Touchstone Magazine - Mere Comments

Jesuits Who Say Eureka, and Shades Who Talk Books

A magazine and a weblog I stumbled across while looking for articles on the English novelist Anthony Powell, author of A Dance to the Music of Time, whose biography I am reading, which (the magazine and weblog) you may find of interest.

First, the magazine: an Australian Jesuit magazine called Eureka Street, which describes itself as a "magazine of public affairs, the arts and theology" that "specialises in fresh, independent and stimulating analysis of the key cultural and political issues in contemporary Australia." I know that word "Jesuit" just set off alarm bells, but remember I said "of interest." It does include a well-done article on Evelyn Waugh, Another Waugh Brings Up a Century (this is the article my search found).

Second, the weblog: The Charlock's Shade, by someone named Enoch Soames. It offers all sorts of interesting things for those interested in English literature, and several entertaining things for those who aren't, though how could you not be. For example: quotes from Saki, the satirist H. H. Munro (Waugh without the religion), which include:

He is one of those people who would be enormously improved by death.

In baiting a mousetrap with cheese, always leave room for the mouse.

Every reformation must have its victims. You can't expect the fatted calf to share the enthusiasm of the angels over the prodigal's return.

The people of Crete unfortunately make more history than they can consume locally.

His list of links includes all sorts of useful sites. Among the items I found is this news from The New Criterion: Brideshead annihilated .

Buckley on McClay on Bush

In Evangelical Bush?, William F. Buckley responds to our senior editor Wilfred McClay's recent talk to the Ethics and Public Policy Center, The Evangelical Conservatism of George Bush (the site includes a link to the audio version, which includes the question and answer period). I heartily commend the talk, the response less so.

No Peace for Jerusalem

A headeline yesterday from Ecumenical News International  (April 29, 2005) notes: "Jerusalem Patriarch not seen at Good Friday church services."

Some readers may ask, So? And that's month old. Yesterday was Good Friday for Orthodox Christians, and the non-appearance of a Patriarch at services on such a holy day is unusual, and the circumstances surrounding the Greek Orthodox Patriarch, Irineos I, are driving the story.

The Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, Irineos I, who is embroiled in a church property scandal failed to appear at services to mark the Orthodox church's Good Friday on 29 April, according to wire agency reports. 

The unusual absence at the church services came during increasing calls for him to step down as a result of the controversy about allegations that church property has been transferred to Jewish investors, the British Press Association reported. 

Patriarch Irineos I has faced calls for his resignation from the Greek foreign ministry and from Palestinians following an Israeli newspaper report that a close aide sold property, near the Jaffa Gate entrance to Jerusalem's Old City, to Jewish investors from abroad.   

The reports of the land sales have angered the church's mostly Palestinian members who resent the way the church is run by Greek clerics rather than Arabs. 
 
The Patriarch has asserted that he had not found proof that any land sale had taken place and even if it had then the aide did so illegally without his permission or that of the church synod. 

On Palm Sunday, 24 April, when Orthodox Christians celebrated the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem before his crucifixion, Israeli police were called on to restore order at a church service. There Irineos faced chants of  "Shame on You" from a crowd of Palestinian Orthodox Christians, some brandishing posters with the word  "Judas" written on them.

I don't know the facts of the allegations, but the controversy has been going on for a long time. And this is not the first time Israeli police have been called in to break up fights between Christians in the Holy Land. It seems to be a nearly annual occurence, as Christians of various "jurisdictions" and loyalties rub shoulders within the traditional burial place of Christ, the Church of the Holy Sepluchre, and the place of our Lord's Crucifixion. It would seem that every foolish word and gesture on the part of the Lord's followers in the Gospels, against which he warned them (and us) often, seems to be repeated, mirrored, in the conduct of his followers even 2,000 years later. Which just means that man seems to learn little, even when taught, and we badly need a Savior, and we need to listen to His teachings, and do them.

The Obvious Implication

of the news in the following item is: subscribe. Which you can do by clicking on the ad to the left of this column. Or, to make it easy for you, by clicking right here.

This kind of hard sell pains our marketing director, but as the father of four squeaky wheels, I mean children, I understand the effectiveness of repetition in these matters. The reality is that small, serious magazines survive by getting people to subscribe and so the editors of small, serious magazines can't pass up any chance to remind readers of the value of subscribing.

By the way, one response to childish requests that I recommend is: "And the relevance of that is?" This helps them with their vocabulary and their logic, and when they're younger is often enough to stop them in their tracks. When they're older they have answers, of course. Not necessarily good answers, but answers, and anyway you're still training them to think and speak.

ACP Awards

Some good news. Last year Touchstone joined the Associated Church Press, and duly entered the magazine and some of our articles into their annual competition. The winners have just been announced and, we are pleased to say, we won five.

The most encouraging was the "Award of Excellence" (i.e., first) in the "Best in Class" category for journals. The judge wrote: “Excellent in every aspect — writers, editing, graphics, and array of content from lengthy letters to footnotes for news stories.”

The almost as encouraging was the Award of Excellence for our website. The judge for this category wrote "It is evident that the editors and designers of Touchstone’s website understand its purpose. The site is truly reflective of the magazine in its tone and design. It provides the visitor access to enough free content to make subscription to the print edition desirable. The site is friendly, engaging, and free of clutter. The ‘Mere Comments’ blog serves as an extension of their editors’ work and enhances their relationship with the readers, without scuttling the print edition. The site appears to work well with the magazine, enhancing the magazine’s appeal while providing a satisfying experience for the online-only visitor. That’s a rare achievement.”

FYI: Sojourners was in second and The Christian Century in third.

We were also given three Honorable Mentions (i.e., third) for:

Feature Article in an ecumenical magazine, for Anthony Esolen's A Geography of Kind;

Critical Review for R. R. Reno's Return to Beauty, his review of D. B. Hart's The Beauty of the Infinite; and

Best Seasonal Article for my The Dust of Adam, my interpretation of the Ash Wednesday liturgy.

I was especially pleased that "A Geography of Kind" was given an award, because it was so un-p.c., and that "Return to Beauty" was also given an award, because it was a review of a fairly difficult and academic book.

ACLU Supports Rape?

This blog from our sister Crux website should give you an idea of how low the ACLU has sunk, if that really needed to be proven. But it goes like this:

According to the Curley’s attorney, Larry Frisoli, NAMBLA is not merely a group lobbying Congress for legal change (a perfectly Constitutional act), or printing fictional accounts of man-boy love—they are actively training their members to rape and abuse young boys.

In an interview with DeRoy Murdock, Frisoli explained that pamphlets like NAMBLA’s “The Survival Manual: The Man’s Guide to Staying Alive in Man-Boy Sexual Relationships” aid and abet felonious conduct, telling members “where to go to have sex with children . . . when to leave America [if one gets caught] and how to rip off credit card companies to get cash to finance your flight.”

This is about NAMBLA--but the ACLU is defending its "right" to such "speech." Read the whole story.

Ora Pro Nobis Predicatoribus

In my seminary days a friend who lived across the hall was writing a master’s thesis on a famous nineteenth century preacher, and asked me if I would mind reading over the chapters as he finished them. What struck me most in consulting this preacher’s sermons and other writings, which I found necessary as the man in the thesis, much admired by my friend, appeared chapter by chapter more bizarre and less believable, was the utter confidence with which he held forth on everything he said and wrote.

