Thursday, December 31, 2009

Can Science Explain Religion? - The New York Review of Books

The NYRoB reviews the Evolution of God where Robert Wright uses game theory and materialism to explain the emergence of the world’s religions. While game theory can be used to explain incentives in behavior for very specific circumstances that often never appear in the real world, its assumptions and inherent limitations prevent the author from engaging in meaningful analysis. Game theory’s weakness is that it cannot account for history and assumes that all human activity is economically determined. Wright uses an ahistoric model with a flawed anthropology that is closed to reality and he dismisses all ontological considerations. This philosophic framework does not allow him to approach or even perceive his subject. Game theory is a poor methodological tool even in the social sciences and Wright’s account is predetermined by his philosophic approach. His conclusions are ideological, methodologically determined, and ultimately irrelevant.

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Jesus "the myth"

Canadian composer and singer Mark Mallett posted an interesting entry in his blog to comment on a sign placed in front of the Christmas display at the Illinois Capitol.

Read his piece Jesus "the myth"

Saturday, December 26, 2009

Pope Benedict's Advent Talk to University Students

Pope Benedict's annual Advent address to university students focuses on Wisdom and the responsibility to remain little as we move forward in our studies. Here is a portion of his speech:

At this point I cannot omit to reflect on something a bit disquieting but nevertheless useful for us here who belong to the academic world. Let us ask ourselves: who was present on Christmas night at the grotto in Bethlehem? Who welcomed Wisdom when he was born? Who hurried to see him, to recognize him and adore him? They were not doctors of law, scribes or sages. There were Mary and Joseph, and then the shepherds. What does this mean?

Jesus was one day to say: "Yes, Father, for such was your gracious will" (Mt 11: 26); you revealed your mystery to the little ones (cf. Mt 11: 25). But then is there no use in studying? Or is it even harmful counterproductive in understanding the truth?

The two thousand-year-old history of Christianity excludes the latter hypothesis, and suggests to us the correct one: studying entails deepening one's knowledge while maintaining a spirit similar to the "little ones," an ever humble and simple spirit, like that of Mary, the "Seat of Wisdom". How often have we been afraid to draw near to the Grotto in Bethlehem for fear that doing so would be an obstacle to our critical sense and to our "modernity"!

Rather, in that Grotto, each of us can discover the truth about God and about humanity, about ourselves. In that Child, born of the Virgin, the two came together: mankind's longing for eternal life softened the heart of God, who was not ashamed to assume the human condition.

Carrón: That Nostalgia for the Infinite

Father Julián Carrón wrote an editorial published in Italy on Christmas Eve. The English translation is available on the CL website. Here is the translation:

Dear Editor,
There is a phrase of Dostoevsky that accompanies me these days, when I have to speak of Christianity to all kinds of people in Italy and abroad: “Can an educated man, a European of our time, believe—truly believe—in the divinity of the Son of God, Jesus Christ?” This question rings like a challenge for all of us. It is precisely on the answer to this question that the success of the faith depends today. In an address given in 1996, the then cardinal Ratzinger answered that faith can have this hope “because it finds a correspondence in human nature. In man there is a nostalgic hope for the infinite that cannot be extinguished.” In this phrase he indicated the condition necessary: that Christianity needs to find the humanity that pulsates in each of us in order to show all the greatness of its claim.
Yet how many times are we tempted to look at the concrete humanity in which we find ourselves—for example the unease, the dissatisfaction, the sadness, the boredom—as an obstacle, a complication, an impediment to the realization of what we desire. Thus we get angry with ourselves and with reality, succumbing to the weight of circumstances, in the illusion of going ahead by cutting away a piece of ourselves. But unease, dissatisfaction, sadness, and boredom are not symptoms of a illness to treat with medicines; this happens more and more often in a society that mistakes disquiet of the heart for panic and anxiety. They are rather signs of what the nature of the “I” is. Our desire is greater than the whole universe. The perception of emptiness in us and around us of which Leopardi speaks (“want and emptiness”), and the boredom of which Heidegger speaks, are the proof of the inexorable nature of our heart, of the boundless character of our desire—nothing is able to give us satisfaction and peace. We can forget it, betray it, or even deceive it, but we cannot shuffle it off.
So the real obstacle on our journey is not our concrete humanity, but disregard for it. Everything in us cries out the need for something to fill the void. Even Nietzsche perceived this; he could not but address the “unknown god” that makes all things. “Left alone, I raise my hands/ … to the unknown god / I want to know you, you the Unknown,/ Who penetrate deep into my soul, / Shake up my life like a storm,/ Beyond my grasp and yet so close to me!” (1864).

Christmas is the announcement that this unknown Mystery has become a familiar presence, without which none of us could remain a man for long, but would end up overwhelmed by confusion, seeing his own face decompose, because “only the divine can ‘save’ man, that is to say, the true and essential dimensions of the human figure and his destiny” (Fr. Giussani).
The most convincing sign that Christ is God, the greatest miracle that astonished everyone—even more than the healing of cripples and the curing of the blind—was an incomparable gaze. The sign that Christ is not a theory or a set of rules is that look, which is found throughout the Gospel: His way of dealing with humanity, of forming relationships with those He met on His way. Think of Zacchaeus and of Magdalene: He didn’t ask them to change, but embraced them, just as He found them, in their wounded, bleeding humanity, needful of everything. And their life, embraced, re-awoke in that moment in all its original profundity.
Who would not want to be reached by such a look now? For “one cannot keep on living unless Christ is a presence like a mother is a presence for her child, unless Christ is a presence now – now! –I cannot love myself now and I cannot love you now” (Fr. Giussani). This is the only way, as men of our time, reasonably and critically, to answer Dostoevsky’s question.

But how do we know that Christ is alive now? Because his gaze is not a fact of the past, but is still present in the world just as it was before. Since the day of His resurrection, the Church exists only in order to make God’s affection an experience, through people who are His mysterious Body, witnesses in history today of that gaze capable of embracing all that is human.
Thank you.

Monday, December 21, 2009

Peggy Noonan on the Adam Lambert Problem

From The Wall Street Journal

America is good at making practical compromises, and one of the compromises we've made in the area of arts and entertainment is captured in the words, "We don't care what you do in New York." That was said to me years ago by a social conservative who was explaining that he and his friends don't wish to impose their cultural sensibilities on a city that is uninterested in them, and that the city, in turn, shouldn't impose its cultural sensibilities on them. He was speaking metaphorically; "New York" meant "wherever the cultural left happily lives."

For years now, without anyone declaring it or even noticing it, we've had a compromise on television. Do you want, or will you allow into your home, dramas and comedies that, however good or bad, are graphically violent, highly sexualized, or reflective of cultural messages that you believe may be destructive? Fine, get cable. Pay for it. Buy your premium package, it's your money, spend it as you like.

But the big broadcast networks are for everyone. They are free, they are available on every television set in the nation, and we watch them with our children. The whole family's watching. Higher, stricter standards must maintain.

Read it all.

Sunday, December 20, 2009

The News Not To Hush

Below is a translation of a recent piece by Italian poet Davide Rondoni published in the weekly e-newsletter ClanDestino Zoom. A real encouragement to all of us to proclaim the true meaning of Christmas.

At Christmas let's talk about Christmas.
This is a simple little rule, to strengthen brains and souls, if one still has them and they're not in a comatose state. Because at Christmas almost no one speaks of Christmas.
Priests in church do a little, but often one wishes they didn't, because it might be better. But, in the end, it's better than nothing.
Let's speak of Christmas, at Christmas, maybe while drinking something, or better, while eating among friends and relatives. Let's speak of Him, of Jesus. As if we were talking about soccer. Or movies. Or better, not as if you were talking about soccer or movies: but as if we were talking about what makes soccer and movies beautiful. Of what gives pleasure to the being here and now.
Because without Christmas, life where we are would be only "a little vessel of sadness sailing in this muffled silence through the autumn dark" as the great Irish writer John Banville wrote. Instead no, life is no longer "a little vessel of sadness". The news is not a news made of words, or thoughts. It is a news in flesh and bones, a present news.
Without Jesus, Christmas could be the saddest holiday in the world, and for many it is. Let's speak of Him, then, in His holiday. Let's speak of Him, of the captain that has inverted the route of the little vessel.

