"Sex-drenched"

Thus reads another missive from our underground correspondent, Guy Noir - Private Eye, sent yet again by carrier pigeon from God-knows-where. Unfolded and spread on the table, it read:

Ding ding ding! Read this (but kids, please be safe…)

Rod Dreher, "Cheap Sex = Dying Christianity" (American Conservative, September 5, 2017), who quotes Mark Regnerus, "Christians are part of the same dating pool as everyone else. That's bad for the church." (Washington Post, September 5, 2017):

Cheap sex, it seems, has a way of deadening religious impulses. It’s able to poke holes in the “sacred canopy” over the erotic instinct, to borrow the late Peter Berger’s term. Perhaps the increasing lack of religious affiliation among young adults is partly a consequence of widening trends in nonmarital sexual behavior among young Americans, in the wake of the expansion of pornography and other tech-enhanced sexual behaviors.

Cohabitation has prompted plenty of soul searching over the purpose, definition and hallmarks of marriage. But we haven’t reflected enough on how cohabitation erodes religious belief.

We overestimate how effectively scientific arguments secularize people. It’s not science that’s secularizing Americans — it’s sex.

About which, Noir noted that decades ago Frank Sheed also wrote on sex, as one finds here in this beautifully arranged post entitled "Let's Talk about Sex" (September 9, 2017).

In answer to which, sent back to Noir via carrier pigeon the following reply, folded up in a paper:

This is good stuff from Sheed. As always. I've run into several things on the topic lately, and one thing I'm gathering is that (ironically) the actual practice of sexual intercourse has dropped off precipitously since the advent of pornography. In Japan they're apparently no longer interested in getting married. It seems that actual relationships with real human beings are too much trouble. People are too busy having sex with themselves to trouble themselves with having it with others.

Sad.

Fr. Perrone: Cultural impoverishment, nobility of soul, and the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Fr. Eduard Perrone, “A Pastor’s Descant” (Assumption Grotto News, August 13, 2017):

I once asked my friend Dan, “When you’re at a stop light and the car next to you has the radio on, how often have you heard classical music playing?” Without skipping a beat he said, “Never.” I also noticed when doing a little food shopping what things were piled up in the shopping carts of those around me. Mostly junk food. Next, I looked over the offerings on non-cable TV (just to take a quick look). Guess what? Trash, silly or filthy, with lots of commercials.

Culturally a great majority of our American people are deficient if not impoverished. That’s not to say they’re necessarily bad, immoral people, but that for the greater part they have a rather low level of culture which can be assessed by standards other than those mentioned above. Reading material, for instance. Language skills. Knowledge of history. Good manners. We may have a pretty good standard of living in terms of technological advances, amenities of life and rather high economic standing, but we’re sorely deficient in what are called “the higher things.”

These observations are hardly news breaking. Our people are by and large the descendants of generally poor, hard-working immigrants who formed a united people that became great in the remarkable achievement that we call the USA. For this we may be forgiven our lowbrow tastes and ignorance about many of those higher things. Yet there’s one measure of a people, and of individuals too, that should not excuse underachievers. This is the attainment of nobility of spirit. It has little to do with schooling or wealth or pedigree, but has all to do with the condition of one’s soul.

This is all by way of an odd introduction to our upcoming feast day. The Holy Virgin Mary is the most noble human person ever to have lived (or yet to live) and this in spite of the mean circumstances of her most humble life. Mary is the exemplar of all that is most excellent in our nature. Our Lord sait that the greatest among us would be as the least. No better instance of this than Our Lady. What we will celebrate on August 15 is god’s acknowledgement of Her incomparable nobility of soul, Her unsurpassed excellence in grace and virtue. She did not need to be schooled in philosophy or science or art, although God may indeed have infused knowledge of these and many other things into Her mind that we do not know of – in this life at least – for She is the Seat of Wisdom. No one can hope to come close to imitating Her exalted degree of excellence in anything, but we can attain to some degree of nobility of soul which is the fruit of the Catholic life well lived.

The Popes, in reference to Her Assumption, have drawn our attention to the ways in which we can become like the Holy Virgin Mary. She set a pattern of life for us that we can imitate no matter what our degree of culture, position, wealth, or any other natural criterion. God rewarded Her in the glorification of Her body immediately after Her death, assuming it united with Her soul into heaven. The other saints – among whom we hope to be numbered – will have to await their rising from the dead and entry into heaven until the end of time. Only those will be glorified, in whatever degree, who have nobility of soul, that is, one healed of sin and elevated by grace.

As always, I make an appeal to our parishioners to be present on August 15th not only for the Mass that they attend, but to spend added time in prayer to and with Our Blessed Mother. This is our parish’[s finest hour and the opportunity to express our devotion and love for Our Lady in a demonstrative way. In this we carry on a tradition that reaches back more than a century when pilgrims came here in search of grace and divine favor. We are privileged to be members of this parish today for all the fidelity it has shown in generations past in honoring Holy Mary. This is the day above all others when we witness Her continuing solicitude for our people.

Let us celebrate together this longstanding tradition of honor to that most noble Lady of the Assumption.

Fr. Perrone

P.S. A reminder to use the shuttle bus from Saint Veronica Church if you can to avoid parking on the neighborhood streets. This is for your convenience and your safety.

Poverty of spirit: different Papal styles

In his Vicars of Christ: A History of the Popes(Arcadia: Tumblar House, 2014), 380-90, Charles Coulombe makes the following insightful observation about the difference in 'style' between Benedict XVI and Francis:

The generation of westerners of which [Francis] is a part was marked -- in Church, State, and indeed, in every field -- by what can only be called a sort of "personalization" of authority. That is to say, that the traditional division in perception between an office and the current holder of that office -- which allowed people of wildly differing, sometimes even opposed, views to collaborate out of shared respect for the office under whose direction they functioned -- has been blurred or even obliterated. Such folk, when in authority, tend to downgrade or do away with traditional symbols of their office while emphasizing their own personalities in pursuit of some nebulous "authenticity." So it is that morning dress and uniforms disappear from presidential inauguration and legislatives openings, and royals love to appear in casual wear. The difficulty with such an approach is that it tends to weaken respect for the office in the eyes of its subjects, who in turn begin to believe that their loyalty to it is dependent purely on their personal feelings for the occupant of the moment. Seeing the problems this had created, Benedict XVI began to restore the symbolic side of the Papacy, for all that formalism and display ran extremely counter to his nature. But it is not an issue that one of Francis's generation could be expected to understand -- quite the contrary.... Despite the lack of tiara noted earlier, piece by piece [Pope Benedict] restored bits of the papal wardrobe that his immediate predecessors had discarted: the fur-lined mozzetta, the camauro, the fanon, and -- most annoying to some -- the traditional red shoes, symbolizing the fact that as Pope he walked in the footsteps of the martyrs.

Commenting on this passage, Prof. Peter A. Kwasniewski writes about Benedict:

This humble Bavarian who shied away from the limelight saw that it was necessary to elevate and accentuate the sacramental iconicity of the pontiff in order to move beyond the cult of personality inadvertently started by John XXIII and vastly augmented in the charismatic athlete, actor, poet, and playwright of John Paul II. With Pope Francis, we see a return both of the cult of personality and of the false conception of poverty, this time applied not only to liturgy but also to doctrine itself.

