Out-of-touch administration?

As voters overwhelmingly reject federal mandate to purchase health insurance (MyWay, August 4, 2010) ...


... tax-payers shell out $700,000 for an Obama campaign to improve public perception of his healthcare plan (Free Republic, August 4, 2010).

Sound familiar?

Oh, what a judge will do to be feted by the trendy lefties

"Judge overturns Calif. gay marriage ban" (Yahoo!news, August 4, 2010). Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker's 136-page ruling cited the term "hostile" twice, "hate" 12 times, "fear" 15 times, "prejudice" 15 times, "free" or "freedom" 20 times, and "equal" or "equality" 65 times. The ruling is clearly one assuming that "gay rights" based on a choice of values and lifestyle may be treated no differently than "civil rights" indiscriminate of color, gender, ethnicity, etc. It thereby effectively conflates the distinction between differences between chosen value-orientations with ontological differences in persons, treating each identically. Minimally, it assumes that the fundamental question of whether sexual orientation is a chosen disposition or an ontological property of a person's being (both have been argued) is the province of jurisprudence and may be settled by a judge in a court of law, overriding voter's rights. All considerations are reduced to the common denominator of liberal sentiment and "compassion." One may as well extend the benign hand of juridical compassion to consenting adults committing cannibalism in the privacy of their own homes.

Another article, "Prop. 8 judge strikes down same-sex marriage ban" (San Francisco Chronicle, August 5, 2010), reports:

... Douglas Napier, an attorney who defended Prop. 8, as a distraction in a case that he said should have been about voters' rights. He called the ruling, which was the result of a nonjury trial in January, a legal "bump in the road."

"Those that want to uphold traditional family values are going to be outraged," said Napier, of the Alliance Defense Fund of Scottsdale, Ariz. "The whole nation is watching, and the whole nation should be quaking to think that a single judge sitting in California can reverse the will of 7 million voters" (emphasis added).

Sir Thomas More, on trial, to his accuser, Richard Rich:

"Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world. But for Wales?" (from Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons). [YouTube clip]

Archbishop Koch: Vatican II meant Mass facing East & in Latin

Excerpts from an interview granted by the new President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, Archbishop Kurt Koch, to Gaudium Press, posted by Rorate Caeli, "Archbishop Koch: Sacrosanctum Concilium meant Mass ad orientem and in Latin" (July 30, 2010):

All those things that some people say that was new after the Second Vatican Council were not a theme of the Constitution on the Liturgy [Sacrosanctum Concilium]. For instance, celebrating the Eucharist facing the faithful was never an object of Tradition.... The second thing was the vernacular language. The Council wished that Latin remain the language of the liturgy.

Yet all those very deep, fundamental, things of the liturgical Constitution, are still ignored by many. For instance, the entire liturgy and the Paschal liturgy.... One cannot celebrate the Paschal [mystery] without sacrifice, and that is the theme that is mentioned in theology. Because the Constitution on Revelation [Dei Verbum] is not yet known in the Church either. We still have much to do in order to receive the Council.

This still leaves unexplored the question as to what the Concilium and Abp. Bugnini were up to; but that's another story.

Pelosi dribbles, dodges, feints then spiritually disintegrates

Watch the Speaker of the House dodge this question on Jesus' right to life (Breitbart.TV, August 3, 2010). This would be comedy material if it were not so seriously devastating. It is a horrible thing to watch the public exhibition of a soul's spiritual decomposition in progress.

[Hat tip to S.K.]

Popular presentation on the origin of Post-Vatican II Mass

In a popular presentation based on "over 500 hours of research," RealCatholicTV.com's third episode of Catholic Investigative Agency presents (in two parts) an hour-long review of the dramatic history of the New Mass. In the promotional material, we read: "Why does Pope Benedict assert that the Mass we go to every Sunday is a spontaneously manufactured product? Find out how the Mass was changed by one radical priest and his cabal of liturgical 'experts.'" Part I deals with the "behind-the-scenes" background history.

