Self-revelations or Lies?

If the anonymous author of the Benedict Post is actually Rod Dreher as we've assumed in the past, then I don't know what to do with this excerpt from a recent post.

Like Scalia, I am a former high school debater, a product of a Jesuit education, a traditionalist-minded Catholic, a conservative, and a lawyer. To see someone so similar, in that prominent of a position, not only saying it’s okay to think this way, but this is the way you should be thinking about the law was incredibly inspiring and motivating. As one of the many conservative legal minds who had (and will have) the privilege of learning the law from you: thank you, Justice Scalia.

Obviously Rod Dreher is none of these things, although an argument could be made that he is a conservative since many people think he is, including himself. But he is not any type of functional conservative, not any more than he is a functional ice cube. (Oh brother, Pauli, do you really want to bring up your support for that loser Romney who very losingly lost the 2016 Presidential election? Sure; if Donald Trump gets the GOP nod, I'll vote for his sinking ship over HRC.) So if this is Dreher's sock-puppet site, he is being extremely deceptive in claiming to be a Catholic lawyer with a Jesuit education. Of course, he has a history of doing this as we know.

This post goes on seemingly forever, quoting and commentating upon practically everybody's farewell tribute to Scalia. I don't know if anyone who reads here is bored enough to compare the quotes with Dreher's TAC tribute — I assume he wrote one — to check for matches, similar patterns, etc. The other angle might be to skim through the writings of His Crunchiness to identify traditionalist-minded, Jesuit produced, former debater, "conservative" friends for whom Dreher provides a name. I'm thinking of people like the rich guy who he drank beers with in Europe who is tired of fast-food joints and dumb-ass Republicans. He might be a lawyer who doesn't want to lose clients by admitting he actually buys into this Benedict Option balderdash.

The possibility exists that Dreher is the author and is simply lying about law degrees and Catholic cred to throw people off the trail. I wouldn't be naïve enough to rule that out. But there are so many nuts out there, like my font abuse friend whom I've written about (and more recent news about him later), that I don't doubt this person could be a separate individual from Rod Dreher. He could be just another self-righteous, politically-homeless dude with a blog, a permanent scowl and a desire for a Christian ghetto apart from all those pesky Christians.

The Benefactor Factor

Dennis Prager writes about how government entitlement programs and increasing dependency of the populace on them don't destroy only the economy, but also the virtue of gratitude. Excerpt:

What entitlements do, and what the transformation of entitlements into rights does, is create a citizenry that increasingly lacks the most important character trait -- gratitude. Of all the characteristics needed for both a happy and morally decent life, none surpasses gratitude. Grateful people are happier, and grateful people are more morally decent. That is why we teach our children to say "thank you." But the welfare state undoes that. One does not express thanks for a right. So, instead of "thank you," the citizen of the welfare state is taught to say, "What more can I get?"

Yet, while producing increasingly selfish people, the mantra of the left, and therefore of the universities and the media, has been for generations that capitalism and the free market, not the welfare state, produces selfish people.

All too true.

In my opinion, another thing which sheds light on the dearth in gratitude among recipients is the impersonal nature of government assistance. At a soup kitchen you may see a smiling face presenting you with the gift of food, with many other volunteers scurrying about in the background to prepare the gift. But often the monetary assistance delivered to those being helped by Uncle Sam is in the form of mass-produced debit cards and checks chunked out by 3rd party processing centers. Some of these don't even say where they are from. They don't even have an official seal or an American flag on them. It's easy to see how this tends to engender an entitlement mentality. Actions speak louder than words, even Obama's applause lines.

But speaking of Obama's words, all this legislation he brags on seems to be moving entitlements to a new level of abstraction. Forcing insurance companies to cover "kids" up to 26 years old—and these companies will merely shrug and raise premiums—is an ingenious way to hide the entitlement and thus hide the fact that it is a gift from either parental guardians or taxpayers. Is as if liberal bureaucrats are saying "Don't thank us, just re-elect us and pay more taxes. We'll keep rigging the system for you."

