme moral authority—and if supreme, shouldn’t it be “shared” with unenlightened others? If it means any of these things, it may be a conversion to something, but not to Christianity. If, however, one recognizes all these as mere extensions of the self, one has converted to Christianity, which means one has become Catholic.

So, when someone asks me why I became a Catholic, I answer, “Because I believe in Christ.” When they repeat the question, “But why did you become a Catholic?” my answer is “I just told you.”         

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September 1st, 2010Aloneby Pavel Chichikov

How does an atheist die? Obviously, he dies the same way as everyone else. God doesn’t vanish because one of His creatures denies His existence. The universe, of which the atheist is a part, doesn’t evaporate when he expires. Angels will be the same as they ever were, and the spirits of those we call the dead still live in the House of Love.

I’ve been thinking about this lately because of the apparently terminal illness of Christopher Hitchens, a prominent atheist, which was in the news a little while ago. I don’t know Mr. Hitchens personally, and I haven’t read much of what he’s written. I’ve never attended any of his talks. He is, however, a prominent publicist for the atheist viewpoint, and he is known to be a very energetic, angry and articulate one. He said recently that if he ever turns away from atheism in the course of his illness, it will be the effect of medication, not a change in conviction.

Though Christopher Hitchens may be an arch and public skeptic, I’m not skeptical about what he says. The cancer he seems to be dying of is a very serious matter, even beyond its fatality. It’s almost invariably fatal. The symptoms are extremely unpleasant. Facing it with courage, and even defiance, is admirable from anyone’s point of view. I know that many people are praying for Christopher Hitchens, no matter how detestable he might find that sort of attention.

A long time ago, I heard someone say: Everyone dies alone. At this point, I must express my own skepticism. I doubt very much that anyone dies alone. Those of us who have glimpsed what Tolkien called the Imperishable Flame, or have known other signs of a reality beyond our ordinary consensus, think otherwise.

The universe doesn’t evaporate when an atheist dies, and neither does he. I believe that what happens next is up to him, and that anyone who beholds the glory of the Flame will not reject it, if only he can for a moment renounce pride and accept love.

ALONE

Shipwrecked on an island,
Himself the rounding sea
That he himself can summon,
His solitude is he

Wind his breath and vision,
Waves the heart and pulse,
Weather his decision,
There is nothing else

 

Inheritor of nothing
Except what he can think,
Rescue may be passing
Between each breath and blink

Immortal soul is mortal
Because his life is spent,
Dying is the portal
To empty firmaments

Light has been abolished
No stars have coalesced,
His emptiness is furnished
With less than emptiness

But rescue will be summoned
From far across the sea,
And he will be made welcome
If welcome he would be

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September 1st, 2010Empathetic Capacityby Ferdi McDermott

I recently read about some 17th century Dominican dialogues with Zen Buddhist monks and the many interesting and moving consequences that such cultural openness brought to the men of that age. I am also currently engaged in some research into the work of Matteo Ricci, the Jesuit missionary in China. These men were Christian humanists, engaged in bold cultural outreach in faithfulness to the Gospel injunction to preach to all nations.

Matthew Taylor, Chief Executive of the Royal Society of Arts (of which I am a Fellow) recently gave an illustrated talk, now available online, which calls for a ‘21st century enlightement’, or a new humanism for the new century. This is going to be the RSA’s new ‘strap’ or byword. You can watch his fascinating, entertaining (and short) lecture, complete with cartoons at:

Taylor speaks of progress in the development of ‘empathetic capacity’ and notes what he sees as the decrease in person to person violence down through the centuries. It seems to me that such an observation is inevitably anecdotal and subjective, rather than empirical. Try telling that to the child-slaves, or urban beggars in India and China, or the child prostitutes in Thailand; people whose ancestors perhaps serenely tilled the fields; or indeed to the millions of aborted babies who bloody our hands without – it would seem – making much of a dent in our consciences. ‘Man’s inhumanity to man’ is always with us. The 21st century – is seems to me – is no time to get complacent. And yet, one knows what Taylor means.

And Taylor is right that popular culture is encouraging us to think about other people. He is, here, in the same optimistic line as men such as Pius XII and Paul VI who saw in the new means of social communication the way to achieve not just a shrinking planet, but a more mutually aware and loving one, as long as we can avoid the very modern curse of ‘compassion fatigue’.

He is right to draw attention to the truth that education has no value if it does not, above all other things, foster ‘empathetic capacity’, or - in simpler terms – love. “For I can have all things, but if I have not charity …” as St Paul observed.

The RSA today is a mixture of university professors, literary figures, industry chiefs and the rising stars of the new left. The latter group tends to dominate. Faithful StAR readers will know that I am very pleased to be described as a conservative, and that have no illusions about Marx, and yet it seems to me that men such as Matthew Taylor do care about people’s lives. Their empathetic capacity, despite its awful name, is a challenge to men like me. Perhaps it is now time for the Christian humanists to join debates like these and to bring to them the light of the Gospel, just like – for example - the great Jesuits and Dominicans of the post-Reformation era. 21st Century Christian humanism’s time has come. Because man is indeed the measure of all things. But it was God who made him so. And, in the man Jesus Christ, He has given us some powerful answers about the Z of A-Z: answers about our final destination. Modern man needs these answers more than ever now, as the world grows ever smaller and history moves ever faster, towards its ultimate consummation.

Ferdi McDermott founded StAR in 2001. He is Principal of Chavagnes International College, an English-language Catholic boarding school for boys, situated in western France.

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September 1st, 2010One Small Step for Virginiaby Sophia Mason

Last week a state delegate and an attorney general got together and decided that it is again time for the Commonwealth of Virginia to regulate abortions.

This may sound like small potatoes—of course there is still a federal mandate permitting abortions, and there will be plenty of abortions performed in Virginia even if the Attorney General’s suggestions are adopted—but it is a step forward nonetheless.

Virginia regulated abortion clinics in the years following Roe v. Wade, prior to the term of Governor Chuck Robb (1982-6).  Robb was known as a moderate Democrat (one of only eleven Democrats to vote for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ nomination); but on the question of abortion his moderation was not in evidence.

Virginia Delegate Bob Marshall thought that the time was right to return abortion regulation to Virginia, and he asked for the Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s opinion on the legality of the move.  Cuccinelli, a Roman Catholic with seven children, determined that Virginia “has the authority to promulgate regulations for facilities in which first trimester abortions are performed . . . so long as the regulations adhere to constitutional limitations.”  Abortion clinics and dental and plastic surgery offices are not currently required to be licensed in Virginia—that grouping says something about how pro-choice people view abortions!—although the doctors who work in those settings must be licensed. 

Supporters of the right to life see the move as a matter of course.  As the Attorney General’s spokesman put it, “The state has long regulated outpatient surgical facilities and personnel to ensure a certain level of protection for patients.  There is no reason to hold facilities providing abortion services to any lesser standard for their patients.”

State regulation of abortion clinics has stood up in court before; South Carolina successfully underwent a federal challenge to its 1995 amendment to existing law.  Following the challenge and implementation of the new regulations, the state saw a marked decrease in abortions and abortion clinics.  Though it is impossible to say how much of the decrease was due to the amendment to the law, the correlation is suggestive.

So yes—one small step for the state of Virginia.  Let us pray for a favorable review of the Attorney General’s opinion!

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August 31st, 2010From Here to Babylonby Pavel Chichikov

I spend a lot of computer time reading and contributing to a blog called Calculated Risk. It’s a finance and economics blog, although people tend to wander very far from the topics, especially when business hours have ended. Many of the contributors are highly educated, articulate, and funny. They can be good electronic company.

Some of them are professed atheists, and a few of those are bitter opponents of religion in general and the Catholic Church in particular. I find myself crossing metaphorical swords with them, because when someone attacks faith, it provokes that sort of response in me. I don’t enjoy arguing, but sometimes it can’t be helped.

It doesn’t help that sometimes the things people do, even when they’re members of a church, or the Church, are indefensible. For instance, I can’t excuse or explain away some of the actions of bishops and priests, generally known as the Scandal. I don’t even try, except to point out that the Church is addressing the problem forcefully, and that it is a much smaller problem than it was decades ago. Still, the inexcusable can’t and should not be explained away.  The Holy Father has taken the lead in expressing contrition and asking for forgiveness.

But how can one explain to people who are afflicted by spiritual blindness why people remain Catholics, and in a way perhaps invisible to nonbelievers, continue to flourish in the Catholic Church? How to describe the ineffable transmission of God’s glory and grace in the sacraments, in prayer, in simple but receptive silence? It’s not easy to do.

The way to heaven is not only hard, it is very often obscure. Babylon, the earthly city in which we live, is not particularly generous with road signs and maps.

FROM HERE TO BABYLON

I saw a line of crucifixes
On the long highway
From here to Babylon that was
And is and yet to be

A darkened sky and grizzled sand,
A sentence for dissension,
For many miles the crosses stand.
A human vivisection

Not Jesus Son of God who rose
Already crucified -
Whose bleeding injuries are those
In hands and feet and side?

There will be the wounded host,
The short whip turned around,
The crown, the robe, the whipping post
Deep rooted in the ground

The hearsay of redemption spread,
A rumor spreading still,
Slowly, word by whispered word
And syllable by syllable

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August 29th, 2010Toward a Definition of “Conversion”by Dena Hunt

A couple of recent little incidents have set me thinking about “Christian ecumenism” again. I’m a convert (1984), and I’ve been asked occasionally why I chose to become Catholic. I can never answer that question directly because it’s a single question with two answers. “Conversion” means either a conversion to Christianity or a conversion within Christianity, and these are not the same question.

On EWTN’s “The Journey Home”, most of the conversion stories are those that happen within Christianity. Even when Marcus Grodi interviews someone who was a former atheist, these guests usually (always?) come into the Church after having first entered a protestant church, likely the one that provided the context for their conversion to belief in Christ. Later, they are exposed to Catholicism by some set of circumstances, and become Catholic. Occasionally, he interviews “re-verts”, or those who were born and raised in the Church, left, and then return. But even the reverts just about always come home after first going through a revitalization of their faith within a protestant church of some kind. Though their stories differ, the many converts from the Anglican priesthood are actually in this category. All these, then, are conversions within Christianity. Rarely, he interviews Jewish converts, but these too (at least those I’ve seen or read about) were first converted from a lapsed Jewish faith into a protestant church, and then into the Catholic Church. The single exception I know of is the conversion of Eugenio Zolli, the chief rabbi of Rome who converted from a lively Jewish faith directly into the Catholic Church, but it must be remembered that his exposure to Protestantism would have been very limited at best. And he was inspired by the saintliness of Pope Pius XII during the Nazi occupation of Rome. 

The fact is that the vast majority of Catholic converts are converts within Christianity, not to it. (I’m in the minority.) I think this means something about the Church’s understanding of itself in contemporary Christianity, but I’m hesitant to speculate because I’m not sure I completely like what I come up with. Let me put it this way: When someone has a religious experience in, say, an evangelical church, no one asks him why he joins that church. His “belief in Christ” is understood as cause enough. Yet, when someone, either Catholic or protestant, asks me why I became a Catholic, I answer, “Obviously, because I believe in Christ.” The inevitable response is, “But why did you become a Catholic?” Why isn’t the repetition of the question nonsensical? There can be only one reason: there is a conviction among both protestants and Catholics that belief in Christ is insufficient cause for becoming Catholic. 

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August 28th, 2010The Feast of St. Augustineby Bruce Fingerhut

Dear Friends:

Today is the 1580th anniversary of the death of St. Augustine. The Church celebrates the Feast of St. Augustine on August 28 each year.

It’s difficult in the extreme to outline all his accomplishments in a few sentences, but suffice it to say that he is perhaps the most influential theologian in history (after St. Paul), that our notions of history itself are largely Augustinian, that he framed the important concepts of original sin and just war, that he is considered the pre-eminent Doctor of the Church, and authored the single most important work on history in The City of God, which he completed a few years before the Vandals laid siege on his own city of Hippo. Shortly after his death the Vandals returned and destroyed the entire city, except for Augustine’s cathedral and library, which were left untouched. His writings, including the world’s first autobiography (and the only one to tell the truth by calling it Confessions), could largely be said to pronounce the end of paganism and the triumph of Christianity, though one could be forgiven for thinking the opposite had occurred if one were looking solely at contemporary political events.

He influenced virtually every great theological thinker after him, including, most especially, St. Thomas Aquinas. Our present Pope Benedict XVI writes with an Augustinian perspective. The whole world has been influenced by St. Augustine, and, indeed, in his very life of conversion, penance, and faith, he has lived up to the words of British Cardinal Hume, who said that the life of St. Augustine proves that all saints have pasts and all sinners futures.

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August 28th, 2010Scabby People & that Grimfaced Nunby Christian LeBlanc | http://platytera.blogspot.com/

One night decades ago I was watching TV; that nun, Mother Teresa, was on Leno. I knew she'd won a Nobel prize, took care of scabby people all day, and looked grim as cancer. What could they possibly talk about that would be, if not entertaining, at least not unpleasant? Curious as to how this was going to work, I didn't zap immediately to another channel.

So she comes out, sits down: outfit from Big Lots, Quasimodo posture, Vietcong sandals. Leno starts asking her the usual stuff about her what, career, I suppose, and..... she is absolutely incredible. After a couple of minutes I think she may be the most serene, fully happy person I have ever seen. She smiles, her eyes twinkle, she's animated. And she says stuff, I can't believe she means it:

Jesus spoke to her on a train, said to go to Calcutta and take care of the poorest of the poor- and so she did!

And how does she keep on caring for these poor, dying unfortunates day after day, year after year? Well, she sees Jesus in each one of them, there you go! Why, Jesus himself said plain as day, "I was hungry and you gave me food; I was thirsty and you gave me drink; I was naked and you clothed me; I was sick and you visited me." And, "as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me." Yep, he said it alright, in Matthew 25. I can read.

She was saying this stuff just as plainly as I'd say, "I can't believe it's Tuesday." Lady, it can't be that simple, can you really think like this? Can anybody? Can you really see Jesus in the least of them? Your whole life is cleaning sores or whatever, how can you be so bright and happy? Why aren't you miserable? I sure would be.

And then Mother Teresa's visit with Jay was over, the happy little arthritic confounding mystery.

For a couple of years I percolated on these few minutes, browsed a Mother Teresa coffee-table book or two. The bluntness of her life was compelling: God says do x, she does x. No intellectualizing, vacillating, plea-bargaining, just action. And she was happy. I had a family, and other reasons (not all of the finest quality) for not doing The Mother Teresa Thing, but felt drawn to her simple motif of faith/action; or as James'd put it in his Epistle, faith/works. And Jesus' instructions in Matthew had bugged me way, way longer than M.T. (since 1981). I wasn't doing any of that stuff, and didn't plan to, either. But she took one of the most annoying things Jesus ever said and made a life out of it.

I envy people like St. Paul: Jesus knocks him off his horse, personally scolds him, blinds him....who wouldn't swap a heart of stone for one of flesh after that? I wasn't on the receiving end of such drama, nor had Jesus spoken to me on a train, but I'd been prodded enough over 15 years to take a baby step or two.

After a Mass, I told my pastor Fr. Day how impressed I was by Mother Teresa's way of living out Matt 25, and said, "The thing is, she steps out her front door every day, and sick people are right at her feet. I step out, all day long there's not a wretch in sight." Fr. Day smiled & said, "If you want to visit the sick I can help with that."

So I began to visit the sick, all thanks to Mother Teresa. Happy 100th birthday.

Jay Leno gets some credit, too.

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August 20th, 2010One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nestby Joseph Pearce

Way back in March, on this site, I highlighted the near-death experience of the atheist philosopher, A. J. Ayer (see "An Athiest Sees the Light" below). Two weeks after I posted this short piece on Ayer, another famous atheist philosopher, Anthony Flew, passed away. For more than half a century, Flew was one of the most outspoken atheists in England, the "Richard Dawkins" of an earlier generation. In Theology and Falsification (1950) he offered a Logical Positivist refutation of God's existence. 

Like Bertand Russell before him and Dawkins since, Flew was almost obsessed with proving the non-existence of God. In God and Philosophy (1966) and The Logic of Morality (1987) he returned to the subject with the sort of irrepressible tenacity that we have come to expect of Dawkins and the neo-atheists of today. Unlike some of these neo-atheists, however, Flew proceeded from a position of genuine intellectual integrity, nurtured by his encounters with the apologetics of C. S. Lewis and the arguments of the Catholic philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe whilst a student in Oxford in the years following World War Two. This genuine curiosity and intellectual integrity stood him in good stead as developments in scientific knowledge threw some of his atheistic presumptions into question. It was the unravelling of the mystery of DNA, coupled with his reappraisal of Einstein's views on theism, and his own further reflections on the laws of nature that led him to abandon his life-long atheism. 

Always fearless in the face of controversy, Flew shocked the world of philosophy in 2004 by publicly professing theism and refuting the arguments for atheism that he had spent the whole of his life disseminating. In 2007, with Roy Abraham Varghese, he published There is a God, definitively proving the philosophical arguments for the existence of the divine. 

Richard Dawkins was outraged by Flew's "coming out" as a theist and dismissed it as the product of old age and the consequent fear of death. Typically, Dawkins had descended to the level of emotion-driven invective and had not even sought to address Flew's arguments. Flew considered it outrageous that Dawkins, "a man who has never spoken to me should make such remarks. If he had done any research, he would know that I am one of the few philosophers who have actually written on death and he would know that I don't expect very much from it!" 

Although Flew's Deism did not mature into fully-professed Christianity, he acknowledged a respect for Christian revelation and came to accept at least some of Aquinas's proofs for the divine. Furthermore, and crucially, he proclaimed his desire in his last years to "correct the enormous damage I may have done". Perhaps, as a by-product, he may also help to correct some of the damage being done by Dawkins and his ilk. In any event, Flew has flown over the cuckoo's nest inhabited by the neo-atheists and has found in death the truth that had eluded him in life. We can but pray that Dawkins will also "fly the nest" before his own inevitable end.          

 

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August 20th, 2010Towards a Post-Imperial Futureby Joseph Pearce

A friend drew my attention to this article in today's Wall Street Journal (see below for the introductory paragraphs), which speaks about an unlikely alliance between "progressive liberals" and "conservative libertarians" over the thorny issue of defence spending. I consider myself neither right wing nor left wing, nor do I adhere to the label of either "progressive liberal" or "conservative libertarian". Nonetheless, I am certainly in favour of a radical downsizing of the US military to take the United States forward into a post-imperialist future. I would therefore agree with the WSJ's contention that the idea represents a convergence of disparate worldviews. I would add further that Bush's neo-con imperialism was the reason that he lost the last election and therefore the reason we are shackled with Obama. It is surely time that the ghost of the Cold War was exorcised from political discourse. 

Here's the article ...

Where Left and Right Converge 

Anticorporatist views are becoming more and more common.

BY RALPH NADER 

Earlier this year, Barney Frank and Ron Paul convened the Sustainable Defense Task Force, consisting of experts "spanning the ideological spectrum." They recommended a 10-year, $1 trillion reduction in Pentagon spending that disturbed some in the military-industrial complex.

Other members of Congress were surprised by this improbable combination of lawmakers taking on such a taboo subject. But the spiral of bloated, wasteful military expenditures documented by newspapers has reached the point where opposites on the political-ideological spectrum were willing to make common cause. 

A convergence of liberal-progressives with conservative-libertarians centering on the autocratic, corporate-dominated nature of our government may be ...

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August 20th, 2010The Action of Graceby Kevin O'Brien | http://www.thewordinc.org

“I have found, in short, from reading my own writing, that my subject in fiction is the action of grace in territory held largely by the devil,” wrote Flannery O’Connor.

This is hard for readers to grasp, for O’Connor’s stories are so shocking, violent, and disturbing that we wonder how they can be about grace.  This is because we see grace as being a “nice thing”, like quietly saying grace before meals, like the “graceful” moves of a figure skater, like the “social graces”, which are about soothing and calming people and situations.  We really believe the message of all the Scriptures is “Jesus was nice; you be nice, too.”

But the Grace of God is a man clothed in rags with a wild gleam in his eye eating locusts in the desert and warning his people to flee from the wrath to come.  The Grace of God is the zeal of Phineas, who slew the Israelite and his wife who were flaunting God’s commands.  The Grace of God is St. Paul, blinded, knocked down, humiliated.

When the hand of God reaches out to us, we usually see it as a disturbance in our otherwise orderly lives.  We want to do things our way, and so we want no interference.  We usually think of the strident atheist as railing against God, but in fact we are the ones railing against God quietly when we take the awe of Him out of our parish architecture and when we castrate our homilies and when we gay-up our liturgical music; we rail against God when we choose a life devoted to nothing but bourgeois comfort, when we placate our lusts with private porn and shut out the silence with headphones and texting.  We come to feel satisfied that grace is a predictable thing we can keep in a box, that God is a feeling we can turn on or off whenever we want, that the prophets are wrong, that zeal is a bit much, that St. Paul is best left ignored, that he’s a tad embarrassing.

Now here’s the surprising thing.  When we invite God out of our lives in this way, He sometimes exercises a great Grace on us – by going.  The Grace of God is not always an active thing.  He is content to be passive, as passive as a good man hanging on a cross.  He is content to give great Grace by removing His Grace.

And what happens then?

In Psalm 106:15 we read, “And He gave them their request, but sent leanness into their soul.” In Hosea 4:10, “They shall eat, but not be satisfied; they shall play the whore, but not multiply.” Isaiah 9:20, “On the right they will devour, but still be hungry; on the left they will eat, but not be satisfied.”  These are three penetrating descriptions of the modern world, of people filled with every activity but never able to be made full by this activity, of people working to crawl out of the hole, but never being able to pay the debt, of never being able to say, “It is enough”, of people who have been given what they want - sterility.

It is a great grace for God to remove His Grace and show us how empty we are without Him.

But then when the active Grace comes, when the great gift is given … we cry out, “Mountains and hills fall on us!” and we flee, as if from the wrath to come.

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August 18th, 2010The Guy/Girl Thingby Kevin O'Brien | http://www.thewordinc.org

OK, there seems to be some confusion in Catholic circles about how to handle this whole thorny issue of dating and romance. As an expert on Life, a fully-fledge EWTN Matinee Idol, and as a man who has spent almost twenty years traveling the country with young actresses, I can help set a few things straight.

LOVE AS A VOCATION

First of all, finding the man or woman of your dreams is a great mystery. I mean that in the most complete metaphysical sense. It is a mystery because it is a Vocation.

What is a Vocation? A Vocation is an invitation from God to love Him more closely by becoming the person He has made you to be; it's a call to a fidelity to true development of character and to heading in the right direction toward the destination toward which He has made you to yearn (we're told in pop psychology, "It's the journey that matters, not the destination", but a true journey is meaningless without a destination, and a destination and a destiny have much in common). A Vocation happens when He calls us by name for a specific task (a calling in life) or to love a specific person in marriage (also a calling in life). Those who have Vocations to the priesthood or religious life can tell you that a hallmark of a Vocation is your misery when trying to deny it, your frustration when it remains unfulfilled, and your contentment when you find it and follow it. Kind of like love. (That's because a Vocation is all about love).

Now here's the thing. Even if you discern a vocation, say, to the religious life, you must discern to what particular order God is calling you. The same is true for secular "vocations" or career callings. If you discern a calling to (God forbid) be an actor, you must discern how you can do this and eat as well as what troupe you must find or what shows you must do. God is not into the Vague and the Blurry; Liberalists are into that, and so is the devil. God is into incarnation, which is always specific and particular. Thus we are not called to love just anybody or do just anything; we are called to love a particular person, and do a particular thing, for each of us is a particular person - this fact itself being a profound mystery. The peculiarity of what God wants us to do and who He wants us to love mirrors the peculiarity of who He has made us to be, the mystery of our own identities. What we do and how we love defines who we are. This cannot be fully understood; it is truly a mystery.

And the other great oddity about this mystery is why it should be so darn hard. Why do so many of us go astray? Finding true love is harder than anything else in life; it is a minefield through which parents or authors can not lead you.

Nevertheless, this author will not be intimidated. I will lead you. Ladies, I may not be able to lead you in the right direction, but I can sure the heck help you avoid the wrong direction, for I have seen a lot over the years.

WHY I KNOW SO DARNED MUCH

My wife Karen has perhaps foolishly allowed me to support the family for the past 16 years by travelling the country performing two-person murder mystery dinner theater shows. The shows feature an actor (me) and an actress playing multiple parts. We perform regularly from Minnesota to Kansas to Kentucky and Tennessee. Therefore, I often find myself going on long car trips with pretty young women in their 20's. And while I have resisted the temptation to become sexually intimate with these girls, still for many years I was foolish enough to do something almost as stupid. I would actually to talk to the actresses while in the car. That's right, I would talk to them! Big mistake. I eventually realized this, and now I play audio books instead.

But what would happen when I would talk to them for hours on end, invariably, would be that I would get a kind of perspective on women that guys almost never get. I would find out about the most important things in their lives - men. And I would find out how incredibly MESSED UP the men in their lives were. And how MESSED UP these girls were in dealing with these MESSED UP men.

GUYS, WE HAVE NO IDEA

Parenthetically, I must say this before going any further. Guys, we have no idea. Guys, we think pretty and intelligent girls will never talk to us. We think we're such losers that we'll never get noticed. We would never make their radar screens.

