Cosmos-Liturgy-Sex

     For all of us called to the Vocation of Marriage (or Vacation of Marriage as I heard mispronounced in a wedding one time) there is a great book I have just discovered.  The title is “For Better…Forever” by Gregory K. Popcak. Dr. Popcak is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker who has his ideas well grounded in the Catholic Faith. You can find more information on Dr. Popcak at the Pastoral Solutions Institute webpage http://www.exceptionalmarriages.com/

     As a budding young Marriage and Family Therapist is it great, for me, to find a text that not only up holds the Catholic Churches idea about Marriage but also challenges each couple (husband & wife) to buck up and work on their marriage. I have personally be even more convicted to work on my marriage as well as to implement these principles into my therapeutic approach with couples. This work does not challenge you to work on your marriage so much as to work on yourself and your part of the marriage. My mom used to tell me growing up that marriage is never 50/50. Sometimes it is 90/10 or 110/-10. Dr. Popcak addresses this and many other great aspects of marriage in this short 235 pages.

     Dr. Popcak also outlines the different types of marriages (Impoverished, Conventional & Exceptional) and describes what the strengths and weaknesses of each marriage are. He provides suggestions in which we as married couples can seek to have “Exceptional Marriages” and not settle for the marriage that we have. This book is a wonderful breath of fresh air (if you have not read it already. Published, 1999) and insight into what our marriages are really about and what we are doing wrong even in the most well intentioned and well oiled relationships.

     Dr. Popcak has many good books that he has written over the years on Relationships (For Better…Forever), Sex (Holy Sex!) and Parenting (Parenting by Grace: Raising Practically Perfect Kids). I will have to provide one disclaimer for his works; don’t read them unless you are ready to do some hard work on your relationships. You cannot read these works without being convicted to put more work and effort in to your family. As with our Catholic faith life our marriages must be in constant conversion closer to what our Lord examples to us in His relationship with the Church (Ephesians 5:23-28). Don’t waste one more minute in raising your spouse closer to Christ as a spotless and unblemished lamb.

     Peace & Prayers,

     CLS

Surely one of the most interesting cultural phenomena of recent years is the proliferation, on television and in radio, of shows dealing with the so-called “paranormal.” Apparently, the world is filled with ghost hunters, many of them have television shows, and people love to watch them in action.

Of course, there is little doubt that many of these ghost hunters are hucksters. But the existence of these people, of their shows, and of their presumably large audiences, points to an interesting fact of our culture: people are starved for the supernatural.

One wonders how truly representative the braying spokespersons of the new atheism can be when more people probably tune in nightly to broadcasts of Coast-to-Coast AM than who have read, in sum total, the books of Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and Sam Harris.

Given that this situation obtains, it is lamentable that Catholic theologians for the past 40 years have been, by and large, silent on the existence of one important element of the supernatural in our midst: the unseen world of pure spirits. Nowadays, Catholic theologians are so unremittingly concerned with the eschatological that they have forgotten to teach people about the reality of this unseen world.

Liberation theologians politicize the eschaton, the end of times, telling us that salvation will come through socio-political revolution. They ignore the unseen world entirely. Many other theologians, even orthodox ones, are chary to discuss the intermediate state of the soul before final judgment, indeed, to discuss the immortality of the soul at all. And where is to be found any serious discussion of the angels?

Many theologians seem embarrassed to admit that the Church’s scriptural and liturgical heritage compels us to recognize the universal presence in and above our world of angelic persons.

We would do well to turn to Cardinal John Henry Newman to remedy this situation. Cardinal Newman was imbued, both by faith and by his innate poetic gifts, with a strong sense of the reality of what he called the “invisible world.”

From a young age, he recognized the presence within this world and beyond it of hierarchies of angels, created personal presences charged by God with ministering both to humans in history and to the entire cosmos. Also, he understood the religious seriousness that should accompany one who has a full sense of the reality of the immortal soul.

He pleaded with his Christian brethren, especially in his Parochial and Plain Sermons, to be open to seeing the whole world through the eyes of faith. This requires seeing the world as filled with angelic presences, and also of recognizing the ultimate seriousness of Christ’s revelation of the spiritual soul. Indeed, this latter, according to Newman, when it is understood in its full meaning, is the central doctrine of revelation.

Newman, then an Anglican vicar, powerfully articulated his understanding of the unseen world, which he later called his “Sacramental system,” in two early sermons: “The Powers of Nature,” and “The Invisible World.” The modernist Newman scholar, Hénri Bremond, was so taken with the latter sermon that he considered it to be one of the most important sermons in all of the Church’s history.

It is a clear and consummately artistic disclosure of the presence and power of the angelic hierarchies.

I would like in the rest of this post to provide a brief synopsis of Newman’s “Sacramental system,” focusing on what he says about the angels, which I draw verbatim from a book that I am writing:

In his Apologia Pro Vita Sua, written later in life, after his conversion, Newman explains his understanding of the invisible world, his “Sacramental system.”

His reading of the Church Fathers, he tell us, confirmed him in this sacramental way of seeing. He relates to us that some portion of the teachings of the Fathers “came like music” to his inward ear:

…as if in response to ideas, which, with little external to encourage them, I had cherished so long. These were based on the mystical or sacramental principle, and spoke of the various Economies or Dispensations of the Eternal. I understood these passages to mean that the exterior world, physical and historical, was but the manifestation to our senses of realities greater than itself. Nature was a parable: Scripture was an allegory: pagan literature, philosophy, and mythology, properly understood, were but a preparation for the Gospel.

