The "Us vs. Them" Pope

There are good reasons why someone like Cardinal Raymond Burke would have made a terrible pope. At the crux of the matter there is the marked tendency he has shown to treat issues like ideological footballs which he would try to pick up and power down the field down his opponents throats. Now, that might make some sense when dealing with forces like a highly partisan and unfriendly to hostile to Catholicism press corps, like the one we suffer from here in the United States. Where it makes little to no sense is in the pastoral work of the church, where to do so is to divide the Church into issue groups, some labelled "friends," others labelled "enemies."

Unfortunately, if such is true of a Cardinal, it's is more true of a sitting pope and Pope Francis seems to have forgotten that fact, if he was ever aware of it at all. It has been the policy of many traditionalists to give Francis the benefit of the doubt, but it is becoming increasingly clear that he sees the world, and as a result the Church, as being filled with combating ideological camps. He's President Bush standing in front of us all and saying "you are either with us or against us." That Francis is being lionized by people who love neither the Church, nor the real flesh and blood human beings that make it up, and seems to be actively seeking their approval, makes me sad beyond words.

It's not that I didn't know it was coming. It's sort of like your own demise. It's one thing to acknowledge one's inevitable end. It's another to see it looming up before you.

"No One But Us Non-Bigots Here"

Head shaking time:

An Orange County couple has been ordered to stop holding a Bible study in their home on the grounds that the meeting violates a city ordinance as a “church” and not as a private gathering.

Homeowners Chuck and Stephanie Fromm, of San Juan Capistrano, were fined $300 earlier this month for holding what city officials called “a regular gathering of more than three people”.

That type of meeting would require a conditional use permit as defined by the city, according to Pacific Justice Institute (PJI), the couple’s legal representation.

The Fromms also reportedly face subsequent fines of $500 per meeting for any further “religious gatherings” in their home, according to PJI...

“The Fromm case further involves regular meetings on Sunday mornings and Thursday afternoons with up to 50 people, with impacts on the residential neighborhood on street access and parking,” City Attorney Omar Sandoval said.

Got that? So, if you want to hold weekly "readings" where you and 49 guests "discuss" Gary Regan's The Bartender's Bible: 1001 Mixed Drinks, well, there is nothing the city can do about it. Have fun. However, if you instead discuss the actual bible, well, then you are a "church" and can be regulated by the city as such.

Sorry folks, but this doesn't pass the smell test.

Only an anti-religious bigot would be okay with this.

Hmm...The Dalai Lama Doesn't Seem To Be A Very Good Buddhist

Um, let's just say this is interesting:

Usually what we hear from the Dalai Lama is an insistant yet soothing voice for compassion and peace.

So Tsering Namgyal, a journalist based in Minneapolis, was jolted by the Dalai Lama's talk to 150 Chinese students this month at the University of Minnesota. Writing at Religion Dispatches, he says:

Midway through the conversation, His Holiness, much to their surprise, told them "as far as socio-political beliefs are concerned, I consider myself a Marxist ... But not a Leninist," he clarified....

Marx was not against religion or religious philosophy per se but against religious institutions that were allied, during Marx's time, with the European ruling class.

Wow. This is spectacularly wrong, and I can hardly see how this could be a matter of opinion. (This is true looking at it from either the philosophical or historical point of view.) Marx was very clearly against religion per se. You see, Marx was a materialist. He denied the very possibility of real spiritual existence. The only meaning which can exist for a Marxist is a meaning based upon the relationship of thing to thing, e.g. workers to the means of production, the individual to the superstructure of the state, the worker alienated from the product of his labor, etc.

How can such a materialism be squared with the basic tenets of Buddhism? Well, it cannot, not without making Buddhism a dead thing.

Which would be fine by the Chinese....

Dumb On Oh So Many Levels

The Board of Regents for the University of Wisconsin System must not be very bright people. From FIRE:

The University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents recently filed a petition asking the Supreme Court to review a Seventh Circuit decision that invalidated the University of Wisconsin's policies governing funding for student organizations. The Seventh Circuit held that Wisconsin's policy of denying student activity fee funding to student organizations who wish to use the money for worship, proselytizing, or religious instruction violated the First Amendment. The University of Wisconsin now seeks to undo prior Supreme Court precedent holding that the denial of funding to religious organizations unconstitutionally penalizes groups for their particular viewpoint, and that funding religious groups does not violate the Establishment Clause.