Friday, December 18, 2009

Question on the Economy

A friend from graduate school wrote to get my thoughts on the economic crisis. He sent a series of questions wondering if there was a way out for the United States and what the consequences of recession will be.

Here was my response:

Do you remember people claiming that this recession was the worst since the Great Depression? There is a reason this claim is being made. Last year we were asked to bail out banks by literally giving them hundreds of billions of dollars to prevent them from closing, something that took place during the Great Depression. This means we are experiencing a crisis of the same magnitude that caused the depression, but we have taken preventative actions to reduce or delay the negative consequences. This action consisted of the government giving banks over $2,000 for every American citizen. If we had failed to act, the consequences would have been grave. The banks would have shut down and people would have had a difficult time getting cash… While this may not sound like much, there are serious consequences as the economy would have come to a stand-still. People would not have been able to do simple things like buy gas or groceries. When you hear the comparison to the Great Depression you have to acknowledge that without the first bailout we would be in the same circumstance today. While this may sound bad, it gets worse.

The U.S. has lost control of the dollar and given China and other Asian states the responsibility to maintain its value. We have officially given up trying to maintain our currency's value and have passed the responsibility to countries of the East who have a lot of positive investments in the dollar. Our official policy is to tax Asian states to keep our government open and financially solvent. Well, eventually China and other states will get sick of this and do something. It is clear that this cannot go on for the long-term. No one knows how they will react, but they will not continue to allow this indefinitely. We are so broke that we are literally resorting to the policies of the Weimar Republic. The only thing is that we are not forced into this by another country, we have chosen it for ourselves.

What really concerns me is the call to form a new international order, one that would allow global governance. It may address some irregularities, but overall it would only serve to reduce democratic governance in the world and would create larger institutions. To solve one problem, we would create a larger one. The larger the institution, the greater its potential for evil. My fear is that our action in response to this crisis could put into place an institution that, in trying to do good, would bring about harm on a greater scale than humanity has witnessed. The warning of Orwell is growing more relevant every day. A new global government would have power so great that it would be incomparable to anything we currently have. And, given our past, we have to be concerned with the lessons of history. Human persons have not changed. Larger institutions create the opportunity for bad things to be done on a greater scale than ever. The largest political sovereign should be the state. Many would consider this statement passé, but I am a realist. Human beings working with the best of intentions can rarely produce a world that is better; often our good ideas only make things worse. Do you remember Flannery O’Connor and have you ever heard of Walker Percy? In different works, these Southern writers wrote the same sentence, “tenderness deprived of the source of tenderness leads to the gas chamber.” These global institutions have every intention of improving the world, but I worry that they will do the opposite.

I also fear to see how democratic states will react to this depression. The risk to the U.S. is that people will be willing to give up individual liberties in order to eat. We have already given up our privacy as a people and consented to domestic surveillance. What else will we give up to survive? Increasing governmental power always comes with a price. Democracy becomes very vulnerable when the economy weakens. Think about what the Great Depression did to the states of Europe…

The world needs a strong U.S. and this economic crisis is only serving to facilitate the transfer of power in the international system to Asia. I fear for the world that will emerge in the wake of our decline. The United States will not be the only country in the world to suffer. A new, Orwellian world may fill the gap. Let's hope and pray that the U.S. is able to make the difficult adjustments and survive as a great power. Freedom will suffer globally if we decline. What does this mean for the future of our country and the world? We shall soon find out.

Thursday, December 10, 2009

Aesop on pop-culture

THE WOLF AND THE SHEPHERD

A Wolf hung about near a flock of sheep for a long time, but made no attempt to molest them. The Shepherd at first kept a sharp eye on him, for he naturally thought he meant mischief: but as time went by and the Wolf showed no inclination to meddle with the flock, he began to look upon him more as a protector than as an enemy: and when one day some errand took him to the city, he felt no uneasiness at leaving the Wolf with the sheep. But as soon as his back was turned the Wolf attacked them and killed the greater number. When the Shepherd returned and saw the havoc he had wrought, he cried, "It serves me right for trusting my flock to a Wolf."

Aesop

G. K. CHESTERTON on Aesop

Aesop embodies an epigram not uncommon in human history; his fame is all the more deserved because he never deserved it. The firm foundations of common sense, the shrewd shots at uncommon sense, that characterise all the Fables, belong not him but to humanity. In the earliest human history whatever is authentic is universal: and whatever is universal is anonymous. In such cases there is always some central man who had first the trouble of collecting them, and afterwards the fame of creating them. He had the fame; and, on the whole, he earned the fame. There must have been something great and human, something of the human future and the human past, in such a man: even if he only used it to rob the past or deceive the future. The story of Arthur may have been really connected with the most fighting Christianity of falling Rome or with the most heathen traditions hidden in the hills of Wales. But the word "Mappe" or "Malory" will always mean King Arthur; even though we find older and better origins than the Mabinogian; or write later and worse versions than the "Idylls of the King." The nursery fairy tales may have come out of Asia with the Indo-European race, now fortunately extinct; they may have been invented by some fine French lady or gentleman like Perrault: they may possibly even be what they profess to be. But we shall always call the best selection of such tales "Grimm's Tales": simply because it is the best collection.

The historical Aesop, in so far as he was historical, would seem to have been a Phrygian slave, or at least one not to be specially and symbolically adorned with the Phrygian cap of liberty. He lived, if he did live, about the sixth century before Christ, in the time of that Croesus whose story we love and suspect like everything else in Herodotus. There are also stories of deformity of feature and a ready ribaldry of tongue: stories which (as the celebrated Cardinal said) explain, though they do not excuse, his having been hurled over a high precipice at Delphi. It is for those who read the Fables to judge whether he was really thrown over the cliff for being ugly and offensive, or rather for being highly moral and correct. But there is no kind of doubt that the general legend of him may justly rank him with a race too easily forgotten in our modern comparisons: the race of the great philosophic slaves. Aesop may have been a fiction like Uncle Remus: he was also, like Uncle Remus, a fact. It is a fact that slaves in the old world could be worshipped like Aesop, or loved like Uncle Remus. It is odd to note that both the great slaves told their best stories about beasts and birds.

But whatever be fairly due to Aesop, the human tradition called Fables is not due to him. This had gone on long before any sarcastic freedman from Phrygia had or had not been flung off a precipice; this has remained long after. It is to our advantage, indeed, to realise the distinction; because it makes Aesop more obviously effective than any other fabulist. Grimm's Tales, glorious as they are, were collected by two German students. And if we find it hard to be certain of a German student, at least we know more about him than We know about a Phrygian slave. The truth is, of course, that Aesop's Fables are not Aesop's fables, any more than Grimm's Fairy Tales were ever Grimm's fairy tales. But the fable and the fairy tale are things utterly distinct. There are many elements of difference; but the plainest is plain enough. There can be no good fable with human beings in it. There can be no good fairy tale without them.

Aesop, or Babrius (or whatever his name was), understood that, for a fable, all the persons must be impersonal. They must be like abstractions in algebra, or like pieces in chess. The lion must always be stronger than the wolf, just as four is always double of two. The fox in a fable must move crooked, as the knight in chess must move crooked. The sheep in a fable must march on, as the pawn in chess must march on. The fable must not allow for the crooked captures of the pawn; it must not allow for what Balzac called "the revolt of a sheep" The fairy tale, on the other hand, absolutely revolves on the pivot of human personality. If no hero were there to fight the dragons, we should not even know that they were dragons. If no adventurer were cast on the undiscovered island—it would remain undiscovered. If the miller's third son does not find the enchanted garden where the seven princesses stand white and frozen—why, then, they will remain white and frozen and enchanted. If there is no personal prince to find the Sleeping Beauty she will simply sleep. Fables repose upon quite the opposite idea; that everything is itself, and will in any case speak for itself. The wolf will be always wolfish; the fox will be always foxy. Something of the same sort may have been meant by the animal worship, in which Egyptian and Indian and many other great peoples have combined. Men do not, I think, love beetles or cats or crocodiles with a wholly personal love; they salute them as expressions of that abstract and anonymous energy in nature which to any one is awful, and to an atheist must be frightful. So in all the fables that are or are not Aesop's all the animal forces drive like inanimate forces, like great rivers or growing trees. It is the limit and the loss of all such things that they cannot be anything but themselves: it is their tragedy that they could not lose their souls.

