Stephen Roney's Blog, page 64

The Master

 

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

Michael Voris Resigns at Church Militant

 

Michael Voris

I am deeply troubled by the resignation of Michael Voris at Church Militant. It just does not feel right; at this time when so much else seems to be falling down around us, we need his voice.

He has been forced to resign for violating a “morals clause” in his terms of employment. We have no more details, but I have a guess that it has to do with homosexuality. He has said publicly he used to be gay; but said he had beaten it.

The annoying thing is, nobody cares. Yes, homosexual sex is a sin; but we all sin. You confess, you try to do better, you move on. Why can’t he? The church is not for saints; it is for sinners.

No doubt, like alcohol, it is an addiction. So for the time being he will continue to sin, until and unless he can again get the cravings under control.

Which I suspect he can, so long as he confronts it and admits it is a sin; which he now publicly has, by resigning. As in AA, the first step is to admit you have a problem.

Because of his public position, and public persona, there is, it must be admitted, the problem of scandal. A bad “role model.” But how big a problem is that? Wasn’t Milo Yiannopoulos able to be an effective voice for Catholicism and morality while still an open homosexual?

That stance is familiar enough: it is as old as Saint Augustine. Who hasn’t been through it?

“Oh, Master, make me chaste and celibate—but not yet!”

I say, a Michael Voris who is transparent and open about his own struggles will be a far more compelling witness than the image of bronzed blonde perfection we have tended to see until now.

Bring back Michael Voris.

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

The Bigger Beating Up the Lesser

 

The good guy?

Friend Xerxes, in a recent private conversation, made guilelessly clear why the far left is generally in support of Hamas in the current Gaza struggle: because Israel is “the bigger beating up the lesser.”

Obvious enough, but also revelatory. This would seem to be, to the left, the only thing that matters: whoever is judged to be weaker, to have less power, is automatically in the right.

Consider intersectionality. Nobody in a designated “oppressed” group can be accused of being racist or oppressive. “Whites,” however, are racist and oppressive no matter what they think or do or have done, because they are supposedly in power: “privileged.”

It is not necessarily the correct perception in this case that Israel is the stronger, and Hamas the weaker. It is foolish for a weaker party to attack a stronger one; and Hamas attacked Israel. But the Arabs are all one ethnicity, by any traditional measure: the same language, the same religion, the same government until divided recently by European powers. Hamas no doubt hoped that the rest of the Arab world would come to their assistance, should hostilities begin, as they did in 1967 or 1973--not to mention the rest of the Muslim world, which is, in principle, supposed to be one political entity, Dar al Islam. In this wider context, Israel is a little sliver of land and a local population surrounded by powerful enemies.

But then too, those designated by the left as oppressed and weak minorities is also arbitrary: women, although the majority of the population is female; non-whites, although the majority of the world is non-white; and so on.

I think it was always objectively improbable, since the Abraham Accords, that Hamas would have received direct and immediate military support. But they might have hoped to flip the growing consensus for peace for the future.

But, not to get bogged down in this one case, if the left’s overall moral logic is correct, Al Qaeda was also in the right to strike the World Trade Centre: after all, Osama Bin Laden’s resources were less than America’s. But then, the left actually is currently thinking better of Osama and his justifications.

Japan was also, apparently, in the right to bomb Pearl Harbor: the USA was the bigger country. They were, therefore, the bullies.

But the idea that the weaker party is always in the right is moral nonsense. It certainly wouldn’t do, for example, as a parenting principle. The child is always right, then, and the parent always wrong?

Nevertheless, you see it in the left’s call a couple of years ago to defund the police: since the police have more power than the criminals, it is the police who are at fault, not the criminals.

Yet it is simply the doctrine of “might makes right” inverted. And it is self-defeating: if you support the weaker party to win, then, if it wins, you must oppose it as the stronger party. And so the wheel spins eternally, in constant blood and strife.

So why, since it is so destructive and nonsensical, does the left want to apply so assiduously?

Because it is an alibi for the sin of envy. 

If you are not morally developed, you will naturally resent anyone who seems to be doing better than you are, or does things better than you. You want to pull them down.

Like the desire to pull down statues of any recognized heroes.

Envy is the sin of Cain against Abel: if another seems favoured by fortune or by God, you resent them and seek their harm. It helps if you can declare them a “bully,” or “arrogant,” or rapacious, or greedy, simply for revealing their talents.

