The New Beginning

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Cardinal Zen warns against confusion surrounding the Pope’s letter to Chinese Catholics

CHINA – VATICAN
Cardinal Zen warns against confusion surrounding the Pope’s letter to Chinese Catholics
The bishop of Hong Kong contradicts some of the claims made by sinologist Father Heyndrickx who suggests that the papal document encourages members of the underground Church to come out into the open, ask for recognition by civil authorities and concelebrate services with officials from the official Church.

Hong Kong (AsiaNews) – It is not true that the letter Pope Benedict XVI wrote to Chinese Catholics says that bishops from the underground Church can concelebrate services with “all” bishops from the official Church. It is not correct to claim that the letter says that there are no more reasons for the existence of the underground Church or that “underground” bishops are urged to seek recognition of state authorities. It is not true that there are no more canonical sanctions against unlawfully ordained bishops. This in a nutshell is the reply Card Joseph Zen Ze-kiun, bishop of Hong Kong, delivered to a July 6 article by Fr Jeroom Heyndrickx, head of the Ferdinand Verbiest Foundation at Leuven’s Catholic University (Belgium), that appeared in the UCA News agency (the cardinal’s reply was published on July 18 and Father Heyndrickx’s counter-reply on the 20).

Cardinal Zen does acknowledge that the Belgian sinologist loves China and “has done a lot of work” to bring together “the Chinese Catholic community with the universal Church.” However, he is concerned that the latter’s “every initiative needs the approval of Mr. Liu (Banian) of the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association (CCPA), and has to be carried out according to conditions imposed by him.” This is the same Mr Liu who is the CCPA deputy chairman and whose “enormous power . . . has allowed him to oppress and humiliate our bishops.

If this were the case the Leuven scholar would lose his dignity, which is no something Father Heyndrickx has accepted. Instead he has reiterated his obedience to the Church and the Pope, not to Chinese leaders. He has only engaged the latter in a dialogue.

At the centre of the controversy is Father Heyndrickx’s interpretation of the Pope’s letter. According to him the letter encourages members of the underground Church to come out into the open, ask for recognition by the civil authorities and concelebrate services with “all” the officials of the official Church.

Cardinal Zen states that none of that is in the letter—there is especially nothing to suggest that bishops from the underground Church can concelebrate with “all” the bishops from the official Church. What the letter does say is that they can concelebrate only with those who are now in communion with the Holy Father. In this sense, the unity of the Eucharistic celebration is obviously important, but without a hierarchical communion it is only a lie.

Similarly, underground bishops are not encouraged to apply for registration; they are only given the faculty or, rather, the heavy responsibility to make a "very difficult decision" for their individual dioceses as to whether they should seek recognition.

For this reason, the underground Church still has its raison d’être since the Chinese government continues to oppress the Church.

As for “canonical sanctions” the letter does focus on unity and dialogue, but it also explicitly mentions the “code of Canon Law (cf. c. 1382)” which “lays down grave sanctions both for the bishop who freely confers Episcopal ordination without an apostolic mandate and for the one who receives it”.

Monday, July 23, 2007

Papal Homily for Sts. Peter and Paul

Papal Homily for Sts. Peter and Paul
"I Am Pleased to Announce a Special Jubilee Year"

VATICAN CITY, JULY 23, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Here is a Vatican translation of Benedict XVI's homily at vespers for the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul, at the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls on June 28.

* * *

CELEBRATION OF FIRST VESPERS
OF THE SOLEMNITY OF THE HOLY APOSTLES PETER AND PAUL

HOMILY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI

Basilica of St Paul Outside-the-Walls
Thursday, 28 June 2007

Your Eminences,
Venerable Brothers in the Episcopate and in the Priesthood,
Dear Brothers and Sisters,

At this First Vespers of the Solemnity of Sts Peter and Paul, let us commemorate with gratitude these two Apostles whose blood with that of so many other Gospel witnesses made the Church of Rome fruitful.

On their memorial, I am glad to greet you all, dear brothers and sisters, starting with the Cardinal Archpriest and the other Cardinals and Bishops present, Father Abbot and the Benedictine Community to which this Basilica is entrusted, the clerics, the women and men religious and lay faithful gathered here.

I address a special greeting to the Delegation of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, which is reciprocating the presence of the Holy See's Delegation in Istanbul for the Feast of St Andrew.

As I had an opportunity to say a few days ago, these meetings and initiatives are not merely an exchange of courtesies between Churches but are intended to express the common commitment to do everything possible to hasten the time of full communion between the Christian East and West.

I address with these sentiments Metropolitan Emmanuel and Metropolitan Gennadios, sent by my beloved Brother Bartholomew I, to whom I express a grateful and cordial thought.

This Basilica, which has hosted profoundly significant ecumenical events, reminds us how important it is to pray together to implore the gift of unity, that unity for which St Peter and St Paul spent their lives, to the point of making the supreme sacrifice of their blood.

A very ancient tradition which dates back to apostolic times claims that their last meeting before their martyrdom actually took place not far from here: the two are supposed to have embraced and blessed each other. And on the main portal of this Basilica they are depicted together, with scenes of both martyrdoms.

Thus, from the outset, Christian tradition has considered Peter and Paul to have been inseparable, even if each had a different mission to accomplish.

Peter professed his faith in Christ first; Paul obtained as a gift the ability to deepen its riches. Peter founded the first community of Christians who came from the Chosen People; Paul became the Apostle to the Gentiles. With different charisms they worked for one and the same cause: the building of Christ's Church.

In the Office of Readings, the liturgy offers us for meditation this well-known text of St Augustine: "One day is assigned for the celebration of the martyrdom of the two Apostles. But those two were one. Although their martyrdom occurred on different days, they were one. Peter went first, Paul followed. We celebrate this feast day which is made sacred for us by the blood of these Apostles" (Sermon 295, 7, 8).

And St Leo the Great comments: "About their merits and virtues, which surpass all power of speech, we must not make distinctions, because they were equal in their election, alike in their toils, undivided in their death" (In natali apostol., 69, 7).

In Rome, since the earliest centuries, the bond that unites Peter and Paul in their mission has acquired a very specific significance. Like Romulus and Remus, the two mythical brothers who are said to have given birth to the City, so Peter and Paul were held to be the founders of the Church of Rome.

Speaking to the City on this topic, St Leo the Great said: "These are your holy Fathers and true shepherds, who gave you claims to be numbered among the heavenly kingdoms, and built you under much better and happier auspices than they, by whose zeal the first foundations of your walls were laid" (Sermon 82, 7).

However humanly different they may have been from each other and despite the tensions that existed in their relationship, Peter and Paul appear as the founders of a new City, the expression of a new and authentic way of being brothers which was made possible by the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
For this reason, it can be said that the Church of Rome is celebrating her birthday today, since it was these two Apostles who laid her foundations.

Furthermore, Rome in our day perceives with greater awareness both her mission and her greatness. St John Chrysostom wrote: "Not so bright is the heaven, when the sun sends forth his rays, as is the City of Rome, sending out these two lights (Peter and Paul) into all parts of the world... Therefore, I admire the City... for these pillars of the Church" (Homily on St Paul's Epistle to the Romans, 32, 24).

