There is a kind of argument, admitted of old, that is called reductio ad absurdum: to bring a position to the ultimate, patently absurd consequences.
The difficulty, though, is to make the interlocutor to see that his positions lead to those consequences.
The New York State legislator passed a law that I don’t quite know how to define. It is commonly described as legalization of “gay marriage”. But I am not sure what that could mean.
Simple, I could be answered: that in the face of the law the union of a man with a man or a woman with a woman is the same thing as that of a man with a woman. No, I didn’t say it right: what is meant is that for the law the sexual union of a man with a man or a woman with a woman is no different from that of a man with a woman.
Really? The law (trough the legislator who makes it) can do that: turn different things into the same?
Again you don’t understand: the law doesn’t turn different things into the same. See how gross you are: we are not dealing with raw sexual matters, but with the love bond that can tie a man with a man or a woman with a woman as well as a man with a woman into an enduring unity.
I could still play dumb, and say: now I understand, I too have many male friends whom I really love and feel enduringly tied to – let’s say the LD. No, I know what my opponents mean: a love relationship implying sexual intercourse. But then, aren’t we back to the first case: that of the law making different things the same?
You just don’t want to understand. It isn’t the law making them the same, because love relationships are the same.
Well, I’d have my qualms with that, because I really have a hard time understanding what it means. I know what sexually involving love between a man and a woman is, and perhaps, with some effort of the imagination (working on the fact that homo sum, nihil humanum a me alienum puto), I could have a notion even of that between two men or two women. But I simply don’t understand what could a sexual love relationship be, making abstraction so to speak from sex. What else could in fact mean a sexual relationship in which sexes (always male and female) are made irrelevant.
Oh come on…
At this point my interlocutor would probably hesitate. His answer could become tautological, in whatever way claiming that I know it, that love is… well, love. and whoever has the right to pursue it in the way it makes him happy.
Did I claim otherwise? I just don’t see what the law has to do with it.
Well, you know… No, I don’t know.
Hmm, the law should guarantee everybody’s right to realize his desires in love matters.
Should it? Imagine I am a mature man, having a daughter of age of whom I am taken: say, I love her. I should then have the right to pursue my happiness with her, and if I want to marry her.
Oh, you always exaggerate. Incest is forbidden and repels.
Of course it is. But up to some time ago even homosexuality was so forbidden, and now…
At this point my reduxio ad absurdum is completed. But I am afraid that the only answer it would find is the one I said: to negate, always to negate the logical consequence it draws, by an appeal to the evidence of feelings that for the “gay marriage” has been excluded.
I could pursue the reduction ad absurdum also on other sides of the matter. But this perhaps another time.
A couple of thoughts about Pentecost, suggested to me by a priest’s homely and a conversation with the LD.
We all know the story: tongues of fire descended on the apostles gathered, together with Mary, in the last supper hall.
Nice fable, like all the rest, one could say. But true, because people full of apprehension, doubtful of themselves, came out (should I say of the closet?) and started talking in a language that anybody could understand.
They announced the “word made flesh”. So, men made dumb could speak again.
Without fear. Better, full of courage for the fights ahead.
That’s what the priest stressed at the mass I attended, addressing a little group of children who had recently taken first communion.
Out without fear at the fight for the good, which might take our life.
Why not to have fear? I thus paraphrase the priest's answer: because the King is with us, and nourishes us with life eternal.
Here you are, always talking of fights and battles. Don’t you know that Christianity is essentially about peace? Of course I do, but I also know that only a man at peace with God and himself can honestly fight and defeat evil.
Let me quote St. Paul, from the Letter to the Ephesians:
Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might. Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness; And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace; above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
While relating the homily to the LD, we realized what a good comment it makes to his last post for Memorial Day.
"I regarded him then as I regard him now -- as one of the world's noblest figures, not only as one of the finest military characters, but also as one of the most stainless. His name and fame are the birthright of every American citizen. In his youth and strength, his love and loyalty, he gave all that mortality can give." - Gen. Douglas A. MacArthur
For more than a dozen generations, from even before the day broke fatefully over Lexington Green those many Aprils ago, America has been defended by men-at-arms who have learned from Mother's nurturing bosom those disciplines, those perfections and that excellence of character, which have made them both capable and deserving of victory; fighting men - and women, too - who have been at once the terror and the envy of tyrants and kings, the pride of their fellows, and - this side of Jerusalem - the last defenders of the hope of mankind.
God bless and keep you all: GOD BLESS THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!
General Westmoreland, General Grove, distinguished guests, and gentlemen of the Corps!
As I was leaving the hotel this morning, a doorman asked me, "Where are you bound for, General?" And when I replied, "West Point," he remarked, "Beautiful place. Have you ever been there before?"
No human being could fail to be deeply moved by such a tribute as this [Thayer Award]. Coming from a profession I have served so long, and a people I have loved so well, it fills me with an emotion I cannot express. But this award is not intended primarily to honor a personality, but to symbolize a great moral code -- the code of conduct and chivalry of those who guard this beloved land of culture and ancient descent. That is the animation of this medallion. For all eyes and for all time, it is an expression of the ethics of the American soldier. That I should be integrated in this way with so noble an ideal arouses a sense of pride and yet of humility which will be with me always
Duty, Honor, Country: Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying points: to build courage when courage seems to fail; to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith; to create hope when hope becomes forlorn.