Much of his work was tripe, piffle, speculation, and, I strongly suspect, high embroidery, set in a plain of free-range pseudo-intellectualism. There was, however, no evidence of hypocrisy. The preacher believed himself an anointed man, clearly convinced himself before he attempted to convince anyone else, and spoke as the oracles of God. Freely mixing the gospel of Christ with grandiloquent gasbaggery, he left no doubt about the worth of his numerous critics’ misgivings.

This sort of preaching survives to this day among pastors of high conviction and low accountability, although my impression is that it is becoming rarer. It is much inhibited by education, and killed outright in seminaries where the scriptures are only as authoritative as critical scholarship du jour allows. This renders out in the pulpit as “be nice, oppose meanness, and hope for the best.” Any Christianity in it is entirely incidental, for to this mind the Christian faith is not itself truth, but subject to a higher critical authority that knows Christianity only as religion, and regards every religion's relation to truth as exemplary, at best.

The desired end in these matters, however, is not a kind of golden mean where preachers get as much education as they can, remain as orthodox as they can in the process, and give their sermons with as much authority as their consciences thereafter allow—an essentially negative prospect, built mostly upon avoidances. No, the desideratum is a positive quality that shows submission to the Holy Spirit by preaching with the power and conviction of the man to whom I refer above, but without his mistakes.

I have heard it done, believe it can be done consistently, and that it can characterize an entire career. It is the kind of preaching that is acceptable before orthodox Christians of any denomination and can be preached with confidence in any Christian church. It cleaves to the sure center of the main road of Christian belief, treating the scriptures as the Word of God, and can be tested by the Creed. It avoids the disputable, the speculative, the personal hobby-horse, and undue attention to current opinion. Its education seeks to gain the classicist’s instinctive knowledge of this main road as a historical phenomenon, to gain skill in its negotiation and fluency in its language.

It is both catholic and evangelical, catholic in that it is what has been believed everywhere, at all times, and by all Christians, and evangelical in that its substance, put-forward in the power of God, is the voice of the Good Shepherd, and as such will most certainly be heard by all who are his. It needs no apologetic through subjection to modern thinking, systematic theologies, or popular taste, but stands in confident judgment on all of these.

What Happens to Lying Children

Here are two articles by Jennifer Roback Morse you may find of interest. The first is the disturbing The True Cost of False Witness, about the effects of false allegations, particularly by and on foster children. As she writes, "it is one of the few lies that the legal system makes no effort to punish. There is, for all practical purposes, no penalty for making a false accusation of child abuse."

I had never thought of the effect upon the child himself:

There are costs for the particular kids who make false claims. A child with a history of making up stories about authority figures really can not be in a foster home, since, most families are reluctant to take a child with this kind of history. The social workers could place such a child with an unsuspecting foster family, but they really shouldn’t. So if the social workers play it straight, the kid will have trouble getting a home. That child is no longer "family material." He or she will end up in a group home, because he or she poses a serious risk to a family.

. . . Think about it from the perspective of a mildly troubled child: "I got my stepdad sent to jail. I broke up my mom’s second marriage. I got my foster parents’ license taken away." Getting an adult in trouble empowers the child, and they become drunk on that power. Every time they get away with a lie, they get more disturbed and more difficult to treat. That is the greatest hidden cost of allowing false allegations to go undetected and unpunished.

The second article is the refreshingly sensible What Dads Do.

Stark's New Journal

Fans of the sociologist Rodney Stark, author of the fascinating and encouraging The Rise of Christianity, will want to know about the new journal of which he is founding editor: the Interdisicplinary Journal of Research on Religion. The first issue includes one article written by Stark with the Italian sociologist Massimo Introvigne: Religious Competition and Revival in Italy, subtitled "Exploring European Exceptionalism."

Stark was interviewed for Touchstone by Mike Aquilina in A Double-Take on Early Christianity.

I've just downloaded the paper titled "Atheism," which argues that "Atheism is indeed more common among people whose social obligations are weak." The abstract for Stark and Introvigne's paper reads:

The religious economy approach in the social scientific study of religion emphasizes theimportance of supply-side factors in stimulating religious demand. Where many religiousfirms compete in a relatively unregulated market, levels of religious belief and participation will be far higher than in situations in which religious life is regulated by the state eitherin favor of a monopoly church or to constrain the market by subsidizing a state churchand making it difficult for other religious groups to compete. Changes in the level of competition should thus be followed by changes in the level of popular religious commitment.This prediction is strongly supported when applied to recent religious trends in Italy.

New Law to Protect Clean Movies

In a somewhat circuitous manner (called backtracks) I found out at the Acton Institute's  Power Blog that

President Bush signed a bill into law yesterday that exempts companies such as ClearPlay from litigation for copyright infringement. ClearPlay, for example, offers a DVD player that will filter out "objectionable" content. Consumers are free to purchase this item or not, depending on the sensitivity of their tastes and the ability of the ClearPlay device to cater to their demands.

ClearPlay is the service mentioned in the first post this morning. I was cheered by the mention this morning, also, by the respondent, John, that he and his wife wanted to keep their new daughter as far away from television as possible, and that they don't watch it. I can't think of a single reason for trying to argue them out of that position.

Open Doors International

An organization you may want to know about: Open Doors International . Their vision statement reads:

To strengthen and equip the Body of Christ living under or facing restriction and persecution because of their faith in Jesus Christ, and to encourage their involvement in world evangelism by:

· Providing Bibles and literature, media, leadership training, socio-economic development and through intercessory prayer;
· Preparing the Body of Christ living in threatened or unstable areas to face persecution and suffering; and
· Educating and mobilizing the Body of Christ living in the free world to identify with threatened and persecuted Christians and be actively involved in assisting them.

We do so because we believe when one member suffers, all members suffer with it (1 Corinthians 12:26), all doors are open and God enables His Body to go into all the world and preach the Gospel.

The site offers profiles of countries in which Christians are persecuted . It is, I should note, an Evangelical group that seems to think only Evangelicals are persecuted believers.

China Arrests Priests (Again)

Joseph Grieboski of the Institute on Religion and Policy just sent me this press release from the Cardinal Kung Foundation:

Stamford, Connecticut, U.S.A. – Seven priests belonging to the Diocese of Zhengding, Heibei were arrested at 5:30 pm April 27 Bejing time in Wuqiu Village of Jinzhou city. These seven priests had traveled from their parishes for a religious retreat conducted by Bishop Jia Zhiguo who had just been released from 24-hour surveillance during the period of approximately March 30 to April 25 when Pope John Paul II was dying and when the new Pope Benedict XVI was elected.

The mass arrest of priests was made by the Security Bureau of Shijiszhuang, officers of the religious bureau, and dozens of police riding in nine police cars. Bishop Jia was warned by the Public Security and religious bureaus not to initiate any religious activities. The seven priests were sent to the Security Bureau of their respective parishes as stated below.

The arrested priests are: (All ages are approximated) Fathers WANG Dingshan (50), LI Qiang (31), and LIU Wenyuan (35) from Gaocheng. Father Zhang Qingcai (45) from Wuji County. Father LI Suchuan (40) from Zhaoxian. Father PEI Zhenping (43) from Luancheng. Father Yin Zhengsong (32) from Dingzhou.

