John Robb, INCREDIBLE EDIBLE -- he gives a short profile of Incredible Edible and relates it to his concept of resilient communities.

From The New Atlantis:

The Climate E-mails and the Politics of Science

by Ivan Kenneally

The recently leaked e-mails from British climate scientists reveal a volatile combination of political ideology, unapologetic mendacity, and simmering contempt for dissent and disagreement. READ MORE

Other commentary from New Atlantis contributors:

• John Derbyshire: “The Climate-Change Scandal”
• Rand Simberg: “Climategate: When Scientists Become Politicians”
• Iain Murray: “Three Things You Absolutely Must Know About Climategate”
• Jonathan H. Adler: “Monbiot: Leaked CRU Docs a ‘Major Blow’”

Also on The World Over, from last Friday -- Fr. Thomas Williams, LC. "Fr. Thomas Williams, LC, ThD talks about his new book 'Can God Be Trusted? Finding Faith in Troubled Times'." Will any of the LC/RC critics be weighing in on what he says?

Bio
Google Books: Who is my neighbor?: personalism and the foundations of human rights
CBS Early Show Talks with Fr. Thomas Williams - Regnum Christi
The Foundations of the Free Society - The Acton Institute
Thomas D., LC Williams - Beyond Distributive Justice

I guess I'll be skipping The Prisoner remake: Imprisoned by David B. Hart. I'll just watch the original all the way through someday...

From the review:

Much of the program reflected both the intellectual stance and personality of its creator. Patrick McGoohan was a very likable but fairly flinty soul, by all accounts, with a gift for playing characters with a very sharp edge; he was also a believing Catholic with a deep streak of Christian humanism in his vision of reality, whose moral convictions were firm and non-negotiable. An old story says that he turned down the role of James Bond because he objected to the idea of a hero whose chief accomplishments were killing and copulating at random. His most famous character before Number 6 was John Drake (who, incidentally, may actually be the same character as Number 6), the protagonist of Danger Man (or, as it was called in this country, Secret Agent), far and away the most intelligent entry in the fanciful espionage genre of the 1960s; and it is remarkable now, when one reviews that program, that its central character—a handsome man in a dangerous line of work—is entirely devoid of any impulse towards brutality or promiscuity. And yet, for many of us who came of age watching him, McGoohan was the very quintessence of what it was to be cool.

An interview with Jim Caviezel on The World Over. I was looking forward to listening to the interview, but now I have some trepidation. What will he say in defense of his latest project?

Kinokuniya sells some Tenugui (traditional Japanese hand towel), along with traditional cloth gift/package wrappers. I was thinking of purchasing one, but they are expensive -- $13 to $15 each. Are they of better quality than the cheap cloths one can presumably get at WalMart? They do look better though. But would I put it to use? Perhaps, if someone would teach me how to tie it around my head.

(source of photo)

Jun Gifts
Tenugui (Hand Towel) - KENDO

Thanksgiving

Don't get me wrong -- I enjoy spending Thanksgiving with family, and this year with Sarge and his family friends. Still, why shouldn't I be reflective about this national holiday? It seems reasonable to find the source of various harvest/thanksgiving festivals in the Fall harvest, no? Thanksgiving, having agrarian roots, thus has an intimate connection to a place and its seasons (and climate).

I do not know if local Churches have ever set aside a day to specifically give thanks to our Lord for the harvest, or if this was just remembered during the day's liturgies.

Then what of the American holiday Thanksgiving? I was reminded that it was instituted by none other than Abraham Lincoln, but permanently recognized by Congress 75 years later. The pilgrims are not named in Lincoln's proclamation. How then did they assume such a prominent place in the the national myth of Thanksgiving? Is it because the Northeastern elites were able to assume national power?

Setting aside the question of how much of an orthodox Christian Lincoln really was (as opposed to someone who made use of Biblical language in his rhetoric in order to strengthen public support and resolve and to turn the War to Prevent Southern Independence into a crusade), we can ask whether celebrating a national holiday is consonant with localist aspirations.

