Those who are emeshed in the flesh cannot understand mysticism

The New Oxford Review links to two stories:

Nuns prove God is not figment of the mind

The idea that there a "God spot" in the brain, a circuit of nerves which could explain mankind's almost universal belief in a deity, is questioned today by a study of Carmelite nuns.

Scientists have been in the pursuit of the brain processes underlying the Unio Mystica - the Christian notion of mystical union with God - and this endeavour is now part of a newly-emerging field called "neurotheology".

But the God module, as some scientists call it, is a mirage, according to the study by Dr Mario Beauregard, of the Department of Psychology at the Université de Montréal and his student Vincent Paquette, published in the journal Neuroscience Letters. "The main goal of the study was to identify the neural correlates of a mystical experience," said Dr Beauregard. "This does not diminish the meaning and value of such an experience, and neither does it confirm or disconfirm the existence of God."

Fifteen cloistered Carmelite nuns ranging from 23 to 64 years old were subjected to brain scan using a method called functional magnetic resonance imaging while being asked to relive a mystical experience, rather than actually try to achieve one. "I was obliged to do it this way seeing as the nuns are unable to call upon God at will," said Dr Beauregard.

This method was justified because previous studies with actors asked to enter a particular emotional state activated the same brain regions as people actually living those emotions.

Rather than reveal a spiritual centre in the brain, a module of neural circuits specifically designed for religious experience, the study demonstrated that a dozen different regions of the brain are activated during a mystical experience.

In other words, mystical experiences are mediated by several brain regions and systems normally implicated in functions such as self-consciousness, emotion and body representation.

In the past, some researchers went as far as to suggest the possibility of a specific brain region designed for communication with God. This latest research discredits such theories.

Speculation about the God spot was triggered when a team at the University of California, San Diego, saw that people with temporal-lobe epilepsy were prone to religious hallucinations.

This led Michael Persinger, a neuropsychologist at Laurentian University in Canada, to stimulate emporal lobes artificially to see if he could induce a religious state. He found that he could create a "sensed presence".

Now, if these regions don't differ from individual to individual, but there is a general area of overlap, all it proves is that the "God spot" is not a small localized area in the brain; it could be a complex activity requiring a larger area of the brain. What needs to be done is to show that correlation is not the same as causal analysis--we who hold to a Thomistic account of the soul maintain in this life, the brain is a necessary instrument or tool of intellectual activity. But while it is a necessary tool, it is not a sufficient or complete cause of intellectual activity, especially contemplative prayer or the higher mystical gifts.

It is good that the Dr. Beauregard points out that for Catholics, authentic mystical experiences cannot be conjured up by the individual at will--they are true gifts from God. This is different from those other religons and spiritual traditions which teach that one is able to achieve a certain state by one's own effort.

The other article:
The Church decries film's focus on saint's sex life

THE church is facing another onslaught from filmmakers.

After the furore of the controversial account of Jesus in The Da Vinci Code, it is now having to contend with an allegedly blasphemous account of the life of Saint Teresa of Avila.

Geraldine Chaplin heads the cast of Teresa: Death and Life, a feature film about one of the world's greatest Christian figures.

Saint Teresa was a mystic who said that Christ frequently conversed with her, and four centuries after her death her writings are revered as spiritual masterpieces. But filmmakers do not do spirituality as easily as sexuality and, in exploring the saint's sex life and virginity, they now find themselves being accused of treading sacrilegiously.
...

The film, made by Spanish, French and British companies, has been written and directed by Ray Loriga, who worked with Spanish director Pedro Almodovar on the script of Live Flesh and made his directing debut with My Brother's Gun.

Asked whether he expected it to be controversial, he said: "There was controversy in the 16th century and I'm sure it can arise now.

"I think that the vision we have been offered of Saint Teresa is very close to a holy image.

"So far, everybody has been careful not to touch on certain uncomfortable subjects - her sexuality, her relationship with God, which was so close, nearly 'skin-to-skin'.

"These subjects were considered scandalous then and have not been studied much.

"They'll probably seem scandalous now, which does not say much for the progress made by the Catholic Church over the past centuries."

He added: "This is the 21st century and I think certain opinions about Saint Teresa, such as the question of her virginity, could change."

He claimed that these questions had to be seen "with a more courageous view".

Benedicta Ward was less than impressed, asking: "What does skin-to-skin with God mean?"

However, she acknowledged that Teresa had been worldly and very much a woman of 16th-century Spain, and not very pious until she was 40.

"She used to nick 'Mills and Boon' books from under her mother's pillow, which gave her writings her style," she said.

"She was the first great prose writer of Spain."

Come on, Ray Loriga doesn't have a certain take on Catholic Christianity? A collaborator with Pedro Almodovar, uhhuh. I think perhaps he, like many others, may have looked at Bernin's "Ecstatsy of Saint Teresa" and completely misunderstood what a mystical experience is:

The use of erotic love as a figure of divine union goes back to the Song of Songs. But it is a figure, not a literal exposition--divine union is not the same as intercourse or dare I say it, an orgasm. (I remember looking at the work for the first time during Humanities class senior year at CHS--our teacher Mrs. Davis commented upon Saint Teresa's expression. An expression and feeling of intense joy could be caused by an orgasm, but it could be caused by something else, and to identify the two causes as one and the same is "sloppy reasoning." And then there are complexities of the female "orgasm"... it's amazing what one can pick up listening to daytime TV and perusing articles at the supermarket. How many women (and men) watching daytime TV have been corrupted by it? Anyways, what I was thinking of was the fact that an "orgasm" may occur for the female outside of any sort of sex. In which case, perhaps a different word should be used to describe the release of chemicals in the body that lead to certain feelings. But the world is too engrossed with sex to make such a fine distinction.)

Those who do not pray should not speak of mysticism, for they cannot understand it. But the devil does what he can to discredit the higher things.

But is the website reliable?

From Fumare: Economy in Crisis

I'll have to explore later when I have some time.

Was getting rid of the Taliban worth it?

Were not some of the consequences forseeable? Did we not have experts in Afghanistan telling us how difficult it would be to unify the whole country, given the continued presence of the warlords?

Bin Laden like the drug dealers

On a more hopeful note, also from 30 Giorni, John Paul I and Nikodim. (Yes, it is a sad story, but in the light of eternity, perhaps hopeful.)

Steven Pressfield has a new novel out, The Afghan Campaign, which is set during Alexander the Great's invasion of Afghanistan. (Podcast interview with military.com.) I didn't know he also wrote The Legend of Bagger Vance. It's not clear to me if his Gates of Fire, about Thermopylae, is still being adapted into film. Looks like 300 will beat the other contenders, including a possible remake of The 300 Spartans. Interview with Pressfield about Gates of Fire.

Stax script reviews for 300, Gates of Fire. What if Michael Mann were to direct Gates of Fire? (Some old news.) Does he even still have an interest in the project? Imagine if he had done Gates of Fire instead of Miami Vice. Perhaps he is waiting to see what 300 will be like; not having seen Sin City (and having no interest to), I can't really say if I would appreciate an adaptation of a Frank Miller graphic novel. (I did read FM's Batman-Superman face-off, The Dark Knight Returns when it first came out a loooooooooooooooooong time ago, and I liked it. But I can't say I like the idea behind Sin City; and is 300 historically accurate? As Thomas Fleming tells us, the Greeks were really different.) I've only seen the first 10 minutes of Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead, so I can't say much about his talents as a director.

If the New Scot were going to be around, I'd go see 300 with him, I suppose, he being the Classics lover that he is. Paul Cartledge (faculty page) wrote a book on the Spartans, and he has a new book coming out on Thermopylae. Perhaps we really need to be more like the independence-loving Greeks instead of the decadent Romans. We certainly need to be more like the early Christians.

Which reminds me of Adrian Goldsworthy, who has written on the Roman army, as well on the Punic Wars, Roman warfare, and Roman generals.

Fr. Amorth in the news

American Papist directs our attention to this article in the Daily Mail, in which Fr. Gabriel Amorth, the chief exorcist of Rome, claims that both Hitler and Stalin were possessed by the devil. Rasputin, perhaps. But both Hitler and Stalin? Makes me want to read the Lukacs book, 1941.