Indeed, if you bother to read the Seventh Circuit's opinion, it becomes clear this is a well travelled area of law with clearly holding, and recently affirmed, precedents readily apparent. Well, readily apparent to everyone but the tin eared members of the Wisconsin Board of Regents.

This is a particularly stupid course of action for two reasons: 1) In an era of tight financial constraints at the state level, the idea of spending even an additional dime on a quixotic effort to remove First Amendment rights for Catholics and other religious groups, is suspect at best. At worst it shows an "out to lunch"-ness that speaks of the worst kind of ideological fervor imaginable. 2) Given the political environment in Wisconsin presently, where a new hard line Republican governor will be able to work with a new Republican held state legislature on whatever they want to do, this action of the Regents is asinine. Republicans already view academia as suspect, so the Regents decide to act in as spendthrift a manner as possible, and as hostile to religion as possible.

So, the Regents are wrong on the legal merits, and have shown all the political instincts of Herbert Hoover looking at the Great Depression.

Bang up job guys.

Our Cultural Ignorance Shocks Me

I saw this and cringed: Lincoln Was 'The Man' First

Abraham Lincoln wasn't just honest. He was The Man! long before Shaq and others who claim that title. The recently reopened Ford's Theatre Museum reveals that among the artifacts it may display is a Lincoln inaugural medallion etched with these words: "Thou Art The Man." Gloria Swift, museum curator, says, "Every time I hear the current phraseology of that, I'm always thinking of that coin, and I'm like, oh, yeah, let me tell you, it goes way back."

Look, I'm not a huge Bible reader, but even I looked at this and thought "This has to come from scripture."

Sure enough.

2 Samuel 12:7-11

And Nathan said to David, Thou art the man. Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, I anointed thee king over Israel, and I delivered thee out of the hand of Saul;And I gave thee thy master's house, and thy master's wives into thy bosom, and gave thee the house of Israel and of Judah; and if that had been too little, I would moreover have given unto thee such and such things.

Wherefore hast thou despised the commandment of the LORD, to do evil in his sight? thou hast killed Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and hast taken his wife to be thy wife, and hast slain him with the sword of the children of Ammon.

Now therefore the sword shall never depart from thine house; because thou hast despised me, and hast taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be thy wife.

Thus saith the LORD, Behold, I will raise up evil against thee out of thine own house, and I will take thy wives before thine eyes, and give them unto thy neighbor, and he shall lie with thy wives in the sight of this sun.

The connection is pretty obvious, although Lincoln seems to be being equated with Nathan and not king David in that it is Lincoln who is informing us of our sins and leading us towards repentance.

No wonder my students cannot make such connections. Even our journalists can't.

Depressed

It is hard to watch the debacle going on at the formerly Catholic Notre Dame University. It has gotten to the point that if you do not want to make "accommodations" with the most extreme of pro-abortion agendas, well, the president of Notre Dame will call you a member of the Ku Klux Klan.

Nice.

I suppose I shouldn't be depressed by this turn of events. After all, it isn't as if I didn't predict them in a sense. In the second post I ever wrote for this blog I noted the following:

The object of this kind of writing, from... liberal Catholics... seems to be [the creation of] a Catholic church that will be safe for the party platform of the Democratic party. Indeed, it is hard to distinguish where the one ends and the other begins. This need to "update" the Catholic church so that it is nearly identical with this or that contemporary political ideology troubles me. I feel the church plays a much more important role as a counter-cultural force. The church is supposed to represent eternal truths, not this decades fashions. Historically the church has gotten itself into trouble by being too of its time, not too little. The sad history of popes as petty tyrants playing out their games of political power is not a pretty one. But it is a history that will be repeated if the church gets involved in remaking itself in the image of our contemporary political institutions. However, the drive that impels the [liberal Catholics] of this world is strong. Anyone who opposes their vision is for them, well, a Nazi.