This is the immortal justification of the Fable: that we could not teach the plainest truths so simply without turning men into chessmen. We cannot talk of such simple things without using animals that do not talk at all. Suppose, for a moment, that you turn the wolf into a wolfish baron, or the fox into a foxy diplomatist. You will at once remember that even barons are human, you will be unable to forget that even diplomatists are men. You will always be looking for that accidental good-humour that should go with the brutality of any brutal man; for that allowance for all delicate things, including virtue, that should exist in any good diplomatist. Once put a thing on two legs instead of four and pluck it of feathers and you cannot help asking for a human being, either heroic, as in the fairy tales, or un-heroic, as in the modern novels.

But by using animals in this austere and arbitrary style as they are used on the shields of heraldry or the hieroglyphics of the ancients, men have really succeeded in handing down those tremendous truths that are called truisms. If the chivalric lion be red and rampant, it is rigidly red and rampant; if the sacred ibis stands anywhere on one leg, it stands on one leg for ever. In this language, like a large animal alphabet, are written some of the first philosophic certainties of men. As the child learns A for Ass or B for Bull or C for Cow, so man has learnt here to connect the simpler and stronger creatures with the simpler and stronger truths. That a flowing stream cannot befoul its own fountain, and that any one who says it does is a tyrant and a liar; that a mouse is too weak to fight a lion, but too strong for the cords that can hold a lion; that a fox who gets most out of a flat dish may easily get least out of a deep dish; that the crow whom the gods forbid to sing, the gods nevertheless provide with cheese; that when the goat insults from a mountain-top it is not the goat that insults, but the mountain: all these are deep truths deeply graven on the rocks wherever men have passed. It matters nothing how old they are, or how new; they are the alphabet of humanity, which like so many forms of primitive picture-writing employs any living symbol in preference to man. These ancient and universal tales are all of animals; as the latest discoveries in the oldest pre-historic caverns are all of animals. Man, in his simpler states, always felt that he himself was something too mysterious to be drawn. But the legend he carved under these cruder symbols was everywhere the same; and whether fables began with Aesop or began with Adam, whether they were German and mediAeval as Reynard the Fox, or as French and Renaissance as La Fontaine, the upshot is everywhere essentially the same: that superiority is always insolent, because it is always accidental; that pride goes before a fall; and that there is such a thing as being too clever by half. You will not find any other legend but this written upon the rocks by any hand of man. There is every type and time of fable: but there is only one moral to the fable; because there is only one moral to everything.

G. K. CHESTERTON

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Bishops, Healthcare, Compromise, and Truth

One criticism that can be leveled against our bishops in the health care debate is that they have failed take into account our current cultural environment. They have indicated certain minimum guidelines that the policy must contain, such as no funding for abortion and a conscience protection for pro-life health care workers. This approach is dangerous and could be self-defeating in the long-run. Given the direction our civilization is moving, it will be dangerous to pass a national health care plan in any form. The problem with the bishop’s approach is that the pro-life provisions accepted today will likely be dismissed tomorrow. The bishop’s strategy is short-sighted because it creates an opportunity for the federal government to advance abortion rights beyond what is possible at present. Through their good intentions, our bishops may have strengthened the culture of death.

By their short-sighted approach, our bishops may have inadvertently made it possible for the national health care bill to be passed without the elements that protect life and conscience. Once the Stupak amendment was included, the bishops gave their approval to the House version of the bill. A critical threshold was met through this support that allowed the bill to clear the first hurdle and move to the second stage where it will be transformed by the Senate. It is very unlikely that this version will contain the pro-life provision. The danger is that after the Senate changes the bill, the House may reconsider it without the pro-life amendment. While the outcome is unknown, it is possible that the bishop’s initial support may come back to haunt them. They permitted the bill to advance and this may eventually allow it to pass without pro-life amendments. If this happens, the bishops may have given their blessing to a bill that may advance the culture of death.

Our bishops' actions suggest a profound political naiveté. When the bill was being considered in the House, the bishops advised cooperation with political adversaries that do not recognize the intrinsic worth of every human life. We cooperated with those who would temporarily use us and then dismiss our concerns at a later time. We can honestly say that our bishops may have hurt the cause for life by failing to recognize our cultural and political reality. Their failure allowed the House to pass the first draft with the Churches blessing and this gave momentum to a bill that may ultimately become law without the provisions that protect life. In retrospect, you should never make a deal with those advocating a culture of death in hopes of defending life. This seems obvious and let’s hope it is not too late… If so, we must give our bishops the credit they have unfortunately earned. Their good intentions may make abortion easier and for this they deserve criticism.

Monday, November 30, 2009

Father Giussani's Writings Available Free Online

The writings of Father Giussani are available free online at a new website. This site contains all his Italian works and many of his English books.

The English books include: The Psalms, At the Origin of the Christian Claim, Is It Possible to Live this Way (v1 Faith), The Religious Sense, The Risk of Education, The Work of the Movement: The Fraternity of Communion and Liberation, and Why the Church.

The website is http://scritti.luigigiussani.org/main/index.aspx.

Sunday, November 29, 2009

Obama, Relativism, and the Concentration Camp

One danger particular to democratic states is that elected politicians who wish to remain in office have an incentive to bring long-term damage to their country for immediate electoral gain. There is some evidence that the Obama administration has chosen to court China over our traditional allies in order to stabilize our country until the 2012 election. {Italian} If this is true, the domestic costs will be great because the middle class will further erode and family life will suffer as more and more jobs relocate to Asia. Perhaps this is the real reason for the dramatic push to nationalize our health care. Once our manufacturing sector relocates completely in Asia it will be impossible for most families to pay their premiums. In any case, any opening to China is dangerous to the future of the United States.

Many people laughed when President Bush labeled Iraq, North Korea, and Iran the ‘axis of evil’. Although this statement may have been a foreign policy disaster, the problem is that this criticism fails to realize that there is a real evil we must confront as individuals and as a civilization. When we fail to see this reality, we open ourselves to a grave threat. Yet, there is a real danger that in a post-holocaust civilization we will fail to recognize the existence of evil. Culturally, we are embracing relativistic positions that deny the reality and danger of evil. We are naïve to hold to this idea when we have seen the concentration camp and the dangers this institution poses even today. An honest assessment of recent history compels us to change our position and to hold a more realistic understanding of the potential dangers to our humanity and our society. By denying evil we open ourselves to its emergence.

We are endangering our future by following policies that bring us closer to the country that has murdered more of its citizens than any other state in world history. China has killed more people than the Nazis or Soviets combined, and we are becoming subservient to a regime with blood on its hands. In Solzhenitsyn’s commencement address at Harvard, he warned the U.S. of the deadly consequences of this relationship:

At present, some Western voices already have spoken of obtaining protection from a third power against aggression in the next world conflict, if there is one; in this case the shield would be China. But I would not wish such an outcome to any country in the world. First of all, it is again a doomed alliance with Evil; also, it would grant the United States a respite, but when at a later date China with its billion people would turn around armed with American weapons, America itself would fall prey to a genocide similar to the one perpetrated in Cambodia in our days.


I hope that Solzhenitsyn was wrong about where we will end up, but we must acknowledge that a friendship with China opens us to grave dangers and as they gain additional economic, and eventually military, leverage over the United States, it will be more difficult for us to resist their advances.

Saturday, November 28, 2009

Pope Benedict to beatify Newman in Britain

In a clear sign of respect to the great convert, Pope Benedict plans to personally preside at the beatification of John Henry Newman during his upcoming visit to Britain.

