To what extent are God and Nature the same thing?
IF Nature was created by God, then it reflects His mind.
Since, in nature, a Darwinian survival of the fittest APPEARS to be the driving factor, should we try to correct God's intentions, by dragging the unfit along?
If an earthquake flattens a country, who is to say that this is not God's will? If it is not God's will, why did it happen? Is there something that God does not control?
If God doesn't exist, then is nature all that there is?
If nature is all that there is, isn't nature, according to Darwin, merely "survival of the fittest?"
If a deer is born with two heads, it isn't fit to survive, and it dies.
If a bug is so deformed at birth that it can't eat, or can't fly, it dies.
If a person is deformed at birth, then, if we are merely animals, why should we attempt to help it along, and help it to survive?
If someone is weak, or has a terrible disease, why shouldn't we just let nature take its course?
Why should we have health insurance at all? Doesn't it go against nature to fight the forces of nature? Why on earth should we do this, especially if nature is God's will?
The left screeches that Darwin is the truth, and that the Bible is false.
If so, why isn't nature the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? If nature is everything, then why shouldn't we only look to the Book of Nature for authority? If a creature isn't well-made in nature, it dies. Here, we drag along our elephant men and women, and succor them. Should we do that?
Fish don't.
Bugs don't.
Monkeys throw up their hands and scramble along.
If, however, we should always care for each other, and "do unto others," as Jesus taught, why do we stop at wild animals? Why aren't we out proselytizing among the wolves?
Why do we still try to get rid of viruses? Shouldn't we do unto viruses as we would have them do unto us, and leave them alone, instead of trying to eradicate them? Shouldn't we liberate the smallpox virus that has been kept alive in refrigerators in Siberia, in order to unleash its magic on the world once more?
Who are we to decide?
If NATURE is the only criterion, then why do we write books at all? Why not just be natural, and stink and live like beasts?
On the other hand, can we teach beasts to sit up at the table, and say their prayers with us? Can we teach cows good English, and get them to read the Bible? Why are horses so reluctant to say the Lord's Prayer? It must be something beastly about them!
If God made all the animals, and at least until the Fall, we could talk with them in Hebrew, then why are some of the animals to be eaten, and others for pets?
If God never existed, and everything is just survival of the fittest, and power is the only game in town, why should we even pretend that there is such a thing as decency or kindness?
If we believe in God, then animals must also be part of the divine will, and also be able to understand morality, and behave as such.
If the Fall represents the beginning of a schism between Man and Nature, then how can we heal that schism? Or how do we live with it?
If some people want to go to strip clubs and act like animals, why shouldn't they?
If others who claim to believe solely in Darwin, believe that we have a moral obligation to care for all people, where do they find this authority in nature?
147 comments:
Kirby,
Playing with pantheism now?
The creator and the created are separate, "We believe in one God, ... maker of heaven and earth ..."
Since, in nature, a Darwinian survival of the fittest APPEARS to be the driving factor, should we try to correct God's intentions, by dragging the unfit along?
The definition of fit changes based on circumstances. If make the choice to assist people with various disabilities, then those disabilities have a lower fitness penalty.
If an earthquake flattens a country, who is to say that this is not God's will? If it is not God's will, why did it happen? Is there something that God does not control?
Check out Polkinhorne on this. God created the universe. A world that contains a magnetic field to sheild us from various kinds of radiation is going to tectonically active. What seems bad to us about nature is often intimitely tied with what seems good to us.
If a person is deformed at birth, then, if we are merely animals, why should we attempt to help it along, and help it to survive?
Because we are moral creature, in relationship with God. From time to time, it occurs to us to do what he would want us to do.
The left screeches that Darwin is the truth, and that the Bible is false.
Some in the left do. Some in the right do to, although somewhat less in proportion. But this does not characterize the left. And I don't see belief in evolution and biblical faith as being inconsistent. Silly me, I just try to believe in the truth.
If we believe in God, then animals must also be part of the divine will, and also be able to understand morality, and behave as such.
Most folks believe not, but certainly St. Francis of Assisi believed in missionary efforts to animals. Unfortunately for him, most sparrows are Lutheran, as we well know.
I think God originally created nature to be all good, but after the Fall, everything started eating everything else.
That's the Christian theodicy, right?
I don't understand the Darwinian version. It's something like what is, is. Very similar to Buddhism, except that Buddhism argues that you can get off the cycle of life through cessation of desire.
The Buddists basically argue that this world is just plain bad, through and through. And only by withdrawing from it can you find peace.
So therefore it doesn't matter how bad the secular authorities get. Because nothing can make this world any better.
I've been reading a book about transcendentalism in the 19th century of America, and a chapter on Emerson evoked these thoughts.
While looking up something called Jubilee (a book, not the festival) I came across the notion that animals spoke Hebrew in the Garden of Eden.
And from there I looked up the other Jubilee and learned that the Sabbath is the root of the word sabbatical.
that every seventh year a farm should lie fallow.
And that from that the idea is the 7th year of a prof's life should be left fallow, so as to refertilize the thinking capacity.
Sice I am sabbatical this semester, it appealed to me.
I like Polkinhorne's double-natured nature.
Sometimes I feel that HUMOR could handle the paradoxes we live better than pious seriousness.
Not that I'm against the latter. But I wonder if humor could help us grapple better.
Anything that isn't funny is humorless.
I suppose I am also calling out to Curtis, who on one side is all Darwin, but another side of him edited a guy named Larry Eigner's poems for several years for no pay, but the motivation is obscure. Eigner had palsy.
Couldn't wipe his butt.
Lots of poets helped him out.
Is it out of aesthetic interest in the work, or was there also some moral interest in helping out a brother?
I am trying to pinpoint various things.
The left has multiple strands, as you say.
What proportion of Democrats are church-goers?
Is it 30%?
Republicans trend the other way, but I don't know the numbers.
True atheists I'm told are very rare -- three out of a hundred or so.
But in the arts they are very common. It is a new religion for a lot of them. And of course the author or painter is the new god.
It's a kind of hilarious new self-idolatry.
Kirby,
What proportion of Democrats are church-goers?
Is it 30%?
A fascinating question. I doubt that it is that high, but before you get excited and all, I doubt that the rate of active church-goers in the Republican Party is that high.
Start here:
Wiki: Religion in the United States
This article makes the fascinating (and quite plausible claim) that while 41% of those surveyed claim active (i.e., weekly) church attendance, estimates that are obtained via other means give rates closer to 21-26%. In short, people lie to pollsters about themselves, systematically describing themselves as being more successful and more responsible than they actually are, and claiming church attendence fits this pattern.
Before you claim those who do attend church regularly are much more likely to be Republican, let me note that there are quite a few Hispanic Catholic Democrats out there, to say nothing of the Black Church, and that I'm hardly the only "old-school, liberal because of my faith" guy out there. Don't forget the role that the mainline churches played during the civil rights movement. My intuition is that these groups roughly counteract the equally obvious bias of white evangelicals toward the Republican Party.
Indeed, in a way, the denizens of this blog are extraordinarily unrepresentative of our society, and the white male part of it is not actually our most significant differentiator. We are largely church-goers, and indeed seem to incline towards the "more active, more thoughtful, more invested" end of the church-going spectrum. We are intellectuals, indeed quite a few of us are professional thinkers, in a society that often perceives any non-professional higher education as the moral equivalent of public masturbation. Most of us have travelled, and/or have friends and colleagues from different cultures, who speak different languages, and maybe even worship different Gods. Most of us know (a least a little bit) of a foreign language (and Spanish no longer counts as foreign). Most Americans know gays, but we know gays who are out and number a few among our friends.
I think there is a kind of moral here, but it's probably not what you'd expect. While belief in God and participation in organized religion first fell away among the intellectuals and culturally well connected, I think that somewhat paradoxically, those of us who have retained our belief in God and sense of relevance of the church are particularly unshakeable, whatever our other differences might be.
a natural desire to perfect the intellect
who giveth us
intelligence
i tell
you tell
we tell
in
tell ah fone
some say god was a darwinist
the church never condemned darwinism
it did hold out the question whether mankind had the wherewithall to endure the affects of social darwinism
the church condemned modernism
and it has proven a correct judgement
pierre tielhard de chardin
explored the weave of god very clearly for him in the awarenesses of science and the charting of the species all swirling toward the omega point
however
and i do mean however
we might just might be moved to consider that the injection of the humanist principles into the market place of world ideas did little but induce massacres
social darwinism did a lot to foment the practice of forced sterilization and chemical experiments of humanoids of all sorts
and the surviving species became very adept and constructing war tools
the best minds died
my mathematical calculation is that the best minds of the last 25 years have been killed off by abortion the characters who would've really made a difference we're left with the riff raff basically and a few of those turn out to be great people but the best are lost and before that the best the fittest were lost in the war and before that the plague got the best of them so we're all living as the least capable of surviving but survivining nonetheless yes survivining..the weak have inherited the earth the strong got killed off
maybe we choose our diseases
both god's appearance in nature the mystery who seems willing to leave traces of himself and who hides too but who reveals himself yet again in the cognitive awareness of minds and persons and poets even if those are all basically the same thing
we all make
all religious sentiment has it's origin in the fascination with the beauty and mystery of nature
lent is over
speaking as one who has every day worked out formulaically i find it oddly refreshing to return to this stream of multi conscious blogblabberers
it is consistent liek monastic life
the food is bland
but sufficient
and sometimes spicy
st benedict wove a clear connection between the table of worship and the table of sustenance
christians found art so satisfying because they percieved god in the visages and panoramas of landscape
completely at home with the flesh and the wonders of landscape and the stuff of the earth the birth image is predominant in early christian art christ emerging from mary's vagina as a king
ouch
the arrogance of darwinist science is the presumption to control and manage humanity all of nature actually
much of the environmental movement is fueled by the opposition to the human presumptions to control and manage the natural world
we see the detriments
it is fascinating that 7 billion humans hustle and jostle together on this planet
we could learn to dance a little better
but it is fascinating nonetheless
if we could just eliminate blood vengeance
mutation adapts
the mutants survivie in nature
i will fight to the death the pretentious ones who claim to be the arbiters of life and death
the human three dimensional chess experts
the spiriT s willin
buh da flesh be weake
for your information
i do prosylytyze amongst wolves
i wish to adapt theire sound
as chant in the church
21st century wolfchant
for jesus
i really do not care for the smart alecky darwinists
they are very stupid people
they make statements al the time
which cannot be supported by fact
i think they see the trees
but not the forest
and they presume to have seen it all even though they'll sit back and oo and ahhh about the wonders of nature basically they've decided they have the mechanism and they can tweek it and they know what they're doing
well i don't have faith that they know what they're doing completely
i just don't have that faith
phuq 'em
i love the scientists who are in love with the planet and see it's beauty and fragility and wonder but those who act like they've got the thing mastered these people really annoy me
who was the goddess who killed and ate her children
kirby U rok
jhosb
"Union membership had been steadily declining in the US since 1983. In 2007, the labor department reported the first increase in union memberships in 25 years and the largest increase since 1979. Most of the recent gains in union membership have been in the service sector while the number of unionized employees in the manufacturing sector has declined. Most of the gains in the service sector have come in West Coast states like California where union membership is now at 16.7% compared with a national average of about 12.1%.[7]
Union density (the percentage of workers belonging to unions) has been declining since the late 1940s, however. Almost 36% of American workers were represented by unions in 1945. Historically, the rapid growth of public employee unions since the 1960s has served to mask an even more dramatic decline in private-sector union membership.
At the apex of union density in the 1940s, only about 9.8% of public employees were represented by unions, while 33.9% of private, non-agricultural workers had such representation. In this decade, those proportions have essentially reversed, with 36% of public workers being represented by unions while private sector union density had plummeted to around 7%. Recently, workers have increasingly chosen union membership. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics most recent survey indicates that union membership in the US has risen to 12.4% of all workers, from 12.1% in 2007. Private sector union membership has rebounded as well, increasing from 7.5% in 2007 to 7.6% in 2008. [8]"
Wikipedia's entry on Labor Unions in the section headed Membership.
I think LS should have a poll about whether Brett should go to the American Film Institute in Los Angeles, where he will learn to be a screen writer and make excellent industry contacts, or whether he should go to NYU and become a poet and or fiction writer.
Now personally I love poetry, and film always kind of sucks, but film connects to the public and there is the possibility of money in it.
Part of stewardship has to be about making money for oneself and for one's family. Therefore, I would advise Brett to go to AFI to make the most of himself.
Los Angeles isn't as bad as many people think. Watts sucks, and so do other low-income communities, where crime is endemic, and learning is scanty at best, and even in Hollywood learning is scanty, and in NYC, there is the possibility of Brett going into the publishing industry and making publishing contracts, plus NYC is beauty itself, wonderful parks, and restaurants, and has a heady intellectual tradition that sybaritic LA tries to replace with smoggy beaches and surfing.
Nonsense philosopher Joseph Campbell said, Follow your bliss, but New Yorker editor Brendan Gill said Campbell was a Nazi who hated minorities, and thought himself to be better than them.
Which is nonsense.
It's right to be afraid of endemically poor communities and stay out of them because they generally aren't following the ten, which is what made them poor in the first place, or keeps them there, or something, but it's wrong to hate anyone just because they are poor.
So I don't think Brett should follow his bliss. Once in Portland Oregon in a huge bookstore there named Powell's J. Campbell came to read and after a tramp was found jacking off in the stacks, and when confronted he said, the man said to follow my bliss! I saw this although I continued browsing while others went to see Campbell. I smelled a rat in Joseph Campbell and wouldn't attend the reading.
The thing is to connect to a larger community, and try to find a good marriage, and a good position in the community (we are our own stewards, as well as stewards of community and nature).
What sayest the others, not that he's asked for our input?
Kirby:
Last night, PBS did a "Secrets of the Dead" segment on the history of the writing of the English versions of the Bible, and how this was intertwined with the Reformation. The hero of the story was William Tindall, a courageous man whose beliefs eventually got him burned at the stake.
I imagine you must have a lot to say about this.
No?
The development of man in nature is a mediation.
Mere survival is what beasts do--given the capabilities and characteristics they've inherited through time, along the line of selective succession.
Humans possess intelligence, and thus have discovered how to manipulate their environment, which lifts them to a higher level, the level of consciousness. This doesn't mean humankind is separated from, and exempt from, the implications of their dependence upon "nature"--but it does mean they have a wider range of choices than UN-conscious beasts do. We don't, for instance, have to breed ourselves into a state of crisis. Certain kinds of parasitic or symbiotic relationships have grown up over time. Certain bacteria and viruses have developed whose only "purpose" is to eat up their hosts. Sound familiar?
But these rhetorical questions all depend upon a theoretical presumption, a logical dilemma based on the positing of a supreme designer. They're purely speculative, and not of much consequence. We do, however, know the consequences of over-population on the environment, and the consequences of neglecting unwanted children in the world. And we can effect the future, act rationally, in our own interest, to adjust and improve and enhance our standing. Sans any moral context, we can live lives of greater stability, pleasure and health.
But nature still has much to teach us about how we go about manipulating our environment. But that's another topic.
Larry Eigner would in any case have had to have care.
The fact of his being a poet is a separate event, not dependent upon his being disabled.
That's why the joy one feels in his work is untouched by any sense of pity or altruistic regard.
I explain in the third of my posts about the edition, just how this works.
It's possible to read his poetry without knowing anything about his condition.
The fact that he "overcame" his limitations by producing literature is heartening, and miraculous. But this doesn't make his poetry good, or better. He did that. But the poetry he produced doesn't validate his condition, or vice versa. They're separate things.
In Larry's case, enforced solitude and the opportunity to write (by using the typewriter) enabled a certain approach, no different, in its discrete sense, from what anyone else who writes does. The fact that he couldn't--as you crudely say "wipe his butt"--didn't make his poetry better, or worse, than someone who could.
Larry's life--anyone's life--isn't a race towards worthiness. If Larry had never written a line of poetry, he'd have deserved the best possible life that circumstances would allow.
Is the choice between screenwriting at AFT and creative writing at NYU or would Brett also do screenwriting at NYU?
If it's a choice between locations, I say NYU because the contacts are more varied there and you avoid the taint of LA.
Stu--that comes from a creed. Most Jewish and Christian Mystics (myself included) view all of creation as part of God. The explanation is simple: God existed. God created creation. The only material available for creation was God--ergo God created creation out of a part of God'self. Tmesis is the word generally used to describe this.
Kirby - at NYU, the program is dramatic writing, a mix of playwriting and screenwriting, and then ya focus on one during the second year.. (screenwriting for me).
NYU will cost a lot less than AFI, but the connection to the industry is not as immediate...
well maybe LS needs a film producer
you have a few poets a math guy and a stats prose writer in the phillipines and a book store poet and a monk monkey eeee eeeee
and a historian in jadl i think gm just plays rock and roll in his garage all day and wb might be a farmer for all i know and ed baker makes things emmy studies early irish poetry so she's a madwoman indeed sally hangs out in trenches and makes intimate inquiry into faults and soil she's sort of the proto earth mama as far as i can tell
maybe LS needs a filmmeister -- the 20th centuriy's most famous megalomaniac used film to great advantage (may his name never more be uttered)
from where i sit it's like choosing wastelands which wasteland would be preferrable
the cultural wasteland of NYC or the spiritual wasteland of LA
in all of film ever made there remains merely 5% of watchable material
i wonder if poetry would stack up the same
it would seem to me that the poet cannot help himself
but the filmmaker has to decide
i think as long as brett keeps up his reading and can divest himself of this gawdawful blog for a year take a long shower with some really powerful soap and keeps up his reading of poets and writers (especially the comedians i've come to appreciate brett's sense of written comedy) but get as far away from this treacherous blog as he possibly can take yourself down to the goodwill store and take this blog off your back brett like youu'd take off a coat and hand it to soem poor bastard who barely understands..and get out there and write
my sense is that brett will always write now
he's made rhetorical sense with the likes of kirby
he'll at least find himself in surreal places for the rest of his life
which can't be all bad
if you can stand the rats with hats
much of 20th century writing was fueled by alcohol
we should avoid that mistake going forward
with surrealism you can use the mind to encourage states approximating intoxication without really being drunk but then with kirby it's like he wakes up drunk spends the whole day in mild inebriation and closes out the day with matacognitive insanity so i don't know he sips imaginitive martinis with marianne moore and does personal studies on the lives of all his neighbors you figure it out
one film project you might consider brett is the filming of the eradication of ticks in north america the blackhawks massacre all the deer
i'd do the film musicscore for a small fee
and something tells me kirby would give his left frontal lobe to do the narration
words words
between the lines of age
(isn't that the neil young tune)
never missed my water
till my well went dry
never missed Crow Jane
till the day she died
o she died
(skip james)
you have to decide
between the righteous and the wasted
maybe we could do a collective cyber novel called
THE MISEDUCATION OF BRETT SWANSON
one thing we do know
he's already jaded
step aside don quixote
jh
Curtis, Ed Baker brought up the fact that Larry noce said that if he could have one wish answered it would be that he could wipe his own butt.
He said this at silliman's blog.
I lowercase Silliman because it's an institution, almost.
As for Tindale, I don't know. Luther wrote in the German vernacular.
I think Catholics wanted to retain the hierarchical aspect of Latin because only the literati could read it or interpret it.
There was a powerful drive for democracy within the Reformation.
God should be made available to all. I think the Chinese still want that, and it's why Protestant Christianity of various kinds is making alarming (to them) inroads in Chinese society. Millions of copies are being bought by the peasantry.
China is a rude power-driven society much like the Roman society in which Christianity originally blossomed. People who are saddened by the might is right philosophy go for it.
Obama is a strange mess. 53% of Americans believed he abused the legislative process to get Stealthcare passed. This was a Gallup Poll they had on Fox last night.
Among that number were about 20% of Democrats who voted for him, and yet believe he is a brutal and obstinate person in the government.
Sohe got it passed with all his tricks and bribes and bullying, but it may be that the way in whichhe got it through will create a stigma for him.
I think Los Angeles suffers from a similar brutality stigma. It's not just in watts and in the Hispanic hoods where the gangs roam where Buffalo once did, but it's in Hollywood, too.
The publishing industry still has some kind of holdover of gentility of some kind which may or may not be really true, but a book is nicer than a movie.
That said, there is a fledgling film industry in NYC (it's odd that NYC captured the entirety of the cultural capital of the country, but film escaped -- and went to LA).
The other place that is up and coming is Florida -- near Orlando.
I think Disney is a very rough customer.
At any rate, I think Brett can survive anywhere. NYU is a very nice neighborhood around Washington Square.
VERY nice.
Doesn't NYU have its own student apartments?
Here's more on the new Gallup poll.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Poll-Majority-says-Dem-health-care-tactics-an-abuse-of-power-89624142.html
There's an irony in the process. That if it's all moral to give everyone stealthcare, why couldn't it be passed in a morally sound manner?
