ingmar bergman has died

Read about it here. I appreciate Bergman. His films resonate. I worry that he never saw the light, though I think Fr Kimel has disagreed with me on this point.

fascinating

A map of "Religious Adherents as a Percentage of All Residents" in the U.S.

from the sad ironies department

You may remember the ECUSA Priest / Moslem, Dr. Ann Holmes Redding, who was the talk of the town a couple of weeks ago.  Well, she's been inhibited by her ECUSA Bishop, Geralyn Wolf of Rhode Island.  That means she's forbidden from functioning as an ECUSA priest for the time being.

Dr. Redding stated that "The church is going to have to divorce me if it comes to that.  I'm not going to go willingly."  That seems like a typically contemporary Episcopalian response.  "I refuse to accept that my actions have consequences!  I must be allowed to do whatever I want!  My actions must be affirmed, no matter what!"

The final irony is that while Dr. Redding is forbidden to teach, preach, or function at any ECUSA parish or institution, she has accepted an invitation to teach at the Roman Catholic Seattle University.  What strange days these are.

michael glatze is courageous

This is moving. I don't want to say that all, or even most, gay people can stop being gay by some kind of decision or therapy, because I don't know what its like to be them. But for the same reason, I don't want to say that some gay people CAN'T change. There are lots of well meaning people on both sides of the theological debate who take one stance or the other for rhetorical purposes. They ought not to do so. A better approach is to listen to people's stories with empathy, and expect that they will do their best to obey Christ.

Michael Glatze's story is this:

(Hat tip: SF.)

After becoming editor of Young Gay America magazine at age 22, Glatze received numerous awards and recognition, including the National Role Model Award from the major homosexual-rights organization Equality Forum. Media gravitated toward him, leading to appearances on PBS television and MSNBC and quotes in a cover story in Time magazine called "The Battle Over Gay Teens."

He produced, with the help of PBS affiliates and Equality Forum, the first major documentary film to address homosexual teen suicide, "Jim In Bold," which toured the world and received numerous "best in festival" awards. Young Gay America's photo exhibit, telling the story of young people across North America, toured Europe, Canada and parts of the U.S.

In 2004, Glatze moved from San Francisco to Halifax in eastern Canada where his partner, Young Gay America magazine's publisher, had family. The magazine, he said, sought to provide a "virtuous counterpart" to the other newsstand media aimed at homosexual youth.

But Glatze contends "the truth was, YGA was as damaging as anything else out there, just not overtly pornographic, so more 'respected.'"

In 2005, Glatze was featured in a panel with Judy Shepard, mother of slain homosexual Matthew Shepard, at the prestigious JFK Jr. Forum at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.

"It was after viewing my words on a videotape of that 'performance,'" he writes, "that I began to seriously doubt what I was doing with my life and influence."

"Knowing no one who I could approach with my questions and my doubts, I turned to God," he says. "I'd developed a growing relationship with God, thanks to a debilitating bout with intestinal cramps caused by the upset stomach-inducing behaviors I'd been engaged in."

Toward the end of his time with Young Gay America, Glatze said, colleagues began to notice he was going through some kind of religious experience.

Just before leaving, not fully realizing what he was doing, he wrote on his office computer his thoughts, ending with the declaration: "Homosexuality is death, and I choose life."

freeganism

There was a time when such people were called "Franciscans." Then Christians got lazy. Now non-Christians do it for the sake of.....? Cool? Philanthropy? A sense of moral responsibility? Probably some combination of all of these. Is anyone doing it for the sake of Christ? (I certainly am not.) Ought we to be?

Read it all here. (NY Times.)

Freegans are scavengers of the developed world, living off consumer waste in an effort to minimize their support of corporations and their impact on the planet, and to distance themselves from what they see as out-of-control consumerism. They forage through supermarket trash and eat the slightly bruised produce or just-expired canned goods that are routinely thrown out, and negotiate gifts of surplus food from sympathetic stores and restaurants.

check out the climate ark on mt. ararat

I went to GreenPeace's website for the previous post, and this story was just too good to pass up.

Judeo, Christian and Muslim religions all include the story of a great flood and Noah's Ark. It's said that as the flood subsided Noah released a dove, and the dove returned with an olive branch to show land had been found. To this day the Ark and the dove are symbols of hope.

On Mount Ararat, where some say Noah's Ark came to rest, 208 doves (one for each country) were released to dedicate the replica ark by greenpeace activists. These doves and replica come with a message called the 'Ararat Declaration'. The declaration demands that world leaders act to protect the basic human rights of life and health, both of which will be at risk for millions of people from the effects of climate change.

Read the rest. Apparently you can reserve a place for yourself and your loved ones on the Climate Ark. Or you can just send a picture. That will help keep global temperatures down, for sure. What a strong symbol for the governments of the world!

via cnn

In answer to a question about religion and abortion, while Rudy Giuliani was trying to explain why he's in favor of legal abortion, lightening struck the building in which he was speaking, and shut off his microphone.

Indeed.

Read it all here.

kids and money

Watch this little series of interviews about teenagers and money in Los Angeles. Its from the NY Times. Our culture is messed up.

I think Lauren Greenfield (the director) is onto something. Check out her other projects here -- they all look pretty shrewed.