Pope Benedict’s Meeting with Artists

On November 21, Pope Benedict welcomed around 250 international artists and greeted them with a short speech in the Sistine Chapel. In the talk, he repeats the welcome extended by Paul IV and John Paul II and speaks of the metaphysical role of beauty. Although beauty wounds us by revealing the disproportion of our experiences and our hopes, it opens us to the fullness of reality because it points to the ultimate source of beauty. This echoes part of Pope Benedict’s homily at Giussani's funeral Mass.
{Italian}

Here are some portions of his speech:

Indeed, an essential function of genuine beauty, as emphasized by Plato, is that it gives man a healthy “shock”, it draws him out of himself, wrenches him away from resignation and from being content with the humdrum – it even makes him suffer, piercing him like a dart, but in so doing it “reawakens” him, opening afresh the eyes of his heart and mind, giving him wings, carrying him aloft. Dostoevsky’s words that I am about to quote are bold and paradoxical, but they invite reflection. He says this: “Man can live without science, he can live without bread, but without beauty he could no longer live, because there would no longer be anything to do to the world. The whole secret is here, the whole of history is here.” The painter Georges Braque echoes this sentiment: “Art is meant to disturb, science reassures.” Beauty pulls us up short, but in so doing it reminds us of our final destiny, it sets us back on our path, fills us with new hope, gives us the courage to live to the full the unique gift of life. The quest for beauty that I am describing here is clearly not about escaping into the irrational or into mere aestheticism.

These ideas impel us to take a further step in our reflection. Beauty, whether that of the natural universe or that expressed in art, precisely because it opens up and broadens the horizons of human awareness, pointing us beyond ourselves, bringing us face to face with the abyss of Infinity, can become a path towards the transcendent, towards the ultimate Mystery, towards God. Art, in all its forms, at the point where it encounters the great questions of our existence, the fundamental themes that give life its meaning, can take on a religious quality, thereby turning into a path of profound inner reflection and spirituality.

In this regard, one may speak of a via pulchritudinis, a path of beauty which is at the same time an artistic and aesthetic journey, a journey of faith, of theological enquiry. The theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar begins his great work entitled The Glory of the Lord – a Theological Aesthetics with these telling observations: “Beauty is the word with which we shall begin. Beauty is the last word that the thinking intellect dares to speak, because it simply forms a halo, an untouchable crown around the double constellation of the true and the good and their inseparable relation to one another.” He then adds: “Beauty is the disinterested one, without which the ancient world refused to understand itself, a word which both imperceptibly and yet unmistakably has bid farewell to our new world, a world of interests, leaving it to its own avarice and sadness. It is no longer loved or fostered even by religion.” And he concludes: “We can be sure that whoever sneers at her name as if she were the ornament of a bourgeois past – whether he admits it or not – can no longer pray and soon will no longer be able to love.” The way of beauty leads us, then, to grasp the Whole in the fragment, the Infinite in the finite, God in the history of humanity. Simone Weil wrote in this regard: “In all that awakens within us the pure and authentic sentiment of beauty, there, truly, is the presence of God. There is a kind of incarnation of God in the world, of which beauty is the sign. Beauty is the experimental proof that incarnation is possible. For this reason all art of the first order is, by its nature, religious.” Hermann Hesse makes the point even more graphically: “Art means: revealing God in everything that exists.”

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

New English Translation of the Order of Mass (Draft, But Now Approved by the USCCB)

Scheduled to be promulgated in the U.S. in 2010.

BEAUTIFUL!!

Ralph Wood (Author of Flannery O'Connor and the Christ-Haunted South) Interviewed in Religion and Ethics Newsweekly

[Her work] can be appreciated, it can be read as a kind of document of its times, it can be read as an illustration of what a southern kind of literature of the 1950s would have looked like, but it can’t be really comprehended in the sense of grasped in all of its fullness apart from her Catholic Christianity. She said if I did not see through the lenses of my faith I’d have nothing to see. I’d have nothing to say. So quite literally there would be no Flannery O’Connor without her profound, life-centering faith in the Catholic Church and the Catholic tradition and the Gospel. You don’t have to have Christianity to understand Shakespeare, although it would help you understand a great deal of Shakespeare, but if you don’t understand O’Connor in the light of her faith, you really don’t understand her. You misunderstand her.

There can be a kind of reductionism and too quick reading of her in Christian terms. She, by the way, did not want to be known as a Catholic writer; she wanted to be known as a writer, that is to say as a woman whose work had its own excellence, that could stand on its own legs, that did not have to be propped up with the crutches of her faith as if it would crumble without it, so in that sense she is not a Catholic writer, and those that say there’s more to her than simply finding Christ figures—there really are almost none, or of tracing down Christian themes—is to misread her, I think they have a point, and she would agree to that point insofar as she said this: remember that reading literature is not like algebra, it is not a matter of finding x, that is to say the kind of extractable meaning that you can lift out of the text—that’s an Enlightenment notion by the way. Instead, she said once you find x you can forget it. A literary text is the embodiment of a whole way of experiencing the world, and therefore it’s going to have depth after depth, layer after layer, but for O’Connor there is nothing larger than the Gospel, nothing larger than the faith, so that those who say you must not reduce her to her faith are engaged in a fundamental category mistake. When you’ve got, as the Book of Colossians says, Christ present in the presence of the cosmos, then in a real sense the Gospel is larger than the universe, so there’s nothing outside it, grander than it, larger than it, and therefore she could encompass all that counts against it. There’s nihilism running rife through her stories. If you don’t pick up that nihilism, you’ve missed it. If you make a kind of sweet, easy Christian reading of her, you’ve missed it. But you can’t get to the core of her apart from her Christianity.

Read the whole thing (well worth your time!!)

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Janet Smith and the Sociology of Contraception

Janet Smith is a contemporary theologian that has important insights into the Church's teaching on contraception (Humanae Vitae). She articulates a sociological apologetic of this teaching in her talk Contraception: Why Not?.

See also: Overpopulation

Monday, November 16, 2009

Catholic Church Under Attack by The State (Again), This Time in Our Nation's Capital

"The Catholic Archdiocese of Washington, D.C. has said it will be forced to end its government contracts for social services in the nation's capital, if the D.C. Council does not broaden a religious exemption in a bill to legalize same-sex 'marriage.'

"Without the exemption, says the archdiocese, the Church would be required to do such things as extend marriage benefits to same-sex couples, in violation of its core teachings.

Religious groups and churches, including the Catholic archdiocese and its affiliates, would also have to open up their services to homosexual couples, including adoption and foster-care services, "spousal" benefits for same-sex couples, and church halls requested for non-marriage functions.

It is also important to note that DC's new law "could mean that individuals - from wedding photographers to caterers - will face charges of unlawful discrimination if they refuse their services to same-sex couples for reasons of conscience."

The District will effectively force the Archdiocese either to violate the law or to abandon charitable practice like caring for the poor, hungry and homeless, things that are fundamental to the practice of Catholic social teaching.

Friday, November 13, 2009

Kissinger, U.S. Foreign Policy, and the Culture of Death

The origin of the U.S. foreign population control efforts stems from a policy created by Henry Kissinger called National Security Study Memorandum 200. This document details the threats the U.S. domestic economy faces if third world populations were to grow. The expanding population would want to work and this would cause domestic demand for raw materials to increase; the U.S. would thereby have to pay more for imports it receives from these countries. To prevent this from happening, we actively promoted contraception, abortion, and indoctrinated children into the culture of death. Foreign aid was conditional on a state increasing its abortion rate. These policies originated under the Ford administration (another example of anti-life Republican administrations) and, unfortunately, remain our country's preference today.

Our federal government failed to see the intrinsic worth of the person and created policies to destroy life in third world countries; we formally consented to distinction between foreign and domestic citizens and thereby devalued the human person. We allowed the poor and powerless to be destroyed so that developed countries could maintain their standard of living. It is particularly painful to see the economic justification for destroying human life in our country's foreign policy. Please read the document, the links are available below.


National Security Study Memorandum (NSSM 200) (pdf version from Government Website)

National Security Council Summary

White House Summary

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Communion and Liberation's Judgment on European Court Ruling

The lay Catholic movement Communion and Liberation has issued a statement on the recent ruling of the European Court of Human Rights on the presence of crucifixes in Italian classrooms. Here is an English translation of this judgment.