Many believe it's simply another attempt to gouge the rich. Some twenty major companies have already said the law is going to be a smackdown to the economy, and will hurt them in the neighborhood of 20 billion dollars, which will further erode the climate for new jobs.
And it looks like America will lose its credit rating for the first time, making us into a second-rate country.
I find this all quite troubling.
I wonder if the 16 AGs who have filed suits will save the country?
It may yet be possible to stop the stealthcare on constitutional grounds.
Somehow I do think there is a signifigant discrepancy between NATURE and GOD.
I can't explain the discrepancy. This world is fallen, and trying to force it to be godly by ramming through angelic measures with monstrous tactics screws everything up.
It would have been better to have the whole thing in the open on C-Span, and get more input, along with the possibility of no.
The way in which Bush rammed through the Iraq war with lies and half-truths cost us the presidency.
I think Obama has now returned the favor, and that we will get it back as a result.
This country is a democracy, still.
Obama has pulled too many fast ones, and he's now simply icky. He's hit 50% disapproval.
Even Obama Girl has turned against him.
GM,
Stu--that comes from a creed.
No. Really?
I quoted the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed because Lutherans accept three ecumenical creeds (Apostle's, Nicene-Constantinopolitan, and Athenasian), and because Kirby is a Lutheran. I agree that there are Christian (and Jewish) mystics that are pantheist (i.e., they believe that God is everything, and everything is God), but I would also note that that these are beliefs held by a relatively small minority of Christians.
One thing that I found curious in this is that the LCMS website has up a version of the Nicene Creed that has a signficantly unconventional aspect, and one that I found to be almost shocking. Here's a link:
LCMS: Nicene Creed
I wonder if anyone else will notice. I also wonder if the new LCMS hymnals use the same variation.
Student housing is rather limited, and the housing that they offer to students in my program seems to only be shared-room housing - no single apartments available (I might be able to get around this, however, but this is my first impression).
One reaches a certain age and it seems strange to share a room with a stranger...that being said, living in university housing would give me a connection to the people I live with/near, which would be nice - summer-camp has made me addicted to this sort of environment.
We'll see how it goes...
I think your main decision is whether to go after your idealism, or whether you should temper your idealism with realism.
Realism means are you making your decision on a purely capitalistical basis.
I don't think the two can be strictly divorced. Anything that for instance asks you to sell your brother or sister into bondage will probably be disallowed by you (although the teenager in Trenton had no trouble pimping her seven year old sister last week, I don't think you would do that).
If pure capital is nature's way (the eagle doesn't mess around -- if it's flying over a river it's in order to spot calories).
And that's nature's way: pure capitalism, every second.
Humanity has some room for ideals, although the ideals generally come out in some kind of perverted way, due to the way in which we remain part of nature, and nature's ways.
God's ways I think are almost totally unnatural.
I'm fascinated by the healthcare crisis because it is so uber-sneaky. It mandates massive spending on the parts of individuals and states, forcing us to buy insurance, and creating a virtual army of new IRS investigators (16,000 new inspectors) to check up on whether we are in compliance.
How many of those 16,000 will be ACORN operatives, and how many of them will be able to follow the fairly, and how many will simply gouge the rich -- targeting them selectively, and targeting anyone who speaks up against healthcare, forcing them to appear before congressional panels for months at a time?
It's fascinating to watch it play out.
What are our ideals?
It's odd, but to me they are still in the Constitution, and are still Lockean ideals, which come out of the English Revolution against the centralizing authority of the crown.
States' rights and individual rights against the centralizing authority of the government still mean a lot to me, esp. as I think about the horror of communist regimes around the world over the last century, and the ways in which the individual was eclipsed by the monstrous centralized power of the state.
Here's a good ten-minute segment that appeared on Fox a couple nights ago talking about the Constitutionality of the bill, and ways in which it could be challenged.
http://video.foxnews.com/v/4131967/constitutionality-of-health-care-law/?loomia_ow=t0:s0:a4:g4:r2:c0.000000:b0:z5
I don't know the moderator. His acronym is GB. I've seen him before but I don't know who he is. After his opening spiel he talks with a professor, an AG from Florida and someone else (I didn't finish the segment) about the constitutionality.
The constitution it seems to me guarantees rights to the weak to protect us from the voracious strengths of the government. Who can stand up against a totalitarian government?
It's nigh impossible for anyone to do it in a place like Myanmar.
The separation of powers that Madison set up is now being eclipsed by a voracious Cyclopsean central government run by a real sneak, much sneakier than Bush, and much more diabolically clever.
Still, 54% according to Rasmussen want to overturn stealthcare.
It's hard to put all the principles down, because there are so many. But I think the main thing to think about is what is nature? I claim it is ENTIRELY selfish, and someone like Dawkins backs that.
JH is against selfishness, and Dawkins.
But look at the priest scandal, and all the NAMBLA pervs inside of the Catholic churches.
You must make institutions that block individual power from attaining monopolies. This is why state and individual rights MUST stand up to Obamacare.
Once the federal eagle gets its beak on our necks, there is no turning back.
we do not allow nambladom
in the catholic church
we burn people like that at the stake now
there never were and never have been sexual perverts in the catholic church
it is a mass media
conspiracy
i might as well let everyone know
the inquisition is being renewed as we speak
all heretics will either
recite the nicene creed while standing on their heads
or they will be disemboweled drawn and quartered and barbecued
no more messin around
the pope will react with a tyrany that makes
20th century totalitarianism look like a bad cartoon
and i'm on the bandwagon
no more mister nice guy catholics
no -- we're mad now
we're arming the nuns
they are the new guerilla warriors
the church is to be run by all guys who like to fish and golf
and read
and we will use the women as the first line of defense
complete with daily firearms practice
so be very nice to the nuns with guns and they all have 'em now
peace
happy easter all
jh
JH -- my latest was pushed by TWO articles in the local papers about European pedo rings. One was in Denmark, and the other I think in Ireland.
Again, the Pope looked the other way.
I think hierarchy is inherently dangerous.
There HAVE to be checks and balances.
I sure hope the states can stand up to federal authority on the stealthcare bill.
If not, we are going to have huge crazy dragnets destroying any company that stands up to them, using that law the way gladiators used nets to catch and then rapier other gladiators, who won't stand a chance now.
The whole balance has been tilted in favor of the Feds.
Oh la la.
400 years of individual rights formation destroyed by a bill that is seemingly in favor of the individual, but is actually all about totalitarian government control of the individual. An incredibly clever move on the part of the new Marxists.
Fortunately, I am not the only one to smell a rat.
Usually, I am.
My problem right now, Kirbster, is that I Am trying my best to temper my idealism with realism - but the realistic choice in this case is not so easily defined -
Getting a steady, paying job in the industry (or getting paid six-digits for a feature-length screenplay) after getting an MFA in screenwriting ain't a slam-dunk, no matter where you go -
The chances of this are improved if I go to AFI, I believe...
But then, I'm not sure by how much, and not sure if those chances are worth the extra $$$ it would cost to go there... (assuming cost of living is generally equivalent between NYC and LA outside of housing... for year 1, room + tuition at AFI for 9 months would be c. 34k. For NYU, it would be about 12k...so a difference of 22k. For year 2, it would be an equal or lesser difference, since AFI offers more $$ for second year scholarships, but then again tuition increases...so all told it would probably be 35-45k more expensive to go to AFI than NYU, though best case scenario it would be 17k more expensive [if I get a full-tuition AFI scholarship for the second year, but they only give out two per class...cost of cheapo student housing near AFI is 5k cheaper than in NYC, thus the decrease in cost over 2 years...).
Though the increased cost in real terms would probably be More than these numbers, since I'd be student loaning it, and interest rates and all that jazz...
In terms of established social relationships, I have 3 or 4 friends from camp/college in NYC, but one of my Best friends (and my filmmaking partner) is in LA, as is a good friend/ex for whom that torch is still bein' carried...
I pretty much have to make up my mind by tomorrow...will be calling AFI sometime today to see if they can scrounge up some more moolah, but that feels unlikely...
Though who knows? Maybe they'll admire my gumption and hand over some cash...
I don't know LA very well, though have a close friend who's a major screenwriter and is in the guild.
But it took twenty years for him to get to that point. He likes it, but he's always been cheerful about a certain seediness in the entertainment industry. (He penned ANACONDA with Ice Cube.)
He now writes what he calls Beach reads -- very entertaining sexy novels called stuff like MOIST and DELICIOUS. Very brilliant.
As a youth he was a headbanging singer and guitarist in Seattle's up and coming grunge milieu and ended up touring the west coast and in England.
A super talent who could do just about anything.
I can't stand the public eye as he can.
I prefer to live under a rock, and rarely peep out.
New York is just gorgeous all year round. Thousands of landmarks.
Lots of other interesting jobs.
I'm about a three hour drive from there and make it in several times a year. Sometimes I stay for a week or so in one of the cheaper hotels.
A cheap hotel in NYC is about 150 dollars.
I understand what you mean about sharing.
Maybe you could live in Queens on one of the metro lines.
You could live in a Korean neighborhood perhaps.
Or in Canarsie which is going Jamaican.
I think you could live in Hoboken and take a ferry in.
There are lots of options.
Let us know what you decide.
It definitely won't hurt to ask AFI for more money, or for one of the free rides.
I suspect you'll get further in LA.
Fewer idealists go that route, and if you can make it in LA, you can get through.
I think NEW YORK CITY is loaded with trust fund talents, and lots of connections. I went to a fiction seminar a few years ago and everyone was coming in eight-door limousines to get their crummy deals at major publishers and so have something to make them look they are real people underneath all the plastic surgery.
I suppose you'll see the same issues in Hollywood, only there's even more money involved, and the chance to get your stuff seen in Peoria.
Kirby,
Hush about Obama, and tell us something about William Tindall.
Now there's a subject I think you could shed some light on!
there's a minnesota lawyer
who has launched an international campaign
to bring the pope to justice
this lawyer is working overtime
he's an alcoholic
on a long dry drunk
http://www.americamagazine.org/blog/entry.cfm?blog_id=2&id=86374359-3048-741E-3059565251918570
there are chex and balances
the church is and always has been a body in conversation and deliberation on all things
so i'm praying for all the penises and vaginas in the world during this easter celebration
dear lord just bless if you would all the penises and vaginas out there bless them make them better penises and vaginas not icky penises and vaginas but good penises and vaginas penises and vaginas that know the right thing to do and avoid the wrong things
there
that should make things a little better
angry people are going to be angry and they scream the loudest so they get the 3 in 1 oil
very trinitarian oil
i wonder if there's a way we could check out the sexual infractions in the lutheran ranks
i've instructed the pope to
give an interview and at one important point to stand up lift the long robes drop his silk boxer shorts and moon the world on tv
i'm not sure he's following my suggestion
but at least it's out there as a possibility
phuq the angry people
they should just get over it
and for the people who leave the church
i say phuq you people too
ye of negligible faith
go
pout pout pout about how disappointed you are
i have to go now
i'm training some nuns out on
the firing range
joan of arc
pray for us
the new knights templar
are really nuns
warrior women for jesus
jh
read arthur koestler on hierarchy
hierarchy is always tricky
and always necessary
nature is hierarchical
just ask the wolverine
how does mental health figure into the new proud american health care system
my sense is that the republicans are working out a collective displacd anger...they're still very embarrassed about the defeat in 2008 but the democrats aren't too sensitive to just how hurt they are the republicans and now they feel powerless and when you combine a collectice weak selfimage with powerlessness and anger well it seems to me practical politics is the very next step
or cultural mayhem
heh heh heh
get ready america
it can't get wierd enough for me
Curtis, I find that the further back in history I go, the more my numbers rise, in terms of readership.
That said, I tend to reject anything that is so openly controversial as Tindall, and instead go after relatively known quantities whose handiwork has largely been settled in terms of public opinion, since I am hardly a controversialist, as you may know.
I saw the show on Tindall, about a year ago (they may have run it twice).
I do think that in Anglophone thought there was a long long attempt to develop human rights for all, and that access to the bible and its authority helped in this cause, since it has so many wise sayings in it, and sharp formulations.
I think everyone should read the bible.
It's interesting on every level.
The Protestant Reformation was an attempt to level the hierarchy of the Papacy because it was felt that hierarchy causes abuses of power.
Herbert Hoover said this:
Dictators organize from the top down, democracies from the bottom up.
I'm paraphrasing which is why I didn't put this in quotes.
All the countries that successfully resisted democratic reforms (Spain, Portugal, as well as their colonies) lost the European war that took place over 500 years to create human equality.
The length of that misery still overshadows places like Cuba (who've merely replaced one dictator with another), or places like the Philippines (the reason Imelda had to have so many shoes is because it is a little-known fact that she was a centipede).
Northern Europe is prosperous simply because of economic and literal democracy. It's the whole story.
Next door to finland is the Soviet Union, which again simply exchanged one dictator for another.
Making the Bible available to everyone enhanced literary, and enhanced the power of each individual to take part in discussion.
Keeping the bible locked in the foreign tongue of Latin led to many abuses.
Many are now complaining that Obama abused his powers (53% claim that he abused his power on the stealthcare scam). He's now going to exponentially multiply the IRS army, and pack it with ACORN operatives.
Remember what Hoover said:
Dictators organize from the top down, democracies from the bottom up.
It's possible to mount an ad hominem attack on Hoover and the Hoovervilles, but I think his adage will stand the test of time.
at any rate, Tindall's effort was just one effort in a long lineage of efforts to give power to the people.
Obama wants to change all that, and centralize power again. The Tea Parties are an organized and very polite resistance to that attempt.
Kirby,
Wiki: William Tyndale
Strangely enough, I wrote a brief paper on Tyndale last year for diakonia...
Tyndale (spelling varied) was a contemporary of Martin Luther (1483–1546), and is best known for his early (pre-KJV) translation of the Bible into English. Tyndale was trained at Oxford and Cambridge University, becoming both a Priest and a linguist, and fluent in many languages including the theologically significant languages of Greek, Hebrew and Latin along with most major European languages.
During this time, he resolved to translate the Bible into English, despite a prohibition against doing so, saying, “I will cause the boy that drives the plow in England to know more of the Scriptures than the Pope himself!” Tyndale sought approval from the Bishop Tunstall, who had been present at Luther’s trial at the Diet of Worms, and who wanted to avoid similar controversies in England. So Tunstall turned him down.
Tyndale proceeded with the translation anyway, and found it expedient to leave England for Hamburg. His New Testament was completed in 1525, and published in Worms (now Lutheran) and Antwerp. Copies were smuggled into England, where it was soon banned, and Tyndale condemned as a heretic.
For a while, he was effectively (but unintentionally) supported by the English crown, which had put a price on his Bible as well as his head, making it profitable to print in the Netherlands, "smuggle" into England, and hand over to be burned for the bounty.
Tyndale’s work on translated the Old Testament (from Hebrew) was halted by his arrest in Antwerp. He was tried for heresy, condemned, and executed.
Tyndale’s English was lyrical, and many of the most memorable passages from the KJV were borrowed directly from Tyndale, c.f.
Mark 1:17 And Iesus sayde vnto them: folowe me and I will make you fisshers of men.
John 1:1 In the beginnynge was the worde and the worde was with God: and the worde was God.
1Cor. 13:13 Now abideth fayth hope and love even these thre: but the chefe of these is love.
Eph. 4:5 Let ther be but one lorde one fayth one baptim:
http://tinyurl.com/bamateaparty
From my POV, Obama gives a pretty accurate and fair description of the teaparty movement toward the end of this (and, yes, he should have taken more personal responsibility for the tone coming from Democrats than he does in the first part o' this interview, since he's the big man on campus).
Stu,
Concerning the Nicene Creed, one thing that is significantly different is its formatting. It is no long trinitarian, but separates the third section into two parts: Holy Spirit and Holy Christian Church. Curious.
As for the Nicene Controversy, I can only say we still use the green hymnal, the same one we have before the congregation elected to jump to Missouri (a long jump for a church in upstate NY -- comparable to that made by Twain's celebrated leaping frog -- plus carrying instead of bb's the manifold sins of the congregation, of whose mine probably weigh the heaviest).
still, we made it, bringing the green hymnals with us.
So I don't know. All these things have a history.
As does, as Stu has now given it to us, Tyndale, or however you spell it.
Brett's link to Obama, and his sense that everyone loves America, who's a real American at least (I would deny this to Bill Ayers, at least in terms of his implementation of his love, which is something that we could call SICK LOVE, at best), but here's Ray Charles, singing the Katharine Lee Bates song (Bates a lesbian (some say) poet who taught at Wellesly in the 1890s), whose only well-known poem is America the Beautiful, published in Atlantic Monthly in 1894. I don't know a more beautiful version than this one, with Ray Charles (I wish he had stuck with the original lyrics):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRUjr8EVgBg
Thank you, Stu, for reiterating the Tindall factoids.
Kirby, I can't think of a less true statement than this,
"I tend to reject anything that is so openly controversial as Tindall."
Controversy is your middle name.
I expect a complete report, with footnotes, in a fortnight.
Incumbent on you--just as your brush-up on Marianne Moore.
WB,
I didn't pick up the Holy Christian Church. Nice catch. This was common in Protestant versions of the Nicene Creed up into the '70's, and can be found, e.g., in the SBH. The LBW and ELW both say "catholic," per the original. ELW even scraps the footnote, although it still uses "small c" catholic. I guess they had to leave something to fix in the next hymnal.
What got me was the singular first person aspect, "I believe," vs. the plural first person aspect "We believe" of both the original (Πιστεύομεν) and more recent (LBH, ELW) English language Lutheran hymnals. FWIW, the singular form is used in the eastern church's liturgical version of the creed, and also in the Latin version, although the English-language RCC (like the ELCA) uses the corporate "We believe" liturgically. The SBH has "I believe," and so might be taken as representative of the kind of pre-ecumenical Lutheran thinking that still holds sway in the LCMS.
I've argued with Phil Hefner over whether the I/We is significant. FWIW, he thinks not. But I see a big difference between a statement of personal belief ( the "I believe" of the Apostle's creed) and a definitional symbol of community ("We believe"). YMMV, as always.
One question I have is whether the LCMS used the SBH. I know that it used the LBW, but wasn't always comfortable with it, and they've gone their own way subsequently (rather than participating with the ELCA in the production of the ELW). Given CPH's attitudes w.r.t. electronic texts, it's probably just as well for those of us in the ELCA.
Anyway, I find it amusing after all the barking Kirby's done as to whether the ELCA still uses the creed liturgically that his synod's version of the creed contains two theologically significant deviations from the ecumenical creed, and that the predecessor bodies to the ELCA moved past a generation and a half ago.
I doubt if I've "barked" anything regarding the liturgical use of the creed. What a cynical statement!
And Curtis, as you well know, I was being ironic.
Of course I am a controversialist. Or is that controversial?
I'm still getting used to the new synodical belief system, but it's the same pastor, and I think aside from a few things I can't put my finger on, it's the same church.
Something's changed, but I don't know what it is (Mr. Jones).
Tindale is probably crucial but wouldn't the bible have been translated eventually by SOMEONE into the vernacular?
The whole effort of moving toward and speaking in the vernacular is also something that's been happening in American poetry.
Not that the normal American cares.
Now we're supposed to have poetry in real speech patterns about real American subjects, since WCW.
tyndals vision of making the bible and quotations from it common to ordinary plowboys
all that's come from putting bibles in the hands of the uneducated is to create more religious madness
the narratives and poetry is
beyond the grasp of people educated in a basic way
tyndale had a mission
he just didn't want to be answerable to anyone but himself
protestants can do that
catholics can't
protestant fundamentalists tend to get more crazy
catholic fundamentalists tend to get
more roman
i know the answer to the problem
but i ain't sayin
I don't see how Bill Ayres is any better than the guy who shot George Tiller. That guy got fifty years mandatory today, which makes him 101.
Why did Ayres walk, and get to teach?
Friend of Obama's?
God and nature aren't synonymous, but I think we can learn God's nature through nature. The sciences and arts are glimmers of reflections of the being of God, and as we understand His code, as we read God's textbook (as pure mathematics does), I think we get closer to His Being.
But what thrills me is God's liberality. His chosen people wanted for nothing while even in the desert. When I look around me, when I'm in my more contemplative moods, I am astonished at not only how generous God is but how EXTRAVAGANT He is. He puts beauty in the strangest of places simply because it pleases Him.
God loves beauty, and I believe natural beauty is of God. It pleases Him to please His children with beauty and elegance and symmetry.
And because it is of God, nature cannot help but create beauty.
I'm going to keep that in my heart when I smell the lilies this Sunday.
Kirby,
I don't see how Bill Ayres is any better than the guy who shot George Tiller. That guy got fifty years mandatory today, which makes him 101.