Newman saw the whole of creation and history as a praeparatio evangelii, directly manifested in the Jewish prophets and indirectly manifested in the pagan prophets, whose bards too were inspired by thoughts beyond their own. It is especially in the school of the Alexandrian masters that Newman found resonance with this intuitive, poetic vision of the universe.

This “Christian Platonism” of his comes to the fore in his discussion of how near to his own thinking he found the Alexandrian masters to be in regard to the angels. For both Newman and the Alexandrian theologians, the angels are not only:

…the ministers employed by the Creator in the Jewish and Christian dispensations, as we find on the face of Scripture, but as carrying on, as Scripture also implies, the Economy of the Visible World. I considered them as the real causes of motion, light, and life, and of those elementary principles of the physical universe, which, when offered in their development to our senses, suggest to us the notion of cause and effect, and of what are called the laws of nature.

In this same passage, Newman repeats what he had said in “The Powers of Nature,” a sermon that he had preached for Michaelmas day in 1831: “Every breath of air and ray of light and heat, every beautiful prospect is, as it were, the skirts of their garments, the waving of the robes of those whose faces see God.” Though he speaks in the Apologia of his cosmology of the angels in the past tense, a view that he had long cherished, there is no indication that he ever forsook his “Sacramental system.”

In his two sermons mentioned above, Newman endeavors to bring the modern congregation to whom he is preaching to a conscious awakening to the reality of the invisible world. In the “Powers of Nature,” he argues that if we are to see the world in its deepest, most religious significance, we must strive, through faith, to recognize that all created things are in the service of God. The world itself is a revelation of God, and all things have meaning in proportion to their glorification of God.

In “The Invisible World,” Newman shows the rationality of the scriptural view of creation. It is no less stunning, he argues, to our quotidian sensibilities to consider the angelic world than it is to consider the myriad unseen worlds that constitute visible nature, and even human society.

Even the physical and historical worlds are constituted by worlds within worlds, a known fact whose consideration should make it less strange for us to acknowledge the existence of the angelic realms. The physical world is constituted by animals whose nature we can never fathom, whose activities go largely unseen by us.

Indeed, their existence, as we experience it, though we can never fathom the depths of their brute natures, points to the reality of will and reason at the heart of nature. Reason and will are realities which go far beyond the limits of the scientific philosophies of our day to dismiss reductively.

History itself is constituted by human societies within societies, whose activities are unknown outside of their respective spheres. Each of us lives in a particular society or sphere: of poets, of scientists, of religious men, of scholars, of artists, of artisans. And we live in our respective spheres, going about our daily lives, as if other societies or spheres did not even exist.

Newman teaches that the invisible world of the angels is no less present to us than the worlds within our visible world that go unseen by us but that we know to exist. Through the light of faith we know that the invisible world of the angels is always present to us, in our own world, though it will only burst forth, into the open, in the future.

Yet, we can reasonably anticipate this eschatological breaking-in of the invisible world by considering it as analogous to the yearly emergence of the flourishing of springtime in nature, in which life and activity bursts forth from out of the frozen winter.

Just as in the change of the seasons from winter to spring the budding of the trees and the flowering of the earth transfigures the barren, wintry soil, so the eternal springtime that is to come will break through into our world. The veil that at present covers over the invisible world will be removed. The eternal kingdom of God, hidden within the world of our direct experience, will shine forth in Christ’s Second Coming.

“Shine forth, O Lord,” Newman prays in order to hasten the coming of the eternal springtime, “as when on Thy Nativity Thine Angels visited the shepherds: let Thy glory blossom forth as bloom and foliage on the trees; change with Thy mighty power this visible world into that diviner world, which as yet we see not….” We would all do well to join him in that prayer.

Well, here’s good news for pro-lifers. John McCain has purportedly ruled out the possibility of picking a pro-abortion running mate. It is said that he has told Republican Party officials that he has gotten the message loudly and clearly from pro-lifers. If this turns out to be true, I would like to extend a hearty thanks to all pro-lifers who got on their phones and e-mails.

It seems that there are always numerous stories floating around that manifest the great dangers a society faces when it has rejected sound, classical philosophy. Modern philosophy, with its foundation in Cartesian doubt, has left the average person who has thought about it with the impression that philosophy is to be equated with sophism.

Modern philosophy has also undermined our ability to any longer distinguish right from wrong. For centuries the Christian ethos in the West held at bay the deleterious effects of the loss of classical metaphysics, philosophical anthropology and practical philosophy (politics, economics, and ethics). The West, by and large, is now post-Christian. The Christian ethos is lost and now we are drifting free in Nietzsche’s great sea of endless possibilities that he waxed on about in his Gay Science. Unfortunately the sea he envisioned will be found to be the “lake of fire” St. John saw in his vision.

We now have medical ethicists who, if not morally sound, at least are honest. Two of them recently published an article in the NEJM, as reported by LifeSiteNews, in which they admit that brain death and cardiac death are fictions. These “ethicists” support the donation of vital organs and are left undeterred by the prospects for donations even though they admit we cannot reliably determine death before needing to harvest vital organs. LifeSiteNews quotes the two doctors:

Troug and Miller suggest that, rather than insisting on dead donors, “ethical requirements of organ donation” should be looked at “in terms of valid informed consent under the limited conditions of devastating neurologic injury.”