John Zmirak on Human Dignity and Current Debates

The hat tip goes to our friend Carol McKinley for pointing out this excellent piece by John Zmirak. It reminds me of another one of his articles which I linked to regarding "misguided compassion". Those Zmirak skewers here are no less misguided than the Earl of Longford; here's his initial characterization:

When asked, "What's your favorite thing about being a Catholic?" some well-instructed souls will cite the Eucharist, while others will speak of their devotion to Our Lady.... Reading what many Catholics have to say on economics and politics lately, it seems to me that if these folks answered honestly, they'd have to say: "Being Catholic gives me a high-minded rhetoric of noble-sounding values, a sense of moral superiority, and unrestricted license to speak and write as a crank."

I really beg everyone to read this entire thing. John Zmirak is not a Catholic blogger, but a Catholic writer, and a well-informed Catholic writer, not a hack theologian or amateur apologist. Plus he's always funny, which makes his writing pleasant, and he's always succinct, which makes reading him worthwhile. Following are some excerpts and my own short commentary on his insights which are rooted in the meaning of what the Church proclaims about Human Dignity and not based on chimerical vagaries bearing titles like "living wage" or "economic justice".

I've had my disagreements in the past with the learned Thomas E. Woods Jr., but as someone who has taken the trouble to read seriously in the discipline of economics (I wrote a book on the subject in the light of Catholic social teaching), I share with him a violent frustration at Catholics who grandstand about "distributive justice" and offer Rube Goldberg schemes for re-engineering our country's economy, without knowing or caring how wealth is produced in the first place. Our country's relatively recent, hard-won, and fragile prosperity they treat as if it had descended in pennies from heaven, and the only question now is how to divide up the windfall fairly. All property and all labor, they take for granted, is owned in common. It may suit the State to allow you to hold a "title" to your house, or keep some portion of your wages. But fundamentally you belong to the U.S. Congress, just as a Russian serf and every stick of furniture in his house was the property of the tsar. Left-leaning bishops who wish to make this point note that Creation was given to man in common; they leave out the fact that our labor is our own, and that taxes enforced by the threat of imprisonment can mount up to a kind of slavery. (Medieval serfs paid only 10 percent of their wealth to their feudal lords; you and I pay up to 50 percent when federal, state, local, Social Security, and sales taxes are added up -- which means that half our time is spent working with a bayonet at our backs.)

This is why whenever I hear the phrase "giving back to the community" I intone the same mantra: "I gave at the office."

What's missing from these people's happy, totalitarian picture is something fundamental to the West, a fruit of Christian culture that it took Vatican II (yes, you read me correctly) for the Church to fully recognize: the fact of human dignity. In the early Church, up through the first writings of St. Augustine, the Church asked only for liberty of worship, confident that the gospel would sway people on its own. In his later years, frustrated by the intransigence of the Donatist heretics, Augustine changed his mind and asked the now-Christian emperors to "compel them to come in." Building on Augustine's later work, many popes and countless Christian kings used the coercive power of the State to persecute heretics -- arguing that the free will of these individuals was outweighed by the danger to the souls they might lead to hell. Besides, they said in a phrase that became a little bit infamous, "Error has no rights." Since no one has a right to do what's wrong, how can those with false beliefs have a right to hold and practice an inaccurate religion? Do they have the right to lie about the gospel?

At Vatican II, the Council Fathers were more concerned about the very real persecution of Christians throughout the Communist bloc than the duty of (now-deposed) Catholic monarchs to uphold orthodoxy. They reframed the question as follows: Error may have no rights, but the person holding the error does. In Dignitatis Humanae, the Council teaches that the dignity of the human person forbids religious coercion by the State. Pope John Paul II was not, I think, misguided when he apologized for the actions of his predecessors that violated this precept.