And, in the short run, I think [they] will win. That is why I consider myself a "partial Catholic." The wind has been blowing cold for some time. The church will be fundamentally altered in my lifetime, and the post Vatican II church in all its successes and failings, will cease to exist. So I keep my distance. It would be too painful for me to be a full blown Catholic.

And, a little over two years ago I noted the following in a discussion about the troubles in the Episcopal church:

The reason I'm interested in this sad spectacle is I'm sure this is exactly how things will play out in the Catholic Church once the "progressives" reach the majority. This movement represents the complete politicization of religion. By that I mean, this is the strongest expression of the belief that political ideology, of the "correct" sort, is the preeminent "moral" principle by which every category of human existence must be measured. Therefore everything, including religious beliefs, must be made subservient to ideology. It was once said that the Catholic Church made philosophy the handmaiden of theology. Well, the Episcopal Church is now attempting to make theology, political ideology's bitch.

Could the sad spectacle going on in Indiana be viewed as anything else but the movement of such an ideology into the "mainstream" of "Catholic" thought? I really don't see how it could be viewed as anything else.

I knew it would happen.

Somehow it isn't comforting.

Islam, A Religion Of Peace?

Sorry folks, I ain't buying it. Oh, not because of the existence of Islamic fundamentalism (there are nutjobs everywhere), but because of stories, like this one, concerning "main stream" Islam: Why is this 'Conservative' News?

It appears that the following story is “conservative” news or, even worse, “Christian” news.

I cannot figure out why this is the case. Readers, perhaps you can enlighten me.

It seems, to me, that this is a story that combines elements of women’s rights and freedom of religion, both of which are strong themes in the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Old-fashioned liberals used to have strong feelings about these kinds of human-rights issues.

Here is a short report from a Christian news source. Notice, however, that the report originated with mainstream-media sources in the region:

Reports are coming in of increasing persecution of Christian believers in the Saudi Arabia. A Saudi man recently cut the tongue of his daughter and burned her to death for converting to Christianity, according to a report by the United Arab Emirates-based Gulf News. The victim frequently wrote on various Web site blogs about her conversion from Islam. It is believed that she converted to Christianity after learning about the faith on the Internet and through Christian media.

The girl’s father is an employee of Saudi Arabia’s Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice — the arm of the government that enforces the nation’s prohibition of Christianity and conversion to Christianity. Sources close to the victim said that the father was being investigated for “honour killing” rather than murder, Gulf News reported. Shariah-ruled Saudi Arabia, where all Christian worship is forbidden, is ranked No. 2 on Open Doors’ 2007 World Watch List of nations where Christians are persecuted for their faith.

Under the kingdom’s strict interpretation of Islamic law, apostasy is punishable by death if the accused does not recant.

The answer of course is ideological. The media would rather not cover human rights abuses done by Muslims against Jew or, especially, Christians because they have a world view that requires their myopia. For some reason, for these people, standing silent while human beings are butchered because of their faith is counted as tolerance.

Of course it isn't "tolerance." In fact, the silence of the media is so damning they are close to being accomplices.

Large segments of Islam are fundamentally at war with the Human Rights Conventions embraced by most of the rest of the world. This is happening not only in the villages and caves of Afghanistan, but also in the spiritual heartland of Mecca, and the cities and towns of Europe and North America, where the murdering of children is held up as something "honorable" instead of being recognized as the barbarism it very clearly is.

Real "peace" is a matter of deeds not words.

A Novel Excuse

So, McCain does much better than Obama in a televised forum dealing with religious issues. Why is that exactly? Well, Team Obama has the answer:

“Of course McCain looked good,” the anonymous Obama aide said. “He didn’t have to worry about how his answer would be perceived. He didn’t have to work to recall his talking points. He didn’t have to think, or even try to look like he was thinking. All he had to do was blurt out what he believed. Clearly, this gave him an unfair advantage, and we think the American people will see this for what it is…another Republican smear tactic.”

The aide added: "Yeah, McCain has to just say what he believes while we have to lie through our teeth. I mean, c'mon, what kind of moron believes all that bible crap anyway??"