The truth is just the other way. There are countless pretty and intelligent young women out there who sell out, who settle for anything that comes their way, who go after the lowest blip on the radar screen, regardless of how far his craft has sunk in altitude. None of them seems to realize what a hot prospect she is, and how if she's the least bit pretty or charming or smart she could have any guy she wanted. Guys aren't that picky, and girls don't seem to know that. We'll settle for what we can get! We can't imagine that a young woman would do the same. We suspect any girl can have any guy she wants - by virtue of simply being a girl!

They don't think that way.

CASE HISTORIES

I have changed the names of each person that follows and a tiny detail here or there to protect identities. But I am not making any of this up, nor am I exaggerating.

ROXY was a former beauty pageant winner who had had only one love in her life, Henry. She wanted to marry Henry until she found out he was using and selling cocaine. She wisely dumped him. But she rebounded to Max. Max was a scrawny public school teacher with bad teeth and a worried look in his eye. Every time he called her on the cell phone, she seemed mildly annoyed to talk to him. Once she told me of how he had been calling her every ten minutes the night before, begging her to come over to his place. She kept telling him she couldn't see him that night, as she had to prepare for her trip and show the next day. And so he drove by her house, sat in his parked car across the street staring at her house and calling from his cell phone every ten minutes begging to see her. She seemed surprised when I told her she was crazy if she kept dating him.

RACHEL had never had a boyfriend she was in love with. When she turned 30, she panicked, paid $3,000 to join a dating service and started hyper-dating. She went on a lunch date and a dinner date every day for thirty days straight - sixty dates, from which she picked a guy to marry. Once, on a trip with me she was worried because Mr. Fiance was a health nut who insisted she work-out three hours a day at a gym or treadmill, just like he did. "I have new tennis shoes and I'm afraid I'll get blisters if I run on the treadmill at the hotel, but he wants me to!" she told me. Eventually, Mr. Fiance insisted that Rachel give up acting. He did not want her to have a life outside of him. She not only thought this was a good thing, but she seemed to think this meant he loved her very much. My wife Karen said, "Once they're married, he'll start beating her and she'll be miserable." She invited Karen and me to her wedding, but I told her I thought she was making a mistake by marrying him (something apparently nobody else in her life had the guts to tell her) and she has not spoken to me since.

MARTHA was a very devout Catholic girl. Her boyfriend was a radical traditionalist. He got the idea from a book that not only did chastity mean not having sex before marriage, it also meant not kissing. So they never even kissed - even after they got engaged! Two months before the wedding, after the showers, after the invitations had been sent, after the wedding and reception were planned, he called her to tell her he had discerned a vocation to the priesthood, and would not marry her, thus dropping a nuclear bomb into her life. In dating this guy, Martha kept her virginity but lost her innocence.

BETTY spent years dating a guy in theater that everybody but Betty herself knew was gay. Her heart went out to this man, but they became nothing more than friends. She got him in bed once and dreamed if she could do it again, he would start to love her. She got angry when other people would tell her he was gay, and that other actors were running into him at the gay bars. I eventually learned that her first husband had left her for another man - though Betty insisted he just moved in with this other man because they were close friends who spent way too much time together and both liked to star in musicals. I also learned that Betty's father, a pastor at a Protestant church, caused a scandal in the 1950's by becoming too close to one of the teachers at the church school. The teacher her daddy became too close to, I eventually found out, was - you guessed it - a man.

KAREN spent nine years dating a guy who was in theater and who made almost no money. She was very self-sacrificing and kind to him, and they were clearly meant for one another, but it took this loser nine - count 'em nine - years to realize she was the gal for him and finally to marry her. And yet she put up with him all that time!

Oh, wait, that last one's my story! I should have changed Karen's name to something else. My excuse is I was not Christian at the time, and oh yes, I was also a total idiot.

THINGS TO WATCH OUT FOR

These stories can go on and on, and there's little point to that. So, dear ladies, let's pass from anecdotal evidence to conclusions and rules we can draw from all of this. I now present THE WARNING SIGNS.

1. If a guy is addicted to drugs, cross him off your list.

2. If a guy has a thing for guys, cross him off your list. Sure he's a great friend, but the closeness you feel with him comes from the fact that there's no sexual tension between you.

3. If a guy is not happy with you having a life outside of him, cross him off your list. Possessiveness and control is NOT a sign of love; it's a sign of a dangerous man.

4. If a guy starts to stalk you, cross him off your list. Stalking is NOT a sign of love, it's a sign of a nasty sickness.

5. If a guy is either obsessed with sex or else obsessed with avoiding sex - if you can't tell him no or he never gives you the opportunity to tell him no - cross him off your list.

6. If a guy shows the least hint of wanting to "discern a vocation to the priesthood or religious life", don't cross him off your list, but break the entire relationship off until he's certain he's called instead to marriage. Then, if he wavers again after "finally discerning marriage" and is the least bit "not sure", cross him off your list.

7. Do not listen to the puritan-Catholics who tell you that dating is evil, courtship is good. Dating is casual courtship, which is fine as long as it doesn't lead to casual sex (or formal sex, for that matter). You do NOT have to go out only with men who are serious prospects. In fact, there is no way of knowing a man is a serious prospect until you spend some casual time with him. Dating should be fun and the guy should be fun. If he's not, cross him off your list.

8. DATE AS MANY GUYS AS POSSIBLE before becoming engaged. Do NOT have sex with as many guys as possible (in fact, do not "make out", but do kiss), and do not believe the lie that fornication is OK if you really love each other. In fact, if you have sex with a guy before you marry him, you stand a fine chance of him dating you for nine years before he gets off his butt and does the right thing. But DO DATE A LOT. Only by dating a lot of guys will you know what men are like and what to watch out for.

9. Do not panic. You can't do a thing about finding love, other than putting yourself in the right environment (avoid pick up bars and community theater, for example). If there is any proof that the ways of God are beyond mere mortals, it's the fact that we can't work our way up into finding the right person to love.

10. It's a humbling thing, and it will NEVER go smoothly!

Well, that's all I have for now. I may yet start a syndicated column 

of advice for the lovelorn, but that's still to come.

I will leave you with this, by Hilaire Belloc.

"Because in your Mortality the most
Of all we may inherit has been found -
Children for memory; faith for pride;
Good land to leave; and young love satisfied."

"Young love satisfied" is a beautiful, tender, wonderful gift, rarely 
received or found. May God grant it to us all!

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August 18th, 2010The Church and the Libertarianby Richard Aleman | http://www.distributistreview.com/mag

Author and attorney Christopher A. Ferrara speaks to Jeremiah Bannister about his book “The Church and the Libertarian.” They discuss the Austro-libertarian movement, Catholic Social Teaching, and Distributism.

This interview runs just under one hour.

http://distributistreview.com/mag/2010/08/an-interview-with-christopher-ferrara/

To purchase Mr. Ferrara’s book, please go to:

http://www.remnantnewspaper.com/Archives/2010-ferrara-church-libertarian.htm

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August 16th, 2010Colloquiumby Susan Treacy

As a new blogger, I have been slow in getting started, but I hope to have something to contribute on a regular basis. My first post will cover what for me is probably the highlight of my year.

Although I have been back home for over a month, I am still basking in the beauty and joy of the Sacred Music Colloquium XX, sponsored by the Church Music Association of America (CMAA). From June 21-27 Duquesne University hosted 250 people in “Seven Days of Musical Heaven”. The Colloquium is more than just a summer music camp, it is more akin to a retreat, for faithful Catholics flock to it for spiritual, as well as musical rejuvenation. Each day is filled with music, prayer, and instruction. There are five Gregorian chant scholæ (Mixed Beginners, Intermediate Men, Intermediate Women, Advanced Men, and Advanced Women) and five polyphonic choirs. Every day there are chant and polyphony rehearsals, and also lectures and workshops, all led by master instructors. Attendees range from those who are volunteer parish choir members to those who are professional organists and choir directors, and the spirit of charity and joy rules as all are made to feel at home. Perhaps that is because every day we are reminded of our true home when we sing at Mass the chants and polyphonic works we have been practicing.

As I noted above, this is the twentieth Colloquium and it has grown a great deal since the early years. The first Colloquium was held in 1990 at Christendom College (Front Royal, VA) and continued there through 2002. The first time I attended was in 1994, and in those years it was common for there to be about 30-40 people in attendance. The founder and guiding light in those early years was Father Robert Skeris. We were also blessed to have Monsignor Richard Schuler, Maestro Paul Salamunovich, Dr Theodore Marier, and Father Ralph March amongst our mentors.

From 2003-2007 the Colloquium was held at the Catholic University of America (Washington, DC), and it was during this time that the Colloquium began to grow, especially after 2005. I don’t think it was a coincidence that this began to happen during the pontificate of Benedict XVI. In 2006 the number of participants grew to about 85, and in 2007 the number shot up to 144, nearly double the size. In fact, registration had to be closed two months before the Colloquium because the capacity had already been reached. By this time it became clear that it would be necessary to move to a facility that could more easily handle the larger numbers we were expecting. Also by this time, the CMAA had a stellar new president in Dr William Mahrt of Stanford University. Under Dr Mahrt’s leadership, new directions and initiatives were taken, including the beginning of a CMAA website. David Hughes was the first webmaster, and Jeffrey Tucker began to play an active role in various ventures to promote sacred music, especially on the website. These ventures, dear readers, will be discussed on a future blog post. A new generation of master teachers joined the Colloquium, among them Scott Turkington, Wilko Brouwers, and Horst Buchholz. Arlene Oost-Zinner became the conference manager and brought her superb management skills to the Colloquium. The new Colloquium was to be Loyola University of Chicago, and this is where we met in 2008-2009.

Here is a link to a brief video (of just under 3 minutes) from the 2008 Sacred Music Colloquium, held at Loyola University of Chicago. It gives a good overview of what goes on at the Colloquium and contains wonderful examples of Gregorian chant and sacred polyphony as sung by the participants. The final work is Anton Bruckner’s magnificent setting of Ave Maria, sung by all 230 participants, at the end of the Colloquium. You will briefly see Bishop Salvatore Cordileone (then auxiliary in San Diego), who came to celebrate Mass and stayed for polyphonic Vespers because he enjoyed the Colloquium so much. This video and the following two were professionally made by Corpus Christi Watershed, a Catholic “apostolate dedicated to the arts, culture, and religion.” For more on Corpus Christi Watershed, visit www.ccwatershed.org. Also, future blog posts will explore this exciting initiative in more detail.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5emKd8ajSc

In 2009 Cardinal George celebrated a Novus Ordo Latin Mass for the Birth of Saint John the Baptist. His Eminence chanted his part expertly and preached inspiringly on the Forerunner of Christ. Corpus Christi Watershed returned, this time to film a full-length documentary on Colloquium XIX, which has now been broadcast on EWTN. The film can be viewed online, or purchased, at the Corpus Christi Watershed website.

Here is a short video (6:25) of this year’s Colloquium, which drew 250 participants to Pittsburgh, PA. All Masses were celebrated in the beautiful Romanesque revival Church of the Epiphany, just across from Duquesne University.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FxEQdh-0JY

Here is a second brief video from this year’s Colloquium; it’s a little over 3 minutes long.

http://vimeo.com/13569791

Finally, here is a third video from this year’s Colloquium; it’s a little over 3 minutes long.

http://vimeo.com/13779840

The CMAA Sacred Music Colloquium has always been an intergenerational event, drawing participants as young as fourteen and as old as seventy-five. This year, however, it seemed as if at least half of the participants were under the age of thirty. Another long-time unique feature of the Colloquium is that, unlike most parish choirs, the Colloquium choirs are made up of as many men as women. There’s more I could say, but this is enough for one day. To learn more about the Colloquium, visit www.musicasacra.com.

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August 16th, 2010The Chesterton Conference: An Insider’s Observationby Kevin O'Brien | http://www.thewordinc.org

Below Dena Hunt waxes joyful on the Chesterton Conference as an Outsider.  Allow me to do the same as an Insider.

I have, in the past, written euphorically on the annual Chesterton Conference, and it's great to see others catching on and writing in the same tone.  Now that the conference is moving from town to town, and vast numbers are being exposed to it who did not normally consider travelling to Minnesota, where it used to be regularly held, this joy is spreading.  How do you explain this?

It really all comes down to salvation.

We like to think in America that we're saved merely as individuals.  We get our personal ticket stamped, and to hell with anybody around us.  Oh, we'll evangelize if we have to, but this is only to save other rugged individuals such as ourselves, who will come into a Church that is at best a pot luck, at worst a committee, and really just a gathering place for separate people saved separately.  But if we know anything about heaven, we know that it can not possibly be a committee.  And if we know anything about our own dysfunctional families, where Mom, Dad, and each kid is plugged into a different entertainment device, where dinner is not even pot luck, but catch-as-catch-can and never eaten together, where the father's role is to keep peace in the way it is kept at a committee meeting where various agendas vie for contention, then we know that that too falls short of what it should be, and short of what heaven is.

Here's what we know from Scripture: the Kingdom on Earth, the Church, is the Body of Christ, and we are His members.  And we know from the teachings of the Church that Communion is the most potent expression of this, and the most effective way to share in His body and to make this all happen.

Now at most of our parishes we have committee-think at best, dysfunction at worst (and not nearly enough pot lucks).  I have yet to experience any parish life where there's a true sense of family, or of communion, of like-minded people worshipping together, of disciples celebrating the One they love.  But we do get a taste of this at the annual Chesterton conference.  And we see that such communion, such a gathering of people who love a saint because of the saint's love of Christ, is a living thing.  It's not just a group, it's a culture - and culture is something that grows. 

The culture of the Church is the Body of Christ in motion.  This is why Dena, this is why any Christian, loves what happens at the Chesterton conference - or for that matter at the annual Portsmouth Institute Conference, or perhaps at any devout conference across this land.  The renewal of Christian culture, for which the St. Austin Review exists, is a renewal of an indispensable element of what we need to live eternally - and that is a gathering with others who give up their selfish agendas and together worship Christ, in literature, music, conviviality, and - amazingly - even in fun!

Having said all of this, my review of the Chesterton conference as an insider is this: IT WAS TREMENDOUS. 

The highlights included Nancy Brown's speech on Frances Chesterton and on the mutual sacrifices that composed the Chesterton marriage; the astonishing witness of James O'Keefe, and the moral issues raised by this journalistic monk; Fr. Milward's off-handed remark, "As I heard Evelyn Waugh say ..."; the reaction to our play "Faith of our Father"; and the people - the wonderful people - who were there and who communed together under the stars drinking, smoking, talking, and celebrating a man who celebrated Christ.

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August 16th, 2010The Mistake About Distributismby Richard Aleman | http://www.distributistreview.com/mag

 

(The following is a robust version of the talk I gave to the American Chesterton Society's "ChesterTEN" conference on Friday, August 6th 2010.)

Today we are going to try something a little different. How well it goes down depends on how many cups of coffee you’ve had this morning.

My name is Richard Aleman and I am, along with my esteemed colleague John Medaille, the editor for an online magazine called The Distributist Review. Our site is dedicated to analysis of contemporary politics, economics, and culture from a Distributist lens. We also include vintage articles from the early movement: G.K. Chesterton, Belloc, and Fr. Vincent McNabb, among many others. 

Dear Friends in Christ,

The title of my talk today is “The Mistake about Distributism.”

What I would like to do is cover two areas in particular.

1.      Some popular misconceptions about what Distributism is and isn’t.

2.      I want to give all of you a brief about the state of Distributism today, where we are, and most importantly I’d like to talk about action and the future of this movement.

Now I don’t want to bore you with a long introduction to Distributism. Instead, I am going to bore you with a short introduction to Distributism. As doctors and executioners say: I will make this as painless and quick as possible.

Founding

Distributism was founded by writers GK Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc, in response to the Catholic social encyclical Rerum Novarum (trans: “Of New Things”), which was issued in 1891. This encyclical outlined the primary rights and responsibilities of capital and labor, government and citizens in the wake of industrialization, which had created social upheaval and disorder. It also attempted to protect the working classes from “the misery and wretchedness pressing so unjustly on the majority of the working classes.” (RR, no.3)

Recognizing the characteristic tension that existed between the separation of ownership from labor, three universal principles from Rerum Novarum stood out in the minds of the Distributists:

1. That the State should rule with justice—distributive justice, towards the nation as a whole and regardless of class.

Among the many and grave duties of rulers who would do their best for the people, the first and chief is to act with strict justice - with that justice which is called distributive - toward each and every class alike. (Ibid, no.33)

In other words, the Distributists were concerned about the distribution of wealth, goods and services, the means of production and who controlled them, and how this impacted and conditioned the foundations upon which society is built, particularly in the wake of the industrial revolution.

2. In order to transcend the contemporary problems inherent in economic Liberalism, the gap in wealth and the separation of ownership and work, the best foundation of a nation is one built upon an ownership society.   

If working people can be encouraged to look forward to obtaining a share in the land, the consequence will be that the gulf between vast wealth and sheer poverty will be bridged over, and the respective classes will be brought nearer to one another…Men always work harder and more readily when they work on that which belongs to them. (Ibid, no.47)

Chesterton understood the importance of labor, the personal aspect of work which is intrinsic to man. To illustrate the difference between title ownership and employment, Chesterton often quoted the story of the Good Shepherd: “And the hireling fleeth, because he is the hireling: and he hath no care for the sheep. I am the good shepherd, and I know mine, and mine know me.” (The Gospel According to St. John 10:13-14).   

How can private initiative be geared to achieve the goals necessary for widespread ownership? The last of the three primary principles Distributists inherited from the good Pope Leo held the answer. We return once more to Rerum Novarum:

The law, therefore, should favor ownership, and its policy should be to induce as many as possible of the people to become owners. (no.46)=

Chesterton and Belloc understood that, along with private initiative, the proper legal framework was needed to overhaul the present system and favor ownership for the family.

(Distributism finds its roots in the social and economic theories articulated in the documents of the Church’s social teaching, beginning with Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum. These social encyclicals raise imperatives on economic transaction and its relation to capital and labor, solidarity, wages, the wide diffusion of ownership, and the proper limits of technology. Distributism is an economic system compliant with the principles of these documents, and is centered on the widest possible ownership of property as the best guarantee of political and economic freedom. A family that owns its own land or its own tools can make its own way in the world without being dependent on someone else for a “job.” Thus, Distributism seeks to extend property ownership; both for private and social use, as widely as possible, and end the concentration of ownership by few capitalists or state officials; neither wage-slavery nor slavery to the State.)

To quote the late Archbishop Sheen, “History reveals that never has there been any tyranny, never has there been slavery, in a country where there has been a wide distribution of property.”  

I’ve called today’s talk “The Mistake about Distributism” because I want to address some of the common errors I’ve come across over the years since my involvement in Distributism. Some of these I call mistakes, while others may be best described as fairytales.

The Mistake about Distributism

Distributism is just another form of Capitalism.

I’ve been asked repeatedly to admit that Distributism is just another form of Capitalism, and so I have decided to give in if this makes other people happy. Distributism is just like Capitalism except that we differ on the nature of man, the purpose of economic activity, usury, the maximization of token wealth, the role and the legitimate exercise of the State, the meaning of subsidiarity, the subordination of economics to the higher sciences, our ends, our means, what money is, what wealth is, what “free” market is, production and consumption, regulation, free trade, the natural and Divine law in the social and economic order, and yes, even what liberty means.

Yep, we are just a bunch of Capitalists. 

Distributism is just another form of Socialism

Take what I’ve said, make a few changes and just add: OBAMA. 

Distributists are against employment.

Chesterton had a profound respect for the worker as do we. Man is not simply an individual but he is social in nature and, for the benefit of the common good, he should organize in order to protect vital common interests.

Most Distributists admire the work of economist Fr. Heinrich Pesch and the solidarity system of human work. In fact, we view solidarity not as foreign to Distributism, but rather complimentary. Distributism does not view the hiring of labor by capital as intrinsically immoral nor as something to be eradicated by the Distributive State. Rather, Chesterton himself and Distributists today hold that there should be harmony between capital and labor. However, in order for this harmony to happen I would like to raise certain conditions:

 

1. Workers cannot be seen as a factor or cost, but rather as essential partners in the production process.
2. Workers must be given a living wage and a just contract.
3. A good society is one where, for the sake of the individual and the common good, the worker has a choice whether to own or seek employment.

 

Chesterton said it perfectly:

“We believe that unless the great majority of men in a country own their home, the ground it stands on, and their means of livelihood, the citizens of that country cannot be free. But we do not insist that a man must own. We insist that he shall be given the choice, and that at any moment it shall be easy for him to become an owner.”

The conflict between employer and employee is not inevitable. We believe tensions will be relieved in a nation based on cooperative and self-ownership, where the worker has the choice to give his labor for a wage or own his business. However, so long as these tensions exist, so long as man exists in a condition where he is forced to work for a wage without the choice to decide whether he will use his talents as an owner or labor under an employer, we will continue to call our present system what it is: wage-slavery. 

Distributists do not believe in competition.

The theory of competition is defined as a contest between two or more forces, which cannot share the same space. Rather than a dog-eat-dog world divorced from the Gospels, Distributists would properly define competitive forces as cooperative – based on mutual survival rather than destruction; the natural forces of creativity and uniqueness rather than undermining of businesses in the same market or the monopolizing of the marketplace. 

Allow me to give you an example. I come from a town in Spain that has two bakeries on the same street; not only are they on the same street, but they also face one another. One bakery opened its doors in the 1950s while the other opened up in the 1980s. How have they lasted so long? Why hasn’t one gobbled up the other? Well, for starters they don’t exchange signs depicting the other bakery as “Hell’s Kitchen”. One store doesn’t reduce prices to lure the other’s customers. They are not subsidized by taxpayer funds. There isn’t some safety net against failure. No, they rely on their own natural talents and they enjoy a customer base that may like the baked bread in one store, but the croissants of the other.

Distributism is dying.

Some think tanks say Distributism is a corpse; Distributism is on the decline because it is a fairytale. If Distributism is dying, as they say, what an odd spectacle it is to observe as a group of people devote so much energy to beating a dead horse. If their proposition is true, then it is also true that they have spent over two years publishing books, articles, pamphlets, and dedicated precious conference time just to prove that a “fairytale” is really an extinct fairytale.  

The reality is that being a Distributist in the 21st century is more exciting than ever.

In the publishing world, successful classics like Chesterton’s The Outline of Sanity and Fr. McNabb’s Nazareth or Social Chaos continue to be reprinted, while contemporary works like Joseph Pearce’s E.F. Schumacher renaissance Small is Still Beautiful, Dr. Race Mathew’s Jobs of our Own, and John Medaille’s Toward a Truly Free Market bring Distributism up to date.   

The great Dale Ahlquist appears on EWTN and talks about Chesterton’s Distributism. In fact, he is the reason I am standing in front of you today. Whether or not this is a good thing, I leave up to you.

Online, hundreds of web pages, sites, and blogs explore Distributist thought: the Chesterbelloc, Wendell Berry, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, E.F. Schumacher, and Fr. Jose Maria Arizmendiarrieta, founder of Mondragón Cooperative.

The Society for Distributism, chaired by Thomas Storck, John Medaille, and myself, was invited to participate last year at the Nassau Community College Center for Catholic Studies’ “Capitalist-Socialist-Distributist” debate against Michael Novak and Dr. Charles Clark.

Overseas, The Sierra Leone Chesterton Centre is teaching Africans how to apply Distributist cooperative methods to an agrarian economy.

“Red Tory” Phillip Blond is taking the U.K. by storm. Mr. Blond isn’t shy about his advocacy for Distributism. In fact he unapologetically ‘name drops’ Chesterton and Belloc at every opportunity: at every press conference or talk. He has also played an influential role in the political philosophy of the newly elected Prime Minister, David Cameron.

The country of Romania is interested in the Distributist model as well. John Medaille spent last summer working with the Romanians, appearing on national television and co-editing a book which will soon be translated into English. And his new book “Toward a Truly Free Market” is expected to be translated into Romanian and released soon.

Finally, Thomas More College just last week announced a new Catholic medieval guild program so that students will learn skills and the inner workings of the guild system. According to the great Distributist and president of Thomas More College, Dr. William Fahey:

“Not only will students learn skills they can use throughout their lives, they will have an opportunity to bake bread for the homeless, produce icons for local churches, create chairs, cribs, and other projects for the poor and needy in our community, and bring music to nursing homes and hospitals.”

Friends, Distributism is not dying…some people are just getting nervous.

Distributism cannot be Done

How we do get started? How can we make Distributism a reality?

We begin with the study group. Let’s look at local Chesterton societies as models, after all, branches already exist across the country. Think of what all of you have accomplished and how you’ve revived Chesterton in the public consciousness. Your efforts have been so successful you have even built a school: Chesterton Academy.

Well, what if existing and new groups are formed, meeting once a week to learn the economic science and philosophy of Distributism? What if you asked your local parish if some space might be reserved on Church premises so your group can be a visible manifestation of faith, attracting others and building new leaders?

How many of you are teachers? You know what it is like. Ten years down the road you discover a former pupil has grown to become a writer, a politician, a store owner, farmer, etc. There is satisfaction in knowing that you may have played an influential part in their lives. I receive emails from folks who say, “I am a political science major and once I finish my graduate studies I’m running for office as a Democrat or Republican on a Distributist platform.” Through the creation of a study group, you can help usher-in a new generation of leadership.

What if, after six months of study you begin to examine the successes and failures of your local community? This can lead to the development of political and social activism, educational efforts, the creation of socially-conscious businesses and non-profits instrumental in the development of the Distributist program.

What if homeschoolers, already ‘educational distributists’, teach their children Distributism? And what if an Outline of Sanity or Economics for Helen educational series could be adopted for homeschoolers of various ages?

