John Zmirak Interviews Pedro Gonzalez

My interview with The Stream! https://t.co/RwQmmOszbv

— Pedro L. Gonzalez (@emeriticus) July 22, 2021

Crisis Magazine: The Profoundly Politically Incorrect John Zmirak by Austin Ruse

Gerald Russello Responds to John Zmirak and Anthony Esolen

The Latest Debate Over Catholic Social Thought by Gerald J. Russello

Jerry Sayler Reviews "The Race to Save Our Century: Five Core Principles to Promote Peace, Freedom, and a Culture Of Life"

Rethinking the American Experiment (via Insight Scoop)

John Zmirak is one of the authors of the book -- he also wrote this essay: The Myth of Catholic Social Teaching

Even CST must be judged as to under which part of the ordinary Magisterium various pronouncements fall. The Compendium of Catholic Social Doctrine recognizes that CST is a product of moral theology. However, Zmirak may go too far in his critique -- slavery which is a punishment may not be unjust or intrinsically evil. There probably has been a change on teaching on the charging of interest for certain loans, to the detriment of society. As for religious liberty - I do not think his interpretation of Dignitatis Humanae as a rupture with previous papal prenouncements is the only tenable one. Finally, the infliction of pain as a punishment is different in its moral species from its use to coerce the revealing of information or the confession of guilt. The latter, as a means of coercion, is unjust, unless it has the character of punishment (for disobeying a lawful command to reveal information), but even that justification of the use of torture is problematic when one considers due process and procedural justice.

Zmirak has shifted in his views over time and the essay reflects this shift.

Pat Buchanan on the Extraordinary Synod

Pope Francis Confuses Catholic Orthodoxy

Related:
No Marriage, No Papacy: If The Pope Endorses Polygamy, That Spells The End of Catholic Claims

Claims about the status of general councils in the West. But claims that they are ecumenical may be false or exaggerated, even if Catholic teaching on divorce and pastoral discipline is maintained.

Illiberal Catholicism

John Zmirak, Illberal Catholicism

Thought about it, but I won't be wading into this discussion...

Rejecting Zmirak’s Rejection of ‘Illiberal Catholicism’ by Andrew Haines
Illiberal Catholicism, the Moral Self, and the Political Community by Aaron Taylor
Discussion of Zmirak's piece at WWWTW.

Related:
Liberalism is a Sin
CDK, On Tolerance, the Benignity of the Christian
Why are U.S. conservatives so obsessed with monarchies?
Tocqueville on Keeping Our Countercultural Churches

John Zmirak on the Uhmerican Catholic Bishops

From 2008: Theological Cannon Fodder

"The latest report on religion in America helps explain why the U.S. Catholic bishops are so terrified at the notion of our country controlling its immigration—exercising its solemn, sovereign duty to regulate, according to the virtue of prudence, the influx of newcomers into America."

Two Catholics on Pope Francis

What is Pope Francis Saying to the Right? by John Zmirak

I also understand the pope’s main point: you don’t lead people to Christ by starting with the code of Canon Law, or even the canons of natural law. The apostles on Pentecost did not rush into the marketplace to explain the indissolubility of sacramental marriage. They proclaimed the resurrection, and that is the key event which ought to motivate each of us.

That said, the news of the resurrection was not what converted the Roman world. First of all, the eyewitnesses were long-dead by Constantine’s day. And the notion of bodies rising from death was profoundly off-putting to Greeks and Romans who saw the spirit as higher and better than the flesh. What impressed the Romans was how the Christians lived, and their willingness to push back against the corruptions of a dying, death-dealing culture. Christians did not kill their unwanted infants—in fact, they went to the city gates and rescued the infants whom pagans had abandoned. Christians did not divorce, as Romans did; they were more likely to be chaste before marriage and faithful afterward—which led Roman aristocrats to seek out Christian wives. (Think of St. Augustine’s pagan father.) Christians might own slaves, but they did not think it acceptable to use them as sexual concubines or kill them for disobedience. In an increasingly totalitarian Roman state, Christians were even willing to say no to the emperor. These radical acts of resistance to the social and political culture, carried out at personal cost that sometimes included martyrdom, won over jaded residents of the crumbling empire. If anyone today is acting similarly, it is precisely those Catholics who fight the culture of death, who resist the expanding power of a secular government, who refuse the ethic of enlightened hedonism which crusades against cigarette smoking while permitting abortion. They are the pro-lifers, the home-schoolers, the large apostolic families, the members of traditional religious orders who embrace ascetic lives.