First and foremost, Roeder was convicted of first-degree murder in Kansas, for which the mandatory minimum sentence is life imprisonment. The options were for a 25 year minimum, or 50. Roeder pressed a pistol again Tiller head, and pulled the trigger. He went into church to murder, and he murdered, but the most certain means available to him. The cold-blood nature of the crime, and the lack of remorse on the part of the guilty, made the hard sentence inevitable.
Bill Ayers bombed a statue in Chicago, killing no one, and an NYC police station, killing no one, the US Capitol, killing no one, and the Pentagon, killing no one. They were intended as symbolic attacks on property, not on people. Of course, these attacks carried a substantial risk of killing or injuring people, and had they done so, undoubtedly the legal consequences of his actions would have far more serious.
These seem like differences in intent and consequence that are adequate to justify the differences in how they were treated.
None of this responds to the issue of who is the better man. In my mind, it's not a question worth asking. We're all worms, remember? So the right question would be, who's the better worm? But once you ask it that way, who really cares?
I thought Ayres had intended to kill people, but had simply failed. Had his wife intended to fail?
As far as the services go, I hope everyone will have a nice one this Sunday. I tend not to notice the niceties of services. They escape me.
Part of a song might intrigue me, or a bit of laughter in response to a portion of the sermon.
I may have been catty about the liturgy, but certainly not dogged enough to bark. Perhaps I'm saying this simply because I feel a bit sheepish.
natural law is the groundwork
for ethics
darwinism is superficial in comparison
JH -- what, exactly, is natural law? Is that not synonymous with "the law of the jungle"?
I find all these terms fishy, but am also cowed by them.
Sorry, I'm also horsing around.
I'm a birdbrain.
It's spring.
The thermometer actually says 80. Earlier this week it said 38 at the same time of morning.
Kirby,
I thought Ayres had intended to kill people, but had simply failed.
In terms of assessing motivation, our tools are limited. There is what the people themselves say, but of course this can be self-serving. Then there is the nature of the bombs used, e.g., fragmentation bombs, or bombs large enough to bring down buildings are going to kill people. And then there's the matter of targetting, which includes both location and time.
The weatherman attacks that Ayers was implicated in were attacks against symbols: a statute at Haymarket Park, a Police Station, the US Capital, the Pentagon. I've not found much by way of technical description of the devices themselves, except "small." That said, a police raid in Chicago netted 59 sticks of dynamite, which is indicative of either much greater aspirations going forward, or an extended campaign. But it is also indicative of a capability to build much more destructive devices than were ever actually employed.
To put this (both the small size of the actual bombs deployed by the weathermen, as well as their actual capability), the destruction of 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham involved 22 stickes of dynamite, and the destruction of the Murrah Building involved more than 5000 lbs of home-brew explosives. Whereas Kaczynski's bombs were much smaller, but he added nails and such to the mix, greatly magnifying the lethality of his weapons. As far as I know, the weathermen did not.
In terms of killing people, the weathermen bombing attacks were something of an "own goal." There was an attack on a San Francisco Police Station, consistent with weatherman technology and targetting, but never claimed by them, that killed one officer. And there was an explosion in a weatherman bomb making facility in Greenwich Village that killed three of their own. AFAIK, that was it. Generally speaking, weatherman bombings were preceeded by warning phone calls, again supportive of the notion that these were intended as symbolic attacks on property rather than as murderous attacks on people.
So, on the whole, it seems to me that the notion that the bombings were intended as symbolic attacks on property is most consistent.
Had his wife intended to fail?
As near as I can figure out, Bernadette Dohrn was a "central committee" type, and so was probably removed from the operational side of the bombings. That said, certainly the campaign itself (if not the actual targetting, etc.) would have required central committee approval. It is easy (and I think valid) to view the culpability of the leaders as being no less than the culpability of those who executed the plans. Certainly, I'd expect JADL to make such an argument in Dohrn's case. But this brings in, again, the issue of precedent, and the same logic applies to Bush-Cheney et. al., with regards to excessive civilian mortality in Iraq. After all, when it comes to running a bombing campaign, the weatherman were posers, and it's our government which is the real professional.
Dohrn is also reviled on the right (and reasonably so, in my opinion) for outrageous statements she made expressing admiration for the cold-bloodedness shown by the Manson cult. Whether this was bravado, or indicative that she was a "Weatherman hawk" who would have supported targeting people rather than things is an interesting question. I honestly do not know.
jh,
all that's come from putting bibles in the hands of the uneducated is to create more religious madness
While not denying that putting the Bible in the hands of the uneducated has caused religious madness, I disagree with the notion that this is all that it has done. I think it's done a lot of good too, and so the question can't be decided by looking at just the expenditure side of the balance sheet.
My sympathies, predictably, are with Tyndale in this matter. The proper role of the Church should be to tear down barriers between God and man, not to create new ones or sustain old ones. By providing a faithful translation of the original language texts into the vernacular of his day, Tyndale tore down a barrier between God and man.
As for the madness, the proper solution to this problem doesn't lie with sequestering the Bible, it lies with educating the masses, and providing them a Bible they can read seems to be an important step in this process.
Stu, shouldn't the left be equally appalled by the Manson comment of Dohrn?
Certainly that was an appalling series of acts -- targeting and mutilating an elderly couple, and the sickening vivisection of Sharon Tate: I wonder if she thought it was an acceptable form of abortion to open her stomach and kill her baby in front of her.
The details of that night are simpy too disgusting to recall in their details. I wonder why she appreciated it.
Maybe she was just trying to shock.
I think the great distinction between Bush and the weathermen is between a legitimate power declaring war openly, and declaring its means and ends, with an illegitimate group sneaking around in the dar.
Just war can countenance the first but not the second.
Just war theory doesn't allow any rights to pirates or terrorists.
Our bombs did kill civilians, but only because their soldiers tried to use human shields and to hide within civilian sectors.
We never targeted civilians.
People claim that we incinerated the Japanese first when we firebombed Tokyo, and secondly with the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
But in both cases we were dealing with a fanatical enemy that was willing to fight on to the last man, woman and child. The Japanese had devastated China, had turned Korean women into whores, and raped wherever they went.
They had to be stopped.
But a landing would have cost us a million men lost.
The air war that we are increasingly turning to is a result of similar attempts by Al Qaeda to hide within civilian populations. this means that the predator drones are going to take out wedding feasts when they are trying to take out military leaders.
Ground wars are much more costly to the offense, and much of our casualties have come from IEDs.
To avoid those, we take to the air, from which it is very difficult to see what we are hitting.
Jean Bethke Elsthain argues in her book on Just war that we ought to be willing to prosecute a ground war and accept the casualties rather than raining down bombs from the air which are as likely to hit civilians going about their business as they are to hit terrorists.
I lean on Just War theory to sort out what I think -- I realize that GM thinks all war is unethical and problematic, and that JH probably does, too.
I think it can also be criminal to do nothing while people are held as slaves.
Sexual slavery is now a huge business all over the world.
It's mortifying that we should stand by and do nothing.
On the other hand, American men shouldn't have to be ground up in correcting the horrors of the crazy countries around the world that don't recognize human rights.
Julia Ward Howe's Battle Hymn of the Republic can't be continuously sung.
But at least it's a Christian hymn.
What god were Dorhn and Ayers all about? Was it not Marx?
Kirby,
Stu, shouldn't the left be equally appalled by the Manson comment of Dohrn
Some are, and it was pretty clear that she's been on the defensive ever since the remarks were made. Certainly, there were those in her immediate audience (i.e., extreme and militant members of the Weatherman Underground) who were offended by her remarks, and said so. As I said before, I think she admired the cold-bloodedness of the Manson killers, the irony of killing people with their own silverware, and then eating (with the same silverware) the in presence of the bodies of the people they'd killed. This can be, and arguably should be, taken as evidence that the weathermen more generally acted with a moral code that Dohrn found limiting. This is not to her credit.
Maybe she was just trying to shock.
I think that's it. I think she was trying to shock her colleagues into more aggressive, less restrained action. It does not appear that she succeeded.
We never targeted civilians.
I don't buy it. The aim of the bombing campaigns during the second world war was to destroy both the means and the will of our opponents to wage war. As such, I am not aware of a single time that we decided not to be bomb a military target because of concerns about civilian casualties. They were seen, instead, as advancing the aim of "destroying the will."
Certainly, the fire bombings of Dresden and Tokyo were horrific, as were the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They were intended more than anything else to shock our opponents.
I think that the atomic bombings had the intended effect, especially in concert with the Russian entry into the Pacific Theater. Many Japanese starved to death during the winter of '45-'46, largely a consequence of the destruction of Japanese shipping capability by our submarine and naval air forces, and despite the availability of US military shipping. Had surrender been delayed, the winter starvation would have been much more devastating, and would have killed many more.
This still leaves to question whether or not a demonstration bombing of an unpopulated area might have had the same effect, and also does not do much to justify the Dresden and Tokyo bombings, which created tremendous human suffering without having much impact on the duration of the war in either theater.
What god were Dorhn and Ayers all about? Was it not Marx?
I don't know whether Dohrn or Ayers have religion. Clearly, the weathermen were about ending the war in Vietnam, which they framed philosophically in terms of a world-wide conflict between US imperialism on one side, and nationalists (including the VC) on the other. While Communists made the same claims, I think each had their own purposes, and their own value systems.
Let me note that the winding down of the weathermen was essentially simultaneous with the winding down of the Vietnam War. When the war went away, the reason for their existence went away; the wind stopped blowing. This would not have been the case if the were driven by a deeper Marxist critique of the US's economic system, nor if there were mere stooges of extant Communist governments.
Kirby,
As far as the services go, I hope everyone will have a nice one this Sunday.
You too. I also hope everyone found meaningful worship on Maundy Thursday, and that you'll all find meaningful worship tonight at Tenebrae, and at tomorrow's Vigil, as well as Sunday morning.
For my part, I find the end of the Maundy Thursday service to be a dramatic high point of the worship year: the stripping of the altar while an offstage soloist sings the 22nd Psalm a capella, the darkening of the sanctuary, the extinquishing of every candle, the departure of the congregation as individuals, in silence.
But this brings up a project that's been knocking around in the back of my mind for the past twenty years. When the 22nd Psalm is chanted, invariably the psalm tone used is appropriate to its opening verse, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me," an exercise in minor mode, and a remembrace of Jesus's final words per Matthew. But the essential theological point isn't made in the first verse, it is made in the last: "... men shall tell of the Lord to the coming generation, and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn!"
At every Maundy Thursday service I've ever been to, that last verse is sung by a soloist, nearing exhaustion, in the very same minor tone. Shouldn't we use a varying tone, which changes in mood to reflect the emotional state of the underlying Psalm, ending in triumph?! The project, of course, is to write it.
The proper role of the Church should be to tear down barriers between God and man, not to create new ones or sustain old ones. By providing a faithful translation of the original language texts into the vernacular of his day, Tyndale tore down a barrier between God and man.
As for the madness, the proper solution to this problem doesn't lie with sequestering the Bible, it lies with educating the masses, and providing them a Bible they can read seems to be an important step in this process.
Two problems here:
1) On Good Friday it's imperative to remember that the barrier between God and man was torn down by God as the veil was rent upon the death of Jesus. The church cannot do what God has already done.
2) Regarding educating the masses--I think we've gone over this before, but there is a real question as to just how educated the masses can be. The vast majority of people are incapable of sustained critical thought--85% of the population has an IQ of 115 or less. They can learn certainly but discerning is a much larger problem. You end up with people believing all sorts of extra-biblical things (the serpent of Eden was Satan, creeds, the Trilogy, etc. ;}).
Seriously, though, simply giving the average yokel with a 5th grade reading level (yay public education!) a copy of the Bible and expecting him to understand it is madness. And Sparta as well.
so merely climbing over the wall between god and man is not sufficient in the consideration of biblical insight
if it is true it must be universally true
tyndale was given a free reign for many years free to work with no presuppositions of responsibility to a magisterium let alone a worshipping community ( he was protected by a bishop for a while i guess - protestant bishop)
he is a paradigm in some ways of the missteps of modern scholarship
vanity posing as humility -- that his work did not go for nought is perhaps gods way of working out the truth with a sense of humor -- even the catholics of the douai version resorted to some of tyndales work --
a trifling small percentage of british people know their bible verses despite all the efforts to make it accessible (strange that the efforts to translate KJV and the DOUAI RHEIMS version and the RONALD KNOX version -- all this has proven to be negligible in england...the highpoint of biblical literacy was over before WW2)
lots of american evangelicals know their bible verses but they know little else they don't read other books which makes them very suspect in a catholic sense
for in the catholic sense there has always been the twofold tradition of bible and intelligent interpretation (the humanities)
we live in a time when biblical inspiration is lived and articulated around the world
the power of the word is loose onthe planet -- is that a good thing?
the further the word gets from the celebration of the eucharist and the ritual proclamation --the less likely it is that there will be a good understanding
god can make things work out in less than perfect scenarios - lord knows he's had plenty of practice -- but the truth of it all is to be realized in the living ritual -- not simply in the study not simply in the preaching not simply in the adamant exposition -- but always connected to the ways of worship
the vast majority of catholic art was a way to address illiteracy of people and to present graphically the bible stories and the stories of great christians...great personalities throughout all scripture all time
and catholic scholars feel that it is incumbent upon them to live up to the standards of the scholars who have preceded them...i always sense when reading protestant exegetes that this "standard" is not all that significant unless one posits the person of luther and then perhaps von harnack as the exemplars
i was once embarassed to the point of rage when i heard mother angelica of EWTN doing a spontaneous exegeses of the one of the gospels -- her point of view is so wierd and skewed -- and she somehow evaded that catholic insistence upon intelligent critique -- she got to do her own thing -- what will the backlash be -- maybe god just works stuff like that out
that being said
it is time for me to
make my way the via dlorosa
i too must to the cross
to venerate
go
blessed three days
jh
stu
your points well taken
(just as an aside -- the holy thursday celebration is about the last supper the institution of the eucharist and the washing of feet - the relationship of sharing in jesus life and service in the kingdom of god -- at least the RC world has been doing it that way since the middle ages -- tenebrae the fading of the candles was and is always late good friday afternoon))
as to scripture
i think it does no good to point to the facts surrounding egregious mistakes in interpretation..the RC world left the translation of scripture to people like Jerome and his little community and later to philosophers and linguists because those people were entrusted to care for the power of the word...in the same way the jews regard the value of scripture when they entrust it to well trained learned rabbis...the point being
it is to be done always in church in the synagogue
in the community of believers
when someone takes it upon himself to articulate the word free from any sort of critique or shared understanding the challenge to resist psychological tyrany becomes almost overwhelming in many cases throughout history it has been overwhelming
the continual fracturing of the christian body amongst the rippling strains of protestantism is just that...individuals or small groups who insist on a different way without recourse to a higher judgement call (i e the magisterium) -- this is not to say that somehow the word has not been used to good result and to good effect in protestant circles...it is also not to say that the scientific scholarship in the realm of scripture has not borne fruit...yet it is necessary to point out that catholic exegetes have always had to recognize their work within the context of a broad tradition have always been forced as it were to know what others have written and said and have had to reconcile their insights with the mission of the church...and they are forced by their baptism to recognise the philosphical contributions of aquinas and augustine and jacques maritain...the humility of the scholar is the humility of one who is in constant awareness of a higher judgement
left to their own wiles no average person of faith can comprehend the bible in a useful way...in fact the only real way to address scripture from my point of view is ritually...to formulate and proclaim within the body gathered
classroom treatment is not enough scholarly journal treatment is not enough
how does it jibe with how the people worship?
what is my responsibility not just to empirical truth (if that's possible in scripture study) but to the needs of the people and the continuing healthy growth of the body of christ?
with this in mind everyone who dares pick up the bible should be aware of the weight of these texts and the responsibility to participate in the body of christ
what about panentheism
as distinct from pantheism?
not that God is all things
but that God is in all things?
for me this understanding jives well
with jesus's admonition
"in as much as you have done it
to the least of these
you have done it unto me"
Kirby, count me in as one of
the church-going democrats
and as a Christian who thinks
that Darwin was for the most part right
about the evolution of species
I have no trouble seeing evolution
as the method God used to create
Evolution does make it difficult
to accept Augustine's theodicy--
that the world was perfect as God
created it and that evil only entered
as a result of the fall
this is hard to reconcile with the fact
that earthquakes occurred before
human beings existed
and animals certainly died
and left their fossil remains
before humans existed
so i don't believe
that death entered the world through Adam
Augustine's theodicy, however,
is not the only Christian theodicy
there is also Ireneus
who posited that suffering
is a tool that God uses
to perfect his creation
or something like that
(it's been a while since
i thought about this stuff).
GM,
On Good Friday it's imperative to remember that the barrier between God and man was torn down by God as the veil was rent upon the death of Jesus. The church cannot do what God has already done.
Point taken, but (and this is not intended as a slam against any particular church body) it still sometimes seems to have a perverse talent for undoing the things that God has done :-). I suppose that I'm cynical enough to believe that simply saying "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus," all day long isn't going to do a person much good if they're detached from the witness as to who Jesus was, what he had to say, etc. One might as well say "Om, Om, Om." In the Bible, one finds that witness. But I wholeheartedly agree with jh that theological free-lancing is a bad idea. Our encounters with scripture will not be beneficial without the support of a large, stable community of the faithful, nor outside of an active, worshiping faith.
The vast majority of people are incapable of sustained critical thought--85% of the population has an IQ of 115 or less.
The fact that 85% pf the population has an IQ of 115 or less is a consequence of the normality of the distribution of IQs, and the fact that the mean is defined to be at 100, and the standard deviation at 15.
It is not clear to me that an IQ of 115 is necessary to benefit from scripture, nor that it is a threshold for sustained critical thought.
jh,
tenebrae the fading of the candles was and is always late good friday afternoon
Of course. Do you guys leave the sanctuary illuminated at the end of Maundy Thursday?
Observation. The scripture reading for Maundy Thursday has Paul first declining to have his feet washed, only to be rebuked. So it seems remarkable to me that although we had somewhere north of 80 in attendance last night, the number of foot washees was about 15. I'd suspect that in a monastery you get 100% participation.
the RC world left the translation of scripture to people like Jerome and his little community and later to philosophers and linguists because those people were entrusted to care for the power of the word
True, but Tyndale was one of these, trained at Oxford (back while England was still a Catholic country), etc. And Tyndale was a part of a community of like minded (e.g., Erasmus, Luther, etc.), and they do seem to have checked their work against one another's. I don't think you can make the case that Tyndale's translation was of poor quality, or that it introduced any particular theological bias into the translated text. Only that it made it accessible to a larger audience (and possibly unprepared) audience.
the humility of the scholar is the humility of one who is in constant awareness of a higher judgement
This should be true of all who teach. It does not appear to me that Tyndale was interested in making the name of Tyndale known throughout the realm. I think he was trying to serve our ultimate master.
the only real way to address scripture from my point of view is ritually...to formulate and proclaim within the body gathered
You'll get no disagreement from me here.
we live in a time when biblical inspiration is lived and articulated around the world
the power of the word is loose onthe planet -- is that a good thing?
It is a mixed thing. Unfortunately, people believe a lot of nonsense. I think this would be true even if the Bible was unavailable.
Stu--
Not only are you a college professor but you are a college math professor. What's the lowest SAT score a student of yours has had in the last decade?
When was the last time you worked with someone whose IQ was less than 115? Less than 100?
