The Great Rival to Christianity

My friend Bubba wrote the following to me in an email in June of 2013.

In The Four Loves, CS Lewis points out that, for everything but the love of God, any love that becomes a small-d deity immediately becomes a demon. Any ideology can become an idol, but I honestly think the Left's ideology is an intrinsic rival to Christianity. It's not just that some Leftists go overboard, it's that Leftism requires them to worship at its altar.

Man's two greatest needs is radical change and a sense of belonging. Christ offers both, through regeneration by His Spirit and adoption into His family. Leftism presumes to offer both as well: we know that the world's not right, and the Left offers utopia through revolution, and we know we don't belong, and the Left offers a sense of belonging through the State.

Christianity and Leftism are rival religions, with competing solutions to man's most fundamental needs.

Smart guy, that Bubba, and a devout Christian.

Their kind of conservatism

Charades:

Boy Working

Yes. Everyone who guessed, guessed correctly. And now to the main event.

Just recently, to further promote his forthcoming Dante book, our hard-sniffing Working Boy availed himself of an interview with  "philosopher James K.A. Smith" (Is philosopher a professional designation? If not, can anyone be one? If so, how does one rank Smith relative to philosopher Charlie Brown or philosopher Pogo?).


Naturally, such favors must be repaid, head to tail, and so this tongue bath urging readers to subscribe to Smith's Comment magazine entitled Our Kind of Conservatism.

Here's what we need to figure out, though. In the comments under Smith's article Redeeming Conservatism, a commenter named John Tiemstra puts us on this notice:

OK, just as long as we understand that the real conservatives are people who favor market-based reforms, like cap and trade, Obamacare, and Dodd-Frank. Most so-called conservatives these days are not conservative at all, but radical libertarians.

Whoa, really? Forgive me, but that sounds more like the Pelosi-Obama-Reid wing of conservatism to me.

And no "Nuh-huh, nooooooooo, no way, Dude!" from philosopher James K. A. Smith.

Is there a nuanced mystery to this redeemed conservatism too complex for my dense and primitive monkey noggin? If not, where am I going astray from real conservatism? I will say Smith appears to me to be successfully "offer[ing] a posture".

(philosopher and noted poultry critic Keith M. Ionlyhaveonemiddleinitial H.)

Can a band named Diarrhea Planet be any good?

I report, you decide.



I like them all right. Remind me a little bit of Fugazi.

Cardinal Burke for Human Life International

I just received the following in an email from Human Life International, a really great Catholic pro-life group.

Cardinal Burke is a staunch defender of the Church's pro-life and pro-family teachings, and has been great friend to HLI---especially HLI's Rome office. HLI thanks Cardinal Burke for his years of service in the Vatican, and wishes him many blessings in his new assignment!  

This letter from Cardinal Burke was written shortly before his reassignment:

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, 

As Christians today, we find ourselves in a completely secularized society marked by violence and death and by a relativism which has generated profound confusion and outright error regarding the most fundamental truths of the moral law.  

The sanctity of human life, the understanding of marriage as the lifelong and faithful union between one man and one woman, and the role of the family as the first cell of society and the Church have suffered very much in the present culture of death.

Human Life International exists to promote and to defend the sanctity of human life, the understanding of marriage and the rule of the family according to the divine natural and revealed moral law, and, in this manner, to help to transform our society from a culture of death to a culture of life. Human Life International works throughout the world, in over 80 countries, to proclaim the beauty of the Gospel of Life to all peoples and to all nations.

I encourage you to give strong support for the most important work of Human Life International. Please support the mission of Human Life International, above all, with your prayers. The mission of Human Life International depends on the gifts of donors, and I ask you please to be generous also in your financial support of Human Life International. May God reward you!

Invoking God's blessing upon you and your home, while confiding your intentions to the intercession of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Saint Michael the Archangel and Saint Joseph, I remain  

Yours devotedly in the Sacred Heart of Jesus and in the Immaculate Heart of Mary,   Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke

Sign of Contradiction

In a Crisis article, Bill Maguire lays out the problem for Bishops who would like to pass off a complete change in Church teaching with regard to marriage, divorce and remarriage as a legitimate doctrinal development. Excerpt:

The problem, then, for those bishops proposing Eucharistic communion for the divorced and remarried isn’t that there hasn’t been a development of Church teaching or that the subject hasn’t already been “thoroughly examined.” The vast body of Magisterial teachings—we could also cite John Paul II’s Apostolic Exhortation Reconciliatio et Paenitentia (n.34) and Pope Benedict XVI’s Apostolic Exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis (n. 29)—evidence 35 years of thorough examination and signal a significant development and deepening of the Church’s teaching regarding marriage.