Scott Richert: Nothing New Under the Sun: Pope Francis, the Gospel, and Love and his comments on "that interview"; plus Getting Naked in the Public Square.

John Zmirak on Immigration

How Catholics Should Think about Immigration by John Zmirak
It’s time to stop the name-calling and argue rationally about the common good

Three Pertaining to the Lay Vocation

Begun on November 14.

Russell Shaw on the laity, again - his moneymaker: The Council and the Laity. "The teaching of the Second Vatican Council concerning the laity was an enormous and lasting achievement. But there is much work to do."

Vatican II and the forerunners to the council, various theologians and saints, attempted to restore a better understanding of the Christian vocation, re-emphasizing the universal call to holiness. But I would argue that the council was incomplete, in so far as it did not grapple with questions appropriate to politics. Would it have been possible to do so? Such a treatment should be left to the wise and learned. But with the realization that the scale of contemporary "polities" is too large, the Church could have focused more on rebuilding community at the local level, rather than engaging governments to redirect "national policy" in accordance with Catholic Social Teaching. An elaboration of general principles is not enough, one must apply them properly, and in order to do that one must have an adequate grasp of their particulars, their causes and perhaps their histories.

If participation in the life of the community is a central part to the lay vocation, then perhaps the Orthodox and the Protestants have Catholics beat and we should be learning from them.

I would claim that much of the loss in the West of the understanding of the lay vocation is tied to the growth of the modern state, the rise of wage slavery, the loss or deliberate destruction of communities. Man (and now women) have been increasingly dispossessed of their natural roles within a community; or, their awareness of these roles has been obliterated through bad culture or the lack of proper formation.

As Shaw points out, Lumen Gentium reminds us that Catholics are called to act in the secular world for the salvation of others. What is the "secular world" but the "temporal" or "natural" political community? We should be witnessing to Christ and living out [the order of] charity in our political communities (and I don't mean with a vague reference to the nation-state, but rather, the local community, and maybe the state). (We should keep in mind the distinction between the political community and the "world" which is rightly derided by our Lord. They are not the same thing. The city of man is not identical to the civitas.)

Despite the constant propaganda about [American] freedom and democracy (put forth even by the bishops), there has been a loss of true citizenship. We are blind to  our current state of subservience, possessing little economic or political freedom (at the national level). Those Christians who lived under other regimes may have had a better understanding of the lay vocation - living with others in community, carrying out their responsibilities to others in charity, and so on, despite having no share in public office.  It is true that the lay vocation is not identical to citizenship, as defined by Aristotle. But for men, the lay vocation does require the exercise of the same virtues proper to the citizen, even if it does not include the same duties: prudence and ordering his affairs and that of his family, cooperating with other men for the sake of the group, and so on. To the extent that men must be concerned with and care for the community, they will need the political virtues; even more if they are engaged in decision-making about the well-being of the community.

There can be no subsidiarity (or recovery of the common good) unless men are willing and able to do this at the local level, going beyond what our impoverished Uhmerican understanding of citizenship requires.

Charity brings about the diffusion of the good. Not just the obvious corporal and spiritual works of mercy, but whatever action within the community that is ordered to the good of others can be sanctified through God's grace. In the Politics, Aristotle defines the perfect community as that which supplies for all the necessities of the good life, and it includes civic friendship. We are accustomed to liberal modes of thinking and to living in aggregate, an arrangement that is not scaled humanely, and so often we think of friendship as being merely one good among the others. We aim for a healthy "life balance," so that our relationships with family and friends are not diminished because of concerns for career and the like. But the common good is really the good life of the whole; living well with others. All other things which the civitas creates or makes possible is ordered to the good of the members.

The private good of the members is not the same as the social good (the good of friendship, community, etc.) but the common good is more than the sum of the private good of the members of the community, and the community exists for the sharing of higher goods. It is the good of the group as a whole, which includes the social good as its foremost manifestation, the members living well with one another. It also includes the sharing or communication of the other goods, which should be directed by the desire to live well with others, or love. In the polis, Aristotle's complete or perfect community, we are able to achieve [temporal or natural]  happiness, securing not only the necessities for survival, but the social good and other goods, leisure, the fine arts, and learning.

