Faith, Reason and Lunacy

A funny thing happened on the way down the slippery slope at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin: someone dared utter, “STOP!”

Father Robert A. Wild, president of the university, rescinded the offer of a deanship made to Dr. Jodi O’Brien, currently a professor of sociology at Seattle University. Why? A quick glance at O’Brien’s curriculum vitae pretty well answers the question. Some highlights: How Big is Your God? Queer Christian Social Movements; Seeking Normal? Considering Same Sex Marriage; Wrestling the Angel of Contradiction: Queer Christian Identities; “Do it on the Web" Emerging Discourses on Internet Sexuality; Phone Sex, Fantasy and Disembodiment.

Oddly Wild felt that perhaps the author of such material might not be the best person to publically represent the 119 year old Catholic institution’s College of Arts and Sciences, the largest of the university.

Naturally all hell has broken loose.

Charges of homophobia (had we mentioned O’Brien is a lesbian?), sexism, intolerance, and injustice swarm like locusts. Legal complications regarding the botched handling of the offer process have defenders of Wild and the university laying low. And fingers are pointing in all directions as to how the offer was ever made in the first place.

Behold the fruits of political-correctness. Marquette, like nearly every other institution of higher learning in America, has long been bending over backwards to appease the ever-increasingly preposterous demands of the champions of that which is politically fashionable: gay rights, multiculturalism and, of course, “social justice.” That among these champions—many of whom are in positions of considerable influence—are some who, by their efforts, seek not to further Marquette’s Catholic Jesuit mission but to destroy it, has likely never occurred to university leadership. Perhaps now it has.

Would that this awakening and subsequent attempts to gain footing so far down the post-Vatican II free fall proves not only successful, but seminal to the Church’s long lonely climb back to Catholicism.

Cheers,

Charlie

Mr. Beck, the Christian Left, and the reigning sin of our age

By way of update: We give you Lady Malkin's - "The Pfelger-ization of the Catholic Church"

Mr. Glenn Beck is in no need of our defence. Suffice to say that, as regards “social justice” as defined by the Left, we concur with him entirely. Indeed, we have written similarly and extensively on many occasions ourselves. Here then, we write not to echo or attempt to add to Mr. Beck’s political analysis of “social justice” which is more than spot on; but to complement it with analysis of what we consider the fundamental theological flaw of the Left’s understanding of “social justice.”

One thing church-going advocates of justice Left or Right ought agree upon is that poverty is the result of immoral behavior. If we are to identify, condemn and root out such behavior among the rich and powerful, are we not obligated to do the same among the poor and powerless? The answer – presuming one is genuinely interested in justice – is “yes.” If a rich, white CEO is misleading board members to justify his preposterous salary to the detriment of the company he is leading, he ought be rebuked. If a poor, unmarried, black teen age girl is delivering her second severely pre-mature child at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars to Medicaid (i.e. tax payers), she ought be rebuked. This would be justice.

Behavior aloof or antagonistic to human dignity – be it directed outwardly or inwardly – is first and foremost an offense against God (i.e. Sin) and is therefore requisite of rebuke. Such rebuke is intended not to establish that the non-sinner is morally superior to the sinner in a particular instance, but to educate him to the error of his ways – as would a friend, a sibling, a spouse, a parent - and guide him back to the path to God. To believers this is true compassion, for the most loving and important act a soul can perform for another is that which brings them closer to God.

The Christian Left rejects all of this. Thoroughly secularized and steeped-in the Progressive mind-set, they have removed the spiritual dynamic from all understanding of human behavior. All that matters is the material: the level of income, the condition of the housing, the access to public amenities. It is forbidden to analyze to what extent “those less fortunate” are responsible for their own misfortune. To do so, we are told in no uncertain terms, is to show a “lack of compassion”, a “failing to understand”, “insensitivity” and, of course, in cases where the unfortunate are members of ethnic minorities, “racism.”