Unhappily, I possess neither that eloquence of diction, that poetry of imagination, nor that brilliance of metaphor to tell you all that they mean.
The unbelievers will say they are but words, but a slogan, but a flamboyant phrase. Every pedant, every demagogue, every cynic, every hypocrite, every troublemaker, and I am sorry to say, some others of an entirely different character, will try to downgrade them even to the extent of mockery and ridicule.
But these are some of the things they do. They build your basic character. They mold you for your future roles as the custodians of the nation's defense. They make you strong enough to know when you are weak, and brave enough to face yourself when you are afraid. They teach you to be proud and unbending in honest failure, but humble and gentle in success; not to substitute words for actions, not to seek the path of comfort, but to face the stress and spur of difficulty and challenge; to learn to stand up in the storm but to have compassion on those who fall; to master yourself before you seek to master others; to have a heart that is clean, a goal that is high; to learn to laugh, yet never forget how to weep; to reach into the future yet never neglect the past; to be serious yet never to take yourself too seriously; to be modest so that you will remember the simplicity of true greatness, the open mind of true wisdom, the meekness of true strength. They give you a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions, a freshness of the deep springs of life, a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, of an appetite for adventure over love of ease. They create in your heart the sense of wonder, the unfailing hope of what next, and the joy and inspiration of life. They teach you in this way to be an officer and a gentleman.
And what sort of soldiers are those you are to lead? Are they reliable? Are they brave? Are they capable of victory? Their story is known to all of you. It is the story of the American man-at-arms. My estimate of him was formed on the battlefield many, many years ago, and has never changed. I regarded him then as I regard him now -- as one of the world's noblest figures, not only as one of the finest military characters, but also as one of the most stainless. His name and fame are the birthright of every American citizen. In his youth and strength, his love and loyalty, he gave all that mortality can give.
He needs no eulogy from me or from any other man. He has written his own history and written it in red on his enemy's breast. But when I think of his patience under adversity, of his courage under fire, and of his modesty in victory, I am filled with an emotion of admiration I cannot put into words. He belongs to history as furnishing one of the greatest examples of successful patriotism. He belongs to posterity as the instructor of future generations in the principles of liberty and freedom. He belongs to the present, to us, by his virtues and by his achievements. In 20 campaigns, on a hundred battlefields, around a thousand campfires, I have witnessed that enduring fortitude, that patriotic self-abnegation, and that invincible determination which have carved his statue in the hearts of his people. From one end of the world to the other he has drained deep the chalice of courage.
As I listened to those songs [of the glee club], in memory's eye I could see those staggering columns of the First World War, bending under soggy packs, on many a weary march from dripping dusk to drizzling dawn, slogging ankle-deep through the mire of shell-shocked roads, to form grimly for the attack, blue-lipped, covered with sludge and mud, chilled by the wind and rain, driving home to their objective, and for many, to the judgment seat of God.
I do not know the dignity of their birth, but I do know the glory of their death. They died unquestioning, uncomplaining, with faith in their hearts, and on their lips the hope that we would go on to victory. Always, for them: Duty, Honor, Country; always their blood and sweat and tears, as we sought the way and the light and the truth.
And 20 years after, on the other side of the globe, again the filth of murky foxholes, the stench of ghostly trenches, the slime of dripping dugouts; those boiling suns of relentless heat, those torrential rains of devastating storms; the loneliness and utter desolation of jungle trails; the bitterness of long separation from those they loved and cherished; the deadly pestilence of tropical disease; the horror of stricken areas of war; their resolute and determined defense, their swift and sure attack, their indomitable purpose, their complete and decisive victory -- always victory. Always through the bloody haze of their last reverberating shot, the vision of gaunt, ghastly men reverently following your password of: Duty, Honor, Country.
The code which those words perpetuate embraces the highest moral laws and will stand the test of any ethics or philosophies ever promulgated for the uplift of mankind. Its requirements are for the things that are right, and its restraints are from the things that are wrong.
The soldier, above all other men, is required to practice the greatest act of religious training -- sacrifice.
In battle and in the face of danger and death, he discloses those divine attributes which his Maker gave when he created man in his own image. No physical courage and no brute instinct can take the place of the Divine help which alone can sustain him.
However horrible the incidents of war may be, the soldier who is called upon to offer and to give his life for his country is the noblest development of mankind.
You now face a new world -- a world of change. The thrust into outer space of the satellite, spheres, and missiles mark the beginning of another epoch in the long story of mankind. In the five or more billions of years the scientists tell us it has taken to form the earth, in the three or more billion years of development of the human race, there has never been a more abrupt or staggering evolution. We deal now not with things of this world alone, but with the illimitable distances and as yet unfathomed mysteries of the universe. We are reaching out for a new and boundless frontier.
We speak in strange terms: of harnessing the cosmic energy; of making winds and tides work for us; of creating unheard synthetic materials to supplement or even replace our old standard basics; to purify sea water for our drink; of mining ocean floors for new fields of wealth and food; of disease preventatives to expand life into the hundreds of years; of controlling the weather for a more equitable distribution of heat and cold, of rain and shine; of space ships to the moon; of the primary target in war, no longer limited to the armed forces of an enemy, but instead to include his civil populations; of ultimate conflict between a united human race and the sinister forces of some other planetary galaxy; of such dreams and fantasies as to make life the most exciting of all time.