Regarding the European Court’s ruling over crucifixes

AN IRREDUCIBLE PRESENCE

The ruling of the European Court of Human Rights against crucifixes in public school classrooms has generated a vast echo of protests: rightly almost all Italians, 84% according to a poll by Corriere della Sera, were shocked by the decision.

“And you, who do say I am?” This question of Jesus to the disciples reaches us from the past and challenges us now.
That Christ on the crucifix is not a memorabilia of popular piety for which we can nurture, at most, a devout memory.
It is neither a generic symbol of our social and cultural tradition.
Christ is a living man, who has brought into the world a judgment, a new experience that deals with everything: with study and work, with affections and desires, with life and death. An experience of a fulfilled humanity.
Crucifixes can be removed, but the reality of a living man cannot be. Unless he is killed, as it happened: but then, he is more alive than before!

All those who want to remove crucifixes deceive themselves, if they think of contributing in this way to delete Christianity as an experience and a judgment from the “public sphere”: if it is in their power –and everything still needs to be proven and we trust they will be belied –to abolish crucifixes, it is not in their hands to remove living Christians from reality.
But there is an inconvenience: that we Christians might not be ourselves, forgetting what Christianity is; then, defending the crucifix would be a lost battle, because that man would not mean anything to our life.

The European ruling is a challenge for our faith. For this reason, we cannot go back with tranquility to the usual things, after having protested with shock, avoiding the fundamental question: crucifix yes, crucifix no, where is the event of Christ today? Or, said in Dostoevsky’s words: “Can an educated man, a European of our days believe, really believe, in the divinity of the son of God, Jesus Christ?”

Communion and Liberation

November 2009.
_____________________________________

This decision could lead to the removal of all public displays of Christianity in Europe.

Read Joseph Weiler's article on this ruling.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

The Bishop of Providence, R.I. Writes to Congresman Patrick Kennedy

Congressman Patrick Kennedy, although a Catholic, voted against abortion restrictions added to the House Health Care Reform legislation. In a recent letter to his bishop, Kennedy defended his failure to follow the teachings of the Church by saying, “The fact that I disagree with the hierarchy on some issues does not make me any less of a Catholic.”

Bishop Tobin responded. And we are glad he did!

Read Bishop Tobin's letter here.



______________
Bishop Tobin Lashes Out At Rep. Kennedy for Going Public on Communion Decision

O'Reilly interviews Bishop Tobin

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

The Ambiguity of Islam

The West has problems understanding the Muslim approach to reality and tends to assume that a natural liberalism within the Arab world will eventually emerge. There are severe consequences of this worldview as the West is never able to respond adequately to the challenges Islam presents. Father Samir Khalil Samir has authored 111 Questions on Islam in which he discusses many of the misconceptions widely held in our culture. If you are unable to read this book, Father James Schall has a summary of it in this month’s Homiletic and Pastoral Review.

Russian Priest who Brought Muslims to Christ Killed

George Weigel on Fort Hood

The Cross, the Pope and the Fall of Communism

In light of yesterday marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, it is important to highlight the role of John Paul II and the Church in bringing about the end of communist rule in Europe. Former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Newt Gingrich, also a convert to the Faith, is working on a film that documents John Paul II's visit to Poland in 1979. This visit marked the beginning of the end of Communism in Europe.

“Nine Days that Changed the World is a story of human liberation. It reveals how Pope John Paul II’s historic visit helped the Poles not only find their courage, but also reclaim their culture. This film presents the Pope’s message -- that after the lies of Nazism and Communism, authentic human freedom is only possible through a true understanding of our humanity.”

The documentary comes out in January of 2010.

Congressman Bart Stupak: A Hero for Our Day

"First, let there be no more wrangling about the facts. The Bill as proposed by Nancy Pelosi - an unfaithful Catholic who should be ashamed and strongly opposed in her next campaign while we all pray for her return to the truth - promoted the intrinsic evil of abortion. It would have funded the feticide of our first neighbors in the womb. End of discussion. All of those folks who tried to argue that all of us who sounded the alarm over this evil were wrong have been exposed as frauds. The phony compromises and fake amendments were a subterfuge.

"Before the determined and courageous efforts of Congressman Bart Stupak, a Pro-Life Catholic Democrat whose name along with Republican Joe Pitts of Pennsylvania of the 16th District of Pennsylvania is on the now historic amendment, the legislation would have funded more abortions with tax dollars."

Click here to read more from Catholic Online.

Whither Catholic Charities in an Aggressively Secular Culture?

Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M Cap., the archbishop of Denver, has written for the blog, First Things, an analysis of the challenges 21st century Western secular culture bring to the core values of Catholic charities. For my money, he hits it out of the park. Here are some brief excerpts:

"Catholic charities, then, belong to a varied and energetic civil society in America—a sphere that the nation’s founders meant to remain distinct from the realms of government, industry, and purely private life.

"Two points are vital here. First, the American proposition presumes that large areas of our common life as a nation exist where government has no special competence and no business intruding. Second, self-government means exactly that: self-government. The solutions to problems in American society are mainly the duty of individuals working together in associations. Government involvement is never the first, and usually not the preferred, course of action. The genius of the American system is that government has found ways to work fruitfully with mediating institutions like the Church to solve problems and deliver key social services.

"To put it another way, American civic institutions have always been nonsectarian, but they have never been hostile to religion. Although the Constitution forbids the establishment of a state-sponsored religion, historically, no constitutional problem has been seen in directing public monies to religious charities that serve legitimate public-policy objectives—so long as these religious groups do not use public funds to proselytize.

*******************************************************

"In Boston, the local archdiocese ran one of the nation’s oldest, most respected adoption agencies. Nonetheless, the Church was forced to shut down her adoption ministry. Why? Because the state demanded that the Church begin placing orphans for adoption with homosexual couples—a demand that violates Catholic moral beliefs that children have the right to grow up in a stable family with a married mother and father. Boston’s archbishop, Seán Cardinal O’Malley, sought a conscience clause to exempt the Church from the requirement. State lawmakers refused. The result was the end of more than a century of excellent child-adoption services to the general public.

"This case embodied the 'grave inconsistency' that Benedict XVI writes about in his encyclical, Caritas in Veritate. A small social subgroup—for example, active homosexuals and supporters of homosexual-related issues—demands that the government defend their right to a controversial lifestyle, a right that is 'alleged, . . . arbitrary, and nonessential in nature,' as Benedict puts it. To meet this demand and promote this ambiguous right, public officials attack the 'elementary and basic rights' of defenseless children without parents.

"When we look closely at Church–state conflicts in America, we see that they now often center on a group of behaviors—homosexual activity, contraception, abortion, and the like—that the state in recent years has redefined as essential and nonnegotiable rights. Critics rarely dispute the Church’s work fighting injustice, helping community development, or serving persons in need. But that’s no longer enough. Now they demand that the Church must submit her identity and mission to the state’s promotion of these newly alleged rights—despite the constant Catholic teaching that these behaviors are personal moral tragedies that can lead to deep social injustices.

"As a result, the original links between freedom and truth, and between individual rights and moral duties, are disappearing in the United States. In the name of advancing the rights of the individual, other basic rights—the rights of religious believers, communities, and institutions—and key truths about the human person, are denied.

Read the whole thing here. It's well worth the time.

Maine Votes to Protect Marriage

Greetings Everyone, since I am a new poster on this blog I thought I should give you a brief introduction. My name is Pete Smyczek and I am a parishoner at St. Peter's in Montgomery along with many of the contributors to this blog. Doug has graciously offered me the opportunity to contribute to this important project.

Enough about me. In addition to last week's elections in NJ, VA, NY (23rd) and CA (10th) was the vote in Maine over the sanctity of marriage. Voters in Maine voted to protect traditional marriage by a margin of 53-47. Despite being outspent 2:1 by those who would redefine marriage, supporters of traditional marriage have won an important victory. Supporters of traditional marriage can now say that every single time the question has been put to voters, the people have chosen to affirm and protect this most sacred institution. A crucial victory, but the fight will go on.

http://www.portlanddiocese.net/info.php?info_id=205

Monday, November 9, 2009

One More Reason to Drink Guiness

The founder of the Guiness Brewery was not Catholic, but he would have made a good one. We could all learn from his example.

