Stephen Roney's Blog, page 20

Kennedy on SSRIs

 

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is getting a lot of heat during his current confirmation hearings for having criticized SSRI antidepressants in the past. Specifically, he is alleged to have said that they cause school shootings, and that they are addictive.

Obviously, there is a lot of money for drug companies in SSRIs, because people who take them are usually on them for a long time, often for life. We ought to be suspicious.

Doctors, in turn, like pills; it is their entire business. You go to your doctor with a complaint, and they will prescribe one, even if they do not believe it will do anything. You have to keep the customer satisfied. They pride themselves on the “placebo effect.”

And insurers, patients, and the government like pills too. A pill for depression looks ideal: no expensive and intrusive therapy sessions with a psychiatrist. No need for any life changes.

Moreover, “Big Pharma,” the drug companies, finance the campaigns of many politicians. Their advertising sustains a lot of the media. So they are in a position to silence any doubts, as they seem to be doing here.

We ought to begin from the suspicion that SSRIs are being overprescribed. 

RFK Jr. is right. 

Whenever another mass shooting happens, there is always an outcry to ban guns. Which is either folly or deliberate misdirection. There are lots more guns in private hands in countries like Switzerland or Israel than in the US, yet no more school shootings there. The number of mass shootings per capita is actually pretty constant country to country across the developed world, despite varying gun laws and levels of gun ownership. Even take away all guns: those intent on mass murder can resort to cars, or IEDs. The UK government has actually, absurdly, recently introduced a bill banning the sale of knives. Guns are not the issue.

Those wanting to defend the right to bear arms then resort to blaming the shootings on mental illness. After all, the shooters invariably have a history of mental illness. So what is needed is not fewer guns, but more money for mental health. These people must get treatment.

This idea, however, is equally folly or misdirection. The killers have a history of mental illness. That means they have been diagnosed; they are in the system; they have been receiving treatment. Treatment has not worked. The incidence of mass shootings or mass killings is consistent across jurisdictions despite varying levels of investment in the mental health system. Lack of treatment is not the problem.

Further, this association of violence with mental illness is profoundly discriminatory towards the mentally ill. The mentally ill as a demographic are actually statistically less likely to be violent than the general population. Stigmatizing them as violent and dangerous gives them more stigma and more problems when they are already the most stigmatized and suffering among us. It is scapegoating the most vulnerable.

RFK has rightly deduced that the problem has to be with the treatment. These killers are all taking SSRIs.

And it is not hard to see what is going on.

So far as we know, there is no such underlying disease as “depression.” This is true of everything we class as “mental illness.” What we have is a set of symptoms, listed in the DSM, which may be caused by all kinds of underlying conditions. We prescribe SSRIs for a certain set of symptoms, called “depression,” in the same way we might prescribe aspirin for pain or fever, without knowing what is causing the pain or fever.

This means SSRIs are at best only suppressing symptoms while leaving the underlying condition to fester and perhaps grow. Without SSRIs, the problem might instead be addressed and solved. Instead, tragically, modern psychiatry, given their present SSRI approach, expects most with symptoms of depression to recur in time and only get worse as the patient ages.

The initial thesis on which they were introduced, that depression was caused by a “chemical imbalance in the brain,” specifically a lack of serotonin, has been disproven by subsequent research. If they work, we do not know why they work.

But what they do, subjectively, is to deaden emotions. This includes happiness, love, laughter, but also unpleasant emotions like anxiety, fear, and sorrow—the symptoms labelled “depression.” 

This means that, rather like alcohol, they also deaden the conscience. They deaden feelings of guilt.

This is good for those feeling unwarranted anxiety and sorrow, usually as a result of being abused. 

This is bad for those feeling anxiety and sorrow due to their past bad actions or their overblown self-esteem being frustrated by the realities of life.

The former, when they feel bad, want to kill themselves. They see themselves as worthless. The SSRIs, unfortunately, can make them more likely to commit suicide, by taking away their fears and inhibitions. This problem is well known.

The latter, when they feel bad, want to kill anyone around them, as many other people as possible. Hence, mass shootings.

And the awful truth is that either form of “depression” does have a cure, that SSRIs, psychiatry, and the pharmaceutical industry suppress.

It is called religion. Religion can recalibrate one’s sense of values and self-worth. It has worked for thousands of years. 

We have been moving away from it in recent years, largely due to the rise of psychology and psychiatry as a “scientific” substitute.