People (most recently Peter Kreeft) get onto me about liking Postmodern stuff. But Lauren Greenfield's work just goes to show how Christians can partner up with with Postmodern types. (I don't know Ms. Greenfield, but it wouldn't surprise me if she were an incredibly hip, Yale educated, ironical feminist.) But she clearly understands that there is something wrong about our culture -- something that is destructive of kids, and girls in particular (check out "Thin" at Ms. Greenfield's website). Christians are well positioned to see this; what's amazing is how few self-described Christians actually do.

Well done, Ms. Greenfield. Christians: learn from her.

yale philosopher alvin plantinga reviews dawkins 'god delusion'

[CORRECTION: And by "Yale Philosopher" of course I mean "Notre Dame Philosopher". Perhaps that was some kind of Freudian wish-fulfilment on my part. Reformed Epistemologists can sometimes run together in my head. No doubt I was thinking of Nicholas Wolterstorff.]

A choice excerpt:

His detailed arguments are all for the conclusion that it is biologically possible that these various organs and systems should have come to be by unguided Darwinian mechanisms (and some of what he says here is of considerable interest). What is truly remarkable, however, is the form of what seems to be the main argument. The premise he argues for is something like this:

1. We know of no irrefutable objections to its being biologically possible that all of life has come to be by way of unguided Darwinian processes;

and Dawkins supports that premise by trying to refute objections to its being biologically possible that life has come to be that way. His conclusion, however, is

2. All of life has come to be by way of unguided Darwinian processes.

It's worth meditating, if only for a moment, on the striking distance, here, between premise and conclusion. The premise tells us, substantially, that there are no irrefutable objections to its being possible that unguided evolution has produced all of the wonders of the living world; the conclusion is that it is true that unguided evolution has indeed produced all of those wonders. The argument form seems to be something like

We know of no irrefutable objections to its being possible that p;
Therefore
p is true.

Philosophers sometimes propound invalid arguments (I've propounded a few myself); few of those arguments display the truly colossal distance between premise and conclusion sported by this one. I come into the departmental office and announce to the chairman that the dean has just authorized a $50,000 raise for me; naturally he wants to know why I think so. I tell him that we know of no irrefutable objections to its being possible that the dean has done that. My guess is he'd gently suggest that it is high time for me to retire.

Read the whole thing here.

the most beautiful film ever made?

Quite possibly. I am, of course, talking about Into Great Silence, which Fr Nelson has just reviewed over at Theology of the Body, and has been receiving critical plaudits and accolades left and right. That's as it should be.

I didn't say it was the "best" movie ever made, but possibly the most beautiful. I stand by that. Mainly because a film depicting people so utterly given to the Lord can't help but be beautiful, because the lives depicted are beautiful. Another striking thing about the film is how normal the brothers seem, and how happy.

Mainly I second everything Fr Nelson said. I would also add that you need to be ready to see this movie. Don't expect a typical popcorn-gobbling, grab-you-by-the-throat cinema experience. This film seduces you. First of all, there is no soundtrack. In fact, as the title suggests, there are long stretches (maybe ten minutes) with hardly a sound. And there's maybe a grand total of seven or so minutes of actual dialog in the whole, nearly three hour thing.

I lived in monasteries for a year. Watching the film felt like life in a monastery. You get antsy. You get introspective. Little details take on real or imagined significance. Periodically something intensely beautiful (usually something chanted) breaks onto the scene. You notice the weather. You become aware of being forced into a slow, subtle rhythm.

Formally, the film reinforces this "feeling of monasticism" (for lack of a better phrase). There are little passages of scripture and the Fathers periodically thrown onto the screen, e.g. "You seduced me... and I was seduced" or "Whoever does not renounce all that he has... cannot be my disciple." These sorts of passages are repeated from time to time, without commentary, and without obvious relevance to what is on the screen immediately before or after they appear. Their effect in the mind is sort of like an antiphon in the psalter. The meaning is not immediately obvious, or directly relevant to the psalm or canticle being recited. You must sit with it, and let the connections form themselves in your consciousness very slowly.

The film begins in darkness, and moves to the chapel. You notice a red light in the distance. It flickers. You come to realize, as the brothers begin to chant Mattins, that it is the sanctuary lamp, symbolizing the sacramental presence of the Lord in the tabernacle. Again, there is no commentary. You are left to percolate in the slow realization of the significance of this flickering red lamp: that Christ is literally in this place, and in this singing. Again at the end of the film, as the credits roll, there is no sound but the occasional creaking of the floor as the brothers adore Christ in darkness; and again, there is nothing on the screen but the flickering red sanctuary lamp in the distance, formally announcing the mystery of Emanuel, God with us.

The film can be frustrating to watch. But what I realized is that the experience of frustration and impatience was a manifestation of a defect in me, not the film.

The whole thing is breathtakingly beautiful and very, very moving. I saw it first on Good Friday and was blown away. Whatever you have to do to make it happen: get ready, and go see this movie.

the virginia tech massacre: my sermon from today

I don't normally post my own sermons, but this one is germane to current events. Also, the media commentary and hand-wringing about this tragedy are really frustrating to listen to. Here is what I say:

Today’s reading from Acts [9.1-19] begins with Saul “breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord.” The reading ends with Saul being baptized and finding both illumination and strength.

“Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went…” that he might bind those whom he found who belonged to the Way.

And Ananias tells Saul that Saul is to be filled with the Holy Spirit, and regain his sight, and be filled with strength.