Sally--panentheism--that's the ticket ;)
i think tyndale had thrown his hat in with the english protestants
but of course the catholics were still there
elizabeth the first got the last of them out however a rather notable purge began with her father and quite a few church leaders were already leading under the umbrella of the church of england
tyndale grew up in the atmosphere of catholic expulsions and the throne taking all catholic properties (to which i am holding them responsible - they have to give it back soon...or else)
i'm not sure about making the bible available to a wide readership is such a good idea
one could argue that televagelism helps people to mind their behaviour...but bible literacy does not equate with intelligence
watch the michelle scott show sometime
she is fairly well versed in scripture language but she's way off base when it comes to accepted biblical knowledge she is an act who is making a case for orthodoxy on her terms -- she does not read theology
in tyndales' day setting out to make a translation in any language was a pretty lonely affair i would think...i can imagine erasmus supporting the effort but he was bound to run afoul of the rules of the game
so he set out to change the rules
and that's not been very healthy really...it is one thing to translate the bible as a means for greater accessibility...but what about the theology to attend the translations??...hairbrained views of god of jesus of revelation in general abounded as more people took it upon themselves to be their own best authorities...perhaps it is one way god keeps things in a state of perpetual precariousness...no matter how certain the insights and truths there's always someone else around to mess with the well set table
perhaps the pope really is the whore of babylon
(forgive me father for i have sinned)
great to read sally's words on panentheism
in his good friday homily our abbot (he's an inveterate scientist) traced very schematically the unfolding from the big bang
( a very dubious concept) and stated at one point that of all the species that have lived on earth we have today only 2% of these...change is a fact of stability
abbot john went on for a few minutes on the nature of tectonic plates...sally would've perked up at that i bet
but he closed with the image of a monk who went out to the woods in winter and cut some large saplings for lenten decor - the barren naked branches - which were put into wet cement which became concrete bases and stood in the church for the duration of lent
by the time the triduum came around a few of the trees were sprouting leaves - there was enough moisture preserved in the concrete to facilitate the growth of a few little roots
life is so much more powerful than death
i ws once approached by a couple on a train after i had told them i was a catholic monk and they got it in their minds to bring me around to the truth...they asked me if i read the bible...monks are literally saturated with scripture day in and out...but i was in a frisky mood so i told them - o not much..i suggested that the only thing worth reading was the sermon on the mount everything else was just interesing literature...but if people would simply come to terms with that great philosphical tract of jesus we wouldn't need anything else...then i told them i read a lot of poetry and philosophy as well...to which they turned away and committed me to the fires of hell i suppose...decadent monks on trains..surely armageddon is near
scripture itself is never sufficient
we have to read the world and all that is in it
and we should read other things too
for my part i feel blest in that almost every day i can hear the word proclaimed and explicated by capable men (and occasionally women)and that it is done so in the patterns of ritual with hearts open to the world and the church in every corner of the globe (do orbs have corners - methinks not)
tyndale might've gone to rome and made a case for the translation as a way of preserving roman presence in england..a way perhaps to offset the german domination of the monarchy there ( the windsors are germans)...but he was just one more arrogant learned rebel - the church has known so many - back in the day there was some quick justice - i guess we should apologize for tyndales' ugly death
the douai rheims bible was an intense collaborative effort of benedictines dominicans and jesuits and a franciscan or two
it is eaier to read to day than tyndale and in it's day stood beside KJV...the NRSV took some important literary q(s) from douai rheims
i'll suggest that to the holy father next time i see him
while he's apologizing for all the sexual abuse on the planet he could throw in a good word for the rebel martyrs too
joan of arc is proof that you can be killed as a dissident and still become a saint..maybe we could find some miracles attributed to tyndale...shakespeare is a miracle - maybe that's the only one
tyndale didn't take his thomas aquinas to heart if he ever read him...by the 16th century he was out of vogue...except for some great jesuit expositors (suarez et al)
i'd like to hear jacques' take on the tyndale affair and the random dissemination of scripture
god is in nature
and that's why it is always mysterious
here we are on one little speck of dust in the universe and we have all these very big thoughts
what do we really know??
pax woebegonum
jh
Reducing scripture to the S on the Mount is a fun idea. I think we have to certainly expand it so that the whole thing is still in play.
It seems that a lot of the radicals want to kick Paul's testimony out in particular, shrinking it up.
Ten commandments are still very much in play.
Famous Amos.
Luther did try to bench James, but James is back in many sermons around here, I note.
The whole playbook is back.
Tyndale must have been burnt by the Catholics, right -- I don't know his dates exactly.
England changes over when?
Many Catholics still exist in the north of England and have large estates.
I don't know that history either.
The breakdown of British religous groups would be a nice pie chart to have.
I assume the Wiccans are doubling exponentially.
Lots of lutherans bought the farm under Henry VIII, too, including one of the wives, Anne Boleyn.
But some Lutheran thought got snuck into the Episcopalian playbook.
Where are all these teams headed?
in the monastery stu we don't have a maundy thursday service per se
our triduum begins with a seder-like meal (the sabbath household blessings over bread and wine)
the celebration of eucharist highlights the reading of the full passion text of matthew or luke
and it is complete with the washing of feet
-- we generally choose 12 people who are in a variety of service positions on our campus everything from administration to housekeeping
and usually one novice monk
recently our abbot suggested that perhaps we might consider an inhouse monastic footwashing with everyone washing everyone's feet
or at least everyone getting the footwashing
we don't know what to think of this
our abbot is in a rather interesting dialogue with mennonites and the idea came from their use of this practice
we dream of tenebrae
i think it is a very cool liturgy
based on the monastic vigil pattern of readings and psalms
in the heyday of tenebrae services (they've only recently come back to parish liturgy) there was rather elaborate instrumental music
11th 12th century and full and generous participation was expected by all -- after the council of trent the ritual tenebrae was sustained by anglicans - catholics lost sight of it completely somehow
maybe it will be a locus of renewed ecumenical practice!!
st william tyndale
martyr with a good idea at a bad time
pray for us
jh
kirby i googled this up and stole it
natural law is--
is not made by human beings;
is based on the structure of reality itself;
is the same for all human beings and at all times;
is an unchanging rule or pattern which is there for human beings to discover;
is the naturally knowable moral law;
is a means by which human beings can rationally guide themselves to their good.
the rest is from my cognitive dementia
basically it is the insight of aristotle which holds that all things and all manner of things are "designed" and possess a way of being that is common to the kind of thing the thing is
thomas added a decidedly theological reworking of the aristotelian thesis
i like to use the example of the penis
it has a twofold purpose
one is urination
the other is related to procreation
and the continuance of the species
(writing your name in the snow is a whole other matter)
pleasure is what the scholars would call an efficient cause
god made sex pleasurable in order to optimize the possibility of life happening again
so the two primary functions of the penis are what are known as formal causes
in our day many people inadvertantly seem to understand pleasure as a formal cause
this has been a huge sin against natural law..and of course we pay a big price for such oversight
and i think you get this one kirby
you understand this
it requires some thought
but i cannot believe that moral discussions happen without some reference to natural law
modern medical science has all but dispensed with it
thus we have a whole generation of kids now who are being browbeaten with the abstinence theme and they're hornier than all get out and they have nobody to tell them the facts of formal causes or moral considerations relating to the penis
i think we need a penis day
i think i will write a book called the penis dialogues
or the penis decalogues
but of course what do i know
i only know the pleasure of morning urination
other than that i have completely purged all pleasure from my consciousness
monastic life can be likened to trapeze artistry
now i hear they've taken away the net
and they let the lions roam the floor below
that every fingerprint is unique is natural law
that every pine tree grows the way it does
that every eye sees
that every heart beats blood
that snow flakes (yeah i know)
that birds sing
that poetry is natural
for most poets not all
and that life is stronger than death when fueled with love stronger by far
to ignore natural law
is to play with hellfire
i think darwin had a sense of natural law
but he didn't develop it
whereas lamarck and mendel
utilized their sense of natural law effectively
but
everyone needs something to do
peace
green hymnals indeed
jh
i do not wish to suggest that we are ignoring the topic of brett's education
it is vastly important
more important than any recent topic
but you know how things go here brett ole pal
just when you think you're making sense......
Sometimes theologians talk about law as "written on the heart," and I suppose that's the same thing as natural law.
But I don't know why it is that whole populations escape this.
Whole groups of people do not feel that Tiger was a bad boy, but rather that he got his rocks off, and good for him. It's rather incredible what he pulled off. Obama still likes Tiger, and is hoping he will continue to play good golf.
I think he should have his clubs broken, as in the old Branded film, where they pull his buttons off.
Remember the theme song: what do you do when you're branded, and you know you're a man?
The adultery thing hasn't actually been a law since -- well, it was a law in Massachusetts back in the day. When did it change over so that it's a personal matter, rather than a legal one?
Now, no one much cares.
Except for the person who's being cheated.
But you'd think that Tiger would have felt guilt lying there in the dark if there was such a thing as natural law!
But apparently there is none. He could lie his face off to 50 women at a time, and still play excellent golf. It didn't eat at him one bit what he was doing.
So I have to wonder about the natural law business.
I think there are other people who can kill all day long and go about their business. The creep who kidnapped that child at 11 and kept her as his slave until 29. He was just fine with this and thought it was a heart warming love story!
People like Ayers and his amazing wife Dohrn who got Obama launched on his presidential bid -- they could blow up monuments and she could even jump up and down for the Mansons, and yet they are now functioning profs in Stu's town, still packing in lots of people.
It's odd, isn't it?
How can people be so entirely crummy in one area, and yet so functional in another?
We shouldn't neglect Sally's question about pantheism versus panenthusiasm, which I once understood, but does anybody want to sound off on this?
I've been in dental agony all week which has become mental agony. They had to dig inside a gum and fill a cavity, and it gyrated my entire nervous system for the worse, and then they gave me ADVIL and said, try to stay on top of this.
Oh la la.
I've been taking double the recommended about and still losing the will to live.
But here it's the third day and I'm starting to rise above it all, even though I have yet to eye an Easter egg with any alacrity.
Sorrows accumulate, as do questions. Panenthusiastically, I think of Tyndale. He dies in 1536. His bibles are published in Cologne which must have been in Luther's control.
In some other time he could have won an award like the McArthur and been feted and flown from city to city like Raquel Welch with hr new book in which she comes out as a conservative. Raquel is her own woman. Does she believe in natural law. Read her book and see. Let's also line up at a bookstore in some obscure province and asks what she thinks of the panenthusiasm versus Pan's enthusiasm versus Pantheism, and whether she likes Tiger, and can understand, and stuff.
Just buy my book, she will say, keeping things simple.
Can someone be said to follow their nature, and to follow God with equally fervent faith?
did raquel achieve this?
I hope Brett gets his film career going fast enough that he can direct the last film of Raquel Welch.
GM,
Not only are you a college professor but you are a college math professor. What's the lowest SAT score a student of yours has had in the last decade?
When was the last time you worked with someone whose IQ was less than 115? Less than 100?
Actually Computer Science, although I started as an Instructor in Math, many years ago.
But to answer your question with an observation, I have a life outside of work... And even a University has folks in it other than faculty and students.
Two things:
1.
Not sure that intelligence is a great factor for understanding the Bible or believing in God. Remember Jesus says I will bring to nothing the cleverness of the clever.
I think in some ways very simple people might have the best understanding of what it means to be a Christian.
It's hard for the very intelligent to get rid of their egos long enough to help another person in any real way.
2.
I'm not certain that Islam is a religion of peace, as even Bush claimed. If it was, why would they have the "bloody borders" of the Huntington thesis? Why do they countenance terrorism? Why are they so often one-religion states wherever they become dominant? Why are they permitted to kill and enslave unbelievers, or keep slaves as in the southern Sudan? Why are the women wearing bags over their heads and forced to undergo clitorectomies? Why aren't their women allowed to learn to read? why do they have so few rights?
But terrorism as policy in which any individual can go on jihad, and the rest support this, is the signal factor that makes me not understand the contemporary mantra that Islam is a religion of peace.
Within one generation Islam was at war between itself over the succession -- and Sunnis and Shiites have been at it ever since.
I would argue instead the Islam is a religion that has only crazy authoritarian Cyclops types in power, and has no understanding of a just peace whatsoever.
They danced in the streets while our buildings burned while the rest of the world mourned.
I don't think Islamics since the Sufis were eclipsed even have a sense of humor. We are fortunately somewhat insulated from Islam here so far in the west.
Try living in a supposedly pluralistic country like Turkey, and try being a secular writer like Orhan Pamuk, and see if you think Islam is a religion of peace.
They have Cat Stevens and Peace Train, but even he countenanced the death sentence for Rushdie in which ANY Muslim could take him out and get a bounty.
We have to try to be more realistic about this group.
We also have to try to be more realistic about the very simple. They are generally better people than academics.
If I were to choose a good Christian at Stu's university, I would think it would be more likely to find a good one among the maintenance crew or in the kitchens than among their English or Philosophy faculty.
I'm not saying that there aren't individual Muslims who are great people, but as a religion, it's a huge mess.
It's almost as bad as English departments.
suppose there are janitors who read
being and nothingness
we shouldn't lump them all together in generalizations of simplicity
i agree with the take on english departments and i extend that to people who think matters like poetry are really phuqqin important
a simple taxi driver could read robert frost and say wow i like that
a simple guy who works at the butcher shop could not read ezra pound or ron silliman (not that they are in the same category at all) or any of the other mindtwisting o so clever literati
those people are worse than angry muslims actually...the muslim poetry tradition is impressive and it carries with it both a common aspect that everyone can understand and a highly cultivated social aspect that satisfies the minds who incline toward more intellectual pursuit
most really intelligent people should be in prison or in monasteries away from the madding crowd
or
maybe they should be consultants to presidents like rahm is a consultant that guy is really clever
he i think got obama to throw the angry spitting cursing republicans a bone with some blood and meat on it...he say
while lighting up a cig with our muslim nonamerican tribal warrior leader -- hey barack why don't you give those angry republicans some off shore drilling just to shut them up !drill baby drill!
barack say
after blowing out a long billowing cloud of smoke
yeah rahm that's a good idea
will they work with me on immigration reform?
rahm say
doubtful they really phuqqed that up
and you can't tell children just how awful they are they get angry and start calling you names
hey rahm says barack
we did OK with the health care thing
it ain't over yet my man
rahm say
the trick of catholicism has always been how to keep the high intellectual tendencies of man in balance with the needs of simple people of faith
how does an institution based completely on sexual perversion do that?
well it ain't easy
you need a definite sense of fashion
and you need to hire a bunch of really fine artist
jh
in one sense you're absolutely correct kirby in stating that the simple people of faith comprehend the essence of faith better than the intellectuals
but
in matters of translation
in matters of theology
especially as it works it's way into the general market place of ideas
these matters are best left to the brain surgeons of langauge and the
rocket scientists of everythinhg else
the philosphers are important
insofar as they recognize themselves as "dumb oxen"
like one relatively famous Catholic theologian
few in our day have followed this example and they tend to end up looking like friggin idiots
the churh is very careful about her intellectuals
she even kicks them out of the house if they don't behave
like they did to matthew fox may he burn in hell
people who live close to the earth have a much more refined sense of the mystery of nature than do ivory tower wonks or flag wavin literati
the hoitee toitee existentialists never had to measure their work against an accepted tradition
so they could be as arrogant as they wanted
stu
do you know david tracey??
he's taken a pecualiar angle on doing theology siding with the
sentiments of agnosticism and working things out basically as an
exercise in epistemology -- he tries to address the huge gulf of doubt and skepticism that has grown up in the modern post modern post post modern and neo dark ages world of today
thomas aquinas although difficult to our minds as a thinker was insistent upon the sensus communis
the common sense of the man on the street he said once and i paraphrase "if it can't be understood by the man tilling the field it is probably suspect"
this is different than tyndale wanting to put a bible in every man's hand or luther propagating watered down theology for the masses...thomas's view was yes intellectuals should do their work and yes it is complicated and yes it is a huge challenge to which most minds are not easily directed but if the result is not something accessible to the average person of faith then the work is futile
i
Poetry became a new religion after modernism. The flag bearers ended up being NAMBLA pervs like Ginsberg.
First they demanded appeasement, and then they ended up with a takeover.
The same thing happened with the ELCA.
It may yet happen to America itself.
Only the Tea Parties stand between patriotism and a style of appeasement that will lead to the new national socialism.
I'm impressed that they are willing to put their necks on the line.
Again, it's not the intellectuals and appeasers who grasp the essence of the thing.
We'll just get rid of St. Paul, we'll jsut get rid of Leviticus, we'll just vote out anything that you don't like, and cut our religion down so that you feel more welcome. Appeasement begins like that. Then it's the Czechs down the tubes, and then the Jews, and then, finally, noone is left, and it's the likes of Bonhoeffer in the prisons, and it's too late.
I keep seeing articles about the current pope's playing along with the pedophile rings, but haven't been able to sit down and really read it through. There was a big article in Time. I assume that part of this is an attempt to knock apart the Catholic church, but another part may be justifiable finger-pointing.
Institutions can go rotten from within at which point it is incumbent to splinter. They can also be seduced into rottenness.
Or they can be rotten from the git go.
If the essence of Christianity is neighborliness, and working for others, then I don't see sex or food as Christian things, because those are both self-ish.
To be self-less is what the so-called saints supposedly have going for them.
Nature is selfish.
Christianity is selfless.
I think they are diametrical opposites.
nature is i suppose without self
although the generosity of nature is legion legendary
nature gives and gives and gives and gives and gives
nature is sweet nand kind for the most part
unless you have to really survive in it but even then most people work it out
christianity maintians a certain dedicated self interest in the body of christ
the sad untold story
is the church always almost instantaneously took priests out of action for sexual misconduct when it became known many were cast out forever ( do you suppose they're going to tell their stories?) maybe they're out there still lurking trying to touch people i don't know
within the walls of the church we know that priests were removed mysteriously quite often in the 50s 60s many in the 70s 80s and bishops were in general quite strict with the discipline ( so you suppose they're going to tell their stories ) some failures some conniving some sinister some gasping horny people slip through the cracks and then show remorse and then ask for another chance..in an older perhaps more merciful day this was the way of things for all for alcholics for divorcee's for the fallen
confesson repentance let's try it again
i want all of paul
i want all of torah
i just think the ten commandments are passe'
i mean
who covets anymore?
what with desperate housewives everywhere you look?
i like the idea of stoning
but i think we should limit the number of stones
give the guy or the gal a chance anyway
maybe they could come out of the punishment with just a bruised head or something
the saddest part of the recent baring of broken penis sins is that there will never be an openness for healing and reconciliation
there will be lots of money
and we'll get to ride on a new wave of worldwide hatred and suspicion something i'm looking forward to given my propensity to surf (even though i live on dry land inland i crave the ocean)
the other sort of sad part but many might disagree as that the vast majority of priests do good work are polite and decent gentlemen and they are faithful to what they beleive and profess
and they live successful lives by any standard without wives and families -- but these guys are now very suspect because of the failures of a few -- perhaps it is just the torment they need in order to embrace the cross
i think the whole thing is being fueled by angry women who want to be priests
come my fellow madmen my derelicts my wretched loners my perverts my street roamers my whores my addicted desperados my tormented my haunted come
let us to the hour of
the empty grave attend
god has generously given of his nature while nailed to a tree
he emptied himself
and the world is beautiful
once again
A A A A A A A A A A A
i just about said it!!!
jh
jh,
i think tyndale had thrown his hat in with the english protestants
My knowledge of religious conditions in England in the mid-1520's is limited, and you may have more to go on than I do, but it seems to me that to speak of English Protestants in 1525, when Tyndale completed his New Testament, is a bit anachronistic. Reformers, perhaps, but not yet Protestants. To put this into historical context, the Diet at Worms (and Luther's excommunication) occurred in 1521, so the German reformation (in any sort of colorably schismatic sense) is only four years old at this time, the Diet of Augsburg (and the definitive statement of the Lutheran position) isn't until 1530, and the establishment of the Church of England isn't until 1534.
I'd like as well to weigh in on the "virtue of simple Christians" discussion. I think it is mistaken to suggest that the simple (or the intelligent) are better able to be Christian, or purer in their faith. Our different abilities are given for different purposes. It takes a great deal of intelligence to express deep truths in simple language. We are tied together in community. We err when we think that faith is found only through scholarship accessible only to an intellectual or ecclesiastic elite (the ivory/bell tower error), just as we err when we think that the true faith can be held only by the simple, unsophisticated, and unaffected (the Sarah Palin error, to note a recent advocate of this way of thinking).
do you know david tracey
No, although his office appears to be kitty-cornered across the main quads from mine. Sounds interesting.
this is different than tyndale wanting to put a bible in every man's hand or luther propagating watered down theology for the masses
Predictably, I do have a different take on this.
Tyndale was focused on the common man, you'll remember that "plow boy" quote. The danger that concerns you is that it is too easy for people to develop their own peculiar theologies, and then to read it back to themselves through scripture, leading others astray. History proves that this happens, but also that representatives of the church can and have erred in the same way. A public Bible is probably the best protection we can have against selective mining of scripture, or the distortions thereof. To put this in a different way, I believe that the Bible was intended for good, but there is nothing that God intends for good that man hasn't found a way to pervert. The later takes nothing away from the generosity or potential of the former.
As for Luther, I think it is unfair to say that he watered down theology. I'd say instead that he focused on what was necessary for salvation, and made sure that the Lutheran clergy and laity were really solid on that. Luther also rebuilt the mass so that the laity were participants in it, rather than observers of it. This, it seems to me, was a good thing too.
jh,
i think the whole thing is being fueled by angry women who want to be priests
I'm not buying this. We have had women pastors in the ELCA for more than a generation. We have strict policies in place for those who abuse their trust. Yet even so, our church has had to remove Pastors for sexual misconduct, including women Pastors.
People are weak. And sometimes people enter ordained ministry in the hopes of finding strength, only to find that the authority that comes with ordained ministry results in increased temptation. And they fail. The failing of the individual becomes a failing of the church only when it forgets that the ordained ministry exists only to serve the laity, and that it possesses no other right.
I don't intend any of this as a slam against the RCC.
I've never read a fair and balanced account of how all the pervs got into the RCC.
