The Sixteen have a blog for their Choral Pilgrimage.


The Sixteen sing "Verbum caro factum est"

Fr. José Antonio Fortea

Wow.

[I am leaving the original post for now, appending to the end of the post a defense of Dr. Reid that is based on information supplied in a comment. I do not know the person who left the comment, but I have no reason at this point in time to suspect that what she says is not true or that she is not who she claims she is. It is a relief to read that there is no evidence to back up the charges. Rather, this incident is just another instance of the animus of the secular media against the Church at work.]

Hrm... did a search and this turned up. Pell and 'sex deacon' at conference. See comments here and this thread at Angelqueen. (Catholic Culture has a round-up of news.) The same Alcuin Reid with whom we are faimliar? If it is, is there something else to the separation between him and Dr. Laurence Paul Hemming and Usus Antiquior? (An interview of Drs. Reid and Hemming, back when Dr. Reid was still an editor of the journal, has either been deleted or has disappeared. Dr. Hemming has been surrounded with some controversy as well.)

If the allegations are true, do they affect the quality of his scholarship? No, those arguments would have to be evaluated on their own terms, but it is not easy to separate the arguments from the man making them. They will reinforce in the minds of some the associations between liturgists and aesthetes with other things. Or they will be used by some to discredit the liturgical movement of the 20th century. (For example, there is one comment at the Angelqueen thread.) Will Dr. Reid complete the second volume of his history of liturgical reform in the 20th century?

I've found only a brief response by Dr. Reid so far, published in The Tablet:

Top liturgist refuses to be laicised

21 May 2010

A leading traditionalist Catholic on the verge of being ordained a priest in France has repeatedly refused to act on requests to seek laicisation, according to his former archdiocese where he was a deacon. Alcuin Reid, a liturgist in the Tridentine Rite who until recently was based in England, had his faculties as a deacon removed in 1991 by the then Archbishop of Melbourne, Frank Little. According to a statement issued by the present archbishop on Wednesday, the action was taken against Dr Reid “because of failure to comply with the vow of celibacy”. Archbishop Denis Hart went on to say that his predecessors in Melbourne including Cardinal George Pell had “all, without success, strenuously and repeatedly urged Scott [Alcuin] Reid to seek laicisation. He refused to act on all these requests”.

Archbishop Hart issued his statement to The Tablet after a report about Dr Reid’s private life as a seminarian appeared in the Melbourne daily The Age. Dr Reid’s faculties were reinstated by Bishop Dominique Rey of Fréjus-Toulon in France last year and it was expected that he would be ordained a priest this year.

Dr Reid told The Tablet that in 1991, following a confidential conversation with Archbishop Little, he had requested leave of absence from ministry as a deacon in Melbourne. He said this request had been granted by the archbishop and his faculties to act as deacon had been withdrawn. “My dealings with my superiors have always been transparent from the outset and I have hidden nothing from them,” he said, adding that he was as a deacon of the Fréjus-Toulon Diocese in good standing.

[This statement should have been enough for the reporter to do his own digging and to see what evidence there actually is, and to learn about the canonical procedures of the Church?]

I don't recall seeing any mention of the allegations in the traditionalist or liturgical blogs that I visit regularly. Perhaps this is to avoid the sin of detraction or calumny, or to avoid damaging someone's reputation without any evidence to substantiate a claim. But my searches have turned up this post at Fr. Z's blog: A brief comment about the stories concerning the author Alcuin Reid. A post at Australia Incognita. Damian Thompson.

Re-reading the article in The Age, I ask if certain facts aren't being interpreted in the worst possible light in order to substantiate the allegations? What is the truth of the matter? Sigh. At this moment I am doubting whether I should even "publish" this post. Newspapers report these sorts of claims all the time, but that doesn't make it right, even though in my case I am not supporting the allegations, merely noting them and adding some comments.

