The League of Bearded Catholics

Wikithoughts

In trying to tease out just what I think of the ruction over the latest Wikileaks scandal, I begin more and more to wonder what our Four Patrons would have thought of it. Tolkien had anarchist leanings (not the violent Rage Against the Machine kind) and one can perhaps imagine Chesterton and Belloc not being just too awfully sympathetic to Caesar as they see his laundered robes aired in public.

I've wondered again and again what life is WARSHington might be like if there were absolute transparency... if there were no such thing as meeting behind closed doors. I've even daydreamed of that creative and whimsical president who decides to live stream every meeting he attends, installing web-cams all over the White House (except, you know, in the washroom). One immediate effect would likely be a lot of lobbyists hanging around the washroom.

Then, there is that part of me that finds it easy to see Julian Assange as a reckless, attention-seeking punk... a more continental and sophisticated version of James O'keefe. I don't know if the damage he is causing is the good kind that humbles governments a bit, or the bad kind that really compromises security. I don't expect he knows, either (how do you thoughtfully read through 250,000+ documents?), which is why I think he's probably something of a punk.

But, truthfully, I confess I've reached the point where the spectacle of politicians in a panic is not something I find wholly unpleasant... and so, my ambivalence.

What's a Bearded Catholic to make of it?

Electorate Comes Out Swinging

The unconscious democracy of America is a very fine thing. It is a true and deep and instinctive assumption of the equality of citizens, which even voting and elections have not destroyed.

- G.K. Chesterton, What I Saw In America, 1922

 

Chesterton penned that about 90 years ago. The question is, of course, have voting and elections come any closer to destroying our confidence in the "assumption of the equality of citizens"?

I ask because I have been trying all morning to think of someone I know who really believes that our government is at all concerned anymore with "the people", their problems or welfare. There is a growing recognition of two classes in society; the hoi polloi and the ruling elite.

I don't believe this is mere cynicism, either, but is just an acknowledgement of something more or less transparently true. As the saying goes, and Randy Quaid might insist, "You're not paranoid if everyone really is out to get you.".

One sees, though, glimmers of life in the electorate, yet. We can be a cantankerous and still (hopefully) unpredictable bunch. The recent shuffle in Congressional seats, though welcome, I don't read as any sort of deep tectonic shift. It strikes one more as, well... I opened with GKC... migth as well close with him;

 

The whole curse of the last century has been what is called the Swing of the Pendulum; that is, the idea that Man must go alternately from one extreme to the other. It is a shameful and even shocking fancy; it is the denial of the whole dignity of the mankind. When Man is alive he stands still. It is only when he is dead that he swings. - "The New House" Alarms and Discursions

Anne Rice "Breaks Up" With Human Race

Anne Rice is calling it quits with the human species, after "giving it her best" for 69 years.

In a series of thirty-seven consecutive Tweets, Rice laid out her major disappointments with humanity. "I didn't realize going in - that is, as an infant - how much negativity and bickering and stupidity there would be. Also, there's the traffic and people cutting in line at the bank... my waiter at breakfast this morning was very inattentive and rolled his eyes when I pointed out that my biscotti was stale. He didn't think I saw, but I did. In the name of Humanity, I refuse to be lumped in with these disgusting humans. I'm quitting humanity as of today, right after my pedicure."

Rice was born a human, but in college began her first mental boycott  of the species, after a particularly disappointing blind date. She considered herself philosophically a Banana Slug for 38 years, but stopped short of actually declaring as an invertebrate.

Discussing her decision on the Intellectual Network, she was asked by Philosophy Today host Joy Behar if there was a species she might now consider her home. "I've heard from so many lovely creatures saying things like 'Hey, we toads don't show up late for appointments, come join us', or ' Lemurs understand where you're coming from'... but I think right now", and here she throws up her hands, "I just want to withdraw from the whole thing, from making a commitment to any species... or even genus. Truthfully, I find the whole animal kingdom kind of gross.".

Rice is working on a new book based on her experience, which should be in most homo sapiens bookstores in time for Christmas.