The Wall Street Journal on What Is Really Inside the House-Passed Health Care Reform Bill

Very important reading here.

UK Courts Crossing new Threshold

The highest UK court may remove the authority of the chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth to decide who is a Jew. This decision will have consequences that could also remove the ability of the Church to decide who is or is not a Catholic.

This is not merely an illustration of the growth of secularism but a dangerous precedent where the state takes upon itself questions of religious truth. All religious authority is threatened. This may create a precedent for the government to intervene in matters of morality and force churches to recognize illicit forms of marriage.

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Who's in Big Brother's Database?

The Constitution is now ignored by both political parties as the democrats and republicans have consented to domestic surveillance in a way prohibited by our founding governmental document. Our leaders have endorsed a vast project that gives the government the ability to archive all your personal information, habits, and communication records and contents permanently. Big Brother's capacity has increased beyond the imagination of the American public and this creates legitimate questions about the nature of our democracy.

Victory in Maine Against Gay Marriage Legislation

Maine voters stood for true marriage as they repealed with 53% of votes a state law that allowed homosexual unions.

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Marriage according to Tyra

Ok, let me start by saying that I am NOT a fan of Tyra Banks and that I never watch her talk show. I actually did not even know she had one until one day, at home for lunch, I started flipping through the channels and saw her talking. I was curious to see what they were discussing and listened for a couple of minutes. Then, another day, flipping again through nothingness, I paused for another short time, appalled, like the previous.

The first time the topic of the day was ‘open marriage’ and the guest was woman who authored a book about this (you can look it up if you want, I am not going to waste my time doing that). She was saying how she has been married for 10 years, 6 of which were open, which means that she and her husband had the mutual agreement that they could have extra-marital affairs while still living as husband and wife. Thanks to this, she said, their marriage worked perfectly, because there were no secrets, no cheating (I don’t know how extra-marital affairs don’t count as cheating!), and ultimately no need for divorce. Bottom line: we should all have open marriages so that divorce rate will decrease.

As I listened to this absurd reasoning I though: well then, why did she get married in the first place? Because of the pretty white dress and the scent of the flowers in the air? Because it is the next thing to do on her list after they have lived together for a couple of years? Because the big diamond ring wasn’t enough and she needed a platinum one to complete her collection?

The sad thing is that people today get married because of these reasons, because it’s the next thing to do after years of cohabitation, because the ceremony looks good in pictures you can hang on your walls, and so on. Many people do not get married because they want to give themselves fully to the other for the rest of their lives, or help each other walk toward God, or be open to the possibility of being co-creators of new lives. On the contrary, marriage is a convenient state, and ultimately all about the individual and what he/she wants; the other, the spouse simply becomes an object that can be used at one’s convenience or left behind for another when tired of it.

And when you do get tired of him or her, don’t worry, cheating agencies can help you find a cheating partner. The second show I briefly saw was exactly about this, a man who started a cheating agency that connects married people to other married people who want to have an affair or for that matter, more than one. Simply disgusting. I wonder how his wife (whom was never cheated on as he claims) can even live with such a man and his perverse ideas.

Unfortunately, wherever we turn, whether it is TV, magazines at the checkout line at the grocery store, movies, politics, this is the message we are bombarded with: marriage, in the end, is just a legal contract that does not imply any lifelong commitment, fidelity, sacrifice or openness to life on the part of those who enter this agreement. If it works, good for you, if not, you can find alternatives that can make you ‘happy’.

This is not what God intended for marriage and it’s not what we are to live if called to this vocation. Marriage is a covenant between a husband, a wife, and God, and it is the total giving of self to the other. It has to be exclusive, unitive, and procreative. Anything else is simply not marriage and can’t be called such.

Read this before you get married.

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Richard Dawkins on What He Really Thinks of the Catholic Church

Guess who he says is a leading candidate for Greatest force for evil in the world. . .

Interviewed in Newsweek

For a good fisking of this interview, see Know-Nothings by Christopher Johnson.

Obama-Themed Abortion Displays at UC Berkeley

The Genocide Awareness Project in collaboration with Berkeley Students for Life set up huge billboards with images of aborted children next to images and words of President Obama on the UC Berkeley Campus, one of the most liberal in the nation. This display, in what is considered the "birthplace of the free speech movement," is especially significant and certainly a great victory for the pro-life movement. Read the full story on LifeSiteNews. For pictures of the billboards, which contain strong graphic images, click here.

Law & Order's "Dignity"

NBC aired this episode of Law & Order in which a Supreme Court case falls apart for Cutter when Rubirosa is touched by an abortion nurse's testimony.

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Hate Crime Signed into Law

At around 2:30 pm this afternoon, the Hate Crimes legislation was signed into law and this makes the U.S. more committed to the culture of death. We have chosen to reduce free speech and become more like Canada and the nations of Europe. There was a lot at stake in the last U.S. national election and our country is now firmly a post-Christian society. The consequences to the family and our culture will be profound. We are witnessing the time when our government has decided to stand against the human person and against reason.


Massachusetts and the Pandemic Control Bill

Radical "pandemic control bill" would give MA broad powers to enter & search homes, take property, detain people without warrants, require vaccinations, and more. Read how this bill expands the powers of the state and limits citizens' freedom and basic parental rights.

Saturday, October 17, 2009

What Outsourcing Has Done to the U.S. High Tech Manufacturing Infrastructure

Three recent articles in the Harvard Business Review argue that as a result of unchecked outsourcing, the U.S. is losing not only the ability to manufacture high tech goods, but also the ability to design and develop innovative new products.

Outsourcing Is High Tech's Subprime-Mortgage Fiasco by Robert H. Hayes, The U.S. Is Outsourcing Away Its Competitive Edge by Gary P. Pisano, and The U.S. Can't Manufacture the Kindle and That's a Problem by Willy C. Shih.

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

The Economist as Official Spokesman for the Culture of Death

The Economist is promoting abortion in the developing countries by claiming that abortion rates are high even in states where it is illegal. Their argument suggests that since abortion cannot be stopped, governments should make the procedure safe and sterile. To be consistent, the same argument can be made in behalf of murder. Although it is illegal, no state in the world has been able to stop the taking of human life. Since murder cannot be prevented, the state should provide criminals with weapons to make it possible to commit this crime more easily. The Economist’s argument would have to be expanded to include all forms of offenses that have not been eliminated.

The Economist is published in the UK and is a willing participant in the marketing of the culture of death. Life is to be discarded if it interferes with economic efficiency. To the extent that we have accepted abortion, our culture endorses this world view. Our culture looks down on those who choose to have large families and find themselves struggling with poverty. It is considered virtuous to be selfish and have smaller families so that more stuff can be consumed. Culturally, we have integrated this economic worldview that subverts everything in our civilization to efficiency and selfishness. Adam Smith in A Theory of Moral Sentiments observes that maximizing wealth cannot produce happiness. Chesterton offers a similar warning in Brave New Family where he notes that he does not trust the support economists and conservative parties offer the family. He recognized early on that the Enlightenment world view cannot be relied on and economists would support the family’s destruction or impoverishment if this leads to greater profitability.

American society shares a legacy with British philosophy and also serves to advance the culture of death. Our new administration’s foreign policy seeks to expand abortion rights in developing countries. We are offering the very same argument as the Economist and are now marketing death to the poor. Our culture argues for less people to improve financial viability but we have made authentic happiness more difficult to achieve. The human heart can never find fulfillment in materialist logic or economic thought.

Friday, October 9, 2009

President Obama Wins the Nobel Peace Prize

The Nobel Committee has awarded President Obama with the Peace Prize for "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples." Mr. Jagland, chairman of the Committee said, “We are not awarding the prize for what may happen in the future, but for what he has done in the previous year.”

The press release also reads that "Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future. His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population."

What greatest value is there, shared by the majority of the world's population, if not life itself?