What are we doing at The Distributist Review? The Distributist Review is preparing a Distributist catechism. Once complete this will be available free for download so that Distributists can finally have a “Q&A” or a “textbook” like the one promised in the early 20th century; something they can pass on to seminarians, parishioners, priests, family, and friends.

MICRO CREDIT LENDING

We have often heard of micro-credit programs used to help underdeveloped nations like India. But micro-credit lending is very Distributist and can work right in our very own communities.

The E.F. Schumacher Society started a micro-credit lending program in Great Barrington, Massachusetts many years ago called SHARE. The Self-Help Association for a Regional Economy (SHARE) was a model community-based nonprofit that offered a simple way for citizens to create a sustainable local economy by supporting businesses that provide products or services needed in the region. Members of the micro-credit program made deposits at the local bank (where the account was located), which were used to collateralize loans for local businesses with a positive community impact. As micro-credit depositors live in the same community as the business owners they support, micro-credit brings a human face back to lending decisions.

SHARE was probably one of those few experiments that were so successful it was discontinued. Banks and Credit Unions found micro-credit programs to be so advantageous that they began to adopt similar models of small business reinvestment across the entire Berkshire County.

Micro-credit lending can make a difference for families and neighbors, and for our children’s future.

B CORP

In order to change how we conduct business it is important as well to take a second look at the business structure.

The S and C corporations are two legal corporate structures under U.S. Federal tax code. One alternative to the S and C corporations is called the ‘B Corporation’ but for our purposes let’s call it the “Distributist Corp.” What would single out Distributist corporations from standard corporations are their articles of incorporation, which are expanded to include the responsibilities and purpose of the business. So, for example, should a publicly traded company become a Distributist corporation, purpose would become an integral component in the interest of the business and shareholders would become stakeholders. Upon selling the business, rather than a fiduciary duty to shareholders, the Distributist Corp’s fiduciary duty will be purpose-driven and laid out in the initial incorporation.

 

A sample outline of purpose-driven extended articles of incorporation, in no particular order, may include and are not limited to:

 

1. Fidelity to Catholic Social Teaching
2. Primum non nocere – “First, do no harm” principle
3. Pro-life
4. Reinvestment into community for public benefit
5. Just or living wages
6. Dedication to eco-friendly and sustainable environments
7. Organic production
8. Application of E.F. Schumacher’s “Appropriate technology” 

 

Distributists cannot meet our large-scale manufacturing and technological needs, nor can they rebuild the agricultural sector.

Without a doubt Distributism started as an agrarian economy. But at the heart of Distributism is a decentralist system. Distributists wish to restore localism; the local economy; Local production for local consumption.

Besides wages and the conditions of employment already mentioned, the reason the Distributists were critical about mass production is because mass production took away from decentralized production. For Chesterton, an economy dominated by mass-produced goods could never replace the strength of a decentralized economy because ownership diversification also meant self-reliance for small towns and for the small country. Local production for local consumption is a policy enabling the flow of an extensive variety of goods and services created by and sustaining the very community that makes them. 

Chesterton recognized how the powerful concentration of the mass production system severed widespread ownership, augmented the nation’s reliance on industry for its GDP, challenged the power of the State, and amplified the influence of these large firms in obtaining government subsidies and rescues (what we today dub “too big to fail”), so that when the factory collapsed we also collapsed with them. Unable to compete with the bargaining and lobbying powers of the factory, local production suffered as mass producers increasingly became the sole sources of wealth for local communities, paid unjust wages and offered unjust contracts to the worker, eliminated the ownership society and, without loyalty to King or country, these factories packed up and moved for greener pastures, leaving small towns in ruin as has become evident today in the United States.

So what is the Distributist answer to our automotive, tech, and other large-scale manufacturing?

Worker-ownership 

Cooperatives are worker-owned businesses: multi-partnerships where the capital owner and the employee are one and the same. Whether the business suffers losses or gains, cooperative owners risk just like any other business. 

For example, say the five of you in the front row decided to open up a bar. You would prepare a business plan, determine how much capital investment each of you need (say $5,000) to start the firm, and operate the business democratically. Any and all decisions in a cooperative vary according to the business; majority rule or unanimous vote. In a nutshell, understanding how cooperatives are formed and run is that simple. 

Cooperatives are the Distributist answer to utility companies, construction, the automotive industry, insurance, healthcare, and even law firms. Cooperatives are the answer to NAFTA and restoring the “Made in the USA” label; mobilizing workers whose jobs have been shipped overseas; raising American domestic production from the ashes. Cooperatives offer the widest ownership not only because of their structure but because of the tentacles of capital investment inherent in cooperative ownership. Instead of one person raising capital to incorporate and invest in overhead, the cooperative is a shared investment by several people injecting capital. 

The most successful cooperative in the world is Mondragón Cooperative in Spain with returns in excess of $16 Billion and with approximately 300 cooperatives under the Mondragón umbrella. Mondragón has also been instrumental in working with United Steelworkers for the creation of worker cooperatives right here in the U.S. Mondragón is a model for us, whether in retail or industrialization.

The Emilia-Romagna region in Italy is full of cooperatives and perhaps because of this it is one of the richest regions in all of Europe, making up 45% of Bologna’s Gross Domestic Product.

But for those who think cooperative success is limited to Europe, the history of cooperative accomplishment may also be found right here in America. There are hundreds of cooperatives united under the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives, and according to the University of Wisconsin, over 16,000 cooperatives in the United States are operating in various industries including fishing, farming, and education.

Worker-owned businesses are a Distributist model for America in the 21st century.

 

• You cannot change the present culture.

 

The late Dr. William Marra once said that philosophers define the world and this is also true of G.K. Chesterton. He understood the need for action and through his work and the organizational efforts of The Distributist League, over 24 branches of the Distributist League were founded across the United Kingdom. Other Distributist groups such as the Catholic Land Movement and the Ditchling Guild also took up the tasks necessary to build a practical Distributist culture.

Action and the Failure to Outreach

Coupled with prayer, fasting, the practice of virtue and the supplication for graces, action is a necessary ingredient for change.

“People follow the leader, and if the principal political leader of a country is a devout Christian, the people tend to imitate his good example. His political power enables him to reform civil society in favor of Christianity and begin the construction of a Christian social order.” (Albert C. Walsh, A Christian Political Party Now, pg. 23)

I know I’ve mentioned a few book titles this morning, but if you can read any book about action I recommend Dedication and Leadership by Douglas Hyde. The late Douglas Hyde was a famous British convert to Catholicism from the Communist Party. In this transcript from a lecture given at the University of Notre Dame in the 1960s, Hyde meticulously described the tactics used by the Communist Party in the U.K. to achieve a level of membership unmatched by the Catholic Church within the same span of time. With few exceptions, such as the Catholic Truth Society, the Catholic Church in the U.K. had grown disinterested in building solidarity with the homeless, the poor, and the disenfranchised. Communists used this to their advantage and swept the nation by specifically targeting the poor through a successful outreach program.

I was invited to a pre-conference lunch one year ago. At this lunch an esteemed priest lamented the abysmal failure of the Right to Life Party in the State of New York. He didn’t understand why, with so many Catholics in New York, the party failed to capture a significant number of votes. So, like the good Distributist and Catholic that I am, I raised my hand and asked if the Right to Life Party had an outreach program. He shook his head but did mention that in order to attract local, the organization did offer Prayer Breakfasts and Conferences. I asked, “Did you grab a table, stand in street corners and hand out pamphlets and flyers? Did you go to the malls and talk to people?” “No,” he answered.

That is why the party failed to acquire a serious amount of votes.

Nurturing the base of any movement is important. But friends, it is not enough to preach to the choir. It is not enough to look within. One must be willing to reach out and capture their imagination.  

I come from a military background so I will not ask you to do what I am unwilling to do. And so, this Fall I will grab a table and our literature, and park myself in front of the colleges and universities – on the sidewalks of New York City. No doubt some will argue and some will just pass me by. But some people will listen and this method will increase awareness about Distributism.

I’ve been told my writing is at times clinical and doesn’t come from the heart. So let me speak from the heart:

I came back to New York, after serving four years in the Marines, and I found my mother losing her small business to the politics of the Left and the Right. I returned and found an economic philosophy that shrugged its shoulders as small businesses—the lifeblood of this country—collapsed under unfair regulations, outsourcing, and Big Business. Capitalists and socialists often either pontificate about how flaws in the system are “the nature of the beast” rather than an organic consequence of their basic assumptions about man, his environment, and the “primacy” of trade, or they smile at you and say, “hey, it’s better than Communism.”

Instead of choosing the lesser of two evils, I believe we have a duty to provide our people with something good. I do not mean Utopia. Distributists recognize Fallen Man while theorists of the invisible hand let God sort it out in the end. For too long we have allowed ourselves to be guided by man instead of building the inner workings of a system worthy of the children of God.

No…I’m sorry…not this time. We reject the age of the Enlightenment and societies divorced from the Gospels. We want something more, something better, and we are going to build it. We choose to be leaders in our communities because we believe in the future of our people and we insist on a state of affairs which acknowledges the visible hand of God. We want something true for our children not so they can have more, but so they can be more.

The defensive posturing of the 20th century will not do. No war has been won on the defensive. We must be cautious but we must never fail to see that our present disorder stems from philosophies and groups that are never overly cautious. Think about it. Either we can allow others to dictate our future or we can rise to the challenges before us and lead this nation. Indeed, Christians should be the leaders of this 21st century popular movement.

It is unrealistic for us to continue to be separated politically by tribal ideologies which have failed us.  

This movement will champion the rights of the unborn, rally against torture and euthanasia, and it will stand up for economics as if families—and more importantly–as if God mattered, because we believe that justice is not only owed to one another and to the dignity of peoples, but above all to God.   

We urge the pro-life movement to adopt Distributist economics so that, while never diminishing the intrinsic evil of abortion, the pro-life apologist may be well-rounded and capable of providing an economic defense for social reform which can persuade those presently opposed to life.

No man is an island. We must recognize that true self-sufficiency means we cannot simply fend for ourselves because man is a social animal by nature. Localism and the cottage industry are about our households and communities; the rural towns; urban dwellers; real life and real people. Thus, we seek political reform based on independence for the family and social interdependence, subsidiarity and solidarity, distributive justice and the favoring of the widest distribution of title ownership, whether individual or cooperative.

Friends, the 21st century should be the beginning of an old and new procession – one that raises the scarlet flag of our Savior, recognizes His authority, and champions his weakest - the poor, destitute, and the propertyless in the name of the Social Reign of Christ the King. This new movement will not stand for prejudices against the poor, the unemployed, and the destitute; make no mistake about it we will not let them rot. Instead we will support the creation of new organizations–new houses of hospitality for the naked and hungry in the tradition of Dorothy Day, giving the disenfranchised material and immaterial blankets. 

This nation doesn’t have to be the place where the farmer loses his dreams, but where he can feed, and teach us how to feed, the future; thus, we will build the facilities to teach husbandry, stewardship, political economy, and provide the knowledge to attract a new generation of farmers, environmentalists, and good stewards. 

To those academics activists out there, join us. Help us draw the blueprints from which we can build a new tomorrow.

For the common man: become leaders in your communities.

Families, march with us so that one day you can tell your children that you played a part in a movement of mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, small business owners, cooperative owners; thousands, millions, who might one day stand in front of Congress with signs that read, “WE CREATED JOBS OF OUR OWN.”

Friends, I choose a visible manifestation of faith over the armchair. I choose not to walk away as Nero burns Rome, but to turn around, and follow my Master as He walks back toward the flames. Join us, there is a fire and we intend to put it out.

 

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August 16th, 2010Dappled Things SS. Peter & Paul 2010by Eleanor Bourg Donlon | http://www.eleanorbourgdonlon.com/

News from Dappled Things President, Bernardo Aparicio:

Dear Friends,

Like a cool summer breeze, the SS. Peter & Paul 2010 edition of Dappled Things has arrived, clearing the air with it a fresh selection of prose, poetry, and art. Among the offerings in this edition, you will find two essays by Eleanor Bourg Donlon on the subject of evil in English literature that study its manifestations from the profound to the popular. In the first of these, "Cinemanemia, or Revenge of the Bloodsucked," Miss Donlon considers that all important question: why don't they make vampyres like they used to?

The real problem with so many of these [new vampyre] films is actually they are both too serious and yet not serious enough. In the midst of taking themselves so damned seriously (the profanity is apt when speaking of the nosferatu), they become seriously unrealistic. (Says Abbot: “I know there’s no such person as Dracula. You know there’s no such person as Dracula.” “But,” quips Costello in response: “does Dracula know it?”) They are so desperate to invest the metaphysically denuded world with some sort of meaning that they end up dressing in modified Lugosi garb and speaking in husky, tremulous tones. This is symptomatic of a pervasive problem: as we have completely lost the sense of the sacramental nature of reality, we attempt to convey the preternatural through fantasy and costume. The more conspicuous the spectacle and more gaudy the display, the clearer it is that we are dull to its true presence. On the one hand we superficially embrace the supernatural under the guise of the fantastical; on the other, we completely reject the metaphysical backdrop proper to any such foray into vampyrism. And—pace drooling Edward Cullen fans—it is the latter which truly makes such nonsensical nightmares resonate with viewers.

But it is not just the essays that are great; let me tell you about the fiction. In Suit, Gabriel Olearnik's first prose submission to Dappled Things, he treats us to an unusual love story graced by the masterful use of the language and the startling imagery that frequent readers already know so well from his poetry.  Then Caroline Paddock challenges readers with a love story of another sort, what you might call a metaphysical one, in her excellent Professore Takes His Cure:

Peter breathed when Luca told him to breathe and bit the thermometer when Luca told him to. He noticed with annoyance that even when performing his medical duties Luca swaggered as if he had not been discharged from the Navy—as if he were still in whites with a sword swinging from his side. That swagger was one of the things Peter disliked about the village’s only doctor. The other thing he disliked was the way Luca pursued Nina: lazily, as if because Luca and Nina were the only young people to have lived abroad and returned to the village they would have to marry no matter how little effort Luca put into courtship. Peter grimaced with the thermometer under his tongue. Wasn’t it true that they would inevitably marry? No, no, he told himself. Nina wasn’t a normal woman—Nina was special. She wouldn’t marry a man who didn’t understand what Peter called her “angelic qualities.” But what interest did Peter, at sixty-one, have in the affair?

Also, be sure not to miss this issues feature piece, Born Again Virgin, a new story by Andrew McNabb, author of the much-discussed short fiction collection The Body of This. Then there is Flesh by Steven Stafford and February 29th by Bernadette Morgan, but you will have to subscribe to our print edition to enjoy those as well (and at only $19.99 a year, isn't it about time you treated yourself?).

Lovers of poetry will find much to rejoice about as well. Ricardo Quinones, the renowned scholar and critic, shares with us "SoCal: A Sorting of the Ways," his first published poem. Online readers can also enjoy Taylor Graham's "Salisbury Plain," and Monica Magnam's "Operation Pedro Pan," but only print subscribers can read our entire selection for this issue, which includes new poems by Gabriel Olearnik.

And if visual art is what you crave, you will relish Whitney Wolf's beautiful oil paintings, including his haunting "The Return."

We hope you will enjoy our selections for this edition, and that you will consider subscribing to our print version, which is sure to enrich your mind and soul.

Sincerely in Christ,

Bernardo Aparicio
President, Dappled Things

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August 11th, 2010The Chesterton Conference: An Outsider’s Observationby Dena Hunt

First, the conference wasn’t the purpose of my journey. I intended a brief visit of three days with my friend in Washington, and since the conference was nearby, we decided to attend Friday’s session and Saturday morning’s. Secondly, I’m not a Chestertonian. I “love” Chesterton (I use that word in its common vernacular misuse), but I’m not a fan or a devotee or a scholar—depending on how sundry Chestertonians might define themselves. There are writers, like Chesterton, whom I admire to the point of veneration, but fandom of any kind is not a temperament I’m endowed with.

I do think, however, that my friend must have had some kind of conversion experience. I don’t know if she joined the Chesterton Society, but I think she bought nearly every book in sight—or a good many anyway. And the reaction was the same after each presentation: “Oh, that was wonderful!” If I happened to miss it—I have trouble sitting still for anything over 50-60 minutes long—I was made to feel that I’d missed the Second Coming. Around the table of books on Catholic social theory, I made the mistake of muttering that I don’t get into that sort of thing much. She countered with: “Oh, but you should! You’re Catholic, aren’t you?” Point taken. I don’t know how many books she bought there.

All the presentations I did hear were too good to single out any one of them, but I got to meet Kevin O’Brien in person. Wow. Really. He and a few of his crew staged a one-act, “Faith of our Fathers”, that made me laugh so loud that if I’d been with any other audience, I think I might have embarrassed myself.

And I do love Chestertonians. Never have I been in a room with so many people I didn’t know with whom I felt downright bonded. Of like mind. Kinship. My kind of people, if you will. I want to go to next year’s conference just to “see the folks” again. I hope it’s not in a big city, though. I’m not a traveler in the first place (this was my first trip away from home in four years), and I found the Washington traffic traumatic, the metro a nightmarish experience. I know that it was only the saintly patience of my city-bred, well-traveled friend that kept her from stuffing a sock into my complaining mouth.

The crowd was, I noted, trans-generational. There were a few old fuddy-duddies like me, but there were a lot of young people as well. Quite young, in fact. How lovely to see at Catholic conferences that children and babies are not left behind with some sitter. I happen to love babies, having never had any of my own, and I enjoyed their presence very much. And where else, I thought, are you going to see teen-agers with scapulars peeking through their tee-shirts, listening—actually paying attention—to some scholar discussing finer points of G. K. Chesterton.

The young people, yes, indeed. Before I was introduced to Eleanor Bourg Donlon, I took her for one of the college kids. Actually, she’s not much older. Someone who’s a brilliant critic, an accomplished editor and writer; someone who has the maturity and moral courage to forego the unhallowed halls of modern academia to pursue real scholarship—is just a kid. And Bernardo Aparicio, president of Dappled Things, is—what?—27? Really? And they’re all so likeable. Not all smart people are likeable, you know.

There is a point I’m making here: Just as we see the Church transforming itself, pulling itself out of the mire and muck of scandal and the banality of modernism, in the new young orthodox priests coming out of seminaries these days, in young families traveling sometimes great distances to attend Latin masses; just as we see the incredible phenomenon of massive numbers attending World Youth Days—and know that the future of the Church is bright—so also, we can be assured that authentic Catholic culture is alive and well and growing. And it’s in good hands. When the time comes, I’ll try to go as gently as possible into that good night, but I have to admit that I’ll sort of resent not getting to see the full flowering of the young talent, faith, and intellect I met at the Chesterton conference.

Meanwhile, I look forward to seeing everyone again next year, God willing.

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August 4th, 2010In Defense of Fencesby Jef Murray

I've been brooding over boundaries: fences, barricades, walls, dikes, moats, hedges and the like. I'm contemplating commodities that separate space from space and vista from vista. "Post-modernist" folk

see such things as antediluvian artifacts that want shoveling out like so much muck into the maelstrom; they call for commons, bridges, networks, cacophony and community, not sanctuaries and silence.

And we all seem to want "openness" with every aspect of our lives: we keep our music always on; we're available 24/7 via cell phones and email; we "personalize" our computers and appliances. We have news
collated and streamed to us in tailored torrents. We carry our lives around in integrated black boxes: our tablet computers, our Smartphones, our MP3 players. Like everyone else in our office or on campus, we customize our cool common contraptions so as to express how unique we are and how hip....

 "We are all individuals!" we proclaim boldly to the cosmos.

But, not all boundaries are bad. Not all differences divide. The joy, even today, of travelling to some far flung shore is to encounter there something other than a McDonald's or a KFC with a slightly different décor. The point of going on vacation is to model a different mode of living, however briefly, so that we can taste our lives anew on our return; the intent of insulating one's work life from one's home life is to be more bountifully engaged in both.

The eastern orthodox churches have a long history of creating boundaries. But theirs are not encumbrances that exclude, but curbs that consecrate. The eastern view of worship is one in which we are taken, wholly, with all of our senses, out of this world. We are placed in hallowed halls: all that we see reminds us of God; all that we hear is harmony, all that we breathe is balm. In the Divine Liturgy, we utter words that are reserved for that place alone; we sing hymns whose rhythms and melodies have been saved for sanctifying time, while gazing at icons that sanctify space.

Why have we lost this in the west? In too many Roman Catholic and Protestant churches, music whose rhythms and words have more in common with daft modern ditties than with timeless traditions are forced upon us. Chatty folk speak to each other in church just as they would in the mall or in a parking lot. Choir members and musicians jest loudly, ignoring the few that might be (horrors!) trying to pray quietly in the pews. If God is present, he apparently has to be "helped along" with snappy tunes and sappy displays of back-slapping congeniality; the Prince of Peace once again has no place to rest His head.

There's plenty here to plumb.

I recollect a book I read years ago entitled "In the Absence of the Sacred" by Jerry Mander. Although its predictions of impending environmental disaster did not persuade, the central concern expressed
by the title remains relevant. What are we, as living beings, if we safeguard no space in our lives for that which is holy? What do we become if we populate our plazas and pump up our parishes with the
profane? What remains to us when we wallpaper over the Host of hosts with melodies and sentiments more suited to Sesame Street than to the sanctuary?

G.K.Chesterton once said "Don't ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up." In our churches, in our homes, in our workplaces, we are whittling down walls willy nilly. We aren't aware
that, instead of impeding us, these constraints may be keeping bad things out and good things in...good things that need nurturing, that want warding: precious treasures to tuck away, ready to refresh us
when our souls are spent; words and images, songs and stories that are set apart for us, and for our children, and for all generations to come.

Can we, then, afford to keep tearing these dikes down? Can we afford a drear and Godless world that resembles the plains of Gorgoroth, where everything is the same, where all is standardized to a low standard? Can we afford to live in C.S. Lewis' "Grey City", where nothing is off limits, where nobody's views are any more important or any more "valid" than anyone else's, where we all believe the same things and where there is no truth other than what is discovered from the next opinion poll?

In short, can we afford a world in which we are all enslaved?

A world without walls is one where monsters maraud and dragons devour. Whether our barricades are being blasted in the name of "diversity", or "tolerance", or "ecumenism", or "progress", their thwarting, like the spanning of the river Narog, often serves the schemes of the vile more than those of the virtuous. And, in the absence of the sacred, we dismantle our defenses against devilry to the risk not only of what, but of whom we most love.

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August 3rd, 2010Tell Talesby Christian LeBlanc | http://platytera.blogspot.com/

Reading epic poetry has always been something of a slog for me. This short video provides a stimulating glimpse of how compelling such tales can be when told, not read. The centuries just melt away.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y13cES7MMd8

Which reminds me, as tale is related to tell, so is saga related to say.

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August 3rd, 2010Speaking Engagements For Augustby Joseph Pearce

I'm delighted to be speaking at this year's Chesterton Conference at Mount St. Mary's University in Emmitsburg, Maryland, along with a veritable host of excellent speakers. I will be speaking on "The Mistake About Progress" this Friday evening. For more details, please visit www.chesterton.org or phone 952-831-3096.

I fly directly from the Chesterton Conference to Santiago in Chile to teach two week-long courses on Shakespeare and Twentieth Century British Literature from August 9 -13. These courses are organized by the Universidad Gabriela Mistral. For details, please see the following link: http://www.ugm.cl/main/2010/07/joseph-pearce-cursos-internacionales-de-la-red-cultural/. The lectures will be given in English.

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August 2nd, 2010More On The Ewtn Controversyby Joseph Pearce

Reiterating that respectful disagreement is fine, I would like to add one further clarification of my position regarding the debate about EWTN that has been simmering on this site. In brief, any surfing through the numerous channels of dross, banality and perversion available on today's TV will show EWTN as an oasis of sanity and sanctity. I have no intention of spending any of my own apostolate quibbling over the odd bad program or the odd bad statement by an EWTN guest. There are far too many real enemies out there, both inside and outside the Church, that need to be combatted. In wartime you don't spend time taking potshots at your allies because something that they said offended you.

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August 2nd, 2010A Sneak Preview Of The September/October Issueby Joseph Pearce

I've just received the page proofs for the next issue of StAR from the graphic designer. Here's a sneak preview:

The theme is "History Revisited" and it features some of the finest writers alive today, including Thomas Howard, Peter Milward S.J., Fr. Dwight Longenecker, Louis Markos, and a host of others. Highlights of the next issue include the following:

The Jesuit scholar Peter Milward on "The Ideal of Christendom: Revisiting History", a panoramic overview of history and its meaning.

The indefatigable and prolific Louis Markos surveys a similar panoramic vision of history in his article on Chesterton's The Everlasting Man: "From Cavemen to Christians: G. K. Chesterton's Précis of History".

Gwen Adams praises "The Madonna of Nevers: A Priceless Jewel from the Rubble of History".

We revisit history with Pope Benedict XVI, especially in relation to the Holy Father's analysis of the impact of nominalism and the ideas of Francis Bacon.

Father Dwight Longenecker devotes his regular film column to "Story and History: The Interpretation of Facts in Film".

James Bemis continues his survey of the Vatican's list of 45 "great films" with a review of Louis Malle's great film, Au Revoir les Enfants.

Christian LeBlanc revisits the horrors of World War One, seeing it through the prism of the art it inspired, in "Bloody Wipers: War Revisited by Art".

In his regular column, "The Sword of the Spirit", Father Benedict Kiely condemns the rise of vulgarity and calls for "A Return to Civility".

Regular columnist Patrick Riley revisits history to defend Pope Pius XII from the calumnious attacks of secular fundamentalists and their allies.