That would, for example, explain why the left calls Trump a bully. He skewers his opponents too well.

That explains why Bin Laden targeted the World Trade Center. It was too impressive a structure.

That explains antisemitism. The Jews are objectively highly accomplished as an ethnicity. 

That explains anti-white hatred; the same observation applies. They have accomplished too much to be allowed to live in peace.

And that is the way of the world.

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

The Parable of the Talents

 

Jesus told his disciples this parable:
“A man going on a journey
called in his servants and entrusted his possessions to them.
To one he gave five talents; to another, two; to a third, one--
to each according to his ability.
Then he went away.
Immediately the one who received five talents went and traded with them,
and made another five.
Likewise, the one who received two made another two.
But the man who received one went off and dug a hole in the ground
and buried his master’s money.
“After a long time
the master of those servants came back
and settled accounts with them.
The one who had received five talents came forward
bringing the additional five.
He said, ‘Master, you gave me five talents.
See, I have made five more.’
His master said to him, ‘Well done, my good and faithful servant.
Since you were faithful in small matters,
I will give you great responsibilities.
Come, share your master's joy.’
Then the one who had received two talents also came forward and said,
‘Master, you gave me two talents.
See, I have made two more.’
His master said to him, ‘Well done, my good and faithful servant.
Since you were faithful in small matters,
I will give you great responsibilities.
Come, share your master's joy.’
Then the one who had received the one talent came forward and said,
‘Master, I knew you were a demanding person,
harvesting where you did not plant
and gathering where you did not scatter;
so out of fear I went off and buried your talent in the ground.
Here it is back.’
His master said to him in reply, ‘You wicked, lazy servant!
So you knew that I harvest where I did not plant
and gather where I did not scatter?
Should you not then have put my money in the bank
so that I could have got it back with interest on my return?
Now then! Take the talent from him and give it to the one with ten.
For to everyone who has,
more will be given and he will grow rich;
but from the one who has not,
even what he has will be taken away.
And throw this useless servant into the darkness outside,
where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.’”

Like all parables, last Sunday’s gospel reading includes a detail making a literal reading impossible.

For Jews and Christians, usury, lending money at interest, was considered sinful. Yet here the master praises two servants for lending money at interest—a 100% rate of interest.

Obviously, the “talents” being referred to cannot be money. Indeed, the English word “talent” comes from this parable. It means spiritual gifts.

Don’t be misled here by the crass and literalistic “prosperity gospel.” God does not pay cash.

We are given what talents we have by God at birth. We are not all given either equal or equivalent talents; the idea of “multiple intelligences” is a transparent cope. Some are given two talents, some five, some only one. “To each according to his ability”; God knows us before birth, and gives talents to those most likely to use them wisely.

It is our responsibility, then, just as Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, not to hide our light under a bushel, not to hide our talents in a hole, but to “let our light shine.” If we do, our talent will increase.

Many do not do this, the parable says, out of fear. It is always frightening to show a drawing or a poem, or to perform on stage. One feels vulnerable. Rightly so: you will be criticized, attacked, meant harm, especially if you’re good.

So those to whom God gives more talent have greater responsibility, and will have a more difficult path through life. The suffering of the artist is axiomatic. The sufferings of the Jews is the paradigm. They are here to be “a light unto the nations.” Evil people fear and hate the light.

Then at the end of life, we will be judged on what we have done with what we have been given.

According to the parable, at this point, when the master returns, those who have used their talents well will be given greater responsibility. 

This tells us there will be more important work to do in heaven. We will not just sit around playing video games. This work is the entire point of life.

Why? Because God made us, in the beginning, as a potter, in his image. Meaning, to be, like him, creators, makers. In creating, we collaborate with him in building the intended world, the New Jerusalem. It is a work of art, a city, not the natural world into which we are born naked.

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

Call the Midwife

 

I’ve been enjoying the British TV series, “Call the Midwife.” It is, at least in its first two seasons, autobiographical, and so an authentic portrait of life in postwar East End London. It is, no doubt inadvertently, a sobering corrective to the claim of some inherited “white privilege.” Poor whites, only a generation or so ago, had it worse than most North American “non-whites” today. Leaving aside the working class Cockneys, consider all the European immigrants who arrived in North America postwar with almost nothing, the DPs, or “displaced persons,” following the war. Consider the Jews, who had just lost most of their families to the gas chambers. And consider those already here, the Okies and the West Virginia miners, who had just lived though, first service and mass death in the Great War, then starvation in the Great Depression, then World War II and mass death again. 