Bill Kauffman writes in his The Grinch Who Moved Thanksgiving:

George Washington issued the first National Thanksgiving Proclamation on November 26, 1789, but the early presidents, disproportionately Virginian and of a states’ rights disposition, regarded such proclamations as excessively Yankee and Federalist. Even John Quincy Adams, the ultimate codfish President, was reluctant to be seen as “introducing New England manners” by a public acknowledgement of Thanksgiving.

Before the Civil War, Thanksgiving was a state holiday, the date of which was determined by the state. According to Bill Kauffman, this continued to be the case even after Lincoln set the precedent for a national holiday. Given the prominence and influence of the National Government, is it any surprise that the national holiday would eventually supplant the others, and become the only Thanksgiving holiday to be recognized by most people?

Given the lateness of the current holiday, and its almost complete separation from our dependence upon food and farms (it being more tied instead to the harvest of the pilgrims that saved them from starvation) and the increased secularization of the country, most of us do not celebrate Thanksgiving as a harvest feast. For example, most give thanks for all of the good things that have happened during the year, or since the last Thanksgiving, rather than for the fruits of the recent harvest. I suspect that less and less of us celebrate it as a religious feast, although some Catholics and Christians may try to bring religion back into it, and this can even be seen in the liturgical texts for the day. But read Fr. Kocik's Thanksgiving Day Mass? No, thanks.

In many ways Thanksgiving embodies what is currently wrong with America, more so than Commercialmas or Consumermas. It is inseparably linked to the rise of the National Government and the Yankee National Myth. There is very little public recognition of God, at least in the schools and government offices, even if certain leaders pay lip service to Him (but do not do His will in drafting laws). And last but not least, by accommodating to our disordered political economy and severing its links to the local harvest, it fails to make us aware of our need for farms to get food and ingrain within us a healthy respect for the agrarian foundation of an advanced (if not civilized) political community.

In response to Opuscula's Thanksgiving and Christ the King (the author appears to following the 20th century national glorification of Washington and Lincoln as the two greatest presidents), I would only say that if we owe God thanksgiving and worship, this should be done everyday (most suitably in the liturgy), not just on one day of the year that is specially set aside for it. What we should recover instead is an awareness of where our food comes from, and our natural limits -- the awareness of the farming cycle and of harvests from which we get our food then should be the occasion of a particular thanksgiving to God for meeting our needs for physical sustenance. And if we are serious about this, we should move the holiday towards a date when the local harvest has been completed, while promoting local food production.


Thanksgiving Proclamation by Abraham Lincoln
alt
Weekly Standard: Abraham Lincoln's Thanksgiving

Orbis Catholicus: Rev. Dr. Pierre Blet, S.J. (1918 - 2009): R.I.P.

Karen De Coster, Gun Owners: “Not Without a Fight”

Clayton E. Cramer, Armed America (his blog)

Interview with Charles Goyette

Link courtesy of Thomas Woods.

Fr. Z: My view of Benedict’s XVI’s sermon for 1st Vespers in this new liturgical year

Pope Benedict XVI celebrates the First Vespers on the occasion of the first week of Advent in Saint Peter's Basilica at the Vatican November 28, 2009. (Reuters/Daylife)

Pope Benedict XVI delivers his blessing during a Vespers Mass in St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican, Saturday, Nov. 28, 2009. (AP/Daylife)


Sandro Magister: The Homilies of Benedict XVI: A Model for a Confused Church

This is interesting: Go Forth and Baptize. The Wager of the Argentine Church

Cardinal Bergoglio and other bishops are ordering that baptism not be withheld from those who are far removed from religious practice. Better a Church of the people than one only of the pure. Ratzinger also thinks this way

From the article:

What reemerges here is the ancient and still unresolved dispute between a Church of the elite, a pure, minority Church, and a Church of the masses, populated also by that immense sea of humanity for whom Christianity is made up of a few simple things.

In Italy, for example, the dispute came up again during the last major national conference of the Church, held in Verona in October of 2006. On that occasion, one position held by the "rigorists" was precisely that of withholding baptism and the other sacraments from those believed to be unfit because they are not practicing.

It is a dilemma that Joseph Ratzinger himself experienced personally as a young man, and finally resolved in the same direction indicated by Cardinal Bergoglio. This is what, as pope, Ratzinger himself said in replying to the question from a priest of Bressanone, in a public question-and-answer session with the clergy of the diocese on August 6, 2008.