(Lovingly cross-posted at Old World Swine, for double your blogging pleasure)

Steamed Rice

Anne Rice is angry;

"In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control... In the name of ... Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen." - Anne Rice, via Twitter

Sounds a lot like "Non Serviam!!", from here. I don't know anything about Anne Rice, haven't read her books. I know there was a stir a while back when she deigned to re-enter the Church and grace us all with her presence. I'm always very cautious abour celebrity conversions and Mizz Rice illustrates one reason why.

People are flighty. They'll say and do things for all kinds of reasons at the drop of a hat... make vows, join the army, redecorate the living room. Celebrities seem even more than ususally restless and ungrounded, always - very publically - embracing this movement or that guru or endorsing some new miracle health lifestyle.

Oh, Anne, Anne... whence the righteous indignation? You sound for all the world like the naive and disillusioned victim of a bait-and-switch con. Had you no idea at all what Christianity was before you signed on? Were the Ten Commandments something you had just never come across, the way some people - by a kind of miracle of chance - have never had a hamburger?

Being a Christian means turning from your own will and embracing the will of God, especially in the teaching of Christ, which has been around for, well... a while now. It strikes me as more than a little disingenuous for you to walk out of the front door of the Church and cry, "I am shocked, shocked I tell you, to find that the Pope refuses to endorse gay marriage!"

That would be like me storming out of a PETA rally, protesting, "Why, I had no idea this was such a narrow-minded organization! They refused to hear my presentation on the benefits of eating hamburgers!".

At least she has the decency to leave, which is more than can be said for dissidents like Call to Action, who insist that, of course, they are the real Catholics... because they have the courage to reject everything even remotely associated with Catholicism. Anne Rice is sane enough, still, to see the contradiction.

Perhaps she will go and have herself de-baptized.

Anne Rice's real problem may be simply that she holds - has held her entire life - a narrow and naive picture of God as, well, a Tame Lion;

By the goodness of God we mean nowadays almost exclusively His lovingness ... by Love, in this context, most of us mean kindness -- the desire to see others than the self happy; not happy in this way or in that, but just happy. What would really satisfy us would be a God who said of anything we happened to like doing, "What does it matter so long as they are contented?" We want, in fact, not so much a Father in Heaven as a grandfather in heaven -- a senile benevolence who, as they say, "liked to see young people enjoying themselves" and whose plan for the universe was simply that it might be truly said at the end of each day, "a good time was had by all". - C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

Addendum: The Curt Jester apparently has a similar take. Read Committed to My Own Personal Version of Christ.

While The Internet Monk and his readers find in the occasion cause for much introspective hand-wringing. Meh.

P.S. - I've edited the above, slightly. The original was too snarky.

Overzealous Beardies

The success of Mohammedanism had not been due to its offering something more satisfactory in the way of philosophy and morals, but, as I have said, to the opportunity it afforded of freedom to the slave and debtor, and an extreme simplicity...

Hilaire Belloc - The Great Heresies

Highly esteemed Bearded Catholic John Kassaian sends along a link to this story of Muslim Fundies in Pakistan beating the mess out of some poor barber - who didn't want to do the job, anyway - for the crime of shaving the beard of a young Muslim man.

Pfft!! (throws up hands).

Presposterous and evil on its face, though I was making the argument the other day that the flouting of some cultural norms, which can seem arbitrary and morally neutral, can (in a particular time and place) constitute an attack on the social order, and that laws may properly be enforced to protect these norms.

For instance, a man in New Guinea may walk around wearing nothing but a gourd between him and the wide blue sky, and this would be perfectly normal. You could not do that in, say, downtown Milwaukee, without it being an affront and an attack on social order, and you would rightly be put in jail, which to a man from New Guinea might seem an unbelieveably barbaric overreaction.

I'm not at all defending the violence of this pathetic event, but it may be that in that part of the world, seeing an unshaven man is an offense akin to seeing RuPaul walking around Disney World in full drag makeup and a thong. In other words, it is perceived as an affront to public morals that goes right to the last frayed nerve-end of these servants of Mohammed.

Which is why I have no plans to visit Pakistan, beard or no. Neither do I anticipate a vacation in Riyad. My family will probably go to Branson, where my wife and daughter can wear shorts without being seized upon, buried to their necks and stoned to death. Plus, Silver Dollar City makes this terrific pan-fried potato concoction that is slap-your-Grandma good.