We will commemorate St Peter specifically tomorrow, celebrating the Divine Sacrifice in the Vatican Basilica, built on the site of his martyrdom. This evening we turn our gaze to St Paul, whose relics are preserved with deep veneration in this Basilica.

At the beginning of the Letter to the Romans, as we have just heard, St Paul greeted the community of Rome, introducing himself as "a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle" (1: 1). He uses the term "servant", in Greek, doulos, to indicate a relationship of total and unconditional belonging to the Lord Jesus; moreover, it is a translation of the Hebrew, 'ebed, thus alluding to the great servants whom God chose and called for an important and specific mission.

Paul knew he was "called to be an apostle", that is, that he had not presented himself as a candidate, nor was his a human appointment, but solely by a divine call and election.

The Apostle to the Gentiles repeats several times in his Letters that his whole life is a fruit of God's freely given and merciful grace (cf. I Cor 15:9-10; II Cor 4:1; Gal 1:15). He was chosen to proclaim "the Gospel of God" (Rom 1:1), to disseminate the announcement of divine Grace which in Christ reconciles man with God, himself and others.

From his Letters, we know that Paul was far from being a good speaker; on the contrary, he shared with Moses and Jeremiah a lack of oratory skill. "His bodily presence is weak, and his speech of no account" (II Cor 10:10), his adversaries said of him.

The extraordinary apostolic results that he was able to achieve cannot, therefore, be attributed to brilliant rhetoric or refined apologetic and missionary strategies.

The success of his apostolate depended above all on his personal involvement in proclaiming the Gospel with total dedication to Christ; a dedication that feared neither risk, difficulty nor persecution.

"Neither death, nor life", he wrote to the Romans, "nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord" (8:38-39).

From this we can draw a particularly important lesson for every Christian. The Church's action is credible and effective only to the extent to which those who belong to her are prepared to pay in person for their fidelity to Christ in every circumstance. When this readiness is lacking, the crucial argument of truth on which the Church herself depends is also absent.

Dear brothers and sisters, as in early times, today too Christ needs apostles ready to sacrifice themselves. He needs witnesses and martyrs like St Paul. Paul, a former violent persecutor of Christians, when he fell to the ground dazzled by the divine light on the road to Damascus, did not hesitate to change sides to the Crucified One and followed him without second thoughts. He lived and worked for Christ, for him he suffered and died. How timely his example is today!

And for this very reason I am pleased to announce officially that we shall be dedicating a special Jubilee Year to the Apostle Paul from 28 June 2008 to 29 June 2009, on the occasion of the bimillennium of his birth, which historians have placed between the years 7 and 10 A.D.

It will be possible to celebrate this "Pauline Year" in a privileged way in Rome where the sarcophagus which, by the unanimous opinion of experts and an undisputed tradition, preserves the remains of the Apostle Paul, has been preserved beneath the Papal Altar of this Basilica for 20 centuries.

It will thus be possible to have a series of liturgical, cultural and ecumenical events taking place at the Papal Basilica and at the adjacent Benedictine Abbey, as well as various pastoral and social initiatives, all inspired by Pauline spirituality.

In addition, special attention will be given to penitential pilgrimages that will be organized to the Apostle's tomb to find in it spiritual benefit. Study conventions and special publications on Pauline texts will also be promoted in order to make ever more widely known the immense wealth of the teaching they contain, a true patrimony of humanity redeemed by Christ.

Furthermore, in every part of the world, similar initiatives will be implemented in the dioceses, shrines and places of worship, by Religious and by the educational institutions and social-assistance centres which are named after St Paul or inspired by him and his teaching.

Lastly, there is one particular aspect to which special attention must be paid during the celebration of the various moments of the 2,000th Pauline anniversary: I am referring to the ecumenical dimension. The Apostle to the Gentiles, who was especially committed to taking the Good News to all peoples, left no stones unturned for unity and harmony among all Christians.

May he deign to guide and protect us in this bimillenial celebration, helping us to progress in the humble and sincere search for the full unity of all the members of Christ's Mystical Body. Amen.

© Copyright 2007 -- Libreria Editrice Vaticana

Early Music America

Early Music America
Non-profit service organization supporting historical performance in North America. Includes scholarships, staff and member directory, and press releases.

If I were rich... I'd subscribe to the magazine... 4 issues for $24/year...

Raven's Bread

Raven's Bread: A Newsletter for Hermits
A quarterly newsletter for hermits and those interested in the eremitical life. Includes articles for meditation, discussion on a contemplative life, ...

What do you think of this Sarge?

Not sure if this address is still current, I didn't double-check with the website.
Raven's Bread
P.O. Box 562
Hot Springs, NC 28743

[Chonan Gang] Lee Young Ae

Son Yeh Jin episode:

Vids: Hong Kong Handover 1997

Where else but youtube would have videos of the ceremonies for handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997? I finally found the video I was looking for, these have the piece of music that was played while the British flag at the governor's mansion was given to Chris Patten... does anyone know the name of the tune? iirc, I think it is was one of Mr. Patten's favorites, and hence they played it for him.

farewell 1997

Part 2

Irish Bagpipes in Hong Kong

Whatever one might think of British colonialism and its legacy, one should admit that the British definitely have a better grasp of pomp and circumstance than the Chinese.

英國撤離 British Retreat 1997

Hong Kong - 1997 (1)

Hong Kong - 1997 (2)

Hong Kong - 1997 (3)

9 more parts : part 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

Another set:
Farewell Ceremony of Hong Kong Handover 1997 Part A
Farewell Ceremony of Hong Kong Handover 1997 Part B

Farewell Ceremony of Hong Kong Handover 1997 Part C
Farewell Ceremony of Hong Kong Handover 1997 Part D
Farewell Ceremony of Hong Kong Handover 1997 Part E
Farewell Ceremony of Hong Kong Handover 1997 Part F
Farewell Ceremony of Hong Kong Handover 1997 Part G

God Save The Queen
Hong Kong Handover Ceremony 1997

Hong Kong Handover 1997 Part 3 - Prince Charles' Speech
Governor's Speech at Farewell Ceremony of Hong Kong Handover

Chinese PLA march into Hong Kong 1 July 1997

Hong Kong Handover 1997 Part 2 - Honour Guards and Leaders
Anita Mui hongkong 1997 stage performance
Establishment of Hong Kong SAR 1997
Interview with Chris Patten 01

Interview with Chris Patten 02

Interview With 港督港定康Chris Patten 03

Esther Kwan, Armed Reaction vids

Esther Kwan in Armed Reaction:

Armed Reaction, second series

full MV for the first series...

Unhealthy dependency.

With respect to the economy. Via EB.

