From the Inbox 3 May 2005 (First entry)

I am not sure whether, because of the quirk of TypePad's we discovered a couple of weeks ago, this will appear as the last post for yesterday or the first for today, or appear differently to different people. But it's being written on Tuesday morning, hence the title. A few things of interest:

An old article (old in journalistic terms), but one that I just found in my Inbox, which I pass along now because it is worth reading and is a cheering example of the reconciliation of divided Christians: the Orthodox theologian — America's leading Orthodox theologian, that is — Thomas Hopko's John Paul II and His Successor. After describing C. S. Lewis's idea of Men with Chests, and a particularly helpful summary of the forgotten  writer Karl Stern, he describes the late pope:

Pope John Paul II was not only a human being, but, amazing to say, he was a male human being in a world where prominent and popular people, particular men, are hardly human. He was the polar opposite of the men, and now also the women, who are ready to do whatever it takes to get whatever they want for the sake of personal power, position, prestige, profit and pleasure.

Whatever he was, John Paul II was not an ideologue, politician, actor or media manipulator. He did not continually remake himself for self-serving purposes. He never lied in word, deed or gesture. He did not act to be seen by people, yet he was not afraid to act as he saw fit to be seen. He did notpray to be observed by people, yet he was not afraid to be observed praying, or laughing, weeping, drooling, groaning or gasping for breath.

Pope John Paul II embraced everyone in the same way. He was not a man of contradictions, as many think, but was all of one piece. His convictions on sexual morality, for example, were wholly consistent with his views on war and peace, art and science, and politics and economics. In a word, whatever he was, the pope was what he was. That is why the masses adored him, while others despised him.

The tribute appeared, cheeringly, in the International Herald Tribune.

And here is a good article on prayer by Thomas Howard, from his "Ashes to Ashes" column in Crisis magazine: On Watching the News. (You can find his contributions to Touchstone by clicking here.)

For your Mark Steyn fans, his latest from The Daily Telegraph: Where's the Vera Lynn for our war?. He notes that "One of the reasons why it's effortlessly easy to 'commemorate' the Second World War is that popular culture had signed up for the duration." and then comments on present pop culture's "dissent" as represented by Madonna wearing a burqua and taking it off to reveal an army uniform (the meaning being that we're as oppressive as they are). Movie makers today would

rather talk about anything other than Islamic terrorism. The Sean Penn thriller, The Interpreter, was originally about Muslim terrorists blowing up a bus in New York. So, naturally, Hollywood called rewrite. Now the bus gets blown up by African terrorists from the little-known republic of Matobo. "We didn't want to encumber the film in politics in any way," said Kevin Misher, the producer.

But being so perversely "non-political" is itself a political act.

Then after more amusing analysis, he concludes:

The disconnect between the headlines and the culture these last four years is not about economics, it's about a loss of civilisational confidence.

Which is a big problem, because the smarter Islamists have figured out that, while they can never win on the battlefield, there's a sporting chance they can drag things out long enough until Western civilisation collapses through sheer self-loathing.

Also from the DT, Schools 'wrap children in cotton wool' , a businessman's complaint about the anti-competitive culture of British schools.

For those of you concerned with the state of liturgical worship today, here is then Cardinal Ratzinger's speech on the liturgy, meaning the old liturgy, given in 1998 in Rome.

And on the new pope himself, here is Lorenzo Albacete on the new pope and the future of the Church, which is the transcript of his appearance on something called the Charlie Rose show. (I honestly don't know what that is.) Rose is an agreeable interviewer and seems to know what he is talking about.

Two articles from Forbes magazine's website: the historian Paul Johnson's Five Marks of a Great Leader and an amusing article by the Cato Institute's Radley Balko, In the Reign of Cotton Mather. I am not a libertarian, and don't endorse the entire argument, but Balko does have a point about the Nanny State's obsessive nannying that Christians ought to take seriously, given that someday the State may think our religion the sort of thing from which we must be protected.

Johnson's article is more useful, as for example his third mark: 

A sense of priority. In running a country or a vast business, one is faced with countless problems, huge and insignificant, and has to make decisions about all of them. Clever leaders (I'm thinking of Jacques Chirac) often have a habit of pouncing on minor issues and pushing them at all costs, even to the detriment of their real interests. Sorting out the truly big from the small takes an innate horse sense that's not given to most human beings. It has little to do with intelligence, but it is nearly always the hallmark of a great leader.

Something I stumbled across while looking for something else: Outing Joel Osteen, a long list of articles on the best-selling minister. See the same writer's earlier The Method In The Madness: The Mystery of Joel Osteen.

And finally, a rather good sermon from Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, titled Formation: Who’s bringing up our children?, given a few weeks ago as the Citizen Organising Foundation lecture.