Mass murder is only one of the results; along with a rising tide of depression, mental illness, drug addictions, social breakdown, family breakdown, and suicide.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Love Me, Love Me, Love Me--I'm a Liberal!

 

Ruby Dhalla

Last Saturday I joined the Liberal Party to vote for Ruby Dhalla. 

This is not a cynical move. 

Some Conservative commentators are urging people to join the Liberal Party to vote for the candidate they think least likely to beat Poilievre. I cannot do that. The end cannot justify the means. 

Besides, rumour has it that many Democrats backed Donald Trump in the 2016 primaries, thinking he was a joke candidate, and their weakest possible opponent. The “weak” candidate you vote for might end up Prime Minister.

I want to vote for her because I think Dhalla might be the Liberals’ best hope. And I want the best for the Liberals. I have at times voted Liberal in the past. She is attractive, charismatic, and well-spoken. She is reasonably qualified as a past MP, but unique among contenders in genuinely having no connection with the current unpopular regime. She represents a new start; if she cannot win this time, no one can. She is best positioned to rebuild the party anew. 

Most importantly, she is running on a new platform, to move the Liberals back to the centre. The platforms offered by the other contenders are identical and more of the same.

The politicos will object that I am sabotaging the right.  By moving to the centre, the Liberals will take votes away from the Conservatives. I think this logic wrong. For the recent past, since Reform and the PCs merged, Canada has had four viable parties on the left, the Liberals, NDP, Greens, and BQ. It has had one or two (if your count the PPC, who have never won a seat) on the right. 

And who has usually won elections? Has the left ceased to be viable? Just the opposite: Canada has been rushing to the left.

It all has to do with the “Overton window”; what counts is what issues actually get discussed, and what views get heard. Four voices for the left and only one for the right drowns out the right and pulls the country to the left. 

Dhalla might surprise in the leadership vote. Any Canadian could join the Liberal Party without charge and vote on the new leader. The Liberal Party has been running to the left of the average Canadian, and Dhalla is now the only centrist option. 

Chandra Arya was also running for the centre, but was disqualified. Rumour was that he was raising more campaign donations than frontrunner Mark Carney. Despite the insurmountable obstacle that he spoke no French and showed no intention of learning it. His support should now all flow to Dhalla. And there is perhaps an ethnic vote too that he and now she can tap into: although Arya was Hindu, and Dhalla Sikh, they are both Indo-Canadian. Sikhs in Canda are highly politically organized.

I’d wager she places a surprise third on the first ballot. 

And even if she does not win, positions herself as ready to take over after the Liberals’ inevitable defeat.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Forgive Me, Father, for I Have Sinned

 

Yesterday I wrote on the nature of original sin and “original blessedness.” “Man is born to love, but learns fear,” the theme of a recent talk I attended, is wrong. Man is born with an inclination to sin.  Nor is this inclination eliminated b baptism, nor by faith in Christ. As the Bible says, we must “work out our salvation in fear and trembling.” 

Even leaving aside the Bible, consider the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

“Baptism, by imparting the life of Christ's grace, erases original sin and turns a man back towards God, but the consequences for nature, weakened and inclined to evil, persist in man and summon him to spiritual battle.”

“The whole of man's history has been the story of dour combat with the powers of evil, stretching, so our Lord tells us, from the very dawn of history until the last day. Finding himself in the midst of the battlefield man has to struggle to do what is right, and it is at great cost to himself, and aided by God's grace, that he succeeds in achieving his own inner integrity.” (Gaudium et Spes, 37 § 2). 

Of the heresy of Pelagianism, the Catechism notes: “Pelagius held that man could, by the natural power of free will and without the necessary help of God's grace, lead a morally good life; he thus reduced the influence of Adam's fault to bad example.”

Which is what our sermonizer of the last post did: he reduced original sin to the example of our parents.

“Ignorance of the fact that man has a wounded nature, inclined to evil,” the Catechism warns, “gives rise to serious errors in the areas of education, politics, social action and morals.”

This is the fatal flaw in left-wing thinking since Rousseau. His notion of original blessedness led to the excesses of the French Revolution, Romanticism, Marx and Communism. It fosters the tragic mirage of a paradise on earth, created by human effort. It has killed tens, perhaps hundreds, of millions in the attempt.

To give the Devil his turn at the podium, our speaker cited the parable of the Prodigal Son as evidence of God’s readiness to forgive.

The prodigal spent all his inheritance. Yet his father, representing God the Father, did not reject him, but welcomed him home and killed a fatted calf in his honour.

