Old World Swine

Nothing to See Here...

Where is the national outcry and spontaneous breast-beating over this murder in a church?

Don't worry, folks. This is clearly an isolated incident, the work of a lone kook who's personal beliefs and affiliations could not be of less importance. After all, this was just a Christian minister of a small town church* working quietly and nearly anonymously. It's not like she was of any real political importance.

Now, when an abortionist is murdered in a church, this is clearly part of a larger and darker sort of conspiracy, and we should all be very, very afraid, especially of anyone who opposes abortion.

Style note: When violence and religion are mentioned together in any sort of press article, it is always the religious folk that direct violence against others, never are religious folk the victims of hatred and intolerance, especially from the irreligious. Religious persecution against Christians in the modern world is a contradiction in terms, and is impossible. Christians are the problem. Just as it is impossible for a white man to be the victim of racism, it is impossible that Christians should ever be the victims of intolerance and persecution. Christians are the intolerant ones, always...

...even when they are stabbed to death, mutilated, stripped and laid out on the floor of their church in a crucifixion pose.

Nothing to see here. Move along. Do contact us, though, if a liberal is murdered.

* Eternal rest grant unto her O Lord,
And let perpetual Light shine upon her.
May her soul
And the souls of all the faithful departed
Through the mercy of God
Rest in peace.
Amen.

Not Sure What I Think of This

There are a lot of cross-currents at work in this case of a 13-year-old cancer patient who wishes to opt out of chemotherapy in favor of some kind of "naturopathic" stuff. It's a Catholic family, but they " also believe in the 'do no harm' philosophy of the Nemenhah Band, a Missouri-based religious group that believes in natural healing methods advocated by some American Indians.".

By itself, a strong belief in natural remedies is not incompatible with Catholicism (or any kind of Christian belief I know of), but it could get into some weird areas. If there is an admixture of shamanism (the family claims the boy is a "medicine man and elder in the Nemenhah Band"), then it may in fact be in positive conflict with Church teaching... if the Nemenhah band teaches, for instance, that faith healing is obligatory and that modern medical practices are of the devil, or something.

If they just want to believe that modern medicine just doesn't work as well as natural cures, they are completely free to do that as Catholics.

The boy is 13, on the cusp of manhood, and so the question of how much freedom and control he should have over his treatment is difficult to answer.

Also, it is cases like this one - rare, but sensational - that can easily be used to undermine the natural autonomy of all families by passing laws that take parental consent out of the picture altogether. Mandatory medical treatment enforced by the state is not something we should be really excited to see increasing.

How would a Jewish or Muslim family react if the state decided that one of their loved ones needed an organ transplant from a pig? How would they be allowed to react? If the patient was a devout Jew or Muslim, could it not possibly cause a horrible, personal/psychological/emotional crisis? Would they be allowed to opt out, then, for "religious" reasons?

At the same time, one hates to see kids caught up in the (possible) kookiness of the parents and end up paying with their lives. It's a sticky situation, but I truly hate to see the power of the state expand yet again at the expense of family sovereignty. The parents, in this case, are obviously not out to harm the boy. They just disagree with the state on the best way to approach his treatment. True neglect may be difficult or impossible to establish.

Please pray for these folks, especially that the boy's cancer will just go away. I don't think the family would mind that sort of intervention in their affairs.

Roamin' Catholic

This past weekend, instead of assisting at the Mass I usually attend at our local parish, I drove to another nearby town because I had thought I heard they had started having a Latin Mass. Not having ever seen one in person, I made the trip.

It turns out it isn't a Latin Mass. What it is, is a reverently done Novus Ordo Mass, with an eye toward the traditional and ancient liturgy, rather than toward the accommodation of pop culture sensibilities. A New Mass that yet gives pride of place to Latin and to Gregorian Chant.

The priest still faces the congregation, but many of the prayers and responses are in Latin. There is a large crucifix behind the altar, flanked by statues of Mary and Joseph. The tabernacle is directly behind the altar. In other words, it only takes a few seconds to figure out that you are at a Catholic Mass. There is no mistaking it.

There was a small Gregorian schola singing. Were they the greatest I'd ever heard? No. Was it cool, anyway? Definitely. Again, when you hear Gregorian Chant, you know what is going on... you know you are there to worship. There was also a young man (probably college age) who was playing the Pipe Organ... only on a synthesizer. The technology has come so far, though, that if your eyes were closed you would have a very hard time telling the difference. He did a great job, and this - again - added to the palpable sense of reverence. Beauty is important.