Life Without Goods Made in China a Challenge (Audio)
Renee Montagne , Morning Edition (NPR)
A Year Without "Made in China": One Family's True Life Adventure in the Global Economy chronicles how Sara Bongiorni and her family tried to live without buying anything produced in China.(18 July 2007)

Related essay by Sara Bongiorni at CSM: A year without 'Made in China'

Contributor Carl Etnier writes:The Bongiorni family, living in the US, didn't try to live only on locally manufactured products. After a long search for sneakers not made in China, they finally found a pair made in Italy, at five times what they would have paid for the Chinese-manufactured pair. Hearing how difficult some of their purchases were when they just tried to exclude this one far-away country from their buying really highlights how tied the US is to imports.

Developed world 'having second thoughts' about globalisation
Peter Ryan, ABC (Australia)

It's not about class envy, but conspicuous consumption:

Welcome to Richistan, USA
Paul Harris, The Observer The American Dream of riches for all is turning into a nightmare of inequality. But a backlash is brewing.(22 July 2007)
Also at Common Dreams.

Vritual communities aren't real.

I'll qualify that--they have some reality, but not that much, and they're neither fulfilling nor humane.

From EB, Deep Thought - July 22

Technophilia, Virtual Communities and the World of Ends
Dave Pollard, How to Save the World A lot of my friends and readers are technophiles. They believe that social networking and other technologies can make the world a much better place. I'd like to believe it, but I don't.

The industrial economy is rigged. It is not a 'market' economy or a 'free' economy. It is designed to reduce us to mere, insatiable consumers -- of politicians' promises with our tax dollars, of overpriced, imported crap products, of 'education', of packaged information and entertainment 'products', of health treatments etc. We are given just enough cash and credit to keep us addicted, and we are isolated from serious social interaction to make us compliant. No great conspiracy. That's just how the world works best when the objective is to maximize profit and GDP.

We are not people in this economy. We are consumers, taxpayers, students, audiences, patients. Numbers. Demographics.

The natural economy, the one we keep striving towards because it's, well, natural, is inherently social, which is one of the things we like about it. It engages us as customers, citizens, learners, participants, as peers in the collective enterprise of living and making a living. It disintermediates the robber barons, the corrupt politicians, the boring teachers, the mindless media, and healthcare professionals who profit from our illness. They are not needed in a natural economy. There is no place for them.

...Ultimately we will have to abandon the illusion that we can be part of a global, virtual, ever-changing 'electronic' community, that we can be citizens of the whole world, that social networks and technology can change the world. Eventually we have to come back to place, to true community, and make it work, face to face. (19 July 2007)

An interesting perspective on the future of education:

Back from the Future
Scrapping Institutional Education in Favour of Community Apprenticeship Learning
Gustavo Esteva, personal website (date?)
Recommended by Dave Pollard ("How to Save the World" blog at Salon). He writes: in a recent post
A long but brilliant article by Gustavo Esteva, Oaxaca Zapatista adviser and friend of Ivan Illich, explains why sustainable intentional communities and self-managed community-based learning go hand in hand, and why the latter is needed before the former is possible.
Short bio of author Esteva by David C. Korten:

Gustavo Esteva is an independent writer, a grassroots activist and a deprofessionalized intellectual.

He works both independently and in conjunction with a variety of Mexican NGOs and grassroots organizations and communities. He has been a key figure in founding several Mexican, Latin American and International NGOs and networks.

Though not an economist by training, he received Mexico’s National Prize of Political Economy for his contribution to the theory of inflation, and though not a sociologist was President of the 5th World Rural Sociology Congress. He also served as President of the Mexican Society of Planning, as Vice-president of the Inter-American Society of Planning, and served as Board Member and Interim Chairman of the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development.

In his early career, he held senior positions in both private business and government, and was destined for a distinguished career within Mexico’s establishment. He decided, however, that solutions to people’s problems could come only from the people themselves and has since dedicated himself to their service....

Another essay by Esteva: “Rupturas:” Turning Points
Spanish language website-BA

Sharon Astyk, Jack of all trades, mistress of none

Published on 22 Jul 2007 by Casaubon's Book. Archived on 22 Jul 2007.
Jack of all trades, mistress of none
by Sharon Astyk
This bit was rather irksome.

Well, if the typing here gets really poor, my advance apologies. At our local "Preservation of the Union 1865" celebration, friends of ours gave us a kitten they had need of a home for. The kitten finds my typing endlessly entertaining and is trying to eat my hands, which is a real speed reducer. We're still trying to find him a name - something Unionist and Civil War related seems appropriate. If only General Lafayette McLaws had been a northerner - "McLaws" really is a good cat name. Suggestions for relevant unionist (not necessarily military) figures are more than welcome.

Now is it a step back when households attain this degree of self-sufficiency? Is specialization and differentiation always progress?

Agriculture is the ultimately "jack of all trades" job - not only do you have to hold all the basic farm knowledge in your head, but there's mechanics (gotta fix the equipment when it breaks down), metal working (don't have that one yet), tree felling (I only do little ones, and I don't touch chainsaws), biology and chemistry (soil science, animal husbandry), botany (plants), dealing with what I'm producing (herbalism, fiber production, cooking, dyeing), and...you get the picture. Add to that the skill sets that go with frugality and dinner, and it is quite a range of things that I haven't even attempted to the ones I have. Sometimes it gets a little overwhelming.

The good thing, however, lest one get overwhelmed, is this. In order to develop functional skills at something, you don't actually have to devote that much time or energy to it. You simply have to develop a very basic, functional knowledge. And once you've done that, you can improve upon your skills, or teach someone else so that they can do so. You don't have to be very good at these things.

For example, let's take knitting as a model. What's "good enough?" A good enough knitter knows a few basic stitches and techniques, and the rough outlines of garment constructure. He knows what tools he needs, and which one he doesn't, and he does it well enough to teach someone else how to knit. But the great thing for the person who doesn't like knitting that much, or hasn't very much time to do it, is that all he really has to do is be able to make a basic sweater, gloves or socks. It doesn't have to be a really pretty sweater, just keep someone warm without falling apart. Getting from 0 knitting knowledge to a basic sweater is a matter of months of spare-time work, weeks if you can take a class or get lessons from someone really knowledgeable. It doesn't take years. A couple of good books, and he's set for pretty much any purpose.

And let us say that our knitter likes knitting fine, but would rather cook. The good thing, is that he now has enough skill to teach the basics to his children or his spouse or his friends in his community. And with a good book, once the basics become muscle memory, his son can become an expert knitter, based on Daddy's teaching and self-teaching.

The same is true for almost any skill. I think people are often intimidated when they approach creating an even partly self-sufficient life by the sheer number of things they have to learn to do. Now it is true that if you live in comparative isolation, you have to do all those things to your own satisfaction - not necessarily well, but at least well enough to content you and not make your life more difficult. But if you are imagining a future of pulling together with other people, and those other people don't know it yet ;-), it is good to remember that the knowledge you need is actually pretty basic. You don't have to be a great talent at anything - just jack of all trades (or all the ones of use to you), and master of none.

What conditions are necessary in order for the members of a community to have sufficient leisure and time for prayer? Is there an ideal way of life in this regard?