The first common misunderstanding is that the son’s fault was in taking his inheritance and leaving home. No, it was being prodigal—that is, he spent all his inheritance. ”He squandered his property in reckless living.”

And it is essential to notice that he did not just come running to Abba to be embraced. Like Job, he repented in dust and ashes. He prepared this speech for his father, and delivered it: “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants.” 

God cannot forgive our sins unless we are both fully repentant and prepared to accept just punishment. No Get out of Jail Free. This is the step the evil ones always elide in the telling.

Compare the Good Thief, who died on a cross next to Jesus. He was granted heaven despite his sins. 

Why? 

Because he accepted that his punishment was deserved and just. He rebuked the third thief, who mocked Jesus: “Have you no fear of God, for you are subject to the same condemnation? And indeed, we have been condemned justly, for the sentence we received corresponds to our crimes.”

This is why the sacrament of Confession/Reconciliation includes penance. This is why there is a purgatory, or we must believe there is. Only then can we hope for God’s forgiveness. We cannot expect it. “Thou shalt not put the Lord your God to the test.”

Nor is the repentant prodigal of the parable, significantly, going to get another inheritance to replace the one he squandered. Too many miss this, wanting to stress forgiveness. He does not achieve equal standing with the brother who had not sinned. When the son who had remained objected to the feast his errant sibling was getting in his honour, the father responded by telling him, “all that is mine is yours.” 

That, surely, suggests that the prodigal gets no second inheritance. He gets, no doubt, secure food and lodging; but will remain now forever a lodger.

In terms of the afterlife, this suggests that the repentant sinner achieves heaven, the Divine Presence, reconciled to God. But there are ranks in heaven. We know this from the listed ranks of angels, the reference in Revelations to those “close to the throne,” and Jesus’s reference to “the least in heaven” when speaking of John the Baptist. 

He, the repentant sinner, will be given no authority.

God does not spoil his children.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Original Blessedness and Original Sin

 

I am disturbed by a Catholic sermon I listened to recently. The repeated theme was “you were born for love, but learned fear.” The audience was given to understand that God’s love for us is infinite and unconditional, and our existential problem was simply not understanding that Daddy, “Abba,” is always here ready to embrace us.

The clear message being that guilt, not sin, is the problem. Spoken like Martin Luther, who famously declared, “Love God, and sin boldly.” The speaker was a convert from Protestantism, and he may have brought Luther’s sola fides doctrine with him: salvation by faith alone.

He was preaching ”original blessedness” instead of original sin. In fact, his slogan seems to echo Rousseau’s in praising the natural man: “man is born free, but is everywhere in chains.” Rousseau’s philosophy was in direct and deliberate opposition to the Christian message. 

The doctrine of original blessedness faces an obvious problem: if each of us is born innately good, how did evil ever come into the world?

The speaker did address this problem. We learn fear from our parents. This is the “original sin.” Our parents are scary, presumably because they do not show unconditional love for us, and we project this lack of love on our image of God.

But this does not solve the problem: it’s turtles all the way down. How did Adam and Eve ever sin, then, since they had no parent to falsely teach them to fear, only God himself?

Adam and Eve feared God because they had sinned. And so this inclination to sin must also be in us. 

The speaker had skipped an essential step, like those Protestant churches that will not display a crucifix, but only an empty cross: they want the resurrection without the crucifixion. He made the original sin fearing God, which is to say, feeling guilt over having sinned.

Compare what the Bible says:

Proverbs 9:10: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.”

And Saint Paul:

“Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling.”

We are not born blessed, ready and able to love. We are born fallen, imagining like Eve that we are gods, and must learn to love. It is a hard and painful process; one that needs divine intervention.

And the first step is to learn to fear. 

“We admitted we were powerless over alcohol — that our lives had become unmanageable.”

My grandmother used to recite Francis Thompson’s poem, “The Hound of Heaven.”

“I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped;
And shot, precipitated,
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmèd fears,
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.
But with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbèd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat—and a Voice beat
More instant than the Feet—
‘All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.’”

God treats us like a father, not a too-indulgent mother. He does not spoil his children.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Musk's Nazi Salute

 

Heil General Public? Heil Republican voters?
About Elon Musk’s “Roman salute.”

Obviously, given the fact that in the popular mind “Nazi” is currently a synonym for pure evil, and Nazism is solely about obtaining power, the last thing a real Nazi would do is anything that would formally associate them with the Nazis of history. The last thing an actual Nazi would do is to give a Nazi salute in public.