It's likely I'll be assisting at this Mass often, now. I have no major gripes about our parish, I'm pretty much with Mark Shea where liturgy is concerned... just give me my lines and my blocking and I'm generally content. But lately I've felt the need for a little more help in the area of assisting my imagination (and that of my family & kids) to truly grasp the importance of what is going on at the altar, and Who it is we are gathered together to worship.

Engaging the whole mind and imagination is part and parcel of true worship (not "imagination" as if one is whipping up a fantasy, but in terms of simply calling to the forefront of the mind what one already firmly believes... stirring up the ashes of faith that too often grow cold). A meaningful, substantial liturgy helps to do this. Ancient forms of music help, statues help, candles and stained glass... Are these necessary? No... one can worship huddled in a bomb shelter. But, am I grateful every day for things that I have that are not strictly necessary? Very much. Art isn't necessary. Poetry and music and dancing, good beer and wine and the cup of hot coffee I have in front of me now aren't necessary. My daughter doesn't have to lay her head on my shoulder during Mass... but I'm very grateful she does.

The Incarnation wasn't necessary. The salvation of mankind isn't either... heaven can get along just fine without us.

This tendency toward minimalism in everything - this work of paring everything down to its bare bones - rather than purifying or freeing the imagination (as is often claimed) is destructive and stifling. It is a kind of mania to think that we should take what is true in a bomb shelter (that one can worship in any blank and spartan environment) and universalize it in such a way that our churches are now as blank and spartan as bomb shelters.

This minimalism begins to extend even to the area of the creed. It is true that one may be saved at the end of one's life - at the very moment of death - by simply and sincerely calling on the name of the Lord... ("forgive me!!"). It is also true that "to whom much is given, much is required". We are not all drowning men. The Church and the Sacraments are not just nice options.

Anyway, I was moved at this not-Latin Mass, and my worship was greatly helped. After many years of making do with whatever was offered, I'm at a place where I need this additional spiritual nourishment. I don't think we should at all come to the worship of God focused on what we receive rather than what we bring, but this more reverential and traditional Mass helps me to bring more, and to worship more truly.

Why Worship? Why Praise?

(Courtesy NASA.gov)

Last week in a combox discussion over at Jimmy Akin's blog, I wrote the following in response to an unbeliever who held that the praise and worship of God - especially in heaven for all eternity - strikes even most Christians as a bore and a drudgery, but they do it anyway because it's what God commands;

I have always been an artist. I have always understood that the world is a work of art, that it means something, and if it means something, then there must be someone to mean it.

(I know I'm paraphrasing Chesterton here and there)

The worship of God - due praise to the artist - is not only something I don't find AT ALL to be a dreary duty, but is something that can hardly be helped. It wants to leap out on its own, like a laugh or the "Oooohs and Aaahhhs" you hear at a fireworks show. They won't be able to shut me up in heaven.

I believe I did get the point across that the praise and worship of God is a very natural response, and this statement is alright as far as it goes, but it doesn't go far enough and could leave the false impression that we worship God mainly for what he does, rather than who he is.

God does deserve endless praise just for his work, his artfulness in creating the universe, but that is only the beginning of the story. The universe is as achingly beautiful and subtle and powerful and fascinating as it is because it reflects in many ways the character - the attributes - of the artist who made it. If the world is an artwork and does have meaning as I maintained above, then it all points back to the one who made it and what he is like. Not that a person would be able to really understand everything about God from nature alone (the pagans demonstrate that), but as St. Paul said in Romans 1:20, "For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.".

As we pray in the Gloria, "We praise you for your glory.". God's glory is this revelation of himself, this radiant presence that comes to us through all of his creation. His glory consists in the very fact that the Triune God, infinitely perfect and complete, does not keep himself to himself. He continually shares his divine life with all creation, holding every atom in existence by his will from moment to moment. God shares with us the attributes of existence and free will in a completely unnecessary and ongoing act of love.

We praise God for who he is, and we only know who he is because he has revealed it to us in this radiant penumbra of glory called Creation.

Addendum: I'll add that we often think of Creation as a noun, like it's only a thing. Creation is also a verb, the ongoing act of God.

Science News; Religious Faith Brings Pain Relief?