They base their “ethics” on a synthesis of Mills’s utilitarianism and Nietzsche’s will to power. If one does not have the prospects of an “adequate” quality of life (i.e. a devastating neurologic injury) then someone (Danger! Danger! Will Robinson) can choose (ala Nietzsche) to kill that person in order to harvest his organs. This is perfectly in line with our culture of comfort and choice.

It seems so reasonable because choosing to be comfortable is the only non-negotiable “value” that we seem to have left. Thus, choice becomes the only absolute moral norm. Good is the right to choose, bad is anything that conflicts with this “right.” How about when two choices for comfort conflict? Well, Barack Obama provides us the answer using this neo-Western ethic.

Last week LifeSiteNews ran a story about Senator Obama’s radical position on abortion and his work in killing (sardonic pun intended) the Illinois Born-Alive Infants Protection bill. The details are curious. Issues of his integrity in owning up to what he actually did with this bill aside, one thing really stands out to me. The Illinois bill copied language from a congressional bill that passed, that included a so-called neutrality clause. The language of this clause is enough to make one shudder:

‘‘(c) Nothing in this section shall be construed to affirm, deny, expand, or contract any legal status or legal right applicable to any member of the species homo sapiens at any point prior to being ‘born alive’ as defined in this section’’

Look at the stark language which wishes to exclude from the bill, any change in legal status or legal right of “a member of the species homo sapiens” before he is born alive. In other words, those drafting this bill who support the “right” to choose (i.e. abortion) have to have carefully considered how to separate members of the same species from one another with respect to legal rights. We have seen this happen in many different ways in the past. We can see it in the U.S. slavery episode, we can see it with the way aboriginal people were often treated, and we can see it in the systems of totalitarian collectivism of the 20th century in Nazi Germany, Communist Russia, China, North Korea, etc.

Here is the philosophical problem with pro-abortion thinking in terms of the above clause. They have chosen the criteria of passive potency in order to distinguish between members of the same species. Passive potency is essentially all of those possibilities of changes that can be done to a human being from the outside (without killing him). They do not seem to have the sense of active potency, those things that a human being already inherently has and can do by virtue of his nature as being human, but has not yet manifested.

What I mean by this is that they do not seem to recognize that everything that a human being will become, he has already in himself, in seed-form if you will, from conception. In other words, after conception, from the perspective of nature, a man gains nothing new. He simply is able to manifest inherent capabilities at different stages of maturity, that already exist in him as “potency.”

All human attributes, for those who reject classical philosophy, seem to become passive potencies–they are given from the outside–somehow. That is why they think that the status of a member of a species can change when some new attribute is manifested or hidden. The problem with this is that there is no way to decided then which attributes are necessary to be manifested, or even how they should be manifested, in order to change the status of a member of the species from one who deserves no protection under the law to one who now is given rights that can come at the expense of the unprotected class (see list of abuses above).

The underlying danger with this type of thinking is that when choice becomes the absolute moral norm, there is no way of ultimately deconflicting the choices of groups or individuals. The atheist phenomenologist Jean Paul Sartre saw this clearly–that is why he so coldly proclaimed that “hell” is other people. The mere existence of others denies one the absolute liberty to do as he wishes. This explains why the Liberté of the French Revolutionaries turned into totalitarian bloodshed. It also explains why “liberal” political movements such as Nazism, Fascism, and Bolshevism become totalitarian. It helps us to understand why modern liberalism also moves in the direction of media censorship and thought censorship (e.g. Canada’s Human Rights Commissions, the modern liberal mind’s proclivity to legislate against “hate speech,” this movement’s move to do away with medical practitioners’ conscience clauses when it comes to “choice” issues such as abortion and contraception, etc.).

This, I fear, is also behind Senator Obama’s rhetoric about getting beyond the debate about abortion. For him the debate is over, even though in reality it is just beginning to turn against abortion “rights.” The debate must end because the supporters lack the intellectual resources found in classical philosophy to defend their positions and they are now coming to terms with the fact that their arguments leave them in self-contradictory, and thus intellectually indefensible, positions. The only option left to them is the “will to power.” They must gain power in order to exert their will upon others–i.e. to end the debate. If this comes to pass, anyone familiar with history must be aware of the dangers which lie ahead.

Shy of the re-Christianization of the West, we need to re-appropriate the self-consistent philosophical framework of classical philosophy in order to facilitate lucid and fruitful public debate on these life and death issue; that is, if we are to turn back the lemming-like march toward liberal totalitarianism. It appears, however, that at this point a Christian West is the more realistic of the two possibilities.

Update: Senator Obama’s campaign now admits that the “people” whom Obama had accused of lying about his part in voting down the Illinois Born-Alive Infants Protection bill . . . was Senator Obama.  It appears that Obama did indeed take the position that he now says “defies common sense.”  One wonders what position he really holds with respect to infants born alive as is clear that one cannot reliably discern this based upon his words.

As everyone knows by now, John McCain recently stuck a dagger in the side of pro-lifers by publically asserting that the protection of human life in the womb is a negotiable issue in regard to his choice for Vice President. Tom Ridge, a pro-abortion Republican, and Joseph Lieberman, a nihilistic socialist, are purportedly on his short list for the position of VP.