We should not [need to] pursue private goods at the expense of friendship, but rather we should do so in concert with others so that we can share those goods with them. "To be a friend is to share," a lesson we may have learned in kindergarten. The civitas may have a division of labor, with the resulting exchange of necessities or products being regulated by justice, but we are oblivious that we should be acting not only for our own benefit but for the benefit of others. Why? Because we have a weak sense of the group and of civic friendship. For instance, that which is aimed at intellectual perfection (scientiae, the products of art, and so on) is not merely for the elite, but should benefit all in some way. (The truths studied in theology and the liberal arts can be transmitted to the community through preaching by an educated clergy)

The natural inclination to the social life finds its fulfillment in civic friendship, and civic friendship (or charity) urges us to work for the perfection of each other. This inclination is naturally met through families joining one another in community, leading to natural affection for the other members, which is developed through civic friendship or sublimated through caritas. In sum, we naturally band together, associate not because  we seek help or benefit from others, but because we are drawn to living with others. One could even claim that cooperation and the division of labor is a consequence of living with others, as everyone in the group seeks to improve the lot of themselves and of the group.

Political communities, like religious communities, are schools of charity for Christians. For those who are not yet united to God, political communities can nonetheless still be schools of love and friendship, the way for us to practice loving others well. The political community is the pinnacle of natural friendship, and so those who aspire to be statesmen or to be practically wise must be cognizant of the conditions that are necessary to bring this about, and this includes the role of culture and group identity. Friendship is not a happy by-product of successful politics; it is one of its aims. One might even say that the first concern of men is the good of the group - what is my group? How do I preserve it and work for its welfare? Who is included in my group and who is not? The outsider is not automatically the object of hatred or enmity, but such distinctions are necessary for following the order of charity.

As lay people striving to rebuild the local community, we need to relearn the primacy of civic friendship, and start from the  beginning, with men and their families networking with each other, rather than presuming that community (or mutual solidarity) exists. We may be aware of some of the trials and problems of living with others through our families, but life is not supposed to be free from difficulties, and these difficulties are occasions for us to grow in grace and holiness through the exercise of caritas.

American Conservative Symposium on the Election

The Conservative Vote: A Symposium

PJB voices his opinion here. Daniel Larison adds some personal notes, and he also has this post: Replacing the Congressional GOP’s Leadership.

Zmirak on Dawson

Dawson’s Usura Canto by John Zmirak

Does Mr. Zmirak consider himself to be a student of Wilhelm Röpke? He offers some appropriate criticisms of Dawson's essay; Dawson goes to one extreme in reacting against modern capitalism. But Dawson's critique is salvageable.

Then Mr. Zmirak writes this:

Dawson clearly follows the Classical, pagan preference for soldiers and noblemen, who make their living employing force against their fellow men, over businessmen who traffic in voluntary exchange. While soldiers sometimes fight justly, nobles can rule fairly, and businessmen can engage in evil trades (like slavery), surely it’s deeply perverse to prefer force to persuasion, serfdom to salesmanship, and conquest to commerce. The Church sees war as evil in itself, allowing it only in narrowly circumscribed cases, setting standards that very few wars waged even by Catholic monarchs ever fully met. Conversely, she sees ordinary business and commerce as the means by which most men earn their bread by the sweat of their brows—though she marks off certain methods of business which are evil. But sins of business are the exception, not the rule. For a war to be good, it must climb through the eye of a needle. So why should we as Christians prefer soldiers to salesmen, militaristic empires to bourgeois republics? Because the former are more romantic, and leave in their wake such poignant ruins?

It is not so much a concern with sin but the good that is the object of each role or function. The soldier is properly concerned with the defense of the polity, the aristocrat with its rule (and by extension the common good). But what is the object of the bourgeois? Making a living through commerce or facilitating some other exchange. (Or worse, profit.) I don't think St. Thomas differs that much from Confucius in their evaluation of the status of merchants in comparison to other classes (roles) in society - it's rather low. Dawson does not have in mind a degraded aristocracy, but one which lives up to its duties and is cultivated accordingly. A businessman's success does not indicate that he will be a good ruler, and yet many had pretensions to that part of political life.

