Lawrence Auster at View from the Right passed away this morning from the pancreatic cancer with which he has wrestled for years. See Laura Wood’s touching send-off here.
I know we’re all very busy with family, work, school, and Easter preparations, but please take a few minutes out of your day to pray for the repose of his soul.
For many walk, of whom I have told you often (and now tell you weeping), that they are enemies of the cross of Christ; Whose end is destruction; whose God is their belly; and whose glory is in their shame; who mind earthly things.
– Philippians 3:18-19
Today is Holy Wednesday, in which we commemorate the betrayal of Jesus by one of his own. Fittingly enough, today was also the day when large numbers of Christians publicly expressed their betrayal of the cross of Christ (or continued to express, rather) in order to align themselves with the spirit of the age by agitating for gay “marriage.” I witnessed this today among my own friends, many of whom rushed to change their Facebook profile pictures (in concert with about ten million other “critical thinkers” who all happen to think and dress and talk exactly alike all the time without any apparent coordination) to a giant equals sign, for, yanno “marriage equality.” Because, they say, Jesus was all about equality, tolerance, and acceptance.
Thank God we’ve got the dumbest generation of spoiled, incompetent narcissists in the history of the world to tell us how Jesus really feels about gay “marriage.” I guess Genesis 18-19 was a giant head fake.
Let us take some time this week to do penance on behalf of these useful idiots (emphasis on the latter word), the better to console the sacred heart of our Lord, wounded as it is by the sins and ingratitude of men.
A guest post by commenter Bill:
Economists form the high priesthood of the Liberal social order. Policy analysis is normally carried out in the language of economics. Almost always, policy analysis just is cost-benefit analysis. Even arguments about inequality are really just arguments about how the cost-benefit ratios should weigh the costs and benefits of policies to particular people.
The courtier whispering in the Prince’s ear is often an economist. If a federal or state agency has a substantial policy analytic capability, then it has many economists. The government’s demand for Ph.D. economists is so vast that these good-paying, easy, benefit-laden, research-friendly jobs are considered a failure mode for a newly minted Ph.D. on the job market. A worse failure mode is to be paid even more by a firm specializing in litigation consulting (economists’ blessings are so powerful that, in significant areas of litigation, it is effectively mandatory to hire one to make the appropriate incantations in court). Worse even than that is to become a beltway bandit: to work for one of the dizzying array of firms which sell economists’ blessings to federal agencies and others lobbying Congress. Cushy jobs as talking heads for think tanks or industry research groups or (horrors) state government bureaucrats are almost beneath consideration.
It is not news that the new Pope is Catholic. Nor, therefore, is it news that he teaches what the Catholic Church has taught for over two millennia–not even if these teachings offend your sensibilities. Continue reading
Is your philosophy asking you to understand some common aspect of human experience as illusory? If so, it is almost certainly false.
I
Glorifying God, leaking into the world the love that he leaks into us through the wounds and breaches and gaps of our own lives, is a severely practical and down to earth activity.
In that sense we do in the world what God does in us. We receive His love where we are vulnerable and weak, and lose sight of it when we claim strength and power. Christians reach to the jagged edges of our society, and of the world in general. Food distribution, places for rough sleepers, debt counselling, credit unions, community mediation, support for ex‐offenders, support for victims of crime, care for the dying, valuing those who have no economic contribution to make, or are too weak to argue for their own value. All this is the daily work of the church, which goes on every day and everywhere. We leak out into the world the love that God leaks into us.
The above bit of revoltingly banal, worldly shlock comes to us from the Christmas sermon of the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, who was enthroned today as head of the Anglican Communion in a ceremony that looked like this:
As she splashed his hair with revengeful drops,
she spoke the spine-chilling words which warned of impending disaster:
‘Now you may tell the story of seeing Diana naked–
if story-telling is in your power!’ No more was needed.