Regular columnist Kevin O'Brien also attacks the "spin" of those who distort history, offering an encouraging example from recent history of truth triumphing over calumny.

Susan Treacy devotes her regular music column to the posthumous history of J. S. Bach: "Reviving Bach: Revisiting the Posthumous History of a Once Neglected Genius".

Thomas Howard reviews two books related to Dunstan Thompson, the neglected poet of the Catholic Cultural Revival.

Jeremy Holmes reviews Eternity, Time, and the Life of Wisdom by the great theologian and bane of heretics, Father Matthew Lamb.

Kenneth J. Howell, who was recently fired from his teaching post at the University of Illinois for teaching the Catholic position on homosexuality in a class on "Catholicism and Catholic Thought", reviews the new book on the Church Fathers by Pope Benedict XVI.

Geneva Leonard reviews another of the Holy Father's books, Jesus, The Apostles, and The Early Church.

Dena Hunt reviews Andrew Thornton-Norris's Spiritual History of English.

Clara Sarrocco reviews Bleeding Hands, Weeping Stone, a new book on miracles.

Phillip Campbell reviews Josef Pieper's Tradition: Concept and Claim.

Brendan King reviews Finding a Hidden Church, a new book about the suffering of Ukrainian Catholics during the years of the communist terror.

Lorraine V. Murray reviews Redeemed: A Spiritual Misfit Stumbles Toward God, Marginal Sanity and the Peace That Passes All Understanding by Heather King.

The exciting poet, Mark Amorose, offers three of his finest historical poems: "Christendom", "Good Queen Mary" (about the martyred Queen of Scots), and "The Battle of Tours", and Sister Ruth Evans offers her fine short poem, "Seafarer", a meditation on the Blessed Virgin's Motherhood.

All of this in one power-punching issue! No serious minded Catholic should want to miss out. Avoid the sin of omisison, subscribe today! Details elsewhere on this site.

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July 30th, 2010“The Halo Effect”by Dena Hunt

Teachers know about this phenomenon by this term. I don’t know what its “real” name is, if it has one. It’s the tendency to grade a student’s paper based on the unconscious expectations a teacher has of that student: Bonnie Sue always writes well. This essay is good too. Bonnie gets an A. I caught myself doing it enough times to cover students’ names when I graded their essays or to use student numbers instead of names. The expectation goes in the opposite direction, too: This student always has poor organization and bad grammar; this essay will get a D too.

But the phenomenon isn’t confined to the classroom. I see reviews that are products of the same expectations. But now the error (for that is what it is) is compounded by other criteria than expectation. We have loyalty at the top of the list, followed by the impulse to return a favor, or still other things to consider, like loyalty that goes beyond the personal—the writer may be a member of our “group” in some way, perhaps our political party, our “side”. This expression of the error is in the positive direction, but there is also a negative: This writer always criticizes me or my “side”. It’s payback time. If the error verbalized itself this way in the consciousness of the reviewer, it would be avoided by most, but it doesn’t—it’s unconscious. It’s the halo effect.

Of course, there are always those who don’t care about such old-fashioned virtues as being fair, being honest, and who gleefully go around destroying perceived “enemies”, cultivating desirable “friends”, always with a view toward their own personal advancement. It’s easy to condemn them, if it’s not always easy to spot them. Third-person is always easy, isn’t it. But when we feel a keen sense of loyalty to a person, a group or an issue, good people can fall prey to poor judgment. It’s proof again—we need it daily—that the one person whose behavior needs constant monitoring, constant questioning, is not presented in third-person. It’s that person in the mirror.

I thought of this again while reading a minor news article this morning that Anne Rice has denounced Christianity, left the “infamous group”, as she called it. Both the announcement and the blog comments on it, favorable and unfavorable, are formulaic halo/horns. And I remembered reading the reviews of her novel “Out of Egypt”, written just after her celebrated return to the Church several years ago—glowing, to say the least—so I got a copy. I couldn’t get past the second chapter. It was awful. I tried another of Rice’s novels, wanting to like it (“Angel Time”). A little better than the other one, but still, stock characterization, predictable plotting, immature thematic content, frankly boring. Is it “safe” to say this out loud now she has denounced Christianity (“my” side)? That’s not a question an honest person should ask.

In public discourse of any kind, we always group-talk. It’s necessary. But it’s just as important to remember that the public words we speak—and don’t speak—while they always have many criteria attached to them, must first serve Truth, not ourselves, our “side”, nor any other thing. If that first criterion is displaced by any other, conscious or not, the words will deceive not just their readers, but also their writers.

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July 30th, 2010Good News for a Changeby Pavel Chichikov

I just came across the news that Dr. Kenneth Howell, who had been fired from his position as a professor at the University of Illinois on the complaint of a student, has been reinstated. The link is here:

http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/jul/10072912.html

I don’t know the circumstances of the reinstatement, but it seems very possible that the ideal of academic freedom of thought and speech still lives in America.

As I wrote in a previous essay, On the Right Side, we are at war. The battles go on within our schools and universities, on public platforms and in the voting booths. Thank God they are not for the most part physically violent confrontations, but the issues at stake are as momentous as those of military campaigns. They have to do with our survival as a moral, and therefore hopeful, society.

Please keep watching and praying, and where you can, take an active part. Avoid bitterness. Try to make friends of enemies. Hope always. Not every battle will be lost.

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July 30th, 2010On The Right Sideby Pavel Chichikov

I came across this news story on LifeSiteNews.com the other day.

http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/jul/10072207.html

I quote from the first paragraph:

“AUGUSTA, Georgia, July 22, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Attorneys with the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) filed suit against Augusta State University Wednesday on behalf of a counseling student who was allegedly told that her Christian beliefs are unethical and incompatible with the prevailing views of the counseling profession. The student, Jennifer Keeton, says she has been told to stop communicating her beliefs and that she must undergo "training" to accept homosexuality in order to graduate from the counseling program.”

It’s impossible to know if officials at Augusta State are motivated by what they think is the rightness of homosexuality, or if some of them don’t really care about much besides law suits by homosexual activists.  The effect is to stifle the beliefs of Christians both professionally and in the public sphere.

It reminds me a little of the situation of Christians in the old Soviet Union. It was possible then to exist as a practicing Orthodox Christian if one had no expectation of a fulfilling professional life. It was OK for a professed Christian to spend a life time swabbing floors or working as a night watchman. God help you if you wanted to work as a chemist, an engineer or in any other highly trained profession. How in the world could you study at a university, join the Communist Party and attend your cell meetings if you believed in God?  And your loyalty was presumed to be shaky. You might even try to proselytize – God forbid.

What people believed very privately might be another matter.

Of course, we’re not at that point yet. I’m also reminded of a conversation I had with an acquaintance of mine who happens to be both a well-known astrophysicist and a member of a Catholic religious order. He told me that many of his colleagues believe in God, although not all of them are Christians. And yet, they prefer not to let too many people know about being religious. It isn’t professionally furthering.

Are the walls beginning to close in on believers? The climate is there. We have to defend ourselves and each other vigorously, whenever we can. But expect a battle. Be happy that you’re on the right side. The war isn’t over yet.

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July 30th, 2010EWTN And All Thatby Joseph Pearce

It seems that it is not safe to turn one's back on this website even for an instant. I wandered away for awhile in pursuit of more pressing concerns and when I return I discover that a veritable hurricane has hit the site in my absence. I refer to the furore that followed in the wake of my last post "Defending EWTN". A perusal of the string of comments reacting to the post will enlighten those who have missed the controversy. For the most part, and with a few exceptions, the exchange was entirely constructive and civilized. In those instances where I have been personally criticized unjustly, I shall turn the other cheek; in the cases where I have been criticized justly, I am very happy to apologize. With regard to the latter, the criticism that was most valid was the one relating to the fact that I unequivocally distanced myself from a book that I hadn't read. For this, I apologise as unequivocally as I had previously distanced myself. I shall, however, beg the indulgence of an explanation.

The controversy began with my apparently unequivocal endorsement of a book that I also hadn't read. I refer to Christopher Ferrara's book on "The Church and the Libertarian". I did so on the strength of the short video in which Mr. Ferrara very eloquently and cogently declared his central thesis, the crux of which seemed worthy of endorsement. See the post of July 22nd, "The Church and Libertarianism". It was then brought to my attention that Mr. Ferrara had also written the book that was critical of EWTN. My follow-up post, which had the effect of disturbing the hornet's nest, was intended to make it plain that my support of Mr. Ferrara's stance on libertarianism did not entail or suggest my support of his stance vis à vis EWTN. If I have judged Mr. Ferrara harshly, without having read his book, I reiterate my apology. At the same time, I reiterate my support and admiration for EWTN and all the great work it's doing - even if it isn't perfect and even if it has made mistakes. In its imperfection and its tendency to err, it is very much like the rest of us. Perhaps we should spend more time looking for the planks in our own eyes ...   

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July 23rd, 2010Defending EWTNby Joseph Pearce

It has been brought to my notice that the author featured in my earlier post, "The Church and Libertarianism", has also written a book attacking EWTN, the Catholic TV network. I wish to distance myself, and this site, from this book - and I wish to do so unequivocally. I have worked with EWTN for many years and know many of those who work for the Network. My experience is entirely positive and I fail to see how any sensible tradition-oriented Catholic could wish to harm this powerful voice of truth. Any attack on EWTN will only serve to weaken the voice of Catholic tradition in our ailing and failing culture. I have always sought to avoid attacking bone fide Catholics, in the knowledge that such division and divisiveness only serves to weaken the Church and strengthen the Church's enemies. In the culture wars, EWTN is a powerful force for Catholic goodness, truth and beauty. Long may it grace the airwaves. Bravo EWTN!    

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July 23rd, 2010Towering Bigotryby Joseph Pearce

As an Englishman, and an English Catholic, I am constantly irked (to say the least) by the outrageous bias exhibited in my native land against the Faith of the English Martyrs. Indeed this very site is full of good and justifiable venting against the anti-Catholic bigotry of modern-day England, not just by me but by other contributors to the site, particularly Dena Hunt. In order to continue this noble tradition of venting our spleen against modern England's bigotry, I'm pasting below the the reaction to such bigotry of someone who sent me an e-mail yesterday. Here is the relevant part of the e-mail:

Mark and I borrowed from the library an 8-part series on "The Tower" (of London of course). Fascinating series, but I was SO irked at the bias against Catholicism throughout. I kept wondering what Catholics in Britain must think about this--I'd be in a constant state of annoyance.

For instance, they made a big deal about Queen Elizabeth being imprisoned in the Tower for 4 whole months in her youth, while making very little of all the Catholic priests who were imprisoned and tortured. The only one they spoke of specifically was John Gerard in regard to his escape--and there was no question of framing it as being unfortunate that he was imprisoned in the first place.

By the way the current curator there kept pooh-poohing the reputation for it being called "The Bloody Tower" because hardly anyone was tortured or executed there and only one woman was racked during the reign of Henry VIII--well how many does it take to qualify for the title? And in the last episode they said they only imprisoned Catholics because of the danger they posed to Her Majesty. Grrr...

Oh, and the Governor of the Tower was showing off an elaborate plaque in his residence that talks about the triumph over all those nasty perfidious Catholics. He admits that in this day and age what it says could be considered prejudiced. Ya think? I asked Mark if the White House would continue to keep something on prominent display if it lauded black slavery. Don't you think it would be packed away in the archives?

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July 22nd, 2010The Church And Libertarianismby Joseph Pearce

If you'd like to spend ten minutes in the company of a no-nonsense, tell it like it is, Catholic, waxing rhetorical on the Church's social teaching, condemning libertarianism, and defending distributism, look no further than the following link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymtCyf8XvLQ

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July 22nd, 2010Siegfried Sassoon Archiveby Joseph Pearce

A friend has just sent me the link to an article in the Guardian announcing the showing of the Siegfried Sassoon archive in Cambridge. Sassoon is indubitably one of the finest poets of the twentieth century, and not simply for the war poems for which he is best known. His religious poetry, especially that wiitten after his conversion to Catholicism in 1957, is positively sublime, though scandalously neglected by today's secular culture. Here's the link:  http://bit.ly/bUdqGY

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July 22nd, 2010A Brief Distributist FAQby Richard Aleman | http://www.distributistreview.com/mag

What is Distributism?
 
Distributism finds its roots in the social and economic theories articulated in the documents of the Catholic pontiffs, beginning with Pope Leo XIII’s “Rerum Novarum.” These social encyclicals raise imperatives on economic transaction and its relation to labor, solidarity, wages, the wide diffusion of ownership, and the proper limits of technology. Distributism is an economic system compliant with the principles of these documents, and is centered on the widest possible ownership of property as the best guarantee of political and economic freedom. A family that owns its own land or its own tools can make its own way in the world without being dependent on someone else for a “job.” Thus, Distributism seeks to extend property ownership to as many as possible, and end the concentration of ownership by few capitalists or state officials.
 
What are the ‘means of production’?
 
The ‘means of production’ are the land, tools, and equipment needed for labor to transform raw materials into goods and services. As wealth (goods or services) is only possible by the combination of the means of production, labor, and raw materials, we believe it is best when these are owned cooperatively (worker-owned) or entirely operated by the family.
 
Are you Capitalists or Socialists?
 
Neither. Capitalism–or Proletarianism–is a system bent on the maximization of returns on investments, and seeks it at the expense of labor and the common good. Socialism aims to eliminate ownership and place it in the hands of an impersonal, centralized government. Both systems–Capitalism and Socialism–limit real ownership in practice. The only difference between a Socialist state and a Capitalist state is whether power is concentrated in a few private or a few bureaucratic hands.
 
So you don’t support ‘Big Government’?
 
Distributists are decentralists who believe most organizational functions (whether business, government, or labor) should occur at the smallest competent level as possible (subsidiarity). Institutions like local guilds and governments exist to curb large-scale control, whether bureaucratic or commercial.
 
What’s with all the talk about justice?
 
Since the time of Aristotle, philosophers and economists have deemed justice an integral element of the marketplace; a factor to be considered before exchanges take place. However, during the period of history known as the Enlightenment, a misconception arose that social justice springs solely from “market forces,” or from central planning by the government. In this case, man becomes a mere cog in an economic machine; he is reduced to material insignificance with disregard for his fallen nature or telos (purpose). Thus, while acknowledging man’s dependency on material goods, we recognize trade and social policy as subordinate to his virtuous vocation.
 
Wouldn’t Distributism be less efficient, and so make us all poorer?
 
Although Capitalism claims to be highly “efficient,” it doesn’t work very well without massive government expense and interventions. Distributists assert productive property as a genuine generator of wealth, because it serves and sustains the family materially (food, clothing, and shelter), and cultivates the soul through work. Moreover, we emphasize that distributed property is actually more efficient and is less dependent on huge government or corporate conglomerates. Property means liberty for the household from the jaws of financial volatility, as from the perspective of the household, land transcends market values due to its indispensability for the family’s stability.
 
What is your position regarding our present economic crisis?
 
Stagnate wages, usury, speculation, derivatives, waste, and consumer debt, are but a few of the problems which have transformed a land of small businesses and small farmers, into a nation pitted between corporations handing off their liabilities to taxpayers, and an obliging government looking the other way as jobs are shipped overseas. With relatively few producers and more outsourced production, the family’s confidence in obtaining healthy food, fair wages, home ownership, healthcare, and proper education for their children through the means of employment, has collapsed.
 
How does Distributism plan to help us restore economic sanity?
 
We believe a renaissance of local economics will repair the damage wrought by corporations that squeeze the government for greater subsidies from the public purse. Distributism puts forward a humane economic and social policy invested in the needs of the family through property ownership and measured technology. Our objectives include the restoration of the guild system, family and worker-owned business advocacy, micro-credit lending, Community Supported Agriculture, and associations tasked with implementing vigorous husbandry programs. We support political initiatives to favor differential taxation policies, legal assistance for the home-based business, as well as the revision of current accounting and banking practices. We intend to achieve our goals by forming a popular movement consisting of academics and laymen working together to create regional chapters dedicated to the implementation of the Distributist program.
 
Isn’t this all very Utopian?
 
No, Distributism is a practical system, which is validated by the many examples of functioning Distributist firms; on the small scale, there are thousands of home-based and employee-owned companies, micro-lending banks, credit unions, and insurance companies; on the large scale, there is the Mondragón Cooperative Corporation of Spain, one of the most successful cooperatives in Europe, and the Distributist economy of Emilia-Romagna (Bologna) in Italy, where over 45% of the GDP comes from cooperatives, and which boasts a living standard twice the rest of Italy and among the highest in Europe. Distributist economies and firms have a built-in competitive advantage over their Capitalist and Socialist counterparts, as well as social and community advantages that Capitalism and Socialism cannot begin to match.

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July 21st, 2010Death and Dirtby Kevin O'Brien | http://www.thewordinc.org

To celebrate the Feast of Hilaire Belloc (July 16), I took a hike and almost died.  Story and photos here http://thwordinc.blogspot.com/2010/07/death-and-dirt.html
 
Belloc recounts in "The Path to Rome" his own providential escape from death while hiking in the Alps.
 
He did not die in the mountains, but as an old man, on the Feast of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel.  Our Lady's miraculous crown can also be seen in a photo at the above link.
 
Pray for Hilaire and for the revival of the clear thinking he embodied - as well as a return to a sane overview of history and an appreciation for good poetry, the kind Hilaire Belloc wrote so beautifully.

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July 16th, 2010Junk Historyby Dena Hunt

For centuries, English revisionist history has propagandized events during the Tudor dynasty to justify its guilt-ridden hatred of the Catholic Church. That history has not affected only the country itself but the United States as well, descended in English bigotry as it is, to the point where an American film producer has only to portray a man in a monk’s robe to suggest villainy. Now, with the coming papal visit to that country, the Catholic-haters have been having a field day. An author who’s grown weary of the nonsense has pointed out an inconvenient truth or two:

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/geraldwarner/100047370/anti-catholic-junk-history-ii-mary-i-killed-284-henry-viii-up-to-72000-but-its-bloody-mary-and-bluff-king-hal/

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July 16th, 2010Rise of the Pelicanby Richard Aleman | http://www.distributistreview.com/mag

Nota bene: Encyclicals treat specific areas of doctrine and, as Magisterial teachings, they require faithful submission of both intellect and will. According to the First Vatican Council text Dei Fillius, ‘[A]ll those things are to be believed with divine and Catholic faith which are contained in the Word of God, written or handed down, and which the Church, either by a solemn judgment, or by her ordinary and universal magisterium, proposes for belief as having been divinely revealed.’
 
While researching another article on Solzhenitsyn, I stumbled upon a review of the Russian writer’s 1978 Harvard Address written by the author of The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism, Michael Novak. In this 1981 piece for the National Review, the Director of Social and Political Studies for the American Enterprise Institute expressed concern about Solzhenitsyn’s speech, which apparently haunted him enough to write about it three years after the delivery of the original address. The Russian author charged the Western world with fabricating an unhealthy society where greed, wealth creation, and the quest for efficiency prevailed over human dignity and the interior development of the citizenry. Solzhenitsyn saw in Western societies a predominant concern for earthly life and riches over the quest for Heaven and the salvation of souls; virtue didn’t prove as profitable as vice, and Mr. Novak, who wrestled with Solzhenitsyn’s observations of the West, was grateful for the “liberation” of the human spirit. The Enlightenment heralded the triumph of Capitalism, unleashing the dawn of wealth creation which had been previously eclipsed by centuries of wealth distribution and trade bridled by the virtues—particularly the virtue of justice. Solzhenitsyn on the other hand, stood shockingly in judgment of the Western world and called for the reexamining of the presumed benefits of economic and social liberalism.
 
The West, according to Solzhenitsyn, substituted authentic freedom in exchange for slavery by promoting trade as the primary function and foundation of life:
 
“An oil company is legally blameless when it purchases an invention of a new type of energy in order to prevent its use. A food product manufacturer is legally blameless when he poisons his produce to make it last longer: after all, people are free not to buy it.”
 
Mr. Novak’s indictment of Solzhenitsyn’s “utopianism” in the pages of the National Review is marginal when compared with his view of the social doctrine of the Church. If his association of Solzhenitsyn’s speech with the Syllabus of Errors is any indication, then clearly he viewed both the Russian author and the Church as an affront to that which liberalism built.
 
“It might even be possible to read Solzhenitsyn’s address at Harvard as an updating of Pope Pius IX’s famous critique of modernity, ‘The Syllabus of Errors.’ Solzhenitsyn, like Pius IX, is adept at pointing out the errors, one-sidedness, and blind spots in many of the things we, in a liberal democratic society, hold most dear.”
 
He continues,
 
“I am sorry, sometimes, then, that we disappoint the great Solzhenitsyn. But I would have it no other way.”
 
Issued in 1864 by Blessed Pope Pius IX, the Syllabus of Errors condemned modernist propositions using a collage of papal documents. These errors included liberalism, communism, religious indifference, pantheism, and even the separation of Church and State.
 
For Mr. Novak, the Syllabus directly opposed the advances of liberalism. The Church in the nineteenth-century not only failed to concede victory to liberalism, but risked alienation by continuing to oppose it. Liberalism meant technological “advances,” amassed token wealth, pluralism, and peace. But what of those who would say liberalism’s errors are ubiquitous and include the devaluing of life, waste, war, divisiveness, ignorance, avarice, consumerism, and the corruption of souls? What of our current dilemma caused by liberalism, which has generated mass confusion among both laymen and clergy, who in some cases unintentionally ignore–or worse, oppose–the social vision of Holy Mother Church, while claiming to be perfectly orthodox?
 
This isn’t a problem for Michael Novak. In his famous book he says that, “Democratic capitalism calls forth not only a new theology, but a new type of religion” (The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism, p.69). Indeed, we find ourselves in agreement. It will take a revolution in Magisterial teaching to accept Novak’s propositions. It will require new religion at the helm. It will “call forth” mental gymnasts to shift the meaning of the Gospels, the sermons of St. Chrysostom, the teachings of Sts. Augustine and Aquinas, and the long list of Church documents mapping out the political, social, and economic order.   
 
Now Mr. Novak’s main thesis boils down to this: that pluralist society, which in the West is an ingredient of civic religion, provides the marketplace with independence from religious authority. A brief review of the papal encyclicals makes it difficult to concur with him and to conclude Mr. Novak isn’t merely replacing Church doctrine with his own doctrine.
 
Let’s take a brief look at what the Church’s traditional teaching tells us about authority and where it springs from.
 
“[E]very body politic must have a ruling authority, and this authority, no less than society itself, has its source in nature, and has, consequently, God for its Author. Hence, it follows that all public power must proceed from God. For God alone is the true and supreme Lord of the world. Everything, without exception, must be subject to Him, and must serve him, so that whosoever holds the right to govern holds it from one sole and single source, namely, God, the sovereign Ruler of all” (Pope Leo XIII, Immortale Dei §3, emphasis mine).

Liberalism, while not necessarily denying God’s existence, rejects submission to God and places man in His stead as the source of all rule. And it is precisely this, what Mr. Novak calls a “new theology,” divorced from Christ; a social order separated from God’s authority and His authority on earth (the Church). This isn’t (new) religion at all, rather it is the religion of the Enlightenment, by man and for man in opposition with God, who is, according to Immortale Dei “true and supreme Lord of the world.” As Vicar of Christ, that is, as temporal sovereign and shepherd of the faithful in Christ’s stead, the pope has the jurisdiction and competence to condemn, temper, correct, and propose social and economic issues in light of his authority, as these are the subject of human interaction. This is reaffirmed clearly by Pope Pius XI in Quadragesimo Anno:
 
“[T]hat principle which Leo XIII so clearly established must be laid down at the outset here, namely, that there resides in Us the right and duty to pronounce with supreme authority upon social and economic matters”(§41).
 
Man needs authority and the “single source” of any authority “without exception” is “God, the sovereign Ruler of all.” As the Vicar of Christ has authority over the Ordinary Magisterium of the Church “to pronounce with supreme authority upon social and economic matters,” and as the teaching authority opposes social and economic liberalism, which both the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises and Michael Novak confess is an affront to traditional Catholic teaching—the religion and the theology of the Church, then the Syllabus is correct in condemning the proposition that “the Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization”(Ibid, §80).
 
Furthermore, in the encyclical Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, Pius XI makes apparent that the social teachings which involve morality are placed at the same level as “Solemn pronouncements,” that is, they become part of the Church’s Universal Ordinary Magisterium; the Church’s dogmatic teaching to which all Catholics must give assent. Yet for Michael Novak, the Church must reject the Social Reign of Christ the King and embrace secularism, pluralism, and economic liberalism.
 
This, we are reminded by Pius XI, is social modernism.
 
“Many believe in or claim that they believe in and hold fast to Catholic doctrine on such questions as social authority, the right of owning private property, on the relations between capital and labor, on the rights of the laboring man, on the relations between Church and State, religion and country, on the relations between the different social classes, on international relations, on the rights of the Holy See and the prerogatives of the Roman Pontiff and the Episcopate, on the social rights of Jesus Christ, Who is the Creator, Redeemer, and Lord not only of individuals but of nations. In spite of these protestations, they speak, write, and, what is more, act as if it were not necessary any longer to follow, or that they did not remain still in full force, the teachings and solemn pronouncements which may be found in so many documents of the Holy See, and particularly in those written by Leo XIII, Pius X, and Benedict XV.
 
“There is a species of moral, legal, and social modernism which We condemn, no less decidedly than We condemn theological modernism”(Pope Pius XI, Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio §60-61, emphasis mine).
 
But what about pluralist society, is it tolerable? Is Mr. Novak correct that pluralist society is the preferred society?
 