Mars, Everest and the Call of the Sea

This started as a combox response, so pardon me if it is a little off-the-cuff.

Responding to this post on a possible manned Mars landing, esteemed reader Shmikey comments;

I guess that I see things a little differently. I watched a documentary a few years back about a climb up Everest that ended with the loss of a couple of climbers, one who had a family at home, and I decided that the pursuit of some thing is not necessarily a good thing. I think that these pursuits can get to the point of looking like the Tower of Babel, and we are trying to prove that we don't need God, as long as we can rely on technology to fill our needs. I will change my opinion when the mission takes on the attitude of Christopher Columbus, and we intend to spread the Gospel through these endeavors.

I can see your point, Shmikey, but in my opinion the original trip to Mars would parallel Sir Edmund Hillary's original ascent of Mt. Everest much more than it would the current tourist trade that has been built up around the mountain.

The slopes of Everest are now covered with the litter (food packets, abandoned gear, oxygen bottles) left behind by numerous climbing parties, many of whom are near novices lured there by commercial guide services who imply that climbing Everest is no longer the very dangerous and maybe deadly an undertaking it is.

To me, the closest parallel to that would be Richard Branson's nascent effort to create a space tourism business in low Earth orbit, catering to those who have more money than they know how to spend... a carnival ride for bored billionaires. The first efforts at flight - say Orville and Wilbur Wright - had a different character. There was something driving them that I think God put there... this human hunger to find out about the created world, to travel to far away places and attempt impossible things. This impulse can, of course, be perverted in any number of ways.

I think there was spiritual value in the initial Moon shots, if only in the fact that they took us self-absorbed moderns out of ourselves and for a moment awakened Wonder in a cynical world.

It may be because I'm an artist that I balk a little at the idea that a thing must be demonstrably necessary to be worthwhile. The whole brilliant thing about art - almost the definition of art - is that it isn't necessary, and is yet worthwhile. To the extent that it is necessary, it is less like art. Art also (hopefully) awakens Wonder and a sense of mystery, which maybe leaves the door open a crack for people to encounter God.

This reflects the ongoing discussion about just what Christian artists should be doing with their talents, whether every worthy work of art must have an explicitly Christian/Gospel narrative element, or not. Can looking at a painting of a bowl of fruit be a spiritual experience that brings a person closer to the mind of God? I believe so.

On Going To Mars

Mars has just been all over the place in popular culture, ours and everyone's, since people first looked up at the wandering red star. Speculation, and fascination, about life on Mars mushroomed in the 19th century and somewhat surprisingly has not abated at all since. Mark Shea points out that rather desperate scientific theorizing regarding evidence of Martian life has only intensified since President Obama made it clear that he's just not that into Mars. "B--b-b-b-ut!..." blurt the scientists, "If we don't go to Mars, we'll never know if we might have missed out on the Greatest Scientific Discovery Ever, which we swear is right around the corner! We might find some new mineral or element that would cure Cancer/AIDS/The Common Cold (though very unlikely) or uncover proof of extra-terrestrial life (though - okay - that's really, really unlikely), or invent some new and better... solar panel! Yeah! That's it! Just let us go up and root around and we practically guarantee we can dig up out of the Martian soil some new and promising source of funding that will last us all well into retirement."

For a long time, now, when people of the Modern West speculate about alien life, they naturally think first of Mars. Chesterton's friend and loyal opponent H.G. Wells famously wrote about Martians (as we have noted), and C.S. Lewis wrote an entire trilogy of novels about Mars.

That Mars occupies this sort of default position is only reasonable. Of all the planets in the Solar system, it is most like ours. Forbidding and toxic, of course, but for all that, more cozy and comfortable than any other of the spinning spheres, by far.

Mars is also our next door neighboor, and it should not be at all strange if we would like to drop in and pay a social call. There may be nobody home, but we might at least try the doorbell and (like we did with the old abandoned house down the block where I grew up) step inside, hear the floorboards creak and see if the ghost stories might be true. Maybe we just need someone to Triple-Dog-Dare us... someone like China, maybe (hey, it worked for the Moon!).