Edit. Please see the comment left by Eileen M. Ross, J.C.L. If there is no evidence to back up the allegation then the articles, as other commentators have pointed out, are just hit pieces making use of unsubstantiated allegations in order to harm the reputations of a prominent traditionalist liturgist and Pope Benedict XVI, and the Church in general. I hope in a few months that the articles are no longer at the top of the Google search results.

Where's the university's senses of priorities?

College football: Ave Maria coach working through growing pains to get Gyrenes on field in 2011 (via Fumare)

Antonius Divitis, Salve Regina

Calmer Waters: Jeremy Irons Plays a Man Known to History As a, Well, er...uh... A Nasty Pope

Check out the links in the post, especially Brideshead Reunited: actors reveal how acclaimed roles nearly never happened and Life after Brideshead.

Jeremy Irons to star in “The Borgias” for Showtime

'The Borgias': Jeremy Irons as Rodrigo Borgia first pic


The Borgias preview, Neil Jordan and Jeremy Irons talk Italian Renaissance

Zenit coverage of the papal delegate to the LCs

Decree Regarding Papal Delegate for Legionaries
He "Has the Power to Intervene Wherever He Sees Fit" [2010-07-24]

Papal Appointment of Delegate for Legionaries
"I Am Well Aware of the Importance of this Mission" [2010-07-24]

Delegate's Letter to Legionaries
"The Church Is With You; the Lord Is Merciful and Generous" [2010-07-24]

Karen De Coster interviews Mark Sisson

Primal Dissent – a Dialogue with Mark Sisson

Expanding upon the above question, I want to ask you about the modern approach to playtime. Everywhere I go I see fabricated, structured amusements geared toward children, and they are often sold as "educational" or "mind-expanding." McDonald’s, Burger King, etc. use monstrous and ugly "gyms" to attract and retain their future clientele. Splash parks, water parks, plastic climbing "gyms" – these all strike me as bizarre forms of convenient and arranged activity, taking away any creative ability on the part of parents, and certainly, the kids themselves. Nowadays, huge malls have become centers of perpetual entertainment – much of which is sold as "educational" or "exercise" – where whole families hang out to find amusement and fend off boredom. I see kids becoming entertainment junkies who do not have the capacity for creative, spontaneous, healthy play using their natural surroundings and the things around them.

As a kid, all of my play was unstructured and instinctual, and we simply adapted to the available resources and environment, and we created impromptu activities. We built snow forts; played hide-and-seek at dusk in the woods; raced paddleboats on the lake; constructed skate boards from scratch; spent hours in the lagoon looking for turtles and snakes; and on and on. Even a schoolyard was a great place to hang out and play many games all summer long. What part of our culture has brought on this madness that stifles human individuality and pre-packages playtime as a one-size-fits-all experience? Do you think it is the desire for ultimate convenience that creates a market for dumbed-down play, or is laziness a big part of the problem?

Part of it is simply the paranoia that pervades society now as we overly protect our kids. Somehow we’ve come to see our world as more dangerous than it was when we were kids; that maybe there are more perverts or child abductors lurking in the bushes; that the potential for broken bones or bloody noses has increased. I’m not sure there is actually any more danger now – in fact there’s probably less – but I see how parents coddle their kids, driving them a half mile to school when riding a bike or walking would be better for everyone, or arranging "play dates" across town instead of encouraging kids to explore every nook and cranny of their own neighborhood. Meanwhile, schools have dropped PE programs partly because of budgets and partly because of fear of being sued over a dodge ball game getting out of hand or the notion that being picked last will permanently scar a child. In this case, "no child left behind" means every child gets left behind.

Of course, the advent of 500 TV channels and the video game has disincentivized kids to even want to venture outside at all. Who knows what the effects of these super-graphic fantasy worlds are on a young psyche. I think games like World of Warcraft are literally setting kids up for a lifetime of inactivity, lost sleep, and delusion about what’s real and what’s imaginary. Some gamers have made pathetic attempts to involve kids in activities (Wii comes to mind) but it’s still a far cry from the outdoor experience that kids’ genes crave. We even did a post recently on the effect that smells in the woods have on health and well-being. No amount of primary-color-infused playground equipment can possibly take the place of a natural setting.