Would the vicar of Rome really keep someone unstable or kooky on as chief exorcist? And under the watch of the pope? One would have more faith in our bishops, unless there were a plot *gasp* to discredit the Church and the ministry of exorcist. Another Masonic conspiracy?

Regardless, it is his own personal opinion of Hitler and Stalin--it does not appear that he has any evidence, just an inference he is drawing from their actions. Certainly, looking at the number of deaths for which they were responsible, one does not doubt that the devil was involved in some way. But a full-blown possession?

On the other hand, Himmler is rumored to have been dabbling in the occult. Even if Hitler was not as interested, might he have taken part in some ceremony?

wiki entry on Nazi mysticism (rather undeserving of the name "mysticism," isn't it?)

Ed Peters and Sandra Miesel have expressed reservations with Fr. Amorth's book, An Exorcist Tells His Story. I think their concerns are unfounded, since what he says can be interpreted differently, but since we are not exorcists what first-hand knowledge would we really have of infestation and possession? I do believe that witchcraft/black magic exists, and that many folk religions that make use of such practices have ties to the occult, especially in the use of curses. (For example, shamanism, which has not died out in Korea. I wonder if curses are used in "religious" Daoism, though charms and spells are.)

Alas, there is no website for the International Association of Exorcists.

Now, I must get back to polishing the Spear of Destiny... and no, it doesn't "belong in a museum."
(Supposedly Karen Allen will be back for the next Indiana Jones movie, along with Indy's love child?)

Actually the Holy Lance is reputedly in Armenia; I will say something about that when I finish my post on Armenia.

Recent articles at Energy Bulletin

Interview with Matthew Simmons and James Howard Kunstler

A great sound bite:

KUNSTLER: It's only really been in the last ten years since a group of eminent elder statesman geologists retired from the industry and started to speak their minds, once they were established in their pensions. And started to essentially tell the truth about the world oil supply situation. And you know oddly enough even while that conversation has been going on for ten years most of the American people don't want to believe it and our leaders do not want to believe it. You know there is a question about why our leadership is so bad. My own opinion about it is that the dirty secret of the American economy is that it's mostly about the creation of suburban sprawl. We don't have that much of a manufacturing economy anymore. And if you subtract all the suburban sprawl activities like the housing bubble, the real estate industry, the mortgage mills, all of the accessories of the housing bubble like the strip mall building and all that stuff. If you subtract that from our economy there is not a lot left besides fried chicken and open-heart surgery. And you know neither John Kerry or George Bush or any people at the highest level want get up and say Americans we cannot have a suburban sprawl economy anymore because all it represents is an investment in stuff that we are not going to be able to use in 5 or 10 years.

Thanks also to Energy Bulletin for the following:

Slow Food Nation

Alice Waters

It turns out that Jean Anthèlme Brillat-Savarin was right in 1825 when he wrote in his magnum opus, The Physiology of Taste, that "the destiny of nations depends on the manner in which they are fed." If you think this aphorism exaggerates the importance of food, consider that today almost 4 billion people worldwide depend on the agricultural sector for their livelihood. Food is destiny, all right; every decision we make about food has personal and global repercussions. By now it is generally conceded that the food we eat could actually be making us sick, but we still haven't acknowledged the full consequences--environmental, political, cultural, social and ethical--of our national diet.

These consequences include soil depletion, water and air pollution, the loss of family farms and rural communities, and even global warming. (Inconveniently, Al Gore's otherwise invaluable documentary An Inconvenient Truth has disappointingly little to say about how industrial food contributes to climate change.) When we pledge our dietary allegiance to a fast-food nation, there are also grave consequences to the health of our civil society and our national character. When we eat fast-food meals alone in our cars, we swallow the values and assumptions of the corporations that manufacture them. According to these values, eating is no more important than fueling up, and should be done quickly and anonymously. Since food will always be cheap, and resources abundant, it's OK to waste. Feedlot beef, french fries and Coke are actually good for you. It doesn't matter where food comes from, or how fresh it is, because standardized consistency is more important than diversified quality. Finally, hard work--work that requires concentration, application and honesty, such as cooking for your family--is seen as drudgery, of no commercial value and to be avoided at all costs. There are more important things to do.

It's no wonder our national attention span is so short: We get hammered with the message that everything in our lives should be fast, cheap and easy--especially food. So conditioned are we to believe that food should be almost free that even the rich, who pay a tinier fraction of their incomes for food than has ever been paid before in human history, grumble at the price of an organic peach--a peach grown for flavor and picked, perfectly ripe, by a local farmer who is taking care of the land and paying his workers a fair wage! And yet, as the writer and farmer David Mas Masumoto recently pointed out, pound for pound, peaches that good still cost less than Twinkies. When we claim that eating well is an elitist preoccupation, we create a smokescreen that obscures the fundamental role our food decisions have in shaping the world. The reason that eating well in this country costs more than eating poorly is that we have a set of agricultural policies that subsidize fast food and make fresh, wholesome foods, which receive no government support, seem expensive. Organic foods seem elitist only because industrial food is artificially cheap, with its real costs being charged to the public purse, the public health and the environment.

The contributors to this forum have been asked to name just one thing that could be done to fix the food system. What they propose are solutions that arise out of what I think of as "slow food values," which run counter to the assumptions of fast-food marketing. To me, these are the values of the family meal, which teaches us, among other things, that the pleasures of the table are a social as well as a private good. At the table we learn moderation, conversation, tolerance, generosity and conviviality; these are civic virtues. The pleasures of the table also beget responsibilities--to one another, to the animals we eat, to the land and to the people who work it. It follows that food that is healthy in every way will cost us more, in time and money, than we pay now. But when we have learned what the real costs of food are, and relearned the real rewards of eating, we will have laid a foundation for not just a healthier food system but a healthier twenty-first-century democracy.

She makes the same points Wendell Berry has been making, especially in The Unsettling of America.

One Thing to Do About Food: A Forum
Eric Schlosser, Marion Nestle, Michael Pollan, Wendell Berry, Troy Duster, Elizabeth Ransom, Winona LaDuke, Peter Singer, Dr. Vandana Shiva, Carlo Petrini, Eliot Coleman & Jim Hightower; in The Nation
(Peter Singer? You gotta be kidding me.)

Wendell Berry:

Alice Waters has asked me if I will propose one thing that could change the way Americans think about food. I will nominate two: hunger and knowledge.

Hunger causes people to think about food, as everybody knows. But in the present world this thinking is shallow. If you wish to solve the problem of hunger, and if you have money, you buy whatever food you like. For many years there has always been an abundance of food to buy and of money to buy it with, and so we have learned to take it for granted. Few of us have considered the possibility that someday we might go with money to buy food and find little or none to buy. And yet most of our food is now produced by industrial agriculture, which has proved to be immensely productive, but at the cost of destroying the means of production. It is enormously destructive of farmland, farm communities and farmers. It wastes soil, water, energy and life. It is highly centralized, genetically impoverished and dependent on cheap fossil fuels, on long-distance hauling and on consumers' ignorance. Its characteristic byproducts are erosion, pollution and financial despair. This is an agriculture with a short future.

Knowledge, a lot more knowledge in the minds of a lot more people, will be required to secure a long future for agriculture. Knowing how to grow food leads to food. Knowing how to grow food in the best ways leads to a dependable supply of food for a long time. At present our society and economy do not encourage or respect the best ways of food production. This is owing to the ignorance that is endemic to our society and economy. Most of our people, who have become notorious for the bulk of their food consumption, in fact know little about food and nothing about agriculture. Despite this ignorance, in which our politicians and intellectuals participate fully, some urban consumers are venturing into an authentic knowledge of food and food production, and they are demanding better food and, necessarily, better farming. When this demand grows large enough, our use of agricultural lands will change for the better. Under the best conditions, our land and farm population being so depleted, this change cannot come quickly. Whether or not it can come soon enough to avert hunger proportionate to our present ignorance, I do not know.