Rich Lowery has a revealing article at National Review Online explaining McCain’s reasoning: he wants to be seen as a moderate, bipartisan candidate, above the political fray, who has the power to heal our fractured polity. Indeed, according to Lowery, McCain’s consideration of Lieberman for VP lends credance to a rumor that McCain might be self-consciously running to be elected as a one-term president. This, presumably, would be a signal above all signals that McCain is beyond the Beltway political game: at a time of crisis, he is the candidate to choose, because he cannot be bought and sold by the Party Machine, or some such nonsense…

Lowery points out that the problem with this strategy, should McCain choose to adopt it, is that it may seal his fate in the election. At precisely the moment, according to Lowery, when McCain has been able to consolidate the Evangelical Christian vote, he would throw that vote away by making Ridge or Lieberman his running mate. His would be a doomed candidacy.

Aside from the practical foolishness of this strategy, and aside from the fact that this strategy reveals more than ever that McCain is a detestably unserious man, what does this debacle mean for the Catholic vote? Specifically, should McCain go through with this ill-conceived plan, would Catholics then have a legitimate reason to vote for Obama?

The latter question would have to be answered with a resounding “no.” Obama, however much he might be making public noise about moderating his positions, has an abominable record on right-to-life issues. In fact, like all socialists, Obama has to “triangulate” politically just to get elected to the presidency. Nihilistic socialism is the path to election for city or state government in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York City. But it is the path to defeat in a general presidential election. This explains his recent “moderation.”

Obama is still, frankly speaking, a radical eugenicist who thinks that partial-birth abortion is morally acceptable and that potential physical or mental handicap is a legitimate reason to murder a child in the womb. Essentially, like all well-heeled leftist suburbanites in the Western world, he thinks that the forced death of another human being is an act of compassion, should that person be otherwise consigned to physical or mental impoverishment.

A McCain ticket, whoever the VP may be, would not be this radically utilitarian. McCain, though he is not a serious man, has been a consistent friend of the pro-life movement.

At the same time, my earlier point still stands: the Democrat Party would remain distinguishable from the Republican Party in that it is the Party whose entire raison d’etre is to destroy pre-political institutions that impede the absolute power of the mechanized federal state.

As a case in point, I would refer the reader to the proposals being heard for the reinstitution of the so-called “fairness doctrine.” This is a proposed federal law which, should it be enacted, would regulate content on radio programs and internet sites. Our site, and all pro-life websites and weblogs, would be effectively disabled. This is a socialist-democrat inspired legislative plan. An Obama presidency would ensure its passage. A McCain presidency stands a chance of thwarting it.

But this is just one example. Lowery makes an excellent point: regardless of whom McCain picks as his VP, he would check the most radical excesses of the Pelosi-led congress, while Obama would enable these excesses. The Church would be thrown into war against the State should the socialists control the presidency, both houses of congress, and the judiciary.  

So, even with the recent and disappointing news coming from the McCain camp, it surely remains unacceptable for a Catholic to vote for Obama. Though I shall concede the point that the option of staying home on election day will be much more justifiable from a moral standpoint should McCain choose a pro-abortion running mate.

Update: Obama’s answer to Rick Warren’s question at Saddleback about at what point a child has rights helps to show that he is far less serious as a man and as a presidential candidate than even John McCain.  He could only answer that it is way above his pay grade to decide that question. In fact, it is not so much that he is unserious as that he is a liar. He could not answer that question honestly and seriously because he is a radical eugenicist, purely and simply. The Rick Warren forum is not the place for him to reveal himself.

A couple of days ago, I began what might turn out to be a series of reflections on the anthropology of sex difference as exposited by one of Radical Orthodoxy’s representative thinkers, Gerard Loughlin. Here I am continuing to concentrate on an essay of his, entitled “Erotics: God’s Sex.”

I had mentioned that Loughlin cannot seem to get beyond his reductionist, postmodern concepts. Furthermore, his importation of a world view from morally bankrupt postmodern thinker, Georges Bataille, further exacerbates his ability to understand, and so critique, the Trinitarian theology and anthropology of Hans Urs von Balthasar. In Loughlin’s defense, while Balthasar is dependent upon an Aristotelian-Thomist metaphysics, he is often loathe to acknowledge it. Without recognizing this metaphysical perspective in Balthasar’s thought, his theology can appear to be somewhat arbitrary. Loughlin’s apparent lack of understanding of this metaphysical tradition might contribute to his misreading of Balthasar.

Recall that Loughlin chose to replace theological analogy with a postmodern “parody,” with all of the latter’s attendant vulgarity. Loughlin seems to make the same amoral move with his understanding of eros, blundering into the same irony. Loughlin’s definition of eros is “ravenous desire” (p. 148). Eros for him, as we saw in the previous post, seems solely associated with animalistic desire. It is of interest to note that the meaning of the term ravenous is focused on taking something for oneself in a greedy way, quite antithetical to Balthasar’s anthropology, which requires disinterested and total self-gift as the foundation for an authentic eros. Etymologically, the term “ravenous” arises from the Old French word meaning “to seize,” itself coming from a word meaning “extremely hungry.” This is consistent with Loughlin’s adoption of Batailleian carnal vulgarity.

Loughlin seems to have in his mind when he talks about sex difference that a constitutive aspect of sex must include the various disordered sexual behaviors in which animalistic consumption masquerades as sexual intercourses’ proper telos, a communion of persons.

Loughlin’s obsession with corporal sex betrays an inability to understand the human person as a body-soul unity, a hylomorphic composite of body and soul in which the soul is not joined to a preexisting body, but the soul interpenetrates, gives existence, shape, and animation to the body. The human person is not, therefore, an enfleshed soul or an ensouled body, but a single nature that has two unified aspects, body and a spiritual soul.