Part II is an interview with a young Canadian priest, Fr. Paul Nicholson, with no experience of the Extraordinary Form Mass. When Pope Benedict XVI issued his motu proprio, Summorum Pontificum (2007), this priest felt he was being summoned to do something about what Holy Father refers to as the "rupture" in Catholic experience separating the post-Conciliar Mass and everything that preceded it. Hence, he started with his own parishioners by learning how to celebrate the traditional Latin Mass in order to share with them a sense of "continuity" with Catholic worship preceding 1970. The results are startling.

Part I: http://www.realcatholictv.com/cia/03Massdest/
Part II: http://www.realcatholictv.com/cia/03Massdest/index.php?pt=2

Gary Gutting on Philosophy and Faith

Notre Dame professor of philosophy, Gary Gutting offers a thought-provoking discussion of "Philosophy and Faith" (New York Times, Opinion, August 1, 2010):

One of my jobs as a teacher of bright, mostly Catholic undergraduates is to get them thinking about why they hold their religious beliefs. It’s easy enough to spark discussion about the problem of evil (“Can you really read the newspaper everyday and continue to believe in an all-perfect God?”) or about the diversity of religious beliefs (“If you’d been born in Saudi Arabia, don’t you think you’d be a Muslim?”). Inevitably, however, the discussion starts to fizzle when someone raises a hand and says (sometimes ardently, sometimes smugly) “But aren’t you forgetting about faith?”

That seems to be enough for most students. The trump card has been played, and they — or at least the many who find religion more a comfort than a burden — happily remember that believing means never having to explain why.

I myself, the product of a dozen years of intellectually self-confident Jesuit education, have little sympathy with the “it’s just faith” response. “How can you say that?” I reply. “You wouldn’t buy a used car just because you had faith in what the salesperson told you. Why would you take on faith far more important claims about your eternal salvation?” And, in fact, most of my students do see their faith not as an intellectually blind leap but as grounded in evidence and argument.

“Well, if there’s no God,” they say, “how can you explain why anything at all exists or why the world is governed by such precise laws of nature?”

At this point, the class perks up again as I lay out versions of the famous arguments for the existence of God, and my students begin to think that they’re about to get what their parents have paid for at a great Catholic university: some rigorous intellectual support for their faith.

Soon enough, however, things again fall apart, since our best efforts to construct arguments along the traditional lines face successive difficulties. The students realize that I’m not going to be able to give them a convincing proof, and I let them in on the dirty secret: philosophers have never been able to find arguments that settle the question of God’s existence or any of the other “big questions” we’ve been discussing for 2500 years.

This seems to bring us back to where we started: “It’s all faith.” I, with my Jesuit-inspired confidence in reason and evidence, have always resisted this. But I have also felt the tug of my students’ conclusion that philosophy, although a good intellectual exercise and the source of tantalizing puzzles and paradoxes, has no real significance for religious faith.

Recently, however, I’ve realized a mistake in the way that I — and most of my professional colleagues — tend to think about philosophy and faith. (One of the great benefits of getting to teach philosophy to bright undergraduates is that it makes it easier to think outside the constraints of current professional assumptions.) The standard view is that philosophers’ disagreements over arguments about God make their views irrelevant to the faith of ordinary believers and non-believers. The claim seems obvious: if we professionals can’t agree among ourselves, what can we have to offer to non-professionals? An appeal to experts requires consensus among those experts, which philosophers don’t have.

This line of thought ignores the fact that when philosophers’ disagree it is only about specific aspects of the most subtle and sophisticated versions of arguments for and against God’s existence (for example, my colleague Alvin Plantinga’s modal-logic formulation of St. Anselm’s ontological argument or William Rowe’s complex version of a probabilistic argument from evil). There is no disagreement among philosophers about the more popular arguments to which theists and atheists typically appeal: as formulated, they do not prove (that is, logically derive from uncontroversial premises) what they claim to prove. They are clearly inadequate in the judgment of qualified professionals. Further, there are no more sophisticated formulations that theists or atheists can accept — the way we do scientific claims — on the authority of expert consensus.