Joseph Kung, the President of the Cardinal Kung Foundation, said: “it defies logic. How could the Chinese government on one hand proclaim to Pope Benedict XVI and the world their willingness to improve the relationship between China and the Vatican, and on the other hand keep arresting the Pope’s priests? It is quite obvious that the desire expressed by the Chinese government to improve its relationship with the Vatican is less than sincere.”

Well, they are Communists. I know that even among political conservatives, the ascription of wicked behavior to Communists because they are Communists is no longer done, but their being Communists does accurately explain why they act like Communists.
 

Clean DVDs & TVs

John Kushiner sends me a note about a service that "cleans up" movies by filtering out sex and violence. I know this is not entirely new, but readers may be interested to know about it or be reminded about it. Movie-makers are not happy about it. 

Some of the dissenters say that you shouldn't be able to modify a movie because you didn't create it. ClearPlay's angle is that they filter out sex and violence scenes in a movie that you've purchased or rented. They're not filtering it out and then selling it - they're selling a special DVD player with software that knows what to filter out.

Here's the link.

I think the opposition is misplaced as well. Publishers might object to a little booklet I might be able to get at a bookstore if it told me which paragraphs to avoid in a novel. Or say that I paid the bookstore owner who supported the idea to line out offensive material. I can understand the publisher (and author) being upset. But, really, there is nothing inherently wrong (or illegal I would think) in such a service. When you watch a movie on VHS, you can fast forward through offensive material as well, or skip some scenes on a DVD. Or watch the movie backwards. They can't tell you how to watch the movie or how to read the book.

They will likely try to come up with a counter technology, but John, who works in programming, points out that technology designed to block other technology usually lags well behind. Which reminds me, before I go, of a news story that I saw a couple of weeks ago about new little gizmo you can put on a key chain that will turn off any television set you aim it at. Like the ones in waiting rooms. If you're alone it's a no-brainer. If others are there watching the afternoon soaps, it might be very tempting. Who would know? The TV just "went out."

East West Hot Buttons

My post of yesterday on healing of schism perhaps did more harm than good for some, to judge from various responses I have received (from both "sides"). Let me note that crimes have been committed by and against both "sides" after the Schism; all are guilty; and that the suggestion about walking in the other's shoes goes both ways, too. My intention was not polemical at all.

East-West Emphases & Disagreements

Christopher Encapera writes:

Having just read Mr. Kushiner’s post “The Healing of Schism” [posted 4/26], I must confess to some consternation around his description of the situation. He correctly describes some facts of  importance, such as the sacking of Constantinople in 1204 and the returning of the relics last year of St. John & Gregory, and these are important aspects of the current division. However, in the opinion of many Orthodox (such as myself) the real underlying cause of the division between the Bishop of Rome and the four other ancient Patriarchs are theological and thus doctrinal.

Mr. Encapera was critical in particular of this:

"Such run the subtle differences between East and West: some of them perhaps due to historical circumstances, others due to differences in theological emphases."

He responds:

Mr. Kushiner’s use of the word “emphases” implies, at least to my mind, that the division is more like a ‘big misunderstanding’. In this view, with the proper amount of honesty and Christian forbearance, both sides would come to see that their differences are only superficial and/or historical.

My main focus in the blog was on history and experience, so my theology program wasn't up and running. Mr. Encapera's complaint is legitimate. I do not think it's all a matter of emphasis. It would have been better to have written something like "differences in theological understandings" or even "theological disagreements." While some might want to reduce some of the theological disagreements to misunderstandings—and there may well be some things that can be attributed to this—I don't think this will prove to be the case across the board. I wish it were otherwise.

The May Touchstone

We've posted two articles from the May issue, which is now in the mail to subscribers. The first, Joel Tom Tate's  Sundays in the Country, describes the surprising joys of pastoring a rural congregation. The second, Disarming Men, describes "What to Do When Scott Peterson Sits in Your Pew (and He Will)." They are both quite good, and challenging in different ways.

You can find the rest of the offerings in the issue in the May Table of Contents.

While I'm at it, let me remind Mere Comments readers of the magazine's Archives. There you can find almost everything published two or more years ago as well as a selection of articles published within the last two years. You can search the Archives by issue, author, and subject.

The Archives  includes a list of the ten most popular (i.e., accessed) articles. One article from the March issue, William Tighe's Abusing the Fathers, has just appeared on the list, at number nine. I think it would have appeared earlier and ranked higher, but at least one Episcopal site published it in toto, without even mentioning  that it was taken from Touchstone. Please don't do this, if you're tempted to. The Commandments have something to say about such behavior.

Sorry for the lecture. Please do read the two newest articles and go to the Archives and enjoy. browsing.

Benedict XVI versus Darwinism

Part of Pope Benedict XVI's sermon at his installation seems to have been flying around the ID world for is condemnation of Darwinist (blind, purposeless) evolution:

Today too the Church and the successors of the Apostles are told to put out into the deep sea of history and to let down the nets, so as to win men and women over to the Gospel — to God, to Christ, to true life.

The Fathers made a very significant commentary on this singular task. This is what they say: for a fish, created for water, it is fatal to be taken out of the sea, to be removed from its vital element to serve as human food. But in the mission of a fisher of men, the reverse is true. We are living in alienation, in the salt waters of suffering and death; in a sea of darkness without light. The net of the Gospel pulls us out of the waters of death and brings us into the splendour of God’s light, into true life.

It is really true: as we follow Christ in this mission to be fishers of men, we must bring men and women out of the sea that is salted with so many forms of alienation and onto the land of life, into the light of God. It is really so: the purpose of our lives is to reveal God to men. And only where God is seen does life truly begin. Only when we meet the living God in Christ do we know what life is.

We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary.

The homily can be found here. The three writers who've sent this message in different forms were all Protestants, by the way, which suggests yet another area of ecumenical reconciliation. One wrote that a

journalist colleague, a Catholic, notes, "The nice thing about breaking decisively with Darwinism now (not that we ever fully adhered), is that Catholics will find themselves at the emergent edge of science. This is because, even in the academy, strict Darwinism is in the act of receding,  back into the primordial ooze." B 16 is nobody's fool, and it will be interesting to see how his clearly aimed comments are spun.

Jonathan Witt, author of The Gods Must Be Tidy! in the July/August issue, has written on this on the Evolution News and Views weblog in an entry titled Science May Have a New Friend and Neo-Darwinism a New Foe .

Pope Bill I & Gorbachev II

Just in case you missed it, and are like more than a few people concerned or interested in the future of the Roman Catholic Church, Bill Moyers on PBS last night provided viewers with a sure-fire path to a secure future: married priests and women priests. If both of these things were allowed by the hierarchy, Moyers assured worried Catholics and other viewers, the Catholic Church would become "an unstoppable force."

Unstoppable? I waited for him to go on and say, "As in, like, the gates of hell wouldn't be able to prevail against it." But he didn't. Married priests and women priests (and, one assume, female bishops and--popes!)--these are the keys to the future unstoppable kingdom.

Pope Bill I's guest, James Carroll, author of Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews, couldn't wait to pontificate with Mr. Moyers. He said he used to hope for a pope who would be a liberal, like John XXIII. Now, he assured us, he would be happy with a pope who is the Gorbachev of the Catholic Church and simply preside over the collapse of its outdated structure. Carroll, by the way, also wrote a book called  When Jesus Became God: The Struggle to Define Christianity During the Last Days of Rome. I think he wishes the Last Days of Rome to come around again.