Social and political pluralism rejects any moral standard of political, social, or economic life; opposes initiatives by any particular religious source as an imposition of itself on the rest of society; abhors the restraining of “freedom” except by voluntary will. In Novak’s world the Christian transformation of public institutions and commerce would be catastrophic for Capitalism and pluralist society. Again, we turn to the Syllabus, which charges against the error that, “The faith of Christ is in opposition to human reason and divine revelation not only is not useful, but is even hurtful to the perfection of man”(§6).
 
Without fidelity to true authority and just social order, appetite and moral relativism become necessary ingredients of pluralism, especially for the sake of peace. “Free” opinion, which should be directed by the virtues of temperance and prudence, may be held and advocated in any form so long as these do not challenge the public will or public institutions. So too, since pluralism defines “truth” by the individual according to his belief and opinion, ideas which challenge the political and social order lead to their privatization, or worse, complete and forced abandonment of all divisive doctrine (e.g. homosexuality, contraception, and divorce). For the Catholic, conformity with pluralism carries with it the quixotic mission of religious disillusionment in our quest for reform. It is this state of affairs that has sadly pierced into the heart of Catholicism, as the Christian reality of being in the world and not of it is quickly fading in hearts and minds, while liberalism gains acceptance even within our ranks.
 
Michael Novak’s modernist views of politics, economics, and social policy reject God’s authority, the sovereignty of the Church, and the correct order of the State. If we are to counter liberalism and its effect on our economic and social policy, for the good of the salvation of souls, we would do well to encourage Catholics to study the papal encyclicals and learn the social teaching of Holy Mother Church. Pope Pius XII once said that we should “...exercise a profound influence on the social, economic, and political life of the country.” In a world of economic crisis and social decadence, how else can we, to paraphrase St. Thomas More, remain man’s good servants, but God’s first?

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July 16th, 2010Audio Booksby Kevin O'Brien | http://www.thewordinc.org

I have just finished reading "Theophilos", a novel by Michael D. O'Brien, for Ignatius Press audio books.  This is the third novel I have performed by O'Brien.  I say "performed" because I do "dramatic readings" of the novels, changing my voice and portraying the different characters, and creating thereby something of a radio play.
 
O'Brien's work is gripping and spiritually profound.  I encourage everyone to check out his novels, all of which are not only written from a Catholic perspective, but also (surprise!) well-written and entertaining to read.  And each of them contains at least one moment guaranteed to blow you away with surprise or passion.  So far I've done O'Brien's "Father Elijah", "A Cry of Stone", and now "Theophilos" for Ignatius Press audio books.
 
In fact, here is a link to web page that contains a list of all of my audio books published by Ignatius.  You can also listen to a sample from "Theophilos" from this page.
 
http://thwordinc.blogspot.com/2010/07/audio-books-by-kevin-obrien.html

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July 14th, 2010Neo-Nazi Activist To Present Tv Documentary On The Holocaustby Joseph Pearce

Is it likely that a mainstream television channel would ever allow a neo-Nazi to present a primetime documentary on the Holocaust? Can we imagine the uproar that would ensue should any mainstream TV channel ever have the tasteless chutzpah to sanction such a travesty of justice? Yet such a travesty is in effect becoming a sickening reality with the announcement that Channel 4 television in the UK has invited the rabidly anti-Catholic homosexual activist Peter Tatchell to make a film about Pope Benedict to coincide with the Holy Father's visit to England later this year. Tatchell has spearheaded the most extremist homosexual activist groups in the UK and has a criminal record for disrupting Catholic Masses and Anglican services. Yet this is the man chosen by Channel 4 to make a film about the Pope! As if this wasn't outrageous enough, Channel 4 also announced that it would be broadcasting a program with the notorious atheist Richard Dawkins to coincide with the Holy Father's visit. It seems that this mainstream TV channel is not even making a pretence of impartiality and objectivity. On the contrary, its agenda is plain for all to see. It hates the Pope and the Catholic Church and will present any amount of biased rhetoric to make Catholics the objects of ridicule, hatred or contempt. There is in the final analysis no real difference between Channel 4 television and the propaganda techniques of Josef Goebbels in the Third Reich. In both cases, objective and unbiased news coverage is abandoned in order to stir up hatred against a minority group. The fact is that Secular Fundamentalism is as deadly as it is intolerant, and it doesn't really matter whether the Fundamentalists call themselves National Socialists, International Socialists, or "liberal secularists", the result is the same lying propaganda, the same stirring up of hatred, and the same persecution of Christians. Plus ca change ...       

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July 12th, 2010The Will to Believeby Dena Hunt

I had a conversation recently with a 70-year-old new convert to Catholicism. Conversion stories are as diverse as converts themselves, but they generally fall into categories, nonetheless. So many converts from the Anglican persuasion, for example, say that their decision came from their recognition of the need for eccesiastical authority. Reasons do come in categories then, even if converts themselves do not.

This man’s reason was different. He says, simply, “I *choose* to believe.” On the surface, it sounds a bit dubious. Over decades of teaching, I’ve had a few occasions to listen to students’ expressions of religious doubt. Very often, these doubts cause them agony: “I can’t help it. I just don’t believe. I want to, but I can’t. I can’t force myself to believe.” One knows they’re sincere and counsels accordingly: “Doubt is part of faith, not its contradiction. You’re just finding your own faith, not your parents’. Be patient with your own journey.”

So, how can this man—obviously intelligent, well-educated—he’s a retired chemical engineer, by the way—how can he simply *choose* to believe? He gave me the reasons behind the reason: As a person of intellectual integrity, he had always been an atheist. He never believed in God. He “recognized” the universe as material and could not with honesty ascribe any other characteristic to it. He was a good man, moral and ethical, and adhered to a humanistic code of behavior. He had a wife, children and grandchildren, whom he loved deeply, but he knew that love was ultimately a matter of brain chemistry, expressed as emotion.

But, he said, one morning about fifteen years ago, he woke up with no reason to live. After trying to work his own way out of the depression, he went to a doctor who prescribed anti-depressants. They didn’t work. No change. Finally, he went to a psychiatrist who tried analysis. For a long time, he believed that his depression was due to aging. When we get older, we start to evaluate our lives. A poor assessment can cause depression. Also, we simply don’t want to age and die—anxiety about that inevitability can express itself in depression. It was all very logical, and for a long time, he believed it. Years went by, however, and neither logic nor chemistry had any ameliorative affect on his depression. It deepened.

The only respite—without which, he says, he would have been suicidal—was beauty. It was like a salve on an open wound. Beauty in nature, in art, music—wherever he could find it. “I found myself as dependent on beauty as other people are dependent on drugs. Life without it was literally impossible.” It became his Great Love, “…as a man loves a woman so much that he believes whatever she tells him. The thought that she might lie to him, betray him, is utterly unbearable. So, even as he knows that she might lie, he chooses to believe her—no matter what.”

One senses what’s coming, can almost see Keats’ hand at work: “Beauty is truth and truth, beauty/That’s all we know on earth and all we need to know.” The inevitable argument is that “beauty” is not truth; it can and does deceive. But the fact is that beauty doesn’t deceive, only the *beautiful* does that. A Grecian urn can betray, but the hand of its maker does not. He said that that realization came like a dawn after a lifelong night. He had loved all things beautiful, made them his reason to live when all other reasons had exhausted themselves. They were—even music—material, because of course, his universe was material. The beautiful was material—but beauty itself was not. It was abstract. It was “the hand of the maker.” It did not lie. Indeed, it was the only thing that never lied. It was objective truth. It was God.

He realized that in order to continue to perceive material beauty—which, for him, had become his reason to live—he would have to admit into his material universe an abstraction. That meant he had to *choose* to believe in the hand of the maker. And so he chose. Since then, he sees that hand behind the chemistry, behind everything that gives life to us all, and to some of us, a reason to live. He says his faith is indestructible. I believe him.

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July 12th, 2010Secular Fundamentalism And The Threat To Academic Freedomby Joseph Pearce

Secular Fundamentalism will tolerate no dissent. The latest example of secular fundamentalist intolerance is the firing of a professor at the Univeristy of Illinois. His "crime" was to explain the Catholic Church's teaching on homosexuality in a class on "Catholicism and Catholic Thought". Even explaining the Church's teaching on moral issues now constitutes a "hate crime" according to the University of Illinois. Any other comment about such totalitarianism would be superfluous. Here's the link to the news story:

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/07/09/university-illinois-instructor-fired-catholic-beliefs/print

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July 9th, 2010A Different Kind of Legionby Richard Aleman | http://www.distributistreview.com/mag

In 2004, Hollywood moguls slammed The Passion of the Christ for its excessive violence while the industry spent decades cashing-in on blood baths like Halloween, Hellraiser, and the psychopathic-comedy A Nightmare on Elm Street. Hollywood’s denouncement of the film’s graphic content was a sleight of hand to cover up the success of an A-list actor who broke the 30 year old moratorium on religious-driven stories; a silence allegedly due to the unprofitability of religious films. 

Mel Gibson’s instincts were vindicated when he turned $25 million into a profitable movie drawing in excess of $370 million domestically ($611M worldwide). Leonardo Defilippis, director of the film Thérèse, credited The Passion of the Christ as “opening the doors for all kinds of religious projects.” Unfortunately, studios like Paramount Pictures never came knocking. Quite the contrary, movies attacking Christianity continued to be greenlit (e.g. The DaVinci Code, The Golden Compass) in Tinseltown, while religious-themed cinema began to enjoy overseas success.

At the time of The Passion’s debut two further “missed” opportunities may be pointed out, both of which are unusual and suspect. 

When The Passion was theatrically released, the movie industry demonstrated poor (or perhaps selective) business sense. Capitalizing on successful predecessors–as quickly as possible–is a time honored tradition in Hollywood. The financial powerhouses-that-be produce knock-offs on the cheap, and what starts as modest investments turn into perpetual home theatre profit. For example, films featuring Native Americans followed the success of Kevin Costner’s Dances with Wolves. Silver screen remakes of old television shows blitzed after the success of The Addams Family. In many ways, insignificant copycats fuel the industry’s more ambitious productions, and sequels like the upcoming The Hobbit fill the pages of trade magazines with buzz. Not so with the $611 million dollar earning Passion play.

The second “missed” financial opportunity was the failure to reissue classic, religious-themed DVDs, previously only available on VHS, to coincide with the film’s premiere (e.g. El Cid, Quo Vadis, David and Bathsheba, etc.). It is typical for competing studios to scour their inventory for related material and capitalize on the premiere of a hot ticket. For example, when the remake “Red Dragon” starring Edward Norton was theatrically released, distribution company Anchor Bay reissued the original, Michael Mann’s Manhunter, on DVD. Again, not so for The Passion.

So why would the movie industry shut out a Hollywood “rainmaker,” and divest from proven and profitable business practices? Is it indicative of the gulf perpetuated by Hollywood between itself and the deeply held beliefs of middle-of-the-road Americans, or does the industry perceive itself as representing mainstream values and ideas? “Doors for all kinds of religious projects” should have opened. But they didn’t. Hollywood continues to churn out countercultural films which fail to edify or illuminate, and instead degrade and corrupt.  

Artistic Freedom and Decency

The film industry describes itself as a business when it is convenient to hide behind the corporation and when not, the business hides under the immunity of artistic freedom. But it wasn’t always this way. 

In 1915 the United States Supreme Court ruled that motion pictures were a business not covered by the First Amendment. Following several scandals during the industry’s infancy, public outcry led to the creation of city and state censorship boards. Fearing even greater censorship, the Motion Pictures Producers and Distributors Association (now MPAA) was established as a trade lobby to stop federal government intervention and police its own ranks. As with any organization which dismisses some degree of regulation, MPAA’s self-imposed censorship diminished and the association refocused its efforts on the industry’s lobbying and business interests.

Perhaps it is time Catholics have a serious conversation about the elephant in the room: “artistic freedom.” Censorship is an unappealing subject to modern man yet we cannot speak of the ills of economic license and give a free pass to deregulated art, especially when public assistance is used to fund it. Decency standards must not simply be left to market forces any more than the economy should, particularly as art increasingly contributes to the moral development of the household and the community. As Archbishop Giovanni Cicognani accurately predicted in the 1930s, motion pictures pose a menace to morals and “massacre the innocence of youth.” 

Thus, while continuing to produce our own films, the first step towards restructuring the movie industry is to resurrect the National Legion of Decency. This Christian organization successfully opposed and actively protested against immoral content. The powerful rise of the Legion caused fear among the trade papers. In 1934, the trade paper Variety published a warning under the headline,

“CATHOLICS WOULD ENLIST ALL FAITHS—Need for Prompt Action to Avert Drastic Penalties Upon Picture Industry Urged in East—Real Danger—” 

And they did recruit all faiths. According to a Jun 11, 1934 article for Time Magazine, “Aiming at enlisting at least half the U. S. Catholic population of 20,000,000 as well as all Protestants and Jews who care to sign, the Legion last week claimed 2,000,000 members.” 

Imagine a number like that one in just one week.

What we need today is an aggressive and unified censor, backed by strong Catholic leadership that will impress upon the faithful a need for abstinence from art that is detrimental to the soul. Local Legion chapters could be formed as vehicles of information for the parish, the priest’s homily, and especially for parents. These chapters can also help in organizing protests, not only to boycott movies and defend the family, but as visible manifestations of faith, inspiring new leadership just as the pro-life movement successfully has. 

Finally, we should remember the work of Father Daniel A. Lord, who was the father of Hollywood’s old Production Code, and whose resume included a stint as technical advisor on Louis B. DeMille’s 1927 silent film, “King of Kings.” Fr. Lord stood defiantly against Universal Studios founder Carl Laemmle and Columbia Pictures’ co-owner Harry Cohen,  calling them out for their, “…contempt for public opinion and disregard for the high trust the nation placed in them in permitting them to supply it with entertainment.” 

With our Heavenly King in our hearts, let us recall the original (1933) Legion of Decency membership pledge, composed by Archbishop John McNicholas:

I wish to join the Legion of Decency, which condemns vile and unwholesome moving pictures. I unite with all who protest against them as a grave menace to youth, to home life, to country and to religion. I condemn absolutely those salacious motion pictures which, with other degrading agencies, are corrupting public morals and promoting a sex mania in our land…Considering these evils, I hereby promise to remain away from all motion pictures except those which do not offend decency and Christian morality.

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July 9th, 2010Facebook - the Abusive Wenchby Kevin O'Brien | http://www.thewordinc.org

Facebook is like a tawdry skank you meet at a bar on a cold night in Laredo.  She lures you in and captivates you, and she shows you a good time on the wrong side of the tracks, but you’ll wake up in the morning heartbroken and deserted, your wallet missing and the taste of bad tequila on your breath.

When I first met Facebook, I knew there was trouble.  All of my young actors were raving about her.  And I learned quickly that she’s great for photo sharing and for reconnecting with old friends.  But Facebook studies you, sizes you up, and forms “algorithms” about you.  Thus she treats you the way she thinks you deserve to be treated.

In my case, from the beginning Facebook kept suggesting friends to me.  Apparently, Facebook looks at the friends you already have, analyzes your interests and assesses your profile, and makes a snap judgment about you.  In my case, Facebook had decided that I was a substance abuser who slept all day.  Thus all of the friends she was suggesting for me were losers and drug addicts.  She must have been doing this because 1) all of my early friends were actors and 2) I listed “Judge Judy” as one of my favorite TV shows.

Then Facebook promised me a really fun time.  She lured me into online Scrabble games with friends and utter strangers.  I quickly became addicted, playing into the wee hours and sleeping late the next morning (say – maybe Facebook was right about me all along!)  But then I began to realize that some of my so-called “friends” were cheating at Scrabble by using online word generators – websites that use computer technology to tell you what word to play and where to play it to maximize your score.  This became evident when one of my Scrabble rivals scored a ton on the word PSOCID.  Psocid?  “The larval stage of the common head louse,” my “friend” IM’d me.  Not exactly a word you would come up with on your own.

So I was on again off again with Facebook.  I walked away from her a few times.  We’d have fights, big ones.  Things would be said that we’d both later regret.  It was stormy, tumultuous.  Until we settled in for what looked like a long-term relationship.

I discovered that one of the keys to being happy with this woman was frequent “friend purges”.  A “friend purge” is when you get so sick of the people you’ve “frended” on Facebook that you course through the list of them and delete the ones whose status updates you can’t stand anymore.  It feels really good, and then you find that Facebook becomes fun again.  It’s like fighting and then making up after you fight.  Knocking each other down the stairs and then melting with tears of remorse into each others arms.

But lately it appears as if it’s over.  I’ve walked away from Facebook again, and I’ve been sleeping on the couch in my buddy’s house ever since.

The latest problem was this.  I was foolish enough to enter into intellectual discussions in comment boxes (“comboxes”) on certain topics (“threads”) of a theological nature.

I had foolishly befriended a Lutheran lady whose self-righteousness was matched only by her smugness.  She started a thread with a status update that said, “When I tell people that the Dalai Lama won’t go to heaven based on his good works, they don’t believe me,” to which one of her friends replied in the comment box, “Yep.  He’s got no more chance of getting to heaven than a dying coyote on the side of the road.”

Wow.

This I felt was just a tad bit lacking in Christian Charity.

So I got sucked in.  I entered into a series of combox back-and-forths, with my comments being countered by the comments of others.  And the more I tried to point out the Church teaching on salvation, on St. Paul’s generous attitude toward those who worship an unknown god, on the fact that all good comes from Christ and any attempt to serve god is a movement toward Christ (however imperfect that movement may be), how looking at any fellow man as a coyote dying in a ditch is akin to the self-righteous priest and Levite who passed up the victim who had been assaulted by the evil ones and whose rescue was procured only by a non-believing good Samaritan, at how, while faith in Christ is essential to salvation, we ought not to take glee in damning those who do not profess faith in Christ, etc.

And the fight was on.

I was countered by a barrage of attitudes and bizarre theology.  For example, one Calvinist supremely claimed that there is absolutely nothing we can do, there’s only stuff that God can do.  It’s all Him, never us, and really we’re puppets only.  No one wanted to look at the points I was making from Scripture – particularly the first three chapters of Romans.  Scripture?  It’s the only thing necessary for salvation, but we’re not going to treat it with enough respect to approach it with common sense or by reading it in context; no, we’re going to take the only thing we need for salvation (other than faith, which is the only thing we need for salvation), slap it around and then ignore it when it disagrees with us (kind of the way Facebook treats me).  The Dalai Lama potentially saved?  No way in hell!  We will set firm limits to God’s mercy and decide before hand who counts as a member of the in-group.  We can handle the final judgment, thank you very much.  Who needs St. Peter with the keys the heaven?  We’re minding the store, pal; no shoes, no shirt, no salvation.  Whatever counts as faith in Christ, we took care of that at the altar call ten years ago and we’ve been swinging that club around ever since.  So get out of our way or you’ll find yourself wounded and bleeding with those G-damned coyotes on the side of the road.

And then there was the character in another friend’s combox who was sublimely happy as an atheist, and who told me that he didn’t feel the need to seek the truth.  First of all, he said, there is no truth, and second of all, even if there is, it will come to him and all he has to do is wait for it.  “Is this the way you would find a job that you wanted?” I replied.  “If you meet the girl of your dreams, do you just sit there and wait for her to approach you?”

“Yes, I just sit and wait,” he responded.  “And as for meeting a girl … well, my partner and I are perfectly happy together,” he said – which I had kind of suspected.

And finally, after working with another atheist through a about a dozen replies in another thread, I had eventually gotten him to admit that recognizing teleology or a final cause in anything, even in sex, for instance, meant that one could not claim, as another atheist had in this same thread, that there are no final causes and hence no meaning anywhere in the universe.  And once he had conceded that point, I was told by the friend who had begun the thread that I was off-point and that, in so many words, converting atheists was not what the discussion was supposed to be about.

So finally I said, “This is casting pearls before swine” and I stormed out of Facebook’s house.

And as far as I’m concerned, we need never see one another again.

We may still make up, though.  I kind of miss her.


Kevin O’Brien
President & Artistic Director
Theater of the Word Incorporated
PO Box 29510
St. Louis, MO 63126
314-842-5300 / 1-888-840-WORD
www.thewordinc.org

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July 9th, 2010The Education Of E. F. Schumacherby Joseph Pearce

An article of mine (The Education of E. F. Schumacher) has just been posted on the Distributist Review website. This is an excellent site, and well worth visiting.

http://distributistreview.com/mag/2010/07/the-education-of-e-f-schumacher/

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July 8th, 2010Merriment and Devotionby Kevin O'Brien | http://www.thewordinc.org

In researching a play I am writing on vocations, I have recently re-read the spiritual classic "A Right to Be Merry" by Mother Mary Francis (1921 - 2006), a Poor Clare born in St. Louis and cloistered in Roswell, New Mexico.  Back in the 1950's, she wrote a number of very good plays, some poetry and music, and this excellent book.  My company, The Theater of the Word Incorporated, produced one of Mother Mary Francis' stage plays a few years back, and a few years prior to that I had the privilege of entering into a written correspondence with her.  She was a wonderful lady, and as the quotations below attest, a very fine writer.
 
Some highlights of the book, which is all about the joys of life as a contemplative nun (available from Ignatius Press www.ignatius.com ) ...

ST. FRANCIS AND SANITY

Francis had not so much gone mad as become suddenly so completely sane that the city was terrified by his sanity.

***

THE STAGGERING VIRTUE OF TRUST

Francis had that supreme trust which can let God do all the planning and then be ready to carry out His plans without any tortured weighing and planning of its own.  The world likes to call this kind of trust “imprudence”, but only because it is too staggering a virtue to be taken seriously for what it is.


***

HUMOR AND THE DIVINE

The term “sense of humor” has lost much of its fundamental significance in these tortured times of ours, even to the extent that it is often vaguely thought to be something associated with telling jokes and laughing at them.  In point of fact, it is a thing rooted in the Divine, for a real sense of humor is what balances the mysteries of joy and sorrow.  Without it, we can never hold a true perspective on ourselves or on others.  The saints were the true humorists.  The better poets were humorists.  The ability to see through things and to know what is important and what is not, what is to be endured and why we endure it, what is to be tolerated out of compassion and what is to be extirpated out of duty, is dependent upon one’s sense of humor.  Without the one, we cannot possess the other.

***

THE PRACTICALITY OF A SAINT

The little Assisian “dreamer” did not sigh over the mystic beauty of our Lord’s admonitions in the holy Gospel.  He simply followed them.

***

POVERTY AND PRAYER

An uncluttered exterior life has a very telling effect upon our interior.  And an uncluttered interior is the sine qua non of contemplative prayer.

***

THE MYSTERY OF VOCATION

A vocation is so mysterious a gift, a thing so locked in the inner court of the soul, where alone God speaks His wishes, that no one can properly describe or explain it.  What can be said is that a true vocation is a call so compelling that a soul must loosen its hold on the dearest and even the holiest of its loves to rise up and follow the summons.

***

MARY AND MARTHA

Activity not rooted in prayer is mere bombast and flurry.

***

EDUCATION AND THE NUN

Education worthy of the name is built on integration and correlation of knowledge. … True education always fosters humility, although mere accumulation of facts fosters pride. … A girl who has learned to cultivate the soil of her own intelligence is already conditioned for an interior life.  Her education is thus supremely useful to her in the cloister.

***

For the repose of the soul of Mother Mary Francis, P.C.C. we pray!


Kevin O’Brien
President & Artistic Director
Theater of the Word Incorporated
PO Box 29510
St. Louis, MO 63126
314-842-5300 / 1-888-840-WORD
www.thewordinc.org

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July 8th, 2010Solzhenitsyn And The Meaning Of Progressby Joseph Pearce

There's an excellent article by Peter Augustine Lawler in a recent issue of The City, a publication of Houston Baptist University. Apart from Lawler's article, "Solzhenitsyn & The Future", this issue also includes an article by Robert P. George on "Obama and Abortion", and an article by the irrepressible and indefatigable Louis Markos on "Christ in the Classroom". All in all, this journal is well worth checking out.

http://www.civitate.org/2009/08/the-city-summer-2009-full-edition/

The magazine can be read in your browser, click on the image in the middle of the page, then click to turn the virtual pages. The article about Solzhenitsyn starts on page 51 or 52.

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July 7th, 2010Saints for Todayby Joseph Pearce

Saints for Today: Blessed Roger Dickenson, Blessed Ralph Milner, & Blessed Lawrence Humphrey http://catholicfire.blogspot.com/2006/07/saints-for-today-blessed-roger.html  

These three martyrs lived in England during the time of Church persecution by Queen Elizabeth 1. "Mr." Roger Dickenson was an undercover diocesan priest. Ralph Milner was a husband and father. He worked as a farm laborer and was brought into the Church through the good example of his neighbors. The day he made his First Communion he was put into prison for being a Catholic. The jailer liked Mr. Milner so his prison confinement was not strict at first. For several years, he went on "parole" to find supplies of food and whatever the other prisoners needed. While on parole, he was of great help to "Mr." Dickenson and Father Stanney, a Jesuit.

The day came when Father Dickenson, too, was caught. He and Mr. Milner were brought to trial together. Father Dickenson was tried for the crime of being a Catholic priest. Mr. Milner was tried for helping Father Dickenson perform his ministry. The judge looked at the crowd in the courtroom. He thought of Mrs. Milner and the couple's eight children. He wanted to free Milner at all costs. 

"All you have to do," he said, "is visit a Protestant church, just for a few minutes, to say you have been there. I'll let you go free to be with your family." 