Luther claimed that already in 1515 everything had gone amok in terms of sexual transgressions among the monks. Monks amok, monks amok!
the reformation was an attempt to get everything back to normal.
An older Lutheran pastor told me that the hiring was turned over to lesbian nuns in the 1960s who in turn hired gay men, and that this accelerated the disturbance. But I've never seen a more precise account of the systematic infection of the RCC, or how and whether it's now all cleaned up as JH claims.
Sunlight is the best disinfectant and so on, but the RCC has deep deep recesses.
stu
i don't think you appreciate how
fiercely angry some catholic women are
and how devious and vengeful they seem to be
even the nuns
i've witnessed more than one just lose it on the topic of male hierarchy and only male clergy
i find their arguments to be fueled more by 20th century gender theory than by anything that came before
all tho to bee fair
i've had the distinct pleasure of receiving hospitality and have joined in prayer with some catholic women who are stellar jsut stellar in their life witness so i'm certainly not going so far as to lump the whole mass together
maybe you'd have to be catholic to get a glimpse of it
and the fact that women are clergy in protestant circles only gets them madder or more mad which ever comes first
one famous quote from a parting theologianess and i paraphrase as she stepped down from her post at boston College directed at the archbishop at the time "that bastard hasn't heard the last of me" she was trained in angry woman intellection and she used it like a cudgel
luther introduced hymns long repetitive hymns that jsut about drive me nuts for he in some very basic way misunderstood the language of ritual...which seems strange because he was an augustinian and they tend to knwo their liturgy
the RC church alway maintained participation of the laity
they were cantors they were servers they were ushers they were sacristans they were sextons they were organists..now they read adn make announcements and it's never relly a good thing - once in awhile i'll hear a thoughtful reader of prayer leader but they have a lot of good will but don't think about what is happening on any deeper level
that's why it was discerned early on that there needed to be some experts around
we the AR See folks are returning now to a more prevatican two model of the liturgy becasue of all the mayhem of the last 40 years or more
it sill be a synthesis of the very old adn the very new once again
my sense is that most lutheran places survived because of faithful witness of the laity
leit urgos is basically translated as the word of the laity and this comes from the idea of public ceremony which precedes christianity -- but we also know there were always the show leaders
the EM CEEs the high priests who knows how high they were and the parade chaperones - all highly trained people -- o yes and the musicians --- most of them were hopeless wastrels -- they still are !-}
i think luther created a gulf wherein the traditions of the church were lost and replaced with ersatz traditions...i know this..yet there were some germans who remained basically catholic in every aspect but the name some even retained the name...Kant fillled a philosophical gap to some extent but in the end his trajectory of thought diverged from teh church men sho thought deeply before him and hsi though led to the philosphical chaos of the 19th adn 20th century which in turn could be viewed as teh underpinnings for cultural chaos
i recently read
michael burleigh's
SACREd CAUSES
an eye opening exploration into 20th century megalomaniacal madness
i think it far more likely that a minnesota lawyer with a porpoise driven life is out to nail the holy father to the cross
but the catholic girls can get very angry these days
don't kid yerself
i love 'em all tho
smoochers
huggs
i go now to the great christian vigil
i offer all of you folks on this blog
a most glorious and joyous easter!!
jh
My understanding is that the rate of perversion among Catholic priests is about standard when compared to the rest of the population -
The problem has been the covering up of crimes and the shifting around of perpetrators, as well as the lack of turning the criminals in to the proper authorities.
Maybe there's a feeling in the Catholic church that the church Is the proper authority?
It seems that there's an organizational error to this that a twokingdomish worldview would help...
Brett has a point, they need to work with the police, and put their perps into prisons, and allow the victims to air their grievances, and to achieve some legal closure. Just shuffling the perps is -- not quite efficient in ending the problem, and also, kind of a scofflaw's viewpoint: as if they are above the law.
They should recognize the law the same as everyone else, and submit their pervs to the legal process.
it's after midnight
i'm just out of a long mass
2 and a half hrs
phew
you guys are terrible
until about 1980
everyone dealt with internal
seaminess in the same way
families didn't talk about incest
lots of girls never talked about rape
nobody really talked about homosexual stuff in any way other than jesting
the rules changed
bishops generally tried to err on the side of prudence
of course they were concerned with the life of priests and the life of the faithful and all this stuff
was and is as bad for them as it is today
everybody wants sexual justice these days
the police were generally happy to let church people deal with their own stuff
until the rules changed
now we live in
police state light
which is good for eternally paranoid people
like most protestants
the rate of incest and sexual abuse in families is quite a bit higher than in catholic circles
people don't trust celibacy
even when it is lived with exemplary dignity
teh 60s adn 70s saw extraordinary abuse of authority in colleges
on this very topic
and most people never got nailed
until the rules changed
i'm all for seperation of church and state
but the founding fathers of the constitution had every expectation that religion would influence the lives of people - the seperation was more a matter of not allowing the state to intrude upon religious life -- and insuring that no one denomination would become a state religion
legal bodies had very little experience with sexual laws
until quite recently
even rape was often dealt with in terms of a conundrum
now the law favors women no matter what
and whether you're willing to accept it or not
the principle of litigation in sexual abuse cases that i am aware of in RC circles follows the idea of "you are guilty until proven innocent" and i've seen more than one priest forced to live in abject rejection of his vocation based on insubstantial allegations
-only recently is that changing a bit
we live in a culture where the state sanctions murder of innocents
the state does not subscribe to the basic wisdom of religious morality which holds that a human being is a human being no matter what
but the girls can get away with murder now
but there's no mercy for the
silly pervert..that's the worst crime ever
even though this fine country was built on the abuse of children
i say we cast out the child labor laws and get those kids back into the factories
the church has erred on the side of mercy and the notion of the second chance
seems like our faith is the faith of the second chance
it would seem that this night suggests there is mercy aplenty for the sinner
there are not two kingdoms
it's a lutheran fiction
perpetuated by paranoid freaks
we're idiots babe
it's a wonder that we still know how to breathe
how do lutheran officials deal with sexual abuse
peace
jh
He is risen!
Glorious Easter to all. . . .
Jacques & Em
doesn't paul say somewhere that
christians should not bring suits against one another in the civil courts
I was on a jury a few times. In fact, I've been on plenty of juries, but generally the cases have been tossed. In one, however, the case went to trial, and it was about a drunk who one midnight of New Year's smashed into nine cars and killed seven children while coming out of a Navy base party.
The trial was only to ascertain whether or not this was drunken driving, and whether he should lose his license.
Things have tightened up in a few areas, while loosening in others.
We're now pretty mad about drunken drivers, and have MADD on the case.
Back then you could take out a whole neighborhood and have a suspended license for a year.
So the trial was to determine whether he should lose his license for a year.
A woman on the jury with me said that she was a drunk, and that she had a lot of sympathy for the young man who would lose his license.
I wanted to wring her neck, but because there are laws in place, and because she was about 65, I thought I would attempt to reason with her instead.
I said, "Balance your sympathy for the driver with a sympathy not only for the mothers and fathers who have lost their children, but also for mothers and fathers who may lose more children if we let him go on driving."
This tilted the case.
The woman then went against the perp, and he lost his license for a year. This was supposedly a heavy penalty at the time.
I wonder if we could just balance our sympathy for the pervs in churches with a sympathy for the parents who are sending their children into churches, only to have them pawed by wolves.
What people are, and nature is, I think there have to be laws that maybe don't force them to be angels (I don't think people can be angels, but they can stay off of each other, right?).
I'm for the law, and the police, and for the army. I think Jesus was, too.
"I have not come to bring peace, but a sword." Matthew 10:34
It is important to retain an edge, and a certain kind of balance of ookiness.
It's Easter, He's risen, and the flowers are out.
Obama's approval rating has now fallen to 44% according to a new CBS poll:
"The new CBS poll has President Obama's approval rating reaching a record low, with only 44% approving of his performance, and 41% disapproving.
The 44% approval number is down from 49% two weeks ago, a five-point decline since the health care bill passed, and disapproval is unchanged. Other polls have shown Obama enjoying at least a temporary bounce immediately after the bill was signed, but this poll at least suggests a decrease in the span of two weeks.
Also from the poll: "When it comes to health care, the President's approval rating is even lower -- and is also a new all-time low. Only 34 percent approved, while 55 percent said they disapproved."
Those are fairly low numbers. I think it's unclear what Obama wants. If his friends like Jennifer Dohrn liked Manson, and approved of eating dinner with silverware that the Manson family had used to kill pregnant Sharon Tate, you have to wonder if birds of a feather --
I mean, is he intending to slaughter the middle class, and eat us up out of some kind of angry vengeance along the lines of Jennifer Dohrn?
what has America done that is so horrible that there is now a political class that wants to destroy America, and has pastors cursing our poor nation, and asking God to actually DARN us?
I feel like I'm on a roller coaster ride going down into hell at the speed of light.
Oh my goodness.
I work at a summer camp. It is a youth development camp with not much of a religious background. The standards that we have for our staff are quite high.
If you smoke weed anywhere ever over the summer, you'll be fired.
If you've ever had a DUI, you can't work at camp.
If you drink underage while on staff, this is grounds for dismissal.
All because of the fact that working with children requires a huge amount of responsibility, and the camp wants its counselors to be responsible, law-abiding citizens...and also, let's be frank, so that they can prove this in court if they ever get sued.
I would take it as INSANE if anyone who had ever molested a child were to work at camp.
We are people in positions of trust...We must be trustworthy...Smoking a bit of weed while we are under contract for a job working with children is enough of a transgression for us to realize that this person is Not trustworthy. Then they get fired, and go do something else where they don't have so much responsibility.
This can be difficult, since the world has more lenient standards. One summer, we fired 20 people. But it was worth it, and the camp kept its integrity...
Those who have committed heinous criminal acts against those over whom they have authority are in another, much more punishmentdeserving category.
God may grant forgiveness in the afterlife, we may grant personal forgiveness, but this does not mean that people should commit crimes without consequence.
Forgive the rapists and molesters the way we forgive murderers...
By telling them God loves them while they rot in their prison cells.
From an organizational standpoint, the only thing that makes sense is to turn in criminals when they commit crimes.
Especially crimes of abuse towards those under their authority.
The standards of an organized church body should at LEAST be in the same Ballpark as an unaffiliated summer camp...
It is my duty to start down the path of reporting molesters to the authorities even if I do not know the person.
If a member of my Staff molested a camper, it would be flatout criminal of me not to fire that person and get them started on their way to jail.
Not to mention sinful and impractical.
All this hippideedippideee hoo-ha about 'second chances' applies if someone has had trouble with time management, or maybe they let out a curse word at the wrong time.
If they molest a child, then 'second chance' doesn't apply in terms of their being in a position of high, unique responsibility and trust...
They may have a second-chance at heaven, but that's God's decision, not ours.
Here, they have a jail cell.
Here, they Definitely don't keep their jobs or get put into another position of authority.
jh,
stu
i don't think you appreciate how
fiercely angry some catholic women are
My sympathies are with them. They've been very patient, after all. The early Church made full use of the spiritual gifts of women, but this was something that was lost during the second century as the Church began its long rapprochement with Rome.
Well, the Roman Empire has passed away, and still to many Churches, the Roman Catholic Church included, are pandering to its prejudices. Nineteen hundred years is a long time to wait, a long time for the gifts of the Holy Spirit to be held captive to the fears of men.
i find their arguments to be fueled more by 20th century gender theory than by anything that came before
all tho to bee fair
i've had the distinct pleasure of receiving hospitality
I don't doubt that 20th century gender theory has played a role, but I think to denigrate the gifts that the Holy Spirit has given to women, or to try to contain them to roles where any hint of a woman having spiritual authority over a man can be safely avoided, is to miss the point entirely.
the RC church alway maintained participation of the laity
they were cantors they were servers they were ushers they were sacristans they were sextons they were organists
I think you're missing my point here. In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century, most of the titles you've give (cantor, sacristan, sexton) were minor orders, and not part of the laity proper. That in contemporary RC worship, the laity has responsive parts in the liturgy and sings the hymns is given. This is something that the Churches of the Reformation recovered in the early 16th century, and only later by the RCC.
My point here isn't that the RCC church is evil now, or was evil then, but rather that the Reformers did a great deal of good, and that the RCC has subsequently responded in positive ways to the great majority of their criticisms. So you are in error when you dismiss them. Indeed, it seems to me to say that the significance of the Council of Trent was that it recognized that there was an essential validity to the reformers criticisms of the RCC of the time, and that if nothing was done, it would continue to spawn reformation movements until nothing was left. So the effect (if not exactly the intent) was to meet the Reformers half way. Vatican II is a modern parallel, with similar causes and a similar result.
now they read adn make announcements and it's never relly a good thing - once in awhile i'll hear a thoughtful reader of prayer leader but they have a lot of good will but don't think about what is happening on any deeper level
With respect, that's a failure of training. I won't deny that we have the occasional flat reader, but this is an exception, not the rule. Practice helps, clergy and laity alike. Public speaking is hard.
my sense is that most lutheran places survived because of faithful witness of the laity
I think this is true, but I also think that Lutheran laity and clergy are not alienated from one another, as often seems to be the case in the RCC. This has benefits and disadvantages, but for what it's worth, I've never felt inhibited about seeking or accepting spiritual direction from a Lutheran pastor.
Indeed, and this is truly peculiar, I find myself much more willing to actively engage RCC priests in conversation than many of my Catholic friends. So much so, that I think that RCC parish priests must often feel quite isolated within their communities.
i think luther created a gulf wherein the traditions of the church were lost and replaced with ersatz traditions...i know this
With great respect, I know that you're wrong.
jh,
how do lutheran officials deal with sexual abuse
No point guessing. Let me point you at the source.
ELCA: Called to be a Saft Place
Stu,
I read through the ELCA deal, and couldn't find any specific recommendations regarding what would need to happen if a transgression were to occur, who would sanction the punishment, or what the punishment would be, or any sense of an outcome.
I do think it's important that churches be safe places.
Brett's place is a lot more clear in terms of what they expect.
What I don't understand about the blind eye of the Catholic response was this bizarre shuffling of the problem to another place within the Catholic church, where presumably more crimes would take place, until another shuffling occurred.
The buck didn't stop anywhere.
I can't understand the cause of this unless the NAMBLA core in the church was so extensive that standing up to them meant that you yourself were reassigned to a church in Antarctica.
There needs to be a sound oversight group.
The Catholics had foxes in the henhouse who were also responsible for the oversight.
Once an institution becomes THAT corrupt, the institution itself is fatal to anyone who comes in contact with it.
It's like Soviets policing the institutional flaws of Communism.
I think one thing that has to happen is the notion of checks and balances -- watchdog groups disciplining other groups fairly with the only end in mind being the sanity and safety of the institution itself. You have to guard the institution itself or the whole thing will come tumbling down.
Marxism has a proven track record of being procedurally unable to do this.
Catholicism has it (for at least five centuries and counting).
Lutherans and a few others have been mostly able to fend off the worst excesses of their clergy (there have been a few notorious cases -- but even those are more of a rumor to me).
The worst thing is when a group member or leader suddenly becomes like a guru to the others. And attains a cult-like status, but is in fact a wretch.
Awful things happen all the time within Buddhism. the worst being at Naropa Institute where a gay man with AIDS named Osel Tenzin forced hundreds of acolytes to have sex with him as part of their training, without even making them aware he had AIDS.
Lots of people died.
Buddhism is horrific in its lack of procedural safeguards.
Laws have to presume the very worst in people, and then guard their institutions against those tendencies.
the big thing that worries me about the left is that they presume that people can be good all the time.
they can't.
People are often selfish and mean. Some people are actually Satanic.
You have to be able to get those people out of your institution instead of merely shuffling them off to another branch of the institution and letting them hurt still other people.
But once an entire institution is corrupted by a messiah type like Kim Jong-Il, how do you begin to turn the thing around?
Iran is not quite as bad, but it's getting there.
The situation at WACO was just intolerable.
Is there a field of studies having something to do with procedural safeguards within disciplines and institutions, and comparative analysis of them?
Laws have to be clear and specific and they have to protect the innocent from the psychos. Every fourth person is a psycho according to the book The Psycho Next Door (is that the title of the book I'm thinking about?).
Oops, the book is called The Sociopath Next Door, by Martha Stout. And it claims that only 1 in 25 has no conscience at all.
What I find so amazing about evil people is that they usually manage to recategorize what they've done. Pol Pot at the end of his life gave an interview in French (I heard it on NPR about twenty years ago) in which he spoke in a very soft voice about all the good things he had done for the Cambodian people.
I thought that he actually meant this.
I'm sure many dictators have some sense that what they are doing is a fine thing, whether it's ramming through healthcare in order to get more power over people, or whether it's killing seven million Jews.
Whatever they're doing, they somehow think it's a net good no matter how many people protest. They just think the protesters are evil people.
They cannot understand a viewpoint other than their own. And any other viewpoints are evil.
So I am not so sure of the sociopath notion.
I'm sure that the woman who gunned down all those people in Huntsville really thought somehow that what she was doing was just fine. They don't have a conscience or even a sense of what they're doing as wrong.
I have no idea how that viewpoint arrives.
I have no idea how someone like Saul alinsky can deliberately go out and lie, and think it's ok, because it's in a good cause.
I don't get it.
I dno't even understand how someone can say something's going to be on C-span, and then never put it on, and still get to sleep at night.
I have no understanding how someone can tell 20 or 30 women he loves them uniquely, and will care for them, and then turn around and play a perfect game of golf.
It's the oddest thing I can imagine, and I can't even imagine it.
But apparently at least one person in 25 is like this.
We probably all know about fifty people.
So we know 2 of these folks, on average.
I find it scary when that guy J would show up here and lie and skew and scheme, and stalk my commenters, and then claim he had done no such thing, and even said over on Silliman's blog that he had never even been here more than a half a dozen times, and had never left more than six comments.
How do people arrive at these notions that anything at all goes, so long as you're not caught?
Whatever it is, these people do exist, and in a country like America, there are at least 15 million of them.
So you have to set up institutions that get them out, or your institution is in trouble.
Looking through the ELCA guidelines I'd say they are setting themselves up for a disaster by being as unclear as they are. One of the worst structural faults in the document I read is that if you choose you can simply resign, and the ELCA does not pursue the matter.
Absolutely atrocious.
There should be a police follow-up.
I don't know what Missouri does. I hesitate to look.
I can't stand looking at procedural safeguards, because there are generally loopholes big enough to drive a Panzer tank through, or a whole army of Panzer tanks.
I was so happy on the other hand to read Brett's account.