Touchstone's Editor David Mills, by the way, has written an insightful feature article for the June issue in which he engages this sort of liberal media coverage of Catholicism, especially as it "reported on" the legacy of John Paul II. You won't want to miss the June issue, which you can get by subscribing right here.

Killing the Practice of Infanticide?

The Culture of Life Foundation has sent this news item today:

The US federal department charged with enforcing the Born-Alive Infant Protection Act, a statute making it illegal for babies who survive abortions to be left to die, has taken steps to ensure the law is enforced by committing itself to closely investigating possible violations and educating medical providers of their obligations under the statute. In an April 22 statement, Mike Leavitt, Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), said his department had notified "relevant entities that we aggressively enforce federal laws that protect born-alive infants." He also said the agency would "take proactive steps to educate state officials, health care providers, hospitals and child protection agencies about their obligations to born-alive infants under federal law."

Under the Born-Alive Act, passed with overwhelming bipartisan support in Congress and signed into law by President Bush in August 2002, when terms "individual," "person," "human being," or "child" are used in law they must be defined to include any infant who is born alive, at any stage of development. An infant is considered alive, according to the Act, if he or she "has a beating heart, pulsation of the umbilical cord, or definite movement of voluntary muscles, regardless of whether the umbilical cord has been cut, and regardless of whether the expulsion or extraction occurs as a result of natural or induced labor, cesarean section, or induced abortion."

This is good news, of course. But we might wonder why it took more than two and half years for the department to communicate to the health care "industry" that leaving live infants to die was against the law. In the meantime, as well as before this, infanticide has been practiced in American hospitals. You can only guess what sort of things will be going through the minds of doctors and nurses who have participated in this and approve of it, and the minds of those who don't. When a situation arises, will some doctors be tempted to let an infant die if they know the nurses on duty won't blow the whistle? And what pressures will be placed on those who do blow the whistle and report the killings?

It's a good law, and the department has taken the right first step (finally), but it has to realize that the directive is going to those who have allowed infanticide already. Can we assume this alone will simply stop it all? Much will depend on reporting violations (who is going to do this?), then follow through, and yes, the threatened loss of federal medicare and medicaid dollars to institutions who allow the practice to continue.

A Century of Heretics

The American Chesterton Society will be holding its annual Chesterton conference from June 16th to 18th at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. Among the speakers will be several of our writers: the Jesuit writer James Schall, author of Miraculous Daily Planet; the head of the G. K. Chesterton Institute in England, Stratford Caldecott, author of Supermen & Virtues and The Lord & Lady of the Rings; the G. K. Chesterton impersonator Chuck Chalberg, author of two recent book reviews we haven't posted; as well as the polymath Stanley Jaki and a Unitarian minister offering a Unitarian appreciation of Chesterton.

TypePad Eccentricities

For those of you who notice this sort of thing: Yesterday I noted that one of my items appeared as the first item on the day I posted it. Jim Kushiner wrote me to say that it appeared as the last item of the day before.

I opened the page again and found it appearing where I said it was and listed as being posted by 12:07 a.m. Jim then checked again and found it posted where he said it was and listed as being posted three hours earlier, at 9:07 p.m. He lives only one time zone to the west of me, not three, so that wouldn't explain the difference.

We have no idea why this happened.

Hitchcock on Ratzinger

Our senior editor James Hitchcock, the historian, writes a column for Catholic diocesan newspapers. Here is the latest one, which I'm posting because few of you would see it otherwise, either not being Catholic or if Catholic not being blessed to be in one of the dioceses that prints his column.

The election of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as pope, although often predicted, came as a surprise, particularly because of the speed with which the cardinals reached their decision. Conventional wisdom considered him “controversial,” which was thought sufficient to prevent his election.

The address that Cardinal Ratzinger gave to the cardinals at the beginning of the Conclave, if it was a campaign speech, was a highly unusual one, in that it offered no concessions, did not hint at compromise, merely proclaimed in effect, “If you see the situation facing the church in the way I do, then perhaps I am suitable to be pope.” He did not seek, and certainly did not want, the papacy on any other terms.

In the public discussions of the papacy, in a culture where even many church-members are religiously illiterate, it seems almost impossible to get beyond the “bottom lines” will the new pope agree to ordain women, rescind the teaching on birth control, accept homosexuality? Advice on as to what the new pope “must” do is often proffered by people who have scarcely an elementary knowledge of Catholic doctrine, and who in fact cannot understand why we should have a pope at all. Critics of the new pope (as well as of the previous one) in effect demand that he simply conform the Church to modern culture.

Cardinal Ratzinger, one of the most important Catholic theologians of the late twentieth century, was intellectually the best qualified man to be pope, and he defines his role in a way exactly opposite to that of his critics a confrontation with modern culture in order to assert the primacy of the Gospel in all aspects of human affairs. Such a confrontation need not be abrasive, although it may often have to be, but it does recognize that the values of the world are in many ways in fundamental conflict with the Gospel and that the world always needs redemption.

Many modern intellectuals are in various ways antithetical to enduring truths. They are predominantly men of the left, in the broadest sense of that term. But at this moment in history the needs of the time require that the leader of the church precisely be a kind of intellectual, because only an intellectual is likely to see the whole cultural pattern, the way in which the various manifestasions of modern civilization are deeply rooted and systemic.

Many people who reject Benedict XVI's judgments about modern civilization simply have not thought about it nearly as deeply as he has. For forty years it has been customary in the media to equate “thinking Catholics” with dissenters, and the new pope annoys his critics in part because they cannot dismiss him as intellectually deficient not only he is more learned and intelligent than practically all of his critics, he also understands modernity better than they do.

I met the new pope about thirty years ago, before he was a bishop, at an editorial meeting in Munich of the international journal Communio. I recall a modest and friendly man, for all his formidable intellect. Communio was founded by the Swiss theologian Hans Urs Von Balthasar, probably the single most important Catholic theologian of the twentieth century, and it is significant that now two popes in succession have been men who in some sense could be considered Balthasar's intellectual colleagues, even in important ways his disciples.

The June issue of Touchstone, now being laid out, includes an editorial of his on Pope John Paul II. And one of mine on Pope Benedict XVI. You can subscribe now and get that issue in the mail by clicking here.

Frederica Mathewes-Green on “Sex and the City”

Frederica Mathewes-Green will give a series of talks entitled, Sex and the City: Men, Women, and the Future of Civilization, May 7–8 at St. Matthias’ Church in Dallas, Texas as part of the parish’s Easter Week Celebration. There is this downloadable .pdf brochure with good details. For more information, call 214-358-2585 or e-mail the parish.

Mrs. Mathewes-Green is speaking at 9:00 a.m. & 10:30 a.m. on Saturday, May 7, and at 9:15 a.m. on Sunday, May 8.

The Healing of Schism

One of the differences between the West and the Eastern Orthodox churches is in full display this week as the Orthodox are observing Holy Week. In Orthodoxy, Holy Week is not part of Lent proper, and began last Friday evening with services of Lazarus Saturday, the day before Palm Sunday (then connection between the two is suggested in John 11.)

Why the difference in the dates of Easter? Don’t ask me. It does have a great deal to do with the fact that Orthodox use the old Julian Calendar, which runs 13 days behind the “new” Gregorian Calendar. If you base your dating on the first full moon after the Spring equinox, as it was stated in an early church council, then March 21 becomes the baseline. Except that when the Julian Calendar reads March 21 it’s April 3, hence the full moon that is counted may not be the same one used by the other.