On the contrary, then, the conundrum for the bishops is that the definitive examination of the subject and the development of the Church’s teaching on marriage have gone precisely the opposite direction they want it to go.

We will continue to see frustration and anger on the part of liberals who think along the lines "Man, there has simply got to be a way to let divorced and remarried people receive the sacraments! The sacraments are so important to Catholics!" Yes, the sacraments are important to Catholics, and that is why there is already a way for the remarried to receive them: practice complete continence, as the Catechism quoted in the article mentions. That sounds difficult, but since those people put themselves in a difficult situation to begin with, it is hardly unjust, though we are obliged to sympathize with them. Unfortunately this way of gaining access to the sacraments will often be ignored and left untried because it is difficult in fulfillment of Chesterton's timeless dictum.

Pope Paul VI has already given us the response for objections to unpopular beliefs in section 18 of Humanae Vitae.

It is to be anticipated that perhaps not everyone will easily accept this particular teaching. There is too much clamorous outcry against the voice of the Church, and this is intensified by modern means of communication. But it comes as no surprise to the Church that she, no less than her divine Founder, is destined to be a "sign of contradiction." She does not, because of this, evade the duty imposed on her of proclaiming humbly but firmly the entire moral law, both natural and evangelical.

Dietrich von Hildebrand: "Mein Kampf Gegen Hitler"

I am currently reading a great new book, My Battle Against Hitler, a collection of entries by Dietrich von Hildebrand in his memoirs translated and edited by John Henry Crosby with John F. Crosby. It's very intense and informative; it details von Hilebrand's intellectual war against National Socialism as well as the events in his own life which occurred around the time of Hitler's ascendancy. These events have to do with basically getting in the middle of fierce arguments and near-brawls with anti-Semites and fascists, having his wife get threatening phone calls, finding out the Nazis wanted to kill him and finally having to flee the country to save his life. And I'm only on page 60! Since I am not very far in the book I'm not ready to review it, but I will be excerpting sections from it here and in the weeks to come. This is from an introductory chapter titled "A Fateful Decision":

What might von Hildebrand have called this volume? We will never know, and given his humility he might have suggested a title which honored his collaborators rather than himself. But he did, unwittingly, provide the title. Searching the pages of his memoirs, we discovered that he had entitled an outline for part for part of his memoirs "Mein Kampf Gegen Hitler"—"My Battle Against Hitler". Thus was the present volume christened.

A lot of his intellectual lectures and argumentation which I've read so far have been against contemporaries who had an idea that collectivism of some type — usually national socialism but sometimes communism — can and should be compatible with Christianity and, in some way, the collectivist concept of community is actually a Christian idea and should be pursued for that very reason. Von Hildebrand referred to this misconception as an overemphasis of the notion of community at the expense of the individual. Here is his response to the erroneous idea:

My talk was the fruit of all the investigations which formed the subject of my book The Metaphysics of Community which had been published two years before. In the talk I sought to make very clear that every attempt to establish a community at the expense of the individual person is not only in itself false but necessarily leads to a misconception of the true nature of community. I pointed out the horror of antipersonalism and totalitarianism, showing their absolute incompatibility with Christian revelation, and I criticized the false thesis of Hegel who held that the state is a higher entity that the individual. Only the individual person is a substance in the full sense, while the state is only a quasi-substance.

At the same time, I stressed the reality and dignity of true community in contrast to every kind of false liberal individualism. All of this was philosophically grounded with great case, yet there was no chance of convincing the other members of the committee, who were not very acute philosophically and who had allowed themselves to be swept away by the Zeitgeist.