(Gleaned from Right Wing Nation)

UPDATED: Changed to make it clearer that I know what Scrappleface is. I guess I was too subtle.

Bare Minimum Christianity

It has been a little strange to see the attempts to "normalize" the ideas behind folks like Rev. Wright and Trinity Church. The left of center meme has been to act as if views of Wright and Co. are just another Christian denomination, the intellectual and moral equivalent of Methodists or Lutherans. In fact, they have no problem comparing Wright, favorably, to Martin Luther King.

In a sense, it could be argued that this is simply an expression of the liberal adherence to the principle of religious freedom embodied by the First Amendment. In such a view, we are a country populated by a plethora of religious creeds, and as a nation our strength is measured more by our diversity than our uniformity. Thus, if some version of faith strikes you as outlandish, well that is simply the price of admission. Such a view makes some sense until you note the left of center penchant for trashing various forms of evangelicalism at the drop of a hat. So, I don't really think the pass Rev. Wright is getting could be explained away as simple reticence to criticize anyone's religion.

So, what exactly is going on? I would argue that there seems to be modicum of religious ignorance and a lack of theological sophistication on the part of many on the left. Many of the commentariat seem to hold some variation of Christopher Hitchens' belief that all religions are basically a legitimized form of organized crime. They are all frauds, so says this belief system, so how can you make any meaningful distinction between them? After all, there is no such thing as a more sincere con job.

The big problem with this view is the overwhelming majority of Americans believe there is a big difference between being a Catholic or a Lutheran, and being a Branch Davidian or a Ralien. Once you go down the road of saying there are indeed distinctions and judgements that can be legitimately made about different religious groups, it demands a greater basis of knowledge and a certain level of theological sophistication in order to make such judgements.

Now, obviously, Wright's Trinity Church or the Raliens or the Episcopalians, all enjoy equivalent legal protections under the Constitution, but that is not the same as saying they are all morally equivalent. Additionally, one's commitment to the legal protections of the Constitution does not preclude our being able to make moral distinctions between belief systems. As a result, blanket assertions that it is "un-American" to examine or take into account a person's religious thinking are simple nonsense. To undertake such judgements in no way alters the legal protections religious faiths enjoy, which is all that is demanded of us under our system of law. It is un-American to force someone to espouse Lutheran theology. It is in no way un-American to determine the Raliens are a bunch of nutjobs.

So, what kind of judgements can we draw about Rev. Wright and his church built upon the "black liberation theology" of James Cone? For starters, it doesn't seem to be a particularly Christian church. By that, I mean its motivating principles seem to derive less from the life and teaching of Jesus Christ than they do from the writings of Vladimir Lenin and Mao Tse-tung. The language of Wright's church is not that of grace and the love of God for his children on Earth. Instead, a vision of a politicized church built upon a rather clumsy and simplistic transposition of Lenin's essay on "Imperialism" (itself not a model of intellectual brilliance) is put forward in place of the Christian gospel. Where Lenin railed against the exploitation of the un-industrialized nations by the industrialized nations in a statist version of the Marxist idea of class struggle, Wright/Cone offer a vision of racial exploitation that can only be overcome by the "destruction" of the criminal race (i.e. whites.)

If this is what this perspective is politically, what can we say about it as a religion? From a religious perspective the question becomes what sort of claim such a view could have to being called "Christian" at all. (This is assuming that something being "Christian" is not merely a question of self-identification. For example, whatever variation there might be in the definition of "Vegan," you cannot legitimately claim to be a Vegan if you wear leather and eat veal four times a week.)

In my opinion, it seems unlikely that the political goals advocated by the Wright/Cone ideology can be squared with the bare minimum requirements of religious Christianity. In fact, the Wright/Cone vision requires the direct repudiation of the teachings of Christ. For example, whatever Christianity is it must allow for "Christians" of any race or ethnicity. For Wright/Cone only blacks can be "true" Christians. Christianity has always been built around the idea that Jesus Christ came not as a political revolutionary promising liberation for a specific people only, as many messianic Jews had been expecting for generations, but was instead sent for all mankind. But for Wright/Cone the only legitimate work of God is for the benefit of blacks and blacks alone. Such a view represents not just an "unusual interpretation" of Christianity, but a direct repudiation of it.