Jerome a Paris comments on the NPC report

Published on 22 Jul 2007 by European Tribune. Archived on 22 Jul 2007.
Facing the Hard Truths about Energy - the NPC report, commented
by Jerome a Paris

The hard truths

The report notes five main truths:
Coal, oil, and natural gas will remain indispensable to meeting total projected energy demand growth.

The hard truth here is that overall demand for energy is expected to keep on growing significantly over the next 2 decades. What is left unsaid, but made obvious, in the Executive Summary, is that we will have very little control over that demand: the OECD's demand, which makes up 56% of world demand, is predicted to grow by 10% in their central scenario (from 245 quads to 275 quads), whereas demand from the rest of the world is expected to double, going from 44% to 60% of total demand (and from 200 quads to 400 quads).

The report mentions later that it is impossible to treat energy as a national issue - it is a fully global industry, and we will be impacted by what happens elsewhere. Well, the first, stark, lesson, is that whatever happens on the demand side, as a whole, will be decided, to a large extent, elsewhere.

I've been writing a lot about how we should focus energy policy on demand, which we control, rather than on supply, which we do increasingly less. Well, a major proviso of that is that we certainly do not control global demand anymore. That does not make our domestic efforts irrelevant, quite the opposite, but it shows that any sane policy should focus on the demand in other parts of the world, something that will require a lot more cooperation and diplomacy than we seem willing to engage in right now.

The second part of that "hard truth" is that it's pretty likely that we will overwhelmingly continue to burn hydrocarbons to satisfy that growing demand - because that's what we already do, and because a lot of that demand comes from sectors that overwhelmingly use hydrocarbons: transport (with skyrocketing car use in the emerging world) and electricity generation (where burning coal, gas or oil is the default choice).
The world is not running out of energy resources, but there are accumulating risks to continuing expansion of oil and natural gas production from the conventional sources relied upon historically. These risks create significant challenges to meeting projected energy demand.

This is the point that has led to many headlines and was discussed in my earlier diary. Depending on how you look at it, it can be seen as either an acknowledgement of peak oil (significant challenges to meeting demand), or a dismissal of it (not running out of energy ressources). Coming from the NPC, it does seem to be an unsually candid effort at acknowledging the increasing tensions on the supply side that are chronicled on places like The Oil Drum or my "Countdown to $100 oil" series.

In fact, the Executive Summary includes a half-page summary of the debate on peak oil, which can be described to be reasonably fair in the presentation of arguments, and their supply scenarios include those prepared by the ASPO (Association for the Study of Peak Oil), one of the main peak oil groups.

So I'd chalk this report as a major step forward in the acknowledgement that there is indeed a supply problem for both oil&gas. This article this morning in the Independent has a good round up of quotes and comments on this.

The age of cheap oil is gone. That point long made by the peak oil advocates is essentially acknowledged.
To mitigate these risks, expansion of all economic energy sources will be required, including coal, nuclear, renewables, and unconventional oil and natural gas. Each of these sources faces significant challenges—including safety, environmental, political, or economic hurdles—and imposes infrastructure requirements for development and delivery.
That's probably where the report is most disappointing. It essentially says that we'll be able to respond to the challenge by producing (or rather, extracting) more energy, even if it's getting more difficult. The order in which these sources are listed shows that the industry is still expecting to work on the same model as before, with more big utility centralised production. There is no mention of the need for energy demand (it is elsewhere in the report, but not here, where it matters), and an essentially upside down order of priority. As I have said many times, we should focus our efforts first on energy demand reduction, then renewables, then nuclear, then hydrocarbons.

The only notable point is that unconventional oil&gas is last in that list. And the Executive Summary includes an explicit acknowledgement that these sources are unlikely to provide any significant relief by 2030.
“Energy Independence” should not be confused with strengthening energy security. The concept of energy independence is not realistic in the foreseeable future, whereas U.S. energy security can be enhanced by moderating demand, expanding and diversifying domestic energy supplies, and strengthening global energy trade and investment. There can be no U.S. energy security without global energy security.
With energy being one of the most internationalised and globalised industries, this may sound like a pretty basic fact, but in the context of the US political debate, and the regular mention of the words "energy independence" in various politicians' programmes or speeches, it is quite useful that this reminder be included here. There will be no autarchic solution, and no way to avoid an energy crisis coming from elsewhere even if the US were self-sufficient - because prices are set globally, and reflect the global supply and demand balance. It should also act as a warning that there will be no possibility for any isolationist foreign policy in the foreseeable future, and no way to avoid the ripples from what happens in the Middle East, the main exporter of energy sources worldwide.
A majority of the U.S. energy sector workforce, including skilled scientists and engineers, is eligible to retire within the next decade. The workforce must be replenished and trained.
This is, to some extent, a localised problem (as many other parts of the world have surpluses), but it is nevertheless a real one in the medium term, and it might have a very noticeable impact on other political debates - watching the Texas oil managers pleading for a more open immigration policy (as the report already does) might be entertaining - and offer the Democrats a real political opportunity on that topic.
Policies aimed at curbing CO2 emissions will alter the energy mix, increase energy-related costs, and require reductions in demand growth.
The elephant in the room, and the embarrassment of the NPC on the topic is palpable, as this is presented last, with a warning that the report expresses no opinion on climate change. What is significant is that the industry essentially concedes defeat - while not acknowledging the reality of climate change, they note the ineascapable political reality that something will be done to lower carbon emissions, and the report thus focuses on how to do this in what they see as the best way. Again, a major acknowledgement.

Benedict XVI, On War

On War
LORENZAGO DI CADORE, Italy, JULY 22, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Here is a translation of the address Benedict XVI delivered today before reciting the midday Angelus in the Piazza Calvi of Lorenzago di Cadore, near the spot where the Pope is vacationing in northern Italy.

* * *

Dear Brothers and Sisters!

In these days of rest that, thanks be to God, I am passing here in Cadore, I feel all the more intensely the impact of the sorrow of the news that comes to me about bloody altercations and episodes of violence that are occurring in so many parts of the world. This brings me to reflect once again on the drama of human freedom in the world. The beauty of nature reminds us that we have been placed here by God to "cultivate and keep" this "garden" that is the earth (cf. Genesis 2:8-17).

If men lived in peace with God and with each other, the earth would truly resemble a "paradise." Unfortunately, sin ruined this divine project, generating divisions and bringing death into the world. This is why men cede to the temptations of the evil one and make war against each other. The result is that in this stupendous "garden" that is the world, there open up circles of hell.

War, with the mourning and destruction it brings, has always been rightly considered a calamity that contrasts with God's plan. He created everything for existence and, in particular, wants to make a family of the human race. In this moment it is not possible for me to not return to a significant date in history: August 1, 1917 -- almost exactly 90 years ago -- my venerable predecessor, Benedict XV, published his celebrated "Nota Alle Potenze Belligeranti" (Note to the Warring Powers), asking them to put an end to the First World War (cf. ASS 9 [1917], 417-420).

As that huge conflict raged, the Pope had the courage to affirm that it was a "useless bloodbath." This expression of his left a mark on history. It was a justified remark given the concrete situation in that summer of 1917, especially on the front here in this part of northern Italy. But those words, "useless bloodbath," have a larger, prophetic application to other conflicts that have destroyed countless human lives.

