Redeem the Time

Go read this blog now.

And listen to the Pope’s Latinist, here (scroll down here for a recent recording). The recordings sound as if Triumph the comic dog entered a Monty Python skit, if Triumph lived a saint-like existence and was a brilliant expositor of Latin, and if Monty Python skits were performed on Vatican Radio. Go listen; I promise Father Reginald Foster will amuse and enlighten!

Read more about the Pope’s Latinist here. The existence of such men gladdens the heart and brightens the soul.

Go read o.c.’s sermon on these verses.

When I put pictures in my posts I always include a link to where I got them. There are a number of good sites out there—this one is a favorite as it presents various religious paintings and so forth in accordance with what part of Sacred Scripture they describe. Thought I’d do my part to throw a little positive Beauty out to you all.

Vomit the Lukewarm is now Assimilatio Dei.

Once again, I give you my skim quotes so you can read what I don’t have time to…

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There has been talk about the so-called “CrunchyCons” before around these parts—mostly over at Cozy Tea-Blue House. George Nash gives us an introduction to conservative Catholic Rod Dreher’s “CrunchyCon” politics in today’s Wall Street Journal:

Rod Dreher, a columnist and editor at the Dallas Morning News, is a self-confessed member of the vast right-wing conspiracy. As a lapsed Protestant who converted to Roman Catholicism several years ago, he is an unabashed religious and social conservative. He has little use for the morally relativist and libertine tendencies of modern liberalism. Too often, he says, “the Democrats act like the Party of Lust.”

But Mr. Dreher is also a passionate environmentalist, a devotee of organic farming and a proponent of the New Urbanism, an anti-sprawl movement aimed at making residential neighborhoods more like pre-suburban small towns. He dislikes industrial agriculture, shopping malls, television, McMansions and mass consumerism. Efficiency–the guiding principle of free markets–is an “idol,” he says, that must be “smashed.” Too often, he claims, Republicans act like “the Party of Greed.”

If this interests you at all you’ll want to take a look at Dreher’s National Review based CrunchyCon blog, which apparently aims to be a group blog that argues and fleshes out Dreher’s ideas. (Thanks to God’s Body for recently alerting us to it.)

My quick commentary:

Dreher speaks of culture more than political principle. Environmentalism and New Urbanism are sometimes opposed by conservatives because of their proponents desire for excessive government regulation and control, not because anyone likes ugly sprawl or desires to harm the environment. The “small is beautiful” philosophy that Dreher loves was used to great harm by the likes of Jerry “moonbeam” Brown when he was governor of California in the 70s. Culturally speaking, Dreher wants good things—I probably agree with him on lots—but I wonder if he points us to the best way of political action to attain these ends? I don’t know enough to say.

As far as consumerism goes—again, this is cultural, and I would likely agree with him on lots of commentary about culture. However, when speaking about political principles, one has to realize that 1) we have never let capitalism go completely unbridled in this country (does anyone think that CEO’s and most companies are above the law when, on the contrary, they are up to their necks in laws and regulations?); and 2) capitalism is still the best way we know of to keep the most people possible out of poverty. (See the next article I link to directly below these comments.) Again, I don’t know enough about Dreher’s political principles to think that I understand what he is all about, or to be comfortable giving him a thumbs up.

For instance, the WSJ article says that his book “is a reminder of the enduring tension on the right between those for whom the highest social good is freedom. . .and those for whom the highest social good is virtue.” I say that freedom is a necessary condition of virtue—that freedom ought to be understood as in the service of virtue—but that government must first and foremost secure freedom before it can help order it towards the virtue of the citizenry and the common good of the regime. The job of the good government and true statesman is then—to use unfortunate, modern terms—to make the citizen see how his self-interest is the same as the common interest; or, rightly said: how his desire for self-preservation ultimately leads directly and smoothly up towards a more rational and noble desire to defend, love and contribute to the common good. Likely many conservative Catholics sort of, kind of understand and agree about some of these more fundamental notions, but of course they differ widely about how the common good is best accomplished. I wonder about if and how Dreher thinks about the principles of politics and how they promote virtue, as I get the sense he holds deeper principles derived from Russell Kirk and Southern agrarianism that are likely fantastical. So I’m not sure what would happen if one started to push his ideas to their roots in political philosophy. But, hey, I’m all for organic milk—it just tastes better. And thanks to capitalism, I can drink it fresh whenever I want.

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Dreher and the rest of us may not like consumerism, which is always the vice of capitalism (or better put: consumerism, which is always the vice of any society that isn’t full of extremely impoverished people), but a guy named Rodney Stark has a new book out called The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success. Some solid conservatives are likely right to admit that he engages in some “exaggeration in the service of correction.” Nonetheless, it still sounds interesting—here is the author’s own words from a recent article:

Augustine, Aquinas, and other major theologians taught that the state must respect private property and not intrude on the freedom of its citizens to pursue virtue. In addition, there was the central Christian doctrine that, regardless of worldly inequalities, inequality in the most important sense does not exist: in the eyes of God and in the world to come. As Paul explained: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor fee, there is neither male nor female, for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.”

And church theologians and leaders meant it. Through all prior recorded history, slavery was universal — Christianity began in a world where as much as half the population was in bondage. But by the seventh century, Christianity had become the only major world religion to formulate specific theological opposition to slavery, and, by no later than the 11th century, the church had expelled the dreadful institution from Europe. That it later reappeared in the New World is another matter, although there, too, slavery was vigorously condemned by popes and all of the eventual abolition movements were of religious origins.