By "poverty of doctrine," Kwasniewski explains, "I refer to the superficiality, messiness, ambiguities, contradictions, and unclarity of this pope's teaching, in contrast to the rich truthfulness of those of his predecessors who take seriously the Lord's command to 'let what you say be simply 'yes' or 'no' (Mt 5:37); cf. 2 Cor. 1:17-19, Jas. 5:12. (Peter A. Kwasniewski, "True Poverty of Spirit in the Splendor of Worship," The Latin Mass: The Journal of Catholic Culture and Tradition, Vol. 26, No. 2 (Summer 2017), p. 14.

The impact of Catholic culture on Hemingway

Hemingway rejected the sentimental piety of his mother and the liberal 'social gospel' of the Methodism in which he was raised in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park. After witnessing the brutalities of war in Europe, he could no longer accept the conceits about the 'perfectibility of man' found in his erstwhile suburban Methodist religious culture.

Hemingway was not, however, insensitive to religious ideas and practices -- particularly those found in Catholic cultures -- as is abundantly clear from Matthew Nickel's "Young Hemingway's Wound and Conversion" (Pilgrim: A Journal of Catholic Experience, 2013), excerpted and adapted from the first chapter of his recent work, Hemingway’s Dark Night: Catholic Influences and Intertextualities in the Work of Ernest Hemingway (Wickford, RI: New Street Communications, 2013).

One of the most striking early remarks by Hemingway is in a letter to Ernest Walsh, dated January 2, 1926, in which he refers to himself a Catholic in connection with the Sacrament of extreme unction given to him on the battlefield:

If I am anything I am a Catholic. Had extreme unction administered to me as such in July 1918 and recovered. So guess I am a super-catholic.... Am not what is called a ‘good’ catholic.... But cannot imagine taking any other religion seriously.

Nickel then observes:

It is impossible to know exactly what occurred on the battlefield between Hemingway and the priest, but regardless, there is ample evidence that Hemingway practiced Catholic rituals and that he talked and wrote to others about being a Catholic after World War I. Also, the results of a canonical inquest into Hemingway’s standing in the Catholic Church by the Archdiocese of Paris – which on April 25, 1927 reported he was “certified a Catholic in good standing” -- are telling.

One cannot, of course, sidestep the brute fact of his subsequent depression and suicide in Idaho in 1961. But there is clearly more than meets the eye in the standard secular accounts of Hemingway's life and work.

[Hat tip to Christopher Blosser]

If There's an Antichrist, What About an Antimary?

LEFT: Michelangelo, “The Fall of Adam and Eve and their Expulsion from the Garden” from the Sistine Chapel. RIGHT: Master of the Life of the Virgin, “Christ on the Cross with Mary, John and Mary Magdalene”, between 1465 and 1470.

* * * * * * *
Carrie Gress, "If There's an Antichrist, What About an Antimary?" (National Catholic Register, January 27, 2017): No matter how strong the “spirit of antimary” may be, Mary still remains the most powerful woman in the world:

While researching my latest book, The Marian Option: God’s Solution to a Civilization in Crisis (Tan Books, May 2017), I was struck by a new theological concept. I kept running across the notion that Mary is the New Eve—an idea that goes back to the early Church Fathers. Mary as the New Eve is the female complement to Christ, the New Adam. In Scripture, St. John speaks of an antichrist as a man, but also as a movement that is present throughout history (1 John 4:3, 2 John 1:7). This got me thinking: if there is an antichrist, perhaps there is a female complement, an antimary?

What, then, would an antimary movement look like, exactly? Well, these women would not value children. They would be bawdy, vulgar, and angry. They would rage against the idea of anything resembling humble obedience or self-sacrifice for others. They would be petulant, shallow, catty, and overly sensuous. They would also be self-absorbed, manipulative, gossipy, anxious, and ambitious. In short, it would be everything that Mary is not.

While behavior like this has been put under a microscope because of the Women’s March on Washington, D.C., the trend of women-behaving-badly is nothing new. There is, however, ample evidence that we witnessing something, because of its massive scale, quite different from run-of-the-mill vice seen throughout history.

The treatment of motherhood is one of the first signs that we are dealing with a new movement. Mothers (both spiritual and biological) are a natural icon of Mary – to help others know who Mary is by their generosity, patience, compassion, peace, intuition, and ability to nurture souls. Mary’s love (and the love of mothers) offers one of the best images of what God’s love is like – unconditional, healing, and deeply personal.

The last few decades have witnessed the subtle erasing of the Marian icon in real women. First through the pill, then the advent of abortion, motherhood has been on the chopping block. Motherhood has become dispensable, to that point that today the broader culture doesn’t bat an eye when a child is adopted by two men.

Trump, Republicanism, conservatism, & populism: Larry R. Arnn speculates

Trump does not always speak in complete sentences. His language is sometimes coarse. He is not a smooth-talking politician. He knows, however, how to play a crowd. He sizes up personalities and situations instinctively. He is impulsive rather than reflective. He comes from a business background where he is used to making deals autocratically and intuitively, not by consensus. These characteristics lead many of us to worry about demagoguery.

Is this, however, all there is to Trump? Is Trump simply an unprincipled opportunist and demagogue? Larry R. Arnn, who comes from circles very much involved in thinking about political principles and constitutional law doesn't seem to believe so. Are his ideas about Trump's instinctive conservatism anything more than wishful thinking? One would like to believe not. Time will tell. In any case, Arnn suggests there is a great deal we can learn from this election and from President-elect Trump about political conservatism, liberalism, and populism if we reflect on them in a principled way.

Larry P. Arnn, President, Hillsdale College, "A More American Conservatism" (Imprimis, Vol. 45, No. 12, December, 2016):

The astonishing political campaign of 2016 involved much debate about whether Donald Trump is a conservative. He was not always facile with the lingo of conservatism, and he pointed out once that he was seeking the nomination of the Republican, not the conservative party. Yet there is a lot we can learn from him about conservatism.

What is conservatism? It is a derivative term: it refers to something outside itself. We cannot conserve the present or the future, and the past being full of contradiction, we cannot conserve it entire. In the past one finds heroism and villainy; justice and injustice; freedom and slavery. Things in the past are like things in the present: they must be judged. Conservative people know this if they have any sense.

What then makes them conservative? It is the additional knowledge that things that have had a good reputation for a long time are more trustworthy than new things. This is especially true of original things. The very term principle refers to something that comes first; to change the principle of a thing is to change it into something else. Without the principle, the thing is lost.

If American conservatism means anything, then, it means the things found at the beginning of America, when it became a nation. The classics teach us that forming political bonds is natural to people, written in their nature, stemming from the divine gift they have of speech and reason. This means in turn that the Declaration of Independence, where the final causes of our nation are stated, and the Constitution of the United States, where the form of government is established, are the original things. These documents were written by people who were friends and who understood the documents to pursue the same ends. Taken together they are the longest surviving things of their kind, and under their domain our country spread across a continent and became the strongest nation on earth, the bastion of freedom. These documents do not appeal to all conservatives, but I argue that they should, both for their age and for their worthiness.