The only answer is to get back to that concept of play that we lived by as kids. When the box that a refrigerator came in was more fun than any store-bought toy. It may even be too late for some kids today, but I see more and more adults embracing play and exercise creativity as a newfound freedom from the confines of the gym. A major focus of my Primal Blueprint program is to help people rediscover the positive hormonal experience that play and natural movement promote within.

Sarge was encouraging me to get the CD when it comes out: Traditional Benedictine Nuns in France sign major recording contract. To be frank, I'm not so interested in another CD featuring the Solesmes interpretation...



BBC: Major record deal for reclusive Benedictine nuns
Australia Incognita: Le Barroux nuns' Decca CD

Related: Dom Saulnier's Guide to Chant online

John Médaille, Naive Experts: Economists and the Real World

A review of Robert E. Prasch, How Markets Work: Supply, Demand, and the ‘Real World’ (Edward Elgar: Northhampton, MA, 2009).

Obviously, there is some deep problem at the heart of economic science which prevents it from being a useful analytic or prescriptive tool. Let me suggest that the problem lies in the very name of that discipline, which is a new name, only about 100 years old. The study of economic systems is as old as Aristotle, but this study was always considered to be a branch of ethics, and the proper functioning of any economic system was believed to be dependent upon proper ethical arrangements. Adam Smith, for example, was himself a professor of Moral Theology. Through most of the 19th century, the science was known as political economy. As the name implies, an economic system was always viewed as something embedded within—and dependent upon—particular political and social institutions, and could not be studied apart from them. Further, political systems cannot be viewed apart from ethics. It was this connection with ethics that made the new “economists” uneasy. As one wag put it, they suffered from “physics envy,” and wanted to divorce their “science” from any moral considerations, making it solely a matter of pure calculation (as with the neoclassicals) or of pure deduction (the Austrians.) By the start of the 20th century, the term political economy disappeared from common usage and was replaced by the new “science” of economics, a “science” divorced from the moral world.

However, the elimination of ethics could only be accomplished by a ruthless reductionism: man was reduced to an “economic calculator” capable of acting only in self-interest, while all markets were reduced to a single model of supply and demand curves with a single, well-defined equilibrium points. The new homo oeconomicus was conceived as a pure individual with no natural ties and was no more than a collection of unfulfilled desires, always waiting for the entrepreneur to fill them up, while creating new wants. Thus, it is an economics designed for an alien race, built on markets of a single type. But are all men like this new creation, and are all markets like the one they modeled? In other words, does current economic theory bear any relationship to the real world?

Vincent Chiarello writes at VFR:

It should be remembered that President Bush also allowed greater female participation in combat zones, and saw no reason to rein in the increasingly larger role for women demanded by the feminists, including women coming back in body bags. Like affirmative action, the increasing role of women in the military will not change with the administration. True, there will be combat ready units in other branches of the service that can serve the nation's defense needs, but when the true test comes of this nation's ability to defend itself, women in the military, including the one who now commands a carrier strike group, and another who commands a carrier air wing, cannot but be an impediment to victory. To paraphrase, war is too important to be left to the politicians, especially one such as Barack Hussein Obama.

We're fortunate we're not fighting opponents who are equally matched.

Paul Craig Roberts makes some predictions

Only half-seriously? The Year America Dissolved.

It was 2017. Clans were governing America.

The first clans organized around local police forces. The conservatives’ war on crime during the late 20th century and the Bush/Obama war on terror during the first decade of the 21st century had resulted in the police becoming militarized and unaccountable.

As society broke down, the police became warlords. The state police broke apart, and
the officers were subsumed into the local forces of their communities. The newly formed tribes expanded to encompass the relatives and friends of the police.