And through all this welter of change and development, your mission remains fixed, determined, inviolable: it is to win our wars.
Everything else in your professional career is but corollary to this vital dedication. All other public purposes, all other public projects, all other public needs, great or small, will find others for their accomplishment. But you are the ones who are trained to fight. Yours is the profession of arms, the will to win, the sure knowledge that in war there is no substitute for victory; that if you lose, the nation will be destroyed; that the very obsession of your public service must be: Duty, Honor, Country.
Others will debate the controversial issues, national and international, which divide men's minds; but serene, calm, aloof, you stand as the Nation's war-guardian, as its lifeguard from the raging tides of international conflict, as its gladiator in the arena of battle. For a century and a half you have defended, guarded, and protected its hallowed traditions of liberty and freedom, of right and justice.
Let civilian voices argue the merits or demerits of our processes of government; whether our strength is being sapped by deficit financing, indulged in too long, by federal paternalism grown too mighty, by power groups grown too arrogant, by politics grown too corrupt, by crime grown too rampant, by morals grown too low, by taxes grown too high, by extremists grown too violent; whether our personal liberties are as thorough and complete as they should be. These great national problems are not for your professional participation or military solution. Your guidepost stands out like a ten-fold beacon in the night: Duty, Honor, Country.
You are the leaven which binds together the entire fabric of our national system of defense. From your ranks come the great captains who hold the nation's destiny in their hands the moment the war tocsin sounds. The Long Gray Line has never failed us. Were you to do so, a million ghosts in olive drab, in brown khaki, in blue and gray, would rise from their white crosses thundering those magic words: Duty, Honor, Country.
This does not mean that you are war mongers.
On the contrary, the soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war.
But always in our ears ring the ominous words of Plato, that wisest of all philosophers: "Only the dead have seen the end of war."
The shadows are lengthening for me. The twilight is here. My days of old have vanished, tone and tint. They have gone glimmering through the dreams of things that were. Their memory is one of wondrous beauty, watered by tears, and coaxed and caressed by the smiles of yesterday. I listen vainly, but with thirsty ears, for the witching melody of faint bugles blowing reveille, of far drums beating the long roll. In my dreams I hear again the crash of guns, the rattle of musketry, the strange, mournful mutter of the battlefield.
But in the evening of my memory, always I come back to West Point.
Always there echoes and re-echoes: Duty, Honor, Country.
Today marks my final roll call with you, but I want you to know that when I cross the river my last conscious thoughts will be of The Corps, and The Corps, and The Corps.
In Italian the wedding ring is simply called faith.
I'm not quite sure yet why this phrase came to my mind as a kind of synthetic comment to the LD's remarks in the last posts on the state of today marriage legislation.
Sharp remarks, that left little room for current arguing in defense of "traditional marriage": given the way that legislation is made, there is no reason why marriage should be denied to same sex people.
No piecemeal argument.
Rightly then he ended his second intervention with a criticism of Justice Marshall's marauding sentence: it makes shreds of the law, in a way worthy of a tyrannical state.
A free state doesn't make the law, it just promulgate it. To remind that simple fact John Adams, if I am not going wrong, wrote the constitution of the commonwealth of Massachusetts.
Back to the wedding ring. There is a law immanent to things – meaning human relations – and what its Italian name suggests to me is what that law is all about, which the state should just promulgate: articulating faith – fides, i.e. trust – among people.
Does this allow some argument in defense of "traditional marriage". Well, I'd say yes.
To put it rather bluntly: who gives a shit about the sentiment two persons feel toward each other so that the state should give to it an official ratification? Or, to put it better, of course we do care, because, as I just suggested, all laws should promote faith among people. But the word marriage evokes a feeling among people leading to some kind of sexual intercourse among them. And then again I repeat my question: why should the state ratify it?
The only reason is the one hinted to by the LD: because by way of sexual intercourse between people of different gender a society perpetuates itself. Now, society is articulated into a certain status rei publicae, and the institutions – like the presidency, the legislative body and the judiciary – that make that state of things should promote the perpetuation of its life.
This leads to still larger questions. I summarize them by this statement: if the state sanctions the separation of sex and reproduction, and assures the perpetuation of society by any other way than the establishment of family relations, it means that it is sucking in itself all of social life – in short, that it is becoming not simply tyrannical, but totalitarian.
My initial post in this series contained an assertion to the effect that marriage is no more than official state recognition of a public declaration of personal sentiment.
Almost immediately, I subtly but importantly modified the expression "no more than" to read "little more than" in another formulation.
"What real difference is there between no more and little more?" you ask: less, I confess, than an iota's worth, though still significant.
We might avoid the discussion altogether if we simply say that certain benefits are part and parcel of the official recognition. To name a few of the chief ones: rights of entail, inheritance and visitation; spousal privilege; powers of attorney and proxy; participation in a spouse's health plan.
These are not indifferent benefits.
If marriage is merely a temporary mutual ratification of sentiment, and yet one to which the state has attached and conditioned certain benefits, then the state's refusal to ratify the sentiments of a whole class of people is real discrimination - and real discrimination of a kind for which it is hard for this author to see a justification.