It follows then that if Donald Trump helps to conserve these things, he is a conservative in the sense that matters most to the republic of the Americans. Will he?

Brave New World: Fr. Perrone on the present and future of life in the western world

Eduard Perrone, "A Pastor's Descant" (Assumption Grotto News, October 23, 2016):

"I am a man, and nothing human is alien to me."

These well-known words of the Roman playwright Terence are often quoted. I'm sorry to say that I feel a lot less secure about them now than I once did. Things human are becoming far too bizarre for me, and I, like the aging man that I am, reflecting on the disparity of things now from way-back-when, feel estranged from some of the weird goings on in the contemporary world.

I have at times ruminated on some of these things which -- pace Terence -- make me feel much alienated. I have written on occasion about the allowance accorded to college students to choose their sexual identity from among over fifty options which, in the event, turned out to be too restrictive (!) In the same vein, students at a local Catholic high school expressed no surprise when one of their number declared his alternative gender preference. It was discovered that many of the students there are now undecided as to what sexual identity they will adopt. I have also written in some past pastor's column about the transhumanism which aims to so augment the existing limits of bodily and mental capacities so that the new product will transcend homo sapiens, leaving it behind as a mere passing phase in the evolutionary process. We have already recovered (I think) from the shock of tansplants of major bodily organs, of genetic engineering, and of human cloning. Now comes an article given to me by a thoughtful member of my Tuesday night adult catechism class which tells of serious research being done in head transplants. Not to be outdone by the egregious moral transgressions of a decade ago, some bold and bright scientists are working towards the day when one's head can be affixed to someone else's body. The metaphysical and moral questions have not even been completely thought at this point. For example, whose identity will the composite man take on: the identity of the head transplantee or of the corpus? Children engendered by such: whose parents are they? And so on. The incongruity of such a hybrid man reminds me of a fable I once read by Thomas Mann titled The Transposed Heads (the author claims it to be a tale of India) in which a skinny intellectual man and a muscular airhead exchange heads. (Those interested can read the story for outcome of the tale.) Never once did I imagine that such a thing would be written up as a possibility. And yet here I am, reading a mag article on the very topic.

Nothing alien to me? I suppose, to give Terence his due, his saying still holds good for reason that none of these freakish transformations are truly exemplars of human nature as it was intended and created by God. We are living in a brave new world, as someone famously predicted, and it seems that it will only become more and more strange and morally undetermined so that we who have known and wanted to live by the dictates of our rational human nature will find ourselves very much outside, that is to say, alienated. There doesn't seem to be a way to halt the regress of morals unto the point where total chaos reigns, what is likened by some to a Dionysian frenzy, to where -- to phrase it somewhat obliquely -- all Hades will break out in public. This would be, should it ever come to pass, a far worse punishment on the human race than an act of God. We would have, in that case, a hell of our own making, rather than a punishment imposed.

When we add to the specter of this scary future the possibilities of the political disorder that may well befall us following the November election, we get a whole lot more to be worried about. That said, we must be convinced about the one thing I have over and over asserted in preaching, namely, that we must hang on mightily to our Catholic faith -- never apostatize! -- pray, and do penance in reparation for all the crimes being committed -- and those further contemplated -- in this increasingly godless world.

Lest I give the wrong idea about my intentions here, let me add that a Christian always lives in hope, never in despair. The final outcome of all things is a given of our faith. Moreover, grace will not be lacking to all who seek it. In my current reading, a biography of Solzhenitsyn by Joseph Pierce (the same who lectured here a few weeks ago), I take inspiration from a man of incredible courage and indomitable faith, having once himself been an atheist and a Communist who then became a Christian and an outspoken critic of all totalitarianism and idealist systems and of the corrupted leanings of the western world. His is the story of good winning out over tremendous political evils and personal suffering. Hope, courage, tenacity, prayer: these are the themes of his life which encourage me.

I want you, my parishioners, to be strong in faith, constant in prayer, and unflappable in spirit.

Related: Joseph Pearce, "An Interview with Alexander Solzhenitsyn" (Catholic Education Research Center, St. Austin Review, 2003).

So the American dream is dead but some just haven't noticed yet?

I've never quite believed in American exceptionalism the way some people do. But I do believe there was something mighty special about America for a while. Read Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Praire. Read any number of heroic stories from WWII, like Laura Hillenbrand's Unbroken. Or drive across America on her impressive system of Interstate highways. Or listen to Jeff Daniels' terrific speech (if you can get past the 'f-bombs') in this opening segment of the series, Newsroom.

Some scenarios about the present and future are pretty grim. I admit to being pretty grim myself sometimes, though I'm basically pretty upbeat as you'd know if you talked to me. Yet there's something in the grim picture that has a ring of truth, at least on Tuesdays and Thursdays, if you know what I mean.

Take this email I received referencing a speech by Franklin Graham, for instance. It starts with a third party introducing Graham's words like this:

Time is like a river. You cannot touch the water twice, because the flow that has passed will never pass again.Franklin Graham was speaking at the First Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Florida, when he said America will not come back. He wrote:

The American dream ended on November 6th, 2012 in Ohio. The second term of Barack Obama has been the final nail in the coffin for the legacy of the white Christian males who discovered, explored, pioneered, settled and developed the greatest republic in the history of mankind.

A coalition of blacks, Latinos, feminists, gays, government workers, union members, environmental extremists, the media, Hollywood, uninformed young people, the "forever needy," the chronically unemployed, illegal aliens and other "fellow travelers" have ended Norman Rockwell's America.

You will never again out-vote these people. It will take individual acts of defiance and massive displays of civil disobedience to get back the rights we have allowed them to take away. It will take zealots, not moderates and shy, reach-across-the-aisle RINOs to right this ship and restore our beloved country to its former status.

People like me are completely politically irrelevant, and I will probably never again be able to legally comment on or concern myself with the aforementioned coalition which has surrendered our culture, our heritage and our traditions without a shot being fired.

The Cocker spaniel is off the front porch, the pit bull is in the back yard. The American Constitution has been replaced with Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals" and the likes of Chicago shyster David Axelrod along with international socialist George Soros have been pulling the strings on their beige puppet have brought us Act 2 of the New World Order.

The curtain will come down but the damage has been done, the story has been told.

Those who come after us will once again have to risk their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to bring back the Republic that this generation has timidly frittered away due to white guilt and political correctness...

At the same time, I realize that the vast majority of foreign refugees and would-be immigrants clamouring to get into our country are still motivated by the icon of hope that is America. At least most of them are flying from oppressive regimes in countries where the daily possibility is life or death; and they come to America because there is promise of relative security, food, shelter, clothing, and opportunities to live and prosper here. That fact alone tells us that the glass is still half full, that the water hasn't been entirely drained yet. That's positive. Even if it isn't much.