The dollar had collapsed as world reserve currency in 2012 when the worsening economic depression made it clear to Washington’s creditors that the federal budget deficit was too large to be financed except by the printing of money.

The rise of the clans. That has some plausibility. But the rest? I'm not so sure.

Dave Lindorff, BP's Don't Ask Don't Tell Policy

The End of Capitalism? Part 2A. Capitalism and Ecological Limits

Alex Knight, The End of Capitalism

Interesting, but I don't agree with the author's gender politics:

This brutal violence against people of color was instrumental in the spread of capitalism across the planet. It was accompanied by a terrifying assault on women in the form of the witch hunts, which saw hundreds of thousands of women tortured and burned alive, according to Silvia Federici’s provocative and necessary book Caliban and the Witch: Women, The Body, and Primitive Accumulation.

The book documents how the Church and state used the witch hunts to persecute sexually rebellious women, such as those having sex out of wedlock, committing adultery, abortion or infanticide. They also targeted women who held respected professions in peasant communities, such as that of midwife, healer, or fortune teller. Federici sees this as a broad attack on women that created a new kind of patriarchal order. She explains that by the time the witch hunts came to an end in the 17th century, women in capitalist society had largely become enclosed within the prescribed roles of mother pumping out new workers, or unpaid houseworker. These are exactly the female roles that the new system of capitalism required of women, argues Federici, because women’s unpaid reproductive labor boosted capitalist profits just like the unpaid labor of the African slaves. Keeping women confined as housewives and mothers meant their labor was never valued, although this labor is necessary for the entire society to exist.

Women have pushed back against this paradigm and made dramatic gains in the past 50 years, especially in the Global North. But in the Global South the position of women has largely deteriorated as capitalism has penetrated.

This is the feminist understanding of economic history -- instead, it should be that these supposed gains are actually the exploitation of women by first inducing them, and then forcing them into the industrial workforce, which undercut the family wage. The rest of the essay is probably spot-on. What does he think the post-capitalist future will look like, if not a renewal of the domestic economy, which he doesn't respect?

The author's website.

James Howard Kunstler explains our current economic problems

What is it?

Let's call this whatever-you-want-to-call-it a compressive deflationary contraction, because that's exactly what it is, an accelerating systemic collapse of activity due to over-investments in hyper-complexity (thank you John Tainter). A number of things are going on in our society that can be described with precision. We've generated too many future claims on wealth that does not exist and has poor prospects of ever being generated. That's what unpayable debt is. We have such a mighty mountain of it that the Federal Reserve can "create" new digital dollars until the cows come home (and learn how to play chamber music), but they will never create enough new money to outpace the disappearance of existing notional money in the form of welshed-on loans. Hence, money will continue to disappear out of the economic system indefinitely, citizens will grow poorer steadily, companies will go out of business, and governments at all levels will not have money to do what they have been organized to do.

This compressive deflationary collapse is not the kind of cyclical "downturn" that we are familiar with during the two-hundred-year-long adventure with industrial expansion - that is, the kind of cyclical downturn caused by the usual exhalations of markets attempting to adjust the flows of supply and demand. This is a structural implosion of markets that have been functionally destroyed by pervasive fraud and swindling in the absence of real productive activity.

The loss of productive activity preceded the fraud and swindling beginning in the 1960s when other nations recovered from the traumas of the world wars and started to out-compete the USA in the production of goods. Personally, I doubt this was the result of any kind of conspiracy, but rather a comprehensible historical narrative that worked to America's disadvantage. Tough noogies for us. The fatal trouble began when we attempted to compensate for this loss of value-creation by ramping up the financial sector to a credit orgy so that every individual and every enterprise and every government could enjoy ever-increasing levels of wealth in a system that no longer really produced wealth.

This was accomplished in the financial sector by "innovating" new tradable securities based on getting something for nothing. That is what the aggregate mischief on Wall Street and its vassal operations was all about. The essence of the fraud was the "securitization" of debt, because the collateral was either inadequate or altogether missing. That's how you get something for nothing. The swindling came in when these worthless certificates were pawned off on credulous "marks" such as pension funds and other assorted investors.