Now—this is the key paragraph, and it might provide a dividing line for modern day American Conservative Catholics and modern day American Liberal Catholics on issues such as health insurance reform, wage laws, the environment and the role of government in general:

Nor does human dignity stop at the church door. Throughout the Catechism, the Church insists on the rights of the human person to liberty of thought, association, and action—within the limits of justice and the countervailing rights of one's fellow men. Only when our actions violate justice—not charity, but justice—is it right to use the violent, coercive power of the State to curb and restrict them. Indeed, it is only justice that can be enforced by the State. Mandatory charity is as moot as mandatory faith or hope.

If you have a problem with this, go back and read Dignitatis Humanae again, the first paragraph should do in a pinch if you are short on time.

Then he concludes beautifully by explaining the prudential nature of the current debate. I think Zmirak has explained Pope John Paul II's apologies better than just about anyone else I've heard on that oft-misunderstood topic.

Any Roman Catholic decrying the government's use of coercive tactics—the torturing of terrorism suspects comes to mind—should extend their disapproval to the kind of economic coercion imposed by the kind of out-of-control government redistribution being discussed and proposed currently in our nation. It consitiutes an affront to the same human dignity possessed by all, only on a much larger scale.

Thanks for reading my blog. For current commentary and what-not, visit the Est Quod Est homepage.

NPR Makes Fun of the Holy Eucharist and YOU Get To Pay For It

Hey, sinners who read this blog: do some reparation for this sh*t. From the Catholic League:

An official from Public Radio International, the parent organization that carries “Fair Game with Faith Salie,” called to say that the offensive skit has been pulled from its website and an on-air apology has been given.

We are satisfied with this outcome—it effectively ends this issue.

Original News Release from January 9, 2008

JESUS TRASHED IN ANTI-HUCKABEE SKIT;
OFFENSE AIRS ON UTAH NPR STATION

On January 7, an anti-Huckabee skit trashed Jesus on a radio show, “Fair Game with Faith Salie.” It aired on KCPW, Utah’s National Public Radio station. Here is a transcript of the offensive segment:

[Woman’s voice]: And now another Huckabee family recipe leaked by his opponents.

[Male Voice]: Tired of bland unsatisfying Eucharists? Try this Huckabee family favorite. Deep-Fried Body of Christ--boring holy wafers no more. Take one Eucharist. Preferably post transubstantiation. Deep-fry in fat, not vegetable oil, ladies, until crispy. Serve piping hot. Mike likes to top his Christ with whipped cream and sprinkles. But his wife Janet and the boys like theirs with heavy gravy and cream puffs. It goes great with red wine.

[Woman’s voice]: Now that is just ridiculous. Everyone knows evangelicals don’t believe in transubstantiation.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue responded as follows:

“We are lodging a complaint with Ed Sweeney, KCPW’s general manager. This kind of programming would be over-the-top on a shock-jock station, never mind a station funded by the taxpayers. We would also like to know who was behind this assault on Jesus. Therefore, we are asking for an investigation. Whoever it was, he or she used presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee and evangelicals as foil, saving the real sucker punch for Roman Catholics. This is despicable on several counts: it is blasphemous and bigoted. But it may also be motivated by a political calculus, making it really dirty if it is.”

This reminds me of two street acts we saw at a fair up in Canada on summer vacation. The magician was good and we gave him money at the end even though he made fun of President Bush. Because who really cares. The juggler was good and made fun of George Bush too, then he made fun of Jesus. I forget what the jokes were. So he didn't get any money. I explained that to my oldest kid, that we don't really care what anyone says about the President, but you don't joke about Jesus and church and stuff. But as he know, anti-Catholicism is an addictive sickness. As Christ himself said, "His mouth speaks from that which fills his heart." (Lk 6:45)

"Wordsmith Intellectuals"