Michael Pollan:

Every five years or so the President of the United States signs an obscure piece of legislation that determines what happens on a couple of hundred million acres of private land in America, what sort of food Americans eat (and how much it costs) and, as a result, the health of our population. In a nation consecrated to the idea of private property and free enterprise, you would not think any piece of legislation could have such far-reaching effects, especially one about which so few of us--even the most politically aware--know anything. But in fact the American food system is a game played according to a precise set of rules that are written by the federal government with virtually no input from anyone beyond a handful of farm-state legislators. Nothing could do more to reform America's food system--and by doing so improve the condition of America's environment and public health--than if the rest of us were suddenly to weigh in.

The farm bill determines what our kids eat for lunch in school every day. Right now, the school lunch program is designed not around the goal of children's health but to help dispose of surplus agricultural commodities, especially cheap feedlot beef and dairy products, both high in fat.

The farm bill writes the regulatory rules governing the production of meat in this country, determining whether the meat we eat comes from sprawling, brutal, polluting factory farms and the big four meatpackers (which control 80 percent of the market) or from local farms.

Most important, the farm bill determines what crops the government will support--and in turn what kinds of foods will be plentiful and cheap. Today that means, by and large, corn and soybeans. These two crops are the building blocks of the fast-food nation: A McDonald's meal (and most of the processed food in your supermarket) consists of clever arrangements of corn and soybeans--the corn providing the added sugars, the soy providing the added fat, and both providing the feed for the animals. These crop subsidies (which are designed to encourage overproduction rather than to help farmers by supporting prices) are the reason that the cheapest calories in an American supermarket are precisely the unhealthiest. An American shopping for food on a budget soon discovers that a dollar buys hundreds more calories in the snack food or soda aisle than it does in the produce section. Why? Because the farm bill supports the growing of corn but not the growing of fresh carrots. In the midst of a national epidemic of diabetes and obesity our government is, in effect, subsidizing the production of high-fructose corn syrup.

This absurdity would not persist if more voters realized that the farm bill is not a parochial piece of legislation concerning only the interests of farmers. Today, because so few of us realize we have a dog in this fight, our legislators feel free to leave deliberations over the farm bill to the farm states, very often trading away their votes on agricultural policy for votes on issues that matter more to their constituents. But what could matter more than the health of our children and the health of our land?

Perhaps the problem begins with the fact that this legislation is commonly called "the farm bill"--how many people these days even know a farmer or care about agriculture? Yet we all eat. So perhaps that's where we should start, now that the debate over the 2007 farm bill is about to be joined. This time around let's call it "the food bill" and put our legislators on notice that this is about us and we're paying attention.

The Shocking Truth about Bread

First 4 paragraphs:

Flour, yeast, water and salt - a traditional loaf needs only four ingredients. So why are calcium propionate, amylase, chlorine dioxide and L-cysteine hydrochloride now crammed into our daily bread? Andrew Whitely, Britain's leading organic baker, reveals how our staple foodstuff was transformed into an industrial triumph, but a nutritional and culinary disaster. And, overleaf, he shares essential recipes for making your own slice of homemade heaven

Back in the early 1960s, the national loaf was fundamentally redesigned. The flour and yeast were changed and a combination of intense energy and additives completely displaced time in the maturing of dough. Almost all our bread has been made this way for nearly half a century. It is white and light and stays soft for days. It is made largely with home-grown wheat and it is cheap. For increasing numbers of people, however, it is also inedible.

Now, as technology finds ever more ingenious ways to adulterate our bread, so science is revealing the havoc this may be causing to public health. As recent research suggests, we urgently need to rethink the way we make bread.

British industrial bread commands little respect. This isn't surprising when it is promoted with such mixed messages. Some loaves, described as having 'premium' qualities, seem barely distinguishable from others being sold at less than the price of a postage stamp. 'Healthy-eating' brands, adorned with images of nature and vitality, make detailed claims about the virtues of this or that added nutrient. But the big bakers keep quiet about nutrition when pushing their 'standard' loaves, which still account for over half of the market and are sold on price alone.

Article also includes some recipes! (source)

The California Report Magazine

For small and organic farmers, the San Francisco Bay Area is a pretty good place to be. There are lots of farmers' markets, restaurants that pride themselves on serving local and organic food, and plenty of people who think buying local produce makes sense. It's another story in the far-flung towns across rural Northern California, where it's harder for small farms to make it. But recently, groups of farmers and consumers have begun finding ways to fuel local economies with local food.

Click on the link to read more.

Carless in California: Living in California without owning a car (MP3 Audio)

Michael Krasny (host), KQED
Guests:

• Chris Balish, journalist and author of "How to Live Well Without Owning a Car: Save Money, Breathe Easier, and Get More Mileage Out of Life"
• James Corless, senior planner for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission
• Liz Elliott, co-director of Cyclists Inciting Change through Live Exchange (CICLE), an advocacy organization for bicyclists

(source)

Finally, one more:
Permaculture - Permanent Agriculture (& a mini movie)
Short introduction to the origins of permaculture. Movie here. (source)

Charlotte Allen on Plan B becoming OTC

here

College kids get brains, no soul

Something from my old advisor. I wonder how things are going over at Baylor. Thanks to Eunomia.


College kids get brains, no soul

Universities may be churning out capable earners and consumers, says THOMAS HIBBS, but they are failing to equip students for meaningful lives

03:16 PM CDT on Sunday, August 20, 2006

"You are an Athenian, a citizen of the greatest city with the greatest reputation for both wisdom and power; are you not ashamed of your eagerness to possess as much wealth, reputation, and honors as possible, while you do not care nor give thought to wisdom or truth, or the best possible state of your soul?" – Plato, Apology

In the course of his trial, Socrates poses this challenge to his fellow citizens. For the first of all the great philosophers in the Western tradition, the "care of the soul" – the pursuit of knowledge and virtue – is the chief task imposed on us as rational human beings. Knowledge is both desirable for its own sake and as a means of forming citizens for freedom; in fact, the pursuit of knowledge is, for Socrates, one of the ways in which we can exercise responsible citizenship.In the early 21st century, in America's elite universities, institutions renowned across the globe for "wisdom and power," there is a growing mood of discontent. Having become increasingly skeptical about knowledge itself, our most prestigious educational institutions now find themselves ill-equipped to educate youth for the common good. Or so an emerging consensus would have us believe.

Criticism of higher education is nothing new; among conservatives, it constitutes a sport that never seems to go out of season. Yet, in recent years, criticism has arisen from within mainstream liberal academia. Two books from Harvard administrators are signs of this spirit of self-criticism. Derek Bok, former and currently interim president at Harvard, has written Our Underachieving Colleges; and Harry Lewis, a former dean at Harvard, has just published Excellence Without a Soul: How a Great University Forgot Education – a central contention of which is the dismal judgment that the "ideal of liberal education lives on in name only."

In much less detached prose, Tom Wolfe's last novel I Am Charlotte Simmons, released in 2004, depicted undergraduates at an elite university (Mr. Wolfe called the place Dupont University, but rumors abounded that his target was Duke) as booze-saturated, athlete-worshipping, sexual libertines. Reviewers, particularly from the academic world, were less than generous. But, if we are to believe Rolling Stone magazine's stunning recent expose, "Sex at Duke: Raging Parties, Random Hookups & the Girls Who Say the Lacrosse Players Aren't Guilty," Mr. Wolfe's book is a fairly accurate description of drinking and mating habits in the elite social world of schools like Duke.

By comparison with an average night of partying in Duke's fraternity system, the drinking bouts and sexual shenanigans of Animal House , the 1978 frat house party film, seem like the lost episodes of Happy Days. One frat hosts a "foam party," described in Rolling Stone as "a sweaty, alcohol-soaked bacchanalia ... like taking an enormous bubble bath with hundreds of strangers."

But there is an even more striking difference between Greek life at Duke and Animal House. The inhabitants of the film frat were academic failures: "Seven years of college down the drain," was Bluto Blutarsky's lament upon learning that he'd been expelled. By contrast, the rigorous amorality of the Duke party scene does not mean that these students are slackers. "Night Duke," as it is known, gives way to "Day Duke," during which time students are consumed by academic demands.