Here we see in the beginning a man filled with threats and murder, seeking to bind the disciples of Jesus. In the beginning we see Saul under the dominion of Satan, whom Jesus says “was a murderer from the beginning” (Jn. 8.44). And the Hebrew word “Satan” means accuser. And at the end of the reading we see Saul filled with the Holy Spirit, the giver of life. And the Greek word for Holy Spirit “parakletos” means Advocate. In the beginning Saul is under the dominion of the Accuser, who brings murder; and in the end he is filled with the divine Advocate, who brings life.

Last week 33 people were murdered at Virginia Tech, and our society is in the midst of a painful attempt to understand those murders. I believe that, as a culture, we lack the tools to come to terms with what was perpetrated that day, because our culture has become what many are calling “post-Christian.”

As you may know, the killer, Seung-Hui Cho, sent a rambling and vitriolic “manifesto” to NBC on the day of his rampage. While only parts of it have been released, it seems to paint a picture of an outsider, someone who was desperately lonely, who could not find a place for himself in the community in which he lived. In his writings, Cho rails against the decadence of university culture, against the promiscuity and the valuation and display of wealth, against drunkenness, and so forth. Having spent the last eight years of my life in American universities, I can tell you his description is pretty accurate – the social life of universities is libidinous and self-indulgent; it is dominated by pleasure-seeking to the exclusion of much else. And the thing is, in every university (and probably in every social-group or community) there are loners and weirdoes, people who don’t fit in – people who to some degree are ostracized by those who maintain and celebrate the dominant values of the group. My school had several of this sort of people. They didn’t get bids from fraternities; they weren’t invited to parties; they were sometimes openly ridiculed; they often sat alone in the dining hall. After awhile, usually after a year or so, they would give up trying to be a part of the group, and their desire to be accepted would be displaced by a more or less intense animus for the values of the community form which they were excluded – in the case of universities, this means that they often began to display an overt antipathy for the celebration of the passions in drunkenness, recreational drug use, and casual sex, all of which are the cornerstone of the social life of many universities. (Tom Wolfe has just written a novel about this called I am Charlotte Simmons.)

It worries me that American culture seems increasingly Dionysian. We seem increasingly to understand a healthy society to be a society in which the pleasure-seeking of its members is formally ordered and facilitated. It has become a cliché to say “It’s a free country” as a retort to those who question instances of one’s pleasure-seeking. Someone will say “you shouldn’t do this or that," and you’ll respond “it’s a free country.” As a society we are internalizing the notion that no one should interfere with the gratification of our passions. As often as not, this translates into our thinking that no one, not even the most helpless, should interfere with our pursuit of a pleasant, self-sufficient life – not the poor, not the emigrant, not even the unborn.

The thing that strikes me as most tragic about the Virginia Tech killer’s rambling manifesto was his indictment of our culture… that precisely because he was excluded from it, he was able in a sense to see it from the outside, in a clearer light perhaps than we are able to see it from within. Of course this does not absolve him from his actions – and its also not to say that his victims were individually hedonists. From what I hear, his murderous rampage was fairly indiscriminate. He perpetrated a horrendous and heartbreaking evil. But as a culture, to an indeterminate degree, we share in his guilt. To be sure: the blood of those students is on his hands. May God have mercy on him. But their blood is on our hands as well… because we hold up, or at best we tolerate, Dionysian values, and we exclude from our company those loners and weirdoes who are unable to join in our revels.

The 19th Century philosopher Friedriech Nietzsche was a proponent of Dionysian values – he advocated giving free reign to passion. Indeed, shortly before his death, he went insane and began signing his letters “Yours sincerely, Dionysus.” Nietzsche saw Christianity as a kind of slavery that stifles passion and prohibits people from flourishing, by constraining their freedom to do what they want to do. Nietzsche seemed to feel this personally, and he advocated a metaphorical devotion to the pagan god Dionysus, whose followers in antiquity would worship at wild parties, with drunkenness, ecstatic dancing, lewd sexuality, which would end with the ritual slaughter of a sacrificial victim, often an animal, but in the myths also sometimes a human, and indeed always (it was said) Dionysus himself. The god would then be reborn endlessly, to be re-murdered endlessly, to perpetuate the cult of passion and ecstasy. As with much of pagan mythology, there is a keen insight about human nature in the story of the cult of Dionysus, an insight that Nietzsche understood and embraced, but which we as a culture do not seem to see. The insight is this: the lust for violence is an integral component of the unbridled reign of human passion. Violence and murder are inevitably entailed by servitude to our appetitive desires. We can see this in the domestic abuse that often accompanies addiction; we can see it perhaps on a geopolitical level in our society’s addiction to oil, and we can see it in an excruciating way in last week’s tragedy in Virginia. The government of the passions sustains itself by violence and murder. And societies or communities that construe their self-purpose as guarding liberty in the basest sense of protecting an individual’s right to gratify his lusts… these kinds of societies are doomed to contend with violence and strife. And indeed in America: as our social ethics have become increasingly libertine, so have we seen a dramatic increase in violent crime.