Loughlin also seems not to understand the tradition of Trinitarian Persons as subsisting Relations, which distinguish the Persons from the one divine nature and the way that this is analogically manifested in the human person. The category of relation, a sort of quasi-substantial category, is essential to understanding how Balthasar and other personalists think about the human person and the way the human person is differentiated into two different sexes.

Loughlin seems only to be able to think in terms of Cartesian substance, which is simply matter, or - in the case of the human body - corporeality. For non-corporeal beings it is not as clear what his thinking is, but it does not include the category of relation. Thus, when Loughlin reads Balthasar writing of the Processions (the begetting of the Son and the Spiration of the Holy Spirit) in terms of the structure of Self-giving love, he sees this in terms of the movement of some substance from one Person to another. Human persons inevitably “parody” this postmodern monism in Loughlin’s anthropology.

Thus, Loughlin criticizes Balthasar’s concept of unity in difference. For Balthasar the unity in difference, which can be seen in creation (body and soul, individual and community, the Incarnation, male and female), is the created analogy of trinitarian unity (unity in nature and distinction in Persons). Loughlin does not appear to understand relation so he ends up collapsing every characteristic into some sort of substance (read as Cartesian extension).

Without a properly Trinitarian metaphysics, Louglin is unequipped to understand the Processions, the Incarnation, the Church, the Eucharist, or sex difference. It leads him to claim that his “parodic substitution allows Christianity to place at its symbolic centre certain cultural taboos-against cannibalism, incest and homosexuality-and there break them” (p. 152). Loughlin sees the Processions as “the incestuous homosexual coupling of Father and Son” (p. 156). Of course, the Eucharist is cannibalism. The Marian Church wedded to Christ the Bridegroom is incestuous.

Ironically, Loughlin accuses Balthasar of misreading “the flow of the trinitarian parodies” (p. 154) when the latter declares that humanity is primarily feminine. Loughlin claims that Balthasar’s own logic requires human nature to be masculine. His reasoning is that because Balthasar says that the Father is supramasculine in relation to the Son, and because the Church comes through Christ on the Cross, who is male, and that Eve comes from Adam’s flesh, which is male flesh, there is a masculine sexual monism that is later differentiated into male and female.

Loughlin clearly sees matter as the primary reality here, at least for creatures. Substance for him is extended matter. In fact, he does not seem to have any other category. Sex difference for him is real, and so in his limited, modern/post-modern categories, sex difference must be something arising from the flesh alone. This is inevitable without the category of relation, especially in this case, sex difference being a relational category which conditions the relational person (see this metathread for a short primer on these ideas).

Loughlin is not the only RO theologian with these views. Rowan Williams promotes similar thinking in his essay, “The Body’s Grace.” This essay was published in a collection of pro-SSAD articles entitled, Christian Our Selves, Our Souls and Bodies: Sexuality and the Household of God [ed. Charles C. Hefling (Boston: Cowley Press, 1996)]. Hankey (see the previous post) shows that Williams was an original member of the Radical Orthodoxy movement. Hierothee pointed me to a recent article online that shows that Williams’s unfortunately soft thinking in this regard is not at all unlike that of Loughlin.

In conclusion, I would note that it appears to be not so much that Louglin’s and Williams’s distortions/perversions of Christian truth stem from a misunderstanding of classical theology. Rather, the problem begins with their pre-commitment to said perverted notions. Their articulation of an incoherent metaphysics is simply a rationalization for a subversively depraved anthropology. Indeed, with the likes of Loughlin and Williams as guides to the movement, one might argue that Radical Orthodoxy is at root an expression of radical depravity.

Jonah Goldberg’s recent book, Liberal Fascism, has gotten a lot of bad press from certain members of the conservative intelligentsia. It is held by many critics to be sloppily argued, incendiary, and overly journalistic. Given the culture war that we are still fighting, these last two characteristics are not necessarily bad things. Be that as it may, the basic premise of the book is sound: that socialism, in all its forms, is tantamount to fascism. I would only point out as clarification that what Goldberg refers to in the title as “liberalism” really just means “socialism.” Technically, this is an inappropriate conflation of terms. But given the current state of public discourse regarding politics the title serves its purpose well.

Recently, I have been reading a book co-written by Canadian neuroscientist Maurio Beauregard and Canadian journalist Denyse O’Leary entitled The Spiritual Brain. It is a well-argued refutation, from the standpoint of modern neuroscience, of mind-brain reductionism. The theme of the book is pertinent to political discussion because there is a close connection between socialism and philosophical materialism, and the authors have some interesting, if brief, things to say regarding this connection. Denyse O’Leary is a contributor on several fine weblogs. One of these is the Post-Darwinist blogpot. I was perusing this weblog earlier today when I stumbled upon her review of Goldberg’s book, which she highly recommends. Here is how she describes Goldberg’s basic argument:

In reality, most of the modern Western states that are hurtling toward fascism are nanny states.

Instead of ordering you into a concentration camp, the government orders you into poverty, lifetime speech bans, and sensitivity training. For “your own good”, of course.

All a bit more comfortable than a concentration camp. But - either way - there is no mistaking the relationship between you and government. The government is there to Fix Your Thoughts. Change Your Speech. Make You Either Virtuous or Extinct.

The basic idea: Fascist states are states where the government assumes roles that people used to attribute to God.