Instead, Nazis would insist publicly that they are the anti-Nazis, and our protection against the Nazis. Just as the historical Nazis of Weimar Germany snuck into power by presenting themselves as the strongest protection against those horrible Bolsheviks.

The real Nazis would call themselves something like “Antifascists”—“Antifa,’ perhaps, for short.

The fact that Musk made a gesture that looked alarmingly like a Nazi salute obviously without thinking what it might look like to some is a testament that the man does not have a Nazi thought in his head. 

If it was a dog whistle to Nazis, pay attention to which dogs are barking.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

The View from China

 

They left out Greenland.
One of my Chinese students asked me this morning whether Trump is really planning to take over Canada. And how I would feel about that.

Good question. It seems it is on everyone’s mind now, worldwide.

I don’t see why Trump would back down, now, on the devastating tariffs on Canadian goods. By imposing them, he wins any way you look at it. 

At a minimum, it cajoles the Canadian government into making a real effort to close the border, and improve our national defense. 

But I suspect this is not his preferred option. And, luckily for Trump, the Canadian government is determined instead to enter a trade war that only Trump can win. They really are that stupid.

Imposing and maintaining the tariffs gives Trump a major new source of government revenue. This allows him to lower income taxes, turbo-charging the American economy.

Trump says the US does not really need cars from Canada. He is surely right. The Auto Pact was always a gift. Trump wants to pull as much auto manufacturing as possible back across that border into the declining rust belt.

Trump says the US does not really need Canada’s oil and gas. That was supposed to be Canada’s trump card. But on paper, he is right. During the last Trump term, he made the US a net exporter of hydrocarbons. Fracking has opened up vast new reserves. Cutting off Canadian supplies encourages their development, boosting the US economy and keeping the money in the States. Those who think the US needs Canadian oil are thinking short-term, looking at how the infrastructure is currently set up for Canadian imports. But Canada is at least as dependent on this infrastructure: we do not have the transportation capacity, thanks to prior government decisions, to sell oil and gas in volume to anyone else. We have to sell it to the US, and if the US imposes tariffs, we may have to lower our prices to compensate, to preserve our market.

Some point to the electricity grid in the Northeast, dependent on purchasing hydro power from Quebec. And gloat over the Americans having to sit there in the cold with only candles. But here we have the same issue: if Canada cannot sell that hydroelectric power to the US, it just goes to waste. Meanwhile, Trump’s tariffs will be stirring the building of new nuclear plants to supply this need. An economic boom for America. For Canada, there is no up-side.

This will all cause the Canadian economy to fall into recession. Why is that Trump’s concern? If Canada gets poorer, it will have to sell everything it produces to the US at lower prices. If it collapses, all the better. Trump may lose the tariff revenue, but he can walk in and take all Canada’s resources. And he gains a far more defensible perimeter, from either foreign invasion or illegal immigration and drug smuggling: oceans on three sides and half of a fourth.

If Canadians were smart, they would clamour to join the US now as soon as possible. We may grumble, but it is the best option we have. It might call Trump's bluff, causing him to back down. He may not really want Canada.

And that is what I told my Chinese student.

He was more disturbed by the prospect than I was. “Not good for China,” he concluded.

Which, given the global competition, may be another reason to recommend it.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Bishop Budde

 

Anglican Bishop Mariann Budde
I cannot look at my X feed currently, because it is flooded by video postings of that female Anglican Bishop, Mariann Budde lecturing Donald Trump in her inauguration sermon. I really can’t stand to hear her voice, so full of self-righteousness.

I am happy to hear Trump has demanded a public apology from the Anglican/Episcopal Church.

She called on Trump to “have mercy on the people who are scared now. There are gay, lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican, and Independent families, some who fear for their lives.” I had to find the written transcript in order to stand to look that up.

This is the typical leftist fallacy, that we are responsible for the feelings of others, even if our actions are reasonable and those feelings are unreasonable. Feelings trump facts. Or at least, we are responsible for the feelings of certain favoured groups, while our own feelings must be suppressed. 

There is of course no rational or sane reason for any gay or lesbian or transgender person to fear for their life because of anything Donald Trump or the government might do. If they fear for their lives, that cruelty has been inflicted on them by ideologues and propagandists like Budde, who are terrorizing them with phantoms, conspiracy theories, and black legends, not Trump.