So what is the answer? It may not surprise you to hear me say it: the answer is Jesus Christ, and him crucified. There are striking similarities between the story of Dionysus and the story of Jesus. Both are gods who are murdered and who return to life so that their followers can flourish. But there are striking dissimilarities too: for one thing, the myth of Dionysus was just that: a myth. Even pagans in antiquity understood this. Pagan myths were stories that explained the human condition - they were really allegories about invisible and impersonal gods, stories the efficacy of which was found through their ritual enactment. In Christianity, on the other hand, while we do find similar typologies, similar allegories, we are not dealing with a mere allegory. Our god is a real, historical person, who had flesh and blood – and this is a fact that is emphasized in the cycle of gospel readings after Easter, including today’s. Our God is not only the the undifferentiated Maker of Heaven and earth, dwelling in inaccessible darkness, but he also cooks breakfast for his friends. Our myth really took place; and whereas the pagan stories found their power through ritual enactment – with us, our ritual enactments have power in (and ONLY in) the historical veracity of what we are reenacting. Its reversed. Most significantly, however, our God is not a god who enables the gratification of our lusts through and endless cycle of being murdered and reborn. Rather Christ dies once for all, to bring about our flourishing by delivering us from slavery to our lusts. And we return again and again to our rituals – the sacraments – to access that once-for-all gift of deliverance and life, the gift which Jesus himself is, not merely on some distant and intangible Olympus, but in our world, on a hill outside Jerusalem, in the most holy sacrament of the altar, and in the hearts of all his faithful people.

The night before Jesus died he said “Now is the judgment of this world.” Because the work he was about to do was undertaken precisely to end, once for all, the cycle of human bondage to carnal desires with its foundation in vengeance and murder and the ritual placation of demons. This was something only a god could do, and not just any god, not Dionysus, but only the Lord of Lords. And this shows what Jesus meant when he said “I have not come to bring peace, but a sword” – the sword that is the judgment and the destruction of secular culture – a “sword that no human being can fail to dread or resent even though” (or perhaps because?) [Rene Girard] it represents God’s love for us, and is the overthrowing of the powers that bind us in darkness. To some degree we’ve all fallen in love with our captors, and Christ's judgment of "the ruler of this world" is hard for us to bear.

If we are to be honest, we have two choices: Dionysus or the Crucified. With Dionysus we get the gratification of our carnal appetites and the will to power, but (as Nietzsche understood), we must also embrace the violence and death on which its built. As a culture , if we choose Dionysus, we must be prepared for more and more Columbines and Virginia Techs….. Or we can choose the Crucified; we can submit our lives to him and find in his government of our hearts a life transformed by the power of the only true God, who not only is alive, but who is the Lord of life. In him alone, as St. Paul bears witness in today’s reading from Acts, in Christ alone are we delivered from threats and murder; in Christ alone will we find illumination and strength.

hstorical perspective from bernard lewis

Get more historical perspective here. (Via T19.) (Get your "Free Constantinople" bumper stickers here.) Bernard Lewis is the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton (though, pace the bumper sticker, Lewis is a supporter of Turkey).

The Muslim attack on Christendom and the resulting conflict, which arose more from their resemblances than from their differences, has gone through three phases. The first dates from the very beginning of Islam, when the new faith spilled out of the Arabian Peninsula, where it was born, into the Middle East and beyond. It was then that they conquered Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and North Africa--all at that time part of the Christian world--and went beyond into Europe, conquering a sizable part of southwestern Europe, including Spain, Portugal, and southern Italy, all of which became part of the Islamic world, and even crossing the Pyrenees into France and occupying for a while parts of France.

After a long and bitter struggle, the Christians managed to retake part but not all of the territory they had lost. They succeeded in Europe, and in a sense Europe was defined by the limits of that success. They failed to retake North Africa or the Middle East, which were lost to Christendom. Notably, they failed to recapture the Holy Land, in the series of campaigns known as the Crusades.

That was not the end of the matter. In the meantime the Islamic world, having failed the first time, was bracing for the second attack, this time conducted not by Arabs and Moors but by Turks and Tartars. In the mid-thirteenth century the Mongol conquerors of Russia were converted to Islam. The Turks, who had already conquered Anatolia, advanced into Europe and in 1453 they captured the ancient Christian citadel of Constantinople. They conquered a large part of the Balkans, and for a while ruled half of Hungary. Twice they reached as far as Vienna, to which they laid siege in 1529 and again in 1683. Barbary corsairs from North Africa--well-known to historians of the United States--were raiding Western Europe. They went to Iceland--the uttermost limit--and to several places in Western Europe, including notably a raid on Baltimore (the original one, in Ireland) in 1631. In a contemporary document, we have a list of 107 captives who were taken from Baltimore to Algiers, including a man called Cheney.

Again, Europe counterattacked, this time more successfully and more rapidly. They succeeded in recovering Russia and the Balkan Peninsula, and in advancing further into the Islamic lands, chasing their former rulers whence they had come. For this phase of European counterattack, a new term was invented: imperialism. When the peoples of Asia and Africa invaded Europe, this was not imperialism. When Europe attacked Asia and Africa, it was.

deep thoughts from episcopal bishops

From the Diocese of Newark's website.

In the good ol' days, bishops issued statements about, oh, theology 'n' junk. Maybe I can get my bishop to issue a pastoral letter ruling out an NCAA Football playoff system.


Bishops' Joint Statement Regarding Radio Host Don Imus

We, the Bishops of the Episcopal Church in the Dioceses of Newark and New Jersey, are enthusiastic fans and supporters of the Women’s Basketball Team of Rutgers University.

We are deeply offended by the racist, sexist and demeaning comments of radio host Don Imus about the Rutgers team. While he has been generous to many charitable causes over the years (including the Hackensack University Medical Center), Imus’ words last week were cruel, reprehensible and inexcusable. He has distracted the public from the team’s wonderful achievements and the sterling character of its members.