This page is part of a larger essay penned in 1998, and many of you have no doubt read/heard of it before. I can imagine Limbaugh quoting from it; it's the kind of thing that is tailor-made for conservative talkers to quote from. It rings very true, and I have met many people who fit the description of a "wordsmith intellectual" like a glove. I would estimate that over 85% of them oppose or at least greatly distrust our free market system. He first introduces the "wordsmith intellectual" and demonstrates his intrinsic value in society:

Wordsmith intellectuals fare well in capitalist society; there they have great freedom to formulate, encounter, and propagate new ideas, to read and discuss them. Their occupational skills are in demand, their income much above average. Why then do they disproportionately oppose capitalism? Indeed, some data suggest that the more prosperous and successful the intellectual, the more likely he is to oppose capitalism. This opposition to capitalism is mainly "from the left" but not solely so. Yeats, Eliot, and Pound opposed market society from the right.

The opposition of wordsmith intellectuals to capitalism is a fact of social significance. They shape our ideas and images of society; they state the policy alternatives bureaucracies consider. From treatises to slogans, they give us the sentences to express ourselves. Their opposition matters, especially in a society that depends increasingly upon the explicit formulation and dissemination of information.

He then goes on to explain the primary cause of the superiority complexes that intellectuals develop: educational institutions or as they are commonly known by ignorant capitalists, schools:

What factor produced feelings of superior value on the part of intellectuals? I want to focus on one institution in particular: schools. As book knowledge became increasingly important, schooling — the education together in classes of young people in reading and book knowledge — spread. Schools became the major institution outside of the family to shape the attitudes of young people, and almost all those who later became intellectuals went through schools. There they were successful. They were judged against others and deemed superior. They were praised and rewarded, the teacher's favorites. How could they fail to see themselves as superior? Daily, they experienced differences in facility with ideas, in quick-wittedness. The schools told them, and showed them, they were better.

This leads to what Nozick calls a "plausible sociological generalization", which follows:

In a society where one extra-familial system or institution, the first young people enter, distributes rewards, those who do the very best therein will tend to internalize the norms of this institution and expect the wider society to operate in accordance with these norms; they will feel entitled to distributive shares in accordance with these norms or (at least) to a relative position equal to the one these norms would yield. Moreover, those constituting the upper class within the hierarchy of this first extra-familial institution who then experience (or foresee experiencing) movement to a lower relative position in the wider society will, because of their feeling of frustrated entitlement, tend to oppose the wider social system and feel animus toward its norms.

My thoughts.

The author points out that this stated sociological generalization is "intuitively compelling". I agree that there is much truth in this generalization and it shouldn't be dismissed even though other factors are involved. For example, I'm not altogether opposed to the idea that some academics might be able to see some problems in the wider world of commerce which those immersed in it are too close to said problems to discover.

But several of the folks I know who fit this description are almost driven insane by "the system" with it's many faults and shortcomings and their knowledge of what is wrong with it. I always think to myself that assuming these friends of mine, who are really good folks, are correct they will never be able to translate their theories into practice. This is because they are used to communicating to other intellectuals in academia and cannot speak the language of those in the wider world or those involved in commercial enterprises. For all intents and purposes, they might as well be a bunch of barbershop conspiracy addicts, supposing in their small world that they are the sole guardians of the secrets of the universe.

I would also suggest that those in the world of business and commerce are much more open to the suggestions of academics and other wordsmiths, placing them on boards of all kinds and buying their publications, than the typical intellectual is open to respecting an accomplishment in the world of business made by an entrepreneur, say, for example, a college dropout like Bill Gates who in many of their minds merely "got lucky". For this suggestion I have a very small amount of anecdotal evidence, so feel free to light me on fire for suggesting it. But keep in mind that the words and actions of a businessman are very often suspected of being born of ulterior motives while it seems that those of an academic rarely are.