Yes, some discrimination is necessary and proper: we do not issue driver's licenses to blind people - and while sexual complementarity is a perfectly rational ground for discrimination when society holds that marriage is for the stability of society from generation to generation through the regulation and rearing of children within established and legitimate households, it simply will not do when marriage is a ratification of sentiment; then, it were tantamount to saying, "You shouldn't feel that way about each other."
Indeed, this was the ground the Massachusetts SJC discovered in Goodridge.
Against this, it can only be urged: that courts should show great deference to legislatures when dealing with questions of social policy; that the legislature's modification of much traditional marriage law was not meant and in any case cannot be construed - in the absence of explicit declarations in statute or as part of the legislative history of an act or body of acts - to have constituted abandonment or destruction of the rationale behind the legislation, i.e. the understanding of the basic structure and purpose of the institution for and about which they were legislating; that (in the Massachusetts case), the court mistakenly conflates marriage with the benefits accorded by the state to married couples.
More to this:
When Chief Justice Catherine Marshall writes, "Simply put, the state creates civil marriage," she makes a crucial error. Marriage, even on a positivistic, radical empiricist reading, pre-exists what passes for “civil society” in those schools. Native Americans, for example, who were considered not to live in civil or political society by the 17th and 18th and early 19th Century devotees of those schools (not to mention most Europeans in North America), entered into marital unions. Consider the following hypothesis: a Native American woman appealed to the spousal privilege in refusing to offer testimony against her husband, who was on trial for murder in a Massachusetts court, and the court ruled that the solicitor could not compel her testimony, on the grounds that she was married to the accused. I believe, though I am not sure, that the hypothesis is confirmed by case-law precedent. More to this, the Commonwealth does not require married couples to contract their marriage anew, when no record of their marriage exists, because the country in which they contracted the marriage does not keep such records. It is sufficient in such a case to swear an affidavit.
Still, Justice Marshall argues, the state creates the benefits of civil marriage, and places as condition of acceding to those benefits, the necessity of obtaining a marriage license. Justice Marshall cites Commonwealth v. Manson to the effect that, "'[T]he requisites of a valid marriage have been regulated by statutes of the Colony, Province and Commonwealth,' and surveying marriage statutes from 1639 through 1834." In 1639, however, there were no such benefits as those which Justice Marshall conflates with the institution of marriage, itself. Her conclusion of law is based in an erroneous finding of fact.
Her conclusion of law to the effect that, "In Massachusetts, civil marriage is, and since pre-colonial days has been just what its name implies: a wholly secular institution," is based in an erroneous finding of fact. Justice Marshall fails to consider that Massachusetts does not, nor has it ever required a separate civil marriage ceremony, but has always recognized that the religious minister of a marriage, in receiving the vows of the spouses, acts as an agent of the state. More to this, the fact that a religious minister legitimately acts as an agent of the state in receiving spouses’ vows implies that the religious ceremony does not contain anything explicitly contrary to the civil requirements. Further, For a good deal of the period mentioned by Justice Marshall, Catholics were not permitted to live in Massachusetts; it is reasonable to assume that Catholics were not permitted to contract marriages during that time; even after some relaxation of the anti-Catholic laws, for many years a citizen of Massachusetts who was not a Catholic was not permitted under Massachusetts law to enter into marriage with a Catholic person. In Massachusetts, then, marriage has not always been a wholly secular institution, except in the tautological sense that, granted the court’s premise according to which the state creates civil marriage by creating the benefits that constitute marriage and granting the license that allows couples to accede thereto, the benefits the state has seen fit to grant to married couples are granted to married couples by the secular power, or the irrelevant sense that a citizen who is a religious minister can and does also sometimes act as an agent of the state.
Such a response could continue at great length, though it is quite specific, and its usefulness will be mostly confined to cases of judicial impostion, i.e., when courts impose or try to impose same-sex marriage.
It says little about how a body politic ought to behave, when it has the question of same-sex marriage before it in the present day.
Though it were to risk making a fault of frankness, I must say: the more I hear from people on the "no" side of the same-sex marriage debate, the more sympathetic I become to people on the "yes" side of it.
This is not to say that I think same-sex marriage advocates are in the right.
I do not.
Nevertheless, I cannot say that I am "for" something we might call "traditional marriage" sic et simpliciter - without qualification.
You see, I simply cannot get my head around what it might mean to be "for" something called "traditional" marriage. It sounds to me like being "for" gravity, which is what it is, regardless of my disposition toward it (for the record: I am generally well-disposed to gravity).
Let me put it this way: marriage is what it is, quite apart from how I or anyone else might feel about it - and marriage, prior to the state and before all constituted political or civil authority, is between one man and one woman (yes, even where polygamy and polyandry are practiced, each marriage is an iteration of the one man, one woman model: King Solomon's wives were not married to each other); it is for the stability of society in time from generation to generation, through the regulation and rearing of children within established and legitimate households.
This is obvious to me, though it is so only because I have read too much of world history and literature not to be so convicted. Had I looked merely at the state of society today - or had I taken the measure of things as they have developed over the past generation or so (by the biblical reckoning, for which a generation is a 40-year interval), I believe things would indeed appear very differently.