Tridentine Community News - The Sacristy and Its Arrangement; Chasuble Shapes; TLM Mass schedules

"I will go in unto the Altar of God
To God, Who giveth joy to my youth"
Tridentine Community News by Alex Begin (October 16, 2016):

October 16, 2016 – Twenty-second Sunday After Pentecost

The Sacristy and Its Arrangement


A church’s sacristy might seem to be a place of mystery to many Catholics. Relatively few have reason to venture into a sacristy, and those who do generally have a purpose in mind, usually talking to the priest. Indeed, the sacristy is typically the domain of the altar servers, sacristans, and those in charge of laundering the altar linens. Let’s take a look around and see what’s typically in there.

The accompanying diagram from Fr. William O’Brien’s book, In Sacristy and Sanctuary, depicts many of the [numbered] key objects found in a typical sacristy: 1) The sink, not to be confused with 3) the sacrárium, a special sink which drains into the ground rather than the sewer. The sacrárium is used to dispose of Holy Water, excess Precious Blood, water in which dropped Hosts have been dissolved, and in general any liquid which has been blessed. 2) The sacristy table contains drawers for altar linens, certain types of vestments and vestment parts (stoles, maniples) that can be stored flat, and supplies of all sorts. Older churches may have one or more framed prayer cards above the table, containing Vesting Prayers and Prayers Before and After Mass. Above the sink in older churches is often found the Prayer Before Washing Hands. All of these prayers are in Latin and are said by the celebrant while vesting before a Tridentine Mass. In newer churches they are provided on portable, framed cards.

5) The incense cabinet, containing the thurible, charcoal, incense, matches, the incense boat, and related supplies.

6) The safe, containing the cibória (containers for the Hosts), chalices, monstrance, reliquaries, and related precious metallic objects.

Vestments and altar servers’ cassocks and surplices are stored in closets, sometimes in a separate sacristy room on the other side of the sanctuary (the “work sacristy”, meant for servers, as opposed to the main “priest’s sacristy”).

There is always a Crucifix in the sacristy, meant as a focal point for prayer. Before Mass, the servers and celebrant all face the Crucifix while the priest says, “Procedámus in pace.” [Let us go in peace], to which the servers respond, “In Nómine Christi. Amen.” [In the Name of Christ. Amen.] After Mass, all bow to the Crucifix and say “Deo grátias.” [Thanks be to God], then the servers kneel and ask for the celebrant’s blessing, saying, “Jube, domne benedícere.” [Your blessing, Father.]

You are welcome to come explore the sacristy after Mass; please ask one of the altar servers to give you a tour.

Chasuble Shapes

The chasuble is the large outer vestment that the celebrant wears during Mass. There are three principal kinds of chasubles:

1) The Roman or “fiddleback” chasuble, so named because it is the regional norm in Rome and has a front side shaped like a cello, or fiddle [Shouldn’t it be “fiddlefront”?]. The back side is squared off. These days, most Tridentine Mass sites employ fiddleback chasubles, as their level of artistic design is typically more expressive and elaborate.


2) The Gothic chasuble is the type most commonly seen nowadays at Ordinary Form Masses. They are robe-like, longer in the front and back, and shorter on the sides for the arms.

3) The rarely seen Conical chasubles are circular pieces of fabric with a hole in the center for the head to go through. They are most commonly used in monasteries.

Tridentine Masses This Coming Week

• Mon. 10/17 7:00 PM: Low Mass at St. Josaphat (St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, Virgin)
• Tue. 10/18 7:00 PM: High Mass at Holy Name of Mary, Windsor (St. Luke the Evangelist)
• Sat. 10/22 8:30 AM: Low Mass at Miles Christi (Saturday of Our Lady)

[Comments? Please e-mail tridnews@detroitlatinmass.org. Previous columns are available at http://www.detroitlatinmass.org. This edition of Tridentine Community News, with minor editions, is from the St. Albertus (Detroit), Academy of the Sacred Heart (Bloomfield Hills), and St. Alphonsus and Holy Name of Mary Churches (Windsor) bulletin inserts for October 16, 2016. Hat tip to Alex Begin, author of the column.]

Francis Schaeffer listened to Pink Floyd? Timothy Leary, Eric Clapton, and Keith Richards read or studied with him??

A terrific article in many, many ways. Please do yourself a favor if you are the least bit interested in Christian intellectual culture, and read Jake Meador's "Francis Schaeffer and Christian Intellectualism" (Mere Orthodoxy, August 18, 2016).

The piece sets the stage by tolling the death knell of public Christian intellectual culture round about 1960. Like this:

In his recent essay on Christian intellectualism, Alan Jacobs dates the high point of the public Christian intellectual in America as being in the late 1940s. Citing the influence of thinkers like CS Lewis, WH Auden, and Reinhold Niebuhr, Jacobs argues that the movement began to fade in the 1950s and, by the 1960s, was largely a spent force. By that time Lewis, Auden, and Niebuhr were no longer as relevant in contemporary debates and the next generation had not yet emerged. By the time that generation of leaders did, Jacobs argues, the culture had moved past them and they had become more conversant in the intramural discussions happening in conservative religious circles rather than the broader cultural conversation.

... In dating the decline of the Christian intellectual, Jacobs cites, amongst other things, the evidence offered by major media coverage of prominent public Christians. He notes that both Lewis and Niebuhr made the cover of Time in the late 1940s with Lewis appearing on it in 1947 and Niebuhr doing the same in 1948. What’s funny about this is that Francis Schaeffer, who has been hailed by some as Lewis’s only equal amongst orthodox Christian apologists in the 20th century, also makes a prominent appearance in Time ... but in 1960....

Time‘s description of Schaeffer, however, tells us something about how things had changed during the 12 years between Niebuhr’s cover and Schaeffer’s. In 1960, Time presents Schaeffer as a missionary to the intellectuals, which he no doubt was. But this assumes that Christianity needs missionaries to the intellectuals because the intellectuals are no longer Christian. What had been conflict within the intellectual community 13 years before when they reported on CS Lewis has become an attempt to witness to the intellectual community by 1960. This suggests, in one sense, that Jacobs is right—the Christian public intellectual is dead by 1960, which is why Schaeffer was needed.

But it also raises a separate question: If that intellectual is dead, why is Schaeffer being covered by Time in the first place?Further, why does he have well-known figures from the various counter-cultures as well as popular icons of the era beating down his door to study with him at L’Abri? Timothy Leary, Eric Clapton, and Keith Richards are just three examples of prominent 1960s figures who read or studied with Schaeffer. There are others....

Read more >>

[Hat tip to JM]

W.H. Auden (1966) on danger of Church falsifying her message via mass media

In a 1966 essay entitled "The Worship of God in a Secular Age: Some Reflexions," Complete Works: Prose: Vol. V, 1963-1968, ed. E. Mendelson (Princeton University Press), W.H. Auden warned about the dangers of the Church’s use of mass media. “I am convinced that the Church cannot make use of them without falsifying what She stands for,” he wrote. And that was half-a-century ago. The mid-sixties use of television, radio, and advertisements posed, in his view, a danger that the Church would render her message banal rather than au courant.