Free labor was an essential ingredient for the rise of capitalism, for free workers can maximize their rewards by working harder or more effectively than before. In contrast, coerced workers gain nothing from doing more. Put another way, tyranny makes a few people richer; capitalism can make everyone richer. Therefore, as the northern Italian city-states developed capitalist economies, visitors marveled at their standards of living; many were equally confounded by how hard everyone worked.

I was pointed to the book via this. Poke around at Google Scholar and do some research on the topic.

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Common wisdom about America’s science gap is trashed in this short piece by Robert Samuelson:

. . . it’s emphatically not true, as much of the alarmist commentary on America’s “competitiveness” implies, that the United States now faces crippling shortages in its technological elites.

Only about 4 percent of the U.S. work force consists of scientists and engineers. Having an adequate supply depends on what thousands — not millions –of smart college students decide every year to do with their lives. People choose a career partly because it suits their interests. This applies especially to science. “Physics is like sex,” the physicist Richard Feynman famously quipped. “Sure, it may give some practical results, but that’s not why we do it.” But intellectual satisfaction goes only so far.

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“Nobody writes about the planes that land”

In the early 1990s, a smattering of HIV cases appeared among individuals not then assigned to any known risk group; suddenly AIDS was moving into the general population. (It didn’t, and hasn’t, and likely never will, at least in the United States.) Despite a decade of media-inflamed mad cow hysteria, the government reports just two infected animals in the nation and not a single documented death among U.S.-born citizens. And now there’s bird flu.

Siris has some thoughts about Alanyzer’s thoughts concerning St. Thomas Aquinas and “Pure Act.” (Siris found this via Fides Quaerens Intellectum).

The Shulamite is already in action in the comments sections.

Someone’s blogging it.

Father C. John McCloskey, III, STD, is one of the good guys you should know about. He has a website here. If you missed it last month, be sure to check out his “State of the US Catholic Church at the Beginning of 2006:”

We can now examine the state of what was the pride and joy of the pre-Vatican II Catholic Church in America: the educational system that extended from grammar school through hundreds (yes, hundreds) of Catholic colleges and universities. In the history of the Church, there had never been such an extensive and (at least in appearance) fundamentally sound educational system. Elementary education was taken care of by the parish, following the pioneering work of St. John Neumann. Parishes also directed many high schools, but many others were founded by armies of men and women religious. Most of these high schools were single-sex, while some were co-institutional (admitting both boys and girls in the same building but educating them separately). . . All that has virtually disappeared.

Almost half the Catholic schools open in 1965 have closed; 4.5 million students attended Catholic schools in the mid-1960s, while today there are about half that many students. Even more troubling is the religious education offered in those remaining schools . . .

Plenty of draft posts building up. In the meantime, instead of actually reading the few recent articles I wanted to read this morning, I’ll skim to some choice quotes and put ‘em up for your enjoyment:

Our difficulty in pursuing a rational foreign policy in the Middle East—or anywhere else—is compounded by the fact that we ourselves, as a nation, seem to be as confused as the Iraqis concerning the possibility of non-tyrannical majority rule. We continue to enjoy the practical benefits of political institutions founded upon the convictions of our Founding Fathers and Lincoln, but there is little belief in God-given natural rights, which are antecedent to government, and which define and limit the purpose of government. Virtually no one prominent today, in the academy, in law, or on government, subscribes to such beliefs. Indeed, the climate of opinion of our intellectual elites is one of violent hostility to any notion of a rational foundation for political morality. We, in short, engaged in telling others to accept the forms of our own political institutions, without any reference to the principles or convictions that give rise to those institutions.

—The Central Idea, by Harry Jaffa
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As a people we Americans are committed to the equal worth and dignity of every human being — and, hence, every member of our community. When we ask whose good counts in the common good, we seek to answer that question in ways which include the weak, the incapacitated, and the vulnerable — not in ways that narrow and constrict the number of those to whom we are obligated and for whom we should care.

If that is the political commitment of this country, several things follow. We will not casually suggest that becoming a human being depends on development of various capacities over time without attempting with rigor and seriousness to define and describe the point at which this actually happens — the point at which we have among us another one of us whose good should count in the common good. It will not do simply to opine blithely that “it is the journey that makes a human” without offering any serious description of when that journey begins or ends.

“That Thing in a Petri Dish”, Gilbert Meilaender & Robert P. George of the President’s Council on Bioethics are roused into argument by a liberal colleague’s recent NY Times op-ed.
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Q: Was Washington a Deist, or not?

A: Washington’s names for God sometimes sounded deist, but the actions his prayers asked God to perform belong to the biblical God, not the god of the philosophers. Washington believed that God favored the cause of liberty, and should be beseeched to “interpose” his actions on behalf of the Americans- and he often called for public thanksgiving for the many ways in which Americans “experienced” God’s hand in events. He believed God could inspire thoughts and courage in human hearts, and give men fortitude to persevere in extreme difficulties. He held that praying for favors imposed duties on him who prayed.

Washington’s reflections on the workings of Providence were deep, and hardened by the crucible of experience. On these matters, he was a Christian, not a deist.

Q: Weren’t many people at that time both Deists and Christians at the same time?

A: Yes. In Washington’s time, many bishops, priests, and serious lay people had a Deist sensibility — they preferred philosophical language in religion. Actually, such a preference went back many centuries.

Divining W: Inside Washington’s God, Michael & Jana Novak talking about their new book.
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Categories and template are not set up right yet, but a new design, with links and more coming soon.

Comments are working again, so feel free…

UPDATE

Many thanks to Achilles Running, who has graciously given his time to design and implement the new changes. As you can see, things are looking much better around here…