I think his camp gets it.
i suppose lutheran liturgical life is varied
in the half a dozen or so times i've visted a lutheran service there was only "eucharist" once -- the rest of the times it was scripture hymns and preaching
which became the pattern in the breakoff communities
the musical language of liturgy inherited from the jews and then the greeks was chant
the germans even tried to turn gregorian chant into metered rhythmic ("the mensuralist controversy") hymns
catholic women have no justification for being impatient or angry with the men in RC life...they assume a very shallow and selfrighteously ignorant postion when they do... they can trace back through the history of women and find plenty of examples of women finding ways to serve christ and the church fully endorsing them
there is virtually no historical precedent for women serving in the role of eucharistic priest - none - maybe one or two imposters - there was a medici girl who tried to be pope - she never said mass -- those were the days when popes didn't necessarily have to be priests
if one were to focus on teh life of benedictine women alone throughout the ages - just that- one would find that these people engaged in all kinds of important work and they still do
the barking catholic bitches take their Q(s) from the angry feminists of the 20th century and from modern psychology
they refuse to hold their narrow points of view up to any sort of scrutiny
all that has come before is from men so automatically it is worthless to them
they are protestants and i think that's where they should go
leave the rest of us alone
jesus established one church
in a police state everyone is suspect
not until von harnack did lutherans wake up to the realization that the RC held on to the vision of the patristic writers
and they the protestorians had left all that far behind
until recently
now they seem to be the resident experts on patristics
the treasuretrove of truth cannot be entrusted to day laborers
it requires ardent commitment
from people willing to do constant detail work and constant research and constant thinking about what is appropriate or not for worship
the whole thing of criminal background checks is quite recent
i'm sure it provides a certain amount of added security for camp scenarios
every parish priest must go through this now
every parish worker must
every year there are workshops after workshops explaining abuse and harassment
odd
where i am there is spike of cases in the human rights office dealing with reverse harassment where smart alecks are taking priests to task just for the fun of it
and the word is that most of these events aren't reported the priests just wear egg on their faces
the church works out of a moral program that is charitable at its base
the world since "enlightenment" (what a joke) works out of a utilitarian moral code
and this is getting more and more pronounced
in relatively innocent civil encounters between hardluck cases and police in minnesota the common default now is shoot to kill
i guess that saves on court costs
and while there may be an investigation it is rare that cops are held accountable
there is severity and paranoia everywhere now
i can taste it when i visit parishes
i hear it from the priests and deacons in the field
stu the gifts of the holy spirit are not held captive
and women who would think this way are fooling themselves
it was such a common understanding that men served in the liturgy at the eucharistic table that the issue of women serving in that capacity almost never makes it into any historical consideration - a few random disputes in canon law but it was never much of an issue for anyone until after VC 2
the women campaigning for it in RC circles today and commiting themselves to acts of disobedience do so aat the expense of the faith life of everyone else -- and they don't see this -- they get some modern theological learnin and some deep charges from the literatue of rampant feminism and they consider themselves fit for service at the altar
and the thing standing in their way is automatically bad because well we know where the righteousness stands don't we
the contingent roles of servants in the history of catholicism gave formal recognition to people in those roles be they "ordained" or not -- the nature of church life was such that all the roles were determined and blessed in formal terms -- yet the minor orders were not necessarily linked to major orders not until the 1800s when most large cathedrals and urban churches were at no loss for man power and seminarians took over most of the secondary liturgical roles
i do believe the RC world will go in the direction of eastern orthodoxy before it will turn receptively to the witness of protestantism
that's what's happenin now
it can't happen soon enough for me
vsex is a perilous part of being human
it is a domain of existence which begs for mercy and forgiveness
brett you might just check out some reading matter on the social structures of the puritans
your camp experience seems to reflect soem of that spirit
my days in catholic youth summer camp were complete with snitching
altar wine stealing cigarettes swearing profusely checking out some porn and lots of games and creative things like pottery and waterskiing and field games and competitions
and some required reading times
no abuse that i can recall
no girls all boys
it's where i learned to play guitar and sing around the campfire
sin
is it human
i am guilty
share in the guilt of all human sin
there is no sin like that which permeates the systems of justice
in the illusory "this world kingdom"
for to people in these systems humans are not made in the image and likeness of god
i think only when sexual life is directed to god as the ultimate object of desire can it be dignified in any way
i suppose that is linked to the fact that the vast majority of jokes are sexual
i'm sayin
it's time to live
in the spirit of the 8th
beatitude
let us sit back and watch american culture implode
jesus has broken through the chains of ignorance and death
everything
including human law
is new
i would sit down and share a meal with any pervert before i'd even speak with a woman who believes that abortion is a useful social practice
i feel so blessed to pray the psalms every day
it allows me to think of all the horrors of christian misunderstanding in ways that will always evade those who don't get it
i am presently reading into the life of padre eusebio kino sj the missionary of sonora and south arizona - an astounding example of brilliance and service in the field
the 20th century saw much of this change
the preference seemed to be in midcentury for priests to be business savvy and trained in people skills and live a life that looked like the portrait of the laughing jesus
i see nothing of value that came from all this
the men who still advocate humanist psychological rhetoric tend to see the church in much the same way kirby does -- it's really amusing -- they see the structure of the church as the problem - i see them as the problem
they've got all the modern selfesteem books but they no nothin of theology -- of the men i know who were implicated in recent difficulties to the last one they are proponents of the new psychology informed social thinking they are essentially behaviorists -- i just say now: the sadness is they read too many wrong books
the holy father is an easy target for calumny
it's time to live in the full spirit of the 8th beatitude
i appreciate the counter thoughts in this stream
it helps me be convinced there's only one institution in the world doing things right
life in this world is good friday
life in the church is easter sunday
and i would be willing to bet
nobody gets it outside the circle of sacred hearts pictures of saints bloody corpii on the cross madonna and child and formal daily liturgy devotions rosarys gaudy stained glass windows and mysterious and very strange rituals
if you don't have that going on
you don't have much going on at all
if you don't have that
you don't have it
and you shouldn't bother to argue from a place of deprivation
you've bought into the rhetoric of a superficial world
it is a comedy divine
and all roads lead to rome
i hold out some hope that
one day you'll get it
it looks almost hopeless from here
anyway
i have some serious rejoicing to do
from now on it's the day of the 8th beatitude
nothing else matters
not even civil law
this was the witness of the
martyrs of the first 3 centurys of christ's resurrection
i no longer live
but christ lives in me
(that paul never did understand the two kingdom doctrine...neither does anyone else- evidently)
resurrexit
sicut dixit
alleluia
alleluia
alleluia
jh
a few years ago a lutheran pastor became a catholic and he was received here at the abbey and i asked him what was it that drew him to this decision -- his response was something like that of richard neuhaus -- it was the awareness that within the body of catholic life there exists a rich variety of style and charism -
( he also confessed a weakness for inveterate pervs ;-}) and the intellectual tradition exceded anything any other denomination had to offer and the witness of franciscans and jesuits was enough to know the wheel needed no re-inventing and that the continual day in day out awareness of liturgy and life was sadly lacking in protestant circles -- neuhaus became aware that all the ecclesial confusion in protestantism was little more than that - confusion - and that the ignorance in the ranks was never to be fully addressed from even the most intelligent of protestant thinkers and servants -- and the catholic church had resolved all of this confusion
what we face today is not confusion but sordid ignorance and delusions from without
and we welcome these
rejoice!
the newest wave of sordid ignorance is coming from women
time for some good old fashioned witch burning
the only priest i know who left Rc life and joined the protestant/anglicans so that he could have a male lover and serve as a priest that way
i can imagine no greater embarassment -- i shudder in horror just to think that sort of thing is tolerated by anyone
there will never be an easy synthesis of humanist positivist thinking in the catholic church -- we tried it for awhile but now the consensus seems to be that we need to retrieve some of what we left behind and that what looked new and attractive in humanist possibilities is in fact a trap
an insidious trap of misplaced understandings about human nature and human thinking
until the late 19th century a priests' formation was primarily sacramental and intellectual and there was a given expectation that the life of the priest would utilize intellectual gifts throughout the career of the priest
this did not undermine gifts for the holy spirit but provided a context for employing those gifts
it placed far more trust in the working of the holy spirit than we give today
There are lots of hambones, JH.
The synod in which I'm now in doesn't allow women pastors.
I'm fine with that. There are plenty of denominations that allow them.
I don't know the history. The silence of the women in Christ's life is incredibly impressive. More or less sidelined, but there after his crucifixion. There's something amazing about women's silence that not many contemporary people have noticed.
There's something impressive about silence, and people being able to shut up, and simply witness. I think it's an incredible thing to have done.
Writing is far easier.
Speaking is far easier.
The really amazing thing about women, and what makes them so eerie, is when they are silent, but not angry.
I like that you are a holdout on this issue.
I do think that some women (those who are not down with the garbage of cultural Marxism, which is my main enemy in life in case no one has noticed) -- can write ingenious things. I'm very impressed by Marianne Moore in case no one has noticed.
I like our holdouts in general. I like how GM is a holdout on Lincoln, and on the question of slavery. It gives me pause.
I think everyone should be irrational on some topic, or hold to a rationality that is beyond the rest of us.
It gives a person character, and makes conversation worthwhile, as it seems there is a deep mystery on these topics.
Happy Easter everyone!
Kirby, I wanted to say jh is correct wrt teaching and theology and intelligence: I was not referring to faith.
Stu, along the same lines, I was not talking about personal interaction but teachability.
Hard theology is at least as difficult as CS, no? Could an IQ <115 fella get along in a CS classroom?
We had a nice Easter at the church today starting with a very good pancake breakfast served by the Girls Club.
I'm doing a thousand piece jigsaw puzzle of the State birds and flowers with wife now.
I like doing large puzzles with lots of small pieces.
IQ helps I think in terms of finding patterns, and filling them in with the right details.
One of my kids is weird. He pops by, looks out of the corner of his eye, and fastens a piece in, and then goes back to his coloring book. I don't know how he does this. I think he does it by matching colors. He seems to do this with all our puzzles. Just a kindergartner.
He is using his brain in a peculiar way, I think.
jh,
i suppose lutheran liturgical life is varied
in the half a dozen or so times i've visted a lutheran service there was only "eucharist" once -- the rest of the times it was scripture hymns and preaching
which became the pattern in the breakoff communities
You must have visited our churches decades ago. The historical pattern in Lutheranism involved communion at every Sunday worship. This was lost in the US during the "nativist" period of intense anti-Catholic prejudice in the US (I'm talking the 1880's, give or take). Our worship practices were so close to yours that we were often confused with you. This lead to a pattern of less frequent (quarterly or monthly) communion. This affected us for almost a century, and it is by no means to our credit. But it is a rare church in the ELCA that does not celebrate weekly communion today. So complete is the change that our current hymnal (ELW) no longer provides supporting rubrics for an "ante-communion" service, i.e., a Sunday worship service of the sort you witnessed that does not involve communion.
Luther should not be blamed for this error. He valued the Eucharist, and emphasized it as a sacrament of our Church. He'd have been horrified, too.
there is virtually no historical precedent for women serving in the role of eucharistic priest
I think that a fair reading of Paul indicates that women lead house churches in the 50's in and 60's. Certainly, several of his epistles are directed to women, who appeared to be leaders of their churches. Were they priests? It is not clear that the Christian church of the time had settled on this terminology. Indeed, the only occurrence of "priest" in Paul is in Romans 15:16. Did they lead eucharistic meals? I believe they did, and arguments to the contrary seem to rest on projecting the belief that they never did onto the texts. Gal. 3:28: "There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus." This seems pretty unambiguous, doesn't it?
And indeed, you're forgetting about Prisca and Maximilla. Admittedly they were Montanists, and as such belong to a branch of early Christianity that did not become a part of the Catholic orthodoxy, but you can't simply conjure them out of existence. And to the extent that the Roman Church of the late second century criticized the Montanists, the fact that the later had what in effect were female bishops seems not to have been an issue, and I think could hardly have been until the NT canon was normalized with 1st Timothy as a part of it, and this was a significantly later development.
And don't forget Junia, who Paul described as an apostle.
These seem to me to be significant historical precedents.
Separately, let me note that my worship life within the Lutheran Church included Maundy Thursday, Tenebrae, Vigil, and Easter services this year. I'm not about to put my worship life up for comparison against a Benedictine monk, but I do think it is reasonable to put this up against the worship life of the contemporary Catholic laity. I do not mean to be prideful, not at all, but I doubt I will suffer much in the comparison. My church does not hold these observances as an obligation. I have been there because I have wanted to be there.
Our camp culture is not 'puritanical...' There is just a huge amount of respect for the law and an understanding of the responsibility we have (which is pretty big - the emotional and physical well-being of other people's children).
So as Counselors on time off, we do what 20-somethings do, within the bounds of the law and so that we can function at 100% while on duty (this means we drink if we're of age, tell dirty jokes and curse, many philander, etc.) But it also means that, after a night off, you have you be sober to wake up at 4:00 a.m. when that kid comes knocking on your door because he's puking and needs help...
And it's actually law that if a child tells a counselor about abuse (from home, from wherever...), the counselor is required to report it so that it can be investigated...
Of course, around the children we promote an environment of emotional safety - clean speech, clean actions, no distractions from mechanical gadgets or cigarettes or drugs or any of those other things that would detract from the campers' experience).
"Puritanical" does not at all describe our culture...Being respectful of our huge responsibilities while also having lots of fun...that does.
And we don't let any sickos through our doors. Sickos don't belong in positions of authority over children. They belong in jail, maybe a mental hospital.
I find it weird, JH, that you tend toward the flimsyflamsy peopleareallsinners and let's give them a secondchance to havevictims...
I would think you'd be pissed at the perpetrators and those in authority who handled the situation poorly for f'ing with the Catholic church's good name.
Hell, even as someone totally separate from the organization, being someone who often has the responsibility to care for children, I get royally pissed when others in my general field (of caring for children, in some way shape or form) abuse that authority in the most despicable of ways.
Forgiveness does Not mean a lack of consequences...
Kirby,
Looking through the ELCA guidelines I'd say they are setting themselves up for a disaster by being as unclear as they are. One of the worst structural faults in the document I read is that if you choose you can simply resign, and the ELCA does not pursue the matter.
Absolutely atrocious.
There should be a police follow-up.
I think you're misunderstanding.
There is nothing in ELCA guidelines that precludes remedies outside of the synodical structure, nor could there be. One a Pastor has resigned from the roster (note that this what is referred to, not mere resignation from a specific call), there is no longer a legal relationship between the ELCA and that individual. Since severing the relationship is the greatest punishment available through the disciplinary process, resignation moots the process.
If there should be police follow-up, there should be police follow-up, and I would expect the ELCA to cooperate will law enforcement in such cases. But the ELCA as such would not have standing to press charges.
Stu, there should at least be an encouragement to follow through.
We are kicking our problems down the road.
Americans have to stand together against crime.
It isn't neighborly not to.
Right?
i sometimes wonder about the parental urge and i've struggled with that as a monk
but i am older now and i don't think about things like social safety mechanisms unless i confront them on a blog or something...age does more than pious learnin to bring a man around to healthy living and a good moral life, i fear
i guess what i'm sayig is i've seen enough of the darker side of human beahaviour to know it is at some level endemic to human nature..i've heard the strangest most disturbing revelations from people who i would not expect such a thing
christ came to embrace the worst of human expression
and i feel it is somehow incumbent upon me to try to emulate that
where i am
considerable care is taken to create a safe place
but for many years this place was known as a default reformitory
kids from broken homes kids running into fracuses with the law kids stealing cars moving dope or liquor would be sent here
judges thinking way back then that soem sort of discipliine is the only hope for these kids and i suspect that the monks saw about everything corrupt human nature has to offer
it was also a time when one certain monk was famous far and wide for a recipe for grain alcohol and copper still designs
"minnesota 13"
so those days were far more contained in patterns of acceptance of the worst human nature had to offer and a certain sustained decadence was accepted as a manner of life
things are much more puritanical now
and how would i now
perhaps that's the way it should be
sexual irrationality seems to be a fact of life
we all do well to explore the rollercoaster ride of human desire
when the time is right
but we live in a time also where young people are "informed" to the gills with information they can easily access they go adn see things on these contraptions i would never think of looking at
and they carry guns
a high schooler was just busted here recently for bragging about a gun in his car sure enough there it was
i doubt he meant anything
he was stupid
but there it was
right up the street from where i live
kid is 14
what is he thinking
so any policing that can be done in this mad world is welcome
that you can do some and extend some protections our world seems to gnaw away at is a good thing
i simply hold that in the full panonoply of human possibilities we're bound to see some of what's worst
and he is risen to tell us
"hey i can embrace and
love this too"
these days there is no second chance even for priests who have been falsely accused if the accusation is out there it will not go away
not much pisses me off anymore
blessed 50 days of easter
jh
brett
the church is a community of sinners
those who know their guilt
those who know their need
what good does it do anyone to bemoan the fact
the church is a human institution above all
and continues to exist despite the human flaws that could bring most places down
a minute proportion of cases with priests had to do with children per se
the vast majority of cases were with adolescents
i don't condone any crossing of the lines of social responsiblity i find the whole spectre of sexual awareness in modern psychology an absolute horror film but i certainly don't blame anyone for falling into the lurid attractions of sensual pleasure no matter how demented
i once lived next to a guy before i was a monk who had a thing for plastic dolls and some distractions in another part of town i never followed him to see what he was up to but it was sort of like you could smell the seediness on this guy
i engaged him in conversation we shared coffee and talk once in awhile he was at his core a very decent human being with very generous understandings about human beings he was however quite sexually broken but i learned to like the guy
i still hear from him once in awhile i consider him a real friend
at one very interesting level he was as innocent as a child
he was in some ways pathetic
but a real substantial human being none the less
i learned that it's not always necessary to address people by their most glaring and dispicable characteristics..unless of course they want to be known that way
so sorry about playing into your royal anger about all this
i agree with the wave of anthropolgists who noted that cultures who maintained social traditions for thousands of years had ways of creating "worlds" for children quite distinct from the adulty world and i would liek to see a social development like that in this culture where children are given huge amounts of space until they are 12 or 15 where they don't have to presume to interact on the culturalpolitical scene with adults
the transition to the adult world should be a drastic eye opening something moderated ritually
our culture has destroyed any semblance of that
the children have guns and they do crack and they get impressed by thugs and it's all displayed as sort of cute american idol crap
maybe summer camps provide a remnant of that idea and that it's done with a serious concern for safety and enjoyment is a good thing
sort of an extension for daycare for most american families
much like wilderness has become an extension of the american school playground
i only state for contrast the experience i had at catholic youth camp
we were terribly misbehaved prone to stealing explored the use of profanity as a social tool and
(i'm not sure but i may have learned to jack off there)
and we interacted with adults college guys and seminarians and they were good patient leaders
i suppose they let us get away with hell
but being that far away from rather strict catholic homes it was like paradise
Is imprisonment really the best solution to pedophilia? Is it even a solution at all? How long is a typical sentence? And then what happens? They are back out, without having had any support or help to learn how to safely live with themselves and others?
Yes, we have a responsibility to keep them out of positions where they might harm others, but is prison the only solution? If a monastic community is willing and able to take on the responsibility of supervising one or more such persons, ensuring that they are never left alone with children, then I think we should let them try.
I'm not talking about transferring priests to other parishes; I'm talking about placing them under the watchful eyes of a mature Christian community.
the "icon" argument is often neglected and misunderstood
the "picture" of the last supper
no matter what else we may think of it is a picture of men at the table
the consciousness of the priestly role in relationship to the last supper is understood in the term "alter christus"
it is a concept that deserves greater meditation and understanding
it is a perfectly logical analogy when a person claims "to have a woman serve as a priest at the alter is like asking a man to become pregnant" when a bishop said that some years ago people scoffed
but he states something that is true
and my sense is it is almost impossible to get people to see this
i am generally enthused by the fact that women are exploring a renewed sense of what it means to be a follower of christ
and now they are writing and speaking about it
i would only say that theire way of loving him is somewhat different than a man's way of loving christ...and that's the way it should be
but to couch it all in the dialectic of gender tension is to disregard the historical truth of accepted and beautifully administered roles
if it all works out and there's absolutely no reason to expect that it will :) women will after long meditaton come to realize the beauty and significane of sister mother wifely roles and realize that actually no man can perform those roles
for them to desire priesthood is actually a denigration of their
inherent power
for mother sister wife
is actually on a much higher plain
than lowly priestfatherservant
you can argue all you want
but catholic life exalted the feminine
and yes
feminine purity and chastity
virginity
now we seem to like to drag all that through the mud blood and shit of the liberated girls
it causes profound nausea in me
you might not like the clothes and the trappings
but the facts iz the facts
i'd like to get back to a way of thinking where the women actually do run everything
and the men are worthlessservant priests the butt of all men
the subject for drunkards' songs
the worms and not men
peace of the risen christ
alleluiAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!
jh
stu
i have no illusions about the forceful presence and capable presence of women in the early church
i am convinced as you are
that in most places
they ran things
and there was a keen sense as is indicated in jeromes account with
paulina adneth sisters of basil adn gregory the great
that these women did almost everything there was to do
did they set and serve at the communion table
most likely
but probably not once the role of priest became more clearly defined and the temple precedent took hold as the working paradigm around 150 CE or so
teh churhc an liturgy has evolved
one of the most clear and legitimate complaints about modern RC liturgy is its ignorance of the well though out and thoroughly sensible ritual sense of the middle ages
some of the earliest experience has been retrieved and much of what is new reflects soem of that but the sensibilites of a noble and participatory liturgy that existed in the middle ages is all but lost..and yet we know too that the education for these rituals meant so highly refined training and this led to the definition of the role of priest as well
muh of the counter reformation ws an attempt to preserve the medieval awareness of liturgical propriety -- it bore a certain resemblance to the way eastern orthodox worship now
theris a whole genre of narrative referring tot he experience of catholic priests in america in parishes with "housekeepers" - sometimes these were nuns sometimes just ladies who were alone in the world
the general theme of the stories is
these girls ruled the roost
the priest did the sanctuary stuff but the girls did everything to make it happen and they counted the collections and they knew the banker and they set up all the social activities surrounding catholic community life
the stories of nuns in religious houses are also rich with references to the power of women they were hospital administrators school principles personal secretaries asswipers teachers visitors of the sick
i always feel that these stories of common christian heroism are nearly lost to us..and the memeory is still quite recent
there are some marvelous stories about women (nuns) who actually ran the vatican...the men living in humourous delusion of their own powers
stu
i am impressed and delightfully so of
the liturgical efforts you present here
that this spirit of a high regard for this kind of religious activity is growing up again in our midst bodes well for all
i bless it
i embrace and i pray that these efforts may be the contexts for a church united
jh
sally
i live with so many odd people
one more sexually troubled person or ten would hardly be noticed
in the middle ages the monasteries were penitentiaries
monastic life was referred to as
the penitential life
some of the criminals in the dungeons actually became very good prayerful monks
do you ever get the feeling that there's a sort of roman empire throw 'em to the lions or the dogs sort of punitive mentality at work in american justice systems
like the poor guy john lindh walker
just a religiously curious and adventurous kid
gets in with the wrong criminals
and wham
life in prison for wone 1 one wun whun uno bad little choice
when or if he gets out
what are the chances???
i suppose bush wanted to send a message to other highschool dreamers that there's limits now on what can be imagined
we get to define religious interest and even personal vocations
almost makes me want to be a muslim troublemaker just to drive home a point
hmnh
the spirit of totalitarian europe is alive and well
we use it now like surgery
the stone the builders rejected
jh
New Gallup poll says that 51% of Tea Partiers are either Independents or Democrats, and that they represent mainstream America:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/127181/Tea-Partiers-Fairly-Mainstream-Demographics.aspx
I found this first on Althouse's blog.
so, the attempt to demonize them is an attempt to demonize America itself? Not a very wise move, which means that Obama's numbers will tumble still further?