The two feed one another. What emerges from the Rolling Stone interviews with students is a unifying devotion: a craven desire for approval, from the classroom to the bedroom. The picture of Duke student life is a community that is completely structured, superficially successful and utterly vacuous. A glimpse into the emptiness can be had in one student's confessional aside: "If there's ever a time when I just sit around, I get horrible anxiety." Beneath the shining surface of perfectly assembled appearances – the right clothes, the right schools, the right social connections – lurks anxiety and depression, the individual and social costs of which are dramatically detailed in Madeline Levine's powerful new book, The Price of Privilege: How Parental Pressure and Material Advantage Are Creating a Generation of Disconnected and Unhappy Kids.

For all the youthful effervescence involved in the undergraduate penchant for turning sex into a "sport," there is something chillingly unromantic about it all. Rolling Stone calls sex at Duke "a way of life, a source of constant self-scrutiny and self-analysis." An attractive young woman comments, "I've never been asked out on a date in my entire life – not once." Nor has a guy ever bought her a drink. "'I think that if anybody ever did that, I would ask him if he were on drugs," she says.

For all of the apparent insouciance about sex, the interviewees confess to gnawing anxiety and uncertainty. As essayist Wendell Berry once observed, "Sexual liberation ought logically to have brought in a time of 'naturalness,' ease and candor between men and women. It has, on the contrary, filled the country with sexual self-consciousness, uncertainty and fear." In the midst of this carnivale atmosphere of sexual freedom, colleges try to erect clear boundaries. The result is a vertiginous movement from unbridled freedom to severe legality. Mr. Lewis describes Harvard's date rape policy, for example, as creating "an artificial and infantilizing sexual world." And that may be the most telling and painful paradox of liberal sexual mores. Universities have ended up precisely with what they initially wanted most to avoid – legalism regarding sex.

For the sake of knowledge

But that's not the only place where contemporary universities are in trouble. The failure of elite universities to deliver on their core mission is the lament running through Mr. Lewis' Excellence Without a Soul. With a curriculum void of coherence and faculty lacking a sense of teaching as a noble calling, students find that education offers no sense of "larger purpose in life."

Calls for reform, of which Mr. Lewis' book is but the latest in a long list, must overcome the vested interests of both students and faculty, who have an unspoken agreement about their own freedom. The laissez-faire attitude of the precocious teenager meets the professional libertarianism of the faculty. Mr. Lewis is not the first to wonder whether the turning of students into consumers is to the clear detriment of the ideals of liberal education.

In this atmosphere, universities can easily lose track of the one thing necessary for a university, the one thing that it alone can foster: the cultivation of the intellect. As Mr. Lewis notes, what is distinctive about college life is the possibility it offers students for a short but crucial period in the years between adolescence and adulthood to become "immersed in the life of the mind." College is freedom for , not freedom from.

In his classic statement The Idea of the University, John Henry Newman argues that liberal education can be justified only if "knowledge is capable of being its own end." Although Newman defended professional training, he argued forcefully that universities ought to develop in students a philosophical habit of mind, a habit of wonder and an ability to trace the relationships among different parts of knowledge. One of the reasons for the inclusion of all branches of knowledge in the university curriculum is that even though students "cannot pursue every subject, they will still gain from living among those who represent the whole circle."

There are manifold obstacles to realizing Newman's idea in today's university. Given the increasing emphasis on specialization in faculty research, few if any faculty can be said even to approximate representing the "whole circle." And of course students do not "live among" the faculty anyhow. The shared libertarianism of faculty and students results in a diminishing number of contact hours between students and faculty, and even between faculty, who rarely know colleagues outside their departments.

Specialization breeds an inevitable individualism and elevates narrow expertise over breadth of learning. Clearly a university cannot do without rigorous, specialized knowledge in its faculty. The challenge Mr. Lewis and others pose is whether universities can create incentives to balance focus with breadth.

This would entail another sense of liberalism. Such a liberality or generosity of spirit would revive a proper appreciation of amateurism – not in the sense of an absence of serious training but in the etymological meaning of the word "amateur," from the French for "lover."

In an academic context, an amateur would be one who has a passionate enthusiasm for knowledge, an infectious joy at human inquiry itself and a commitment to transforming students from dependent absorbers of information into colleagues in a shared pursuit of knowledge. This spirit of wonder is the most compelling embodiment of Newman's claim that knowledge is an end in itself. Such a spirit knows no bounds – it can be equally present in an English poetry class, a chemistry lab, a music tutorial or a philosophy seminar.

The defense of liberal education as both invigorating for young souls and an indirect catalyst for social transformation stretches from Socrates to W.E.B. DuBois, who in his famous Souls of Black Folk penned the most eloquent defense of liberal education ever composed by an American. DuBois is best known for his debate with Booker T. Washington over post-Reconstruction civil rights strategies. A consequence of Washington's more conservative approach is the continued exclusion of African-Americans from higher education.

Although ignored in contemporary retellings of this standoff, DuBois makes higher education the centerpiece of his argument. For DuBois, this was about more than simply equal opportunity. To refuse African-Americans access to a truly liberal education, to relegate them to training in trades, was to deny their full humanity. Every other sort of education renders human beings fit to perform this or that role in business or society; it makes them serviceable, as we say. But this is to treat education – and human beings – in a merely instrumental fashion.

DuBois counters, "The final product of our training must be neither a psychologist nor a brickmason, but a man. And to make men, we must have ideals, broad, pure and inspiring ends of living, – not sordid money getting, not apples of gold." DuBois shares Socrates' objections to a citizenry that gives no thought to true education, to the state of the soul, to pondering what DuBois calls the "riddle of existence." DuBois asserts, "the true college will ever have one goal – not to earn meat, but to know the end and aim of that life which meat nourishes."

Losing track of its primary goal, higher education lapses into the sort of confused state Mr. Lewis describes and fosters in students the sense that they are nothing more than hollow consumers for whom success is a well-padded resume. DuBois was confident that a truly liberal education could be truly liberating, that it could provide a counter to the instrumentalism that threatens to crowd out an appreciation of life's larger purposes.

Another way to express DuBois' argument is to say that he, like Socrates, takes the term "soul" seriously, as indicating a sense of what is higher and lower, better and worse, in human life. The word "soul" also figures in the title of Mr. Lewis' book about Harvard. But what does Mr. Lewis mean by "soul"? Can contemporary academics use the term without putting it in scare quotes to indicate its status as a relic from a bygone age of religious primitivism? Without snickering, can we seriously pose to our students the challenge Socrates posed to the Athenians, who in this case are a pretty good stand-in for Americans? Can we issue the challenge to give more care to the soul than to the body?

These questions bring us round to Duke and Tom Wolfe's satire, which seizes on the problematic status of the soul in the contemporary university. Mr. Wolfe's title character Charlotte Simmons brings with her to Dupont a conception of soul she inherits from her devoutly Christian mother, who uses the word soul without any hint of irony or doubt. By contrast, one of Charlotte's professors, a Nobel winner for his work in neuroscience, uses the term "soul" advisedly. The self, he asserts, is "nothing more than a 'transient composite of materials from the environment.' " In an interesting convergence between the sciences and the humanities, the dissolution of the self into a series of intersecting impersonal forces is also a prominent feature of an influential postmodern philosophy.

Mr. Wolfe's book suggests a subtle link between the demotion of the soul to a ghost in a machine and the exhaustion of young adult life in a series of activities – work, study, drinking, sex – lacking any overarching sense of mission. If that's right, then the problems facing the modern university in its attempt to recover its liberal arts mission go much deeper and may be more intractable than any of its contemporary critics have thus far acknowledged.

Beyond the herd

There is no easy, short-term corrective for what ails higher education. But, for parents of bright students with aspirations for more than mere social or career advancement, there is a short-term answer, a paradoxical one given what we have argued thus far. Be better consumers, tougher negotiators and don't follow the herd of parents who mindlessly rattle off a list of acceptable schools. The converse of the truth concerning competition among students for admission to selective schools is that schools compete very hard to lure good students. They need to be forced to compete even harder.

And wherever your children end up going to college, urge them to seek out the best professors, which is not the same as an entertaining professor who grades easily. Even in the midst of an otherwise bleak environment, an encounter with a gifted teacher, a latter-day Socrates, can make all the difference.