It doesn’t matter whether you believe in God. If you make the government God, well you’ve got a God. And your new God is in your face, at every opportunity. Not like the Old One.

Goldberg offers a number of characteristics of the fascist state that well describe Canada today under the rule of our “human rights” commissions - which make themselves judges both of a clergyman’s sermons and a comic’s jokes. Here are the five I think most relevant:

1. Identity politics: Fascist politics revolves around “identities”: “transgendered person”, “generously proportioned person”, “first X-type person to … “, “an X-type victim of … ” et cetera.

Hordes of taxpayer-funded advocates promote tax-funded rewards for a given identity - or compensation for an injured identity, extracted from some hapless victim who has already been ruined by legal fees.

Identified traditionalists are key targets. For example, it is not accident that, as Ezra Levant has pointed out, white Christian males are disproportionately targets. They thrived in the days of liberal democracy. The extent of their persecution is the extent of its decline.

2. Culture of grievance All fascist cultures, whether the nanny state or Islamic fascism (obligatory beards and burqas) or whatever, are cultures of grievance. The basic message is: We are not happy and it is someone else’s fault! That guilty person must be made to admit it and be punished! And pay us money, … lots of money!

3. Enemies The fascist always has “enemies.” You or I, by contrast, mainly have rivals and competitors. Conveniently for the fascist, her enemies are the enemies of “the state” or “the people.” Those enemies justify the immense amount of power she wants over our lives. She needs that power to fight the enemies - who are everyone’s enemies, or so she claims.

And if the enemies that justify her power don’t exist, she must invent them! That explains

4. Constant crises Fascist states, nanny or otherwise, thrive on crises because crises enable them to acquire power that no sane person would give them in the absence of a crisis.

Have you noticed the sheer number of “crises” that afflict fat, rich societies today?

How about this one: The “crisis” of obesity. Lots of people are fat. So? Calling fat a crisis justifies the nanny state telling you what you can and can’t eat, banning stuff, and policing the popular fast food industry in the same way that some “human rights” commissars now hope to police late nite comedy.

The reality: There is no crisis.

Millions of people say yes to a second helping and no to a long walk.

That is not a crisis. It is a personal choice that can affect health and appearance. It may raise health care costs - but if most adult taxpayers are slightly overweight, the increased costs are costs we have volunteered for.

The reality, by the way, is that underweight people are far more at risk of early death than overweight ones. And a true crisis would be if millions of Canadians were starving and there was no way to get food to them.

5. Government is religion This last point is, in my view, the greatest concern. All fascist states, including the communist* variant, become a religion to their supporters. Pay attention when someone insists that the government should “inspire” people or “increase self-esteem.” People should go to church or an ashram or a Humanist counsellor or something if they want that kind of thing.

The government of a free society is a limited government - limited in its objectives and strictly defined in its powers. It is not there to solve existential problems or make us all love and respect each other. In other words, it is the exact opposite of Canada’s “human rights” commissions - which are unlimited and undefined, and increasingly out of control.

Obviously, it is going to be very difficult and take a long time to solve the problems we have created for ourselves by allowing government to become a schlock religion that loves us and creates self-esteem.

*Note: Communism is a form of fascism. Its “identity politics” is the industrial working class, thus it is internationalist rather than nationalist. So the Soviet Union invaded Hungary, Czechosolovakia, and Poland to enforce the “workers’ state.”

This is all quite true, and the fascism described here is in perfect alignment with the direction that the Democrat Party wants to take the United States. This is why the upcoming election is so important, and why I cannot for the life of me figure out why so many Catholics seem to be enduring a stuggle of conscience regarding whom to vote for: Obama or McCain.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the Democrat Party has a pressing goal on its short-term agenda: the destruction of intermediate, pre-political institutions that impede the State’s direct control over the individual. The Democrats see the family and the Church as the great enemies of governmental power and think that they must be destroyed. This is why promotion of abortion-rights policy comes so naturally to the Democrat Party. Abortion is not only the murder of innocent children, it is also a symbol of society’s indifference toward, if not hatred of, the intrinsic, biological, familial bond.

Contrary to much of what comes from the USCCB, the Democrat Party’s promotion of the welfare state is not inherently in accord with Christian social justice. The welfare state does not uplift the poor. Rather, it serves as the instrument by which the government takes control over individual lives, by which it tells people what to do with their lives, and even what to think.

Of course, many point to the Iraq War as the great counterbalance to this line of argumentation. This is fallacious, in my opinion. One can argue whether it is a just war or not. But one thing that it is not is a directly intended instrument for the expansion of the power of the federal government. It is comical to hear socialists scream about George Bush as if he were a tyrant. Meanwhile, they point to their Great White Hope in Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, as an exemplary political leader. Given their hysteria, it is hardly worthwhile pointing out to them that Chavez, unlike Bush, brooks no public dissent to his commands.

And even though the war has had unintended consequences in regard to expanding the power of the state in some ways, the many vehement critics of the war in the Republican Party show that the Party as such is not inherently directed to the expansion of governmental power. In fact, it is often rightly remarked that Bush’s Wilsonian foreign policy is contrary to the ethos of the conservative movement that built up the modern Republican Party. In other words, the Party is redeemable.

The same does not appear to be true at present on the Democrat side, where there is no effective voice or resistance to the eugenicist ethos that fits so naturally into their socialism. Indeed, they are the party at present of unmitigated philosophical materialism. I am not even sure that one could make a coherent defense of the substantiality of human personhood from within the wider context of their socialist and materialist ethos.