In these popular debates about God’s existence, the winners are neither theists nor atheists, but agnostics — the neglected step-children of religious controversy, who rightly point out that neither side in the debate has made its case. This is the position supported by the consensus of expert philosophical opinion.

This conclusion should particularly discomfit popular proponents of atheism, such as Richard Dawkins, whose position is entirely based on demonstrably faulty arguments. Believers, of course, can fall back on the logically less rigorous support that they characterize as faith. But then they need to reflect on just what sort of support faith can give to religious belief. How are my students’ warm feelings of certainty as they hug one another at Sunday Mass in their dorm really any different from the trust they might experience while under the spell of a really plausible salesperson?

An answer may lie in work by philosophers as different as David Hume, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Alvin Plantinga. In various ways, they have shown that everyday life is based on “basic” beliefs for which we have no good arguments. There are, for example, no more basic truths from which we can prove that the past is often a good guide to the future, that our memories are reliable, or that other people have a conscious inner life. Such beliefs simply — and quite properly — arise from our experience in the world. Plantinga in particular has argued that core religious beliefs can have a status similar to these basic but unproven beliefs. His argument has clear plausibility for some sorts of religious beliefs. Through experiences of, for example, natural beauty, moral obligation, or loving and being loved, we may develop an abiding sense of the reality of an extraordinarily good and powerful being who cares about us. Who is to say that such experiences do not give reason for belief in God as much as parallel (though different) experiences give reason for belief in reliable knowledge of the past and future and of other human minds? There is still room for philosophical disputes about this line of thought, but it remains the most plausible starting point of a philosophical case for religious belief.

But this defense of faith faces a steep hurdle. Although it may support generic religious claims about a good and powerful being who cares for us, it is very hard to see it sustaining the specific and robust claims of Judaism, Christianity and Islam about how God is concretely and continually involved in our existence. God is said to be not just good and powerful but morally perfect and omnipotent, a sure ultimate safeguard against any evil that might threaten us. He not only cares about us but has set up precise moral norms and liturgical practices that we must follow to ensure our eternal salvation. Without such specificity, religion lacks the exhilarating and terrifying possibilities that have made it such a powerful force in human history.

But how can religious experience sustain faith in a specific salvation narrative, particularly given the stark differences among the accounts of the great religious traditions? What sort of religious experience could support the claim that Jesus Christ was God incarnate and not just a great moral teacher? Or that the Bible rather than the Koran is the revelation of God’s own words? Believers may have strong feelings of certainty, but each religion rejects the certainty of all the others, which leaves us asking why they privilege their own faith.

I am not saying that religious believers are in principle incapable of finding satisfactory answers to such questions. I am saying that philosophy and religion can and must speak to each other, and that those who take their beliefs seriously need to reflect on these questions, and that contemporary philosophical discussions (following on Hume and Wittgenstein) about knowledge, belief, certainty and disagreement are highly relevant to such reflection — and potentially, to an individual’s belief. This is what I will try to convey to my students the next time I teach introductory philosophy of religion.

Gary Gutting teaches philosophy at the University of Notre Dame and co-edits Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, an on-line book review journal. His most recent book is “What Philosophers Know: Case Studies in Recent Analytic Philosophy.”

[Hat tip to N.B.]

Weigel v. Diogenes on Benedict and the future of progressivism

I just rediscovered a column by "Diogenes" in Catholic World Report upon which I had intended to post something back in June. In that column, Diogenes refers to a column he wrote five years ago, following the election of Pope Benedict XVI, reflecting on how the election would affect Catholic liberals. After his column appeared, a friendly reader commented:

Let's wait 5-10 years and see who's right, Weigel or Diogenes. If Benedict XVI proves to take his role as administrator of the church, or primus inter pares, more seriously than did his predecessor, it is fair to assume that Weigel will win the wager. If not, Diogenes will win, but all believing Catholics will lose.

Diogenes remarks that he would be happy to report that Weigel was right and "your Uncle Di" was wrong, but that in light of the worldwide torrent of criticism directed recently against the Pope -- much of it from Catholic quarters -- he wonders.