As for Baroque Spain - yes, its cultural achievements may have been possible only because of its empire, but let's not miss Dawson's point, which is about priorities and orderings - or the end of society and how leisure is practiced. Is it ordered to something beyond itself or not?

Items of Interest, 9 January 2012

Daniel McCarthy: Conservative Movement at a Crossroads (mp3)
Tom Landess, R.I.P.
Alt Rght interview with PJB

The US-Iran economic war

CIA Chief Endorses Ron Paul (Michael Scheuer, of course.)

Rick Santorum Sounds Like Rachel Maddow on Nullification

Patrick Deneen, University, Community, Universe

Economics:
Do We Really Understand What an Economy Is? by John Willson

Lee Cheek, Agrarianism and Cultural Renewal

Is Distributism a Form of Capitalism?

John Zmirak, Say It Loud: Bourgeois and Proud

Ryan Grant, How to Prepare for Catastrophe

David Korten: Walking Away From the King from Katie Teague on Vimeo.

Money and Life

Via JM:
How US Policies Fueled Mexico's Great Migration
and


Energy and Sustainability:
Enough is Enough

Occupy Educated: Educating and Uniting 100% of the 99%

Tom Murphy, The Future Needs an Attitude Adjustment and Nuclear Options

There Is More to It than Oil by Chris Clugston
Oil Shock - The No Growth World by Alex Smith (EB)
Occupy sustainability by Juliet Schor (EB)
Economics: pre- and post- Copernican by Erik Lindberg
Heinberg, Kunstler, Foss, Orlov & Chomsky on A Public Affair

Relocalization:
What Is 'Slow Money'?

The Storm Surge of Decentralization
Death of an Institution: Desperate Mergers & Destructive Acquisitions

Everything you could possibly want to know about ‘In Transition 2.0′ by Rob Hopkins (EB)

Blog: Catholic Land Movement

Maybe old tractors do die by Gene Logsdon (EB)

As economic growth fails, how do we live? Part II: Out with the old
by Craig A. Severance (EB)
In with the new: part III of "As economic growth fails, how do we live?"
by Craig A. Severance (EB)

Wendell Berry:
On Wendell Berry: As farms go, so go the cities by Erik Curren (EB)

Counterpunch:
The Whole World is Watching by KEVIN CARSON
Why America Can’t Afford Its Military by Col. DOUGLAS MACGREGOR

Feminism:
Oz Conservative: Brainwashing Norway

Diet and Health:
Gary Taubes on Dieting

Some bishops speak on immigration

Why do they make these political statements? They may claim that they are being pastoral, but they should clean house instead. (Even if they do it in the wrong way, how much more can traditionalists be excluded, ignored, or attacked? Oops, remembered Little Rock.) When the Church and the hierarchy is feminized what valuable reform to domestic and parish life can we really expect? Some may rightly draw attention to the bishops' failures to police their priests. But the crisis of leadership is bigger than that. (The "Mommy Church"?)

Reactions:
Hispanic bishops decry ‘disdain for immigrants,’ inaction on immigration reform

Zenit: US Bishops Write Letter to Hispanic Immigrants
the letter (PDF)

Catholic Culture:
Phil Lawler, Clarity, please, on illegal immigration and How Catholics might advance the debate on immigration
Toward a Realistic View of Society by Dr. Jeff Mirus

Crisis Magazine:
John Zmirak, Render Unto Caesar
Christopher Mannion, Is America Just a Protestant Botch?
Joseph A. Varicalli, Divided We Fall (reviewing Peter Brimelow!)


There's also a piece by Mark and Louise Zwick of Casa Juan Diego/the Houston Catholic Worker - Who Should Be Here?

One might infer that they hold to a liberal conception of universal benevolence based on their writings, but I have seen nothing explicit. I don't think there is very little with which an orthodox Catholic would disagree. But showing hospitality to strangers and foreigners does not entail giving them citizenship or increasing the size of the welfare state (which should be done away with). The same system that "forces" migration is also the cause of the welfare state, which is not sustainable. When the U.S. is ready to embrace a lower standard of living for everyone, how many will want to move here? And how many of those already here will return to their homelands instead?