The priest, named Paolo Rizzi, a pastor and professor of theology, asked Benedict XVI a question about baptism, confirmation, and first communion:

"Holy Father, 35 years ago I thought that we were beginning to be a little flock, a minority community, more or less everywhere in Europe; that we should therefore administer the sacraments only to those who are truly committed to Christian life. Then, partly because of the style of John Paul II's Pontificate, I thought things through again. If it is possible to make predictions for the future, what do you think? What pastoral approaches can you suggest to us?".

Pope Ratzinger responded:

"I must say that I took a similar route to yours. When I was younger I was rather severe. I said: the sacraments are sacraments of faith, and where faith does not exist, where the practice of faith does not exist, the Sacrament cannot be conferred either. And then I always used to talk to my parish priest when I was Archbishop of Munich: here too there were two factions, one severe and one broad-minded. Then I too, with time, came to realize that we must follow, rather, the example of the Lord, who was very open even with people on the margins of Israel of that time. He was a Lord of mercy, too open – according to many official authorities – with sinners, welcoming them or letting them invite him to their dinners, drawing them to him in his communion.

"Therefore I would say substantially that the sacraments are naturally sacraments of faith: when there is no element of faith, when First Communion is no more than a great lunch with beautiful clothes and beautiful gifts, it can no longer be a sacrament of faith. Yet, on the other hand, if we can still see a little flame of desire for communion in the faith, a desire even in these children who want to enter into communion with Jesus, it seems to me that it is right to be rather broad-minded.

"Naturally, of course, one purpose of our catechesis must be to make children understand that Communion, First Communion is not a 'fixed' event, but requires a continuity of friendship with Jesus, a journey with Jesus. I know that children often have the intention and desire to go to Sunday Mass but their parents do not make this desire possible. If we see that children want it, that they have the desire to go, this seems to me almost a sacrament of desire, the 'will' to participate in Sunday Mass. In this sense, we naturally must do our best in the context of preparation for the sacraments to reach the parents as well, and thus to – let us say – awaken in them too a sensitivity to the process in which their child is involved. They should help their children to follow their own desire to enter into friendship with Jesus, which is a form of life, of the future. If parents want their children to be able to make their First Communion, this somewhat social desire must be extended into a religious one, to make a journey with Jesus possible.

"I would say, therefore, that in the context of the catechesis of children, that work with parents is very important. And this is precisely one of the opportunities to meet with parents, making the life of faith also present to the adults, because, it seems to me, they themselves can relearn the faith from the children and understand that this great solemnity is only meaningful, true and authentic if it is celebrated in the context of a journey with Jesus, in the context of a life of faith. Thus, one should endeavour to convince parents, through their children, of the need for a preparatory journey that is expressed in participation in the mysteries and that begins to make these mysteries loved.

"I would say that this is definitely an inadequate answer, but the pedagogy of faith is always a journey and we must accept today's situations. Yet, we must also open them more to each person, so that the result is not only an external memory of things that endures but that their hearts that have truly been touched. The moment when we are convinced the heart is touched – it has felt a little of Jesus' love, it has felt a little the desire to move along these lines and in this direction, that is the moment when, it seems to me, we can say that we have made a true catechesis. The proper meaning of catechesis, in fact, must be this: to bring the flame of Jesus' love, even if it is a small one, to the hearts of children, and through the children to their parents, thus reopening the places of faith of our time."

Baptism requires responsibility on the part of the pastor or priest (and the godparents) to ensure that the children are properly raised as Catholic. But what if there is very little possibility of this happening? If the parents are not practicing but acknowledge that the children must be properly formed, and sincerely pledge themselves to see that this is done, then the children should be baptized. But if baptism is treated merely as a cultural event, or if the parents do not care to see that the children are raised properly? Or worse, what if the home situation is scandalous? The words of the Pope do not seem to me to support the claim that he is so "lax" regarding the giving of the sacraments.

Dr. Paul Gottfried responds to Dr. Fleming and Matthew Roberts: Christian Heresies.

What is the relationship between Christianity and liberalism/the Enlightenment. Is liberalism a Christian heresy? Dr. Gottfried isn't the only one to advance this claim, but is Dr. Fleming merely saying that "the Enlightenment and Christianity are clean different things"? Or is it more nuanced than that? Are the two writers really that opposed?