The recidivism rate for child molesters is 99%.
The only safe place to put them?
A maximum security prison.
That, of course, is very expensive.
Maybe we could do with them what Holder is now suggesting we do to captured terrorists due to the high costs of trying to hold them.
Just kill them, rather than capture them.
People will be all up in arms, no doubt.
And if those people are all up in arms, let them keep the terrorists and the pervs under house arrest in their own houses?
Do I see any hands?
Kirby,
I think it is up to the individuals affected whether to pursue additional remedies. The ELCA's goal in such situations is to promote healing, and to prevent future abuse. It is not driven by vengeance.
What would you have us do, put up a web site that names everyone who was disciplined for, or resigned under threat of discipline? Does any confession do this? Doesn't this cross the line from discipline to harassment?
It seems to me that someone who presents themselves for a ministerial role on the basis of formal training at Lutheran Seminary, but does so outside of the context of the synodical roster, ought to be immediately suspect, with explanations sought and verified.
BTW, I've searched for the comparable LCMS policy, and came across this:
LCMS: President's Letter to Pastors, March 2002
This points to the existence of a policy, but is not the policy itself. It describes a "zero tolerance" policy w.r.t. "sexual intercourse" (the letter's scare quotes, not mine, and the context makes it clear that the phrase can be interpreted broadly), with removal from the roster as the standard punishment. The LCMS policy also provides for the possibility of reinstatement, although the barrier (75% of all District Presidents present and voting, by written ballot) seems so high as to make this a possibility only as an intended safeguard against a miscarriage of justice in the initial investigation.
It also notes that "as mandated by law, allegations of sexual misconduct involving minors will always be reported to civil authorities, who will assume the responsibility of an investigation."
On the whole, this seems a shade looser than the comparable ELCA policy, to the extent that "sexual misconduct" is somewhat broader than "sexual intercourse," even if the later is broadly interpreted.
well if you can't actually kill the perverts
maybe just kill the people
who should be watching them
nothing like a graphic examle
for a deterrent
it's helped with the murder rate
i'm really interested in that one percent
actually once you chop off theire hands
the perverts don't do much at all
i often wondered what that was in you kirby now i see it
the guy with the hatchet near the rope of the guillotine
i mean
what would jesus do
i hope you'll discuss this with your friends at MLA
- what should've happened to allen ginzberg -- that would be a good presentation topic
think about it
;-]
jh
i simply cannot understand why you hate the president
is it becuase he's black and his wife is so beautiful?
kirby your life will only get better because of this guy
just be patient
the awareness of prescription politics amongst dems is post doctoral compared to the street deals of the republicans
they know the right pills you ought to take
now be a good patient
sit back and take your meds
hey
this batch is on us!!
obama needs to get back on the track with the railroad project
bring back the trains!!
hooooo hooooooooooooo
jh
jh,
I am enjoying our discussion. Although I don't think it likely that we'll change one another's minds, I am learning things, and I appreciate that. I also appreciate that we can disagree without animosity.
the "icon" argument is often neglected and misunderstood
the "picture" of the last supper
no matter what else we may think of it is a picture of men at the table
I'll grant that we typically envision the last supper as a male-only affair, although the possibility of women preparing and serving the meal can't be discounted. We know that women played an important role in Jesus's community, even though there were no women among the twelve.
But I find the "icon" argument as presented here to be dubious because as far as I know, it has never been used to suggest that Eucharist be a male-only ritual. In any event, the RCC does not hold it so to be. Why should the "icon" argument apply to the server, if it does not apply to the served?
This is my logician persona coming to the fore. How do we judge arguments? If we believe that a certain way of arguing is valid, then we are bound to accept its consequences when applied in the same way to different facts. Given a choice between retaining the icon argument, or permitting women to continue to commune, I would chose the later.
if it all works out and there's absolutely no reason to expect that it will :) women will after long meditaton come to realize the beauty and significane of sister mother wifely roles and realize that actually no man can perform those roles
No more than a woman can perform the analogous male-specific roles of brother, father, and husband. Granting both, how does either apply to the question of fixing a gender identity for those in the office of word and sacrament (a Lutheran formula to describe the clergy -- note the parallel to the structure of the mass in terms of the liturgy of the word, and the liturgy of the eucharist)?
you can argue all you want
but catholic life exalted the feminine
and yes
feminine purity and chastity
I'm not arguing about this. It is possible to be placed on a pedestal, and bound in chains, at the same time. Yes, this is hyperbolic, but my point is not to claim that the Catholic Church advocated enslaving women, but rather that it is possible to value something while constraining it too. Indeed, if you're trying to constraint the intelligent, resourceful, and powerful, you pretty much have to sell them on the notion that they're getting a better deal when they accept the constraints than when they don't, and putting them on a pedestal can be part of this.
It seems to me that certain aspects of this deal have broken down. It used to be that women needed men as protectors -- it wasn't safe or sustainable for a woman to be on her own. That has changed. But if it was coercion that kept intelligent, powerful, and resourceful women in submissive roles, how prepared are you to be the last guy trying to keep them there?
What do we expect from our priests but faithfulness (πίστις) and wisdom (σοφία), both of which are feminine nouns, and not just by declension?
Kirby,
I believe you're misinterpreting the Gallup poll. The discussion in 538 is helpful here:
538: A Teacup Half-Full
Here's the point. Gallup was asking about "support," not "membership," and so it's not really comparable to the Winston or CBS polls, "support" being a much more permissive criterion.
But I do find the relatively high proportion of "independent" voters who support the TP to be interesting. My thinking here is that the Republican Party is still a "distressed brand," and there are a fair number of conservative types who now self-identify as Democrats, whereas it is more accurate to view them as disaffected Republicans.
It's kind of like the Presidential approval polls. Some polls (Rasmussen, Gallup) do a hard "push," and try to pin down folks to either the approve or disapprove position. On the other hand, there are polls with a weak push, which allow people to say that they're undecided. For example, consider the recent CBS News Presidential approval poll: 44% approve, 41% disapprove, 15% undecided.
FOXNews (and therefore Kirby) report this as "Obama's approval rating has fallen to 44%!!" But as a +3 poll, this is actually more favorable for BHO than the slightly more recent Rasmussen (49/51, -2) or Gallup (48/46, +2) polls.
" i certainly don't blame anyone for falling into the lurid attractions of sensual pleasure no matter how demented."
I do! Hey you...Yea you. The guy who is in a position of responsibility and authority...Yea you, that one, that guy, who stuck his penis inside the ass of a 13 or 15 year old.
Yeah, I blame you and condemn you for that, and get thee to a prison.
If you can't refrain from sticking your cock in a kid, you don't belong as a leader in my church! And you need to be dealt with in a way that keeps kids safe in the future...
By committing such a crime, you have made your personal freedom far less valid than the freedom of the innocents around you that you like to rape.
(sorry to be graphic, but you don't seem to grasp what we're talking about here in a real visceral way, JH...Kirby can decide if he wants to censor this stuff or not. I would understand either way).
"brett
the church is a community of sinners
those who know their guilt
those who know their need
what good does it do anyone to bemoan the fact
the church is a human institution above all
and continues to exist despite the human flaws that could bring most places down."
You confuse me, JH. Has your monk diet made you toothless? Even in the face of obvious heinous criminal behavior?
I'm not bemoaning the fact that people are all sinners, who know their guilt and know their need...and the church a human institution.
Of course it is! (though it could probably do with a bit more self-awareness on this, imho).
But to equate being a 'human institution' with fucking 12 and 16 year olds? And letting these fuckers Continue in positions of authority?
That's Egregious, and deserves outright condemnation.
If you were in charge of someone else who was in a position of authority over children (trying to lessen the blow by saying 'a lot of 'em were adolescents' is lame, JH...adolescents are children too, ya know?) wouldn't you know to handle the situation by turning the fuckers in to the police so they could be taken away from All communities w/children?
I mean, let people hump plastic dolls all they want - they're not hurting anyone.
But our civilian laws are about protecting those who have been/might be hurt.
the "icon" argument is the
essential argument
and it isn't used
per se
but it is used
ad hominum
all the time
and it's sort of like getting people to appreciate the prayerfulness that goesw into painting and icon and the prayerfulness it takes for the observer to sit and pray before and icon
if we don't do it
well we can't expect to understand what it is about
thanks for your words stu
jh
jh,
I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but I have two orthodox icons on the wall of my office at work. My University is Baptist in history, secular de jure, and polytheistic tending towards Jewish de facto. I figure that it needs a bit of Christian witness :-).
The types are both well known. One is a "Christ Pantocrator," the other "Virgin Mary Directress." Perhaps not what you'd expect from a Lutheran, but powerful objects of conversation and prayerful reflection. Jesus Christ is so much more than any of us can conceive, indeed, more than all of us working together can conceive. I think there is much to be gained from considering Christian traditions very different from our own. It's not necessary to agree with everything, but the truth as seen through different eyes retains the ability to surprise and deepen us.
Kirby,
And if those people are all up in arms, let them keep the terrorists and the pervs under house arrest in their own houses?
Do I see any hands?
I think Benedictine monasteries may be raising their hands.
I had dinner once with a fellow who is now in jail for entertaining a 13 year old in the backseat of his luxury automobile in the parking garage of the luxury highrise where he lived. He was among the top ranking unelected officials in an organization that provides services to governments of more than thirty countries. He was about to be promoted to the top unelected position for his region in that organization and would have if he hadn't been arrested.
It's possible the arrest was politically inspired. There is no such thing as privacy in a country where 15 million people inhabit an area only ten miles square.
The 13 year old was apparently recruited by a 21 year old who had known the man in question for several years and become adept at finding other youths willing to sell favors. The timing of the arrest was quite suspicious and so was the fact that it was videotaped by the media and shown on national television. The "victim" had no motivation to go to the police as that would have jeopardized the livelihood to which he'd been introduced and eliminated the income he had hoped to bring to his impoverished family. The official in question was disowned by both his home country and his employer and did not contest the charges brought against him. That was a year ago. My understanding is that he's still in jail. I would not be the least bit surprised if the terms of his incarceration bring him into daily contact with hundreds of incarcerated youths who fit the profile of his victim.
One of the local prisons produced a YouTube video that went viral commemorating the recent death of a famous pop singer. It featured hundreds of youths clad in orange dungarees in a prison exercise yard doing a Michael Jackson dance step in unison as a tribute to their idol. Very few of the local prisons have the means to provide their inmates with orange dungarees.
Craig, I saw the orange suited Michael Jackson stuff. It showed a lot of talent. But apparently it was done with a lot of "discipline."
if i became aware brett of someone holding someone else sexaully hostage and i was in a position of responsibility in anyway i think i might just bypass the law :)
if i knew a young girl or boy was being raped by her father and i could do something about it i don't think i'd call the police
that being said
my take on the whole catholic thing is that's all made up
there ain't an ounce of truth to any of it
it's all fodder for the spectacle
someone's playing a trump care and makin us look like chumps
it never happened they made it all up it's so horrible how can catholics walk with their heads up after what father mulcahey did
it's grocery store sensatioanlism at it's finest it's a huge cultural fiction something to keep the talking heads talking and boy are they talking jabber jabber jabber jabber jabber jabber nothing nothing said nothing accomplished but wind escaping from lungs referring to empty signification and people getting paid to jabber jabber jabber
it never happened there's no existing proof of any of it
so quiet your fears
and come into the church
we're a gentle church
with gentle people
who pray gentle prayers
don't mind the incence
there now
it will all be alright
the new patterns of justice are established
we lose all sense of decorum
we have hope that
sexual craziness is not the final word
personally i want nothing to do with any of the discussions in modern psychosexuality
i find it all abhorrent
and it seems to make more than one person just crazy
i don't enjoy films with sex
i don't enjoy sexual jokes
i enjoy novels where the subject is treated with artistic care
i have to hand it to ginzberg
he played up the crazy making card like a adirondack comic
i'm pretty gaurded about facing evrything from the some sex crap to gender mixing to kink of any kind
i used to think it was good stuff for humorous talk
now i don't the topics sicken me
yet i do not retain any judgement for those who'v struggled with sexual urges of any kind
sexual falling is too commonplace
there is no such thing as sexual justice
we're all walking wounded
were you to blow the whistle on a bad counselor doing bad things i certainly would not condemn you
there's a place called no man's land
and people who do really bad things seem to have to go there
i don't think compassion should be presented to them as impossible
and i don't know if i coudl do it i don't know if i would or coudl be the one to have to face a fellow human who has fallen into soem sort of demented irrational sexual activity
i suppose prison chaplains have to face that stuff all the time
but i honestly dont know if i'd want to have to face a steady diet of human crap like this
i'd rather play my guitar
and try to make sounds sound beautiful
you're good with vivid detail brett
the only true psychologists for me are the novelists
like dostoevsky
everything else is balderdash
including the daily news
which i do not read or watch
save for one dose ot two a week
just to remind myself of empty signification
full of sound and fury
peace
jh
There's certainly an agenda behind the media frenzy with the Catholic church. They don't accept women as pastors. Must destroy, must destroy.
Worse things could be found about the communists or the Buddhists, but they get a pass, please note.
Buddhism is now a kind of anaesthetic to help the pain of having one's churches shot out from under by the left-wing media.
It is what it is, accept it and move on.
If the media were to go out after the Buddhists with some of the same abberrant hostility with which they approached the Catholic church we could at least call it fair and balanced.
We'll leave that moniker to O'Reilly, since he actually is what he says he is.
He still goes to the Catholic Church, and believes in it, as he believes in America.
In 1932, Marianne Moore said that FDR was our Hitler.
Obama's pitch was nowhere near the strike zone.
Bush threw a much better fastball.
Obama is all curves and sneakiness, with the Buddhist overlay, calm down, calm down, you're going to LIKE national socialism once you see all the goodies that are in it for you!
i'm sorry if i slip into absurdity
but from where i sit
it is absurd
it is an absurd argument
it is likened to the way people regard sex these days
complete with the really sick and distorted commercialization of sex sort of opening that possibility in people's imagination that there experience in pleasure is limited only by the limits of their imaginations
what the mob and special interest groups are saying is not the truth it is hardly discernible as a meaningful agenda it is broken humanity screaming out for a justice they've never really thought about
this is not a nice tea party
this is a torture ridden ghoulfest
the only way i'd be willing to concede to the possibility of changing the role for the acceptance of women in sacramental priesthood is if the birth control pill was taken off the market - no more birth control for ten years and then maybe i'd be willing to discuss this as a possibility -- and no more abortion
the women will have to agree amongst themselves that these two factors are not viable options within catholic thought or practice and then we might be able to talk
we are sick with chemistry
i don't know enough of the actual practice of lutherans these days i would do well to know more
yet
i hold to the idea that the peace we seek as divided followers of christ will be understood and seen at his altar and it will be a successful reunion when we so internalize the beauty of his existence that we will be like beacons shining on hills
the girls will love christ in a different way than the boyz
and when they do
they will save the world
the boyz will merely bless the work
easter peaster
the clarity of your thoughts
are appreciated muchly on this end
my friend
jh
accepting stu that we are all baptized into the priesthood of christ it remains clear in the understanding of those who think about this that the role the living "icon" of the priest is a seperate and unique role...his service at the altar is recognized as representing as fully as possible the person of christ so we take the image of christ we have from the gospels the language with which he and others identified him...his identification with god the father
his representation as son his identity as a male human being his propensity to hang out with a gang of guys..the whole baseball team prototype theory - the whole picture of jesus cannot be represented in life by a woman it just cannot
it basically comes down to the fact that jesus had a penis and girls don't so they can't dress up and serve at the altar
you have to have a penis
anyway
that's what i like to tell the
theology ladies of today
i so desire these conversations to go somewhere interesting
the true nobility of women who love christ is yet to be fully realized
there have been some stellar absolutely stellar examples of the spirit of christ alive in the world in women women fortified with a mysterious desire to love and follow this practical cosmic joker they've served christ actually physically they've loved christ they've entered into the most sublime and interesting dance with christ in serving the poor at the altar of the world they've stood like raging priestesess in their commitment to kissing the wounds of the souls the very mouth of christ the gaping pleading suffering wounds of christ still present still immersed in the body of humanity they've taken the salve of love and treated the wounded poor with this salve
their altar is a higher altar than the one in church their altar is more sacred and their prayer is closer to christ than that of men like a wife knows her man better than anyone else and i think they should strive to serve the world at their own altar and not diminish their gifts by presuming to take a stand at the lesser altar of the men
i don't buy into the idea that
anybody should be free to do anything they desire to do or be that anything that stands in the way of a person realizing who they think they are is de facto oppressive and broken and archaic as a system...the whole education positivism of the late 20th century was saying to girls "you can do or be anything you want to be you can be an astronaut" but the church does not nor has it ever thought this way...so all these girls then face their faith and see this male bastion and whoa wait a minute no girls up there this cannot stand i've been formed in the way of the expanding frontier of possibilities i need to be there i need to control from there i need to be a catholic priest
one bishop said to me once
and i paraphrase because i refuse to quote anyone anymore
"...i'd be happy to ordain women if i had the freedom to refuse the first 1000 or so...how can i endorse that many angry people into the priesthood " knowing they are really angry and then realizing their anger is not about what they say it's about it's about something else and they can't even get there they can't see it they refuse to do the hard work necessary to get there they refuse to read the complete works of thomas aquinas so they can't be sacramentalservant priests they just cannot
the fastball is so overrated these days
and it wrecks arms
used to be a pitcher was an artist
now he's a flippin machine
maybe they should move the mound back 10 ft or so
obama is an artist
he has worldwide cred
people like this guy
since when did the republicans start to care about what the people think...this is completely new...i find it hopeful but really surprising - i mean geez i held them out there as stodgy old money grubbing fascists with american smiles cynical bastards who preyed on the paranoid sentiments of middle america-- i wonder if they looked at the groundlevel grassyrootsy antibush swell and saw how powerful that was and now they are saying - let's use the techniques of the other side they claim to have the voice of the people on their side well we can do populism as well as they can - and then they arrange to have the tea ceremonies with the tea spiked with what we don't know but it's good to be wary..these people ain't right theyz altered theyz mindz somehow
why don't they just let themselves be taken care of by a gentle govt
why do they fear what appears to them a direct line between marx adolf the h mao fdr pol pot obama and netanyahu ( o wait i can't say that where's the delete button o o o can't find it too late) at least these people still have their guns and their religion and a new ritual...when they do these tea ceremonies do they have pictures of ronald reagan to which they present flowers and incense???...that's what made america great anyway
when it comes right down to it guns and religion
coulda never subjugated the infidel injuns had it not been for guns and religion by gumm
rejoice
the daffodils are drunk
with being
jh
Obama can't even throw a good fastball and he wants to run the country's healthcare system?
jh,
the whole picture of jesus cannot be represented in life by a woman it just cannot
Well, I don't believe that the whole picture of Jesus can be represented by anyone, male or female. The gap between what we are as humans, and what our Lord was and is, is so vast that the distinction between male and female hardly matters. It is a gap that only he can close, and he will close it where and with whom he chooses.
For me, the notion that women were worship leaders in the 50's and 60's, and that this role was not taken from them until the 150's or later, is evidence that God did not intend to limit women's participation as spiritual leaders the way we have subsequently. The Church of the 50's and 60's was closer to Christ, and many who participated in it knew Jesus during his ministry in human form. When they communed, the memories for them were fresh and real, of a Jesus they could hear, see, touch, and smell. That they were willing, against the prejudices of their day, to accept women as leaders of congregations and worship is a powerful argument.
i don't buy into the idea that
anybody should be free to do anything they desire to do or be that anything that stands in the way of a person realizing who they think they are is de facto oppressive and broken and archaic as a system.