Items of Interest 17 November 2011

Catholic:
Zenit: On Psalm 110, to Christ the King
NLM: Pope: Pray the Divine Office

Book Notice: The Latin Clerk: The Life, Work and Travels of Adrian Fortescue (by Fr. Aidan Nichols)

Rorate Caeli: Quaerere Deum
It links to the trailer for a documentary about the Benedictine monastery at Norcia.


John Zmirak, The Devil Never Wore Diapers

Conservatism:
Wendell Berry on Agriculture and Work


Peter Hitchens, Change is sometimes bad, sometimes good. How do we tell?
F. Roger Devlin, The Impossibility of Higher Education Reform

The New Right & What It Can Offer the Rest of the World by Siryako Akda (posted first at Alt Right)

An excellent discussion in the combox for "Debating Conservatism."

OWS:
Ralph Nader, Repression expands resistance

Joel Salatin:
10 Minutes with Joel Salatin
He was featured on Robert Scott Bell's Raw Milk Freedom Riders, which has been archived.
Inside Polyface Farm, Mecca of Sustainable Agriculture

But the enterprise is not wholly sustainable, because of the chickens: How big is a chicken's footprint?

Diet and Health:
Weston A. Price “Wise Traditions 2011″
CrossFit NYC, Kindle Edition, Obesity and Bipolar, Dr Mercola, and Wise Traditions 2011

Music:
Anonymous 4: The healing joy of singing 13th-century girl-group music
The ensemble will be at the Community School for Music and Arts in Mountain View this Saturday for an informance at 11:00 A.M. (Stanford Lively Arts)

New Early Music Series from Edition Peters

Items of Interest, 8 November 2011

Phillip Blond, Who Are the Real Conservatives?


Story of Broke

I would dispute the push for clean, renewable energy -- sustainable sources of renewable energy should be cultivated, but we should not maintain the illusion that we can replace fossil fuels with renewable energy. We need to learn to make do with less.

Budget battle is not all about me by David Walker and Lisa Borders

MIKE LOFGREN, Defense Cuts Hysteria

John Zmirak, Is Multiculturalism Evil?

Collapse:
Erik Curren, Collapse could happen, literally, overnight

Fear and the three-day food supply by Toby Hemenway (EB)

OWS:
Jan Lundberg, How The Occupy Movement May Be Off-Base, and How It Can Evolve

Occupy as a New Societal Model & Ways To Improve It by Alpha Lo (EB)

Relocalization:
Transition Culture: Local currencies, Transition Councils and Declarations of Food Independence: it must be the October Transition podcast!

The fire next time is now: Environmental historian Angus Wright’s call for a planetary patriotism by Robert Jensen

Jim Antle reviews SOVEREIGNTY OR SUBMISSION: WILL AMERICANS RULE THEMSELVES OR BE RULED BY OTHERS? by John Fonte

Peak Oil:
Triple-Digit Oil Prices Block Growth & Investments Before "Petro-collapse" (EB)

Peak oil: the five most common misconceptions by Robert Rapier (EB)

Will the “economic price” limit oil production? by Richard Douthwaite (EB)

Virtus:
The Hunger for the Heroic

Welmer, No Man’s Land — A Brief Treatise on Contemporary Masculinity

Classical Education:
Rod Dreher, Why study the Classics?

Items of Interest, 27 October 2011

Happy Birthday to the MD.

Is the US Declaration of Independence illegal?
I had seen this news before, I think because of Rebellion, but I'm posting it now, prompted by Ohio Republic.

Redeeming America's Political Culture: The Kirkean Tradition in the Study of American Public Life by Bruce Frohnen

Are Executive Orders Constitutional?

A provocative piece for conservatives: Ron Paul, Constitutions, and (or vs.) Populism (via David Lindsay). It's a question asked by others, such as Jeff Culbreath -- how integral is the Constitution to the conservative platform? If the old constitutional order is gone, then how necessary is it to base one's program upon it?

Brett Stevens, Globalism loves diversity

Conspiracy theorists may readily believe that those who wish to maintain power will resort to the cultural destruction of their society as a means, so long as they are insulated from the consequences of their rule in their gated communities and such.