Mr. Milner quietly and firmly refused. He and Father Dickenson went bravely to their deaths. It was July 7, 1591.

The third martyr, Lawrence Humphrey, had been brought into the Church by Father Stanney, S.J. He would not give up the faith he had so recently acquired. Lawrence was just twenty-one years old when he was martyred. 

Every martyr reminds us that a treasure is worth defending. The martyrs recognized the value of their Catholic religion. They would not give it up for any reason. We can pray to Blessed Roger, Blessed Ralph and Blessed Lawrence. They will lead us to love and cherish our beliefs as they did.

SOURCE: http://catholicfire.blogspot.com/2006/07/saints-for-today-blessed-roger.html

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July 7th, 2010Letter From The Shireby Joseph Pearce

I'm posting part of the text of an e-mail that I received today from a fellow English exile. His report of the anti-Catholic atmosphere in England comes as no surprise. Indeed, the rabid media hostility to the Holy Father's forthcoming visit has plumbed new depths of meretricious mendacity. Here are my friend's words from the "ravaged Shire":

I am back in the ravaged Shire for my annual visit. Yesterday I had a few pints with GW, and a sausage butty in your honour, at The Cardinal pub behind Westminster Cathedral; G sends his best. Anti-Catholicism seems to be on the rise here, with a most unpleasant athmosphere being created for the Pope's visit. The BBC has, quite literally, lost all credibility. I fear Fr. S's worst visions of serious persecution beginning here may be true. God Bless! Fr. B.

The BBC's outrageous bias is evident through any cursory perusal of BBC America's "World News". We are a long way from the days when the BBC boasted of its objectivity. This is, of course, the bitter fruit of relativism. If there's no such thing as objective truth, why try to report it. All that's left is the pursuit of an agenda, i.e. propaganda. 

And while we await a new period of persecution in England, it is worth noting that today is the feast of Blessed Roger Dickenson and Companions, who were martyred on this day in 1591. Although these holy martyrs are entirely forgotten in England, we are sure that England is not forgotten in the prayers of these great Englishmen, who now reside in God's eternal Presence. The more that England forgets these true English heroes, the more she is in need of thier prayers. 

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July 6th, 2010The Fifth of Julyby Dena Hunt

Whatever else one may say about it, the Fourth of July is always evocative. It means something. People think in first-person possessive pronouns—my country, or our country—and those pronouns always generate emotion. Especially that latter plural pronoun, with all the suggested associations with unity, with belonging.

What is the difference between patriotism and nationalism? The best explanation I’ve read is in an essay by C.S. Lewis, in which he distinguished love for one’s homeland from the nationalistic fervor of the Third Reich, against which Britain was struggling at the time. (I cannot recall the source for the essay or its title, but I believe it was a radio address delivered during the war.) He said that when he thinks of his country, he has a mental picture of Victoria Station. He went on to explicate the meaning of “place”, grounded in familiarity, in memory, in associations with family, friends, childhood, all that one holds personally dear. None of that meaning is even remotely associated with politics or political doctrine.

I think I was affected at the time because of my own love for my homeland, which, historically, was “traitor” to this country. Few historians have ever really attempted to understand, much less explain, Robert E. Lee’s motivation for turning down Lincoln’s offer of command of Union forces, preferring instead to assume command of the “enemy” forces of Virginia. I never had any trouble understanding him. It had to do with love for one’s homeland; it had nothing to do with political doctrine, still less to do with slavery.

Maybe there really is no such thing as coincidence after all. I had never thought of any historical role England may have played in the War Between the States, other than that of southern sympathizer (primarily because England needed southern cotton for its mills), but in a conversation with an English laborer in a Birmingham pub several years ago, I received the surprising opinion that the American Civil War was a continuation of the English Civil War. The opinion’s surprise was superceded by the surprising sense it made. The violent intensity with which the abolitionists hated the South, settled largely by cavaliers, had its geographical seat in Puritan New England. Most historians agree that without that fervor, a political solution would have been found and war would have been avoided.

Now for the coincidence. I was lightly gliding over the internet (I never “surf”), actually looking for the source of the Lewis essay, when I came across a book published this year by an old acquaintance, Charles Coulombe. It has to go on my reading list, even though I’ve promised myself repeatedly to stop that list from growing. It’s called Puritan’s Empire. Coulombe explores Americanism as the natural offspring of Puritan anti-Catholicism. Excerpts from the book (which contains massive historical research typical of Coulombe) make almost alarming sense, particularly as they relate to consequences for modern England and Europe. Here is a link to the review:

http://corjesusacratissimum.org/2010/01/book-review-puritan%C2%B4s-empire-by-charles-a-coulombe/

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July 6th, 2010Slave Masterby Kevin O'Brien | http://www.thewordinc.org

Here is a very interesting article on the scientific effects of pornography on the physical brain and brain chemistry: http://www.salvomag.com/new/articles/salvo13/13hilton.php.

It’s important to remember that, while Catholics are not materialists, neither are we Gnostics. We do not believe that man is merely matter, any more than we believe that man only exists as disembodied spirit. The article above shows the interaction between spirit and matter, and gives us a blueprint of the effects of sin. Sin indeed “re-wires” our brains, and addiction to pornography, overeating and gambling can be as physically devastating as addiction to drugs and alcohol. Thus the article is entitled “Slave Master”, for we have here the physical evidence of the means by which sin enslaves us spiritually. In fact, a better way of saying this is that sin enslaves us spiritually and physically at the same time, especially in the realm of pornography, where an addict’s entire life, his ability to love, understand, and relate to others, is, over the long haul, destroyed.

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July 6th, 2010Speaking Engagements For Julyby Joseph Pearce

On July 16-17 I am speaking at the Immaculate Heart of Mary Homeschool Conference in Tampa, Florida. On Friday, July 16 I speak at 7pm on "Unlocking the Catholicism of The Lord of the Rings". On the following morning I speak at 9:30 on "Reclaiming Christian Culture: The Battle Begins in the Home".

On the following weekend, July 23-24, I am speaking at the Immaculate Heart of Mary Homeschool Conference in Grapevine, Texas. I will be speaking on the same two topics as in Tampa and at the same times, i.e. Friday at 7pm and Saturday morning at 9:30.

If you are able to attend either of these conferences, please come and say "hello"!

For further details about both conferences, plaease contact Mary Lou Warren: mlwarren@ihmconference.org.

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July 6th, 2010Federalism Versus Subsidiarityby Joseph Pearce

A friend recently drew my attention to an article arguing for robust federalism and a limitation on subsidiarity. In order to continue the ongoing discussion of subsidiarity and distributism that has become a feature of the Ink Desk on this site, I'm posting my reponse below:

I admit to reading the article somewhat hastily and in the midst of distractions but I can't say that it impressed me greatly. If I understand the gist, the author is saying that pure subsidiarity leads to anarchy, i.e. struggles between conflicting power groups that cannot be resolved on a subsidiarist level, and therefore we need a strong government to police subsidiary function. The fact is that a system of checks and balances needs to be integral to political function, ensuring that subsidiary functions can work as smoothly as possible within a human, and therefore Fallen, context. No system will be perfect but the principle of the family's centrality as the fundamental building block of a healthy society must be sacrosanct and therefore protected. This is the problem that must be resolved. Experience suggests that Big Government with its state-centralized education and health systems, and its one-size-fits-all mentality, is not the best place to invest our faith. I'd be willing to risk outbreaks of injustice on a local level if the only alternative is the danger of universal injustice, imposed by the jackboot of coercive central government.

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July 1st, 2010Looking For The King And Finding Tolkien And Lewisby Joseph Pearce

I've just had the immense pleasure of reading the page proofs of a new novel that will be published by Ignatius Press this autumn. The novel, Looking for the King, is written by David Downing, a fine writer who has published several excellent books on C. S. Lewis. This is, as far as I'm aware, his first foray into fiction. And what a first foray! What a fine debut! 

In brief, the novel is an Arthurian spiritual thriller set in England during the early days of World War Two. It's clearly influenced by Lewis's That Hideous Strength and by the spiritual thrillers of Charles Williams. But what is best about the novel is its inclusion of Lewis, Tolkien and Williams as real-life characters. And since Downing has studied these writers and their respective biographies, they are true to life. We can almost imagine ourselves in their presence. Indeed, while reading the novel I was reminded of Chesterton's hopeful wish that all roads would one day lead to an Inn at the World's End where we would meet Dickens and all of his chaaracters over several flagons of ambrosial ale. In Downing's novel, we meet Lewis, Tolkien and Williams in their favourite pub, the Bird and Baby, and listen spellbound as they come alive in our mind's eye. All this as the spellbinding backdrop to a mystical quest that leads to the legendary Spear of Destiny, in which the protagonists are purused by mysterious and deadly foes. Who could reasonably ask for more!

Here is my brief endorsement of the book:

This superbly gripping novel about dreams coming true is itself a dream come true. In the former sense, of dreams coming true, the mysterious dreams of Laura Hartman in Looking for the King remind us of the dreams of Jane Studdock in C. S. Lewis's That Hideous Strength, and indeed Downing's novel has much in common with Lewis's spiritual thriller. In the latter sense, of a dream come true, Looking for the King enables admirers of Lewis, Tolkien and Williams to meet their heroes in the flesh. Since Downing introduces each of these literary giants as literal characters in his gripping Arthurian mystery, we find ourselves in the pub and sharing a pint of ale and good conversation with the sub-creators of Narnia and Middle-earth. Lewis and Tolkien come alive as real-life characters, playing their sagacious parts to realistic perfection as the protagonists follow their Arthurian quest pursued by deadly enemies. For lovers of Arthurian romance and for admirers of Tolkien and Lewis, this is indeed a dream come true!          

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July 1st, 2010Jesus as Persona Non Grataby Pavel Chichikov

In the reading for June 30, in Mark chapter eight, Jesus, true God and true man, drives devils out of two possessed men. He hurls these resident devils into a herd of swine, which plunge into the sea and drown.

You’d think that the people in the nearby town would thank Jesus for expelling demons from the demoniacs. The devil-possessed men had been terrifying everyone and blocking a road.

True to form, however, the townsfolk "begged him to leave their district." They preferred serious trouble with ranting, violent demoniacs to having to see the hideous devils of rage and violence hiding inside them.

The townspeople were also infected with the devil, the arch enemy of truth, who wants to hide within us, and who wants us to refuse the exorcism of Christ’s love.

DOCTOR'S ORDERS

Doctor devil sniffed my breath, declared
Your portion of forever must be pared,
You have been prophesying, you must cease
Or else reduce the truth of it, decrease,
Words of truth offend me with a stink
Of truthfulness, and therefore they must shrink

Try a smaller bore, a narrow gauge
More suitable to this anemic age, -
Here he showed a brush that I could use
To brush my teeth, my clothing and my shoes,
A multi-purpose brush for every need -
A dirty carpet or a dirty creed 

A brush to smooth the edges of your speech,
Your words have grown too long, reduce their reach

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June 30th, 2010Green Burialsby Dena Hunt

Anyone on their mailing lists knows the financial difficulties of convents and monasteries in these modern times. While self-sufficiency has always been their mode of support, there was a time when cloistered monks and nuns could count on generous bequests and donations from faithful Catholics. That’s no longer true. Now they sell everything from coffee to candy, from rosaries to wind chimes, just to make ends meet. They try to be competitive with mail order houses, but it’s not easy—because prayer is still their real business, and that’s a very time-consuming occupation.

The Trappist Monastery of the Holy Spirit in Conyers, Georgia, has come up with a new initiative. The monastery, built by the labor of the monks themselves in 1944, happens to sit on 2,100 acres of some very valuable real estate. Beautiful wooded wetlands in their natural undeveloped state lie within commuting distance of the Atlanta megalopolis. One might expect the monks to sell off this land to developers, probably at a very good price. But it also happens that the Trappists take their responsibilities as stewards of God’s creation very seriously. The natural wetlands of the surrounding counties have been destroyed by development, so the monks have had to resist pressure to sell even as they continually multiplied the items in their catalog and gift shop. They were determined to save the land.

Now, the monastery lands are the site of the first “conservation burial ground” (also known as “green burial”) in Georgia, one of the few in the country. And the land is safe—forever. I have wandered in those woods during retreats, foregoing the guided tour of the outskirts sometimes offered by Father Gerard, and confessing afterwards to one of the priests that I “know” I’m closer to God there than in the sanctuary. Emphasis must be placed, however, on the word “natural.” This is not land that’s been manicured like a park. One can easily encounter very unfriendly snakes (I wear thick rubber stable boots) as well as the occasional bobcat. But, having spent some of the happiest days of my childhood traipsing through the wilds of the deep “pineywoods” of Georgia, I can think of no better resting place for my remains.

For those unfamiliar with the concept, “green burial” means burial in a plain wooden box in a plain white shroud, with no embalming, tombstone, or monument, just a small flat granite marker. Following the burial, the land returns to its natural state, so gravesites are very inexpensive. The land is not consecrated; sites are open to persons of all faiths or no faith at all. Further information can be found at the link below.

http://www.trappist.net/place/land_conservation.htm

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June 28th, 2010Solzhenitsyn’s Distributismby Richard Aleman | http://www.distributistreview.com/mag

 

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s socio-economic thought is found in his books, “Rebuilding Russia,” “From Under the Rubble,” “Letter to the Soviet Leaders,” and his address to the 1978 Harvard graduating class. As Solzhenitsyn relayed to author Joseph Pearce in his book “Solzhenitsyn: A Soul in Exile,” he arrived at his conclusions unaware of the early Distributist movement or E.F. Schumacher’s neo-Distributism. Nevertheless, his vision is complimentary to the Distributist thesis.

Our Cold War enemy, the Soviet Union, spawned endless debates between conservatives and progressives, each painting two incompatible portraits of Soviet life. For some, Communism was a worker’s paradise of egalitarianism, liberty, and democracy. For others, Soviet life meant being under the thumb of “Big Brother”; a tyrannical force in control of every aspect of society and guided by the materialist myth created by a few well-to-do bureaucrats. One man’s underground publications settled the debate, shocking the naïve Western world and sparking outrage in his native country. Through books like One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn exposed the cold realities awaiting those willing to stare down the Soviet regime. And he did not fail to deliver. Solzhenitsyn described the human cost of Communism: detentions, murders, lies, and forced labor camps for the innocent and the brave, including the author himself. 

For Europeans and Americans, Solzhenitsyn was a hero. 

But when Solzhenitsyn committed the sin of criticizing the West in front of the 1978 Harvard graduating class, and dismissing Western materialism as a false alternative for the world, those same European and American thinkers that once cheered Solzhenitsyn as a champion for freedom consequently berated his scrutiny and ignored Solzhenitsyn’s social, political, and economic analysis, as well as any of his proposed reforms. This was particularly true of proponents of neoclassical economics and market deregulation, as Solzhenitsyn, once crushed under the boot of massive centralized government, was expected to champion the Non-Interventionist State. Instead, he predicted disaster for institutions apathetic to economic and social involvement. After all, government regulations—within recognizable limits—serve to protect the common good and to keep the fallen nature of man in check. What’s more, public institutions should recognize man’s requisite for spiritual development and generate provisions for them, not fight or ignore these needs. Pope John XXIII, in the encyclical Mater et Magistra, called this task of the State its reason for being (raison d'être), as government bodies are responsible to oversee the common good and cannot afford to be “aloof from economic matters.”

Like Solzhenitsyn, G.K. Chesterton was a celebrated dramatist, political analyst, and unapologetic Christian. Along with Hilaire Belloc and Dominican friar Fr. Vincent McNabb, Chesterton conceived a movement to incarnate the social vision of Holy Mother Church. After all, the social encyclicals were the first to tackle the economic tug-of-war between capital and labor from the highest ecclesiastical position: the Papacy. Under the name “Distributism,” these men sought to counter the socio-economic system in place by subordinating the economic order to the higher sciences, reincorporating justice as an integral component to the marketplace. Distributists supported subsidiarity, the strengthening of local economics, and the widest diffusion of land ownership. Laws favoring self-ownership for the common man and for the propertyless were perceived as instrumental in reaching equilibrium both for the family and the community, as property freed them from the dependence on Big Business and Big Brother, which are essentially one and the same. The author of “Rebuilding Russia” was also suspicious of both Capitalism and Socialism, and perceived them as co-dependent rather than distinct economic theories.

“But just as we feel ourselves your allies here [in the West], there also exists another alliance—at first glance a strange and surprising one, but if you think about it, one which is well-founded and easy to understand: this is the alliance between our Communist leaders and your capitalists.” 

For Solzhenitsyn and for the distributists, the demise of these two systems didn't lay in their misuse. Their failures were an organic consequence of the penchant for the cult of man. As Solzhenitsyn astutely wrote, 

“I refer to the prevailing Western view of the world which was first born during the Renaissance and found its political expression from the period of the Enlightenment. It became the very basis for government and social science and could be defined as rationalistic humanism or humanistic autonomy: the proclaimed and enforced autonomy of man from any higher force above him. It could also be called anthropocentricity, with man seen as the center of everything that exists.” 

It was intuitive for Solzhenitsyn that centralized government acted as an organism attentive to the needs of its citizens for those matters local government could not address. A policy of subsidiarity (the smallest competent authority, whether central or local) effectively met the challenges of security, stability, and accountability for the nation as a whole and the smaller communities in particular. But it was the latter Solzhenitsyn turned his attention to; focusing on popular local governments overseeing the common good in the tradition of the Russian zemstvos. 

Created under the reforms of Alexander II in the 19th century, zemstvos disappeared with the advent of socialist uprising, effectively ending any form of independence for the yeoman in lieu of the concentration of power at the central level. Zemstvos were a form of self-government consisting of elected boards and councils made up of large land proprietors, small landowners (including clergy), wealthy townsmen, urban classes, and peasants. Elected individuals representing these distinct groups of owning classes would determine the economic needs of any given locality. In Solzhenitsyn’s mind zemstvos would be instrumental in restoring post-Communist Russia. With the easing of concentrated power, Solzhenitsyn believed the just wage and local craftsmanship would “come to light,” restoring an economy of permanence, instead of mindless consumption. This would shift the focus from desire to need, and subordinate the material to the spiritual.

In Joseph Pearce’s biography Solzhenitsyn: A Soul in Exile, we learn of Solzhenitsyn’s appreciation for Distributist thought included Catholic convert and German economist E.F. Schumacher. Schumacher, author of the book Small is Beautiful, spent most of his life crusading for small-scale economics, intermediate technology, and an humane economy of use, as an alternative to exhaustive expansion and economic license. Just as the Distributist movement did before him, Schumacher urged the restoration of local—or decentralized—economics and farming, combined with responsible eco-friendly development to end the depletion of natural resources.

Likewise, Solzhenitsyn argued for a sane economy providing civilization with stability, instead of an “uninterrupted rise in the level of material existence.” Solzhenitsyn spoke favorably of traditional, repairable, crafts replacing shoddy manufactured goods intended for consumers to replace at the slightest defect. Products and technology, he argued, should be measured by how well they serve our needs, particularly our spiritual ones, as our primary concern must be for our inner development, which frighteningly had shifted at the hands of a society bent on material acquisition or outer development. Production should flow as an agent which is subordinate to our inner development within a society sheltering the soul first and foremost. 

No greater example could be given than his famous book Letters to the Soviet Leaders, where one can quickly view his closeness to Small is Beautiful and his distance from The Wealth of Nations. 

“What must be implemented is not a ‘steadily expanding economy,’ but a zero-growth economy, a stable economy. Economic growth is not only unnecessary but ruinous…we must renounce, as a matter of urgency, the gigantic scale of modern technology in industry, agriculture, and urban development…”

It should give any reader pause how a man whose life began in the midst of Communist culture could condemn not only the Soviet way of life but ours as well. Dismissing the criticism, embracing Western materialism as a “better” alternative to Communist materialism, is to avoid the elephant in the room. For some, being in a pit without snakes is better than being in a pit with them. Solzhenitsyn brilliantly asks us why we should be in a pit at all.

 

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June 25th, 2010Preview Of The July / August Issueby Joseph Pearce

The July / August issue of StAR is winging its way to the printers. The theme of the next issue, which will be available to subscribers at the beginning of July, is "The Middle Ages".

Highlights of this power-packed issue include:

Paul J. Contino on Dante's Divine Comedy: "The Pilgrim's Path to Freedom"

Charles J. Kelly, Jr., on Catholic Piers Plowman

Michael Martin on The Holy Grail and the Eucharist

Sophia Mason discusses "Merlin the Not-Quite-Human" in relation to Mark Adderley's Arthurian Trilogy

Fr. Dwight Longenecker's regular film column compares "the Middle Ages and the Movie Age"

The regular full colour art feature is on Ruth Ballard's iconography

Susan Treacy's regular music column looks at "Hollywood and the Medieval Trumpet Fanfare"

James Bemis' regular movie feature reviews the classic silent film, "The Passion of Joan of Arc"

Donald DeMarco muses philosophical in the quest to do justice to the notion of virtue

Regular columnist Fr. Benedict Kiely waxes indignant against the anti-Catholicism of the media

Patrick G. D. Riley pays tribute to the late Ralph McInerny

Ferdi McDermott "hallows the flesh" in his discusison of two recent art exhibitions in London

Kevin O'Brien engages the rules of chivalry

The book review section includes reviews of Through Shakespeare's Eyes (Pearce), 111 Questions on Islam (Samir), The Testament of Cresseid (Henryson, transl. Heaney), Terry Jones' Medieval Lives (Jones and Ereira), Knight of the Temple (Sadasivan), and A Little Guide for Your Last Days (Hendrix).

Don't Miss Out! Become a Wise Man - Follow the StAR! 

Subscription details can be found elsewhere on this site.

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June 22nd, 2010The Aquinas Mousepadby Eleanor Bourg Donlon | http://www.eleanorbourgdonlon.com/

What do you get when you combine a Thomist and a computer geek? An Aquinas mousepad, of course!

But there is a great deal more to celebrate in the unfurling of the website of Matthew Alderman, church furnishing designer, professional illustrator, and design consultant, with architectural training and experience in ecclesiastic interior design. For churches, organizations, and individuals, he is a man of talent and a man worth knowing, and I am overjoyed to celebrate the work of my fellow Dappled Things editor!

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June 18th, 2010Portsmouth Conferenceby Kevin O'Brien | http://www.thewordinc.org

Last weekend I attended and performed at the second annual Portsmouth Institute Conference, at Portsmouth Abbey School near Newport, Rhode Island.  It was a tremendous experience.

With over two hundred attendees, I was amazed that this was only the second year that Portsmouth Institute has sponsored such a thing.  The school is a Catholic co-ed boarding high school, run by a group of Benedictines who celebrate the Ordinary Form of the liturgy with Gregorian chant and who all attended the conference and mingled with the guests, much to our delight.

The subject of last year’s conference was “The Catholic William F. Buckley”, and the presentations given then were very entertaining, as you can discover yourself by checking out the inaugural issue of “The Portsmouth Review”, which features the texts of the speeches and photographs from the 2009 conference.

And this year’s conference was on “Newman and the Intellectual Tradition”.

Get this lineup of speakers: Fr. Ian Ker from England, the world’s foremost Newman scholar; Peter Kreeft, the Catholic author and apologist; Deacon Jack Sullivan, whose miraculous healing via Newman’s intercession was the official miracle that led to the upcoming beatification; Fr. George Rutler, EWTN rock-star; Fr. Richard Duffield of Newman’s Oratory in England, who is serving as Actor for Newman’s cause; Patrick Reilley of the Cardinal Newman Society; Edward Short and Paul Griffiths, Newman scholars; opera singers, musicians, and an Anglican boys’ choir performing some of Newman’s works; oh, and me.  You see, even though I’m not qualified to mix with the upper echelons of culture and the intelligentsia, I get a free pass because I’m an actor.  I may not be a Newman expert, but I play one on TV.

I was honored to perform my one-man show as Blessed Dominic Barberi, the Passionist priest who received John Henry Newman into the Church, and the audiences for my two performances were very enthusiastic.

This conference was, as the American Chesterton Society conference always is, a little bit of heaven on earth.  It is what the Church ought to be; it is what the Church really is – a body of people sharing a common faith and the rich intellectual, musical, artistic, and dramatic tradition such a communion of faith produces.

The great thing about the St. Austin Review and what we gripe about and stumble towards at the Inkdesk here is that we are yearning for something that is no chimera, no pipe dream.  The Catholic culture that we seek to revive, the culture that once informed all of the West and that gave us Shakespeare, Dante, cathedrals and hospitals is something real.  And not just real, but alive.  It’s not the common culture of the day, the secular parody of culture that is not really a culture at all, except in the sense that it’s a culture grown in a Petri dish, a culture of bacteria, infection and death; it is a culture of health and life that spreads from the Body of Christ and His members; it is the soil for growth, the agri-culture of our souls, the communion, camaraderie and shared search for truth, beauty and goodness.  It is what keeps us all happy, fed, and Christian.

This is what we had at the Portsmouth Institute last week.  This is what we will have at the Chesterton Conference in Maryland in August.  This is Christian Culture.

And if you needed any more proof – all you had to do at the conference was drink the wine.  The wine, the port, and everything served to the grateful attendees was supreme.  The water of the dreary world was for a weekend turned into the good wine of Cana, and may we all work for such a transformation in the false culture about us and in our own hearts.

For more information on the Portsmouth Institute, go to http://www.portsmouthinstitute.org

For more information on this year’s Chesterton Conference (featuring Joseph Pearce, Fr. Ian Ker, yours truly on stage as Stanford Nutting, and more) go to http://chesterton.org/2010conference.htm

And to find out more about Cardinal Newman and Dominic Barberi, keep an eye on these pages where we’ll announce by fall the release of Theater of the Word’s movie “To Follow the Light – The Conversion of John Henry Newman”, filmed on location in Littlemore, England.