By their strong and mature response to Mr. Imus’ insults, these young women of Rutgers have won a greater victory than an NCAA title. Their calm dignity and quiet confidence have been blessings to behold. Their light will not be overshadowed by the bigotry and insensitivity of a powerful media icon and his corporate sponsors.

We believe that Mr. Imus should face the consequences of his actions. Pending the outcome of his meeting with the team, we look for real changes in his conduct and his program. His failure to learn from this experience should result in his removal from the air.

The Rt. Rev. Mark M. Beckwith, Episcopal Bishop of Newark
The Rt. Rev. George E. Councell, Episcopal Bishop of New Jersey
The Rt. Rev. Carol J. Gallagher, Episcopal Bishop Assistant of Newark

keeping the faith

A very interesting article in the NY Times Magazine about Pope Benedict. It is trenchant in its analysis of the issues at play in Western culture, and in this Pope's thinking about those issues. It ends, however, with a hackneyed and jejune implication: that if the Catholic Church would just soften its moral teachings, it would be better positioned to speak to people in contemporary culture. The article quotes Fr Keith Pecklers (professor at the Gregorian): "On Sunday mornings, the people in the pews, in Europe or America, are very often divorced or gay or are using birth control. Or else they’re not in the pews; they’ve left the church." It then concludes by quoting Fr Reese (SJ), the editor of America, who was suspended from his post for allowing too much theological latitude in his journal: "Think of the silencing of theologians in recent decades... The suppression of discussion and debate. How certain issues become litmus tests for orthodoxy and loyalty. All of these make it very difficult to do the very thing Benedict wants" -- i.e. to reinject Christianity into Western culture.

It seems to me that ECUSA's efforts over the last thirty or forty years unquestionably belie that implication. Even if it were possible to make the moral teachings of the Church more palatable to contemporary mores, ECUSA's pathetic membership slide illustrates that such palatability doesn't translate into some kind of renewed interest in Christianity among those who have left the Church. It just tells them that the Church is realizing institutionally what secular folk came to believe decades, if not centuries, ago: that the Church was wrong all along.

But a softening of the Church's moral teaching is not possible to begin with: it is what it is. ECUSA's hierarchs are chasing a delusion born in the minds of people who came of age in the 1960's. They are the offspring of a curious romantic reaction to cold Enlightenment rationality, who have adopted the idiom of postmodernity for convenience, but who are thereby left with nothing to preach but weird platitudes ("God / Goddess loves you").

Catholic moral doctrine is an outgrowth of (and secondary to) catholic Christianity's sacramental ontology. We can't abandon our moral teachings without abandoning very fundamental truths about what is going on in the cosmos -- about God's love for his creation. And if you abandon the latter, then you have become secular or pagan (cf. ECUSA).

Anyway, here are some choice snippets from the NY Times Magazine article:

Sociologists and even some church officials routinely apply the term “post-Christian” to Europe or parts thereof. Spain is still deeply Catholic in its cultural identity, yet polls show half the country “almost never” attends Mass, and the government has defied the church in legalizing same-sex marriage and making abortion easier to obtain. A recent survey of the Church of England by researchers at the University of Wales showed that only 60 percent of its clergy believe in the virgin birth of Jesus, and 1 out of 33 Anglican priests doubts the existence of God.
....
“While Europe once was the Christian Continent, it was also the birthplace of that new scientific rationality which has given us both enormous possibilities and enormous menaces. . . . In the wake of this form of rationality, Europe has developed a culture that, in a manner hitherto unknown to mankind, excludes God from public awareness. . . . A culture has developed in Europe that is the most radical contradiction not only of Christianity but of all the religious and moral traditions of humanity.”
....
Or consider that after I attended the nearly empty Christmas season Mass at Sopra Minerva in Rome, I strolled a few hundred yards away, just across the Tiber, to find a radically different spectacle. The Basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere is just as ancient and just as packed with icons that are featured in art-history texts as Sopra Minerva. Here 300 people filled the pews, as is more or less the case seven nights a week at 8:30 p.m. They were mostly in their 20s to 40s, most seemed to be professionals, a group both well shod and featuring some extreme eyewear. The setting couldn’t have been more Catholic, and yet it wasn’t a Mass that was taking place. No priest officiated; there was no Communion offered, no body and blood of Christ. It was an energetic, soulful lay service, a 30-minute meditation — a well-orchestrated mix of prayer and song on a spot where Christians have celebrated their rites since around 300 A.D., conducted by and for ordinary people. Precisely at 9 o’clock it ended; people gathered into clusters and chatted briefly and then everyone headed into the night.

mississippi passes 'what-if' abortion bill

The governor signed a bill Thursday that would criminalize abortion in the event that the U.S. Supreme Court overturns the 1973 decision that legalized the procedure. The measure, signed by Gov. Haley Barbour, would ban nearly all abortions in the state if the court were to overturn Roe v. Wade. In that event, anyone performing an illegal abortion in Mississippi would face one to 10 years in prison. . . . Proponents of the bill say the ultimate goal is to one day challenge Roe v. Wade. Anti-abortion activists and some lawmakers believe that with the recent appointments of new, conservative justices on the U.S. Supreme Court, Roe v. Wade could be overturned.