Over the past four decades or so, we have seen a series of social changes regarding marriage: fewer couples entering into marriage and at ever greater age; exponential increase in the number of children born out of wedlock (and in many jurisdictions, tendentially erosive change in laws governing legitimacy); the introduction of "no fault" divorce, with the subsequent increase in numbers and rates of divorce, re-marriage and the increasing prevalence of "blended" families. It is for sociologists to debate and perhaps to decide whether, how and to what extent these phenomena are related to one another. What is certain, and pertinent to present purposes, is that society has come to understand marriage not as a commitment to a way of life, but rather as a sort of official seal of approval on a statement two people make about how they feel toward one another in a given moment.
In several important senses, chief among them the legal, marriage today is no more than this.
Quae cum ita sint, it is more than merely reasonable to ask why society should withhold its official recognition from any two persons who wish to make such a declaration.
In other words: political communities in the United States have decided to understand marriage as little more than a temporary mutual ratification of sentiment, and this does as a matter of fact make it difficult to understand why persons of the same sex cannot have such ratification - why the state ought to withhold its seal of approval.
The debate over "gay marriage" is only symptomatic of a broader sickness in the body politic.
Until we recognize this state of affairs for what it is, and for so long as we continue in our obstinate refusal to recognize that the position of our interlocutors on the other side of this issue is reasonable and (in enough cases to admit of a generality) held in good faith, we will make no headway in a contest for which the prize is neither more nor less than a chance to restore and recover the basic integrity of our entire civilizational project.
I often mentioned the fact of there being a creeping civil war going on in the West. But the USA are in a somewhat better shape than Europe. It is that A that follows the US: an idea of America, that still makes for a civil religion of Christian matrix. So, it doesn't matter whether the POTUS is liberal or conservative, in certain junctures he can deliver a speech that is simply presidential, as Obama did when he announced Osama bin Laden's execution.
Too bad that it is the only time since Obama won the elections, on the promise to be a post partisan president, that he really spoke post partisan.
I'd like to enclose a little e-mail exchange I had with an American friend of mine. I change the name with our pseudonyms. I wrote:
"They killed the bastard", was the comment of my young friend the LD. And I must recognize that for once Obama gave a presidential speech. But I hope this will not take away the dissatisfaction with his leadership. Obama is and remains a fraud. He hasn't been able to stimulate American economy, that means Americans, in the least. But I couldn't understand, from the conservative sites I follow, whether there is a strong republican candidate emerging, and who he, or she, is.
Here is the answer:
Dear HP--yes, justice has been served--and although the Book of Proverbs tells not to rejoice in the fall of our enemies--we may be forgiven for a sense of satisfaction seeing justice served--and although Obama deserves some credit--more and more people are talking about the fact that it wasBush's policies (like waterboarding, Guantanamo etc.) which Obama opposed, ultimately proved successful in bringing the bastard to justice--now of course Obama and his minions in the press are waxing overmuch about how the "great one'' led us to this victory--this euphoria will be short lived-since Americans have such short attention spans--and the economy is in such disrepair--as one analyst put it: "Americans have not been disappointed in Obama's handling of the Bin Laden situation"--it's the economy that will bring him down along with his foolish so-called foreign policy of letting others lead--if gas prices and food prices continue to rise--along with high unemployment Obama will be defeated in 2012--as for Republican candidates--there are two midwestern governors (Pawlenty of Minnesota and Daniels of Indiana) who are popular successful Republican politicians and while they might not be so charismatic as Obama is supposed to be--I think Americans are longing for competence and substance instead of superficial glitz which is what Obama is all about--there are also two very interesting potential black Republicans who may run--Herman Cain is a very successful businessman (millionaire) who is very articulate and dedicated to conservative principles (check him out on the internet)--the other is a recently elected member of the House from Florida--a retired colonel--Alan West--who is also very articulate and very conservative--kind of the anti-Obama (except he is black)--these two are very interesting and appealing--if the economy continues in the desperate straits as now--Obama can be defeated by a competent alternative--it should be interesting--besides, it will be interesting to see how Obama's media toadies react to these two black men--it will be difficult to accuse them of racism--the usual response to any criticism of Obama--I am delighted with the beatification of John Paul II--a truly saintly person--my love to your lovely.
Just as a curiosity, meaningful for what is America: my friend is a Jew.
Christ is risen from the dead. The Easter day is passed, but not our celebration, which is extended to every week of the year, starting all over again from the dies dominica, vulgarly called in English "day of the sun", Sunday.
What is the meaning of Easter, and its announcement of the resurrection? Does it exempt us from thinking of the days before, of the death and descent into hell that preceded it? Surely not.
I'd say, the meaning of that announcement is: don't be afraid of facing death. But to face death we have.
How about if I reformulated it in: don't be afraid of loving?
I could legitimately asked what fear of loving has to do with fear of death.
The answer might go deeply into God's mystery. Because the question would turn with it into another, odd one: is there death in God?
Fear of death is the main cause of the fear of loving. Why? Because there is no true love without a dying. He who is afraid of dying, cannot really love. And is condemned to death.
We don't really know what death is. We watch people being born and dying, and we have been told that, as it happens to them, so it happened and will happen to us. But what is it that so happens is outside our experience.
As far as death is concerned, we should say that it is the future as an "x", the future as unknown. Isn't it this way with love? It doesn't depend on me, but on the beloved one, who can return it or not. If, then, to face the future is to face death, so it is also with love.
Let's call death without further ado fear of dying: to oppose our resistance to dying, wanting to make ourselves sure of what is going to come, by embracing past present and future in a knowledge that spares us the danger of loving.
Eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge and you will be like God, said the serpent to tempt Adam and Eve. Indeed they acquired knowledge, but not of God. They were instead exiled from Him, and death entered into their lives.
Had they relied on God, they would have come to know him as he is, and as Jesus Christ showed him to be: a personal love exchange, perennial mutual giving of one's life to the beloved.
Hence that odd question I mentioned. I remember my surprise when I found it put in a most prominent Catholic theologian. Of course there is no death in God, in the way I defined. But surely there is dying for love.
By descending into hell, Christ could absorb human death into his love dying, and pull the dead out of it in his resurrection.
I'd like to add something to what the LD well said in the last post.
There are more sides to Christ's sacrifice, as in the Old Testament different kinds of sacrifice are prescribed by the book of Leviticus. Of these, I'll single out two.
Christ died for our sins.
In this way he enacts, as sacrifier and victim at the same time, the sacrifice called by Leviticus "for sins", prescribed to cleanse the priest or the people of the pollution left by the misdeeds we call sins.
What is after all a sin? Neither in Leviticus nor elsewhere in Scriptures we find a definition, only cases of it. I dare say that sin is a diabolic act in the etymological sense of the word: an act of self-indulgence that doesn't unite but divides.
Uniting, then, is Christ's sacrifice: said in strict theological terms, what it realizes is atonement (word recalling a reckoning, a settling of accounts, a drawing together of loose ends – and may finally evoke, in a wild sort of etymologizing, the "at-one-ness" of reconciliation). So He overcomes the divisiveness coming from our sins.
He does it, however, because that sacrifice is like the one Leviticus calls a burn offering, a holocaust, in which the whole victim is offered for no other reason than to pay the due homage to the Lord.
It is, in other words, the pure act of self giving that shows Jesus to be Christ, the anointed one, the King. It is because of that that it takes away our sins, i.e., it represents efficaciously for us the way that doesn't divide in hate, but unites in love.
Before I turn my thoughts to the HP's considerations, let me explain something: usually, I do something for Lent like go off the booze, or give up meat for the whole time, or put down my pipe.
This time, 'round, though, I did not do much in that way. I tried to be a little less indulgent in general, sure, but there was no one pleasure I decided to forego.
This year, my Lenten discipline was rather in the positive direction (I choose to say, "positive" with scientific exactness): I decided I would do my best to take seriously - really to live by - the Ignatian maxim: "Think all the good you can!" It is a maxim that I quote often, but too rarely take to heart. So, I decided to make a go of it.
Now we are in Holy Week, and the Passion is in my mind (and on TV, for that matter): there is a scene in the Gibson film, in which Christ calls out, "Father, they know not what they do. (cf. Lk 23:34)," a scene I happened to see just last night. It struck me that the portrayal of Christ's pleading with the Father on behalf of his torturers and murderers was full of all the urgency that knowledge of the Father's love and omnipotence - therefore appreciation of the mortal peril in which Christ's torturers and murderers found themselves - would have entailed: as if Christ were begging God not to exact His vengeance on them, as though God were preparing to do just that. Then I remembered the following lines from the homily delivered by the man who would become Pope Benedict XVI, during the missa pro eligendo Romano pontifice:
The day of vindication and the year of favour converge in the Paschal Mystery, in the dead and Risen Christ. This is the vengeance of God: he himself suffers for us, in the person of his Son.
So, as I consider taking up my cross, I wonder whether I could become God's vengeance by quiet and convicted advocacy for those who fulminate against me, who seem to hate reason and truth, who slander God the Father and malign Christ and His Holy Church. I certainly could not.
Then, I recall that Christ's pleading was for me: every sin I commit is a stripe on his body, a blow that drives the nail, a thorn that cuts his blessed brow.
I talked with the LD about a possible post, on a recent dreadful event that saw the killing of a poor young Italian fellow, who thought of working for the good along lines I don't agree with. The LD dissuaded me, rightly arguing that it could sound like hitting a dead man. The purpose of our blog is not so much to pass judgments on things and people, as to reason on how we pass judgments. We humbly hope this might help to increase in a however minimal degree the awareness of what judging things requires.
We definitely have our ideas, hence our liking and disliking, which run against opposite liking and disliking. But what use would be to bang our head against those holding them? Not much, and therefore it isn't much the use of mentioning and discussing facts, if we don't agree about what kind of facts they are.
I give you as example an observation my mother made when, as school teacher, she realized that facts changed in the course of time with the changing of text books.
Everybody makes history as he likes, she observed. Take Robespierre. It used to be, in older text books, that they unequivocally spoke about him as having turned the French Revolution into terror. Now I read that he saved it, because he brought order in a country in disarray.
The very nature of the fact changes by the way we tell it.
The most necessary thing, therefore, is to promote the awareness of the criteria by which we judge facts. Without such an awareness it isn't possible to inquire into them, in order to see whether an agreement on them could be possible.
First of all the book I am writing, which kept me away from blogging. I am at a crucial point, where I am trying to explain to a possible reader, which means essentially to myself by putting myself in the place of a possible reader, the main tenet of Christianity: that funny doctrine which says that the divine ground of all things we call God is at the same time one and three. By a possible reader I don't mean a Christian believer, but any man who, if he just recognizes to be educated, should also recognize to be believer in some authority. Because of this I try to explain to myself through him why to believe in Christ leads us to that funny doctrine of three in one, which is the most translucent account of reality ever given (consonant with the best of science). And therefore that to believe in Christ is the most rational thing any man could do.