Readers of this blog can all probably think of many people to apply this rule to, even in the blogosphere where the wordsmith skills often of many academics is tested and tried by the dreaded free market. There are countless articles and even whole books like this one) being written which decry the sad state of blogging as dominated by amateur smithies "outside the guild", so to speak. It's all very humorous to me of course; if they fear for their full-time jobs on account of some scrub bloggers it says a lot more about them than us amateurs and answers the question regarding who are the content-providers in the employ of an industrial complex.

But to be fair, I doubt most of them are motivated by fear when they criticize; more than likely it's the horror that they could be one degree -- a hyperlink, perhaps -- away from something with terrible grammar written by an uneducated hack. The library shelf is safe. The flattened plains of the blogosphere surely comprise a horrific realm to these giants whose ankles are ripe for the teeth of a thousand chihuahuas.

Thanks for reading my blog. For current commentary and what-not, visit the Est Quod Est homepage

A Musing on Chesterton

The thought just came to me: would G. K. Chesterton be happy or appalled to know that there is a group of folks who read him fairly selectively and then sew their favorite aspects of his thought, along with a few perceived conclusions, into an ideological crazy quilt resembling what he might call an "insane simplification"?

Just wondering.

Religion Writing and Me

Someone asked me recently if I ever thought about doing this writing thingy as a career. I was flattered. But I'm really not sure it's a good idea, especially since I write on religious topics so much. Let me try to explain.

If I started getting paid for giving out my opinion on religion there's a good chance that I would start viewing religion in instrumentalist terms. Think about it; if you took away my writing about religion from this site what would be left? Not so much. A few links to jokes I found and some political commentary. Maybe a few laughs worth a buck a month from Google Ads. Best go back to being a jitney driver.

And if I was getting paid or accepting donations to do this blog then I would be receiving utility from my faith? That would make me basically be a faith-based utilitarian, an FBU for short. Kind of a "whatever works" type.

I could see if I was actually really knowledgeable or was a priest or had a theology degree; if I had something to say about this whole religion thing. Naturally I teach my children about religion and I talk to friends about it when the opportunity is presented. But I don't get paid to do that.

It is so darn easy to talk about religion. Look at Madonna, for instance. She's talking about religion now that she's 96 in female pop-star years and she's not as fresh, young and perky and no one cares as much about her as the newer models coming out. If she blogged for some online magazine the editors would probably advise her to convert from Kabala to Yoga or astrology just to beef up the hit count for advertising. "Pimp yo conversion!" Madonna's probably not that hard up for cash though, so we'll most likely be spared from anything of that sort.

But we have enough writers out there who "manipulate God for their own ends"; they are the loudest about their own religions and even more so about that of others are often the least qualified to say anything and are nothing short of offensive in their pronouncements. Andrew Sullivan is ostensibly a Catholic who sees barbarous hordes of what he calls "Christianists" around every corner. He speaks of these politically conservative Christians with wild-eyed paranoia reminiscent of nativist Know-nothing hysteria. Best I can tell they are closest to Islamist suicide bombers, only they are worse because they never actually kill anyone. Damn these wily Christianists! They exploit religious faith and they don't have the decency to blow themselves up. But he has been dining out on this intriguing concept for quite some time, he even wrote a book on the topic. By his own wobbly definition, this makes Sullivan a fundy and an exploiter of a different stripe.

If that is paid religion writing, the hell with it. So say I. There's a reason why Jesus warns about the Pharisees who "strain a gnat and swallow a camel."

I apologize if there are people who really want me to do this more and make a career out of it. Sorry to disappoint you. I just really can't see the point of selling out my religious identity for material success, to "gain the world and lose my soul". If I obsessed wrote about the Catholic Church for a living, I might start taking notes on how Father X does the Consecration, roughing in an outline for my next blog post during my thanksgiving for Holy Communion. I'd ruminate on how Deacon Y said something that I'm not exactly sure I agreed with instead of meditating on the Five Wounds. I'd start noting the banal architecture in the suburbs and motes in the eyes of bishops. Worst of all, I would see all of life in business transaction-like terms: salvation, the end-product; the Sacraments, a service performed; bishops as salesmen....