What follows in Diogenes' column is the original article he wrote in 2005, completely unaltered. Here are some excerpts:

In a syndicated column that appeared in Catholic diocesan newspapers late in April, George Weigel argued that Cardinal Ratzinger's election as Pope Benedict XVI signified the twilight of Catholic progressivism. As he put it:

It was expected that the Catholic Church would, indeed must, take the path of accommodation: that has been the central assumption of what's typically called "progressive" Catholicism. That assumption has now been decisively and definitively refuted. The "progressive" project is over -- not because its intentions were malign, but because it posed an ultimately boring question: how little can I believe, and how little can I do, and still remain Catholic?

I am not as sanguine as Weigel regarding the intentions of progressivists. After all, they haven't been low-profile church mice quietly pleading for a live-and-let-live Catholicism. While the now-comic 1960s culture of flowers and folk music may incline us to view them as harmless sentimentalists, they were and are revolutionaries, out to replace their old order with a new one of their own devising.

Diogenes asks us to remember how progressivists have taken over most theology departments, some seminaries, some diocesan religious education offices, as well as some religious congregations; and how they have used the "shibboleth issues" of contraception, women's ordination, gay rights, PC language, etc., to hire and promote ideological allies and torpedo others. While Weigel is correct in declaring that progressivists have failed to carry the day and that their religious minimalism has much to do with their failure, says Diogenes, most of us probably know seminarians or grad students or lay volunteers who, because of their orthodoxy, found themselves unemployed before realizing what hit them.

For the same reasons I do not expect progressivists to shrug and gracefully fade off the scene. What is at stake is not a failed literary review, but the meaning of their entire life. In the Bolshevik revolution, the young firebrands of 1910 did not cede authority to the young firebrands of 1980; once having seized power, they couldn't relinquish it, and kept a white-knuckle grip on the Party until it was loosened by clogged arteries. So too in the post-conciliar Catholic putsch, the angry young mustangs of 1968 became the angry middle-ages mustangs of 1988, who became the angry old mustangs of today....

Diogenes also notes that mainstream Catholic liberals "have blood on their hands" by dint of their complicity to a woman's right to an abortion since Roe v. Wade in 1973, a temptation hard to resist after casting their lot with contraception after Humanae Vitae in 1968. The aggravating thing, of course, was how this flatly contradicted their professed concern for the voiceless, which is why they detest so deeply any mention of abortion, which "reminds them of their betrayal of the sole element of nobility in their progressivist project."

"Weak men are apt to be cruel," said Lord Halifax, "because they stick at nothing that may repair the ill effect of their mistakes." The ad hoc acts of injustice perpetrated in seminaries and theology departments -- rejections, firings, demotions -- were for the most part tactical cruelties necessitated by the dynamics of revolution: with 40 million casualties behind you, there's no stopping, and there's no going back.

[Acknowledgement: excerpts from Diogenes, "The Reckoning -- Reconsidered," Catholic World Report (June 2010), p. 48.]

Congregational Responses in the Low Mass – Part 1 of 2

Tridentine Community News (August 1, 2010):

By the grace of God, we now have the privilege of attending Low Masses in the Extraordinary Form every Monday at St. Josaphat Church at 7:00 PM, and every Tuesday at Windsor’s Assumption Church at 7:00 PM. In an effort to answer questions that have been posed regarding the congregation’s spoken responses at a Low Mass, we will cite relevant excerpts from the authoritative document, De Música Sacra, the Instruction on Sacred Music and Sacred Liturgy issued in 1958 by the Sacred Congregation for Rites (now known as the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments):

14. a) In sung Masses only Latin is to be used. This applies not only to the celebrant, and his ministers, but also to the choir or congregation.