Many young people might now be rescued from mutilation and sterilization because of Trump’s policies refusing to officially recognize multiple genders and gender switching. Many women and girls might be freed from legitimate and rational fears of rape by supposed transgenders in their bathrooms, locker rooms, or prison cells; and physical injury from being forced to compete with them in sport.

Nor are people who imagine themselves to be “transgender” caused any harm by these measures—let alone anyone who is gay or lesbian. They are, at most, only losing special privileges they had been given, to choose which bathroom they wanted to use, which sports league they wanted to compete in, and so forth. The rest of us cannot.

There is a fundamental but always overlooked principle here. The bishop claims to be calling on Trump to have mercy on the powerless. But the powerless in a society are never those given special acknowledgement and preferences by government, by definition. The powerless will be the ones the government is not acknowledging, nor supporting, or those it is even actively suppressing. Currently, the unborn, for example, or white males, or to some extent the working class. Groups to whom Trump has brought some hope, and whom I daresay Budde probably distains. Ironically, Christians are also among those groups. Making Budde a Judas figure.

Budde then asks Trump to show mercy on “The people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings; who labor in poultry farms and meat packing plants; who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shifts in hospitals.” Interesting perspective: Budde clearly sees herself as a member of the elite, the upper class. In her mind she owns the crops, the office buildings; she eats in restaurants. Trump is supported by just these people, the poorest of the working class, because he is taking their perspective and trying to help:  by cracking down on illegal immigration. Illegal immigration forces down the wages of the poor, to the advantage of the rich.

“They…may not be citizens or have the proper documentation,” she goes on to say. “But the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals.”

Trump wants to stop illegal immigration, and deport illegal immigrants. He also says he wants to let in more immigrants. Budde does not seem to understand this. By definition, 100% of illegal immigrants are indeed criminals. Budde does not grasp the distinction between legal and illegal immigration; it suggests she also cannot distinguish between sin and virtue. Or refuses to make such distinctions. This is troubling in a prominent member of the clergy. It marks her as a false shepherd, someone leading her flock astray.

“I ask,” she continues, “that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here.”

Of course, America should offer asylum to those fleeing persecution, as America always has, more than any other nation. And there is no indication that Trump would change this policy, as she seems to imply. 

But it is a different matter to offer asylum to those fleeing war zones. Our current governments do not seem to understand this. Offering asylum to both sides in some distant war is to import the war. It is hard to imagine a more stupid immigration policy.

Then too, if you restrict your offer of asylum to one side, the one you consider the victim in the war, you are doing harm to that side. You are depriving them of needed soldiers by importing their young men. Unless you restrict your offer to women and children.

And of course it is even worse if you restrict asylum to the side you feel is doing harm. Give asylum to Nazis or belligerent aggressors, and what do you think you are importing?

I do believe the bishop is quite stupid. But that is only a partial defense. She is also immoral, and, worse than that, masquerading as a religious person, indeed a religious authority, to lead others astray.

The deepest pits of Hell are reserved for such Pharisees.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

A Test for False Prophets

 

Simon Magus, who exorcised in Jesus's name.

Some years ago, friend Xerxes objected to George Bush Jr.’s supposed attitude, which he said was “anyone who is not with me is against me.” And this he said was starkly opposed to Jesus, who said instead “anyone who is not against me is with me.”

I corrected him then. Jesus actually said both. See Matthew 12: 30; Mark 9: 40.

Presumably in Xerxes mind, had he known this, he must think Jesus contradicted himself; or else the Gospels are inconsistent. One must be unreliable.

But both are true. There is such a thing as the fallacy of the false dilemma. But here we have a true dilemma, a situation in which there are only two choices. Either you are with Jesus, the Truth, or you are against it. There is no third option. Creation is a constant war between truth and falsehood, good and evil.

Bob Dylan makes the point in song: “It may be the Devil, or it may be the Lord, but you’re gonna have to serve somebody.”

Anyone who is committed to Truth, which is to say, necessarily, the one true God, is on the same team. Anyone who is not so committed is, consciously or not, worshipping and working for the Devil.

This point comes to mind from noticing several talks on YouTube by Rabbi Tovia Singer. His entire programme seems to be to debunk Christianity. I say those who try to debunk or discredit any monotheistic faith are really of the Devil’s party. Their agenda, even if not themselves conscious of it, is to drive others from faith in the Lord; they are doing the Devil’s work.