Rorate Caeli: "In the center is the Eucharistic Jesus Christ, the tabernacle, the cross. That is where we must begin. Otherwise we lose the sense of the Divine."

The following is a translation of an interview with Msgr. Nicola Bux published on the blog Disputationes Theologicae on April 24, 2010. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first English translation of this particular interview to be published anywhere. Many thanks to the friends of Rorate who labored on this translation.

(via NLM)

Dierks Bentley, "Up On The Ridge"

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Some have said that the move by a "mainstream country" singer to bluegrass is good for bluegrass, but I have to say that every time I've heard "Up on the Ridge" on the radio, I haven't liked it.

His website.

Dierks Bentley's Up on the Ridge Branches Out
NASHVILLE SKYLINE: Dierks Bentley's Bluegrass Outing
Washington Post Album review: Dierks Bentley, "Up on the Ridge"

Rorate Caeli: The Reform of Holy Week in the Years 1951-1956: A translation of the study by Fr. Stefano Carusi IBP

Sarge sent me a link to this video. I haven't done enough research to know if it is 100% correct or not.

After Mass, Mr. and Mrs. W invited my mother and I to R&B in Palo Alto for lunch. The gai si chin min and gon chow ngau ho were ok, but oily, especially the second. I had the lunch special - jiu yim pai gwaat with fried rice. Alas, the pork did not taste fresh, and I could not recommend the restaurant for the second nephew's ginger and red egg banquet.

Tonight, despite my lack of appetite, my mother and I went to the Newark BJ's to meet up with KK, her husband, and nephew #1. The cute hostess who was there on Wednesday was there tonight. The parking lot was full, but with cars of patrons who were attending some party at Swiss House. Does BJ's have a policy of hiring only attractive wait staff?

At the DMZ

A North Korean soldier stands guard as South Korean soldiers (bottom) look at him on the south side of the truce village of Panmunjom in the demilitarised zone separating the two Koreas in Paju, about 55 km (34 miles) north of Seoul, May 19, 2010. South Korea has briefed the Chinese ambassador on its findings on the sinking of a navy ship widely believed to be the work of North Korea, an issue that has created tension between the two major Asian trading partners. (Reuters/Daylife)

A U.S. soldier, right, and a South Korean soldier stand guard at the truce village of Panmunjom in the demilitarized zone (DMZ) that separates the two Koreas since the Korean War, north of Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, May 26, 2010. North Korea threatened Wednesday to block all cross-border traffic and blow up any South Korean loudspeakers blasting propaganda northward after a six-year hiatus, as tensions soared over the sinking of a South Korean warship. (AP/Daylife)

A reporter speaks for a news report on technically the North Korean side of the truce village of Panmunjom as a South Korean soldier stands guard in the demilitarised zone separating the two Koreas, in Paju, about 55 km (34 miles) north of Seoul June 2, 2010. South Koreans voted in regional elections on Wednesday, a barometer of support for conservative President Lee Myung-bak as he tries to push through business-friendly reforms, with the North Korea standoff a key campaign issue while liberal oppositions has blamed Lee for provoking tension between two Koreas and not keeping his presidential election promises. (Reuters/Daylife)

A South Korean soldier keeps watch at the truce village of Panmunjom in the demilitarised zone separating the two Koreas, in Paju, about 55 km (34 miles) north of Seoul June 2, 2010. South Koreans voted in regional elections on Wednesday, a barometer of support for conservative President Lee Myung-bak as he tries to push through business-friendly reforms, with the North Korea standoff a key campaign issue while liberal oppositions has blamed Lee for provoking tension between two Koreas and not keeping his presidential election promises. (Reuters/Daylife)