In a short guest Op-Ed entitled "The Selfie Pope" (Rorate Caeli, March 19, 2016), a newly ordained diocesan priest, writing under the name of Monsieur l'Abbé, addresses this concern:

... When the Church invests Herself too heavily in the latest technologies and social media, Her message becomes no more than another voice in the clutter of hashtags and modern self-obsession. Now that the “selfie-Pope” is on both Twitter and Instagram, his juxtaposition with Kim Kardashian is complete. As Auden noted so perceptively fifty years ago, this can only attenuate the Church’s message: “In the New York subway one can see placards saying: ‘Go to Church next Sunday. You will be richer for it.’ The effect of this is to put going to church on the same level as buying a particular brand of cigarettes or tooth-paste.”

The only mass media that will succeed in converting the world is the same mass media that was employed in the first century: the undiluted truth of the Gospel and the zeal of its adherents. The Church’s unchanging tradition and patrimony are Her greatest advertisement. We live in a world today that is dazzled by the latest novelty at one moment and prepared to replace it with another at the next. When the unrest in society’s heart becomes too much to bear, the Church will be the only force capable of anchoring it in a firm foundation....

[Hat tip to JM]

Fr. Perrone on the commodification of human beings in porn and abortion, as reflected in the McDonaldization of death

Fr. Eduard Perrone, "A Pastor's Descant" [temporary link] (Assumption Grotto News, January 31, 2016):

Funeral customs are fast a-changing in our time. Speaking recently with a local funeral director, I was shocked to learn about the new thinking of how we bid adieux to the dead, viz. with increased indifference and quick dismissal. It’s so very inconvenient to have someone’s death interfere with whatever one happens to be busy about. The old obsequies of making visits to the funeral home to “pay one’s respects,” of comforting the mourners, of praying for the happy repose of the departed, of taking time off from other demanding necessities in order to perform these corporal works of mercy–all that is fast vanishing from American life. In its place, according to my funeral director friend, is something like this. No funeral home visitation; no flowers or Mass offerings; the quickview scan of the online bio of the deceased with its ready-at-hand link to register a brief word of sympathy; cremation for the corpse; and, often, no funeral service or requiem Mass. Moreover, the strictly forbidden retention of the deceased’s cremains or, worse, their scattering to the four winds, is becoming more prevalent. In short, we’re making rapid disposal of the dead, just as we had avoided contact with them as living persons in their last years of life, allowing them to rot in a nursing home or hospice facility. (Even that fate is now become accounted as fortunate since the administration of painkilling drugs in high doses can speed along the death processes so as to avoid all the inconveniences of what we had been accustomed to call one’s “final illness.”)  

What’s caused these new customs, these new ways of thinking about the dead and the process of dying? For one thing, we’re all on life’s fast track. We have now no time to be bothered by the death (or even the life) of anybody else when we’re so busy getting done whatever we must do–or even–whatever we think advantageous to ourselves–even our own pleasures and idle leisure. And what’s behind that selfish preoccupation? A number of things. The indoctrination of Selfism has long been forming our attitudes, succeeded to convince us that only the Great I am worthy of myself, my time, my deeds; only my goals are important; only what I want–morally good or bad–is what I must have; and whatever may interfere with these ‘goals’–God and religion included–must be set aside. And how did we arrive at this?  

Among the contributing causes to this attitude and way of living is the ever increasing use of porn which reduces the human person to so many body parts for exploitation and titillation of the senses. The fact that the “models” who so shamelessly expose themselves for public viewing are real people with minds and consciences, with souls that have human feelings–these facts have been put out of mind with porn use. Other people are toys. They can be bought, used, abused and are disposable. This contributes to estimate that the bodies of the deceased are as so much useless trash. 

Another thing that has shaped our thinking about the body is our relative unconcern over the hideousness of crushing and dismembering babies in the womb. Killing babies or–worse yet–selling its surviving parts as ‘spares’ for the living or as ingredients for cosmetics–is regarded as a social good. But it’s an old heresy which regards the human body this way where it was said that only a person’s spirit, (soul) counts. The body is unimportant. This specious premise, which at first glance may seem an ascetical, spiritual perspective, is in fact a way of so denigrating the body as to make utilitarian use of it without a care to any moral considerations of it or even to consider the meaning of the human person as a unity, a totality, of spirit and body.  

Our world is changing fast, and with it our thinking about who (or what) we are. Necessarily we will think about God and the Catholic faith differently (and not for the better). We are transhumanizing, becoming something else. Monsters, I would say, caricatures of what we were made to be–the image of God–and of what we were privileged to become as Christians–children of God and Christs-in-miniature.  While we may not be able at large to stop these horrible denigrating ways of inhumanity, we can retain the consciousness of our human dignity and our Christian vocation to holiness and refuse to go with the flow. Keeping ourselves unsullied by all the filth this fallen world offers and by the devout practice of the Catholic life is a goal within the reach of all of us. 

Fr. Perrone

The unbearable lightness of postmodernity and Donald Trump

R.R. Reno writes, in "Populism," in the Public Square section of the latest issue of First Things (February 2016), p. 3:

The rise of populism in Europe -- and here in the United States by way of Donald Trump -- is a rebellion against postmodern weightlessness. Political commentators are right to point out voter concerns about immigration, economic distress caused by globalization, and the technocratic establishment that holds them in disdain. But underneath these concerns lies a metaphysical disquiet....

.... Populism is a response to this vacuum more than a movement of economic grievances, or even anti-immigrant sentiment. It reflects a concern that our common life lacks metaphysical dignity: There's no longer something greater than utility or some other bloodless good capable of binding us together strongly enough that the rich and powerful remain accountable. [emphasis added]

Reno is almost always worth reading; and whatever one thinks of some of the positions taken by writers at First Things, it is well worth getting a subscription and reading it.

Death: a history of beliefs

One of our readers cites as one of his favorite books on the subject is by Professor of History at Warwick University, UK, Peter Marshall, Beliefs and the Dead in Reformation England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). An excellent introduction, he says is the article, also by Peter Marshall, entitled "Death."

[Hat tip to Sri A.S.]

Timely: "The Mass-Clock and the Spy: The Catholicization of World War II"

"Never did American Catholics do evangelization better than in World War II," wrote the correspondent who emailed me the link to this article. Indeed, it's a telling and timely piece, given what lies just over the horizon. Read on: John C. Seitz,"The Mass-Clock and the Spy: The Catholicization of World War II," Church History (December 1, 2014). What follows here are just two excerpts from the Introduction:

At the back of a pocket-sized missal distributed by the National Catholic Community Service (NCCS), U.S. military personnel serving in World War II could find a particularly useful wartime device. The two-page spread centered on an image that would have been vaguely familiar to most U.S. Catholics. The largest feature was a sun-like circle rising and radiating out from a smaller ciborium beneath. In more familiar Catholic imagery the circle appeared sometimes as the sun, sometimes as the Eucharistic host itself. It was typically embossed with the letters "IHS," a Greek-derived abbreviation of the Holy Name of Jesus, or with the Greek letters A[Omega], representing Jesus as Alpha and Omega, the beginning and end of all. In these familiar forms, the image signaled the centrality and efficacy of the sacrament of communion in the religious life of Catholics. Through communion, received in the form of the Eucharistic bread consecrated and delivered by the hands of an ordained priest, Catholics united themselves with Christ, whose very name was woven into the fabric of the universe. Participation in Holy Communion, which for the properly scrupulous was preceded always by the sacrament of confession, united Catholics with Christ, activated the flow of grace into their lives, and ensured their eternal proximity to God.