Does this mean there are no possible errors in the creed of this or that denomination? Of course not; this is categorically impossible. So long as they disagree on any point, and they do, one must be right, and one must be wrong. But in comparison to the fundamental issue, of being of the party of God, any such differences must be trivial. To focus on them is to turn away from God yourself, and to attempt to turn another away. You are of the Devil’s party, even without knowing it.

This applies to nominal Jewish rabbis like Singer; they are really wolves in sheep’s clothing. It applies to those many Protestant ministers whose chief interest seems to be in criticizing Catholicism rather than asserting their faith. They are attacking faith.  It applies to any who claim to be Christian, who scapegoat Islam as intrinsically evil. Although so ffar as I can see, the strongest criticism of Islam comes not from the fellow religious, but from secularists. It applies to any Muslims who claim that Christians or Jews are evil—the “Islamist” terrorists. They are not true Muslims; they are secularists. Like the psychiatrist who drove his car into a Christmas market in Germany: these people hate Islam as well, if they hate Christianity.

I note too the conclusion to the story of the rich man and Lazarus, told by Jesus in the Gospel of Luke:

“They [i.e., like the Jews] have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.’

“‘No, father Abraham,’ he said, ‘but if someone from the dead goes to them, [i.e., like Jesus] they will repent.’

 “He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”

A good Jew is a good Christian. A good Christian is a good Jew. 

It is important to me that the post-Vatican II Catholic church has a good record of not criticizing other faiths. I went through the Catholic schools, and never heard a peep in criticism of any other denomination. 

I had a Jewish friend in grad school who refused to believe this. She assured me that, regardless of my actual experience, all Catholics are taught that the Jews murdered Christ.

Her supposedly Jewish teachers were in league with the Devil.

This is a good test, like the test for discerning the spirits. Does the teacher support and nurture faith, or does he spend his greater energy criticizing faith?

There are many false shepherds.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

The Deterioration of the Western Mind

 

The Deterioration of the Western Mind:

1. Modernism: “We have lost our direction. We no longer know what is true, or good.”

2. Existentialism: “We can create our own reality. We can create our own meaning. Morality is just social consensus.”

3. Postmodernism: “Nothing is true or good. Oppose all truth claims. Any claim of truth is authoritarian.”

The Response: “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Put on the Full Armour of God

 

The Jerusalem Cross

As a Christian, I am offended by the controversy over Pete Hegseth’s tattoos: the Jerusalem Cross, and the Latin slogan “Deus Vult” (“God wills it.”)

The objection is based on the fact that “Deus Vult” was the slogan used to promote the First Crusade; and the Jerusalem Cross is so called because it was the official emblem of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem.

So the objection to Hegseth’s tattoos is an objection to the Crusades.

I believe the Crusades were honourable and worthy of celebration in the history of Christendom. The objection to them is simply prejudice against Christianity and Christians. If “Islamophobia” is a problem, and “antisemitism” is a problem, then “Christianophobia” must also be condemned. It is at least as prevalent, and as dangerous.

The Crusades were a defensive war. To fight in defense of one’s country or religion is deeply honourable. It is courageous and selfless. The Crusades were a time when the Christian world put aside its divisions and united to keep the general peace. 

You might object that the Crusades were an invasion of foreign, Muslim, lands. You would be wrong. They were summoned to defend the Byzantine Empire, which was under attack by the Muslims. The great majority of the occupants of Palestine at the time would have been Christian or Jewish, not Muslim. And the Muslim caliphate had cut off the right of Christians to make pilgrimages to the Holy Land.

And even if you see the Crusades as an attempted conquest of “Muslim” lands, if this is illegitimate, you must first condemn the systematic and more successful Muslim attempt to conquer Zoroastrian, Jewish, and Christian lands, from the seventh through the fifteenth centuries, and to the gates of Vienna. Over the previous three centuries, the Muslims had overrun perhaps half of the Christian world, taking by conquest, not conversion. With the Crusades, the Christian world was then only belatedly and less systematically adopting the Muslim tactic of spreading their faith by the sword.

It is true that the Crusades involved war crimes—on both sides. The modern rules of war were not established, and the rules of war understood by Christians were different from the rules of war understood by Muslims, so that either side might think anything was permitted in dealing with “infidels.” In some ways, the Crusades were more humane than modern warfare. For example, prisoners could be ransomed. If besieged cities were put to the sword, this was at least no worse than Hiroshima or Nagasaki: the argument was the same, that it saved far more lives than it cost. Sieges were devastating. 

We need to recover the spirit of the Crusades. This world is a battle between good and evil, and we are all called on to be soldiers.

“Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes.”

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.