Is it any wonder then that in a nation that gives $300 billion a year in charity, and billions more through tax-funded government poverty programs, poverty persists? Indeed, many on the Left insist it is growing, as “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.” If a man is never rebuked for picking the scab off his wound he will continue to bleed. If the human family forbids itself from rebuking the devastating effects of certain behaviors, that family will continue being devastated.

And when people are forced by law to fund programs that merely encourage and enable destructive behavior by masking their effects, we are hastening that destruction, more deeply embedding it into the culture, ensuring it will continue for generations to come, and - to those of faith – institutionalizing a grave sin against God and man. Thus Sister Angelica’s charge that “misplaced compassion” comprises the “reigning sin of our age.”

Gads. Are we suggesting then that social justice as defined by the Left is immoral? Yes. Not only because it perpetuates poverty, destroys lives and hope, greatly diminishes human achievement, dishonors the fruits of human labor, and breeds dependency that atrophies the human spirit, but most significantly because it eases men off the path to truth – God – which makes everyone poorer in the most absolute sense of the word.

On the occasion of this blessed Easter, let us pray that Reason, enlightened by God Almighty, be resurrected in the minds and hearts of all mankind so that true compassion and true justice once again be made the object of our ambition to virtue.

Cheers,

Charlie

The Mother of Dissolution

“Mercy without justice is the mother of dissolution” – St. Thomas Aquinas.

Words matter to the extent they accurately represent the concept for which they were originally intended. When you wish to make a piece of toast, for example, you request a “toaster” not a “philodendron.” Surely some concepts are more abstract than others. This reality, however, is no justification for obfuscation nor does it make holding the loftier terms to their original definition any less important. Indeed, quite often it is more so.

But what with ever-slackening educational standards and minds liquidated from endless hours before the tele, modern man can hardly be expected to prevail in the Herculean task of holding words to their meaning. Thus “freedom” today is synonymous with perversion, “greed” refers to any instance of any creature acting in its own self-interest, and “justice” equates to making sure everyone has the same number of points at the end of the game.

It is this last abomination of explication upon which we wish to focus.

It is our contention that the Obamanon by which America is currently disfiguring herself was made possible by this contemporary misinterpretation of justice. The laughably un-American policies and proposals, the bald-faced contempt for free-market values, the sanctimonious arrogance of apologizing to the world for American greatness, all are made acceptable to the American people to the extent they believe these atrocities to be acts of “justice.”

After all, under the modern definition of justice, the realities of poverty and suffering can only exist as a result of some injustice, and could never be the by-product of human stupidity, fecklessness, impulsiveness, or outright evil. Inequality of circumstance simply IS injustice, and Bob’s your Uncle! Ergo the gains of the rich, clearly ill-gotten, must be redistributed. The ventures of the capitalists, pure wanton profiteering, must be shackled. And American influence in the world, nothing but imperialistic bullying, must cease and desist. Only thus can justice be restored. Yes we can. And the people nod in passive agreement.

But, as has been pointed out so many times before by others nearly as brilliant as ourselves, equality of circumstances for all is not justice. In fact, the key ingredient in establishing equality of circumstances for all is injustice, usually in the form of jack-booted thugs, firing squads, tanks, and secret prisons.

Alas, modern man, in his zeal to demonstrate his compassion, his empathy, his sense of justice for those less fortunate, is in the process of securing the exact opposite of all for all. He has removed actual justice from the equation and need now only sit back and await validation of St. Thomas Aquinas’ supposition, “Mercy without justice is the mother of dissolution” i.e. chaos, anarchy, tumult, pestilence, suffering, and death.