Why can’t everyone adopt the “new” Gregorian Calendar? While some Orthodox Churches in the West have finally done so (except for dating Easter), the fact that the new calendar bears the name of a pope (Gregory XIII in 1582) has not helped it gain wide acceptance among the Orthodox.

It’s no secret the Orthodox have problems with the papacy, although there have been great strides in opening up dialogues beginning in the 1960s, when the official anathemas that precipitated the Great Schism were lifted. Pope John Paul II fervently hoped for and worked for reunion. Last November he arranged for the return of relics of two saints dear to the Eastern Church—John Chrysostom and Gregory Nazianzus. The relics had been taken from Constantinople during its sacking by soldiers of the Fourth Crusade in 1204, a date and event that lives in infamy among the Orthodox. (The relics were taken to Venice then Rome, where they remained in the Vatican until 2004.)

I have heard modern arguments break out about 1204. Christians are called upon to forgive sins against each other and the Lord makes that clear in the Gospels. One thing that I would point out to Western Christians baffled by Orthodox sensitivity to something that happened 800 years ago is that Orthodoxy does have a very real, palpable sense of the oneness of the past and present of the Church. For this reason the martyrs of the early centuries are very much present in the daily consciousness of the observant Orthodox; and the fathers of the Church, such as John and Gregory, speak in the hearing of our own ears in 2004 with a living voice. (I do not mean to imply that other churches have no sense of this.) There is, I think, less idea of time as linear, more (in emphasis at least) an experience of the whole history of the church as still present.

I say this not to excuse any lack of charity but simply to note that something being simply “a long time ago” in the Orthodox Church is not quite how its history is viewed and experienced. It stems in part, I think, from its peculiarly intense orientation to liturgical time.

Such run the subtle differences between East and West: some of them perhaps due to historical circumstances, others due to differences in theological emphases. The history of Russia, homeland of what is counted the largest Orthodox Church, is a case in point of historical circumstances that create a separation that remains ever present.

Whenever I think of the Russian view of its own place in Christian Europe, I think of this this notion of separation expressed by Pushkin:

“The division of the churches separated us from Europe. We did not take part in a single one of its great events. But we had our own special predestination. Russian and its vast expanses absorbed the Mongol invasion. The Tatars did not dare cross our western borders. They retreated to their deserts and Christian civilization was saved. To achieve this goal our way of life underwent a change that, while preserving us as Christians, alienated us from the Christian world.” (Written October 19, 1836. My source for this quote is the screenplay of The Mirror, by Andrei Tarkovsky.)

The historical experience of Orthodox cannot simply be thrown off as something a long time ago, and grasping this alienation might aid in drawing closer together. Of course, there may be other events in the future, known only to God, that will bring Christians closer to one another. But those we cannot know nor engineer.

We can only take practical steps as wisdom dictates. One bit of wisdom I recently picked up was from the film The Fog of War. In this documentary, former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara noted that the one lesson learned during the Cuban missile crisis that helped Russia and the United States avoid nuclear war was the realization that the President’s best hope for a peaceful resolution was to put himself in the shoes of Krushchev and figure out what he needed to do that would allow them both to back off and at the same time save face.

Of course Christians have the “luxury” (via our Lord’s teaching) of acting in humility and asking forgiveness of one another. Also, bearing the wounds and burdens of the other. Those who can place themselves in the shoes of the East may offer, outside of intervening acts of God through history, the best way forward in healing our schisms, of which the differing date of Easter is but a symptom.

Monastic Narcissism

A reader responds to the quotation from Norman Mailer I posted last night, though it appears as the first post for today:

Thank you for the quote you posted on narcissism. It was very interesting and is a keeper. As someone who is delving deeply into some of the great writings of the past, however, I can't help notice there might be a fine line worth drawing. It seems to be that the Christian tradition has a curious form of intentional narcissism which works its way out in the monastic traditions.

Indeed, both Cassian and the Desert Fathers seem to describe a purposeful spirituality that perfectly fits this description: "The narcissist suffers from too much inner dialogue. The eye of his consciousness is forever looking at his own action. Yet ‹ let us try to keep the notion clear. A narcissist is not only a study in vanity and self-absorption. One part of the self is always immersed in studying the other part. The narcissist is the scientist and the experiment in one."

The eye of the monk is forever looking at his own thoughts, actions, etc. There is little other than inner dialogue. The self is always immersed in studying the self. Thus, on a superficial level it seems that anyone pursuing the solitary life is, in effect, spiritualizing narcissism.

As someone who is trying to find my own way in the Evangelical Church through a temporary, hopefully, stepping away from the usual patterns and instead engaging the 'letting go' of Cassian and the Desert Fathers, I saw a danger for myself in the quote. I began to see how this can be a tendency in my own soul, too far to the left into this particular sin rather than too far to the right into the sins of society.

But, I caught myself from falling totally away, because of the realization that in the great monastic writings the emphasis on self has as its goal the Kingdom of Heaven. The self-emphasis is like the athlete's fervor for physical perfection, it is not the traits that define narcissism as much as the goal.

Those who pursue the depths are considered selfish, while in fact by pursuing our own perfection, as much as possible, we become better able to serve the God who calls all of us. Like Cassian's first conference states, "Have your scopos indeed, in purity of heart, but your end in eternal life." By constantly fixing this goal before one's eyes, we strive to attain the heavenly prize.

We then read of the various interactions of the monks and how they see each particular interaction as some measure of themselves as much as an interaction with another. The goal, however, is not the self . . . and that is the major, though subtle, distinction between the monastic and the narcissist.

I note this partly for myself, and partly because I think such words are often at the core rejection of a monastic approach within non-Catholic/Orthodox traditions. I think the various other traditions have lost a great deal of depth by rejecting at least some form of the monastic path.

I know that your intent was not to touch on the monastic realities, but those of Western excess. . . I just know how most of my Evangelical friends respond to monasticism in general and saw in these words their arguments against the inward focused life.

Quo Vadis? Rome & the East

Well, what, now, about the prospects for unity between Rome and the Orthodox Churches under Benedict XVI? While a Pope may indeed help improve or hinder relations, ultimately genuine progress will have to be a work of the Holy Spirit, through (or even in spite of) church leaders. Some of the relevant statements from the last week or so:

• His Beatitude, Metropolitan Herman and the Orthodox Church in America wrote, "It is my sincere hope and prayer that Your Holiness will be inspired by his example and will continue to work for the realization of our Lord's high-priestly prayer, 'That all may be one' (John 17:21). (Article posted: 4/20/2005 10:50 AM SYOSSET, NY [OCA Communications])

• At his first Mass with the Rome-based College of Cardinals on 20 April, Pope Benedict XVI said work for the "full and visible unity of all Christ's followers" would be his "primary commitment" and he was determined to promote "contact and agreement" with other churches.

A Romanian Orthodox ecumenist, Metropolitan Daniel Ciobotea of Moldavia and Bukovina, told Ecumenical News International that Orthodox leaders would accept papal primacy if it conformed with practices before churches became divided during the first Millennium.