The head she had sprinkled sprouted the horns of a lusty stag;
the neck expanded, the ears were narrowed to pointed tips;
she changed his hands into hooves and his arms into long and slender
forelegs; she covered his frame in a pelt of dappled buckskin;
last, she injected panic. The son of Autonoe bolted…
What does it mean to say that Diana turned Actaeon into a stag? I mean, I get it that she’s a goddess and can cause a deer to appear where a man once was, but what does it mean to say that the deer is still Actaeon? According to the Philosopher, the unity of a thing (and hence our ability to identify it as the same thing in different states) comes from its substantial form, but Actaeon has just changed species. While there may be some continuity of vital and sensitive processes, the essential nature of these has been altered. It would seem that this is no different from saying that Actaeon was killed and his matter reconstituted as a deer, but this is not how we understand the story. (Otherwise, the deer being killed by Actaeon’s dogs would be no new misfortune for the poor hunter.) An Aristotelian might say that the poet cheats by having the deer experience human-like emotions and thoughts. Still, we have all experienced moments of terror when reason abandoned us. Couldn’t we imagine Actaeon’s last moments being like this, and it being consistent with the restrictions of deer-nature? We can imagine this, and we know what we are imagining that makes seeing Diana and getting attacked by dogs be events that happen to the same being. It is a single subjectivity, a single stream of consciousness, a single “I” that can attach itself to both experiences, even though the two experiences belonged to different natures.
For those who are interested, Kidist Paulos Asrat has posted my essay on the English composers Ralph Vaughan Williams and Gustav Holst at her Reclaiming Beauty website.
http://reclaimbeauty.blogspot.ca/2013/03/in-fen-country.html
The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.
Yesterday’s gospel reading is often used nowadays to argue that laws punishing adulterers are somehow unchristian. This is obviously wrong, because Christians themselves continued to punish adultery for many centuries thereafter, with no one seeing anything contrary to the faith about it until very recently. Indeed, penalties for adultery became much harsher when the Roman Empire was Christianized. Adultery is intrinsically evil, and it is a menace to the common good, so punishing it is an appropriate state act. Another unfortunate message readers sometimes take away is that wanting to see such laws enforced marks one out as self-righteous and hypocritical. When an appropriate authority enforces the law, this is certainly no mark against that magistrate’s character, but this is not the situation that confronted Jesus.
Let us ask why it says the Pharisees were trying to trick Jesus with this question. After all, they just gave him the right answer, right? If Jesus would have just agreed with them, of what could He be accused? Well, as the Pharisees later admit to Pilate, they don’t have the authority to carry out executions. (“We have no law to put any man to death.”) So we are not here dealing with a proper exercise of authority. What we are dealing with is something more like a mob. Jesus is being tested in the same way He was when asked whether it is right to pay taxes. When taking a position on how to deal with the occupation, it’s hard not to come off as either suicidal or cowardly. Christ must either defy the occupational arrangement or seem indifferent to the enforcement of the Mosaic Law.
Jesus resolves the problem by emphasizing the crowd’s lack of authority. He questions neither the Law nor the woman’s guilt. He does not even take any initiative to rescue the man caught in adultery, who is likewise liable to stoning. He only asks what right the crowd has to take upon itself the enforcement of the law. It could only be based on their supposedly greater righteousness and purity. Christ points out that if that is your claim to power, you had best take a more honest look inside yourself and realize that you are as much a sinner as anyone else. Human authority cannot base itself on the virtue of those who rule, for all are sinners. Rather, it comes from being one of God’s official ministers, of whom it is said that they do not wear the sword in vain.
Son: Dad? God is totally good, right?
Father: Yup.
Son: And he is super-powerful. He can make anything happen that he wants to have happen, right?
Father: Pretty much. Only he can’t make things happen that just don’t make sense. Like, he couldn’t make a circle that was square, right? He can’t make a true thing false, either. Like, he couldn’t make 2 + 2 = 5, you know?
Son: Yeah, that’s a silly idea.
Father: Why do you ask, kiddo?
Son: Well, I’ve been scared ever since Jade died. Why did God make her die? Why did he let that happen?
Father: It’s for the same reason he can’t make a square circle.
Son: What do you mean?