Ron Araujo, A Supranational Authority—a Catholic perspective

Stranded Resources (EB)

Automatic Earth: How I Prepared My Family for Peak Oil (Nicole Foss)

Richard Heinberg on Reaching The End of Growth (Podcast) (mp3)

Dmitry Orlov, Living on Stolen Time (EB)

Rod Dreher:
He writes on a PUA blogger: Telling the Ugly Truth about Modern Sex
The derivatives monster under the bed
How will the United States die?
Papal global government wish: ‘Impossible and dangerous’
Our hexayurt future
$6.6 billion in lost Iraq cash now accounted for, inspector says
My precious job, my precious self
We should want to have time for authentic leisure, family, friendship and so on -- but would those participating OWS be willing to have this, if they had to embrace a simpler lifestyle and voluntary poverty, so long as their basic needs were met?

VD on Marc Rubio: On the other hand, it didn't stop Obama

John Zmirak, So Many Gods, So Little Time

An article featuring Dr. Marshner: Moral theologian voices concern over CCHD grant process (his report)

Rorate Caeli: "The great Catholic horror story: the pseudo-historical deception of Communion in the hand"

Movies after the jump:

Items of Interest, 21 October 2011

Vandana Shiva: "People should see that corporations have abandoned them long ago."


Rob Hopkins, Does Transition build happiness? An article from the latest Resurgence magazine. (pdf)
Economic Solutions Worth Spreading
The Empowerment Manual
A Conversation with Helena Norberg-Hodge, Part II
How Can We Rouse Police and Other Protectors of the Corporatocracy -- "Guards" of the Status Quo -- to Join the OWS Rebellion?

Tom Engelhardt, Bailing out the Complex

PJB, Is America Disintegrating?

Counterpunch:
VIJAY PRASHAD, Qaddafi, From Beginning to End
PAUL IMISON, The Drug War in Mexico
GARETH PORTER, Was the Iranian Plot a Plan for Retaliation?
PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS, America’s New African Empire
ALEXANDER COCKBURN, Imperial Massacres

Why Do Men and Women Talk Differently

The Endless Courtship Fantasy

Risky “Sexual Marketplace”: Beware Loathsome STDs

Catholic:
Good news for the Eastern province: Dominican Rite Instruction in Washington DC
Reform of the Reform beginning with the Ordinariates?...
Oxford Oratory Ordination
John Zmirak, Heresy Gets Things Done
Halo Shapes: Round or Triangular?
Healey Willan Society Established by Canons Regular of St. John Cantius
Baldichin by Baldichin

Items of Interest, 13 September 2011

The conversion story of Thomas Storck.

Thomas Fleming, Idling, Week 2

John Zmirak, College: How Not to Waste Your 4 Years

A guide for the perplexed energy policymaker by Kurt Cobb (EB)

This is the house Transition built by Charlotte Du Cann (EB)
The Mondragon bank – an old model for a new type of finance by Oscar Kjellberg (EB)


States quietly throwing wrenches into health care implementation

NPR: An Interrogator Writes the Inside Story of 9-11

Counterpunch:
FRANKLIN SPINNEY, It’s Budgetary War, Bloody and Terrible
IAN HARRIS, Drone Warfare
HARVEY WASSERMAN, Ten Thousand Fukushimas
SHELDON RICHMAN, 9/11 and the National Security Scam
PATRICK COCKBURN, The Enemy That Barely Exists

Terri, Should Christians Kiss Dating Goodbye?

Items of Interest, 12 September 2011

Corporate Taxes: How Low Can You Go?

Srdja Trifkovic, 9-11, Ten Years Later: Islam’s Unmitigated Success
Scott Horton Interviews Michael Scheuer
Clark Stooksbury, For Shame
GARETH PORTER, The Terrorism Issue That Wasn’t Discussed
PATRICK COCKBURN, The Enemy That Barely Exists

Transition Voice: Organic Matters
Another Joel Salatin interview.

Discovering limits to growth by Tom Murphy (EB)

There be 'Isms': Saturday Book Pick: John Zmirak's guide to navigating college ideologies.


Morning Air with Sean Herriott
Fr. Paul Keller on Relevant Radio

Chris Masterjohn, How to Do a Proper Self-Experiment, and Why Your "N" Doesn't Equal "1"

NLM: Obsequies of Professor László Dobszay
The Chant Cafe: The Brilliance of László Dobszay

Saturday: Happy Birthday Christopher Hogwood

Kimberly Fraser: More useful links about Cape Breton and its music

Feature story: Bluegrass by the bay
The band Windy Hill finds its place in the close-knit Bay Area bluegrass scene