“However, popular vernacular hymns may be sung at the solemn Eucharistic Sacrifice (sung Masses), after the liturgical texts have been sung in Latin, in those places where such a centenary or immemorial custom has obtained. Local ordinaries may permit the continuation of this custom ‘if they judge that it cannot prudently be discontinued because of the circumstances of the locality or the people’ (cf. canon 5)” (Músicæ sacræ disciplína: AAS 48 [1956] 16-17).

b) At low Mass the faithful who participate directly in the liturgical ceremonies with the celebrant by reciting aloud the parts of the Mass which belong to them must, along with the priest and his server, use Latin exclusively.

But if, in addition to this direct participation in the liturgy, the faithful wish to add some prayers or popular hymns, according to local custom, these may be recited or sung in the vernacular.

c) It is strictly forbidden for the faithful in unison or for a commentator to recite aloud with the priest the parts of the Proper, Ordinary, and canon of the Mass. This prohibition extends to both Latin, and a vernacular word-for-word translation. Exceptions will be enumerated in paragraph 31. However, it is desirable that a lector read the Epistle and Gospel in the vernacular for the benefit of the faithful at low Masses on Sundays and feast days. Between the Consecration, and the Pater noster a holy silence is fitting.

* * *
At Low Mass

28. Care must be taken that the faithful assist at low Mass, too, "not as strangers or mute spectators" (Divíni cultus, Dec. 20, 1928: AAS 21 [1929] 40), but as exercising that kind of participation demanded by so great, and fruitful a mystery.

29. The first way the faithful can participate in the low Mass is for each one, on his own initiative, to pay devout attention to the more important parts of the Mass (interior participation), or by following the approved customs in various localities (exterior participation).
Those who use a small missal, suitable to their own understanding, and pray with [the] priest in the very words of the Church, are worthy of special praise. But all are not equally capable of correctly understanding the rites, and liturgical formulas; nor does everyone possess the same spiritual needs; nor do these needs remain constant in the same individual. Therefore, these people may find a more suitable or easier method of participation in the Mass when "they meditate devoutly on the mysteries of Jesus Christ, or perform other devotional exercises, and offer prayers which, though different in form from those of the sacred rites, are in essential harmony with them" (Mediátor Dei, AAS 39 [1947] 560-561).

* * *
Prayers and Hymns

30. The faithful can participate another way at the Eucharistic Sacrifice by saying prayers together or by singing hymns. The prayers and hymns must be chosen appropriately for the respective parts of the Mass, and as indicated in paragraph 14c.

31. A final method of participation, and the most perfect form, is for the congregation to make the liturgical responses to the prayers of the priest, thus holding a sort of dialogue with him, and reciting aloud the parts which properly belong to them.

There are four degrees or stages of this participation:

a) First, the congregation may make the easier liturgical responses to the prayers of the priest: Amen; Et cum spíritu tuo; Deo grátias; Glória tibi Dómine; Laus tibi, Christe; Habémus ad Dóminum; Dignum et justum est; Sed líbera nos a malo;

b) Secondly, the congregation may also say prayers, which, according to the rubrics, are said by the server, including the Confiteor, and the triple Dómine non sum dignus before the faithful receive Holy Communion;

c) Thirdly, the congregation may say aloud with the celebrant parts of the Ordinary of the Mass: Glória in excélsis Deo; Credo; Sanctus-Benedíctus; Agnus Dei;

d) Fourthly, the congregation may also recite with the priest parts of the Proper of the Mass: Introit, Gradual, Offertory, Communion. Only more advanced groups who have been well trained will be able to participate with becoming dignity in this manner.

32. Since the Pater Noster is a fitting, and ancient prayer of preparation for Communion, the entire congregation may recite this prayer in unison with the priest in low Masses; the Amen at the end is to be said by all. This is to be done only in Latin, never in the vernacular.

[Comments? Please e-mail tridnews@stjosaphatchurch.org. Previous columns are available at www.stjosaphatchurch.org. This edition of Tridentine Community News, with minor editions, is from the St. Josaphat bulletin insert for August 1, 2010. Hat tip to A.B.]

LLA Recap – A Whirlwind Weekend

Tridentine Community News (July 25, 2010):

After almost two years of planning, the Latin Liturgy Association National Convention [of July 16-18, 2010, in Detroit/Windsor] is finally over. It was one of the most memorable events ever to have happened on the local Latin Mass scene.