Thomas S. Hibbs is a philosopher and dean of the Honors College at Baylor University. You may e-mail him at tshibbs@aol.com

Surely he wouldn't be advertising for the Honors College at Baylor, would he? haha

I know he is an advocate of liberal education, and he would agree that a liberal education can be "useful" for future employment; I just wonder if liberal education has much of a future in the Western world, given the way things are going and the precarious state of the economy. If one could attract both Christians and non-Christians to the good colleges and universities that are still left, that would be great, but those who are "practically-minded" will probably disregard the advice.

To say that students leave the typical college or university with brains is misleading. Indoctrinated, yes; able to reason, no.

Someone should say something about the gods of usury at Boston College. All that student debt for the promise of prosperity...

A mention of Dr. Hibbs as a distinguished faculty member. Baylor Magazine article. The Honors College.

I hate it when...

DVD companies decide to release special "collections" or "sets" that turn out to be cheaper in price than getting the DVDs individually.

Legendary Director Releases Collection of Five Movies

Five acclaimed movies by director Im Kwon-taek are now available for purchase in a five-disc collection. It contains the Buddhist classic "Come, Come, Come Upwards," plus "Sopyonje," "Taebaek Mountains," "Festival" and "Chunhyang." The DVDs have been formatted with Korean audio but also provide subtitles. Each DVD contains a wide range of supplements such as commentaries and trailers.

Arirang News

I have 4 out of 5 of the movies... couldn't they have decided this sooner?

Chogye Buddhists Angry Over Samsung, Court

Elizabeth I

Beavis and Butthead: The "Virgin" Queen... "heh heh heh"

HBO's production of Elizabeth I won the Emmy for best movie last night; I saw some clips and found it remarkably similar to the BBC production The Virgin Queen (BBC page). I dropped by the HBO website and saw some photos--evidently the way it portrays the relationship of the Earl of Leicester, Robert Dudley, to the Earl of Essex, Robert Devereaux, differently (in The Virgin Queen it is insinuated that the Earl of Leicester is the true father of the Earl of Essex), and one assumes from one of the stills that Elizabeth is present for the death of the Earl of Leicester in Elizabeth I.

I've seen The Virgin Queen--there is not much discussion of the religious conflict; it is assumed and portrayed to a tiny extent; it makes Elizabeth I a very strong proponent of the "new religion"--maybe she was. I wonder how Elizabeth I will handle it. I suspect it cannot be as bad as the 1998 movie Elizabeth, with Cate Blanchette (can you believe they are making a sequel to it?). Despite their talents, Jeremy Irons is a bit too old to play a young Rober Dudley, and the same can be said of Helen Mirren as Elizabeth, and this is probably the greatest flaw with the production.



Hugh Dancy is at least young enough... I wonder what the Lady Downstairs thinks of him?


Ah well, enough fuss over a "heretic queen"... it's too bad they destroyed the monasteries, or the monks would be praying for her soul. I wonder if there are any Catholic religious or priests in the U.K. who make it part of their vocation to pray for the English monarch, past and present?

I note that neither woman cast to play Mary, Queen of Scots was particularly attractive--an English prejudice? Or historically accurate?

Barbara Flynn, in Elizabeth I:


Charlotte Winner plays Mary in The Virgin Queen, but I can't find any photos of her online.

I have no clue, really, as to how historically accurate either production is...

A Report on Fr. Foster's visit to ND

here

Thanks to Amy Welborn.

Varia for 28 August 2006

Koryo Ships Discovered in China

Bae Yong-joon Drama Set Becomes Top Tourist Site
The first paragraph of the article:

Up to 30,000 Japanese women will head to Jeju to catch a glimpse of Korean Wave star Bae Yong-joon, affectionately known as Yonsama in Japan. That is because on Sept. 5, shooting of “Taewangsasingi,”a story of the Grand King Gwanggaeto (375~413) of the Koguryo Kingdom, starts.

The drama is slated for 24 episodes--sounds good, but I have a preference for historical dramas.

fan website for the drama

There's More to Life Than Acting, Says Shin Ae-ra

American Idolatry
Agree? Disagree? I don't know if I would agree with what he says about why country music became popular; the New Scot would probably have something to say regarding his disdain of it.

Song Hye Gyo cfs

Benedict XVI: On Sts. Monica and Augustine

On Sts. Monica and Augustine

"Their Testimonies Can Be of Great Help for Many Families"

CASTEL GANDOLFO, Italy, AUG. 27, 2006 (Zenit.org).- Here is a translation of Benedict XVI's address today at midday, before and after reciting the Angelus with the crowds gathered in the courtyard of the papal summer residence of Castel Gandolfo.

* * *

Dear Brothers and Sisters:

Today, Aug. 27, we remember St. Monica, and tomorrow we will remember her son, St. Augustine: Their testimonies can be of great consolation and help for many families also of our time.

Monica, born in Tagaste, in present-day Algeria (in Souk-Arhas), of a Christian family, lived in an exemplary way her mission of wife and mother, helping her husband Patricius to discover, little by little, the beauty of faith in Christ and the strength of evangelical love, capable of overcoming evil with good.

After his death, which occurred prematurely, Monica dedicated herself with courage to the care of her three children, two boys and a girl, among them St. Augustine, who in the beginning made her suffer with his rather rebellious temperament.

As Augustine himself would say later, his mother gave him birth twice; the second time required a long spiritual labor, made up of prayer and tears, but crowned in the end by the joy of seeing him not only embrace the faith and receive baptism, but also dedicate himself entirely to the service of Christ.

How many difficulties there are also today in family relationships and how many mothers are anguished because their children choose mistaken ways!

Monica, a wise and solid woman in the faith, invites them not to be discouraged, but to persevere in their mission of wives and mothers, maintaining firm their confidence in God and clinging with perseverance to prayer.

As to Augustine, his whole life was an impassioned search for truth. In the end, not without a long interior storm, he discovered in Christ the ultimate and full meaning of his life and of the whole of human history. In adolescence, attracted by earthly beauty, he "fell upon" it -- as he says honestly (Confessions 10, 27-38) -- selfishly and possessively with behavior that caused some sorrow in his pious mother.

But through a toilsome journey, thanks also to her prayers, Augustine opened himself ever more to the fullness of truth and love, to the point of conversion, which occurred in Milan, under the guidance of the bishop, St. Ambrose.

Thus he remains as model of the way to God, supreme truth and good. "Late have I loved you," he wrote in his famous book of the Confessions, "O beauty so ancient and so new .... For behold you were within me, and I outside; and I sought you outside .... You were with me and I was not with you ... You called and cried to me and broke open my deafness: And you sent forth your beams and shone upon me and chased away my blindness" (ibid.).

May St. Augustine obtain for us also the gift of a sincere and profound encounter with Christ, an encounter above all also for all those young people who, thirsty for happiness, seek it in mistaken ways and get lost in dead ends.

St. Monica and St. Augustine invite us to turn with confidence to Mary, seat of wisdom. To her we entrust Christian parents so that, like Monica, they will support their children on their way with their example and prayer.

To the virgin mother of God, we commend young people so that, as Augustine, they will always tend to the fullness of truth and love, which is Christ: He alone can satisfy the profound needs of the human heart.

More Zenit profiles

I think Zenit is done with the profiles...