Precisely these very lands in which we presently find ourselves, which in themselves speak of peace and harmony, have been a theatre in the First World War, as many testimonies and some moving songs of the Alps still recall. These are events not to be forgotten!

It is necessary to make a treasury of the negative experiences that our fathers unfortunately suffered, so that they not be repeated. Benedict XV's "Nota" did not limit itself to condemning war; it indicated, at a juridical level, the ways to construct an equitable and durable peace: the moral force of law, balanced and regulated disarmament, arbitration in disputes, freedom on the seas, the reciprocal remission of war debts, the restitution of occupied territories, fair negotiations to resolve problems.

The Holy See's proposal was oriented toward the future of Europe and of the world, according to a project that was Christian in inspiration but able to be shared by all because it was founded on the law of nations. It is the same program that the Servants of God Paul VI and John Paul II followed in their memorable speeches at the United Nations, repeating in the name of the Church: "No more war!"

From this place of peace here in the north of Italy, where one feels even more vitally how unacceptable the "useless bloodbaths" are, I renew the call to follow with tenacity the way of law, to firmly renounce the arms race, to reject in general the temptation to face new situations with old systems.

With these thoughts and wishes in our heart we now offer up a special prayer for peace in the world, entrusting it to Mary Most Holy, Queen of Peace.

[Translation by ZENIT]

Charles A. Coulombe on the South

Confederates and Catholics, Unite!

Dr. Hibbs has an answer

to the question I posed here, in his review of the last Harry Potter book

A review by Eve Tushnet (with minor spoilers).

Stephen Pimental: Joseph Ratzinger's Theology of Covenant

The Master Key:
Pope Benedict XVI’s Theology of Covenant
by Stephen Pimentel

Among his many contributions to Catholic theology, one of the most important of Joseph Ratzinger—now Pope Benedict XVI—is his “theology of covenant.” Arguably as significant as John Paul II’s “theology of the body,” Ratzinger’s theology of covenant, once assimilated by the Church, promises to transform and revitalize the Church’s approach to matters ranging from Scripture study to ecumenical dialogue. The theology of covenant gives nothing less than the master key to a unified interpretation of Scripture that is centered on the person and work of Jesus Christ.

Ratzinger’s work in this area is firmly based on a fundamental principle: The theology of covenant is integral to Christian identity as given by divine revelation, especially as the latter is recorded in the New Testament. This theology cannot be primarily based on contemporary concerns, such as the perceived needs of ecumenical dialogue, however important such concerns may be.

Ratzinger’s approach to Scripture in working out the theology of covenant is noteworthy. He interprets the sacred texts with great scholarly care and learning. Yet, unlike many recent theologians, he also clearly treats them as normative for Christian doctrine. Ratzinger refuses to set aside central doctrinal statements of the New Testament or treat them as somehow “up for grabs.” The theologian, above all, must fully confront the person and work of Christ, for “Christology thus appears as a synthesis of the covenantal theology of the New Testament, which is grounded in the unity of the entire Bible.”

What Is a Covenant?
In the biblical conception, a covenant is not a contract or mutual agreement between God and man, but a unsought gift of God to man. “The covenant then is not a pact built on reciprocity, but rather a gift, a creative act of God’s love.” In their concrete historical realizations, the covenants of God take multiple forms. The Apostle Paul uses “covenants” in the plural to describe God’s dealings with Israel (cf. Rom. 9:4). Ratzinger notes, in particular, that the Old Testament distinguishes the Noahite, Abrahamic, Mosaic, and Davidic covenants.

For Paul, the most important of these covenants are the Abrahamic and the Mosaic, which relate to the new covenant in different ways. While all the covenants enter into human history, the Abrahamic and new covenants share in a divinely guaranteed permanence, in contrast to the “transitory” and “provisional” nature of the Mosaic covenant. Whereas the Abrahamic covenant is “fundamental and enduring,” the Mosaic covenant is “intervening” (Rom. 5:20). The Mosaic Law was a form of divine pedagogy designed to “fall away once the pedagogical goal has been achieved,” and the goal of the Law is none other than Christ Himself (cf. Rom. 10:4). Hence, the Mosaic covenant is a transitory “stage in the decrees of God, which has its own time. All this Paul has brought out clearly, and no Christian can revoke it.”

The New Covenant
The establishment of the new covenant is described by the words of institution spoken by Jesus over the cup during the Last Supper. In the Gospels of Mark and Matthew, Jesus says, “This is my blood of the covenant” (Mk. 14:24), which echoes the institution of the Mosaic covenant in Exodus 24:8. A covenantal ritual of this kind establishes a blood-union or kinship between its participants. Through the covenant, God establishes a “mysterious consanguinity” between Himself and man.

By declaring the cup to be the “blood of the covenant,” Jesus is stating that His blood, poured out in His Passion and made really present in the Eucharist, will reestablish the bond of kinship between God and man. In this way, “the words of Sinai are intensified to an overwhelming realism.” The Last Supper was fundamentally the “sealing of the covenant,” and the Eucharist is now “an ongoing reenactment of this covenant renewal.” The Letter to the Hebrews describes the institution of the Eucharist, in which the blood of Jesus is really offered to the Father, as “a cosmic Day of Atonement” (cf. Heb. 9:11–14, 24–26). In the Sacrament of Communion, the disciple is united both physically and spiritually with Christ (cf. 1 Cor. 6:16).

The Broken Covenant
Paul and Luke give a somewhat different version of the words that Jesus spoke over the cup. Instead of the “blood of the covenant,” the cup is described as the “new covenant in my blood” (1 Cor. 11:25). This formula alludes to Jeremiah’s prophecy of the new covenant (Jer. 31:31–34). In this prophecy, the new covenant, which is never to be broken, is expressly contrasted with the Mosaic “covenant they have broken” (Jer. 31:32). “The history of Israel repeatedly appears in the Old Testament as a history of the broken covenant. In contrast, the covenant with the patriarchs is considered eternally valid.” It is the Mosaic Law that renders the covenant conditional and subject to being broken. Moreover, the tablets of the Law, which symbolized the Mosaic covenant, have been “lost forever” with the destruction of the temple. Indeed, it has not been possible to live in accordance with the Mosaic covenant, as formulated in Deuteronomy, since that destruction. By the preaching of the prophets, “Israel knew that even though it celebrated again and again the renewal of the covenant, it could not regain the lost tablets, which God alone had the power to give and to inscribe.”

The implication of Ratzinger’s observation is crucial. It is not the New Testament, much less later Christian theology, that first declared the Mosaic covenant to have been broken. It was the prophets of the Old Testament. Thus, the neo-Deuteronomic program advanced by the Pharisees and later adopted by the rabbis is not in accordance with Scripture, even if attention is restricted to the Old Testament. Rather, the way forward lies with the new covenant given by God “in the flesh and blood of the Risen Christ.” In the final analysis, the Mosaic Law points from within itself to beyond itself, “for Moses himself is a prophet and can be understood correctly only if understood prophetically.” This is a particular application of St. Augustine’s principle, reaffirmed by the Catechism of the Catholic Church, that “the New Testament lies hidden in the Old and the Old is unveiled in the New.”