Friday’s bus tour was sold out. On Saturday, the hall at St. Joseph was filled with over 110 people, many more than we expected for the talks, which covered a variety of subjects. The Sunday Pontifical Mass had over 430 in attendance. Considering the modest advertising that was done for this conference, it is clear that interest in the Latin Mass, both Ordinary and Extraordinary Forms, is growing, locally and across North America.

The music programs at each of the liturgies were outstanding: Friday’s Vespers at Assumption-Windsor under the direction of Wassim Sarweh, Saturday’s Ordinary Form Latin Mass at St. Joseph under the direction of Michael Semaan, Saturday’s Vespers at St. Albertus under the direction of Dr. Steven Ball and Dr. David Saunders, Sunday’s Benediction led by Joe Balistreri, and, of course, Sunday’s Pontifical Mass under the direction of Wassim Sarweh. The latter featured the combined choirs of St. Josaphat and Assumption-Windsor, plus volunteer singers from our parishes and guest singers from Assumption Grotto and Ann Arbor’s St. Thomas the Apostle Church. We were also privileged to have Montreal soprano Melinda Enns join us with her “angel’s voice”, as one of our readers terms it.

Some of the English-speaking world’s most accomplished Latin Mass music directors attended the conference. One of them with conference-organizing experience was particularly complimentary. While some of us look up to Chicago with its 14 Extraordinary Form Mass sites, one attendee from Chicago told us that yes, they have quantity, but Detroit has the quality. Well, of course, isn’t Quality Job 1 around here?

CDs and DVDs of the talks and the Pontifical Mass will be available from Ferndale’s St. Michael’s Media; details to follow.

Looking Forward

We pray that three things develop from the LLA Convention: First, that those who were not yet familiar with the riches of the Church’s liturgical and musical traditions would be introduced to this vast treasury, motivated to learn more about it, and through it grow in their spiritual life.

Second, that those who may be interested in starting Latin Masses in their own parishes and dioceses might pick up some practical lessons from our region’s experience, and be motivated to embark on such projects with more confidence.

Third, that those already attending a Latin Mass might discover yet more riches available to them. The process of preparing for Vespers and the Pontifical Mass, for example, was a humbling and eye-opening experience that proved that there is always more to learn about the Church’s liturgy.

May God bless everyone who helped, who contributed towards, and who attended this conference. Ad majórem Dei glóriam.

[Comments? Please e-mail tridnews@stjosaphatchurch.org. Previous columns are available at www.stjosaphatchurch.org. This edition of Tridentine Community News, with minor editions, is from the St. Josaphat bulletin insert for July 25, 2010. Hat tip to A.B.]

Dr. Kenneth Howell reinstated at U. of Illinois

Many of you will remember our post, "Catholic prof fired for giving Church teaching on homosexuality" (Musings, July 11, 2010) about our friend, Ken Howell, who was precipitously fired because of a complaint of "hate speech" leveled against his account of Catholic teaching on homosexuality. Well, he's been re-instated. Sort of. At least it's a temporary victory for academic freedom.

Tribune reporter, Manya A. Brachear, "U. of I. reinstates Catholic instructor" (Chicago Tribune, July 29, 2010) writes:

An adjunct religion instructor barred from teaching by the University of Illinois after defending the Roman Catholic stance on homosexuality has been invited back to teach this fall.

Adjunct associate professor Kenneth Howell was reinstated on Thursday — a day after the deadline when his lawyers said they would sue the university for violating his academic freedom if administrators failed to reinstate him.

University officials also announced they would sign Howell's paychecks, ending an unconventional decades-long practice by which the church compensated whoever taught Catholic studies at the state university.

Jordan Lorence, an attorney for the Alliance Defense Fund, a conservative legal consortium representing Howell, commended university officials for reconsidering their actions and reinstating the associate professor.