There are a lot of differences between Christian denominations concerning the idea of the sacraments, the nature and role of clergy, the importance of church authority, the nature of grace, the nature of sin, the status of Mary, the teaching role of the Bible, and hundreds of others subjects. However, such differences do not touch upon the most basic and fundamental roots of what it means to be a Christian. Christ asked us to recognize that whenever two are more are gathered in his name he is there as well. He did not say he would only be present when two or more of the "correct" ethnicity were gathered. Any church that implies this is so will have a hard time upholding any claim to Christian-ness.

For the non-Christian all of this must seem like much ado about nothing. But even an ardent agnostic can legitimately look at the dodgy political ideology masquerading as religious belief in Barrack Obama's church and ask probing questions about it. If we are not allowed to ask the difficult questions including those touching upon the intersection of faith and politics, in a mistaken belief that it is "bad form," how can we ever know what Obama believes about anything?

Cross posted at Blue Crab Boulevard.

What Are We Supposed To Think?

You know....you try to be open minded and level headed about things, but when you read crap like this its an effort.

An Afghan journalist has been sentenced to death by a provincial court for distributing "blasphemous" material.

Sayed Perwiz Kambakhsh, 23, was arrested in 2007 after downloading material from the internet relating to the role of women in Islamic societies.

A primary court in Balkh province said that Kambakhsh had confessed to blasphemy and had to be punished.

The court also threatened to arrest any reporters who protested against Kambakhsh's sentence.

Kambakhsh, a student at Balkh University and a journalist for Jahan-e Naw (New World), was arrested in October 2007 after material he downloaded was deemed to be offensive to Islam.

Shamsur Rahman, the head of the court, told Reuters news agency: "According to... the Islamic law, Sayed Perwiz is sentenced to death at the first court.

"However, he will go through three more courts to declare his last punishment," he said.

Balkh province's deputy attorney general, Hafizullah Khaliqyar, warned other journalists that they would be arrested if they attempted to support Kambakhsh.

If this is acceptable, then there is no question that Islam is incompatible with liberal democracy. If this is acceptable, then there is no question but western nations should restrict Muslim immigration into their societies. If this is acceptable, then everything is acceptable.

If this is UNacceptable, then Muslims everywhere should get off their asses and do something about it.

If they don't they have no complaint when the West considers Islam nothing more than an excuse to repress women.

Distasteful? Maybe. Unconstitutional? Not Really.

Concerning Mitt Romney's speech on religion Jason Steck writes the following in a post entitled Religious Bigotry Lives:

Mormons are subjected to a double-whammy. At the same time that they are opposed by anti-Mormons who deem them a “non-Christian” “cult”, they are barred by anti-Christians who hate them because of their Christian religious beliefs. There exists, in effect, not one but two unconstitutional religious tests barring Romney and every other one of the millions of American Mormons from ever aspiring to the Presidency. That these two tests contradict each other in every way merely adds insult to injury.

I repeat here what I wrote there in the comments.

During the World Wars it was said that "Loose Lips Sinks Ships." Nowadays I think that idea should be revived as "Loose Terminology Sinks Ideas." The notion that since the government is not allowed to use religious tests as a prerequisite for holding political office then individual voters are not allowed to be uncomfortable with candidates who hold religious beliefs they find odd or downright weird is simple nonsense. We do not say that since the government cannot censor publications they dislike then any individual who chooses not to allow a copy of The Turner Diaries in their collection is guilty of censorship. The Constitution is a document that regulates the running of the mechanism of government, it is not a source of personal ethics. You may personally feel that voters shouldn’t ever take religious background into account, but that is nothing but the expression of your personal preference.

I myself would find it difficult to vote for a practitioner of voodoo, or a scientologist, or a believer in the divinity of Jim Jones, or someone who believes completely in astrology, therefore I cannot say that there is something inherently wrong with those people who are distrustful of Mormonism. Now, I may argue that their fears are exaggerated or completely misplaced, their ignorance too great to make any knowledgeable decision on the matter, etc., but that is an entirely different argument than the one made here.