Nor do I. Gender does not moot the need for discernment by the Church as to who meets the criteria for ordained leadership: an authentic call, and the ability (which includes emotional stability) to perform in this role. One of the advantages of admitting women that there is no "priest shortage" in the Lutheran Church, so our discernment processes can be more rigorous and more selective.
one bishop said to me once
and i paraphrase because i refuse to quote anyone anymore
"...i'd be happy to ordain women if i had the freedom to refuse the first 1000 or so...how can i endorse that many angry people into the priesthood " knowing they are really angry and then realizing their anger is not about what they say it's about it's about something else and they can't even get there they can't see it they refuse to do the hard work
I think your bishop would do well to reject any candidate who is driven to the priesthood out of anger or a sense of entitlement rather than out a sense of call and an eagerness to serve. Part of my witness to you is that the association of women seeking ordination and anger is not inevitable. And of course ordination should only be possible for those who are willing to submit themselves to rigorous training, and to master the knowledge and skills needed in pastoral ministry. But so far as I can tell, the ability to piss while standing is not an important skill in pastor ministry. I would never claim that being female represents an entitlement to be a pastor/priest, only that it should not of itself constitute a disqualification.
i hold to the idea that the peace we seek as divided followers of christ will be understood and seen at his altar and it will be a successful reunion when we so internalize the beauty of his existence that we will be like beacons shining on hills
Amen.
Kirby,
George has a better fastball than Barry, but let's be honest here, it's not and never was good enough to be a player, not even in high school. His game was rugby, "a scoundrel's game played by gentlemen." My son's game too. Still, GWB owned a baseball team (it helps to have rich parents), and clearly picked up a few things.
On the other hand, Barry would embarrass George in basketball. He has real skills, and played competitively in high school. You'll remember that three-pointer in Kuwait during the campaign -- no warmup, first ball, swish. Evidently he has some jazz in ball-handling too. If I recall correctly from your book, you've played a bit of basketball too, and perhaps can appreciate these skills.
If you think about it, most Presidents were decent athletes as young men, even folks you might not expect. Obama played basketball, GWB played rugby. GHWB played baseball and soccer. Reagan played small college football. Ford played football for Michigan, the basis of many jokes, but the truth was he played both center and linebacker for teams that won two national championships. Nixon played small college football and basketball. Kennedy was a swimmer. So it goes.
A difference, though, is that GWB and BHO became President as relatively young men, and for both, athletic activity was part of their present, not just their past. And no, golf doesn't count, at least not to the same degree. Another factor is that both George and Barry have wives who look fully capable of tearing their men to bloody pieces given the right provocation. Jacqueline was cute and all, but even in her prime I don't think she'd have lasted thirty seconds in the ring with Laura, let alone Michelle. For George and Barry, working out might involve a small amount of self-preservation.
Well, a big part of the Lutheran church (Missouri synod) holds to the men-only ordainment process, and we don't have squirrelly priests, at least not squirrelly in the sense that Brett describes.
The call is difficult to discern, but one thing is key for the Calvinists, and I think it's something to really consider.
As you know, they have a doctrine of the elect. That is, God has already chosen, so it doesn't matter what you do to curry favor. You can sweat in Bombay your whole life, and help out hundreds of thousands of people, but if you weren't chosen, you are still going to be damned in the eyes of God.
And if you are thus damned, and don't turn on God, but can accept this, then you are truly called.
So that's what you have to ask yourself.
I think it might cordon off all the angry women, and all the people who simply want their hands on the Gospel in order to rewrite it according to their specifications, and in order to improve their earthly lot (Gene Robinson of the Episcopalians was very bitter that when he came back from Europe on a junket that he had to write down all the stuff he bought twice, while the married couples only had to do it once, an affront that he considered ginormous).
I was thinking to myself, well, who has the money to buy trinkets and junk while in Europe that wears your hand out in writing it all down?
And felt a certain hilarity.
But then, I really don't buy anything on trips unless I buy books, and those I generally buy used, because I like to giggle over the margin notes of the other people who have read the book in advance of my own excursion.
I don't think you should sign up in order to get something, in other words, or to use the church as a tool of social transformation. That is an a priori evil.
I would make a lousy priest. I'm afraid I might giggle at funerals and cry at weddings, and my head might spin in the service from all the demons inside of me.
I think priests are amazing. But they are also people, right?
And as people, fallen like the rest of us.
But they should still be able to follow the ten commandments to the best of their abilities.
the only extra thing I'd ask of them is, Are you damned to the glory of God?
Kirby,
Well, a big part of the Lutheran church (Missouri synod) holds to the men-only ordainment process,
Half true. LCMS women can and do become Lutheran pastors, albeit in the ELCA. Our current intern is an exemplar, and I have to say, this has been very much to our benefit as a synod, and very much to your loss. Thanks!
The call is difficult to discern, but one thing is key for the Calvinists, and I think it's something to really consider.
As you know, they have a doctrine of the elect.
I consider the doctrine of the elect to be a bucket of hogwash, and one of the cruelest lies that anyone has ever spoken in the name of a loving God. Yes, I know all of the Bible verses, but I don't think they mean what the Calvinists think they mean. YMMV.
Stu, whether you believe it or not is irrelevant (doctrine of the elect, put in place because Calvin couldn't believe God was not omniscient, including even the future!).
What matters is do you still love God even if you don't get into heaven?
Of course, many of us here are universalists, and perhaps there are even some unitarians, but I'm not one. I think it's wonderful to imagine being scorned by God, but loving him all the same, and accepting His judgement.
I mean, I know for one that I certainly deserve it.
Heh heh.
Kirby,
What matters is do you still love God even if you don't get into heaven?
I don't believe that this is possible. What I do believe, and you hint at in your earlier post, is that it is still possible to love God even when he seems silent to you. It is important to keep cause and effect sorted out here. I don't think we as humans are capable of loving God unless he is actively involved in our lives. We may not perceive that activity, but that speaks volumes about our lack of perception, and not one word against God's involvement in our lives.
I think it's wonderful to imagine being scorned by God, but loving him all the same, and accepting His judgement.
I'd be careful here. It sounds as if you're trying to interchange Jesus's role and our role in salvation history. After all, Jesus was rejected by man, and suffered and died under our judgment. Yet he continued to love us, and we now understand his death as a sacrifice on our behalf. Indeed, this little phantasy seems to require that there is an "after God's scorn" for us to continue to love him and to accept his judgment, but this seems to presume the possibility of a resurrection and after-life outside of God's agency.
I think it is well and good to want to follow Jesus as a model, but I think we have to draw the line at projecting human sinfulness (e.g., scorn) onto God.
That said, there is an insight here that is worth holding onto. It is wonderful to know that no matter how much we might scorn or reject God, he continues to love us, and his judgments will reflect that love.
when GWB was asked if he's made any mistakes in his life that he felt he could be honest about in 2000 he said the only thing he coudl think of was he sold sammy sosa to the chicago cubs
i was surprised
i would have thought the whole baseball conscious world would have seen right then and there what a deficient leader he would be
stu your point well taken
no one person can exemplify christ
espesially now in hsi resurrected state
we try
hans urs van balthasar made a whole life of clarifying the dramtic response to faith as it has been articualted in catholic history both in theology and in liturgical praxis
and his right hand girl
his theological girlfriend as it were
( he was asked to leave the jesuits because of his relationship with ) adrienne von speyer - but he never left the priesthood and he was exhalted to the college of cardinals - a few days after he died but so what?
yes in the catholic church you can become a cardinal even if you're dead (we're trying to be more sensible all the time - again - your want surrealism? check us out)
hans urs spells out the brilliant intuition involved in developing a liturgically aesthetically genuine approach to manifesting jesus in the world..this icon thing defies practicality it is not about "gifts" per se it is not about abilities..it is about presentation..we do not see jesus as a woman at the last supper - plain and simple...and the eucharistic celebration is a divine drama which means to recreate on a daily basis what went down on that fateful divinely ordained night in jerusalem
and i maintain
only a man can play a man in that role - for he has to be son of god - "SON" - so the role transcends practical arguments
but what about the other roles in the unravelling narrative
witness roles
the trustworthy women
who stuck it out
in contrast to the cowardly men who probably rightly thought "who's next?"
i hold to the icon argument
i will not be moved
it is beyond didactic or dialectical dispute
it may be worked out in aesthetics i don't know
but one thing an icon must do is
portray the scene as vividly and prayerfully as possible adn a lot of prayer goes into the icon
i suppose we have to take seriously recent artistic presntations like
CHRISTA showing jesus crucified with big girl tits and flowing hair
or the piss jesus thing
or the madonna and child with elephant shit thing all at MoMa
or maybe we don't it's all just overpaid artists with nothing better to do
but the icon is the icon the visible theme is what it is and it can't be anything else
how the word
how ministry is enacted
how the spirit moves
within the apprehension of the icon
is a wide open field
and i woudl hope women would genuflect humbly before that icon
and not presume to know that they can usurp the inherent qualities which are necessary for presenting the icon
the icon
your girls are making our girls
phuqqing crazy
pardon my french my arabic french
god may be enjoying all this
but it is excruciating
heavy on the crucia
spitball
scuffball
dirtball
slider sinker
curve
knuckle
submarine
fastballs are boring
jh
Yeah, Obama can 'ball.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWTfgtvKHr8&feature=related
If Laura Bush and Michelle Obama were to be involved in a wrestling contest (normal rules, not Greco-Roman), and they were both thirty years old, how many of you would bet on Laura? We're talking three two-minute periods, with a pin counting as a win, and otherwise to be decided on points.
I think for sure I'd bet on Michelle.
Laura was a librarian.
Most women back in Laura's time had never been involved in fights. Now, of course, young women do fight, as they want to be like men in everything.
Meanwhile, it's a little-known fact that I myself have never been in a fight. Even among my three brothers, when we had an issue, we talked it out, or swept it under the rug.
Does this mean that women have a nature, or that they are changing their nature, insofar as they rarely fought (at least with muscle to muscle bare knuckles?).
Men now fight less and less, but voting still indicates a kind of fight to the photo-finish. So men do fight, and when we're facing the barbaric third world, we sometimes still have to resort to using tanks and all the old clunky methods of settling things.
Perhaps it's natural.
I'd prefer chatterboxing the enemy to actual boxing, and if it came to actual boxing, I'd send in Michelle rather than Laura.
I don't know why. I think Michelle is larger, for one thing.
And I've seen her at the edge of fury a few times.
Laura is much more contained.
I thnk she can probably get mad, but if she did, she'd raise your daily fine or something, rather than swatting you over the head with a copy of Time.
The book of Judges has a female Judge named Deborah, who calls for a revolution that wreaks havoc on the ungodly and I seem to remember -- on the Canaanites.
I can't remember if a Canaanite is the same thing as a Philistine.
Perhaps it's a venn diagram in which some Canaanites are Philistines, and some Philistines are Canaanites, but no Jewish person is either a Canaanite or a Philistine.
At any rate, there's an example of a woman who's not a typical woman, but she's a general.
There's another angry woman in the story. Sisera who is the Canaanite general, stops over in a local woman's tent, and she pounds a tent stake into his forehead.
Which finishes him off.
Samson is in this book, too, and is a warrior. God seems to like warriors at least to some extent, and to like JUDGEMENT, and JUDGES, people who can say, this is right and this is wrong, and then to wreak havoc on those who are wrong.
It's probably natural to turn to sin if things seem hunky dory. But then they are in danger of being overtaken, and need heroes and warriors to bail them out.
Also, they need judges to formulate right and wrong, right?
It seems that women CAN BE judges, and can drive the wedge if need be, as Deborah does.
Later, the woman in the tent (her name starts with a J) drives a tent stake through Sisera's forehead (I think it's temples, but I prefer forehead because it's funnier to say forehead).
More three Stooges-like.
At any "rate," I do think God can certainly be scornful to those who are outside of his -- um -- bailiwick, or outside of his covenant, and can slaughter them, or have us slaughter them willy-nilly.
For some reason the left want God to be solely the God in a good mood of the Sermon on the Mount, but in the OT the mounts are often shot out from under the riders, and the sermon they get is a good pounding of a stake through the forehead, which kind of causes a ringing in the temples.
I often wonder if the people who think of the Judeo-Christian God as exclusively loving aren't actually worshipping the Buddha, which would be a false God.
Peace is important, but that kind of peace (the kind they have in Myanmar, or in what's left of Tibet) -- is it worth having?
David could throw stones effectively, and Samson knew how to move the luggage around, and really bring the house down.
Michelle's more muscular.
Michelle's more muscular
Sure, but Laura is definitely a specimen, and much more repressed. So there's a much larger adrenaline potential there.
Look, part of the GWB history is that he was a rogue well into his 40's. Drinking at least, and many rumors of cocaine use. Then, the story goes, between his wife and Jesus, he was turned around. One way of interpreting this, the conventional way, is that she told him to shape up or she was leaving. But look at those eyes! My theory is that one day, she let him know that he was going to meet Jesus in the next half hour, and that this could happen in one of two ways.
something tells me if laura and michelle were dukin it out and laura got mad michelle would fall down laughing
this is interesting
because i've decided the only women's sport i like to watch now is
girls fighting
it seems like a sport that holds such promise for people
j ;) h
jh,
something tells me if laura and michelle were dukin it out and laura got mad michelle would fall down laughing
Oh, probably. But I never posited Laura vs. Michelle, only either of them against Jacqueline (age adjusted, of course). But the point was that I don't think JFK had much to fear from Jackie—he certainly didn't live his life as if he did. Whereas George and Barry don't have the kind of rumors of infidelity around them that pretty much all of the other Presidents of my lifetime (from Eisenhower on) have.
Apropos BHO vs. GWB on the mound, I thought that anyone still reading might like this:
The Onion: Presidential First Pitches
sally posted
a proposal for rules of engagement
in blog religous talk
she thinks we're getting
too absurd
ludic beyond reason
outlandish perhaps
and even i think
lewdic
and i apolgize once again
for intentionally referring to genitals
butt to be fair
brett used worse langauge than i ever did
i'm not defending myself
i'm just sayin
yet i think sally might have a point
something moving us toward civility
this time of year
people believe in the impossible
i don't think it ever happens
or maybe it happens all the time
if people want me to start using punctuation i can
i may not think as well
but i can use the stuff
what do i now
i'm just a monkey on a music box
eeee eeeeeh
jh
Sally's rules for engagement are interesting, though I'm not sure what specifically she's pointing to as the inspiration for her insecurity and unease.
My assumption might be that it came out of my own rather intense and lewd comments wrt to the priest abuse scandal, though of this I can't be sure.
I agree that it is true that generally a more insecure party will lash out when in an argument, but 'tis also true that lewdness or aggressiveness are not always the same as defensively lashing out.
In terms of 'coming together' to share a truth, there would be no way for JH and I to do this wrt the priest scandal if the Language we use is that of 'silly pervs.' They're perverts as a euphemism, child-raping fuckers as a blunt statement.
I think we Can and Should Battle over the language used within a certain argument.
Generally, we use euphemisms to avoid directly confronting the gruesomeness of certain acts...
But if someone seems to be arguing from a place that does not understand or take into account the severity or gruesomeness behind the euphemism, the euphemism must be dispensed with.
I think intensity is a good thing, as long as it stays away from ad hominems. Sometimes I think it's a difference in gender, but most of the productive (and fun) conversations I've had have been rather intense arguments about Ideas.
It's not about Who is right and wrong, it's about What is right and wrong...And you can't understand the differences in viewpoint if both sides muddle themselves and their statements to reach a false agreement.
The hazy version of your viewpoint, and the hazy version of mine, might meet in the middle in an indistinguishable haze. But this means we've misrepresented ourselves for the purpose of a false peace, not that we've reached truth...
Most of us here are Christians, and our Bible is full of murder, rape, incest, overturned tables, Egyptians hung like donkeys.
We can talk about genitals when genitals are involved... We shouldn't overdo it or be gratuitous about it or bring such things up when it doesn't suit the topic.
But we can't be like the Christians who only read the sermon on the mount, and pass by the stuff about eating placentas.
I do agree that we are here to seek after truth, and help each other along the way, hopefully coming to agreement - Sometimes, though, that means we have to use crude language when talking about crude things, and speak honestly and bluntly and intensely. With respect for one another, of course, but sometimes the right play in a game is a slide-tackle.
I'm not sure where Sally posted the rules of engagement. She did suggest that a bunch of Benedictine monks were capable of being wardens for a pack of pervs.
I don't think monks are that good as jailers. Or tailors.
What good are monks?
they can make good cheese and wine, and I think they are generally good for conversation. But ask them to seriously supervise a situation, and act as jailers. O no! Monks are far too lax for that!
When I'm thinking of a jailer, I want someone with a handlebar moustache, big bushy eyebrows, and at least seven tattoos.
Maybe even some stab wounds from when they got lax.
So they are now hyper-vigilant, and their breath is hot and stinky like a mixture of garlic and the bottom of a trash can, and the armpits worse, and with one kick they could send a half-back into a permanent coma.
Monks aren't like that. They are gentle people. Have you ever even heard a monk raise his voice except in prayer?
Monks are inappropriate.
Benedictines offer benedictions.
What we need instead as a perp jailer is someone who doesn't mean anyone any good, but if you walk the line, you might stay alive in their presence.
None of us here would even remotely qualify as jailers.
Junk yard dogs on steroids are good jailers.
We're a bunch of canaries in a salt marsh.
If anything any one of us has ever said is relevant to the larger discussion of anything, please let me know.
But the jailer shouldn't even have to talk. It should all be harrumph, snort, kick, smash, you do this, or...
But perhaps I need enlightening.
The best jailer is of course death, but even that didn't stop Freddy Krueger.
I'm lazy, and I think the cemetery does a pretty good job keeping in the bad people until and unless of course there is the day that comes with pumpkins and bumpkins with paper bags.
Cemeteries are wonderful jailers. Anyone who deliberately and knowingly hurts a child, should be put in one. Luther recommended that they be in a casket alive.
Luther had the right attitude. But he was an Augustinian.
brett i would only meekly offer that
your comments measure in intensity with those i hear on the extreme prolife front
they in theire rallying sessions
will sometimes express such deep dismay and horror that one wonders what they might do next
call the catholic pervs what you want
but in the end they are simply sick human beings
enmired in the blindness of sin and desire
monasteries were once upon a time
penitentiaries
the life was referred to as the penitential life
i suspect that sally is saying in her own way that she would be willing more than willing to enter into the fray if it wasn't so riddled with hard and harsh responses
luther created a mindset of cultural schizophrenia
it's too bad
he would've been a good catholic
or wait a minute
he was catholic
he was just the wittiest reformer that's all
the theology of chronic consptipation
jh
Brett,
it's about What is right and wrong
I'm reading Bonhoeffer's "Ethics" right now, and he makes an interesting point. It's not about the choosing between right and wrong that's hard, since pretty much anyone with a reasonable moral sense can do that. The hard questions are when we have to choose between a right and a right, or a wrong and a wrong. I think he's got a point.
Kirby,
I'm not sure where Sally posted the rules of engagement.
sally's rules for ecumenical discussion
Sally had a post on her blog.
So it's there.
Oh, and btw, I'm going to AFI.
NYU would be better if I don't go into film as a career.
But I'm going to film school to go into film.
Ka-blammy.
I don't think luther had much of a sense of Metamucil.
Lousy German diet and lots of sitting around.
We should all be more immersed in herbal lore, and taking copounds, and teas, and massages, and the whole new age thing without any of the dopey philosophy.
I wish I had a large vial of clove oil to put on the tender teeth.
There is nothing wrong with herbalists except you have to be a witch to go in for it much.
Oh, and AFI is the right move for Brett.
NYU is a communist hellhole.
Hollywood is a bastion of capitalism, even if in order to capitalize there you have to pretend to be communist.
Really, it's all about being bankable.
Which is good.
Brett Swanson, you made the right choice, and have invested wisely in your future. I know I will never see you making coffee for other people and dreaming what could have been.
Smart choice!
Stu - yes, you are correct sir! I was more pointing out that arguments can be about ideas, and intensely, argumentatively so, without the argument being about personal attacks, or about who is the 'winner' -
I think sometimes people see friction in a conversation, and they automatically assume that there's a personal fight going on, when in fact it's a fight about ideas, and those are two very different things...
it was not lewdness
nor brett's intensity
that led to my rules
it was the tyndale discussion
and the suggestion
that we protestants
have bungled the bible and the faith
that our theologians
are free lancers
shooting from the hip
having no regard for
proper authority
i guess i took that personally
imagining that my pal jh
might think poorly of me
for choosing to belong
to such an obviously inferior church
perhaps it was the fact that
i sensed there might be some truth
in jh's portrayal of the
protestant church
that made it hard for me
i was grateful for stu's
gracious and well-informed
defense of the protestant church
maybe we're not so bad after all
maybe jh was exaggerating
anyway
i'm over it now
i can't quite explain
how the rules are related
to what i just said
they're just what came out
they have been fomenting
in my mind for a few years now
and may not really even be
much related to this discussion at all
maybe i was just trying
to give myself permission
to be weak
when i am weak
then i am strong
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