Fortunately, or unfortunately, I have never held the view that is ascribed to me. Two of my books, one on multiculturalism and the other on the post-Marxist Left, should make this clear. My writings present my perspective on the relation between Christianity and the Enlightenment and between both of these and our current neoconservative and multicultural afflictions. What I do not deny in my work is the obvious. There is, indeed, an egalitarian, universalist side to Christianity, unlike Judaism or Hinduism, and it can be found in the Gospels and the Pauline Epistles. This remains the case, however much Fleming’s confession incorporated Roman hierarchical structures and distinctions and however much the Protestant Reformation became identified with European nationalist movements. Nor does the recognition of these anti-elitist elements signify the belief that Christianity is reducible to them. A specific divine revelation and the very unprogressive doctrine of Original Sin most emphatically distinguish Christianity from modern political dogmas, although here attention must be paid to the usability of the belief in inborn sinfulness in its transformed version as the doctrine of inherited social guilt. It is this transformed sense of individual and collective culpability that characterizes most current forms of Political Correctness.

But egalitarianism is not the same as universal love, which, in turn, is not the same as tolerance. How are human beings equal, according to Christianity? They are equal with respect to their nature, origin, and end, but not with respect to their endowments or the graces that they receive from God. Does Christianity require that rulers provide for equality of opportunity or condition, or of results? Not really. How much of the "egalitarianism" that is promoted by liberalism reducible to basic notions of justice and benevolence, as can be understood through the Natural Law? (And similarly, notions of hierarchy and distinction of respect?)

Dr. Gottfried writes:

But what seems to me undeniable is that some degree of connection does exist between Protestantism in its purest form and its current American liberal manifestations and between Christianity in general and the Enlightenment. Muslims or Jainists did not develop Enlightened or democratic ideas, except to the extent that they borrowed them from Western Christian cultures.

But what sort of egalitarianism is being borrowed, and from what source? Is egalitarianism just an empty slogan used by demogogic democrats to stir up the masses and give them support? How much of liberalism finds its source in debased republicanism and opposition to Christianity, rather than in debased teachings of Christianity?

It's Obama's War Now By GARY LEUPP
A "Necessary War" -- for a Gas Pipeline

2 on Dubai

Crisis in Dubai By MIKE WHITNEY
JHK

How can that kind of wastefulness not be a mortal sin?

Edit. One more, by Paul J. Cella: Dubai and the failure of the modern mind.

Zenit: On Christ, the Foundation of Hope
"He Is 'Flesh' Like Us, and Is 'Rock' Like God"

Wendell Berry on the Diane Rehm Show (via Patrick Deneen) -- ram, windows media.

Please pray for Mrs. O, who passed away this morning.

I had wanted to see her since her condition had gotten worse in the last half-year, but hadn't been able to do so because of work, and then there was the move. I was also told that her health also prevented her from receiving visitors often. But it would have been nice to see and talk to her again. Now I can only pray.

The Thinking Housewife: The Spiritual Alchemy of Oprah

NLM: Sunday and Festal Vespers from Norcia now Available Each Sunday and Feast Day

I'm back in California... Thank you to Sarge for a great Thanksgiving break!

A Chicken Bus and Other Lovely Portents of the Future

Gene Logsdon, The Contrary Farmer

Returning home from a new farmers’ market in Wooster, Ohio last Saturday (Nov. 21), I passed a scene in a farm field that might have said more about where farming is headed than any economist’s prediction I have seen lately. Out in a clover field stood a big yellow school bus full of chickens.

(original)

Obama as LBJ By FRANKLIN SPINNEY
Domestic Politics, Escalation and the Descent Into Chaos

Johsefin's Waltz


The composer of this piece:
Roger Tallroth on MySpace Music
Roger Tallroth - Sweden | Facebook

Uncle Earl - Bowling Green in Bowling Green!

THOUGHTS ON THE COMING CRASH by Richard W. (via the Thinking Housewife)

Rather premature? Some of the facts may not be in dispute, but the severity of current trends may be.

A review in the Canadian Military Journal of Dave Grossman.