Read the entire AP story, and a write up from NARAL, an abortion-rights group, that reads thus, in part:

Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, called Gov. Haley Barbour's (R-MS) decision to sign a statewide abortion ban into law an egregious attack on women's freedom and privacy. . . Keenan continued that Barbour's action makes him the latest example of anti-choice politicians who continue to attack safe, legal abortion, while they refuse to support commonsense policies, like better access to birth control, that would prevent unintended pregnancies. "The hypocrisy is blatant," Keenan said. "In the Bush tradition, Gov. Barbour won't support or promote a different vision for Mississippi—one that allows families to make personal, private decisions without political interference. Mississippians are tired of divisive attacks on women's freedom and privacy."

The abortion debate is a perfect example of the kind of apples-to-oranges conflict that constitutes the American culture wars; of which TEC's crises are a part. One side wants human rights and privacy, the other wants to stop the murder of innocents. These two perspectives differ so fundamentally that the issue at the root of the debate seldom sees the light of day; that is, I believe, the same issue that's at the core of TEC's crises -- the authority of Scripture in our lives and culture. What we need is a campaign for good, grass-roots philosophical analysis that can point out where people's values differ and what it is they're believing about the world and themselves that necessitates those values. We need to have widespread local discussions about what is true, real, and valuable - it's the only way a culture like ours will ever reach homogeneity and relative peace.

It's interesting, too, that this post follows one about the annunciation. Talk about your unwanted pregnancy.

religion: the hourly regimen of prayers that monks have followed for centuries is spreading beyond monasteries

From St. Benedict's Parish website.

By John Rivera
Baltimore Sun Staff

*O Lord, open my lips

And my mouth shall declare your praise. *

For centuries, monks have mouthed these words as they begin their daily
regimen of prayer in the pre-dawn hours. The Liturgy of the Hours --
Psalms and prayers recited at set hours -- fixed the rhythm of their
day, from rising to rest.

Also called the Divine Office, the prayers have for the most part been
the preserve of Roman Catholic priests, deacons, nuns and brothers.

But the Office is being discovered by Catholic lay people, such as those
who gather every day for Morning Prayer at St. Clement Mary Hofbauer
parish in Rosedale, or for Evening Prayer at * St. Benedict parish* in
Southwest Baltimore.

Protestants say they, too, are finding spiritual inspiration in coming
together -- or in seeking solitude -- to recite the prayers known by
Latin titles such as Lauds, Vespers or Compline.

For the average person, picking up a breviary, the prayerbook used in
the Office, is a daunting experience. A half dozen colored ribbons mark
the sections one must flip between during the prayer's various parts.

In response to the increasing popularity of the Divine Office, about a
half dozen books have recently been published or are soon to hit print.
The cyber world is weighing in, too, with such Internet sites as
http://www.liturgyhours.org and http://www.universalis.com springing up.

"I think there is a clear need, there's a hunger for Christian
spirituality, Christian spiritual discipline," said Phyllis Tickle, the
Publisher's Weekly religion editor who is compiling her own breviary,
"The Divine Hours." Her first volume, "Prayers for Summertime," was
released last month.

"We've gone from the ooey gooey to the importing to Christianity of
disciplines from other faiths," said Tickle, whose watch alarm reminds
her three times a day to pick up her prayer book. "Now, we have stumbled
on the fact that some Christians would like to know what their spiritual
traditions are."

Bonnie Shannonhouse has been traveling the world for six years to teach
the Liturgy of the Hours to Protestant women -- Anglicans like herself,
but also mainline Protestants, evangelicals, Pentecostals and
charismatics.

"When I discovered [the Hours], it pained me that the Protestants threw
the baby out with the bath water at the Reformation," said Shannonhouse
of North Baltimore.

She has written two versions of the Hours for lay people, which she
calls "The Lost Coin" series, after Jesus' parable in the Gospels about
the person who rejoices on a precious find. The Hours offer a bridge
between what she calls the liturgical churches, such as Catholics and
Anglicans, and the non-liturgical, evangelical Christians.

"We've lost a spiritual coin in our Christian hearts, and we rejoice
because it is now found," she said. "It's breaking down barriers and
prejudices and hatreds that have existed for the last 500 years."

Robert Benson, who was raised in the Nazarene Church, later became a
Methodist and now worships as an Episcopalian, has prayed the Hours
since he was introduced to them a decade ago.

"Because of my evangelical background, all I knew about prayer was the
kind of extemporaneous, conversational prayer that's most common, almost
exclusively used in evangelical settings," said Benson, who has written
his own simplified Office, "Venite, a Book of Daily Prayer."

"I didn't know anything about corporate prayer, daily prayer, monastic
prayer," he said. "This was prayer that was not dependent on my
eloquence or my spiritual depth at a given point in time. It required
simply faithfulness, not always an easy thing to do."

The benefit to praying at fixed hours is that "it keeps our focus on God
during the day," said Etta Patton, who says morning prayer at St.
Clement Mary Hofbauer and evening prayer by herself. "You take that time
to stop the busyness of the day, all the distractions."

The practice of the Office is rooted in the Jewish tradition of fixed
hours of prayer and receives its Christian inspiration from St. Paul's
admonition to "pray without ceasing."

By the fourth century, monastic communities had set apart specific parts
of the day for prayer, and between the fifth and the ninth centuries,
the Office developed its form of eight hours: Matins and Lauds in the
early morning; the Little Hours during the day of Prime (the first hour,
before dawn); Terce (the third hour, 9 a.m.), Sext (the sixth hour,
noon) and None (the ninth hour, 3 p.m.); and the evening and night
prayers of Vespers and Compline.