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June 18th, 2010Just the Facts, Ma’amby Dena Hunt

A teacher at a Catholic school in Washington was fired for posting on her educational blog a report on a student’s political speech. Both the student and the school were unnamed, and the subject of the post was a pedagogical method for teaching “tone.” Sounds very unfair on the surface, very easy to condemn as a Catholic school’s heavy-handed violation of the teacher’s right to free speech. As usual, however, the devil can be found hiding among the details; what is unusual is that the Bellingham Herald provided those details. (See the link below.)

The incident raises the question of objectivity in reporting, in writing virtually anything, and in teaching. It’s such an easy demand to make. We’re so fond of quoting Joe Friday’s “Just the facts, ma’am.” And we’re equally fond of claiming objectivity for ourselves, denying ownership of what we say. But the truth is that human beings are not capable of complete objectivity. One of my students, a forensic psychology major, wrote a research paper in which he said that only a small percentage of eyewitness testimony turns out to be actually valid. The demand for atonality is itself tonal and disingenuous, as even a casual reading of James Joyce’s “atonal” fiction proves.

The teacher’s criticism of the student’s tone is far more revealing of her own lack of objectivity. Perhaps we should just demand less objectivity and more honesty—from ourselves as well as others.

http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2010/06/15/1480784/teacher-learns-the-hard-way-watch.html

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June 9th, 2010Discussing Shakespeare With Raymond Arroyo On EWTNby Joseph Pearce

I'll be discussing my new book, Through Shakespeare's Eyes: Seeing the Catholic Presence in the Plays, with Raymond Arroyo on EWTN's World Over Live this Friday evening at 8pm. Raymond is very knowledgeable of the Bard and his work, and has acted in several of his plays. As such, I expect a lively and engaging conversation with him. 

I'll be travelling to the EWTN studio from the Dulles Expo Center where I'm giving a couple of talks at the Immaculate Heart of Mary Catholic homeschool conference. If you're able to attend, it would be good to see you. Here are the details:

Date: June 11 & 12

Venue: Dulles Expo & Conference Center (North Hall), Chantilly, VA

Event: Immaculate Heart of Mary National Home School and Parent Conference

June 11: 3:30pm - Talk Title: "The Quest for Shakespeare: Revealing His Catholicism"

June 12: 9:30am - Talk Title: "Reclaiming Christian Culture: The Battle Begions in the Home"

Contact: info@ihmconference.org  / (540) 636 1946

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June 8th, 2010Paper Or Plastic?by Dena Hunt

Everyone knows the difficulty that publishers of periodicals are having these days, even those of us whose involvement is limited to subscription. The publication schedule changes from weekly to bi-weekly, from monthly to quarterly, even while the price of subscription rises. There are several forces behind this unhappy change, some probably more forceful than others.

Some people say the increasingly mobile lifestyle of  American and European readers makes electronic reading more convenient than print. Since periodicals are quite portable, easily rolled up and stuck into convenient side pockets of roll-on luggage, I don’t think that explanation is very convincing, especially since print does not require recharging, wireless connections, the purchase of special equipment, or anything other than the simple desire to read and the willingness to turn a page manually. And there is the satisfaction of possession. You buy a magazine and it’s yours. You can keep it, throw it away; discard it or pass it on. The infatuation with technology and a perceived need to keep up with it is a far more likely explanation.

Other people offer the green explanation—just think of all the trees electronic publishing is saving. Well, not really. In South Georgia where I live, tree farming is a major industry. There are people here who own thousands of acres of pine trees. If you’re a tree-lover as I am, this is a happy state of affairs. As trees are harvested, seedlings are planted and cared for until they mature. Moreover, the need for healthy trees assures pretty fair treatment of soil, air, and water. South Georgians enjoy life surrounded by trees; it’s one reason I wouldn’t want to live in a city. Concrete forests are not a desirable substitute, nor would I want to exchange oxygen for carbon monoxide. The paper made from trees is biodegradable (it makes excellent garden compost, by the way), while the plastic housing of all that electronic equipment (not to mention those toxic batteries) is emphatically not. But most importantly, tree farming is a business. As the demand for paper decreases, that business becomes less profitable and those thousands of acres of trees are sold, stripped, and used for other purposes—like development. How green is that?

So print publishers of all types are having a bad time, and that’s especially true for publishers of Catholic periodicals. Even the hugely successful Ignatius Press lost a lot of money last year because (so I’m informed) of its periodical Homiletics and Pastoral Review. They’ve had to increase the HPR subscription price by thirty percent just to keep publishing it. Others depend solely on donations, and when that funding source is lost, they fold. Loyal readers should pay attention. Our periodicals are dying. StAR, Dappled Things, et al, need our support. (Do people know that DT is the only Catholic literary publication in the country?) Catholic writers, poets, artists, all know well the shrinking number of publication venues, the increasing competition for acceptance. Too many are turning to secular venues and are forced to tailor their submissions accordingly.

So, now for some good news: there’s a new Catholic periodical coming. The Pilgrim Journal’s driving force is a young woman from Yale, a history Ph.D., and she’s asking for submissions of art, poetry, fiction, and non-fiction that relate to the contemporary American Catholic experience. It’s worth taking a look at the website: www.pilgrimjournal.com.

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June 8th, 2010A Truly Revolutionary Videoby Joseph Pearce

This video is well worth a couple of minutes of your time. It turns the lie of modernity inside out, literally! Very clever, very innovative, and very true.

A palindrome reads the same backwards as forward. This video reads the exact opposite backwards as forward.  Not only does it read the opposite, the meaning is the exact opposite.

This is only a 1 minute, 44 second video and it is brilliant. Make sure you read as well as listen...forward and backward. 

This is a video that was submitted in a contest by a 20-year old. The contest was titled "u @ 50" by  AARP. This video won second place. When they showed it, everyone in the room was awe-struck and broke into spontaneous applause.  So simple and yet so brilliant. Take a minute and watch it. 

Lost Generation http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=42E2fAWM6rA

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June 4th, 2010ICUby Christian LeBlanc | http://platytera.blogspot.com/

For the last 10 years or so, I participated in the Ministry to the Sick, bringing Jesus to the ill, the shut-in, and whichever Catholics were in the hospital on my day of the week. Most memorable were the visits to those who lay in the Intensive Care Unit. A few minutes in ICU will have you counting your blessings. I had started writing this post on May 25, planning to talk about acting as a conduit of God's grace to people I don't know. But those plans went astray today.

This morning about 4am we got a call from the hospital; they wanted information on Evangeline LeBlanc, isn't she our daughter? Do we have her Social Security number, medical insurance info, etc? What? What? She's had a bad fall, is seriously injured and will be at the ER shortly. My daughter, who only a couple of weeks ago came home from college, is in bed across the hall from us; what a mistake! No mistake, they have her ID. My wife says we can be there in 10 minutes and will bring the data.

She is not in her room. They said she fell?

The world is quiet and dark at 4:15, except for the brightly-lit ER entrance, and a concrete pad where a helicopter is landing. I reflect for an instant on the West and its incredible machines. We go in, are quickly received and processed to a waiting room in the back. Turns out we arrived at the same time as Evangeline, who was delivered in the medevac. The ER doc sees us about 15 minutes later, says a CAT scan shows broken bones in her toes and foot, and a subdural hematoma, i.e., a blood clot in her brain like the one that killed Natasha Richardson in March. The neurosurgeon is already on his way, and we can see her now before she's prepped for surgery. The curtain to her cubicle is pulled shut; he pauses and says we should prepare ourselves.

Evangeline is hooked up to the usual devices, including a ventilator. My recollection from ICU is that nobody gets off the ventilator alive. But maybe not in this case: she was yelling and fighting with the ER staff when she arrived, so she was restrained and heavily sedated. They are gently wiping blood off of her head and face, her big toe is showing bone. Her appearance is absolutely shocking. Twenty-five years ago my car was totaled in an accident. Standing the rain I looked at it...that wasn't my car...my car looks pretty and new, not destroyed. And now I stare at this person who resembles my daughter, but must be someone else: busted mouth, swollen lip, swollen head, sightless eyes, tangled bloody hair, the ventilator, naked under a sheet with God-knows what-all stuck in her. I notice the urine bag, it's got a little bit in it already. I expected her to look more like...Evangeline; my sadness was indescribable. How could this wreck be my little girl? Except that there's no way not to bear it, it's unbearable. And of course all Janet & I can do is stand around while the staff, in its efficient yet surprisingly affectionate way, goes about the prep work. The chaplain is with us, and helps with the phone book as we try to find a priest; we are close to three of them and are pounding every cellphone, toll-free, and church office number we can think of to reach one.

In the meantime the surgeon arrives, fired-up, ready to save a life at 5am. He explains what he'll be doing. He expects a good result, which means in a month or so she will likely recover completely, or nearly so. The fact that she arrived able to fight, yell, and focus meant there may have been no permanent damage. May. This blow was an insult to the brain, he said; we can't ever be sure how the brain will react. I thought that was an artful description.

The daughter is wheeled off to surgery and the chaplain escorts us up to the appropriate waiting room. The procedure "doesn't take long" and at some point I decide it is running long. I accept that she will die. My wife & I sit and pray silently, and the chaplain sits with us doing the same. I'd have thought I'd pray for her to live. Instead I was praying that if this were the right time for her soul to go to heaven, then I wasn't going to argue with God about it. She had been a great blessing and a wonderful gift for 18 years, and I was thankful for that. So I prayed that God's will be done. I asked her 3 patron saints and my buddy saints Isaac Jogues and Max Kolbe to receive her if it became necessary, and pray along, too. I can't imagine how people get through this sort of horror without faith.

Two of Evangeline's friends show up. The ER told them how to find us. They are about her age, 19 or so. I know Joey and Larry; last week they all played Parcheesi in the living room. Joey ate dinner with us yesterday, and afterward all the kids watched a movie. Turns out that later that night Evangeline snuck out and they picked her up to go to an impromptu cellphone-coordinated party in an abandoned warehouse. She had the bad luck to fall through the upper floor and land about 15 feet below onto a concrete slab. They had called 911 and thus she got to the hospital in good time. I told them that regardless of the outcome, we didn't blame them, and they shouldn't blame themselves. The two of them looked so miserable; they stayed with us the whole time.

The surgeon strode in all of a sudden...here it comes, accept it. The operation went well, he reiterated his original prognosis. He advised us to go home, sleep, and come back around 1pm to see her in ICU. This isn't a sprint, he said, it's a marathon. Get some rest. Oh... so she'll live, then. I was surprised. We went home, told the other kids the news. They'd been praying rosaries and were stressed out. Vangie's dear sister Allegra had been crying. We slept a bit.

We returned to ICU about 1 pm, went right in to Evangeline's cubicle. I know the ICU drill. I have seen so many dying, battered bodies in ICU over the years, no worries. But I could not look at my daughter for even 30 seconds without breaking down. Still on a ventilator, induced coma, and a partly-shaved still-swollen head, with a 4-inch long cut running from her right earlobe arcing up the side of her head, held together with metal clips. Looks like a brain zipper. I had to retreat to the ICU waiting room. Tried again after I felt better; same result. My little girl is the most heartbreaking thing I've ever seen. Janet deals with it better and stays with her. Maybe mothers are tougher, I thought it'd be the opposite. No, wait. I was there at Vangie's birth: the mothers are definitely tougher.

We're at home now, eating something, heading back around 8:30. Close friends have already come by with food, and our immediate family who live close by are ready to help as needed. The doctors may take Vangie off the ventilator tomorrow; barely conscious, she keeps trying to yank it out. To me that's good. You go girl, get off that thing. Once more I reflect on the West: its managerial and organizational skills; its knowledge base and educated populations; its flexibility, responsiveness, and preparedness; its machines.

At the top of the page is the shirt they cut off of Evangeline in the ER. This would seem to be the perfect time to say thank ya Jesus.

Thank ya, Jesus. I know you love us.

This is an ICU blessing I never expected to count.

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June 2nd, 2010Speaking Engagements For Juneby Joseph Pearce

I'll be speaking on the next three consecutive weekends, in Indiana, Washington DC, and Michigan. If you're in the area, I'd be delighted to meet you.

Here are the details:

Date: June 4 & 5
Venue: Taylor University, Upland, IN
Event: Colloquium on C. S. Lewis and Friends
June 4: Noon till 2pm - Panel Discussion
June 4: 6pm - Talk Title: "Race with the Devil: A Journey from the Hell of Hate to the Well of Mercy"
June 5: 11am - Talk Title: "Unlocking the Christianity in The Lord of the Rings"
lrconstantine@taylor.edu

Date: June 11 & 12
Venue: Dulles Expo & Conference Center (North Hall), Chantilly, VA
Event: Immaculate Heart of Mary National Home School and Parent Conference
June 11: 3:30pm - Talk Title: "The Quest for Shakespeare: Revealing His Catholicism"
June 12: 9:30am - Talk Title: "Reclaiming Christian Culture: The Battle Begions in the Home"
Contact: info@ihmconference.org / (540) 636 1946

Date: June 19
Venue: Lansing Center, 333 East Michigan Ave, Lansing, MI
Event: Catholic Family and Home Education Seminar
June 19: 9:45am - Talk Title: "The Catholicity of Shakespeare"
June 19: 2pm - Talk Title: "A Matter of Life and Death: The Battle for a True Education"
Contact: mchemails@gmail.com / (517) 272 9639

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June 2nd, 2010Bocelli On Abortionby Joseph Pearce

I've just watched the wonderfully gifted Andrea Bocelli tell a true fairy story on YouTube about abortion. I shan't spoil it by giving away the happy ending but please take a couple of minutes to be edified. The link is below but, if it doesn't work, typing in "bocelli fairytale" as a search in YouTube will take you to video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QfKCGTfn3o

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June 2nd, 2010Britain’s House of Vulgarityby Joseph Pearce

Recently I had the misfortune to catch part of the State Opening of Parliament on BBC America. I call it a misfortune because it hammered home the utter venality and vulgarity of Britain's governing classes. As the pomp and circumstance of the occasion unfolded, it was punctuated by the sort of howling and heckling from amongst the ranks of the elected Members of Parliament that one usually associates with a riotous mob of adolescent schoolboys. The motivation for much of this heckling seemed to be a disdain for tradition in general and for the monarchy in particular. The queen, as ever, seemed unperturbed by the immature babble emanating from the disordered ranks of her ostensible subjects. For my part, I felt a renewed sense of nausea at the depths to which my nation has fallen. The fact that this tawdry rabble could be governing the country was bad enough, but the thought that they had just been elected by the British people was far worse. It is a sad and sobering fact that the present denizens of the "sceptred isle" get exactly what they deserve. If Shakespeare were in his grave, he'd be turning in it!  

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June 2nd, 2010A Catholic Renaissance in Ukraine at Riskby Pavel Chichikov

I came across an interesting story by John L. Allen Jr. in the online edition of the National Catholic Reporter. John Allen is a hardworking journalist respected even by colleagues who differ greatly with most of what appears in NCR. A recent book of his about Opus Dei, an organization with which I am somewhat familiar, seemed to me a fair and objective view by a perceptive outside observer.

The present article is an overview of the situation of the Catholic Church at this time in Ukraine.

I link it here and welcome comments:

http://72.26.206.155/print/18507

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June 2nd, 2010Recording of “Macbeth”by Kevin O'Brien | http://www.thewordinc.org

I am not only the first actor in history to have played every part in a Shakespeare play, I am the first actor to have done it twice!
 
I achieved this feat with the audio book version of "The Merchant of Venice - Ignatius Press Critical Edition"; and just last week did so again with the audio book version of "Macbeth".
 
The Ignatius Press Critical Editions are the texts of classic works coupled with essays of sound literary criticism.  They are well worth the read - or in this case, the listen.  Joseph Pearce serves as general editor for the series, and you can find out more about them at the Ignatius Press website www.ignatius.com , where you can also download any or all of the Ignatius audio books.  I am honored to serve as the "dramatic reader" for most of the fiction titles.
 
For a sample of my recording of "Macbeth", visit www.thewordinc.org/macbeth.mp3 .

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May 21st, 2010Language, Literature And Liberationby Joseph Pearce

This excellent review of a new book by Andrew Thornton-Norris, The Spiritual History of English, offers a panoramic perspective of philosophical and literary history. It's well worth reading as, it seems, is Thornton-Norris's book. Not surprisingly, Thornton-Norris converted to Catholicism as a direct result of his research for his "Spiritual History". When you read this review, and see the scope of his knowledge and understanding, you will understand why such an honest intellect came to such an honest conclusion and acted upon it.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article7129997.ece

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May 21st, 2010No Future For Europe Without Return To Christian Rootsby Joseph Pearce

No future for Europe without return to Christian roots, says Cardinal Kasper

Vatican City, May 20, 2010 / 10:12 am (CNA/EWTN News).- During a recent symposium in Rome on the Orthodox and Catholic Churches of Europe, the no-nonsense president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, Cardinal Walter Kasper, reflected briefly on the future of Europe. With his characteristic frankness, he said, "If Europe wants to have a future again, it must first and foremost renew its Christian roots."

The symposium "Orthodox and Catholics in Europe today. The Christian roots and the common cultural heritage of the East and West" took place Wednesday afternoon at the Rome's Russian Orthodox parish of St. Catherine of Alexandria. It one of a number of events during the "Days of Russian Culture and Spirituality in the Vatican," running from May 19-20.

Speaking of ecumenism and the goal of achieving full communion between Christians, Cardinal Kasper noted the necessity of using dialogue in efforts and not force or submission, according to SIR news.

Recalling the "new intensity and urgency" in the commitment to relations between Eastern and Western churches after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the cardinal said that it also brought back to the surface the schism between Rome and Constantinople in the 11th century.

Evidence of "existential emptiness" was seen on both sides, remarked the head of the Vatican dicastery for Christian Unity. The West was seen to be characterized by "post-modern indifferentism and the mentality of consumer escapism," while the East was marked by "the blameworthy traces and spiritual devastation" resulting from "atheist propaganda" of the Communist era, Cardinal Kasper observed.

Addressing these issues in the current situation, Cardinal Kasper warned, "If Europe wants to have a future again, it must first and foremost renew its Christian roots." This renewal's only chance of success, he added, is through the re-evangelization of the continent.

The 77-year-old prelate noted that in their crises, the East and West face similar challenges, historically being civilizations "deeply defined by the Christian faith."

He added that it isn't Christianity itself, rather its "inculturation" that is in danger in Europe. The continent is marked by spiritual weakness, he said, and it needs a renewal beginning with the healing of Christian divisions.

"To find its spiritual and missionary strength again, Europe needs a new-found unity, first and foremost among Christians."

In that vein, a joint Italian-Russian Academy was inaugurated today in Rome. The Academy will offer a permanent place for encounters between Church and civil delegates and for the development of relations between the nations.

The culminating event of the "Days of Russian Culture and Spirituality in the Vatican" is a concert offered Thursday evening at Paul VI Hall as a gift from Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill I to Pope Benedict XVI.

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May 21st, 2010More On Britain’s New Governmentby Joseph Pearce

Earlier, I posted my response to a friend and colleague who had asked for my thoughts about the new Conservative government in the UK. The friend in question, Gabriel Martinez, chairman of the economics department at Ave Maria University, sent me this response to my thoughts. Needless to say, his assessment is very perceptive and I find myself in substantial agreement with his conclusions. He writes:

I've read that when Cameron talks about taxes or schools, he sounds rather dull  ... but that he gets excited and stirring when he speaks of returning decision-making authority to local communities.  The name of the manifesto is supposed to be important: you, little guy, come join the government of Britain.

I'm both more pessimistic and more optimistic than you.  I don't think that any conceivable election in the imaginable future will be "good" from the point of view of people like you and me.  That said, there's bad, worse, and worst, and perhaps these Tories are less-bad in ways that are closer to our hearts.  So I'm excited.

Agreed on the social liberalism of the LibDems.  But a hung parliament, it seems to me, suggests that the small power elites of two dominant parties will lose some control, and that more independents and small-party politicians may stand a better chance.  Oh well.

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May 21st, 2010Anglicans On The Journey Homeby Joseph Pearce

Here's an exciting development from tradition-oriented Anglicans in the UK:

The Traditional Anglican Church
Rt Revd David Moyer
Episcopal Visitor
C/O: Church of the Good Shepherd
1116 Lancaster Avenue
Rosemont, PA 19010
USA

His Eminence William Cardinal Levada
Congregazione per la Dottrina Della Fede
Palazzo del S. Uffizio
00120 Vatican City

Sunday within the Octave of the Ascension, 16th May 2010

Your Eminence,

The people of the Traditional Anglican Church in the United Kingdom (a province of the Traditional Anglican Communion) express their profound gratitude to you for your positive response of December 16th 2009 to our Letter to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith of October 5th 2007 in which we expressed our desire to "seek a communal and ecclesial way of being Anglican Catholics in communion with the Holy See, at once treasuring the full expression of catholic faith and treasuring our tradition within which we have come to this moment."

We have read and studied with care the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus with the Complementary Norms and the accompanying Commentary, as well as the initial statement from your Dicastery at the time of your press conference with Archbishop DiNoia.

And now, in response to your invitation to contact your Dicastery to begin the process you outline, and in accordance with our unanimous synod vote of October 2009: which reads thus:-

"That this Assembly, representing the Traditional Anglican Communion in Great Britain, offers its joyful thanks to Pope Benedict XVI for his forthcoming Apostolic Constitution allowing the corporate reunion of Anglicans with the Holy See, and requests the Primate and College of Bishops of the Traditional Anglican Communion to take the steps necessary to implement this Constitution."

We therefore request that:

1) That the Apostolic Constitution be implemented in the United Kingdom and a Personal Ordinariate be erected.

2) That we may establish an interim Governing Council.

3) That this interim Council be directed by the Holy Father to propose a terna of names for the appointment of an Ordinary in a UK Ordinariate.

While we cannot speak for other groups of Anglicans in the United Kingdom, we shall be delighted if others apply for acceptance under the terms of Anglicanorum coetibus.

With continued expressions of appreciation for the generosity of the Holy Father in gathering the Anglicans into the fullness of Eucharistic communion, we await your instructions,

Yours sincerely in Christ,

+David L. Moyer, Episcopal Visitor
+Robert Mercer CR, retired, assistant to the Visitor

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May 21st, 2010New Shakespeare Series On Ewtnby Joseph Pearce

The second series of "The Quest for Shakespeare" premieres on EWTN at the beginning of June. It will be aired at 5:30pm every Monday and for early birds (and insomniacs!) at 5:30am every Friday. I am hosting the series and am assisted throughout by Kevin O'Brien and his troupe of actors, the Theatre of the Word. Whereas the first series was mainly biographical, based on my book The Quest for Shakespeare and looking at the facts of Shakespeare's life, the new series, based on my latest book, Through Shakespeare's Eyes, looks at the Catholic presence in three of the Bard's greatest plays, The Merchant of Venice, Hamlet and King Lear. This new series has much more interaction beetween myself and the actors making for much more dynamic viewing.

On a related note, I've just heard from EWTN that the filming for a third series is being scheduled for Spring 2012. The Quest continues! 

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May 21st, 2010Shakespeare On Male Chastityby Joseph Pearce

The First Things homepage has published an excellent article by the topnotch scholar Anthony Esolen about Shakespeare's Christianity and the reflections on the beauty and necessity of male chastity to be discovered in the Bard's plays. Here's the link:  

http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/1969/12/desires-run-not-before-honor

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May 21st, 2010Pope Benedict in Portugal: Christians, Answer to Secularism is to Re-Evangelize Worldby Joseph Pearce

By Hilary White

ROME, May 18, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com http://www.lifesitenews.com/) - Pope Benedict said in his many addresses and homilies during his recently concluded trip to Portugal that "vast effort at every level" is needed to answer the threats of growing secularism in Europe, of which abortion and homosexual "marriage" are among "today's most insidious and dangerous."

To the assembled bishops in Fatima on Thursday, he forthrightly called for "a new missionary vigor," to counter "politicians, intellectuals, communications professionals who profess and who promote a monocultural ideal, with disdain for the religious and contemplative dimension of life".

"In such circles are found some believers who are ashamed of their beliefs," Benedict added, "and who even give a helping hand to this type of secularism, which builds barriers before Christian inspiration."

What is needed, he said, is "a vigorous Catholic outlook ... in fidelity to the magisterium ... a strong prophetic dimension without allowing yourselves to be silenced."

The theme of the entire three-day visit was the call to all Christians to become personally committed to missionary activity and the re-evangelization of western culture. He called for Christians at every level in the Church and society, to "bear witness to all of the joy that [Christ's] strong yet gentle presence evokes, starting with your contemporaries."

He asked Christians to display courage in the face of secularist opposition and even their own complacency, saying, "Often we are anxiously preoccupied with the social, cultural and political consequences of the faith, taking for granted that faith is present, which unfortunately is less and less realistic. Perhaps we have placed an excessive trust in ecclesial structures and programs, in the distribution of powers and functions; but what will happen if salt loses its flavor?"

In comments on Thursday to social and pastoral care workers in Fatima, Benedict became even more explicit, praising work to preserve "the essential and primary values of life, beginning at conception, and of the family based on the indissoluble marriage between a man and a woman." These pastoral works, he said, "help to respond to some of today's most insidious and dangerous threats to the common good."