This leads me to the other things that press my mind, which on the contrary pull me toward blogging to get rid of the turmoil in which they keep it (I won't say how otherwise this turmoil risks to annoy my wife, forced to listen to me).
Europe, once the land of Christianity, in the last centuries has been progressively turning away from it, a turn which has taken in recent decades a sudden acceleration. The academic, media, and political elites not only act as if indifferent top Christianity, which isn't a novelty, but take a stance toward it that in the best of cases tends simply to erase it from history, in the worst they openly fight it as backward and oppressive.
Does this sound familiar to the American reader of this blog?
Christianity is a belief, a belief is an opinion, and opinions, however they may seems to motivate people's actions, are not fit for a scientific understanding of them. So the point goes. That's why people who think this way hardly will become readers of my book, even though I am writing it for them too. They feel exempt, in fact, from knowing what Christianity is about, and for that matter any other of those beliefs equally called religion. Deemed supernatural, they have no pertinence for those who want to attain themselves to nature. Because, lucky them, they look as if they knew what nature is. (Being so, I'd like to ask them what Einstein's theory of relativity says. As for me, not being a mathematician, I was helped to understand it by the study of the "savage mind", i. e. the thought of archaic or primitive peoples.)
In America, this way of thinking, let's call it "liberal", is also widespread in the "main stream" media, academia, and politics (let's think, alas, of the present administration). Luckily, though, there is in America a more powerful "conservative" resistance to it that in Europe.
Still another thing that presses my mind: the international situation. And to say this means largely the state of the Muslim world. It means Islam, with its home consequences in the Western world.
The peculiar thing that liberals don't seem to realize, is that their way of thinking involves them in an blatant contradiction.
It shows it well their loathing of the foreign policy doctrine of "exporting democracy". Odd thing, if one thinks that they wouldn't let go an inch of their right to do as they like, without an outcry of "oppression", "Nazism", or the like! But when other peoples live under oppressive and nazi-like regimes, they don't seem to be moved.
Perhaps they think that living under political-religious regimes of the Iranian kind is what people there like, and, because what anybody likes has to be granted, we shouldn't interfere. Or they rather think that democracy, while good for us, would be disruptive in other peoples' lives. So, while enjoying the benefits of democracy, they ask who are we to tell others how to live. Too bad that when it concerns us they are quite ready to do it.
We? How can you say that? To us, who are all for tolerance? There you have it. Tolerance. You decide what to tolerate and what not. I actually know that you find the Tea Party quite intolerable. Why don't you find equally intolerable Muslims?
The point worth to notice, with tolerance, is that if you grant a right to somebody, you obligate others. Who might not like it. But have to swallow it.
As for me, I always thought that, either democracy is good also for others, or that it is no good even for us. Of course, this means to find a notion of democracy that could be shared.
Of one thing I am sure: it can't be defined on the basis of tolerance. Should we do it, we would turn democracy into a most oppressive system.
Here I close, because the things that press my mind are so heavy loaded that they would require a book to exhaust them. Ah, I forgot, I am writing it.
A meeting for bloggers will take place in Rome on the afternoon of Monday 2 May 2011. The aim of the meeting, which is being organised by the Pontifical Councils for Culture and Social Communications, is to allow for a dialogue between bloggers and Church representatives, to listen to the experiences of those who are actively involved in this arena, and to achieve a greater understanding of the needs of that community. The meeting will also allow for a presentation of some of the initiatives to engage with new media practitioners being taken by the Church, both in Rome and at the local level.
In two panels, speakers will open up some of the key issues in order to set up a more general discussion open to all participants. The first panel will involve 5 bloggers – they will be chosen to represent different language groups and each will address a specific theme of general relevance. The second panel will draw on people involved in the Church’s communications outreach – they will speak of their experiences in working with new media and initiatives aimed at ensuring an effective engagement by the Church with bloggers.
Among those participating at the meeting will be Cardinal Ravasi of the Pontifical Council for Culture, Archbishop Celli of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications and Father Lombardi of the Vatican’s Press Office and Vatican Radio. An important dimension of the meeting is to allow an opportunity for informal exchange and contact between those attending with a view to opening further avenues of interaction.
The meeting is taking place on the day after the Beatification of Pope John Paul II in order to take advantage of the likely presence in Rome of many bloggers. The invitation is open to all, but bloggers who wish to attend need to apply by emailing blogmeet@pccs.it and sending a link to their blog. As space is limited to 150 seats and there is a desire to have a representation of the entire blogosphere, entrance passes and further details will be distributed with a view to the diversity of language and geography, typology of blogs (institutional or private, multivoice or personal), subjects of blogs, and timeliness of request.
Simultaneous translation will be provided for Italian, English, French, Polish and Spanish.
The venue is the Palazzo San Pio X, in via della Conciliazione, 5.
Below, please find the English text of a letter explaining a special Lenten initiative.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
This Lenten season, please consider a private devotion in the form of (at least) one decade of the Rosary to be said each Friday, with the following intention: the official juridical recognition of the Holy Martyrs of Baghdad.