Which brings us to Sonia Sotomayor; wise Latina, President Obama’s nominee for Supreme Court justice, and the embodiment of all of the above. By her words and actions this woman has demonstrated her conviction that justice is not the preservation of equality of opportunity, but the establishment of equality of circumstances. It is attainted and maintained not by adherence to a mutually beneficial rule of law, but by quotas, affirmative action, and the intrinsic knowledge that she knows better. She will judge others not by the content of their character, but by the color of their skin. She has been called – and rightly so – a racist, a supremacist, an irresponsible even reckless jurist, and she will win confirmation as a justice on the highest court in the land on or about July13.

In the objective world, a toaster remains distinct from a philodendron, justice remains distinct from empathy and preference, and dissolution is dissolution. But in this era of the new “justice,” we must do everything in our power to pretend otherwise, lest we find ourselves held in contempt.

May God help America.

Cheers,

Charlie

Sacrifice, the “Common Good”, and Greater Evils

“My Father! If it be possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not My will, but Thine be done" (Mt. 26: 38-39).

Sacrifice. It is core to the extraordinary teaching of Christ. We are compelled to sacrifice by God’s commandment, love thy neighbor as they self, and the revolutionary insight that it is in giving that we receive.

No where in this transaction is there a role for the State.

The salvific quality of sacrifice – great or small – is in the individual creature surrendering his will to the will of the Creator by free choice. To be compelled to give by force of law is no sacrifice at all.

Herein lies the bitter heresy of the so called Christian Social Justice movement that provides “moral authority” to the rape of human liberty currently being arranged in the halls of government throughout the free world. No thinking free man would willingly sacrifice his hard earned wealth to the corrupt cesspits of waste and ruin that comprise the majority of today’s social justice industrial complex. But force him to fund them through taxation and declare that doing so is necessary in order to ensure justice, eradicate poverty, and save the planet, and what choice does he have?

This is extortion not sacrifice, for the element of choice – Liberty – is wholly absent from it. Entities which identify this process as “sacrifice” reveal the perverted state of their minds and souls. They make virtues of envy and materialism and condemn the exercise of liberty as sin. This they do, they say, in the name of the “common good.” But they are blind to the far greater evil they unloose in supplanting human liberty in the name of “righteousness.”

This is the great sin of our time, for those championing it, know of what they do. It could scarcely be made more plain than in the words of Pope Benedict the XVI in his first Papal Encyclical “Deus Caritas Est” of 2006.

“There is no ordering of the State so just that it can eliminate the need for a service of love. Whoever wants to eliminate love is preparing to eliminate man as such. There will always be suffering which cries out for consolation and help. There will always be loneliness. There will always be situations of material need where help in the form of concrete love of neighbour is indispensable. The State which would provide everything, absorbing everything into itself, would ultimately become a mere bureaucracy incapable of guaranteeing the very thing which the suffering person—every person—needs: namely, loving personal concern.

We do not need a State which regulates and controls everything, but a State which, in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity, generously acknowledges and supports initiatives arising from the different social forces and combines spontaneity with closeness to those in need.

The Church is one of those living forces: she is alive with the love enkindled by the Spirit of Christ. This love does not simply offer people material help, but refreshment and care for their souls, something which often is even more necessary than material support.

In the end, the claim that just social structures would make works of charity superfluous masks a materialist conception of man: the mistaken notion that man can live “by bread alone” (Mt 4:4; cf. Dt 8:3)—a conviction that demeans man and ultimately disregards all that is specifically human.”

This Easter we pray that the Logos – the Word made Flesh, the Communion of Faith and Reason - be raised again in the hearts and minds of men, shedding the light of true freedom, and stirring them, as before, to fight all that would threaten their God given gift of Liberty.

Cheers,

Charlie

Useful Idiots Begin to Bristle at Own Idiocy

Under the "well DUH" category -

Christians Optimistic But Disappointed in Obama
Christians point out that Obama is, after all, a Democrat and supporter of keeping abortion legal -- and he has promised to proceed with caution on stem cells.

We believe that when Christ advised we be as sheep, he intended that we follow Him and not every happy-talking Tom, Dick, and Barry.

Cheers,

Charlie