A South Korean soldier stands guard in the United Nations Command Military Armistice Commission (UNCMAC) Conference Building at the truce village of Panmunjom in the demilitarised zone separating the two Koreas, in Paju, about 55 km (34 miles) north of Seoul June 9, 2010. (Reuters/Daylife)

A South Korean honor guard soldier holds U.S. and the South Korea's national flags during a rehearsal for the welcoming ceremony of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates in Seoul, South Korea Tuesday, July 20, 2010. Gates, who arrived on Monday, will be joined by Clinton on Wednesday for high-profile security talks with their South Korean colleagues, a meeting meant to underscore Washington's firm alliance with Seoul as the two nations plan military exercises in a message of deterrence to North Korea. (AP/Daylife)

A UN Command soldier (L) stands on duty as US Army Colonel Kurt Taylor (R) briefs US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (C) and US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates (2nd R) as a Korean People's Army soldier looks through the window at the truce village of Panmunjom in the Demilitarised Zone separating the two Koreas on July 21, 2010. Clinton arrived for a visit aimed at showing strong support for South Korea following a deadly naval attack blamed on North Korea. She and Defense Secretary Robert Gates visited the Demilitarised Zone dividing the two Koreas, before paying tribute to 46 South Korean sailors killed when their warship sank in March. (Getty/Daylife)

SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA- JULY 20: A soldier holds a challange coin presented to her by U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates at Camp Casey, on July 20, 2010 in Seoul, South Korea. Gates, who will join Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in talks with South Korean Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan and Gates' counterpart Kim Tae-young, greeted troops from the 1st Heavy Brigade and the 210 Fires Brigade. (Getty/Daylife)

How much did these individualized coins cost the US taxpayer?

ID the camo

A U.S. Army soldier from the 1-320th Alpha Battery, 2nd Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division searches an Afghan villager during a foot patrol towards COP Nolen, in the volatile Arghandab Valley, Kandahar, Afghanistan, Tuesday, July 20, 2010. (AP/Daylife)

A U.S. Army soldier from the 1-320th Alpha Battery, 2nd Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division points his rifle during a patrol towards COB Nolan, in the volatile Arghandab Valley, Kandahar, Afghanistan, Tuesday, July 20, 2010. (AP/Daylife)

A U.S. Army soldier provides cover during a patrol by the 1-320th Alpha Battery, 2nd Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division near COP Nolen, in the volatile Arghandab Valley, Kandahar, Afghanistan, Friday, July 23, 2010. (AP/Daylife)

A U.S. Army soldier puffs a cigarette while providing cover on a patrol by the 1-320th Alpha Battery, 2nd Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division near COP Nolen, in the volatile Arghandab Valley, Kandahar, Afghanistan, Friday, July 23, 2010. (AP/Daylife)

A U.S. Army soldier receives help while leaping an irrigation ditch during a patrol by the 1-320th Alpha Battery, 2nd Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division near COP Nolen, in the volatile Arghandab Valley, Kandahar, Afghanistan, Friday, July 23, 2010. (AP/Daylife)

Some UCP-D?

Our friend MB recommends the following address given by Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury at San Anselmo University: 'Benedict and the Future of Europe.'

Much of what he writes concerning communal life and the need for a more humane economy is good. The biggest objection I would have would be to his discussion of cultural diversity. Culturally diverse Christian polities in Europe? Wonderful. Cultural diversity within a political community? Problematic.

The community envisaged by the Rule is therefore not in any way a unit dominated by individual will, however strongly the injunctions may be phrased about surrendering to authority. That authority attempts to be, not representative in the modern sense, but at least systematically attentive to the diversity of character and experience within the community. Most significantly, perhaps, the community's discipline does not assume that there is a 'natural' order of precedence established by the world outside which dictates the degree to which you are taken seriously in the community. Seniority is a matter determined within the monastery (chapter 63), primarily related to the date of entry, except as the abbot may determine. It is, we could say, the scope of your involvement in the community's life that defines your standing, not any external criterion such as wealth or social status or education, or even chronological age. Put the other way around, no-one's voice in the community is automatically dismissed or minimised because of the lack of wealth, status and so on. The community is one in which the 'currency' of exchange is not restricted by social or historic accident; commitment to the community is the ground upon which the right to be heard is based.