The spirit of the age in these encounters mirrors the intellectual bankruptcy and moral corruption in our own. And yet there was something much more threatening at that time because of the will to enact horrible evils in the form of direct violence upon individuals and institutions on the part of Hitler and his followers. I have a friend who invariably brings up Hitler whenever the two of us discuss Obama and his awful policies. Recently I took issue with him. I said "OK, I know what you mean, but you are going to lose at least 50% of the people if you compare Obama to Hitler. Obama isn't scratching people off left and right for opposing him." Hitler was elected, but years before he ever was made chancellor he was organizing fascist attempts at government takeovers. He was way beyond political dirty tricks; he was into violence, threats of violence and destruction to achieve his ends. Reading this book really reveals the fear of that time and place and brings it home to me in an incredibly personal way as a Catholic and as someone with a family.

Charles M. Blow, Race-hustler and Professinal Whiner

I could post a commentary on Charles M. Blow's latest three articles which are even worse in the race-hustling and black victimhood department than normal. But it would actually just make everybody stupider to read them. So I'm going to post something much more intelligent and uplifting which my kids recently showed me.

Rod Dreher, fortunate son

Over at the national edition of Wick Allison's trendy and urbane D Magazine, oddly named The American Conservative, Rod Dreher calls out Ethan Epstein at The Weekly Standard (just as oddly not named "conservative" while actually being so) for criticizing Bruce Springsteen's choice to play John Fogerty's "Fortunate Son" at the Veteran's Day "Concert for Valor" on the National Mall. Epstein:

The song, not to put too fine a point on it, is an anti-war screed, taking shots at "the red white and blue." It was a particularly terrible choice given that Fortunate Son is, moreover, an anti-draft song, and this concert was largely organized to honor those who volunteered to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq.

But as readers of EQE already know, Dreher's testicles have not yet descended to the point where he has the courage to make his main point directly, in this case hypocritically and self-loathingly criticizing American military involvements that may later have been second-guessed, including the Iraq War Dreher himself ferociously supported while it was a hot career builder, then later reversed his position on when the opposite point of view filled his rice bowl better instead.

In this instance, Dreher's post ostensibly about Springsteen's song choice (the click bait wrapper) and its criticism (including at The Washington Post) leads incongruously with a full column image of Emmanuel Goldstein Dick Cheney (the comment box bait payload)

The song is not an “anti-war screed”; it is a song protesting the unfairness of the draft, and how the burden of war-fighting fell disproportionately on members of the working class who were not in college, and couldn’t get, say, five Vietnam War draft deferments, like some former vice presidents we could name. In that sense, performing that song last night was perfectly legitimate, even laudatory.

complete with link to a 10-year-old New York Times article.

His carefully vetted disciples in the comment boxes dutifully take up The Weekly Standard/neocon red meat from there with well-trained rodentine reflex.

Well, not all. Aptly named commenter Thomas Aquinas points out

The fact that you have to write this means the song should have not been sung. When celebrating someone’s service, it is deeply insulting to inject anything that would cause division. Why risk upsetting people you are supposed to be supporting?

Controversy, in this case, was not a virtue

No, not a virtue at all, nor Dreher's cynically exploiting the due and appropriate criticism of it by leftist Post and conservative Standard alike in order to suck up to his new isolationist patronage.

So, let's review:

- When he was at National Review, swooning at living in New York City and getting paid the bucks to do so, Rod Dreher loudly supported the Iraq War, and very likely his exhortations in favor of it sent young men and women to die there at no cost to himself.

- During the Vietnam War, Dick Cheney did in fact receive a number of legal draft deferments. He subsequently served as Secretary of Defense and Vice President of the United States. He did not, however, pick Bruce Springsteen's song list.

- Rod Dreher's brother-in-law, Mike Leming, an actual patriot and a veteran, volunteered and served in the Louisiana National Guard, both at home and in Iraq.

- Mike Leming's brother-in-law, Rod Dreher, volunteered to eat oysters in Paris and black truffles in Tuscany.

- Back home, in between those two overseas deployments, he often slept for long stretches during the day because he was depressed about himself.

- He will tell us about that ugly combat in his forthcoming hardback book for sale at something on the order of $20 a copy, the one with Dante in the title (the click bait wrap...well, you already know how that works, now, don't you)

Rod Dreher, fortunate son indeed.

UPDATE (as they say): In the few minutes since I put this post up Dreher has changed the prominently leading image (with its simpering subtitle "A lucky recipient of five Vietnam draft deferments") of Dick Cheney, replacing it with an innocuous one of Bruce Springsteen. Here is the original post I wrote about with the original Cheney image-bait.