Certainly, the Republican Party is much more amenable than the socialist Democrats to leaving the Church alone to fulfill its mission, and it is not hell-bent on deforming our social concept of the family.

Quite simply put, the Democrat Party is the party of socialism, and socialism just is fascism. Do Catholics really have that tough of a choice this election season?

In a recent thread, a discussion about Radical Orthodoxy arose. In this discussion, Hierothee mentioned that at least some within the RO movement are able to advocate for unnatural sexual acts as theologically justified. RO arises out of the Protestant ethos and, even though they promote the importance of the authority of tradition, their Protestant ethos still imbues their thinking and so their rejection of the Christian anthropological tradition.

One such RO author is Gerard Loughlin. Loughlin writes a chapter in a volume edited by John Milbank, Catherine Pickstock, and Graham Ward, entitled Radical Orthodoxy. The volume is meant to be a representative summary of Milbank, Pickstock, and Ward’s school of thought. Thus, it would seem, that Loughlin’s essay is representative of RO’s anthropology. Loughlin’s article is entitled: “Erotics: God’s Sex.”

Loughlin uses Hans Urs von Balthasar’s theological articulation of the analogy between Trinitarian Processions and the marital sexual act as his foil, primarily using the second volume from Balthasar’s Theodrama. Loughlin wishes to critique Balthasar (and by explicit implication, John Paul II’s Theology of the Body) by privileging the insights of none other than the French pervert postmodern essayist/philosopher Georges Bataille, who obviously was a bit sick, having volunteered to be a human sacrifice for a group of his friends. Bataille apparently never saw a Rorschach chart that he couldn’t find obscene, finding the mechanical aspects of sexual copulation in almost everything he saw. Bataille’s pornographic milieu, then, is Loughlin’s point of departure for evaluating Balthasar’s analogy.

The main thing he takes from Bataille, perhaps aside from his pornographic obsession, is his attachment to the postmodern literary parody. Loughlin decides that he wants to substitute parody for the theological concept of analogy because it entails the burlesque which “couples [Loughlin is clearly enthralled with the "parody" of this grammatic/logical phrase and the sexual-mechanical inference] the polite with the vulgar, the metaphysical with the indecent” (italics mine, p. 145). To replace parody with analogy simply illustrates either ignorance of the metaphysical foundation upon which analogy stands or an irresponsible disregard for analogy’s metaphysical implications. Wayne Hankey’s insights suggest to me that it may be both.

Loughlin, though a Cambridge scholar, who, I understand, claims to be Catholic, does not seem to have a solid grasp of the Catholic tradition in terms of metaphysics or theological anthropology. He very often appears unable to extract himself from his postmodern categories, which, after all, are ironcially modern distortions that are simply taken in a different direction. This leads him often to accuse his foils of the very faults he himself possesses. For example, he finds that Balthasar falls into a crude biologism (see p. 158). This charge comes from his apparent inability to distinguish between relational and substantial categories.

Perhaps his critique of Sister Mary Timothy Prokes treatment of human sexuality might be sufficient to illustrate what I mean. He says:

Prokes, who with Balthasar, is surely correct in stressing the intimacy of persons in the sexual relation, is nevertheless so concerned to distance human sexuality from the animalistic-from the itch and yearning of sexual organs-that one might think the attraction and desirability of the body-its physical comforts and excitements-had nothing to do with human sexuality. Prokes offers a peculiarly passionless, unsexy, sexuality. In short, she fails to think the erotic (p. 148).

This quotation, it seems to me, is quite revealing. Loughlin seems to want to equate the “animalistic” with eros. He appears to say that without this animalistic “itch and yearning” one cannot have eros. In other words, like many who promote libidinism (a sexual ethic which elevates pleasure to an end rather than accepting it as a secondary, non-essential fruit of the sexual act), he either does not understand or rejects classical Christian anthropology.

The human affects (appetites, emotions, etc.) are good, but they serve primarily the animal aspects of the human person. But man is a hylomorph; he is a body-soul unity and the soul has priority, though this does not diminish the essential (in a metaphysical sense) importance of the body. The functioning of the affects becomes an issue in our fallen state.

Human nature was created for grace. We do not require grace in order to be human, but we do require it in order to function integrally. Our human affects were created to be subordinated to human reason, but our loss of original integrity makes this subordination a challenge and a task. The tradition calls this challenge concupiscence. Too often, post-moderns (or better, late-moderns) emphasize human experience but they refuse or at least neglect to contextualize this experience as fallen. Truth be told, they want to make even their fallen experiences normative.

Loughlin seems to fall into this trap. He appears to want to make his experiences paradigmatic. Thus, he conflates the animal aspect of his experiences with the fallen animalism to which he apparently succumbs. He does not see that eros and the erotic must be purified from concupiscence. Nor does he desire to subordinate sexual urges (which in his thought include the unnatural) to reason. This he finds to be “passionless, unsexy, sexuality.”

Interestingly enough, this leads him in the complete opposite direction of the communion for which the personalistic end of the sexual act tends. In fact, Loughlin, clearly, has chosen his terms wisely. For the sexual act outside of the Church’s understanding of sexual intercourse is a parody, a mocking of its intended personalistic and natural ends-communion and procreation, respectively. These ends correspond to the hylomorphic aspects of the human person. When one severs the unitive from the procreative, one gets neither. We are left with what is authentically animalistic and contra-personal.