Previous lists: 1, 2

International Association of Missionaries of Political Charity
Catholic Charismatic Renewal Services (www.iccrs.org)
International Catholic Conference of Guiding (www.cicg-iccg.org)
International Catholic Conference of Scouting (www.cics.org)
International Council of Catholic Men (http://www.unum-omnes.com/)
Catholic Movement for Intellectual and Cultural Affairs (http://www.paxromana.org/)
Federation of Catholic Parochial Youth Movements (http://www.fimcap.org/ )
L'Arche Communities (http://www.larche.org/)
Forum of Catholic Action (http://www.azionecattolica.it/FIAC)
Independent Christian Youth
Union of European Guides and Scouts (http://www.scouts-europe.org/ )
Lay Claretian Movement (seglaresclaretianos.claret.org)
Legion of Mary (http://www.legion-of-mary.ie/)
Movement of Catholic Students (http://www.imcs-miec.org/web/)
Memores Domini Lay Association (http://www.comunioneliberazione.org/)
Militia Christi (www.militia-christi.org)
Militia of the Immaculata (http://www.mi-international.org/)
Missionary Contemplative Movement "P. de Foucauld" (www.centromissionario.org)
Oasis Movement (http://www.movimento-oasi.it/)
Pope John XXIII Community (http://www.apg23.org/)
Prayer and Life Workshops (http://www.tovpil.org/)
Regnum Christi (http://www.regnumchristi.org/)
Salesian Cooperators Association (www.sdb.org)
Salesian Youth Movement
Sant'Egidio Community (http://www.santegidio.org)
School of the Cross
Secular Missionary Carmel (www.carmelmis.org)
"Seguimi" Lay Group of Human-Christian Promotion (http://www.grupposeguimi.org)
Sermig (www.sermig.org)
Shalom Catholic Community (www.comunidadeshalom.org.br)
St. Francis de Sales Association (http://www.desalesassociation.org)
Society of St. Vincent de Paul (http://www.ozanet.org)
Teresian Association (http://www.institucionteresiana.org)

Found it!

The website I was looking for, that is.

John Goodwin's Macrobius.

Found it here.
Note: Thomas Fleming writes:

The historiographical question on Empire and Republic is vast. One aspect has to do with Caesar, who in the 20th century has been typically praised as the genius who brought rights to the masses. Yes, he had a few faults but geniuses are like that. This is the burden, basically, of Gelzer's very good biography. A rather different tack was taken by Christian Meier, whose book on Caesar is available in English very cheaply, and is an excellent three-dimensional view. I also recommend Guiglielmo Ferrero's Greatness and Decline of Rome. The problem with the late Republic is that it may not have been worth the lives of Cato and Cicero who endeavored to save it. In Nero's time, Seneca the younger (thinking probably of himself as Nero's chief minister) asks Cato, what difference did it make to him which gangster, Caesar or Pompey, became dictator. A said question and all to relevant to our own times.

As Ferrero points out, Augustus--in contrast with Caesar--managed to incorporate a good deal of republican virtues and traditions into the Empire. The period from the Third Punic War to the the Augustan principate I like to describe as a transition from an imperial republic to a republican empire. There is much more to be said on this.

Hmm Koine Greek...
Differences between Classical and Hellenistic Greek
Koine Greek Study Page
Biblical Greek
Little Greek 101
History of the Greek Language
Resources for Learning NT Greek

Benedict XVI Mourns Death of Maori Queen

Code: ZE06082221

Date: 2006-08-22

Benedict XVI Mourns Death of Maori Queen

Message Sent to New Zealand at Passing of Dame Te Atairangikaahu

VATICAN CITY, AUG. 22, 2006 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI expressed sorrow for the death of the queen of New Zealand's indigenous Maori, Te Arikinui Dame Te Atairangikaahu, and sent a message of sympathy to her relatives and people.

In a telegram sent by Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Pope assured the deceased sovereign's loved ones of his prayer at this time of national mourning.

"The Holy Father commends the late Dame Te Atairan to the loving mercy of Almighty God and invokes upon the country the divine gifts of consolation and peace," stated the message, published today by the bishops' conference of New Zealand.

The queen died Aug. 15 at age 75 from kidney failure.

The country's Catholic episcopate confirmed that the vicar general of the Diocese of Hamilton, Monsignor David Bennett, along with other Church officials paid their respects Aug. 17 to the deceased queen at Turangawaewae Marae, while awaiting the arrival from Australia of Bishop Denis Browne of Hamilton, president of the New Zealand bishops' conference.

In his absence, Monsignor Bennett, on behalf of New Zealand bishops and particularly of Catholic Maori and the Hamilton Diocese, expressed his prayerful condolences to Dame Te Ata's family.

"Many have attested to her qualities of leadership," he said, stressing her sincerity, graciousness, gentleness and humility.

Ties with Church

Monsignor Bennett spoke of the friendship and personal regard between the queen and the first Catholic Maori prelate, Auxiliary Bishop Takuira Max Mariu of Hamilton, who died last December at 53.

During his 1986 visit to New Zealand, Pope John Paul II also had a cordial meeting with Dame Te Ata.

The vicar general of Hamilton mentioned that in 1981, when Bishop Edward Gaines was installed as the first Catholic Bishop of Hamilton, "Dame Te Ata presented him with a carved crozier. And when Bishop Denis Browne was installed as the second bishop of Hamilton, Dame Te Ata brought the crozier forward again to give it to him. This crozier is always used by the bishop in our cathedral church."

"The fact that people of diverse cultures and backgrounds are coming in great numbers to Turangawaewae to pay her tribute, attests to the way in which Dame Te Ata brought peoples and cultures closer together," observed Monsignor Bennett.

The new Maori king is the son of Dame Te Ata. Vatican Radio reported on Monday that Tuheitia Paki, 51, assumed his duties, according to tradition, while his mother was being buried on Taupiri mountain, where all Maori sovereigns are buried.

Thousands of faithful attended the ceremony, including New Zealand's prime minister and numerous representatives of the government and other Pacific countries.

The new king will have the task to continue his mother's legacy, which kept the various Maori tribes united and obtained positive results in the area of territorial and political rights for her people, commented Vatican Radio.

Tuheitia Paki is the seventh king since New Zealand's indigenous monarchy was instituted in 1858 to counteract the colonization of the territories.

About 500,000 of New Zealand's 4 million inhabitants are Catholics.

Another act of a fictional head of state? (I believe the message was sincere.) Some Catholics have complained about the Holy See's statements regarding Israel and Lebanon, that the "prudential judgments" being issued are completely uninformed. Undoubtedly there are those who who argue the Holy See should give up the remnants of its medieval claims to secular power and recognition, perhaps even abandon its permanent seat on the U.N. as an observer. (Of course there are those who want to see the Vatican's status revoked, whether the pope agrees to it or not, including Catholics for a Free Choice.)

After all, how many still hold to the theory that the pope is both the supreme spiritual authority and temporal as well (whether it be exercised directly or indirectly)? Would such claims not be an obstacle to non-believers and those who have been scandalized by the sins of various popes and other Christians in the past?

It is the tension between the Church and the world, in a different guise--some would call for a pure Church, cleaned of all the abuses, accretions, ambition for power, and human artifice that were adopted by the Constantinian Church and is endemic to Constantinism.

A notable critic of Constantinian Christianity is Stanley Hauerwas.

• an interview; SoJo interview
• When the Politics of Jesus Makes a Difference
• Remembering John Howard Yoder

According to the wiki entry, the Constantinian shift is term used by Anabaptist and Post-Christendom theologians; however this historical/ecclesiological account seems also to be adopted by former Catholics critical of the Catholic Church.

The investiture controversy and many of the struggles between the Church and kings should be understood as the Church attempting to assert and protect her authority and autonomy from the temporal authorities; while some of the conflict clearly involved the pope as the ruler of the Papal states, and not as the head of the Church, still I suspect the struggles were more complex than a fine distinction between his two roles would allow. iirc, even in the 19th century, Pope Pius XI argued that the papal states were necessary for the papacy to maintain its spiritual independence.
(European history is something I definitely need to read up on when I have time.)

Did the popes go too far in asserting the supremacy of the Church's spiritual authority, to the point of subordinating secular political authorities to it? It should not be in question among Catholics that the common good of a temporal community is subordinate to the supernatural common good. The question is whether the pope has care of either. Certainly God as Lord and Creator rules the universe through His providence and omnipotence, and is that supreme authority. Does the pope, then, have any role to play as the vicar of Christ and servant of God?

Clearly, any exercise of such a role or influence would only be feasible with Christian
nations and rulers who were supposed to be under the authority of the Church. If authority is not recognized, even if it is exercised it will not bring about its proper effect (and coercion through the threat of punishment or force is not the same as inducing obedience). In a political (dis-)order hostile to Christianity and the Church and where Faith is explicitly rejected, would the pope's demands for recognition of the higher authority of the Church be heeded by secular governments? It would seem unlikely.