"Ratzinger is a clever theologian. He said Orthodox churches cannot be expected to accept anything outside our common tradition, including papal dogmas which were formulated without us," said Metropolitan Daniel, a presidium member of the Conference of European Churches. (22 April (Ecumenical News International)

• Patriarch Alexiy II, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, congratulated newly elected Pope Benedict XVI Wednesday and called for his help in uniting the two Christian Churches which have been split for a millennium.

…Alexiy said he hoped that relations would improve during Benedict's pontificate and even that the two branches of Christianity could work together.

"Our Churches, which have authority and influence, should unite their efforts to spread Christian values to modern humankind. The secular world is losing its spiritual way and needs our joint testimony as never before," he said.

Deacon Andrei Kurayev, theology professor at Svyato-Tikhonsky Institute, told Interfax news agency that Benedict's German nationality might also make him more open to improving relations than John Paul was.

"After the Second World War, German Catholic dioceses had a very timid attitude toward Russia, and they wanted to make amends for the tragedies brought by German tanks with, alas, crosses on their turrets.”

"A German believer's attitude toward Russia is very different to that of a Pole, for whom Russia is a symbol of aggression. So I think the psychological atmosphere of our dialogue will change greatly," Kurayev said. [Apr 20, 2005 11:06 AM BST MOSCOW (Reuters)]

• Alexander Ogorodnikov, a religion expert and editor of an Orthodox magazine, said that judging by the past, Benedict will be more reserved in relations with the Orthodox Church. "There may even be a certain cooling of relations," he said. (Associated Press / 13:57 2005-04-20)

There you have it, a mixed bag. I don’t expect much to change formally, though diplomatic relations could go either way, especially between Rome and Moscow.  But it is incumbent on Orthodox and Catholics and other Christians of good will to pray for greater church unity. Which I heartily do.

Alien Abduction?

On Friday I scheduled a day off work for a medical check up. My doctor advised a particular check up since I am over fifty and there is some history in my family of a particular susceptibility to some problems in a particular area. (Yes, I am using circumlocutions; I don't watch medical procedures and I won't describe them.) Anyway, because of the sedation they give when doing this exam, my wife was required to accompany me back and forth to a downtown hospital (where I used to work many years ago--that is another story.)

The lab was humming with activity and with patients being gently herded from consultation room, to locker room, to the "pink seat" where a nurse fitted you with a plug for the IV, to a waiting room, the examination room, and the recovery room. The nurse fitting me with the IV hook-up asked if this was my first time. I said yes, and was it her first time? Well, small talk with strangers who are sticking things into your body--I suppose that's one way of coping with what, if you think about it, is a weird situation.

From the moment I walked up to the registration desk until I was released into the custody of my wife, I did not see one person whom I had ever met before. Yet everyone seemed perfectly at ease and assumed that they could trust everyone else in some pretty vulnerable situations, while nurses and doctors and technicians probe various body parts through various means (and orifices).

My nurse then assisted my passage from the pink chair to a waiting room. Enroute a man emerged from the dressing room and she asked him if he still had on his underwear. He promptly flashed her, saying, "Woo-hoo!"--he had his underwear on it turns out. (He said he was going for a liver test, so that was ok.) The nurse says over her shoulder to me, "The only time that does anything for me is when they're packing a full six-shooter!" Hah, hah, okay, just get me to the waiting room and leave me, quickly, I thought. She did.

I sat across from a heavy man dressed like me in a double hospital gown (to cover front and back). I noted the lovely literature laying about that showed maps and charts of various bodily parts, with commentary, reminding me a bit of some of the car manuals or computer diagrams I have seen. He said, "You might want to read this," and held up a copy of one of the Chicago paper's mini-version tabloids. Plastered over a young half naked man grasping a young buxom beauty was the headline, "Boys will be Toys." It had something to with young "hot" men and their female stars in television shows, I think.

I looked away to the inevitable television screen where a soap was playing: a young woman wearing a very revealing low cut dress had just sat down next to a man at a wedding. There was no dialogue for a few seconds while the man leaned slightly forward and studied her cleavage and whatever else he could spy. She smiled back at him.

From there I was taken to a procedure room where I waited for 30 minutes,  hooked up to wires monitoring vital signs. For some reason, my heart rate was a bit elevated. Someone was playing a rock station which, surprise, had songs about doing it and one-night stands. I asked an aide if she could turn on the classical station, but she hesitated saying that the nurse in charge might not like it.

Ms. Nurse in Charge came in and offered to get me a magazine. I declined, deciding all the First Things (I have already read the latest Touchstone) were likely taken. They gave me a drug to sedate me that induces a bit of short term amnesia, so I can't tell you much else, except I did meet the doctor I had never met before. After that I awoke in the recovery room where another stranger gave me something to eat but I don't think any sexual harrassment took place.

It's been a while since I have spent much time in a hospital environment, but having just experienced a little bit of it recently, I can say it felt a bit alien in its clinical assembly line proficiency mixed with the soap-sex saturated culture that views the body as a complex machine with appetites.

Don't get me wrong. I admire the technical skills and the knowledge the medical profession has conerning the "mechanical" aspects of the body. It's just that, pretty much like the rest of the culture, do they even know what the body is for any longer? Maybe long-term amnesia has set in.

The Nature of Narcissism

An interesting description of narcissism from a book I was just reading:

The narcissist suffers from too much inner dialogue. The eye of his consciousness is forever looking at his own action. Yet — let us try to keep the notion clear. A narcissist is not only a study in vanity and self-absorption. One part of the self is always immersed in studying the other part. The narcissist is the scientist and the experiment in one.

Other people exist, have value to the narcissist, because of their particular ability to arouse one role or another in himself. And are valued for that. May even be loved for that. Of course, they are loved as an actor loves his audience.

Since the amount of stimulation we can offer ourselves is, obviously, limited, the underlying problem of the narcissist is boredom. So there are feverish, even violent attempts to shift the given. One must alter that drear context in which one half of the self is forever examining the stale presence of the other.

That is one reason why narcissists are forever falling in and out of love, jobs, places, and addictions. Promiscuity is the opportunity to try a new role. The vanity gained from a one-night stand is an antidote to claustrophobia. That is, if the gamble of the one-night stand turns out well!

. . . Narcisissts, after all, induce emotion in each other through their minds. It is not their flesh which is aroused so much as the vibrancy of the role. Their relations are at once more electric and more empty, more perfect and more hollow. But the hollow seems never to fill.

. . . The paradox is that no love can prove so intense, therefore, as the love of two narcissists for each other. So much depends on it. Each — the paradox turns upon itself — is capable of offering deliverance to the other. To the degree that they tune each other superbly well, they begin to create what before had been impossible: They begin to acquire the skills that enable them to enter the world. (For it is not love of the self but dread of the world outside the self which is the seed of narcissism.)

Narcissists can end, therefore, by having a real need of each other. That is, of course, hardly the characteristic relation. The love of most narcissists tends to become comic. Seen from the outside, their suffering manages to be equaled only by the rapidity with which they recover from suffering. Is it hundreds or thousands of such examples that come to us from Hollywood?

This comes from Norman Mailer's The Spooky Art: Some Thoughts on Writing. He is analyzing Henry Miller's relation with his fickle lover June, in a book whose title I suddenly can't remember. What Mailer is describing, of course, is not just the life of people like Miller and June, but the life of every sinner.