The suffering of Christians all across the Mideast region is very real, and truly terrible.
It is worthy, therefore, that we ask Almighty God to move His Church to recognize the victims of the Oct. 31st massacre in Baghdad's cathedral Church of Our Lady of Salvation, as true Christian martyrs, slain in hatred of the faith.
Please also consider, as part of this devotion, a prayer: for the conversion of all those who are now enemies of Christ and His Holy Church; that through their conversion, they obtain pardon; that by pardon, there be reconciliation, and in reconciliation, peace.
As this is a "grass roots" initiative, please help spread the word: especially by way of the new communications media, to prudent use of which our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, has called us in the service of the Gospel.
Even one day late, it is still worthy saying: I hate the 8th of March.
It isn't that I don't love women and I don't want to celebrate them. But that is not the way.
Just to speak of "woman" doesn't say anything about what is there to celebrate. Nothing archetypical in it. There are good women and bad women, angels and bitches. Or normal women: but according to what a criterion defined?
You could answer: well, according to no criterion whatsoever. Because it doesn't matter. The 8th of March is for women as such.
Too bad that this "as such" is questionable.
Ancient Greek mythology knew at least four archetypes of women: Hera (in Latin, Juno), Aphrodite (Venus), Athena (Minerva), Artemis (Diana), etcetera. Each one of them personified some aspects of womanhood: like maternity, sex appeal, wisdom, virginal strength, or whatever. When that same mythology tells the story of Paris being called to choose among three of them (Hera, Aphrodite and Athena) thus unchaining the events that led to the war of Troy, it is as if it was telling us that we too have to make a choice:
To decide which traits of womanhood we want to celebrate. Because there is no celebration that isn't of archetypes.
Woman par excellence in the Christian tradition was Mary: embracing all the power of a virgin and all the realization of a mother. So, it would seem, we don't have to make a choice. And we could celebrate all women in her.
But still, her archetype was felt too strict a model. Because we wanted to add another type of woman: the active single, not virgin and only accidentally mother.
And I ask myself: what peculiarly feminine remains in the active single? And why should I celebrate it?
The answer is close to: nothing, and for no reason.
That's why I hate the 8th of March. Because I love women, and I'd like to celebrate them without having to make a disastrous choice (guess then where it goes my pick).
Internal affairs and international affairs intermingle with each other. Let's look at what is happening now: part of the world afire, and we not knowing which way to go and what action to take. More: divided, we don't know who are our friends and our enemies, and fear reactions inside and outside.
Powerful, we are impotent, with the USA aligning themselves on this regard with Europe. Once colonialist, Western Europe demised any claim to tell others how to be and what to do. Actually it even gave up telling it to itself.
Should I go over the history of colonialism, mainly in its Nineteenth Century version? It is easier to go over its end of the Twentieth Century version.
The newest version sprung from bad conscience over what went on previously. This raises the question: what did actually go wrong? Here the mainstream answer is summarized by the word imperialism (which embraces colonialism).
"Imperialist" are labeled people who want to impose themselves on others. Which now looks as a no-no, absolutely to be avoided. Hitler did it (actually also Stalin, but he is less talked about), but he was defeated, and we, the winners, don't want to hear of anybody wanting to implement a policy that runs against our grain. So anybody who trying to do it is likened to him (as it shows the mob of public servants parading in the streets of Madison).
On a larger scale, it is no longer a question of the Hitlers of the situation, but of "us": in the new era of blatant globalization, in which peoples seem to want to emulate us, or turn against us in hatred, "we" see ourselves as a kind of cancer of the earth, that bought about the ruin of all the pretty local realities everywhere existing before our arrival. It looks like "we" have imposed on others our life style – whose comforts, however, "we" are rarely ready to give up.
Hence, the heinous idea of multiculturalism: it looks open, for as much as it is closed: on "ourselves", incapable of understanding that what is culture for "us" it is simply the world for others.
Actually, colonialism is the history of mankind: all along a story of peoples' movements, their superimposing, mingling, or erasing each other. Never was there anything we could call "nativism". That local realities appear such is just another manifestation of the mystique of western domination.
Neither old days colonialists, nor to days multiculturalists, give sign of an idea of man, nature, society, and – last but not least – of God, such to convince and attract other peoples.
So the answer given to the question of what went wrong, turns out to be just another version of the same cultural disease, which led to colonialism and two world wars. The trouble, finally, is that arguing to convince others is confused with imposing, and any talk about truth becomes suspicious.
We love disagreeing, and we would love to disagree with you, but we can only disagree with you if you write to us at:
chroniclesfromthefront@yahoo.com
Of course, there are other reasons for writing to us besides disagreement. Have something you want me to see or maybe treat on the blog? Send it in. Appreciate all the fine work we're doing? Let us know.
A caveat to potential stalkers: writing e-mails in one's own blood is an extremely messy and inefficient business.
A caveat to all would-be correspondents: If you do write, we can publish it. That does not mean we will, though. We are reasonable men. If you want anonymity, just ask for it, and you shall receive it. Just remember: sign with your real name. The first thing we do is check for a real name. We delete all unsigned e-mails.
LD & HP
"Chronicles from the Front" Copyright 2006-2012. All rights reserved.
Not too Shabby for a Tenderfoot
Chronicles from the Front Supports Fr. William Casey, CPM
Posts