Having direct rule over Christian rulers would imply that the pope has, at the very least, authority over the common good of those communities. One might even argue that he has authority over the temporal common good of the world, but this does not necessarily follow from the first, as far as I can tell.

How was such authority transmitted? The fact that the answer is not evident in Sacred Tradition seems to argue against it being the case. (And what would be theological grounds for the position that the pope does have direct authority over secular rulers?) Moreover, if such a claim was voiced during the the history of Christendom (and no doubt there were theologians and partisans who did voice it), it fell on deaf ears. (Which would seem to give some support the position that the claim was never a part of Sacred Tradition.)

Besides, in order for one to have rule over the temporal common good of the world, one must not only be just but have civic prudence. Since civic prudence is necessary both for the primary act of ruling, legislation, and secondary acts, such as executing law or policy, and so on. But it seems impossible for any one man to have that kind of knowledge of particulars that would be necessary (unless that man were Christ, who is definitely Lord of the world). Without providing the gifts necessary for such authority to be exercised well, would God give that kind of authority to the pope? (If nation-states today are ruled poorly because of the their size and the consequent problems that come from size, we should not blame God, since it is not the case that God will communities of such size to exist--rather they come to existence because of human choices, especially sinful choices.)

At first sight, having the pope be the final arbiter of justice for Christians, especially in disputes between Christian nations, might be appealing. But can the pope have ordinary jurisdiction over the citizens of a political community? Could the pope be the last court of appeal for someone on trial? And could he be an arbiter without having in some way care of the temporal common good of the world? It doesn't seem so. (Would resolving the dispute between Spain and Portugal over the division of territory be an example? )

Then there is the exercise of an indirect authority,

From the Seattle Catholic review of Beginning at Jerusalem by Glenn W. Olsen:

Olsen also spends considerable time on the idea—and reality—of a Christian politics, and in so doing clears away many popular misconceptions. Today, in an era of hypernationalist secularism, any "check and balance" on the power of the state by the Church is near-unthinkable and immediately regarded as a threat. The Catholic conception, argues Olsen, was (and is) different. "Constantinism"—the supposed theocratic domination of society that began with Constantine, is in fact a complete misreading of early Christendom. Constantine and his successors sought to preserve the Roman ideal of society, not create a new one. Christendom was never a theocracy. The Church gradually assumed authority over matters, not worldly, but spiritual. Olsen thus counters the current notion (held by, for example, Father Richard Neuhaus) of the medieval papacy as a "temporal world leadership."

What the medieval age did have was a Church that had a "right to intervene in secular matters in the cause of justice and for the salvation of souls." (77) Olsen turns to the middle ages, and the vision best articulated by Pope Saint Gregory VII, to establish a different, and more just, conception of worldly order. Saint Gregory in particular helped "desacralize" kingship, and hence temporal authority, by asserting that the king could be held accountable by the Church. The king was no longer an absolute, unchallenged monarch whose will was automatically synonymous with God's, but rather a monarch accountable to another authority whose weapons were spiritual, but nonetheless powerful indeed—Christ's Church and Christ's Vicar on earth. Modern liberals may well assert that the necessity of an ecclesial "check" is no longer necessary—that the concept of natural, inalienable rights prevents, at least in liberal democracies, such absolutism. But the Catholic responds that it is the contemporary state itself—in its courts, its constitutions, and most of all its interpretations of who has these rights—that monopolizes the debate. Hence, for example, in American society, the state has thus determined that an entire class of human beings (the conceived but not yet born) has no intrinsic rights whatsoever.

Therefore Olsen certainly cannot be classified as a "neoconservative" Catholic, for his favorable view of Gregorian reform puts him at odds with the John Courtney Murray - Richard Neuhaus school. In Olsen's view, "Catholicism in America has been so coopted by the 'American experiment' that almost the whole spectrum of American Catholic interpretation...rules out the confessional state. Thus liberalism rewrites and denies the explicit teaching of the encyclical tradition of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, making Vatican II mark a decisive break with that tradition..." (82-3) What Olsen has done is what Dawson once did: in a deliberative way, seek to re-open a line of traditional Catholic thinking to challenge contemporary political society.

I won't examine the justification for the pope, in historical Christendom, having the power to depose Christian rulers by excommunicating them, and so on. Such a power would not imply direct authority--rather as the pastor of souls the pope could declare that a "Christian" ruler who had committed a serious enough crime (especially one that put the salvation of souls at peril) to be excommunicate, and therefore no longer qualified to hold authority over Christians. By being ministers of a supernatural good, one greater than the temporal common good, the popes could address any threat to that supernatural good with the means available to them. (A fuller inquiry into what those means might be, other than the one I just mentioned, I leave for another time. I definitely need to read St. Robert Bellarmine's writings on papal authority.)

Examples of indirect authority abound even today. The Church's mission as a witness to and interpreter of the Natural Law is a part of this, elucidating the general principles of morality and of justice, as well as telling us what actions violate those norms. Against any ideologue who might say the contrary for whatever reason, including an exaggerated nationalism, the Church can advise us if a human law is contrary to God's law.

Perhaps the role of the Magisterium as a teacher/interpreter of Natural Law and councillor to governments and nations might obscure its supernatural mission and ministry, and create further animosity when hearts have been hardened. And there is something to be said about the credibility of a bishop suffering when he is unable to keep the affairs of his own house in order; there is a pressing need for bishops to take care of their own flocks as shepherds, not as bureaucrats or CEOs.

Benedict XVI's emphasis on the importance of the bishop and on de-centralization, taking the focus away from national conferences where it interferes with the life of the local Church instead of enhancing it, can be partially understood in this light.

The bishops of a country or nation should be united in addressing local issues as individual bishops, but also work together to address what at the national level affects the local. If there can be something done to improve the state of the local community, the bishops should be spearheading it, especially because it is what [social] justice requires. If the time for that is past, then they should be preparing their flocks for more difficult times, so that they can provide a greater witness to the evangelical counsels and center their spirutal lives on the Beatitudes.

But, if the Church is still voicing its judgment and advising those who do not believe, her ministers must believe there are still men of good will who will listen; if the Church were instead to become silent, one should worry indeed that the end times were at hand, along with the concomitant persecutions.

Given the struggles between the papacy and various temporal authorities during the Middle Ages and afterwards, it is not surprising that theologians would be discussing the question of authority, both ecclesiastical and temporal, its origin, scope, and nature. (One wonders if such a topic is covered in theology programs today, or if it is considered to be irrelevant by the powers-that-be, or just plain wrong-headed.) No study of European history, political theory, political theology can be complete without covering it. (It's a shame that there are no integrated programs at most major Catholic colleges or universities--while there is an order to learning and a hierarchy of the sciences, still history can have a role to play in illuminating the past and the present. At least there are some professors who are offer bibliographies to those who wish inquire further.)


Links:
George Weigel's take on the question, "Papacy and Power"
R. Hittinger reviews Owen Chadwick's A History of the Popes, 1830-1914

Some medieval background:
Boniface VIII, Unam Sanctam
Summary of John of Paris, On Royal and Papal Power
SEP on Giles of Rome
Matthew of Aquasparta
IEP on William of Ockham
Franciscan Views on Papal and Royal Sovereignty
SEP: "Medieval Political Philosophy"
Fr. Schall, S.J., "What is medieval political philosophy"

Dr. Winfield H. Rose's course on classical and medieval political thought
Medieval Political Philosophy
The Cambridge History of Medieval Political Thought

Renaissance/Modern:
Robert Fastiggi, "Ecclesiastical and Temporal Power in Vitoria, Suárez and Berllarmine"
John Courtney Murray, St. Robert Bellarmine on the Indirect Power
(Keep in mind that this is John Courtney Murray writing on Bellarmine; it might not be an accurate portrayal of Bellarmine's teachings.)
Robert Filmer, Patriarcha

(Bellarmine's theory of sovereignty does not imply that democracy is the only valid form of government, or that democracy necessarily follows--see Charles N.R. McCoy's essay comparing Bellarmine and Suarez in reference to the transmission and designation theories.)