Global warfare pressed this imagery into new realms. Instead of a host or the sun rising up, the circular form here took the shape of a clock face. Inside the clock face, instead of the letters "IHS," readers found a world map, including the six inhabited continents viewed from a point high above the North Pole. In each hour segment of the clock face, the names of two different regions were listed. Text below and on the facing page offered instructions if one was "unable to attend Mass because of military service or the absence of a chaplain." Using this "World-Mass-Clock" and the accompanying "Mass-Clock-Prayer" Catholics could join themselves spiritually with the sacrifice of the Mass as it was happening at any given moment, somewhere in the world. "No matter when you look at your clock," the pages explained, "it is early morning somewhere ... and some Priest is offering Mass!" With these pages at hand, Catholics could discover where in the world, at that precise moment, the church was uniting itself with Christ's original sacrifice. In addition to studying the catechism assigned to that week's Mass (found earlier in the booklet), servicemen could recite the "Mass-Clock-Prayer" which began:

Eternal Father, through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I wish to unite myself with Jesus, now offering His Precious Blood in [mention name of country] in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

... But Catholics did not rest solely on the assurances provided by these powerful prayers, objects, and actions. Alongside the heavy traffic of sacramentals and stories about their potency, Catholics eagerly disseminated separatist narratives of U.S. Catholic triumph. "Mack," a "twentieth-century G.I.," offered one of these stories for the editors of the NCCS's wartime newsletter entitled Contact....

Well-versed in Catholic expectations for the lay apostolate, Mack riffed on the motto of Catholic Action--a very twentieth century plan for extending Catholic influence in secular democracies--to describe his role as a Catholic in the U.S. military. The main fruit of this experience, he averred, would be relatively slow to develop. Military service was a time to "OBSERVE and JUDGE," a chance for "sizing up what is pagan in our environment." Armed with "a knowledge of what this environment should be," "Contact men"--those lined up with the Catholic approach to the war--could also use their time in the service to forge plans "to change what is into what should be ." "ACT," the implementation phase of the Catholic Action mandate, would have to wait until later, when the hindrances of military life--"army discipline and organization, schedules, breaking up of outfits, fatigue, discouragement"--had been left behind.

In the meantime, "day-to-day living in the midst of the men," what Mack described as life in a "pagan" environment, could be a kind of religious ordeal. Military life, he wrote, is "unconsciously sounding our spiritual depths and ploughing furrows in the very fibers of our being." With war's end, the "days of reconstruction " would begin, and tested and focused Catholics would manifest "a spiritual ripeness hitherto unknown to us" in the form of Catholic Action. Catholics in the military should understand themselves as spies behind enemy lines, immersed in a trying reconnaissance mission on behalf of the church. The enemy was not Germany or Japan, not Nazism or totalitarianism, nor even the lurking menace of communism. The enemy was a wayward America. Catholicism, mobilized through informed and eager lay Catholics, could be America's only hope in a future clouded by indifference, immorality, and paganism.

Read more. Much, much more >>

[Hat tip to Sir A.S.]

"Complacency = death"

Rod Dreher, "The End of Our Time" (The American Conservative, November 17 2015):

A reader sent that cartoon to me. It’s by Joann Sfar, a Charlie Hebdo cartoonist, and it’s a response to people around the world who are offering prayers for Paris. No sir, Parisians like the atheist Sfar have no desire for prayers. Religion, you see, is the problem. If only everyone would be a thoroughly secular person like Sfar, these difficulties would resolve themselves.

The other day, a musician with a peace sign painted on his piano set up outside the devastated Bataclan nightclub, and played John Lennon’s nihilistic ballad “Imagine”

... I credit the sweetness of the anonymous musician’s spirit, but the more I thought about that gesture, the angrier I grew. Why angry? Because this — and the Sfar cartoon — are emblematic of the decadence and despair and emptiness of the post-Christian West. I keep saying, “You can’t fight something with nothing,” and that’s exactly what “Imagine,” and the Sfar cartoon stand for: nothing. Believe me, I celebrate music! kisses! life! Champagne and joy! too — it’s one of the reasons I love Paris madly — but it is not enough, and it will never be enough.

... Russian novelist Evgeny Vodolazkin ... told me that just as World War I wasn’t really about an assassination in Sarajevo, so too is the West’s current crisis not truly about Islamists who shoot up concert halls. He added that the West has never seen a migration like the current one, with so many masses of people moving from East to West, at once. He described it as “a great historical event.” “Nobody knows how this experiment will end,” he said. “The best thing we can do now is to pray. To tell the truth, I don’t see any way out of this tunnel.”

... Houellebecq [in his recent novel, Submission] depicts a France where people do little more than shop, have sex, and talk about eating, drinking, real estate, and getting ahead in their careers. There is no purpose for individuals other than pleasing themselves, no animating vision for society. This, for Houellebecq, is why the West is dying: people have ceased to believe in their civilization, and do not want to make the sacrifices necessary to continue it — not if it is going to cost them the thing they value the most: individual liberty to choose one’s pleasures.

... As Douthat, Houellebecq, Ferguson, and Vodolazkin all aver, in their different ways, these scattered events that trouble us all have their roots in a fundamental breakdown of civilizational order and confidence. This is about the Western mind, but more importantly, it’s about the Western soul. The breakdown, the crack-up, will be painful, violent, unpredictable, and long-lasting. But it’s coming. In fact, it has begun. I believe that the Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev, in his 1923 book The End of the Modern World, in which he prophesied the rise of a “New Middle Ages,” is telling us what is to emerge out of the chaos of our cultural suicide. [Berdyaev writes]:

[F]aith in the ultimate political and social salvation of mankind is quenched. We have reached settlement-day after a series of centuries during which movement was from the centre, the spiritual core of life, to the periphery, its surface and social exterior. And the more empty of religious significance social life has become, the more it has tyrannized over the general life of man....]

... We have been walking this Enlightenment road for far too long, and it has us now in a dark wood.

[Hat tip to J ]

Not Coming to a World Youth Day Near You

Roman Amerio's Iota Unum is a big doorstop of a book, one that covers a sprawling territory. But surprisingly, the brief section that I think best captures and communicates the difference between today's Catholic 'theology' and the perennial wisdom of the Church is the item on "The Church and Youth." Or maybe this is not surprising, since usually what we communicate to young people is a good indicator of what we truly value and find important. I think this is the case here. Can you imagine any speaker sharing any such words at one of today's World Youth Days? "My topic for today is Lighten Up or Grow Up?" Ha-ha. I think not. Maybe there is some possible sort of fusion, a la inverting Dorothy Day or John Piper's idea of 'The Duty of Delight" into "The Delight of Duty"? But either way, as for Amerio, good stuff for kids and a strong reminder for adults. With a nice dose of impressive-sounding Latin. -- Guy Noir - Private Eye.