And what has Obama done in his 37 weeks as President? Rescinded the Mexico City Policy, assured his continual support for China's one-child policy, confirmed his never-ending promises to Planned Parenthood and the alike, and proposed a national health care system that would fund abortion.

There cannot be any world diplomacy or international understanding without respect for human life from conception to natural death. There cannot be true peace without a commitment to life. President Obama is certainly not a champion of this and should not have been awarded a peace prize.

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Review - David Harvey's The New Imperialism

David Harvey's The New Imperialism

Perhaps it is a little strange to review the work of a historical materialist on a blog focusing on Catholic culture. David Harvey, although a Marxist, is one of the most important contemporary social theorists and has written The Limits to Capital, The Condition of Postmodernity, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, and all of these books are thoughtful, well-written, and interesting. The New Imperialism is a brief historical account of U.S. foreign policies leading to the 1973 economic crisis that started the long-term decline of the U.S. and resulting in neoliberal policies that sought to preserve hegemony by turning to financial capital. While the U.S. was focused on destroying unions at home, it engaged in an expansion of an ideological form of free market capitalism that sought to get emerging market (3rd world) states to privatize, eliminate trade barriers, open domestic market to foreign banks, and give foreign corporations full ownership and repatriation rights. Within the U.S. there is broad support for these policies and the poor states were forced to adopt provisions when they were most vulnerable through the IMF and the World Bank. How did the U.S. use these institutions to increase their global wealth?

The answer, Harvey notes, is found in the U.S. transition from manufacturing to financial wealth that took place at this time. We have to contrast this time-frame with the years following the Bretton Woods summit when the gold-standard foreign exchange system was in place. At this time, individuals could hold their savings in local currencies without fearing a total loss because their currency could always be exchanged for a fixed amount of U.S. dollars and dollars were exchangeable for a fixed amount of gold. This allowed emerging market countries to all have a growing, even if small, local economy. After Nixon ended the gold standard and the dollar was not tied to any currency or precious metal, a series of crises started to emerge in the third world. The small domestic economies of emerging market states all became vulnerable in this move because individuals and families could no longer place their savings in local banks where inflation could destroy their value at any time. Where did these savings go? The primary beneficiary to the post-gold standard era was New York City which became entrenched as the financial center of the global economy. The financial instability of currencies served to strengthen NYC and help preserve the U.S. position as a hegemonic power. It also did this by starving small manufacturing firms in most of the third world by moving local money to foreign banks. If you have ever traveled through these countries, you frequently come to small manufacturing towns that are dead and abandoned. Many jobs were lost in foreign countries as a result of this switch to financial power.

Tragically, this account tells only half of the story. Within the Third World this economic downturn slowly started to cause local currency crisis and the IMF would step in to lend money if the receiving state would make economic changes. The first change was that they needed to float their currency and this would inevitably devalue it. At this point, U.S. enterprises would come and purchase the local businesses for a mere fraction of their worth. These currency devaluations could be so severe that foreign enterprises could not but purchase financial enterprises. David Harvey calls this process “Accumulation by Dispossession” and he explains how the U.S. was able to maintain its economic hegemony by diverting funds from poor countries. NYC also played an important role in this process because if a state did not adopt recommended neoliberal modifications, it would give the country a lower financial rating and the flow of funds would come to a halt. This is problematic for a state where its own citizens are providing funds to the very banks that now refuse to lend to it. If a state refused to open its market to the U.S. there were other means employed to get the poor country to cooperate. A financial crisis could be triggered by financial institutions in NYC that would force the IMF to step-in and get the country to open itself to U.S. enterprises.

The title of this book accuses the U.S. of engaging in imperialistic practices with these methods. If Harvey is right, and there is much evidence that he is, then the U.S. economy has survived since the 1980s by causing economic crises in poor states and then using this opportunity to buy up local property. Also, our banks gained vast deposits through savings accounts sent by families in vulnerable states that simply wished to preserve their wealth. Poor countries throughout the world have been subsidizing the U.S. by filling our banks and by seeing their domestic profits also sent there. In other words, our economy has avoided crisis by keeping poor states in a subservient position where we drained their wealth and preserved our place in the international system.

This work provides some insight into the negative consequences of U.S. foreign policy that have made the lives of the poorest families more difficult. Harvey is a materialist and there are philosophic weaknesses in his assumptions about the human person. Although he does not believe in justice, this work reveals a fundamental distinction between the way the U.S. regards its own citizens and individuals and families in poor countries. We preserve our standard of living by exploiting the vulnerable and weak. The tragic irony is that our policies may be used against us in the current economic downturn. If so, I wonder if we will be as silent when we are the ones suffering injustice.

Income concentration: Top heavy | The Economist

Monday, October 5, 2009

McLouvre

Art lovers from all over the world will soon be able to appreciate the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo while munching on big macs and french fries as a McCafe' is scheduled to open next month in the Louvre Museum in Paris. While the new 'restaurant' will be located in the Carrousel, a stonewalled gallery that houses other restaurants and shops and food will not be permitted outside of this area, employees of the museum are worried that McDonald's "unpleasant odours" will spread all over and damage the atmosphere of the Louvre.

According to the Daily Telegraph, "The Louvre has the right to protest against boutiques it considers fail to meet such criteria. However, the museum told the Daily Telegraph it had agreed to a "quality" McCafé and a McDonald's in place by the end of the year, which it said was "in line with the museum's image"". French culture is really going down the toilet if the Louvre's image is in line with McDonald's! I still have to see the day when this corporation produces 'quality' food and who knows, maybe someday soon we will see the Egyptian mummies dressed up as Ronald McDonald!

This is clearly a sign of the decline of France and what we call civilization.

Thursday, October 1, 2009

Feast of the Chinese Martyrs



While the Chinese communist government is celebrating its 60th anniversary today, we remember St. Augustine Zhao Rong and his 119 companions who were canonized nine years ago today. Today is their feast day. We ask these martyrs to remember the people of China, who suffer under a regime that has taken more innocent human life than any other regime in world history.

The Dollar

In what can be only bad news for American families, there is reason to believe that as soon as our economy starts to rebound there will be rapid action by investors to move their savings into other currencies. As a result the dollar will decline in value and all those imports we consume will be much more expensive. When our economy is in recession our standard of living drops, but as soon as our economy starts to grow again the expected fall in value of the dollar will again lower our living standard. Even economic recovery may serve to make life more difficult for families and it may be along time before things start to improve.

It is also important to note that the U.S. dollar is in relative trouble globally and there may be increased pressure to replace it with the Euro, Yuan, or a new currency. Jeffrey Sachs observed that the U.S. has already passed on the "baton" to the G-20 as our economy is becoming less important globally.

This is bad new for families in the United States. Even our economic recovery may make life more difficult. Fortunately, we do not hope in economics or the dollar which, even in the best times, cannot answer the needs of the heart.

Friday, September 25, 2009

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Quebec: A Story in Lost Parental Rights

In Quebec, the state has ruled that its authority over children is greater than the parent's right to educate according to their wishes. Moral and religious relativism is 'objectively' taught in this province's classrooms. This curriculum is even forced on those that home school. Totalitarianism based on moral relativism grows more firmly entrenched in Canada every day and slowly the rights of parents decline... The danger is that the elements we see in Canada are slowly beginning to be adopted in the U.S. Let's hope this movement does not make further gains in our country.

"...the Drummondville judge ruled that 'parents do not have ultimate authority over the moral or religious education of their children, and that the state can impose a curriculum that conflicts with the moral codes parents strive to instill.'"

Horowitz Plays Chopin



Vladimir Horowitz is recognized as a legendary pianists and perhaps one of the greatest players of all times. He performs Chopin's Ballade in G Minor (Opus 23).

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Angelo Scola

Angelo Scola is the Patriarch of Venice and an important member of the Catholic Movement Communion and Liberation. Check out his website.

A Non-Triumphant European History

Here is an interesting review of Dark Continent: Europe’s Twentieth Century.

The New Totalitarianism, "hate crime," and same-sex "marriage"

This classic Michael O'Brien essay covers the degeneration of democracy and the consequences this loss has for those who do not consent to the new generation of political correctness.