According to an article in Science News online;

Stimulating a religious state of mind in devout Catholics triggers brain processes associated with substantial relief from physical pain, report neuroscientist Katja Wiech of the University of Oxford, England...

I had to grin at the "devout Catholics" thing. Remember, in any mainstream media source, Catholics are always "devout".

Practicing Catholics perceived electrical pulses delivered to one hand while viewing an image of the Virgin Mary as less painful than pulses delivered while looking at a non-religious picture....

...In alternating trials, volunteers first spent 30 seconds observing an image either of a painting of the Virgin Mary or Lady with an Ermine, a painting of a similar-looking woman by Leonardo da Vinci.

Why does this bring flashbacks of A Clockwork Orange?

This kind of study seems... well, in the words of Hermione Granger, "a very woolly discipline...". The two images used are different enough in mood to explain certain differences in reaction. One face is alert, attentive and brightly lit, the other muted,  downcast and listless to the point of being soporific (oddly, when I viewed the story this morning, it was accompanied by a different picture of the Virgin Mary). The whole thing just doesn't seem to me very scientific, except for the use of some scientific equipment (MRI machines).

I keep wondering what kind of real conclusions anyone expects to be able to draw from such an experiment. At least it seems nearly impossible to get anything from this set of observations that one doesn't bring to it. According to the study, there is (at certain times) activity in certain regions of the brains of religious people that isn't there in non-religious people. Okay. Duly noted - but that's no data to which any reputable scientist could even begin to attach any explanatory meaning.

That won't stop some from trying to nudge interpretation one way or another, but even in that effort they run into difficulties, as when Tor Wager of Columbia University states “Anyone can create new, positive meanings for aversive events, but they have to find thoughts or interpretations that they truly believe in”.

Anyone spot the Chicken or Egg problem here, or is it just me? I have no doubt, though, that rash, pseudo-scientific atheists will be happy to (somehow?) use this study as further evidence that the Religion Centers of the brain evolved because it proved beneficial (in some ways) to primitive man, lessening the psychic impact of his prehistoric boo-boos.

GET THE STORY.

China Adds New Olympic Sport

Just in time for the closing ceremony. The venue was a cathedral in Zhengding, a city in northern Hebei province.

Underground Catholic Bishop Detained

The AP reports.

Pelosi Violates Mythical Church/State Wall

(AP Photo) This whole idea of a Wall of Separation between Church and State is malarkey, especially in the way it is understood to mean "religion has no place in government" - but let's pretend for a moment that it really is something enshrined (though mysteriously not mentioned) in the Constitution.

Why is it that so many politicians gnash their teeth and wring their hands and invoke this Wall when religious people dare to exercise any influence on the political process (especially in an organized way) but then can be so glib about violating the wall in the other direction? Witness the recent spectacle of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi waxing theological on Meet the Press, and clarifying for the audience why it is that the Catholic Church really has had no consistent position on abortion.

Whoa! Hold the pontificatin', ma'am. The Church has a whole posse of bishops and cardinals and even a Pope to handle these things, and we don't cotton to politicians and gub'ment lackeys taking Church Law into their own hands. You're outside your jurisdiction.

But this wall, in the minds of many like Ms. Pelosi, isn't like a wall between rooms in a house, or even a wall between two farms or two countries. It is increasingly the wall of a prison camp or a ghetto. The guards can come and go and do what they like, but the inmates must be contained. So Ms. Pelosi sees nothing inconsistent in her behavior. She was only speaking to the inmates, some of whom are confused and in need of her wisdom and instruction.

Fortunately, some of our good bishops have begun to correct Ms. Pelosi, as the formidable Amy Welborn documents.

This Changes Everything!

Rabbi discovers that God is androgynous! So instead of this hackneyed old conception of God...

...we now have this far superior image...

I Love Magic, Too, Harry

I wouldn't call myself a Harry Potter fan, exactly, but I have enjoyed the movies with my family and respect J.K. Rowling's gift of imagination, especially in the details; an enchanted pen that writes one thing while the reporter says another, Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans, Platform Nine and Three-Quarters, Floo Powder, etc...

I love the Weasley family, and one detail that I found especially delightful was the Weasley's magical tent. This is an ordinary looking canvas camping tent that turns out to be far bigger on the inside than on the outside. It was not only a fun imaginary detail, but it made perfect sense, in a way. It fit something, or was like meeting someone and swearing you had met them before. It took me only a minute to figure out why I responded to the idea of the Weasley's magic tent so strongly.