Once again, how does all this relate to the questions we might want to put to our continent and its culture at the present time? The first point is obviously about the valuation of diversity in the Rule. It is not anything remotely resembling the rather passive pluralism, which seems to be the default position of many kinds of post modernity. There is a clear and unambiguous assumption that there is such a thing as a common good and that therefore each distinct diverse perspective is open to challenge; Benedictine obedience is to do with this, not with some generalised submission of one person's will to the power of another. But there is an equally unambiguous refusal of any sort of competitive struggle for the dominance of one individual or group, and a set of checks and balances to offset any risk attaching to the strong emphasis on the abbot's authority. Authority is the negotiating of a variety of gifts in order to sustain a society in which all are at work for the sake of each other's flourishing and (in the monastic context) holiness).

In the macro political scene, this implies a serious valuation of cultural diversity - of local language and custom - and a suspicion of those trends that associate authority either with an isolated professional class or with an economically dominant partner in the community of states. The bureaucratic urge to homogenise is one which Christians have every reason to resist; and the characteristic style of international planning and debate needs to allow the less materially advantaged partners a free voice. One of the more positive factors of some of the language of European politics in recent decades has been the emphasis on regional autonomy - a recognition that the solid and inflexible concepts of national sovereignty that have prevailed in the modern period cannot do full justice to actual cultural diversity and the need for appropriate local freedoms.

A European community (in the strict sense, and in the looser sense of the general geographical ensemble of European countries) that reflected something of the Benedictine vision would be one in which smaller nations and minorities within nations would be assured of a voice. And, to pick up a point that is especially pertinent in our present situation, it would be one that did not panic about migrants. The migrant group that is prepared to work within the civic framework of a host society, that aspires simply to citizenship, is one whose voice in the community overall is of significance alongside those who have a longer history and a political or economic advantage. Once within the relationships of purposeful common life, the facts of coming from ethnically or religiously different backgrounds should not disenfranchise them. The basic importance of 'obedience', in the full sense give by the Rule to that word, requires governing authorities to listen to diversity and to ask how the overall balance of nation or transnational grouping needs to be adjusted so as to incorporate both the gifts and the needs of the incoming stranger who is seeking not simply hospitality (the Rule's priorities are clear about what to do in such a case) but shared belonging.

How this is achievable when we confront groups whose basic assumptions about civic identity appear to be different from our own historic ideals is of course a major challenge. While it is a facile and dangerous fiction to think of Islamic civic ideals and Christian or Western ones as so different that they cannot be sensibly compared, there is undoubtedly a spectrum of understanding from the ideologically secular liberal through to the most inflexible Muslim primitivist (the kind who elects to ignore most of Islamic history and jurisprudence in favour of a supposed adherence to the bare data of initial revelation). But once we have stopped thinking of this as inevitably a standoff between rational pluralism and simple theocracy - once we have actually begun to think about how to conduct debates over civic identity across some of these frontiers - the way is open to a properly 'Benedictine' questioning as to how we shape a common civic purpose out of these new diversities rather than assuming that this is now a level of diversity with which we can't cope.

I think he is rather optimistic about a community formed in a Christian Western civilization being able to maintain some semblance of harmony when cultural diversity is extended to include (a sizable population of) Muslims.

Democrats and Jihadists: A Love Affair by R. Cort Kirkwood

Pontificio Ateneo S. Anselmo

Thomas Molnar, RIP

The Society of St. Hugh of Cluny: Professor Thomas Molnar: In Memoriam.

Related:
Utopia, The Perennial Heresy
ISI archive
Thomas Molnar: The Counter-Revolution
wiki
Academic Dictionaries

Once Upon a Time in Mumbai

official, FB



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Making Of