Though monks can devote their entire day to prayer, the Christian in the
world usually chooses a portion of the Office: just morning prayer or
Vespers, or maybe just the Little Hours of Terce, Sext and None (Prime
has been dropped).

Although the Office can include prayers, hymns and religious readings,
the recitation of the Psalms is at its heart. They are recited or sung
and are done in an antiphonal style, with one side of the congregation
taking one strophe or stanza while the other listens, and then reversing
roles.

Dale Dombrosky discovered the Office when she stopped at * St. Benedict's*
in 1990. "I was going through a particularly hard time in my life, and
the Psalms really spoke to me. Sometimes, they express praise, sometimes
petition, sometimes anger. It's like a real conversation with God," she
said.

"To me, this was a healing for me, to be able to speak to the Lord like
that," she said. "That's how I came back to the church. Really, the
Liturgy of the Hours has been a saving prayer for me."

Many who recite the Office have a sense of participating in a cosmic
wave of prayer. "It's not just us here. People around the world are
saying these same prayers," said Nancy Cappellini, who often drives from
her Owings Mills home to morning prayer at St. Clement Mary Hofbauer in
Rosedale.

"You feel like you're in union with the whole church."

Originally published on Apr 12 2000

International Philosophy

FYI: Beckenbauer was the German füssball captain and was regarded as "the Greatest German soccer player ever" in the 1970s.

"*** save the queen"

I have just returned from seeing "The Queen," which has been, as I understand, been nominated for several Aacademy Awards. Since there has been such a dearth of worthwhile movies of late, I hope this gets something. Helen Mirren, no doubt, deserves the Best Actress trophy for her portrayal of Elizabeth II R. Overall, I'm pleased that the movie was so nuanced: much more than they tend to be in these days of cheap emotions and shrill polemics.

The film raised some interesting associations in my mind while I was watching with the ideas of René Girard, my intellectuel du jour. To understand this parallel, one must remember that the movie is set against the events that unfolded in the wake of Diana Spencer's death following a car accident in a Paris tunnel. The death of the "people's princess," as PM Blair (regrettably) called her at the time, brought out the populace in droves who put on a tremendous, spontaneous display of communal grief. HRH, duly noting that Diana was no long a member of the royal family, and even as a member, a particularly difficult one, restrained from taking action, preferring to let the Spencer family handle the affair. In the movie, this is portrayed as essentially a political mistake, since it she failed to recognize and capitalize on the "mood" of her subjects, the monarchy lost face and was diminished in the hearts and minds of the British. Be that as it may, I believe that more importantly it effectively illustrates and even substantiates the arguments of Girard as to the development and continued operation of culture.

Girard's main thesis explores the concept of mimetic desire as the origin of human culture. According to him, people are fundamentally mimetic (that is, imitative) creatures. We learn and develop by copying each other. This same propensity for imitation results in conflict and violence when two desire the same thing, the second simply because the first wanted it. The conflict quickly escalates because it is not centered around the contested object at all but on the other person. Then more and more people, following suit, become entangled in the initial conflict. Acts of violence beget imitative reprisals, and soon violence threatens to destroy a fragile community. The violence is stopped, however, by the devolving of blame on one individual by the community, who then receives the punishment for the initiation of violence in order to expiate it from the community. In this manner, order is restored and culture is born through the introduction sacrificial rites. What is important here is that at some point the community unites against a common enemy, a scapegoat whose death will cease the violence which endangers their society. Furthermore, the community is able to exempt itself from any guilt in the spread of violence because it successfully projects its guilt onto the scapegoat. In Girard's scheme, this scapegoat is also the origin of law. Since the scapegoat's power in the community to stop violence which forever looms over them gives this individual special status and a surplus aura and is usually attendant with special privileges in the community, the delay of time between the selection of the scapegoat-victim and the execution of punishment can give the scapegoat the opporunity to consolidate power and privilege into a more permanent position, thus giving rise to kingship. For Girard, a monarch is never more than a paroled victim. Another key moment is that community is united and consolidated by its opposition to an individual who is necessarily excluded from it. As I believe he put it, the community belongs to the victim, but the victim does not belong to the community. In effect, the victim creates the community.

What matter all this? Well, the effects of this idea become far reaching, in personal and public spheres, although that is not what I want to explore here. However, Girard's theory about the formation and operation of culture must first be validated, and I believe that "The Queen," although without at all meaning to do so, does just this. In fact, because it is inadvertent, its proof necessarily takes on more weight than an intentional proof does, since it confirms that this is indeed a natural and inevitable mechanism of human societies. How does it do this? In "The Queen" (and here I am generally assuming it accurately represented the general events as they occurred), an act of violence, in this case the death of Diana Spencer, threatens the community with disintegration by grief, and even a public uprising, which is intimated by Tony Blair. The community, the general mass of Britons, seeking justice, does not lay the blame at the feet of the paparazzi who drove her car into the ground, nor at Diana herself--who perhaps justly reaped the rewards of her wanton and frivolous lifestyle--nor even itself, for its relentless consumption of the tabloids that paid the photographers who hounded her to death, but on the royal family, who failed to see what a "saint" she was. The cards among the flowers left at Buckingham Palace crystalize this, explicitly citing the queen as the author of Diana's demise. While rationally, this is absurd, in the Girardean scheme, the queen must get the blame because she is the monarch and thus the scapegoat. This allows the excess of violence in the community to be cathartically channelled into the victim for the preservation and consolidation of the community, here represented by the resounding applause given to Diana's brother's milquetoast eulogy.