Sub-personal animals also reflect divine perfection, but in a lesser way than humans. Like their human counterparts, sub-personal animals also seek a sort of communion. However, without a spiritual soul, this communion is reduced to consumption. It is manifested in eating, in which the animal annihilates an often lower nature and takes it up into its higher nature. It is joined to the other but in the antithesis of personal communion. Instead of self-giving/self-sacrifice, it is the other that is taken/sacrificed. Perhaps this insight can explain why we speak of “comfort foods,” which we seem drawn to, especially when we have relational problems.

The eroticism that Loughlin seems to seek is this mocking parody of authentic, sexy, sexuality. His is the desire to follow his animal inclinations, to reject human reason, and to pursue a fallen, and in his case unnatural, communion with another. Thus he advocates the consumption of another soul for the sake of his pleasure-”the itch and yearning of [his] sexual organs.” Is it any wonder that unnatural sexual acts are “parodies” of eating?

There is much more that can and will be said about Loughlin’s article but this will have to do for now. If he is indeed representative of “Radical Orthodoxy,” then theirs is a most unorthodox and vulgar orthodoxy.

A few days ago someone sent us an e-mail mentioning that they had included C-L-S in a blog listing that they had set up. I recently had a chance to go over and see what this was all about. It seems that a Christian dating service established a page of blogs/websites that in some manner related to Christian relationships.

I suppose that the title of the page, Christians Do It Better, should have been some indication of the thinking of the site’s originators. Given that it was for a dating service, perhaps I should have expected some of what I was to see. A good portion of the listings are what one might expect from a Christian site. However, that is not entirely the case.

There are at least two headings which are largely problematic. Under the Sex section you will find such fare as pornography free sexual positions guides for “Christians”, a blog about a bisexual “Christian” who enjoys open sexual relationships, and “Christian” guides to sexual identity. There is also a “Gay” section which lists a number of websites by self identified Christians who embrace the lifestyle associated with same sex attraction disorder.  I am not sure many of these folks would be comfortable being included in the same category as our blog.

One might say that for a large portion of the entries, this site is not about Christian relationships but a summary of the gamut of relationships engaged in among those who call themselves Christian. This site perhaps is emblematic of the natural conclusion of a Protestant mentality. What I mean is a world view which rejects all moral authority but one’s own. As this coincided with Hierothee’s reminding me about an article that I need to write, I thought I would jot a few quick thoughts on the matter. That will come in a future post.  In the meantime, perhaps we might contemplate the thinking that lies behind a Christian’s coopting the quite pagan claim that they do “it” better.

1918-2008

One of the most important intellectuals of the 20th century passed away earlier today. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Russian dramatist, novelist, and historian, who helped awaken the sleeping Western world to the atrocities of communism, has left this world for the next. His was a voice of conscience for all of us, speaking out against the depravity of the modern age, which too often seems hell-bent on absorbing humanity into the Moloch of the mechanized state. Western intellectuals, who for decades fawned over Joseph Stalin and the glorious new era that he was presumably bringing to birth in Russia, did not want to listen to Solzhenitsyn. His voice is still too much ignored. His famous address in 1978 at Harvard shocked the communist sympathizers on the faculty there. Many of them did not want to hear what he had to say. He was too intellectually honest for them. He was too intellectually serious. He cared too much for the plight of man.

His Christian witness against the dehumanizing philosophy of nihilistic socialism is exemplary for all Chrisians in the United States, as our own nation faces the prospect of being plunged further and further into nihilistic socialism, especially with the upcoming presidential election. Solzhenitsyn knew that the brutalities and atrocities perpetrated by the communist regime in his land were not the outcome of his country’s czarist, Christian past, as is often claimed, but of the anti-humanist Marxism of the revolutionaries. How pleased he must have been that his own people in Russia seem now, more and more, to acknowledge the fact. Seldom do intellectuals in the West, even in the Catholic Church, understand that all of the socialist variants of Marxism breed barbarism, by virtue of their denial of the ontological substantiality of the human person and of the transcendent destiny of the human race. Solzhenitsyn knew where Marxism and socialism lead, if allowed to flourish without resistance: straight to the gulag and to the mass grave. We would do well to heed Solzhenitsyn’s voice. We pray for the repose of his immortal soul.

. . . did anybody miss us? Jeff Miller heard from a number of Catholic bloggers whose blogs went down because they had been flagged as spam. At first it looked like something along the lines of the pro-Hillary blogs a few weeks ago but this time against Catholic/prolife bloggers. I must admit, a part of me felt good about having been deemed worthy of attack. Oh well, apparently it was nothing so glorious as cyber martyrdom.

As it turns out, it appears that sitemeter was doing some backend work and caused an instability with IE 7 and perhaps IE 6 users. Any bloggers who had sitemeter outside of their main body (like in the sidebar) became something of a malicious script running an endless loop on the host’s server and so the site was tagged as a spammer by those using Google/Blogger.

We have sitemeter in our sidebar but we do not use the Blogspot host. We graduated to Wordpress back in December of 2005. Nevertheless, it appears we were not insulated from the problem. I hope this was the problem because I could not find any other issue. Visitors using IE 7 were interacting with sitemeter in such a way that the sitemeter script was overloading our host’s server and so we were automatically suspended. This happened twice. Sitemeter says the problem is resolved. Hopefully, it is for us as well. If not, don’t be surprised if you see our blog suspended again.