I don't disagree with Mark Shea's thesis that NASA scientists are highly motivated by a potential loss of income and position, but I would have to disagree with the idea that we have no good reason to go to Mars. Let's just admit that all the Russians did in the 1960's was to give us a really plausible excuse to go to the Moon. Heck, we pretty well knew there was nothing much there. Buzz Aldrin called the lunar landscape a "magnificent desolation", which was no great surprise, no more a surprise than finding the top of Mt. Everest to be on the chilly side.

But by galactic standards, the Moon is, let's face it, a little like tent camping in your own back yard. It doesn't come near exhausting the idea of going "where no man has gone before". A great start, but shoot!... from the moon mankind can collectively say "I can see my house from here!".

We've always been a little obsessed with Mars. We've dreamed of going there since long before it looked remotely possible. Does everything have to have a scientific justification? Must every endeavour add up to a positive number on someone's balance sheet? We should go, but we should do so just for the poetry and adventure of the thing, and hang the sense of it.

When we went to the Moon, people around the world watched and many cried and prayed. Those who did so in India and Africa and elsewhere were not crying and praying that we would beat the Russians. They did not get a lump in the throat hoping that we would bring back some good moon rocks. They didn't get all misty eyed over the science. When we went to the Moon, the whole world in a real sense went with us. WE - mankind - were going to touch the Heavens.

Not that I think there will be much real manned exploration to do past Mars. The universe is, well, a big place and odds are very heavy that no human being will ever walk outside the Solar system. But until we go to Mars, we just haven't checked off all the items on our To-Do list, I don't think.

To me the question is, why not go? Because it's expensive? I would bet we've sunk enough money into the Wall Street bail-outs to go to Mars and back. Maybe more than once. What does "expensive" mean anymore to a nation that uses play money? What's a dollar really worth? One can find of a lot of brain-warpingly expensive items on the national budget that are not only far more useless than a trip to Mars, but that are positively harmful.

Then there is the danger. Okay, it's a dangerous undertaking. There you go. It is not unlikely that we will lose some people. Still, just as with project Mercury and the entire early space program, there will be astronaut wannabes lining up around the block for the chance to go. Some things are worth the risk (and I don't mean a few scoops of Mars dirt).

I've been leaning heavily on Chesterton here at TLBC, lately, but he's a big guy and can hold me up with no problem. This passage is from Heretics and for me sums up the difference between our great, vigorous leap for the Moon just a few decades ago, and the current hand-wringing about Mars following an extended period of dithering about in low Earth orbit;

When everything about a people is for the time growing weak and ineffective, it begins to talk about efficiency.  So it is that when a man's body is a wreck he begins, for the first time, to talk about health. Vigorous organisms talk not about their processes, but about their aims. There cannot be any better proof of the physical efficiency of a man than that he talks cheerfully of a journey to the end of the world. And there cannot be any better proof of the practical efficiency of a nation than that it talks constantly of a journey to the end of the world, a journey to the Judgment Day and the New Jerusalem. There can be no stronger sign of a coarse material health than the tendency to run after high and wild ideals; it is in the first exuberance of infancy that we cry for the moon.

None of the strong men in the strong ages would have understood what you meant by working for efficiency.  Hildebrand would have said that he was working not for efficiency, but for the Catholic Church. Danton would have said that he was working not for efficiency, but for liberty, equality, and fraternity.  Even if the ideal of such men were simply the ideal of kicking a man downstairs, they thought of the end like men, not of the process like paralytics. They did not say, "Efficiently elevating my right leg, using, you will notice, the muscles of the thigh and calf, which are in excellent order, I--" Their feeling was quite different. They were so filled with the beautiful vision of the man lying flat at the foot of the staircase that in that ecstasy the rest followed in a flash.

For Earth Day

"Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither." - C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

I meant to post this earlier in the day, in honor of Earth Day, but what with one thing and another...

Lewis' quote above illustrates the main gripe I have with Earth Day and similar things; that it represents such a very earthbound point of view, a spiritual myopia, that contains the seeds of its own failure. Aim merely for earth, and you will end up with nothing in the end, not even earth.