You know, I think I'm getting really good at the detection of projection, and that's all I'm going to say about that. For now.

(By the way, there are people pimping Lou Reed's new meditation album from a religious perspective, belief it or not. Read it if you want the Rock 'n Roll Animal to teach you about cool stuff like tai chi and alpha states. You can't make this up.)

Cha-ching

Another nice gratuitous slap at the Catholic Church brings us up to $6.00. It turns out that some Catholic churches are -- for shame! -- buying ashes instead of producing them locally.

Does the Father not understand the sense of continuity and connection between this year's ashes and last year's Palm Sunday services. To dust everything living returns? Good grief! All in the name of convenience.

I imagine these are probably the same churches using cheap imported wine for communion?

Anyway, Rod then provides an example of a bad Catholic liturgical experience he had. Deja vu, anyone? In the combox, a commenter calling himself "ignorant-redneck" who "hates being Catholic" throws a few sticks on the fire:

This post sums up well, why I hate being catholic. Love the magisterial theology, love the liturgy, when it is the liturgy. Have almost no respect for priests or bishops, because of things like you just wrote about.

It gets even better as he instructs us on the meaning of the theological word "damn". Commenter TGB then gives us a laugh and saves me from having to comment:

Don't worry, someday, somewhere you'll find a priest or minister or shaman or mullah who says things exactly the way you want them said, until they say something differently than you want them said and then you'll find another who says things exactly the way you want them said. It's a journey, not a destination, you know.

In other news, a dog barked at a cat somewhere across town.........

Thinker or stinker?

Maybe Kathleen or Diane will remember Damon "the Thinker" Linker's short lived blog for his Theocons book. I'll never forget my disappointment when I realized that he took it down. The kitchen gets hot, what can I say. And I was so ready to, ummm, obsess-o-stalk him. (spelling?) Well, check out a good exposé of his obscenely bad reasoning here by Lowell Brown. It turns out that the Thinker is branching out and attacking Mormons now, but only the Republican ones, which the Thinker readily admits. Here's a snippet from Lowell B:

So Linker admits that his is a partisan attack, but justifies it because he is on the side of the angels (only figuratively speaking, of course), also known as left-wing Democrats. One problem with his response is that every objection to a Mormon President that he raised in his article, based on the tenets and practices of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and especially his objection to the Mormon belief that the President of the LDS Church is a prophet, would apply equally to a devout Mormon of the political left. If the Church President could prophesy as arbitrarily as Mr. Linker seems to believe, he could just as easily reveal a prophecy calling for the institution of a socialist welfare state as he could one opposing gay marriage. Or perhaps Mr. Linker's point is that liberal Democratic Mormons don't really in their hearts of hearts believe in all that silly religious stuff, and therefore won't muck up our laws with it. That would certainly be an offensive affront to Senator Reid. Nonetheless, that very possibly is what Mr. Linker thinks, because his response in The New Republic echoes the theme that underlies his career as a political pundit.

Where's Chavez when you need him? He could tell us which sulfurous compound this reasoning smelled like. And how 'bout that black t-shirt? Dude, that's so dark and ominous.... Why don't you lighten it up a little with this one? I love how Brown, who calls himself "the Hedgehog" wraps it up:

Linker is clearly a polemicist more than a thinker, which helps explain his rather embarrassing reasoning. One glaring example: As Ralph notes, Linker's basis for justifying the attack on Romney is that religious conservatives "bring . . . their faith with them into the public square." Excuse me, but like just about every Mormon candidate for public office I have ever known, Mitt Romney never mentions his faith in public; others do that for him, and unceasingly. The irony in Linker's fuzzy thinking is delicious, but it doesn't make his argument any less silly.