The Deuteronomic Curses
By gravely violating the Mosaic Law, Israel had incurred the curses of the Deuteronomic covenant (cf. Deut. 28:15–68; 30:1). “Jesus fulfills the Law to the point of taking upon himself the ‘curse of the Law’ incurred by the those who do not ‘abide by the things written in the book of the Law, and do them.’” In Galatians 3:10, Paul quotes Deuteronomy 27:26, the summary curse of the Deuteronomic covenant that encapsulates the longer list of conditional curses ritually imposed on Israel when the covenant was instituted (cf. Deut. 27:14–26). Because Jesus took these curses upon Himself on the Cross (cf. Gal. 3:13), his death served as “the perfect realization” of the Day of Atonement.

The transitory nature of the Mosaic Law does not imply that the new covenant lacks a law of its own, for Paul also speaks of “the Torah of Christ” (Gal. 6:2), namely, “the dual commandment of love.” Thus, the new covenant calls all who accept it to “their own faithful conduct” (cf. Heb. 3:13), for Christ “imposes duties upon us and challenges us to obedience.”

The Children of Abraham
For Paul, “the promise of Abraham guarantees from the beginning the inner continuity of salvation history, from the patriarchs of Israel to the coming of Christ and the Church of Jews and Gentiles.” Scripture presents salvation history not as dichotomy between the new covenant and those of the Old Testament, but rather as a “dynamic unity of the entire history.” Indeed, from the perspective of eternity, there is only “one covenant,” which is the “eternally valid” covenant of Abraham, now perfectly fulfilled in Christ.

The Abrahamic covenant was structured from the beginning to be fulfilled by Christ. In the very ritual establishing the Abrahamic covenant (see Gen. 15:12–21), God enacted “symbolically a conditional curse” upon Himself, offering His own life as a surety. This ritual was a “sign of the Cross of Christ, in which God vouches for the indestructibility of the covenant with the death of his Son.” Thus, the full meaning of the Abrahamic covenant is revealed only when “God binds his own existence to the creature, man, by taking human nature upon himself.”

For Paul, the children of Abraham are those in covenant with God by faith (cf. Gal. 3:6–7). God’s promise to Abraham of blessing for the Gentiles (see Gen. 12:3) is the foundation of the Gospel (cf. Gal. 3:8–9). In fact, the Gospel can be described as the proclamation that the blessing for the Gentiles is now coming to pass through Christ (cf. Eph. 3:6). Within covenantal history, the promise of blessing was given to Abraham and fulfilled by Jesus, who “opens up and fulfills the wholeness of the Law and gives it thus to the pagans, who can now accept it . . . thereby becoming children of Abraham.”

The Catechism, Ratzinger notes, presents the same teaching. The “‘full number of the nations’ now takes its ‘place in the family of the patriarchs.’” Jesus is “the promised shoot of Judah, who unites Israel and the nations in the kingdom of God.” Therefore, members of all nations enter the “People of God with Israel through adherence to the will of God and through acceptance of the Davidic Kingdom,” understood not merely as a temporal political entity, but as God’s rule on earth extended from heaven (cf. Is. 52:7). In consequence, there is only one People of God, the Body of Christ, in which both Jews and Gentiles are welcome. “The mission of Jesus is to unite Jews and pagans into a single People of God.”

Paul’s understanding of the Body of Christ as an organic “grafting” of the Gentiles into Israel was confirmed by the Second Vatican Council in Nostra Aetate 4: The Church “draws nourishment from that good olive tree onto which the wild olive branches of the Gentiles have been grafted (cf. Rom. 11:17–24).” God prunes from this tree only those branches that refuse belief in Christ (cf. Rom. 11:20). Therefore, the Old Testament remains central to faith in Christ. “There is no access to Jesus and thereby can be no entrance of the nations into the People of God without acceptance in faith of . . . the Old Testament.”

Ecumenical Dialogue
In regard to dialogue between Catholics and those outside the faith, Ratzinger insists that Jesus Christ must be seen not as a barrier but as the only doorway to the desired unity, for through Jesus, “the God of Israel has become the God of the nations.” As Paul described, Jesus has united Jew and Gentile in one Body:
For he is our peace, who has made us both one, and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law of commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby bringing the hostility to an end. (Eph. 2:14–16)

This communion in Christ “is not empty theological rhetoric, but an empirical state of affairs,” visible wherever the Church is present.

Ratzinger qualifies the authentically Catholic approach to ecumenical dialogue with a distinction drawn from J. A. Cuttat. “To try to make mankind better and happier by bringing the religions together is one thing,” which one might call humanitarian ecumenism. “To pray ardently for the unification of all mankind in the love of the same God is something else,” which one might call Christocentric ecumenism. “And it may be that the former is Lucifer’s most subtle temptation, designed to frustrate the latter.” Ecumenical dialogue, in order to be authentically Catholic, must be firmly Christocentric, that is, centered on the new covenant established in Jesus Christ, for “the renunciation of truth and conviction does not elevate man but hands him over to the calculations of utility and robs him of his greatness.”

Stephen Pimentel is a writer and speaker on Catholic biblical theology. He is the author of several books, the most recent of which is Envoy of the Messiah: On Acts of Apostles 16–28 (Emmaus Road Publishing, 2006). Pimentel writes from Annandale, VA. Readers can visit him on the web at http://www.stephenpimentel.com/.

Sunday, July 22, 2007

The Kill Point, on Spike TV

Sarge, since you have access to cable, you might want to check this out.

AICN round-up of reviews.
SpikeTV

MSG Paul R. Howe, ret.

Via Sarge, who found this info through wikipedia. He opened his own combat shooting school, Combat Shooting & Tactics.

Some of his articles (pdf):
The Weapon Safety
Tactical Shooting: Some Thoughts
CQB: Direct Threat or Points of Domination
Training for the Real Fight

This sounds interesting:

His book, Leadership and Training for the Fight, ISBN# 1420889508, is guide for military and law enforcement on effective training and leadership principles, including examples of training from a Seasoned Combat Veteran passing on his wisdom.

Article on the Wyoming Carmel

in the Salt Lake Tribune

there is a slideshow presentation with audio track here (you can see Br. Michael Mary in one of the photos taken during the liturgy)

via Open Book

Bill Bonner, Greenback to the Future

Greenback to the Future
By Bill Bonner "As we get older we take with us only memories and money (property). If all goes well, when we grow into middle age, the memories grow with us…and the money does too."

Today's Guest Essay:
The Unbearable Lightness of the Buck
By Bill Bonner and Lila Rajiva "It has been said that a man is only as good as his word. Well, dear reader, the same can be said for the U.S. dollar. Since there is nothing else to support it, we must trust that it is worth what it says it is worth. Unfortunately, the dollar's 'word' may soon be worth no more than the paper it's printed on. Read on…"

The Austrian School and credit bubbles

Why do I give the Austrian school some credence when it comes to credit bubbles, and not to their claims about the nature of economics? Because it is rarely an all-or-nothing affair, when it comes to evaluating the truth or falsity of a claims put forth by a school or system--truth can be mixed with error.