"The university has righted the wrong by letting Ken Howell back into the classroom," Lorence said. "They should never have removed him in the first place."

Howell, who has taught on the Urbana - Champaign campus since 2001, was removed last month after explaining during class why the church believes that homosexual behavior violates natural moral law. He elaborated later in an e-mail that lawyers say circulated around campus, prompting one student to call it "hate speech."

His subsequent removal generated outcry from alumni and students, including a "Save Dr. Ken" Facebook page. On Thursday, the page was filled with posts celebrating victory.

But the reinstatement is temporary. It does not affect an ongoing faculty review, which has been investigating whether Howell's immediate removal violated his academic freedom or right to due process.

Another faculty committee appointed to examine the circumstances of Howell's compensation concluded that the university's relationship with St. John's Catholic Newman Center, the Catholic ministry on campus, was improper.

Though Howell taught Introduction to Catholicism and Modern Catholic Thought in university classrooms, he served on the payroll of the Newman Center funded by the Diocese of Peoria — an agreement that remained in place despite scholars' objections when a religious studies program was established in 1971.

Howell now will earn $10,000 from the university for teaching Introduction to Catholicism in the religious studies department this fall.

Pope John XXIII on fitting liturgical language

"The Catholic Church has a dignity far surpassing that of every merely human society, for it was founded by Christ the Lord. It is altogether fitting, therefore, that the language it uses should be noble, majestic, and non-vernacular."

Blessed John XXIII, Veterum Sapientia, 1962

[Hat tip to New Theological Movement]

Does skimming short texts on the internet make us stupid?

Patrick Kingsley, "The art of slow reading" (The Guardian, July 15, 2010) -- [Just skim this ... and LOOK: I've even done your preliminary skimming FOR YOU!!!]:

If you're reading this article in print, chances are you'll only get through half of what I've written. And if you're reading this online, you might not even finish a fifth. At least, those are the two verdicts from a pair of recent research projects – respectively, the Poynter Institute's Eyetrack survey, and analysis by Jakob Nielsen – which both suggest that many of us no longer have the concentration to read articles through to their conclusion.

The problem doesn't just stop there: academics report that we are becoming less attentive book-readers, too....

So are we getting stupider? Is that what this is about? Sort of. ... we are now absorbing short bursts of words on Twitter and Facebook more regularly than longer texts.

Which all means that although, because of the internet, we have become very good at collecting a wide range of factual titbits, we are also gradually forgetting how to sit back, contemplate, and relate all these facts to each other.....

Still reading? You're probably in a dwindling minority. But no matter: a literary revolution is at hand. First we had slow food, then slow travel. Now, those campaigns are joined by a slow-reading movement – a disparate bunch of academics and intellectuals who want us to take our time while reading, and re-reading. They ask us to switch off our computers every so often and rediscover both the joy of personal engagement with physical texts, and the ability to process them fully.

[Hat tip to C.G.-Z.]

Liberal media wants to "crack down" on bloggers

In a gratuitous exhibition of a most illiberal, repressive attitude, "CNN Host Calls for Crackdown on 'Bloggers' in Wake of Sherrod Incident: 'Something’s Going to Have to be Done Legally'" (News Busters, July 23, 2010). The pretext is variable, but the sentiment is the same: shut down those reactionary right-wing media outlets (talk show hosts, bloggers, etc.). The left can't seem to prevail in the free marketplace of ideas, so it wants to grab the the levers of power and do something "legal" to leverage its will. Recall what J.J. Rousseau said of those who dissent from the will of those in power: "They must be compelled to be free." The closing of the American mind redivivus.

Von Hildebrand criticizes West's cult of the body

Alice von Hildebrant provides substantial food for thought and fuel for the fire in her recent essay, "Dietrich von Hildebrand, Catholic Philosopher, and Christopher West, Modern Enthusiast:Two Very Different Approaches to Love, Marriage and Sex" (CNA, July 21, 2010) [archived here].

[Hat tip to D.]

Prayer request

Please pray for Donna, who recently wrote requesting prayer for a difficult time in her life.

God bless,
PB