Privileged?

Not compared to most immigrants to Canada today coming from “Third World” countries. Because of Canada’s points system, they are almost always from the wealthy upper classes in their homelands. And nobody is quite so rich and privileged as those with lots of money in a place where everyone else is very poor. These are your Canadian “non-whites” today. It may be somewhat different in the US or UK, with mass illegal immigration.

Beyond this useful corrective to the social narrative, the British series is touching; what could be a more important subject than the coming of new life? With each new child born, the world is born anew. We value this far too little in these days of mass abortion and feminist scorn of child care.

Nor is everyone in the series beautiful; a standard flaw in North American drama. I had to stop watching one recent Canadian series, midway through the first episode, set in a remote nineteenth-century mining town. All the miners’ wives were young, well-spoken, immaculately dressed, and gorgeous. Immediately killed my suspension of disbelief.

On the other hand, to its detriment, the British series sadly suffers from the Hallmark affliction: every character in it is well-intentioned. Any wrong they do is based on a misunderstanding; it is always pointed out to them by the end of the episode; and they apologize humbly.

Such a circumstance might be common in the next life; but not in this one. And spreading the idea that it is, is sinister and dangerous. It leaves too many sheep vulnerable to wolves.

In this world, most people have their own interests primarily at heart. Most will sacrifice the well-being of others to varying degrees. Most people, caught doing wrong, or even simply making some mistake, will react with anger, attack the messenger, or the victim, and double down. 

Bruno Bettelheim, psychiatrist, wrote a famous treatise on fairy tales, “The Uses of Enchantment,” in which, among other things, he criticized the traditional stories as always portraying characters in black and white, as either entirely good or entirely evil. This, he argued, was not the psychological reality.

And in recent years, no doubt largely under his influence, there has been a concrete effort to rewrite fairy tales to show that the villain was really in the right all along and only misunderstood.

Bettelheim was falsifying the fairy tales. They never show a character as entirely good. The hero or heroine always does something wrong. Snow White keeps buying trinkets from pedlars, although warned not to, out of vanity. Cinderella lies to her sisters, and stays too long at the ball. Psyche doubts her husband and violates her promise to him; then she break her promise to Venus by, vainly, opening Persephone’s box and taking for herself immortal beauty. Beauty breaks her promise to Beast to return in two weeks, almost killing him. And so on.

Bettelheim’s real problem is that there are, indeed, entirely bad characters in fairy tales: witches and ogres and giants and stepmothers and wolves and the like are purely bad. 

The difference is that good characters, at some point, realize their fault and show regret. The bad characters never repent, but double down.

This is the real world; and this is the real difference between good and bad people.

Bettelheim does not want to acknowledge this distinction, because he was himself, in the end, an unrepentant bad man. According to Wikipedia, he “routinely embellished or inflated aspects of his own biography.” He falsified his academic credentials, for one thing. He had no formal qualifications in psychiatry. He is accused of plagiarism in his famous book, and from many sources of abusing his colleagues, students, and young patients.

And this is generally the case for those who prefer the Hallmark perspective, that everyone is good deep down, only sometimes misunderstood. It is a denial of their own guilt.

And, for the rest of us, it is a red flag.

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

The Anti-Christian Pogrom

 

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

A New Hope

 

William Lane Craig

Here’s cause for hope. While the postmodern sacred chaos seems all-conquering in the academy, and marching through the culture—something else is happening at the cutting edge of research in departments of philosophy and of physics. There, it looks as though the arguments for atheism have collapsed. The “New Atheism” had a strong popular run recently, but that seems only to have brought the issue, and the true state of affairs, to broader attention. 

And the New Atheism has fizzled. It has fizzled in part under the greater scrutiny all ideas can receive in our information age.

Philosophy is traditionally considered the queen of the sciences: the most advanced academic degree is thus “Doctor of Philosophy.” Similarly, among the materialists, physics rules. And these two, according to William Lane Craig and others, have turned to the “God hypothesis.”