If the Austrian school is speaking in a descriptive mode, telling us the causes of inflation and the effect of currency and credit manipulation by a "central" agency, one can evaluate its explanation against the explanations offered by other economic schools. (Though one must be careful, as even this form of explanation, whether it is historical narrative, when applied to understanding events in the past like the Great Depression, or as an idealized "law" falls short of the necessity strictly required by a true science.) I have not read other schools on monetary economics, but Ron Paul is a follower of the Austrian school and makes much use of it in his discussion of the Federal Reserve and its policies.

However, as far as I can tell, much of the problem with the positions of the Austrian school arises when it is speaking in a normative mode, making claims about what ought to be done, or the relation of economics with respect to ethics and politics. One cannot sever economic behavior from the natural law if the goods attained by economic actions are subordinate to the ultimate end of human life. Nor can it be argued that the ultimate end of a political community is merely the production of wealth, or that idealized laws that supposedly represent human behavior should therefore be elevated to the status of norms. Models of practical rationality are only good in so far as they admit of the full range of human freedom, which is rooted in the conception of the good, however erroneous it may be in certain people. When those models become reductionistic in order to simplify the explanation being given and to give them the semblance of necessity needed for them to appear "scientific," some form of determinism is inevitable.

If the Austrian school is wrong with respect to its first principles in the practical realm, then its conclusions [concrete recommendations] cannot but be flawed.

While Lew Rockwell.com has no problems publishing the political tracts of Paul Craig Roberts, as far as I can tell, it will not reprint what he says about the economy, and for a good reason. The sort of "protectionism" that Mr. Roberts endorses is opposed by the Austrian school. It is not clear to me how well-grounded the protectionism of Messrs. Roberts, Buchanan, or Dobbs might be. Let me instead refer to the protectionism advocated by Wendell Berry, in The Idea of a Local Economy, which is a normative claim rooted in a conception of what the good life should be like for a community and is virtually identical with Aristotelian-Thomistic politics on this point:

SO FAR AS I CAN SEE, the idea of a local economy rests upon only two principles: neighborhood and subsistence. In a viable neighborhood, neighbors ask themselves what they can do or provide for one another, and they find answers that they and their place can afford. This, and nothing else, is the practice of neighborhood. This practice must be, in part, charitable, but it must also be economic, and the economic part must be equitable; there is a significant charity in just prices.

Of course, everything needed locally cannot be produced locally. But a viable neighborhood is a community; and a viable community is made up of neighbors who cherish and protect what they have in common. This is the principle of subsistence. A viable community, like a viable farm, protects its own production capacities. It does not import products that it can produce for itself. And it does not export local products until local needs have been met. The economic products of a viable community are understood either as belonging to the community's subsistence or as surplus, and only the surplus is considered to be marketable abroad. A community, if it is to be viable, cannot think of producing solely for export, and it cannot permit importers to use cheaper labor and goods from other places to destroy the local capacity to produce goods that are needed locally. In charity, moreover, it must refuse to import goods that are produced at the cost of human or ecological degradation elsewhere. This principle applies not just to localities, but to regions and nations as well.

The principles of neighborhood and subsistence will be disparaged by the globalists as "protectionism" - and that is exactly what it is. It is a protectionism that is just and sound, because it protects local producers and is the best assurance of adequate supplies to local consumers. And the idea that local needs should be met first and only surpluses exported does not imply any prejudice against charity toward people in other places or trade with them. The principle of neighborhood at home always implies the principle of charity abroad. And the principle of subsistence is in fact the best guarantee of giveable or marketable surpluses. This kind of protection is not "isolationism."

Legislators are not concerned merely with bringing about a state of affairs that is "best for the consumer" (i.e. an abudance of goods at the cheapest prices possible)--they must consider what is best for the producers who are also members of that community, and for the community as a whole. Life is not just about consumption, and both production and consumption are ordered towards higher things.

Links:
Credit Bubbles - A Daily Reckoning Whitepaper Report
'Austrian School' of Economics Makes a Comeback - Seeking Alpha

The housing bubble created by a credit bubble and poor banking standards
What is Austrian Economics
Economics Blog : Amid Financial Excess, a Revival of Austrian ...
Mises Economics Blog: PrudentBear.com on Price Controls and the ...
Mises Economics Blog: The Economist: Austrian school provides the ...
PIMCO Bonds - Global Central Bank Focus- July 2006 "A Kind Word ...
The Mess That Greenspan Made: Austrian economics in the WSJ
Wanniski.com: The Austrian School and the “Austrian” School
Austrian School: History
THE AUSTRIAN SCHOOL
Austrian Economics, by Deborah L. Walker: The Concise Encyclopedia ...
1 AUSTRIAN SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS What is it about the Austrian (pdf)
Austrian Authors: The Online Library of Liberty
The Austrian Economics Study Guide
The Austrian School of Economics (ppt)
The Austrian School of Economics (ppt)
The Austrian School of Economics (pdf)
Austrian Economics
NEW CLASSICAL AND OLD AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS
Austrian School - Wikipedia
New Perspectives on Political Economy The Austrian School in the
Austrian School: Introduction
The Economists.
MAN, ECONOMY AND STATE -- BOOK REVIEW/SUMMARY
EconLog, Austrian Economists and the mainstream, Arnold Kling ...

Mises Economics Blog: More on "Austrian School Flunks"

It's The Bubbles, Stupid
American Chronicle: Is the U.S. in a bubble now?
Inflation, global monetary tightening
Global Liquidity Crisis when the Credit Boom comes to an End ...

On the Fed:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Federal Reserve Education Home
The Federal Reserve Monopoly Over Money by Ron Paul
Abolish the Federal Reserve
Weazl's Revenge: Ron Paul devastating the Fed

Monetary Economics:
Money - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Monetarism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Monetary Economics
ERN Monetary Economics
American Monetary Institute
The Monetary Economics of Thurston Howell III - Mises Institute
Money and the Individual by Murray N. Rothbard
Moss, The Economics of Ludwig von Mises, The Monetary Economics of ...
Austrian school arguments on the free market origin of money ...
Austrian economics for central bankers

Journal of Monetary Economics - Elsevier

MIT Economics: Macroeconomics and Monetary Econommics

David Rieff: The possibility of genocide is not a sufficient reason.

to stay in Iraq. Via the Crunchy Con.

PCR becomes a 9/11 conspiracy theorist?

"A Wake-Up Call": here; not yet archived at Creators.com

This does not diminish his reasoning about the current state of the American economy, which must be evaluated on its own terms. Does the 9-11 Commission Final Report allay all suspicion? Ron Paul himself recently restated that he is not a 9/11 conspiracy theorist; he thinks the government is too incompetent to pull a plot like that off. He does, however, think that the attack was used by neocons as a pretext for invading Iraq. While Mr. Roberts may be somewhat justified in his attacks on the current administration and the neocons, I wonder if he hasn't gone too far this time. Mr. Roberts mentions that Pat Buchanan has recently written about a possible August surprise with Iran. It seems too incredible to believe, that the executive branch of the Federal government would deliberately bring about war on the basis of a false rationale. But when Washington is so distant (literally and figuratively), do we really know what our "leaders" in the Federal government are and are not capable of doing?