The Church and Youth

There are other aspects of human life that the Church views differently since the council. The deminutio capiris  based on age, which was imposed by Paul VI in his decree Ingravescentem aetatem, was an indirect sign of the new attitude it has adopted towards youth. The new view is directly expressed in other documents.

From ancient times down to our own, youth has been regarded by philosophy, ethics, art and common sense as a time of natural and moral imperfection, that is, incompleteness. St. Augustine goes so far as to call the desire to return to childhood stupidity and folly and writes in this sermon Ad iuvenes flos aetatis, periculum tentationis, insisting on youth’s moral immaturity.  Because his reason is not yet settled and is liable to go awry a young man is cereus in cereus in vitium flecti, and in his youth needs a ruler, adviser and teacher. He needs a light to see that life has a moral goal, and practical help to mold and transform his natural inclinations in accordance with the rational order of things. All the great Catholic educators from Benedict of Nursia to Ignatius of Loyola, Joseph Calasanz, John Baptist de la Salle, and John Bosco made this idea the basis of Catholic education. The young person is a subject possessing freedom and must be trained to use his freedom in such a way that he himself chooses that one thing for the choosing of which our freedom has been given us; namely; to choose to do our duty, since religion sees no other end to life than this. The delicacy of the educator's task comes from the fact that its object is a being who is a subject, and that its goal is the perfecting of that subject. It is acting upon human freedom not in order to limit it but to make it really free. In this respect the act of educating is an imitation of divine causality which, according to Thomistic theory produces a man’s free actions even in their very freedom. The Church's attitude to youth cannot ignore the difference between the imperfect and the relatively more perfect, the ignorant and the relatively more informed. It cannot set aside the differences between things and treat young people as mature, learners as experts, lessers as greaters and (here the fundamental error returns) in the final analysis, the dependent as independent.

Character of Youth and a Critique of Life as Joy [Say what?!]

The profound Thomistic theory of potency and act assists a student of human nature in considering the nature of youth, by supporting him in seeking out the essential characteristics of that stage of life, and by stopping him being led astray by prevailing opinion.

Given that youth is the beginning of life, it is important that a view of the whole of life ahead be presented to it and that it keep that view in mind; a view of the goal in which the beginner’s potential will be realized, the form in which his powers will unfold. Life is difficult, or, if you prefer, serious. Firstly; this is because man’s nature is weak and in its finitude it collides with the finitude of other men and of the things around, all these finitudes tending to trespass on each other. Secondly it is part of the Catholic faith that man is fallen and inclined to evil. Man’s disorderly propensities mean that he is beset by opposing attractions and that his condition is one of struggle, of war, even of siege. That there is a potency within life which must be  brought out means that life is not only difficult but interesting, since interest consists in having something lying within (interest). This does not mean, however, that man should realize himself in the current phrase, but rather that he should be transformed by realizing the values for which he is created and which call him to that transformation. It is curious that when post-conciliar theology so often uses the word metanoia, which means a transformation of the mind [or repentance], it should go on to put so much emphasis on the realization of the self. It is pleasant to go with one's inclination, and rough to resist one’s own ego in order to mold it. The difficulty of it is recognized in philosophy, poetic adages, politics and myths. Every good is acquired or achieved at the price of effort. The Greek sage says the gods have put sweat between us and excellence, and Horace says: multa tulit fecitque puer, sudait et alsit. lt was a commonplace of education in ancient times that human life is a combat and an effort, and the letter upsilon became a symbol of the fact, but not the upsilon with equally sloping arms, Y, but the Pythagorean one with one arm upright and the other bent, P. Antiquity also applied to life the much told tale of Hercules at the fork in the road.

Life is today unrealistically presented to young people as joy, taking joy to mean the partial sort that comforts the soul in via rather than the full joy which satisfies it only in termino. The hardness of human life, which used so often to be referred to in prayers as a vale of tears, is denied or disguised. Since the result of this change in emphasis is to depict happiness as a man's natural state and thus as something due to him, the new ideal is to prepare a path for the young man which is secura d'ogn'intoppo e d'ogni sbarro. Thus every obstacle they have to overcome is seen by young people as an injustice, and barriers are looked upon not as tests, but as a scandal. Adults have abandoned the exercise of their authority through a desire to please, since they cannot believe they will be loved unless they flatter and please their children. The prophet’s warning applies to them: Vae quae consuut pulvillos sub omni cubito manus et faciunt cervicalia sub capite universae aetatis.

All the themes of the juvenilism of the contemporary world, in which the Church shares, come together in Pope Paul’s speech to a group of hippies who had come to Rome for a peace demonstration in April 1971. The Pope sketches and enumerates with praise those “secret values” young people are searching for.

The first is spontaneity, which doesn’t strike the Pope as being at odds with searching, even though a sought spontaneity ceases to be spontaneous. Nor does spontaneity seem to him at odds with morality even though the latter involves considered intentions, superimposes itself upon spontaneity and can clash with it. The second value is “liberation from certain formal and conventional ties.” The Pope does not specify what they are. As for forms, they are the substance itself as it appears, that is as it enters the world. And as for conventions, they are what is agreed upon, that is they are consents, and are good things if they are consents to good things. The third value is “the need to be themselves.” But it is not made clear what self it is that the young person should realize and in which he should recognize his identity: there are in fact many selves in a free nature, which can be transformed into many guises. The true self does not demand that the young person realize himself any old how but that he he transformed and even become other than he is. The words of the Gospel, furthermore, will bear no gloss: abneget semetipsum. The day before, the Pope had been exhorting to metanoa. So then, is it realize yourself or transform yourself? The fourth value is an enthusiasm “to live and interpret your own times.” The Pope, however, offers the young people no interpretative key to their own times, since he does not point out that from the religious point of view, man must seek out the non-ephemeral among the ephemeral things of his own time, that is, seek out the last end that perdures through it all. Having thus developed his argument without any explicitly religious reference, Paul VI somewhat unexpectedly concludes by saying: “We think that in this interior search of yours you notice the need for God.” The Pope is here certainly speaking speculatively rather than with his authority as teacher.

"THE REAL REASON FOR THE DEATH OF CLASSICAL MUSIC"

William Bigelow, "The Real Reason for the Death of Classical Music" (Breitbart, October 25, 2015).

Mark Twain is reported to have said "The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated."  I also think this applies to classical music; and even if the reasons may differ considerably, I wonder whether, like the Church, classical music will not simply endure.

It is a fact, nevertheless, that as the Church seems  to be imploding, the constituency supporting classical music also seems to be rapidly eroding.  Perhaps in some ways the two are not entirely unrelated.  Both rely upon tradition.  Both are "counter-cultural" in "swimming upstream" against the prevailing currents of contemporary popular culture.

The essay here is worth a read.  See what you think.

[Hat tip to D.H.]