This is all far too sketchy, I am sure to adequately cover the ground, but I hope it whets appetites for closer reading of Girard (who is a Christian, by the way). His thought and writings, I find, are deeply rewarding. As a postscript, though, I think this same parallel can be seen in the public response to our president. Suddenly and swiftly, Bush is being abandoned by everyone. He is losing support because he must. In order to channel our fears concerning the state of the world, Bush is being blamed for not only Iraq, but the environment and every other global crisis. By villifying him--and given the tone of bumperstickers I see these days, even murdering him--people are able to exempt themselves from their own role in the perpetuation of violence in the world. In less than two years, Bush will no longer be in office, and will no longer affect the problems which he inherited from his predecessors. And lo, the problems will not vanish in his passing.

As a post-post script, the asterisks in the title refer to the (accidental) bleeping of the word "God" from the version of "The Queen" shown on commercial airlines. Nevertheless, God save the Queen.

thank you; it's good to be here

Fr. WB has kindly invited me to become a contributor to his blog. The bar has already been set high by the current roll of writers and readers, but I will endeavour to do my best. One could hardly ask for more.

Since by training and inclination I am an art historian, and by conviction and grace a Roman Catholic, I suspect that many of my posts will center around the nexus of those issues (in other words, cultural rather than theological issues; and much sympathy for my Anglican brethren and sistren).

Look for more of me in the future, but for tonight, I have little energy left for a more extensive post.

children of men and a reflection on current affairs

I went to see Children of Men last night. It reminded me a good deal of Apocalypse Now: A cynic on a weird redemptive journey through apocalyptic weirdness and violence. Unlike Manolha Dargis of the NY Times, I'm not naive (or unobservant) enough to think that there is no ideology behind the movie. It does sort of masquerade as mere reporting. But as with V for Vendetta (which I found intensely irritating in this respect), the clear implication of the movie is that the policies of the governments of America and Britain (today) are on a path leading civilization to the brink. This is implied mainly by the ubiquitous stylistic and thematic elements of Children of Men that were taken directly from the news media's coverage of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

For example, in Children of Men, the cynical protagonist (Theo played by Clive Owen) is caught in the crossfire between a misguided government and a misguided resistance. We are left to guess at the particulars of what drives the resistance, apart from their vague and vaguely benevolent concern for immigrant rights (in the movie, immigrants are distractingly referred to as "fugees"). Moreover, the resistance is a make-believe group called "The Fishes." By contrast, the implied continuity of the government with its real world counterparts is more than evident in constant references to "The Department of Homeland Security" (this time in Britain), whose thugs dress like American soldiers and parade around with vicious German Shepherds, rounding up immigrants, beating them indiscriminately, and dressing them à la Abu Ghraib torture victims (complete with sacks over their heads, etc.). Further continuity with reality is implied by little touches like anti Iraq war memorabilia in the home of one of the movies unambiguously good guys: an old hippy played well by Michael Caine.

Technically - and overall - the movie was impressive. Certainly much better that 90% of today's cinematic schlock. One action sequence in particular, which has Clive Owen running through an urban battlefield while bullets and rockets zing around him, is very impressive indeed - it felt real, and really violent, without being especially gory. And the actual theme of the movie (overlying its Bush-critical subtext) is taken straight from the pages of our culture's Christian mythos: a child is miraculously born in disadvantaged circumstances, and brings with it to the world the hope of peace, righteousness, joy, etc. And you can't help liking a protagonist (Clive Owen) who's only motivation is to protect a helpless mother and child. Who doesn't like helpless mothers and children?

Okay, so what's my problem? Its not that I am a big fan of the Iraq War or of some particular set of immigrants or immigration policies. What I do dislike, however, is ham-fisted criticism of any of the above, though it be implied. The challenges facing contemporary society (particularly the challenge of Islam - what is called in public "radical" Islam) are multifaceted and incredibly deep and complex. Does this mean the Bush Administration is engaging them wisely? Not necessarily. But I don't see a cultural or political consensus on a viable alternative. I see myriad potential alternatives (e.g. more troops in Iraq, fewer troops in Iraq, no troops in Iraq, etc.), the viability of any of which are to my mind far from demonstrable. And over and over again I see in the media reductionistic accounts of the conflicting ideologies which, in their grossest form, usually go something like this: the American government wanted to steal oil, so they invaded Iraq; this has provoked radical Muslims to rage against the West.

Piffle. The media occasionally reports with indignation that many in the American Government don't know the difference between Sunnis and Shiites. I don't doubt this, and its a horrifying fact. But who in the media knows the difference? You can't begin to understand the West's conflict with Islam until you understand something about Islam. And no one seems to. It looks to me like Alfonso Cuarón (the director of Children of Men) is buying into the notion, pervasive in Western culture, that prophecy consists of one part recognition that there is, in fact, a conflict going on, and one part inculpation of our side's leaders for their role in it. Again: piffle. Mordacious criticism, to my mind, is made credible only in being accompanied by a constructive alternative to the object of criticism.

But in the meantime, notwithstanding its subtextual punditry and minor flaws, Cuarón has made an interesting, compelling, and visually very impressive movie. Go see it.