Even neo-Darwinism seems to be in retreat in biology departments. Although the claim was never strong, Darwinism was in the popular mind the main argument against theism. Darwin’s theory, and its proponents, largely kicked off the currently fashionable atheist religion of scientism.

But the intricacies of the genetic code, the need for “multiverses,” a gross violation of Occam’s Razor, to avoid postulating some higher power in physics, and the bizarrely narrow and specific set of circumstances that allow for life in the universe, have forcefully reintroduced the argument from design that the atheists thought Darwin had circumvented.

And if you don’t like that argument for God’s existence, as Craig has quipped, “I have others.”

Thinks move glacially in academics. Once a new truth is established, it takes at least a generation for it to percolate down to undergraduate level—let alone the high school texts, and the general consciousness. I just saw a post on Facebook teasing the revelation that Columbus was not the first European to discover the Americas. There are even still Freudians about. For the direction in any field to change significantly, the current generation of faculty members, who have built their reputations on the prior paradigm, has to die off. People rarely admit mistakes.

But we can perhaps now see the future, and it is divine. 

We must just hope that not too many more churches be burned or torn down from within before we get there.

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

Should the West Be Supporting Israel?

 

I hear some complain that we seem to care too much about the death of Israeli civilians in the October 6 assault. Would we have been so supportive if the same thing had happened in, say, Armenia or Azerbaijan? Why do we care so much more about the Jews?

Subtext: surely it is all about rich Jews in America controlling US foreign policy behind the curtain, right?

I believe the opposite: at the best of times, I see antisemitism always just below the surface, if not openly expressed.

There no doubt is a Jewish lobby in the West. But there also is, and always has been, a powerful Arab lobby, with money, votes, oil, and geopolitical importance.

If a similar attack had occurred in Azerbaijan or Armenia, it is true, the public and government reaction in the West would probably not have been as dramatic. But this is for practical reasons: Azerbaijan and Armenia are in the Russian sphere of influence. We would expect Russia to handle the matter, we would have little logistical ability to help, and doing so would probably provoke Russia.

But Israel is an ally. They have a right to expect support.

There is an obvious comparison: 9/11. When a roughly proportionate terrorist attack hit the US, not only did the rest of the West support the US’s invasion of Afghanistan to hunt down the perpetrators, NATO invoked section 5 of their treaty, and everyone sent in troops in support. 

Compare, more recently, Ukraine. Not a NATO member, not a traditional ally, but all of NATO has been sending support.

Compare Kosovo, or Bosnia. Again, the West mobilized to end the perceived genocide.

When Saddam invaded Kuwait, and there were claims of atrocities, the US mobilized a coalition of the West to intervene.

So, in this case, the expected reaction should be for the other nations of the “Free World” to give Israel full diplomatic support, and supply any help Israel needs to eliminate the threat—up to and including sending their own troops.

Western support for Israel falls short of that. 

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

Trudeau Lectures Israel

 

Justin Trudeau has caused another foreign relations lap by publicly demanding Israel exercise “maximum restraint” in Gaza, implying they are responsible for the deaths of many women and children.

Victor David Hanson makes a good point on this: calling for restraint or measured response in war is incoherent. This is to prolong war indefinitely, and perhaps to court defeat. The moral course, if you have overwhelming force, as Israel does here, is to use everything you have to bring the war to an end as soon as possible, and so end the killing. Trudeau’s advice would lead to many more deaths.

Of course, it is morally necessary to avoid any killing, of either soldiers or civilians, not needed to achieve victory. But if Israel is correct to claim Hamas is using “human shields,” the IDF refusing to fire on them for this reason is like paying ransom to kidnappers: if the tactic works for the terrorists, it guarantees more innocent civilians will die in future.

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

Apocalypse Maybe Later

I think it may now be winding down, but for weeks, people have been speaking of the conflict in Gaza as if it were the start of World War III.

I think the opposite. Hamas is not a serious military force; this is nothing like as serious as the Six Day War, or the Yom Kippur War, when substantial Arab armies were arrayed against the Jewish state. The very barbarity of the initial attack smells of desperation: like a tantrum. Knowing they have lost the support of Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, all that is left is an attempt to, improbably, horrify Israel into surrender. And we can be sure no major Arab state is going to enter the fray.

There is a feeling of apocalypse in the air, and so every hiccup is taken as a cosmic death rattle. The end may be nigh, but not because of events in Gaza.

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