It's because people, every one of us, are just like that tent. We are all much bigger on the inside than we appear on the outside. This is the one salient fact about human life, and the one fact that scientific materialism can't seem to get it's brain around. I have had protracted combox arguments with avowed materialists who swore up and down that neither they nor I really had a free mind and will. My first response has mainly been, "Then, why in the name of Grandpa's bunyons are we arguing? What is the point, if neither of us has a free mind? Why labor so doggedly to convince me of the truth when there is no truth outside our own respective brains?"

My other response is to just gasp at the totality of their delusion. It's one thing to argue that there are no such things as magic tents. It's another, though, to make the argument vehemently from the doorway of your own magic tent.

We all have direct knowledge of free will by our own experience. It's a fact we take as much for granted as breathing. To have become so enamored, so thoroughly swayed by a theory (a theory as thin as water) that you will deny the reality of your own inner life rather than question it, is simply staggering. It takes one's breath away. There can be no logical back-and-forth with someone under such a delusion. The problem isn't in their logic, it's that their logic moves in such a tight, impenetrable circle that it leaves out everything it is meant to explain.

Chesterton, reliably states it better;

"The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.

The madman's explanation of a thing is always complete, and often in a purely rational sense satisfactory. Or, to speak more strictly, the insane explanation, if not conclusive, is at least unanswerable...

Nevertheless he is wrong. But if we attempt to trace his error in exact terms, we shall not find it quite so easy as we had supposed. Perhaps the nearest we can get to expressing it is to say this: that his mind moves in a perfect but narrow circle. A small circle is quite as infinite as a large circle; but, though it is quite as infinite, it is not so large. In the same way the insane explanation is quite as complete as the sane one, but it is not so large. A bullet is quite as round as the world, but it is not the world. There is such a thing as a narrow universality; there is such a thing as a small and cramped eternity; you may see it in many modern religions. Now, speaking quite externally and empirically, we may say that the strongest and most unmistakable mark of madness is this combination between a logical completeness and a spiritual contraction. The lunatic's theory explains a large number of things, but it does not explain them in a large way." - from Orthodoxy

Nine times out of ten, it is not a problem in logic that lies at the root of such delusion, and so logic won't be the cure. It is a kind of spiritual sickness or blindness. Jesus seemed particularly sympathetic to blind people, though, which might be comforting. There is always hope, and the hope is, as ever, in the action of the Holy Spirit and not in our power to persuade.

This idea of the Magic Tent (St. Paul referred to his body as a tent, too, I recall) is what is lacking in all the modern and merely material theories of commerce and governance. They all leave out completely the fact that human beings are much bigger and more complex on the inside than they are on the outside, and they can't give up figuring only on the outside... and so they fail.

I only bring it up because it fits nicely between the two parts of this series on the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution and the Modern World.

TAE on "Waste as Worship"

Some good thoughts on art and architecture and their proper role in worship from The Aesthetic Elevator.

As a Catholic in post-modern America, I see the same attitude in Catholic circles (more assumed than articulated) that was prevalent in the Baptist churches of my youth... that worship should be as plain as possible, and that highfalootin' art and architecture is a waste of money... "It could have been sold for more than a year's wages and the money given to the poor.". After all, we are supposed to worship Christ "in spirit and in truth", which means singing praise choruses in a strip mall or, in my case, a plain beige "worship space" (how prosaic is that term?) with track lights hanging from the bare girders.

I can't help thinking of C.S. Lewis' "men without chests", who were assumed to be geniuses because their heads seemed larger than normal, when in reality, it was their shrunken chests that made the heads look proportionally bigger.

A plain church building does nothing to guarantee a more pure or more "spiritual" worship. In a frontier setting, or by other necessity, true worship can be managed anywhere, and a beautiful thing it is. But a church building can also be seen, not just as a place in which to worship, or something that inspires worship, but as the product of worship... architectural worship, or a "prayer in stone" as it has been called.

Besides, I've heard too many stories of people being brought to hushed awe and reverence - even conversion - by the beauty of, say, the Pieta or Chartres Cathedral, to just wave them off as anomalies. Art can make a big impact on people's lives.

I can't imagine the kind of mind that could look up into the vast expanse of the vaulted ceiling of Notre Dame and think "What a waste of space". Waste is part of what makes art "art". Like poetry or music, it is useless for anything but making human beings remember their humanity.