Why "gun-free zones" are magnets for mass murders

I don't usually address topics like this, but Marshall Lewin makes a pretty good case for how I would explain, among other things, the otherwise seemingly counter-intuitive reason why I avoid movie theaters which have signs prohibiting firearms. Yes, it IS counter-intuitive. It doesn't mean you yourself necessarily have to be armed. But public gathering places that explicitly ban arms inadvertently advertise themselves as easy targets for mass murders. Here's how: Marshall Lewin, "Let's End The Charade Of Gun-Free Zones" (America's 1st Freedom, September 25, 2015) - abridged and edited:

“Gun-free zones” don’t protect anyone except the evil. How? By disarming law-abiding, peaceable people. By giving the lawless and the merciless a monopoly on force. And by guaranteeing that suicidal mass murderers will have zero resistance and 100-percent success against disarmed and defenseless victims....

Gun-Free Zones At Military Facilities

This summer’s attacks on two military facilities in Chattanooga, Tenn.—in which Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez murdered four Marines and a Navy sailor at a recruiting office and Navy reserve center—are far from unique. From the 2009 Fort Hood shootings, where an Islamic jihadist killed 13 people and wounded 32 more while screaming “Allahu Akbar!” ... to the 2013 Washington Navy Yard shootings, where a lone gunman shot 15 people, 12 of them fatally ... to the 2014 Fort Hood shootings (again) in which four people were killed and a dozen more were shot—every one of these crimes was committed at military facilities where our own soldiers and sailors were rendered helpless by “gun-free zones.” ...

Magnets For Mass Murder

... Consider the case of the Aurora movie theater shooter. As [John] Lott wrote for Fox News, “There were seven movie theaters showing ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ within 20 minutes of the killer’s apartment.” Yet he didn’t choose the theater closest to home. And he didn’t choose “Colorado’s largest auditorium,” which was only 10 minutes away and surely must have been tempting for someone who wanted to kill as many people as possible. Why not? Because, as Lott wrote, “all of those theaters allowed permitted concealed handguns.” Instead, the killer chose “the only one with a sign posted at the theater’s entrance prohibiting guns.”

Internationally renowned self-defense firearms instructor Massad Ayoob, who refers to “gun-free zones” as “hunting preserves for psychopathic murderers,” has analyzed many such events. Here are just a few examples:

Pearl, Miss., 1997: A 16-year-old stabs his mother to death, then takes a 30-30 rifle to his school, where he murders two young women. As he tries to drive away to continue his shooting spree at a nearby junior high school, Vice Principal Joel Myrick retrieves a Colt .45 from his truck, intercepts the killer and holds him for police.

Edinboro, Pa., 1998: A 14-year-old brings a gun to an off-campus school dance at a banquet facility and opens fire, killing a science teacher and wounding three others. Restaurant owner James Strand retrieves a shotgun and, as the killer is reloading, points it at him, forcing him to surrender.

Santa Clara, Calif., 1999: A 21-year-old man rents a 9 mm handgun at a gun range, then takes it into the adjoining store, fires it into the ceiling, and herds three store employees into an alley, where he tells them he’s going to kill them. One of those employees is secretly armed with a pistol, however, and uses it to end the attack.

Grundy, Va., 2002: After a 43-year-old former student shoots two faculty members to death, two students, Mikael Gross, 34, and Tracy Bridges, 25, immediately and independently run to their cars, retrieve their firearms, return to the scene, disarm the gunman and hold him for police.

Tyler, Texas, 2005: A man enraged over his divorce proceedings and wearing body armor opens fire on the courthouse steps, killing his ex-wife and wounding his son. Police fire upon the killer with handguns, but he drives them back with his rifle. Hearing gunfire, Mark Allan Wilson rushes to the scene with his Colt .45 and shoots the gunman, who flees without inflicting additional casualties. The gunman is later killed in a shootout with police.

Colorado Springs, Colo., 2007: After killing two and wounding two more at a nearby religious center, a gunman opens fire at New Life Church, killing two and injuring three more. Jeanne Assam, working volunteer security at the church, rushes the killer, shooting him with her Beretta 9 mm before he kills himself.

Moore, Okla., 2014: An Islamic jihadist who has pictures of Taliban fighters on his Facebook page returns to Vaughan Foods, where his employment had recently been suspended, and beheads a 54-year-old grandmother. He then slashes the throat of a 43-year-old female employee, but before he can behead her, company CEO Mark Vaughan, an Oklahoma County reserve deputy, retrieves a rifle from his car and shoots the assailant.

Chances are, you haven’t heard about most of these cases—or if you have, you haven’t heard about the armed citizens who stopped the attacks. And the reason is because that truth doesn’t fit into the media’s anti-gun narrative.

Does the Civil War still matter?

A book review, followed by letters to the editor of the New Oxford Review:

Christopher Gawley, "Taking Sides with the South" - a review of A Disease in the Public Mind: A New Understanding of Why We Fought the Civil War, by Thomas Fleming. Da Capo Press. 384 pages. $26.99. [published in the May 2015 issue of NOR]

Does the Civil War matter anymore? We recently passed the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, the most momentous battle in U.S. history; can we now consign the subject to the dustbin? Is it simply a footnote to America’s legacy of racial animus? No, this conflict still matters — and for many more reasons than race. For those who care about concepts like tyranny, limited government, subsidiarity, and the principles that animated our independence in 1776, the Civil War ought to matter. And like most things we think we know — and were taught — the truth is far more complicated. A war between two overwhelmingly Protestant peoples fought over a century and a half ago may seem to have little relevance for Catholics today. But many of the ideas and values Catholics care about — and many of the forces that seek to stamp out the free exercise of religion in the U.S. in our time — played definitive roles in the Civil War.

While it is tempting to align with the Copperheads, the Northern anti-war and anti-Lincoln Democrats who sympathized with the South, by doing so one runs headlong into true detestation of slavery. A similar contradiction manifests itself when one is attracted by the antebellum South, by the culture of the South, by the very idea of the South — but with an important difference. Notwithstanding the South’s sin of slavery, the antebellum South represented noble virtues and aspirations like tradition, manners, honor, hospitality, and duty far better than its eventual conqueror ever did. For a traditional Catholic, the antebellum South — its very ethos — is far more resonant and familiar than any other American subculture or time period. Thus, one must bring a fair amount of suspicion to any Lincoln hagiography or demonization of the South. In our time, knowledgeable haters of the South are, perhaps just beneath the surface, people who likely hate the Catholic Church as well.

In any honest evaluation of the Civil War, one must recognize the incongruity of vanquishing a democratic people at the point of a gun in the name of liberty. Seeing what a centralized, power-hungry, and war-mongering monstrosity the U.S. federal government has become, one cannot help but sympathize with those souls who stood up to the incipient leviathan. Contrarily, it is difficult to sympathize with a federal government that practiced “total war” against a people who had democratically chosen to sever the bonds of fraternity and country. The South’s emphasis on states’ rights and limited government is preferable to a bureaucratic, all-powerful state.

Thomas Fleming’s A Disease in the Public Mind promises a new understanding of why we fought the Civil War. This reviewer, however, didn’t find much that is new in it.