The book, by the way, is quite good. Mailer is a genuinely interesting thinker, though one with some odd opinions, like his high opinion of Miller, Burroughs, and Lawrence. Writing about the latter, though, he includes a very entertaining analysis of the feminist writer Kate Millet's attack on Lawrence, which he shreds by quoting the passages she summarized inaccurately, to put the charge politely.

Goodies from Crux

Two things from our sister magazine (online not print) Crux you will enjoy:

1) Dawn Eden's Everybody's Doing It (Dawn wrote the report on Planned Parenthood's corrupting, and corrupt, website for teenagers in the April issue of Touchstone).

2) Crux's weblogs Signs of the Times.

Papal Attack Hits Canada

A reader in Canada, Pastor Doug Smith, responds to our recent postings on coverage on the new pope. He is one among many non-Catholics who recognize the attack as being upon on all Christians:

I heartily agree with Hutchens: the attack against the "Hardliner Pope" is not merely an attack against Roman Catholics but all Believers whatever their particular stripe. (I am an Evangelical minister serving in Flin Flon Mb. Canada.) In fact here is an editorial I wrote for our local paper recently:

Give the Pope a Break

I am not a Catholic, as a matter of a fact I am a Protestant Minister but the ongoing accusation that the new Pope is "conservative" is as ridiculous as criticizing him for being Catholic. Roman Catholicism specifically, and Christianity generally share a common belief in revealed Truth. The Bible, the Creeds, and to a varying degree church history and tradition, all come to us as teachers of that Truth. Believers, whether they be Pope or pauper are therefore all conservative. It is our goal to conserve the saving message of Jesus Christ and pass it on, not only to those around us, but also to the next generation.

         I am all for using the latest technology to spread this message, to make it "new" for this time. Every generation since Christ has done this to some extent. But to change our teachings because they are deemed unpopular or even worse: un-liberal, I think not. The liberal elites have for a long time been accusing the rest of us of being "intolerant". They fail to see that there are things worth preserving (sanctity of life, marriage, etc...) and that much of what has taken place under the guise of tolerance over the last fifty years, especially in Canada, has not "liberated" anyone.

         We have tried to make "truth" fit our whims, it’s time to acknowledge that we have failed. Truth is something we are to conform to, not something we can mould as we see fit. The power of the Christian message lies therefore not in it’s ability to change, but it’s ability to change lives. We do not move towards freedom by trying to change the ancient truths of the Bible, but rather by allowing them to change us. The last Pope presided over the death of communism, with any luck this one will live to see the demise moral relativism.

(Please note the terms "conservative" and "liberal" are not speaking about Canadian political parties!)

From the Inbox 23 April 2005

A few things for today, which I'm posting partly because I'm sitting in the town library awaiting one of my children. (We're in the taxi driver stage of parenting, which with the range in our children's ages will last about 31 years. At least. Many of you will understand this nomadic existence.)

Here is something more curious than enlightening: Benedict's two great challenges by an Orthodox rabbi living in Israel, which appeared in the Asia Times. Referring to the Archbishop of Canterbury, he writes:

This archbishop, whose Church is the closest to the Roman Catholic Church, has female priests; it is in fact one of their key theological differences (transubstantiation — the meaning of the body of Christ in the Eucharist — being another). To affirm life and not recognize that the feminine is brought through the respect and equality of women is a non sequitur.

One begins to doubt the writer's competence when he claims that the Church of England is "the closest" to the Catholic Church, and not Orthodoxy. This is wrong in so many ways. And then one rejects it entirely when he claims that a Church must ordain women to affirm life, which is a non sequitur. What he is proposing, as it turns out, is a liberalized Catholicism supposedly more relevant and attractive, as in:

Pope John Paul II, while affirming life, did not recognize what most of his own people have, that life must be ordered to be lived well (personally, globally and in his own Church). There is such a concept as improving the quality of life.

. . . the Catholic hierarchy can still affirm life — even if salvation comes from the Cross of Golgotha — while improving the quality of those lives. An example is the controversial medical work on stem-cell research. Orthodox rabbis have defined the sacredness of life as beginning 40 days after conception, Islamic clerics as beginning after 120 days and Catholic theologians as beginning after conception; none is defined in the appropriate scriptural texts.

Which is a point in favor of Catholicism, and Christianity in general. Anyway, I would have thought that any reader of John Paul II would see that everything he wrote was directed to the right ordering of life. A writer may disagree with his idea of right order, as this rabbi does (he goes on to advocate ordaining women, married priests, liberation theology, and understanding "the feminine side of God"), but claiming that the pope did not know that life needed to be ordered is a bit dim.

In addition to the Asia Times' columnist Spengler's The crescent and the conclave, which I mentioned yesterday, you may enjoy his previous two columns, Africa, Islam and the next pope and Ratzinger's mustard seed and one of his answers to the "Ask Spengler" feature, Will African Christians Raze Mecca?. In fact, I'd recommend everything he writes. You can find his Asia Times columns here. The page includes the "Ask Spengler" feature in a sidebar.

Also of interest from the Asia Times: a series on Money, Power, and Modern Art by Henry C. K. Liu; Islamism, fascism and Terrorism by Marc Erikson; and The Philippines: The Disgraceful State by Pepe Escobar.

And as Spengler's consisting entertaining and stimulating writing reminds me of Mark Steyn's, here are a few links to his recent articles: In The inimitable Mark Steyn, the transcript of a radio interview, he analyses the major media's treatment of Benedict XVI. After noting that the major media "were rooting for Ellen Degeneres or Rupert Everett," he observes:

the difference between him and most western politicians, for example, is that he has given some thought as to how he wants what he believes in to survive, in a very difficult century which we face. For example, he's concluded in Europe, there's no point listening to the New York Times and Andrew Sullivan, because secularism is weak.

And that even though he is 78, you know, if he lives to 90-95, by the end of his life, it will be clear to all but the most obtuse, Belgian, Dutch, French, German and Italian politicians, that secularism as it's practiced in Europe, has been a disaster. It's left them with this birthrate that's made them almost extinct, and which will be presenting tremendous conflicts.

And he thinks the real challenge is to make Christianity resonate with the people who are going to be in the majority in Asia and Africa and other parts of the world, and not to listen to this sort of pathetic, feeble, parochial minority represented in the western media.

Referring the Cardinal Ratzinger's declaration against relativism in his sermon before the conclave, the interviewer asks, "You can say mandate, can't you, Mark Steyn?" Steyn replies:

Absolutely, and I think these Cardinals have actually accepted his view that the challenge to the Catholic Church is actually the opposite of what the western critics say.

It's not a question of how quickly it signs onto the New York Times' agenda. It's how fiercely it can hold the line, given that the disastrous consequences of the New York Times' agenda are going to be more and more plain in the next decade or two. And that's why it is, in that sense, not just an act of blind foolishness, but it's a conscious rejection of the New York Times' worldview.

Actually, I won't post the links. Just go to SteynOnline and pig out.

A few things from the English magazine The Spectator (the site requires registration, by the way):

Where Blair has gone wrong, an interview the Labour MP and Anglo-Catholic believer Frank Field,. He deals, I don't think all that well, with the collapse of civil society, though at least he recognizes that it has collapsed, which puts him ahead of most of his peers.

Leo McKinstry's The age of unreason. He attacks the ideological celebration of diversity and its effects upon immigration policy.

And Germaine Greer's The man who made England, her reflections on Shakespeare.