John Kilcullen, Medieval Political Theory (his teaching materials on the history of political thought; Politics, Philosophy and Medieval Studies)

Augustine Thompson, O.P. faculty page

Some bibliography; Brian Tierney has written much on the subject and his books probably have a useful bibliography, even if his own personal position on the question is not acceptable within orthodox Catholic Christianity

Chapters from a (questionable?) book at LIBRO: "The Papacy," "Christendom"

An older article by Sandro Magister, "Constantine 1700 Years Later: The Imperial Church of John Paul II." See also his A Parish of the People, Not of the Elite. Italy Renews its Model of Church
and The End of a Taboo: Even Romano Amerio Is “A True Christian”

For future reference:
Pius XI declared St. Robert Bellarmine a Doctor of the Church in 1931; I can't find the document announcing it though.

UN General Assembly observers

Today's Randomness:
Pius XI, Quas Primas, Mortalium Animos; Casti Connubii
Location and Procession of Choir
Ite ad Thomam (website of Francisco Romero Carrasquillo, who's really into the manualist tradition and the commentators on St. Thomas)
John P. Rickert
Aquinas, On the Principles of Nature (pdf); On the Mixture of the Elements (pdf, alt); On Being and Essence
Aristotle, On the Generation and Corruption (alt, txt)

Too much time and money on his hands?

No, not me!

Anatomy of Cartoon Characters

By Cathy Rose A. Garcia
Staff Reporter

Have you ever wondered what cartoon characters Bugs Bunny or Donald Duck would look like if they were real flesh and bone?

Artist Lee Hyung-koo has created a series of fossil sculptures of popular Disney and Warner Brothers cartoon characters. Taking a character from virtual reality and making it real is the theme of Lee's first solo exhibition, ``The Animatus,'' which will open Friday at the Arario Gallery, in Chonan, South Chungchong Province.

Featured at the exhibit are cartoon characters, namely Wile E. Coyote, Road Runner, Bugs Bunny, Donald Duck, Tom, Jerry and Huey, Dewey and Louie. Lee even gave Latin names to each of his sculptures, for a faux scientific feel. For instance, Bugs Bunny is named as Lepus Animatus in his art pieces, while Donald Duck as Anas Animatus, and Tom and Jerry as Felis Catus Animatus and Mus Animatus.

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From Arario Gallery:


Lepus Animatus
2005-2006
Resin, aluminum sticks, stainless steel wires, springs, oil paint
111 x 60 x 70 cm
(Bugs Bunny)

Canis Latrans Animatus
2005-2006
Resin, aluminum sticks, stainless steel wires, springs, oil paint
75 x 118 x 46 cm
(I think this is Wild E. Coyote...)

Geococcyx Animatus
2005~2006
Resin, aluminum sticks, stainless steel wires, springs, oil paint
44 x 130 x 41.5cm
(Roadrunner)

Felis Catus Animatus
2006
Resin,aluminum sticks, stainless steel wires, springs, oil paint on wooden pedestal
127 x 58 x 64.8 cm
(Felix the Cat, no bag of tricks)

Drawing A01
2005
Pencil, ink, marker, acrylic on paper
109 x 79 cm

Drawing B11
Conté, white-out, pencil, acrylic on black paper
2006
200 x 200 cm

Go to the gallery website for more pictures.

It's somewhat amusing, but really, is this great art? Or a misallocation of resources? Wouldn't his talents be better used on something else? Still, it's certainly better than the $%!@#%!@$# Bodies Exhibition.

I don't think he did any Tiny Toon characters...
(Jamie's Tiny Toons Adventures page)

Plus, Traditional Beauty Secrets to Mesmerize Paris

Looking for homilies by Fr. Altier?

You won't find them at the link on the right, though you may find some updates concerning him.

They are, however, available here:
2006
2005
2004
2003
2002
2001

Thanks to Custos Fidei.

Fr. Altier was one of Brother Michael's favorite priests and preachers, and recommended his homilies very highly. I believe Fr. Altier is very much a Carmelite in his spirituality.

I personally have no idea of what is going on in the archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, so I will say nothing further about that.

Fundamentals of Catholicism
Examination of Conscience (From CatholicParents.org)
St. Agnes Church

Some news from Spero: 15 May 2006 ; 21 July 2006
The Wanderer coverage: 16 March 2006; 25 May 2006
The most recent news, at Amy Welborn.

Hrm, Fr. Cantalamessa

Father Cantalamessa on Marital Submission

Pontifical Household Preacher on This Sunday's Gospel

ROME, AUG. 25, 2006 (Zenit.org).- Here is a translation of a commentary by Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa, preacher to the Pontifical Household, on this Sunday's second reading.

* * *

Husbands, Love Your Wives

This time I would like to focus attention on the second reading of the day (Ephesians 5:21-32) because it has a theme of great interest for the family.

Reading Paul's words with modern eyes, one immediately sees a difficulty. Paul recommends to husband that they "love" their wives (and this is good), but he also recommends to women that they be submissive to their husbands, and this -- in a society strongly (and justly) conscious of the equality of the sexes -- seems unacceptable.

In fact, it's true. On this point St. Paul is conditioned in part by the mentality of his age. However, the solution is not in eliminating from relations between husbands and wives the word "submission," but, perhaps, in making it mutual, as love must also be mutual.

In other words, not only must husbands love their wives, but wives must also love their husbands. Not only must wives be subject to their husbands, but also husbands to their wives, in mutual love and mutual submission.

In this case, to be subject means to take into account the wishes, opinion and sensitivity of one's spouse; to discuss, not to decide on one's own; to be able to give up one's own point of view. In short, to remember that both are "spouses," that is, literally, persons who are under "the same yoke," freely chosen.

The Apostle gives Christian spouses as model the relationship of love that exists between Christ and the Church, but he explains immediately in what such love consisted: "Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her." True love is manifested in "giving" oneself to the other.

There are two ways of expressing one's love for the beloved. The first is to give presents, to fill the other with gifts; the second, much more demanding, consists in suffering for one's spouse.

God loved us in the first way when he created us and filled us with goods: Heaven, earth, flowers, our bodies, everything is a gift of his. But then, in the fullness of time, in Christ, he came to us and suffered for us, unto death on the cross.

This is also true in human love. At the beginning, the newly married express their love with gifts. But the time comes for all when presents are not enough. It is necessary to be able to suffer with and for the beloved. One must love despite the limitations one discovers in the other, and despite the moments of poverty and illnesses.

This is true love which is like Christ's.

In general, the first kind of love is called "seeking love" (with a Greek word, eros); the second kind, "giving love" (with the Greek word agape).

The sign that a couple is passing from seeking to giving love, from eros to agape, is this: Instead of saying "What more could my husband do for me (respectively, my wife) which he still does not do?" one begins to ask: "What more could I do for my husband (or my wife) which I still have not done?"

[Translation by ZENIT]

I was posting this at depositum fidei, though I had not read it yet, but recalling the current confusion on the authority of the husband as head of the family, I decided to read it. Good thing I did. Is Fr. Cantalamessa taking his cue from John Paul II? If he touches upon the question of the authority and headship of the husband, it is to deny that the husband has any unique authority over the family.

Now Ordinatio Sacredotalis has closed the book on the discussion of ordaining women to the priesthood, but if it hadn't been written, would Fr. Cantalamessa say that St. Paul's injunction that women should not teach or have authority in church is "historically conditioned" as well?
I am surprised that someone with his reputation for orthodoxy as a preacher and teacher could say something like this with a straight face. Even if what natural reasons is mute or confused on the issue (especially because of sin), what do we make then of the teachings of the Church?

Charity does not destroy distinctions of function and authority--rather, it divinizes the exercise of such function and authority; through charity we are turned away from sin and encouraged to overcome weakness so that we can exercise our function (and what authority we might have) well, rather than dominating others for the sake of our private good, "as the Gentiles do." (Or as Aristotle would put it--rather than being tyrants.)

Links:
Karol Wojtyla and the Patriarchal Hierarchy of the Family, by G.C. Dilsaver.
The Authority of the Husband according to the Magisterium, by Rev. Paul N. Check

Random Link:
Absolutely No Spin