Benedict's call to the Christians of Portugal to defend the spiritual and philosophical roots of their culture came at the same time that Portuguese legislators were preparing to legalize same-sex "marriage." This week Portuguese president Anibal Cavaco Silva signed a law making Portugal the sixth country in Europe to allow gay "marriage."

It has been announced that Pope Benedict's call for the re-conversion of Europe and other western, traditionally Christian countries, will become the work of a new Vatican Office, the Pontifical Council for the New Evangelization. This expression was coined by his predecessor John Paul II and is an activity that has gained strength in the U.S.

In an address http://www.ewtn.com/new_evangelization/Ratzinger.htm to religious education teachers in December 2000, then-Cardinal Ratzinger, said the New Evangelization is "the path toward happiness," and "to evangelize means to show this path-to teach the art of living."

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May 21st, 2010Britain’s New Tory Government: Searching For The Silver Liningby Joseph Pearce

A good friend recently asked me what I thought of the Conservative Party manifesto following the election of David Cameron's Tory government. Here is my response:

Although I have not actually read the Conservative manifesto, I am very aware that the Conservatives have fallen under the mostly benign influence of the so-called "Red-Toryism" of Philip Blond, which is itself influenced largely by the distributism/subsidiarity of Chesterton and Belloc. This is obviously good and to be celebrated. Nonetheless, corruption is now endemic in British politics and I have no confidence in David Cameron who is a typical chameleon politician, i.e. he will change his political complexion according to the way the winds of media-driven public opinion are blowing. He is a typical pragmatist who will willingly sacrifice principle for "success", i.e. staying in power. He is also very weak on the European Union, i.e. he will do nothing meaningful to resist its onward draconian march. Finally the hung parliament means that he will have to compromise the manifesto to placate his partners in the Liberal Democrats, who are morally liberal in the extreme and sickeningly pro-EU, but who also profess some subsidiarist principles. I suppose my judgement, in a nutshell, is that a dark cloud still looms over Britain, portending a deluge, but that there is perhaps a silver subsidiarist lining even to the darkest of stormclouds.

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May 18th, 2010New Editions in French and Spanishby Joseph Pearce

I'm delighted to announce that my book, Small is Still Beautiful: Economics as if Families Mattered, is due to be published in a French edition this September. The Paris-based publishers, Editions de L'Homme Noveau, have asked me to write a preface to the French edition. This is particularly exciting news for two reasons. First, it's the first time that any of my books have been published in French. I've had my books published in Spanish, Portuguese, Polish and Dutch, but never in French. Second, it's the first foreign language edition of Small is Still Beautiful. Although many of my other books, indeed most of them, have found foreign publishers, my solitary foray into the sphere of political and economic didacticism has thus far been available in English only. Since France is at the darkened heart of the bête noire that is the European Union, I am gratified that I may be striking a blow, albeit a small one, against the monstrous EU dragon that is overseeing Europe's demise.

On a related note, I'm also pleased to announce that my biography of Roy Campbell is due to be published in a Spanish edition. Since there are several chapters in this biography covering Campbell's sojourn in Spain before and during the Spanish Civil War, I have long been hopeful that a Spanish publisher would be found. The Madrid-based publisher, LibrosLibres, are currently having the work translated and it will presumably be published some time next year. I have suggested that the Spanish title should be "Spain Saved My Soul: The Friends and Enemies of Roy Campbell", a title that reflects Campbell's own words about the role of Spain in his conversion to Catholicism, and a title that will have more appeal to a Spanish readership than the titles of the two editions that have been published in English, i.e. Bloomsbury and Beyond: The Friends and Enemies of Roy Campbell (British edition by HarperCollins) and Unafraid of Virginia Woolf: The Friends and Enemies of Roy Campbell (US edition by ISI Books). 

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May 18th, 2010Defending Distributism Yet Againby Joseph Pearce

I seem to be spending a lot of time defending distributism on this website. On this occasion, I feel moved to respond to an outrageously facile attack on distributism in general, and Belloc and Chesterton in particular, in a recent issue of the London Review of Books. The attack emanates from the acerbically perverse pen of Jonathan Raban in the course of his review of Phillip Blond's Red Tory: How Left and Right Have Broken Britain and How We Can Fix It. Needless to say, Raban's review is almost totally devoid of any engagement with the ideas that animate Blond's book. It is, however, filled with the lowest kind of rhetoric, particularly the device of smearing one's victim by association with the disreputable company that he is alleged to keep. Thus, for instance, there is no reference in Raban's review to Belloc's groundbreaking distirbutist works, such as The Servile State and the Essay on the Restoration of Property, which were hugely influential on the politics of George Orwell amongst others, or of Chesterton's Outline of Sanity. Instead we are told that Belloc was an admirer of Mussolini and is therefore a "fascist". We are also then led to assume by association that distributism is merely fascism wearing a mask. It can, therefore, be dismissed and derided without the necessity of engaging with what it actually is or says. Such reductionist bigotry is worthy of the fascists themselves and it is indeed ironic that Raban uses the propaganda techniques of the fascist in order to attack those he accuses of fascism. Does he realise this, one wonders, or is he blissfully ignorant of his own ignorance? Or, to put the matter another way, is he coldly cynical or simply stupid?

In any event, let's put the record straight. Belloc and Chesterton flirted with Mussollini briefly in the belief that he had saved Italy from communism (which, in fact, he might have done) but they distanced themselves from him once his true colours became apparent. Second, Belloc and Chesterton were always vociferous in their condemnation of Nazism, despising socialism in either its national or international manifestations. How many of Raban's literary or political heroes fraternised with Lenin or Stalin, and for much longer than Belloc and Chesterton fraternised with Mussolini? How many millions of innocent people died at the hands of Lenin and Stalin compared to the relatively few who died under Mussolini? Indeed, how many millions more were put to the sword by Lenin and Stalin than were put to the sword by Hitler? In terms of innocent blood spilled, even Hitler was less of a butcher than Stalin, indeed probably only about one-tenth of the butcher in terms of the number killed. Does Raban refuse to take seriously the political ideas of Shaw or Wells or the Fabian Society because they continued to support Stalin, the world's worst ever serial killer, long after Belloc and Chesterton had seen through the mask of Mussolini?

Such gross hypocrisy cannot be allowed to go unrebuked.

The fact is that the Big Government of the socialists leads to the Big Brother of state-sponsored oppression. Distributists have learned that particular lesson and demand, in consequence, that small government must replace Big Government. As for the socialists, they refuse to learn the lessons of history and cling to the belief that Big Government will solve the world's problems. It is socialism that leads to Big Brother, and it doesn't really matter whether Big Brother is called Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, Lenin or Mao. Whatever colour shirt Big Brother wears it is still covered with the blood of the innocents. Chesterton understood this, as did Belloc. Does Raban? 

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May 18th, 2010Screwtape on the Boardsby Eleanor Bourg Donlon | http://www.eleanorbourgdonlon.com/

The latest issue of Dappled Things is now available, full to brimming with short stories, poetry, reviews, art and photography, and more. Deserving particular note is Janice Walker's review of the Fellowship for the Performing Arts production of The Screwtape Letters (accompanied by her interview with actor Max McLean):

The snake may have all the lines, but this was never put to such glorious effect as in the Fellowship for the Performing Arts’ production of C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters. In this more than timely production now on national tour, actor Max McLean as demonic Under Secretary Screwtape has brought a new dramatic energy to the devilish epistolary and holds up a mirror to our own noisy, confounded, joyless age.

Those of you who are familiar with the C.S. Lewis novel upon which the play is based (and those among you who are not... well, you’re pagans) will be cheered to learn that all of its biting wit and penetrating insight into the nature of temptation and redemption have translated remarkably well into the theatrical format. For the purposes of this review, I shall strive very hard not to reveal too much of the story, but since a good deal of my analysis rests on those dramatic turning points in the play that act as fulcrums to new emotional and theological experiences, I hereby issue an all-points spoiler alert! Abandon hope all ye who read further!

(Brave souls are encouraged to read further here.)

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May 14th, 2010Newman’s Conversion - The Rest of the Storyby Kevin O'Brien | http://www.thewordinc.org

So for nearly two months now I haven’t posted a thing at the Ink Desk.  I have a very good excuse – Theater of the Word Incorporated, my touring apostolate which evangelizes through drama, has produced 81 performances of 16 different scripts in 12 states since the first of the year.  I’ve been, you might say, a tad busy.

I’m brimming with stuff to write about, as my only outlet has been making my keen and witty and insightful observations to my actors, who are pretty sick of me by now and who have had enough of all of the above.

But there’s always a new audience out there, if not an old one, so I’m back.

For now, let me encourage you to watch my appearance on EWTN’s program “The Journey Home”.  I portray Blessed Dominic Barberi, a Passionist priest who was the 19th Century Apostle to England and who personally received John Henry Newman into the Catholic Church.  EWTN is airing this episode of “The Journey Home” at various times all this week, but it can also be seen in its entirety here http://www.youtube.com/user/EWTN#p/u/4/AiwHtcSLnCg at EWTN’s youtube channel.

Barberi’s witness is fascinating and is really the untold story behind Newman’s conversion, the Catholic Literary Renaissance, and Pope Benedict’s vision for England today.  It’s well worth watching.

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May 10th, 2010Defending Distributism Againby Joseph Pearce

I've just had the great pleasure of reading the uncorrected page proof's of John Médaille's forthcoming book, Toward a Truly Free Market (ISI Books), which I confidently predict will be a classic distributist text, deserving a place of honour beside Schumacher's Small is Beautiful. Here is the brief endorsement that I've supplied to the publisher:

This is a book that will change minds, a book that challenges us to change the way that we think about the world in which we live. It is radical in the best sense of the word, discovering the root of the problem, and, when necessary, calling for the root itself to be uprooted. And yet, at the same time, it is deeply tradition-oriented, taking its bearings from the greatest philosophers of western civilization. In its power-punching pages, John Médaille takes up the cudgels and throws down the gauntlet to the ideologues of both left and right, exposing the bankrupt theories of neo-conservatives and "progressive" socialists and linking these bankrupt theories to the bankrupt reality of modern political economy. Toward a Truly Free Market is not only groundbreaking but earth shattering, shaking our understanding of political economy to its very foundations. When nothing is left of conventional economics but the rubble of its discredited aftermath, the foundations that remain will be the basis for a just and sustainable future.

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May 7th, 2010The Care and Feeding of Imaginary Petsby Lorraine V. Murray

Sometimes I yearn for a dog. I'll see a fluffy guy scampering down the street and think about how much fun it would be to have him as my very own. He would sit with me at night while I am reading. He would sleep on my feet as I'm at the computer writing.
 
Then I see myself getting up early on cold rainy days to walk this fluffy beast. I see myself hauling big bags of dog food home from the grocery store. And, oh, don't forget cleaning up after him in the early days when he is learning his manners.
 
At that point, I realize the truth: I must be content with the dogs I've created myself, the ones that exist only in the pages of my books. They don't have to be walked, and they never shed on the couch. And if they have an accident on the carpet, it’s no big deal.
 
I've been a writer for many years. I write two columns a month on religious topics for the local secular press and two for the Catholic press. And although I do enjoy writing these reflections on faith, I have never found myself chortling with glee as I sit at the computer.
 
This all changed when I switched to fiction. All of a sudden I had a delicious inkling of what God might have felt in the Garden of Eden when he was creating all those animals. I mean, he must have chuckled when he saw the giraffe, the hippopotamus, and the duck-billed platypus.
 
I found myself laughing out loud when a pure-black dog named Spot showed up at the rectory of St. Rita’s church, the fictional setting for Death in the Choir, my first mystery. I chuckled some more when I realized he was about to give the pastor a major scare in the middle of the night.
 
The poor man heard scratching sounds in the hall and thought there was a demon loose, so he grabbed his crucifix and went to hunt it down. What he confronted was demonic indeed – a big black blur and the smell of something sour as the blur knocked him down. But it was merely Spot.
 
As I was writing my second, soon-to-be-published mystery, Death of a Liturgist, another dog showed up. I swear I didn’t carefully select his features; instead, they seemed to spring onto the page full-blown. This dog is a big, shaggy, poodle-like beast with crooked front paws. The children at St. Rita’s school named him Dopey because he is unable to perform even the smallest trick properly.
 
One day, while I was writing about the archbishop’s visit to St. Rita’s, Dopey really surprised me by climbing up on the Queen Ann recliner in the sitting room of the rectory, where he lounged about and enthusiastically hunted for fleas. When the archbishop entered the room, the pastor nearly died of embarrassment, but Dopey refused to budge.
 
Where do the animals in fiction come from? Where do the people come from, for that matter? I honestly can’t say. There is a true mystery that a fiction writer gets engulfed in whenever he sits down at the computer keyboard.
 
I do know, however, that every writer, painter, and poet has a chance to do something J.R.R. Tolkien called “sub-creating,” which is the act of bringing to life people, animals and events in a world that the artist himself fashions. For Tolkien it was Middle-earth, but for me, it is a more down-to-earth version of the real world.
 
It would be misleading, though, to say that imaginary pets in an artist’s sub-created world require no care at all. On the contrary, an author must keep track of the animals he creates.

In my own recently completed mystery, for example, there is a hamster named Ignatius on the loose in the rectory, and I had to double-check the manuscript to make sure I had provided him with sufficient stashes of food and water to sustain himself on his odyssey. I also had to be sure he was out of harm’s way when the cook dropped a blueberry pie.
 
In my books there are many beasts drooling on the couch, shedding on the carpet, begging for treats, screeching for attention, and generally causing a ruckus. In my study in the real world, all is calm and relatively quiet. And in the future, whenever I feel the need for a new pet, I shall simply create one. It sure saves on veterinary bills.
 
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Lorraine’s most recent books are “Death in the Choir” and “The Abbess of Andalusia: Flannery O’Connor’s Spiritual Journey.” She lives in Decatur, Georgia, with her husband, Jef, and a (real) hamster named Ignatius.
 

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May 5th, 2010Talks by Joseph Pearceby Joseph Pearce

A range of talks given by Joseph Pearce are now available on compact disc for only $8 each.

Unlocking the Catholicism of The Lord of the Rings

The Orthodoxy of Shakespeare

A Matter of Life and Death: The Battle for a True Education

Personal Conversion Story

A Call to Catholic Responsibility in a Hostile Government

Please send orders to:

Matt Willkom
1196 Edgcumbe Road
Saint Paul, MN 55105
c. 612.251.9329
mwillkom@gmail.com

Checks should be made payable to "Matt Willkom".

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May 5th, 2010Christian preacher arrested for saying homosexuality is a sinby Joseph Pearce

A Christian street preacher was arrested and locked in a cell for telling a passer-by that homosexuality is a sin in the eyes of God.

By Heidi Blake http://www.telegraph.co.uk/journalists/heidi-blake/
Published: 1:05PM BST 02 May 2010
Christian preacher arrested for saying homosexuality is a sin http://i.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph/multimedia/archive/01628/bible_1628720c.jpg
Mr McAlpine was handing out leaflets explaining the Ten Commandments or offering a 'ticket to heaven' with a church colleague on April 20, when a woman came up and engaged him in a debate about his faith Photo: REUTERS

Dale McAlpine was charged with causing "harassment, alarm or distress" after a homosexual police community support officer (PCSO) overheard him reciting a number of "sins" referred to in the Bible, including blasphemy, drunkenness and same sex relationships.

The 42-year-old Baptist, who has preached Christianity in Workington, Cumbria for years, said he did not mention homosexuality while delivering a sermon from the top of a stepladder, but admitted telling a passing shopper that he believed it went against the word of God.

Police officers are alleging that he made the remark in a voice loud enough to be overheard by others and have charged him with using abusive or insulting language, contrary to the Public Order Act.

Mr McAlpine, who was taken to the police station in the back of a marked van and locked in a cell for seven hours on April 20, said the incident was among the worst experiences of his life.

"I felt deeply shocked and humiliated that I had been arrested in my own town and treated like a common criminal in front of people I know," he said.

"My freedom was taken away on the hearsay of someone who disliked what I said, and I was charged under a law that doesn't apply."

Christian campaigners have expressed alarm that the Public Order Act, introduced in 1986 to tackle violent rioters and football hooligans, is being used to curb religious free speech.

Sam Webster, a solicitor-advocate for the Christian Institute, which is supporting Mr McAlpine, said it is not a crime to express the belief that homosexual conduct is a sin.

"The police have a duty to maintain public order but they also have a duty to defend the lawful free speech of citizens," he said.

"Case law has ruled that the orthodox Christian belief that homosexual conduct is sinful is a belief worthy of respect in a democratic society."

Mr McAlpine was handing out leaflets explaining the Ten Commandments or offering a "ticket to heaven" with a church colleague on April 20, when a woman came up and engaged him in a debate about his faith.

During the exchange, he says he quietly listed homosexuality among a number of sins referred to in 1 Corinthians, including blasphemy, fornication, adultery and drunkenness.

After the woman walked away, she was approached by a PCSO who spoke with her briefly and then walked over to Mr McAlpine and told him a complaint had been made, and that he could be arrested for using racist or homophobic language.

The street preacher said he told the PCSO: "I am not homophobic but sometimes I do say that the Bible says homosexuality is a crime against the Creator".

He claims that the PCSO then said he was homosexual and identified himself as the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender liaison officer for Cumbria police. Mr McAlpine replied: "It's still a sin."

The preacher then began a 20 minute sermon, in which he says he mentioned drunkenness and adultery, but not homosexuality. Three regular uniformed police officers arrived during the address, arrested Mr McAlpine and put him in the back of a police van.

At the station, he was told to empty his pockets and his mobile telephone, belt and shoes were confiscated. Police took fingerprints, a palm print, a retina scan and a DNA swab.

He was later interviewed, charged under Sections 5 (1) and (6) of the Public Order Act and released on bail on the condition that he did not preach in public.

Mr McAlpine pleaded not guilty at a preliminary hearing on Friday at Wokingham magistrates court and is now awaiting a trial date.

The Public Order Act, which outlaws the unreasonable use of abusive language likely to cause distress, has been used to arrest religious people in a number of similar cases.

Harry Hammond, a pensioner, was convicted under Section 5 of the Act in 2002 for holding up a sign saying "Stop immorality. Stop Homosexuality. Stop Lesbianism. Jesus is Lord" while preaching in Bournemouth.

Stephen Green, a Christian campaigner, was arrested and charged in 2006 for handing out religious leaflets at a Gay Pride festival in Cardiff. The case against him was later dropped.

Cumbria police said last night that no one was available to comment on Mr McAlpine's case.

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May 5th, 2010Defending Distributismby Joseph Pearce

A friend recently asked me whether I'd read a new work of polemics from a conservative who attacks the ideas of distributism. The friend and the work (and its author) will remain nameless, but here is the reply that I sent to my friend, defending distributism:

I haven't read [the author's work that you mention] but I suspect that I have heard the thrust of his arguments in other "free market" attacks on distributism. Distributism, in a nutshell, is the principle of subsidiarity with regard to productive property, i.e. land, labour and capital. Free marketeers argue that subsidiarity with regard to productive property cannot be achieved except through big government and unjust taxation, i.e. distributism in practice is not much different from socialism. But free marketeers gloss over the fact that the free market is an illusion, i.e. the market is not "free" because it is manipulated by big business and big government to pursue the objectives of big government and big business. The market is not "free" but is the tool of the most powerful. Free marketeers also ignore the fact that big business and big government make very comfortable bedfellows, e.g. the capitalist-socialism of the European Union and the cosy partnership between global corporations and communist China. In contrast, distributists acknowledge that the free market is a myth and that the world is being carved up between the cosy axis of big business and big government. This can only be combated by a system that favours small government and small business. If this includes tax policies that favour small businesses and political decentralisation that gives real power back to local and state government, so be it. The "realists" will no doubt argue that such policies will simply lead to the global corporations taking their business elsewhere. Such "realists" don't seem to realise that global corporations have already taken their business elsewhere, outsourcing most of their production, and therefore most of the jobs of their employees, to the pacific rim. When globalism has asset stripped the United States of its manufacturing base, which has largely happened already, and its service industries, which is now proceeding apace, the only parts of the US economy that will remain will be those parts that can't be exported to areas of lower unit labour costs, e.g. health and education. Since health and education are those parts of the economy that cost money and do not make it, the US will then be utterly bankrupt. This is the path that the free market realists would have us follow. It is the yellow brick road to cloud cuckoo land. In the face of such "realism" I'll take distributism every time!

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May 5th, 2010Music to the Earsby Joseph Pearce

This short video offers a wonderful encapsulation of the definition of sacred music suitable for liturgical use, and also represents a resounding condemnation of the gatecrashing of the sacred by the musically profane.

http://vimeo.com/10686215

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May 5th, 20102010 Immaculate Heart of Mary Home School and Family Conferenceby Joseph Pearce

Below is a link to the official flyer for the 2010 Immaculate Heart of Mary Home School and Family Conference, which lists upcoming conference speakers, talk titles, vendors, etc. Take a look. Speakers at this year's conference on June 11 & 12 include my good friends Dale Ahlquist of EWTN and Chesterton fame and Christopher Check of the Rockford Institute. I'll also be giving two talks: "The Quest for Shakespeare: Revealing His Catholicism" and "Reclaiming Christian Culture: The Battle Begins in the Home". For further details see the link below. I hope to see you there!

http://www.ihmconference.org/images/documents/nationalbrochure.pdf

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May 5th, 2010Juniper Treeby Pavel Chichikov

I’ve been thinking about the “Scandal” lately. I believe that the Holy Father is right when he says that wounds have been inflicted on the Church. Unfortunately, some of them have been self-inflicted.

But wounds heal, and we have a physician called Christ.

My wife and I attend Mass at the Franciscan Monastery here in DC. The gardens around the monastery are extensive and splendid. Against the south facing wall of the little chapel in the garden, a replica of the Portiuncula near Assisi, which St. Francis restored with his own hands, is a spreading juniper tree. Is it a coincidence that one of Francis’ original followers was named Brother Juniper?

The juniper tree in the monastery was damaged by the heavy snow of this past winter. But it will grow again.

JUNIPER TREE

A Juniper tree
Green-bright, blue berries,
The warm south wall
The gray stone chapel

St. Francis come
Stand in the sun
With her and me
And the Juniper tree

See what price
Has fixed the cross
Of sorrowed Christ
The five wounds lost

Above the altar’s
Emptiness
That was before
Adored and blessed

Faithful green
And supple limb
The growing one
Proposes Him

Tree of shy
And stubborn will
And it replies
Beloved, be still

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May 4th, 2010Two Talks In Chicago This Weekendby Joseph Pearce

I am giving two talks at the Chicago area homeschool conference this weekend. On Friday at 7:00 pm I will speak on "Reclaiming Catholic Culture: The Battle Begins in the Home". On Saturday at 11:00 am I'll be "Unlocking the Catholicism of The Lord of the Rings". Anyone interested in attending should contact Virginia Seuffert: vseuffert@sbcglobal.net. 

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April 27th, 2010Inspiring Middle-earthby Jef Murray

Greetings!

I'd like to pass on some information about the new "Inspiring Middle-earth" exhibition in North Oxfordshire. The Banbury Museum will be hosting this exhibit starting 24 April and continuing through 19 June. It will feature original works by Ted Nasmith, Ruth Lacon, Peter Pracownik and myself. If you're in the Oxford area over the next couple of months, do swing by and take a look. The formal announcement is at: http://www.cherwell.gov.uk/index.cfm?articleid=2782

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April 27th, 2010Praising a Saintby Joseph Pearce

During my recent trip to Rome I was interviewed for the website of Saint Josemaria Escriva, the founder of Opus Dei. The film of this interview is linked here - in English, Spanish and French:

english - http://www.josemariaescriva.info/article/opus-dei-usa-pearce-st-josemaria-is-a-magnet-drawing-people-to-christ

spanish - http://www.es.josemariaescriva.info/articulo/un-iman-que-arrastra-a-la-gente-hacia-cristo

french - http://www.fr.josemariaescriva.info/article/opus-dei-interview-joseph-pearce

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April 22nd, 2010Pearce in PAby Joseph Pearce

I keep forgetting to post my speaking engagements on this site. Mea culpa!

Last week I presented a paper on "Chesterton on the Meaning of Progress" as part of a conference at Grove City College in Pennsylvania. Tomorrow (Friday) I am giving a talk entitled "Eating Well: The Ethics of Food" at the University of Scranton, also in Pennsylvania. The talk is in the evening and I'm also taking part in a panel discussion in the afternoon. If any visitors to this site are able to attend either of these distributist-oriented events, please contact my host, Dr. Cyrus Olsen: (570) 941 7729.

I'll try to post details of future speaking engagements in a more timely fashion.

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April 20th, 2010Was Shakespeare a Secret Nazi?by Joseph Pearce

The ever delightful and perennially thought-provoking Theodore Dalrymple has written on a surprising connection between Shakespeare, the Earl of Oxford, Sigmund Freud and Adolf Hitler. I kid you not!

 

Personally I think that the Oxfordians, Baconians, Marlovians and others who think that Shakespeare was not Shakespeare are as mad as Hitler. Perhaps, however, and in fairness, I should qualify this outrageous statement. They might be as mad as Hitler but they are certainly not as nasty as the Nazis. On the contrary, their madness belongs to the nonsensically logical world of Lewis Carroll rather than the perniciously illogical world of racism and socialism that was the peculiarity of the Nazis. On second thoughts, an Oxfordian may be as mad as a hatter but he is certainly not as bad or as mad as a Hitler!

In any event, please follow the link below for Dalrymple's excellent Shakespearian and Hitlerian perambulation.  

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/springtime-for-shakespeare/?singlepage=true 

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