Displeased Swede

An American friend of Swedish descent sends this about the (Lutheran) Church of Sweden. I think it's part of a story from the newspaper Dagen, though he may have added the skeptical quotation marks around "bishop" (and he's a Lutheran himself).

SveK [Church of Sweden] “Bishop” Martin Lind (Linköping diocese) has called Benedict XVI “the worst pope we could have gotten” and “a stumbling block (snubbeltråd)” to progress in inter-church relations.

“Bishop” Lind thinks the election of Cardinal Ratzinger will “complicate” efforts to bring SveK closer to the Roman Church, “. . . but as a Christian, I believe the Spirit can change the hardest cases,” he told the paper Folkbladet.

Lind told Folkbladet that he would have preferred a pope who could ‘mediate’ and adapt the Church to today’s society by, for example, allowing female priests.

The Church of Sweden thumbs its nose at the Catholic Church (and Orthodoxy as well) in making all sorts of changes to the Faith it once held in common with her, and then insist that the Catholic Church is the problem. It's a kind of ecclesiastical imperialism: asserting oneself as the measure of all things and then condemning others for not measuring up.

The Catholic and Orthodox Churches do this as well, of course, but with reference to the historical record, which is to say, with an attempt at an objective defense of the claim. The problem with the Church of Sweden, and those who do the same thing, like the Episcopal Church, is that they change most of the rules and still make themselves the measure of all things. They offer no objective ground for their claim, other than an appeal to the movement of the Holy Spirit (discerned by them by not by the Catholics or Orthodox), modern conditions, new insights, and other things equally vaporous.

Here is the article in Dagen (in Swedish). And the the original article in Folkbladet (also in Swedish).

The Romanian Association for the History of Religions

A press release recently received:

We are pleased to announce that ‘The Romanian Association for the History of Religions’ has now a website at the following address: www.rahr.ro.

It is hoped that this will more efficiently reflect the activities of our Association, and in particular the editorial work into which our team is currently engaged.

The website encompasses the full range of information about RAHR, the Centre for the History of Religions (Bucharest), and the two journals: Archaeus (founded 1997), and Studia Asiatica (founded 2000). Please note that some articles and book-reviews are available online.

Should you like to make any comments, please send your message to secretary@rahr.ro

From the Inbox I 22 April 2005

Today I have a big selection of stories on Benedict XVIth. (Saying that name gives me such pleasure.) In a day or two he will, for the secular media, become just the pope, so read up on him now. Or just the pope until he says something secular editors dislike or succeeds in a way they can't ignore. Or, they're hoping, fails. Stories on other subjects appear in "From the Inbox II" below.

But first, one item on John Paul the Great: From National Review Online, Colleen Carroll Campbell's No "Mixed" Legacy. Among the cheering news she reports:

They may also be more committed. Last year, the Vatican announced that there were nearly 50,000 more seminarians in 2001 than in 1978, and the attrition rate for seminarians had fallen during John Paul's pontificate from 9 percent in 1978 to 6.9 percent in 2004. In his Holy Thursday letter to priests that year, the pope acknowledged that there is still a serious shortage of priests in many parts of the world, but he also thanked God for this "promising springtime of vocations" that had begun to bloom.

Now to Benedict XVIth: First, an e-mail friend who is among the elders of the Bruderhof Community in England wrote:

Many Greetings! I imagine there will be celebrations in the Mills house tonight! We were all very happy to hear the glad news — a man after our heart as well! We actually know him quite well and have had some correspondence over the years. We have met him on a couple of occasions in Rome and Germany. We thank God for what was given.

He sent the link to an article on Benedict they've just published.

Christianity Today's website offers an article on the cardinal written in 1998 by Richard John Neuhaus.

Also from CT, From "Erstwhile Liberal" to "Vatican Enforcer", a review of John Allen's biography of the cardinal, published in 2000. (Reading Allen now — he's the very good Vatican correspondent for the otherwise wretched National Catholic Reporter — I suspect he'd write a very different book today.) The review contains one sour note:

Hans Küng . . . once suggested "Ratzinger had sold his soul for power." That's a scathing, and probably unfair, indictment.

"Probably unfair." Nice of him.

Sandro Magister offers his usually interesting analysis in Benedict XVI: The Pope and His Agenda. He explains the pope's conservatism, which is vastly more insightful and supple than his critics claim:

His was a strange conservatism, in any case. It was apt to disturb, rather than pacify, the Church. One of his favorite models is Saint Charles Borromeo, the archbishop of Milan who, after the Council of Trent, did nothing less than “reconstruct the Catholic Church, which was almost destroyed in the area around Milan as well, without returning to the Middle Ages to do so; on the contrary, he created a modern form of the Church.”

. . . Benedict XVI does not dream of the mass conversion of whole peoples for the Church of tomorrow. For many regions, he foresees a minority Christianity, but he wants this to be “creative.” He prefers the missionary impulse to timid dialogue with nonbelievers and men of other faiths.

Magister goes on to list the ways in which then-Cardinal Ratzinger publicly disagreed with John Paul II, and his argument with Cardinal Walter Kasper about the relation of the universal church and the local churches, ending with a description of "The Ratzinger formula" for relations with Orthodoxy:

the thesis maintained by the present pope on relations with separated Christians, and called this “fundamental for ecumenical dialogue.” One written form of this thesis maintains that “in regard to papal primacy, Rome must demand from the Orthodox Churches nothing more than was established and practiced during the first millennium.”

And following that is Magister's very helpful analysis of the challenges facing Benedict XVIth.

Jonathan Witt, author of The Gods Must Be Tidy! in the July/August, sends this: Science May Have a New Friend and Neo-Darwinism a New Foe.

From the New York Times, Pope May Color Debate in U.S. Over "Life" Issues Like Abortion. The liberal Catholics it quotes all repeat the established line that current Catholic attention to abortion and marriage — the issues on which they prefer to be Democrats rather than Catholics — is "selective." Which means, "I don't have to defend the unborn because a lot of Republicans support the death penalty and the war in Iraq."

The story contains some good news, though not surprising good news.

Professor Green [John Green of the University of Akron] said the new pope was unlikely to disappoint those conservative American Catholics."The new pope is very much likely to continue the policies of the late pope," he said."This developing alliance of religious traditionalists will continue, with the blessing of the Catholic hierarchy. Also, I think we'll see the Catholic hierarchy continue to be very visible and active on political issues, with the 'life' issues and the marriage issue front and center."

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan declares in Why They Ran,
"The new pope speaks to the inner adult in all of us."

Also from the WSJ, George Weigel's Light in a New Dark Age compares Benedict XVIth with St. Benedict. Among his observations:

As with the program, so with the man: He is a Benedict in the depths of his interior life and in his intellectual accomplishment. Benedict XVI has an encyclopedic knowledge of two millennia of theology, and indeed of the cultural history of the West. He is more the shy, monastic scholar than the ebullient public personality of his predecessor; yet he has shown an impressive capacity for a different type of public "presence" in his brilliantly simple homily at John Paul II's funeral and in his first appearance as pope.

He has known hardship: He knows the modern temptations of totalitarianism (paganism wedded to technology) from inside the Third Reich; he has been betrayed by former students (like the splenetic Brazilian liberation theologian Leonardo Boff) and former colleagues (like Hans Kung, a man of far less scholarly accomplishment and infinitely less charity). His critics say he is