"The totalitarian begins with a seemingly benign re-education, but as he extends his grasp into more and more aspects of human life he gradually becomes hostile to everything outside of his own will."

"No grotesque executions. In some cases there may even be no visible dictator, only a system or a social philosophy which permeates and controls everything. Indeed, the world may appear to be perfectly normal. The philosopher Josef Pieper points out that this is the most dangerous form of totalitarianism of all, almost impossible to throw off, because it never appears to be what, in fact, it is."

"How long will it take for our people to understand that when humanist sentiments replace moral absolutes, it is not long before very idealistic people begin to invade human families in the name of the family, and destroy human lives in the name of humanity?"

"... in the modern age it takes little more than one generation to turn a war crime into an “act of compassion."

Saturday, September 12, 2009

Democracy and European Institutions

Interview to Declan Ganley, leader of the No campaign for the Irish referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, on the Wall Street Journal.
How the Irish Can Save Civilization (Again)

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Sarah Palin on Healthcare

The former Governor of Alaska published an opinion piece titled "Obama and the Bureaucratization of Health Care" in yesterday's Wall Street Journal.

The Irony of "Constitution Day"

Colleges and universities that receive federal funding must now create a Constitutional education program on September 17th or risk losing money. While I support the opportunity for citizens to learn more about our government, it is ironic that this program is something that is specifically allotted to states within our founding document, so, we are legally violating its mandates while attempting to make it more publicly known.

Thursday, September 3, 2009

Radiation of Fatherhood: Play by Karol Wojtyla

The complete text is available for Karol Wojtyla's "Radiation of Fatherhood".

John Paul II's plays are beautiful and we are lucky to have this available online.

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Bishop D'Arcy's reflections on Notre Dame

Bishop D'Arcy recently published the article "The Church and The University" and reflects on the controversy surrounding Obama's invitation at Notre Dame.

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Two wonderful documentaries!

The first one is a 2005 nine-part documentary by National Geographic titled "In the Womb." Through the use of 4D ultrasound, the documentary shows the incredible journey of human life in the womb from conception to birth. Absolutely worth seeing!

The second documentary, "Blood Money," is still in the production phase but will be available in theaters in late September if it finds a distributor. Go to their website to watch the trailer. This is another movie really worth seeing and promoting.

Monday, August 24, 2009

Alas, That I So Late Have Known Thee

Alas, that I so late have known Thee,
Thou, above all, the loveliest,
Ah, that I did not sooner own Thee,
Thou greatest good and final rest!
It grieves me, I am sore reproved
That I so late have loved.
But I was blind and went astray,
I sought and sought and was not sated;
from Thee, alas, I turned away
To love the things Thou hast created.
I want to love Thee, O my Lord,
I want to love Thee, O my crown,
To love Thee, yea, without reward
Though in dire need I be cast down;
Fair Light, I'll love Thee for Thy sake
Until my heart shall break!

Angelus Silesius (1624-1677)
German poet

Thursday, August 13, 2009

Mother Teresa of Calcutta National Prayer Breakfast Speech

"I was surprised in the West to see so many young boys and girls given to drugs. And I tried to find out why. Why is it like that, when those in the West have so many more things than those in the East? And the answer was: 'Because there is no one in the family to receive them.' Our children depend on us for everything - their health, their nutrition, their security, their coming to know and love God."

"But I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child, a direct killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself. And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another? How do we persuade a woman not to have an abortion? As always, we must persuade her with love and we remind ourselves that love means to be willing to give until it hurts. Jesus gave even His life to love us. So, the mother who is thinking of abortion, should be helped to love, that is, to give until it hurts her plans, or her free time, to respect the life of her child. The father of that child, whoever he is, must also give until it hurts.

By abortion, the mother does not learn to love, but kills even her own child to solve her problems. And, by abortion, that father is told that he does not have to take any responsibility at all for the child he has brought into the world. The father is likely to put other women into the same trouble. So abortion just leads to more abortion. Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love, but to use any violence to get what they want. This is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion."

"Many people are very, very concerned with the children of India, with the children of Africa where quite a few die of hunger, and so on. Many people are also concerned about all the violence in this great country of the United States. These concerns are very good. But often these same people are not concerned with the millions who are being killed by the deliberate decision of their own mothers. And this is what is the greatest destroyer of peace today - abortion which brings people to such blindness."

"And also I offer you--our Sisters are here--anybody who doesn't want the child, please give it to me. I want the child."

Link to speech transcript.

Free Speech?

Free speech is still free, as long as you do not criticize the President. Ben Stein, a New York Times columnist and co-writer of the movie "Expelled", was recently fired by the newspaper for "conflict of interest", but in Stein's opinion, he lost his column because of his take on Obama's policies.

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Quote of the Day: Karol Wojtyla On Our Times

"We are now standing in the face of the greatest historical confrontation humanity has gone through. I do not think that wide circles of the American society or wide circles of the Christian community realize this fully. We are now facing the final confrontation between the Church and the anti-Church, of the Gospel and the anti-Gospel. This confrontation lies within the plans of divine providence. It is a trial which the whole Church . . . must take up."

Karol Wojtyla, Philadelphia, 1976, printed on November 9, 1978 in the Wall Street Journal

Life, See the Potential!

My sister-in-law recently gave me some copies of the Catholic Digest, a publication I was not familiar with, and I discovered the beautiful story of Patrick Henry Hughes. A 22-year-old from Kentucky, Patrick is a musician (plays piano, trumpet, and sings) and a member of the University of Louisville Cardinals Marching Band. He loves country music and wants to be a Spanish major. A pretty normal kid, right? Well, Patrick is blind and on a wheelchair, unable to walk since birth. Despite these great disabilities, he has overcome many obstacles and has become the man he is today thanks to the love and support of his family and his faith in a good God. Patrick has been traveling around the country to share his story and his musical talents with others and has just published a book called I Am Potential.

Catholic Digest reports that once, in school, a young Patrick said out loud "I can do anything I set my mind to!" One of his classmates, apparently trying to make fun of him, then said "If you can do anything you set your mind to, you can set your mind to seeing and walking. Why can't you do that?" Patrick replied, "Well, why can't you fly like Superman?" We can only learn from people like Patrick!

Saturday, August 8, 2009

An Official Appeal to Help "Big Brother"

The White House blog is calling for people to forward them 'fishy' emails concerning the health care reform. Perhaps, we could call this request "Rats for Facts" or "Help Big Brother".

Since friends and family members are normally the ones who forward emails, does this mean that the White House is really asking American citizens to betray those they love who disagree with the administration's proposal? Granted, there has been little intelligent discussion on health care reform in the mainstream media and almost nothing thoughtful on the internet. This request indicates that emails against the health care reforms appear to be working and what is the best way to curb the flow of these messages: to scare individuals from exercising their first amendment rights and challenging the 'proposal' coming from our governmental leadership. The request to betray friends and forward their messages to the White House is a violation of our constitutional order. This precedent should concern all Americans. It is something that was common in the Soviet Union where individuals were in constant fear of being betrayed. The problem is that no one knows what the government will do with the names and other information it collects.

Saturday, August 1, 2009

The 'Children of Men' Warning

In the film, Children of Men, mankind was threatened with extinction because it was impossible for women to have children. The difficult truth is that this work of science fiction may actually describe reality today. There is new evidence that the usage of oral contraceptives may have massive unforeseen environmental consequences that may partially explain the increase in infertility rates. There are already rivers in the United States where the effects of birth control pills are threatening fish populations. These pills have only been used for a few decades, we can only imagine the consequences that will emerge if we continue to release this chemical into the environment. Traces of the oral contraceptive are already being found in the drinking water of New Jersey and once the drug enters the water supply everyone is affected. The threat is greater than widely perceived because eighty-five percent of the estrogen contained in birth control pills passes directly to the environment through human waste. From the water table, this contamination passes into women and men who drink water supplied by municipal sources. Already, there are findings that link this exposure to male infertility. Ironically, the environmental lobby wishes to continue to support the pill even when it is fully aware of its consequences. The hard reality is that these symptoms are only the beginning of what we can expect to see in the future.

Children of Men Trailer