How about San Jose?

Via Mr. Jeff Culbreath:

More California renaissance news. According to this story at SanLuisObispo.com, the TLM will be returning to San Luis Obispo County in September. The Diocese of Monterey, now headed by Bishop Richard Garcia, is taking the initiative here. I can tell you that Bishop Garcia was actively working to bring the TLM to his diocese even before the Motu Proprio was issued. I suspect this is a result of his exposure to the good fruits at St. Stephen the First Martyr in the Diocese of Sacramento, where he served under Bishop William Weigand as auxiliary bishop.
Courtesy of John Grasmeier.

Sharon Astyk, Feminism Post-Peak

Published on 18 Jul 2007 by Casaubon's Book. Archived on 20 Jul 2007.
Barefoot, bearded and in the kitchen: feminism post-peak
by Sharon Astyk

So the odds are good that a call for a return to domestic life will fall heavily on women's shoulders, unless both women and men negotiate cultural changes to ensure otherwise. This is, of course, much of the project of feminism. But I think modern feminism has yet to acknowledge how much of its goals and structure were created by cheap energy, and a product of that peculiar, unique and historically unlikely to be repeated abundance. By this I mean that much of what was possible for the women's movement was made possible by cheap energy. For example, the movement of women into the workforce while they had young children was to a large degree as much about refrigeration, electric breast pumps and industrial formula as it was about equal representation in careers. This is hardly the only example of this.

Feminism has, I think, fallen into the economic trap of "externalizing" other costs -for example, while in principle we may care about the rights of poor women, many women who have taken the "go out and work" message are unconcerned about the realities of the poor women and men they employ to mow lawns, clean houses, tend children and care for seniors. The moral responsibility of these acts shouldn't fall only on women - the message that the Nanny's poverty is the sole responsibility of a woman who gets a job, and none of her husband's is nonsense. But there is a reality that when women moved out of the home they left no replacement, leaving the marketplace to provide poorly paid people with few benefits and few comforts to meet the needs both men and women left behind. To feminism's right and credit, feminism has taken up the cause of these women - but it has not always fully credited its impact in creating their situation.

Just as we have to stop externalizing the costs of oil, we have to stop externalizing the costs of the domestic sphere - because these costs are ours to bear. The failures of child nutrition, for example - Americans are documentably getting shorter and less healthy because there is no one there to cook dinner, and industrial agriculture has gained much of its power because we rely upon them to feed us these inadequate foods. Our fossil fuel usage has gone up steadily, in part because we're going places all the time - to work, to daycare, to preschool, to school and etc...

Overwhelmingly, the feminist message was that we should move the dull, rote jobs of domestic life out of the home and into the public economy - to daycare centers and cafeterias and other public utilities. Part of the failure of this project was the failure of government participation - when ordinary people were stuck putting their domestic world into the public economy on their own wages, they got what they could afford - not much. But part of the problem may have come from the notion that political power for women mostly derived from participation in the public sphere in an economic sense - that is, that everyone was best served by getting as many women and men out doing "important" jobs as possible.

There have always been multiple feminisms, so what I am speaking here is of the dominant discourse, which is necessarily watered down by, as Tom Lehrer said of folk songs, "being written by the people." But the dominant discourse of feminism has valued the professional over the private, the money-earning over the work of not needing money, and found political pwoer there. And by pushing both women and men further out into the capitalist economic sphere, and saying that power is to be found there, we've been sold an anti-democratic bill of goods - the notion that the marketplace will fix all of our problems if we all just go out and make enough money to buy solutions has, of course, eroded our democracy.

Someone has to go home, if we are to cease externalizing our costs and deal with the hard realities. In some cases, that may not be possible - the very poor who have to take what work they can, single parents who have no one with whom to share domestic work, etc... these people have few choices. But many of the people reading this blog are not among them - most are middle class or better working families, and many do have better choices. And someone has to go home and stay there, simply because it is manifestly the case that turning domestic work over to the industrial economy is destroying us.

It is worth noting here that one of the reason capitalist feminism succeeded so well while other feminist discourses were lost is that I doubt growth capitalists could have found a way to be happier if they'd commissioned a study. Over a few short decades, nearly every able bodied adult stopped doing work autonomously for themselves, stopped running the home economy (the word economy itself implies home management, not public life) and thus practicing things like frugality and getting along without industry, and started to create new businesses subcontracting out domestic work into industry. While feminism manifestly succeeded in creating more justice in some areas, in others, it simply managed to expand the creation of a new underclass, doing the unpleasant domestic labor we were all being "freed" from - the jobs we did at home, where no one told us what to do or how to do it.

Now I would strongly prefer that there be no distinction here between men and women -in my own marriage, for example, I do the majority of childcare and domestic work during the academic year, when Eric is teaching, and he does it during the summer when I am writing and farming. But this is not feasible for many families, and there are a number of factors, economic (men generally make more money than women), cultural (we have a prejudice against having men care for young children) and biological that are likely to lead to more women being at home than men, particularly younger women and women who choose to have children.

Historically speaking, women with young children who could not afford wet nurses did "women's work". A famous paper in anthropology by Judith Brown, "Note on the Division of Labor by Sex" observes that generally speaking, whether a lot of women do something in a society depends on its compatibility with childcare, whether the work met the criteria, which Brown defines as "...such activities have the following characteristics: they do not require rapt concentration...they are eaily interruptable and easily resumed once interrupted...they do not place the child in potential danger; and they do not require the participant to range very far from home." Making cloth and clothing, cooking, gardening, tending small animals, gathering wild foods... this was women's work to a large degree.

That is not to say that women didn't do other work. But generally speaking, traditional women's work was designed to accomodate the realities of having young children for a decade or so of a woman's productive adult life. No society could afford to lose women's productive labor during the period of childbearing and rearing young children, so the society emphasized that sort of work. Nor could any society afford to lose children to the illnesses and death that faced those who were weaned early. There are other sorts of labor that are also child friendly - many cottage businesses, or even keeping shop, if the shop contains child space are suitable. Indeed, many more jobs could be made child friendly if we wanted them to be, and feminists have for years fought and lost this battle.

In many ways, our present society is even more insistent that we cannot "afford" to lose the productive labor of women during pregnancy, breastfeeding and early childhood. Because of that, industrial substitutes like formula and heavy-duty electric breast pumps are created so that children can be left with other women, and women can return to work that cannot be interrupted easily. With science doing its best to ensure that the consequences to children are less evident and longer-term, we have come to believe that breast is best, but only a tiny bit better, and that best of all is a little breast feeding, lots of attaching yourself (on your break time) to a pump machine and the eventual transition to formula, rather than, g-d forbid, not feeding the growth economy.

Worth reading in its entirety, even though one might want to quibble over the fine details.