Anyhow, the ever-bombastic Iowahawk is holding his 2010 Earthweek Virtual Cruise-In, in which he publishes entries from his readers, featuring photos and descriptions of some formidible gas-guzzlers. He writes;

In honor of this auspicious occasion, the text for the remainder of the day will be displayed in soothing, energy efficient green -- saving nearly 7000 tons of CO2 emissions. As far as you know.

One reader promises (if he wins this dubious competition) to donate his carbon credits to an orphanage. Don't miss it if you can!

Beard Them All!

To all follicularly festooned Catholic co-conspirators; not much action on the TLBC front in the last few weeks, due to the human frailties and limitations of your blog master, who after having fallen headlong into a very challenging new employment situation, took ill on account of exposure to a rich and varied stew of unfamiliar microbes therein, a hearty streptococcus among them, apparently.

This program to toughen the immune system comes as part of an absolutely free package of benfits given to all public school employees. As a result, I have been just well enough over the last month or so to heave my aching carcass out of bed in the morning, supervise my young charges in their art-making ventures, and then let my old beater of an SUV find its way home on auto-pilot in the evening. I've actually entered "Read list of neglected household chores" as one of the items on my list of neglected household chores.

Naturally, blogging has been light, and daily visitor stats have been correspondingly anemic.

But, I am feeling much better, now.

I would like to have given more thought to the recent rash of gleefully savage attacks on the Pope disguised as sober news articles (in which nothing new is presented). The enemies of the Church gain boldness, and finding that their victim offers little resistance, they kick and pummel with ever greater ferocity and confidence. No fatwas or bomb vests to worry them here! The secular authority will not stop until it sees the Church in abject submission to earthly power... after a suitable episode of public humiliation, of course, it wouldn't be the same without that.

Fools. The life of the Church flows from such as this. Take up your hammer and nails. Drive the spear deep.

It's ironic that the attackers have latched on to sexual abuse as a kind of raison d'etat in the war against the Church, because the reality is that their deepest and most secret gripe with Rome is over her continued resistance to the Sexual Revolution, wherein mankind is stood on its head, and the pelvis is elevated above both the heart and the brain, where fulfilled desire is the ultimate value. The same people who complain of pedophile priests actively and studiously ignore the same abuse in nearly every other context, especially as it is revealed as part and parcel of the "homosexual lifestyle", which it is. Those calling most loudly for the Pope's head are likely the same ones quietly working to "protect" sexually active minors from the meddling of their parents by providing state-approved birth control and abortions in secret, and by systematically ignoring statutory rape.

It's. Not. About. The. Children. It is about finding an exploitable breech in the fortress of the Church. There is even giddy chatter about arresting the Pope. It won't happen, of course, but that is not their goal, at present. Their goal in talking about it is only to make the idea begin to appear less unthinkable, to simply get it out there, to let it begin to float around in the realm of possibility.

There is a definition of the word "beard" that I find somewhat encouraging, at this juncture. "Beard" as a verb, as an act;

–verb (used with object)

7. to oppose boldly; defy: It took courage for the mayor to beard the pressure groups.

 

Beard them all, Holy Father! We're with you!

 

(Thanks to Dictionary.com).

Canada's Bearded Ladies

(Photo -Yahoo Sports)

I'll admit that I have not watched a great deal of women's hockey - save for a few minutes of an Olympic matchup a few days ago - and even then, I had questions (such as "why am I watching this?").

I make no claim to be a "fan", but I have been stirred to come to the defense of the embattled Canadian Olympic women's hockey team, as a wave of political correctness threatens to swamp their merry island... or ice floe.

In an emptying areana, the team (having just won the Olympic gold medal) celebrated on the ice with beer and cigars, which has caused no end of consternation and embarrassment for the Canadian Olympic committee. Such behavior sets a bad example, according to some (one girl was under the legal drinking age).

I withhold judgment on that issue until I know what brand of beer and cigars they indulged in.

But on principle, I must stand with these Olympic lasses and issue an official TLBC eye-roll to the hysterical ninnies who have made this an issue.

Do you figure the beer or the tobacco will land them in more trouble?

Anyway... puff proudly, ladies.