Stephen Roney's Blog, page 78

The Folk Mass

 

In my youth, in the wake of Vatican II, the Church decided to jettison all the liturgical music of the past two millennia, The Beethoven and the Bach and the like, generally written for choir and organ, in favour of the “folk mass,” with guitar, up in the front of the church. Folk, after all, was what all the youngsters were listening to. The church was going to be hep.

Except—I was one of those youngsters, who adored folk music. A tradition is rich with deeply religious songs. Indeed, rock itself is only secularized gospel music. “Go Tell It on the Mountain”; “We Shall Not Be Moved”; “We Shall Overcome”; “Turn! Turn! Turn!”; “Children, Go Where I Send Thee”; and the like, were on the radio every day.

But the church did not go to real folk music. Instead, they had a small group of St. Louis Jesuits compose almost the entire new hymn book, with songs presumably in the folk tradition; but soulless and trite. Hallmark Card stuff. To anyone who loved either folk music, or true religion, it was offensive.

The low point, for me, was when I passed a Catholic Church in grad school days, and the carillon was playing the notes of John Denver’s “Sunshine on my Shoulders.” 

“Sunshine on my shoulders makes me happy
Sunshine in my eyes can make me cry
Sunshine on the water looks so lovely
Sunshine almost always makes me high”

Why didn’t the church use true folk music? I suspect a need to control, a Pharisaic fear of the Holy Spirit. But probably also because, in the English world, the folk music other than that substantial body out of Ireland was mostly going to be written by Protestants, and express Protestant theology. For example, “The Old Rugged Cross”:

“And exchange it one day for a crown.”

That easy conviction that one is going to heaven would be, to Catholicism, the sin of pride, and a likely ticket in the opposite direction.

Still, there was a ready alternative, a better road not taken. There is a rich Catholic folk tradition in non-English-speaking countries. The lyrics need only be translated. My wife and I were the choir back in Athabasca, and the priest allowed us to sing the English version of the Spanish song “Pescador de Hombres.” Not included I the regulation hymn book, but he had pasted it inside the back cover. A visitor came up to us afterward and said it wax the most beautiful thing he had ever heard in a church.

“O Lord, with a glance you embraced me:
Then you smiled and whispered my name.
I’ve abandoned my boat in the harbour;
Close to You I will seek other shores.”

For that matter, the good old Protestant hymns could be adapted.

“So I'll cherish the old rugged Cross
Till my trophies, at last, I lay down
I will cling to the old rugged Cross
And wear every thorn like a crown.”

Some day, I pray, the Church will come to its senses on liturgical music. 

But how long, O Lord, how long?

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

Who Replaces Trudeau?

 

As Justin Trudeau’s popularity plunges, people begin to talk about his possible successor as leader of the Liberal Party.

Chrystia Freeland is his second in command. But she is too closely identified with him: if his popularity goes down, hers does too. 

The rest of the cabinet does not look much better. The problem is that Trudeau has been relying on a personality cult, and no cabinet ministers have been able to develop a strong independent identity or following. 

Mark Carnet is mentioned. But he looks too much like Michael Ignatieff, vulnerable to charges of being a carpetbagger; and with untested political skills.

There is no obvious candidate that nobody seems to be mentioning: Jody Wilson-Raybould. This actually follows the typical Liberal tradition: a former cabinet minister who has resigned over disagreements with the leader comes back from retirement to take over. So Jean Chretien, John Turner, Paul Martin.

Raybould has earned a reputation for strict honesty and respect for the rules, which would be the antidote for the odour of corruption and overreach left by Trudeau.

She has remained loyal to the party: ejected, she ran not as an NDP or Green candidate, although she had offers. They would have killed to have her. She took the harder path of running as an independent.

Why do the mainstream media not mention her?

It seems sinister.

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

The Devil As a Way to God

 

J. P. Sears has an interesting take on his conversion to Christianity. He says he started believing in the Devil before he started truly believing in God.

The presence of evil-and Satan, the source of evil, he says, is becoming ever more apparent. Lean away from evil, and where are you leaning?

So for Sears, accepting the reality of the Devil came first. Perhaps recognizing evil is a necessary step to true belief in God. Without it, you may have a nominal, lukewarm belief. But a belief without urgency is not a true belief. In fact, according to the Bible, it is better to be an atheist than a lukewarm Christian. Perhaps because that is more sincere, and shows you care about the issue.

“you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.” Revelations 3: 15-16.

But Sears has another revelation.

“Anyone who wants to control you purposely pulls you away from God.”

They do so, he says, because their control is always based on fear. The ultimate fear is fear of death. Sears cites the climate crisis: do this or we’re all going to die! He cites the covid panic being used to justify totalitarian measures.

And those who believe in God, and an afterlife, are less afraid of death, and so harder to control. This is why totalitarian movements always reject religion, even persecute the church and the religious. 

But Sears is missing a trick. Christianity and its separation of church and state—thee state, after all, crucified Christ—makes this difficult, but in nations where other religions are dominant, the better tactic is to identify God’s will with that of the totalitarian state. Then the dissident has even greater reason to fear: he goes to hell. This is common in Islam—see Iran. It is arguably why democracy has been unsuccessful in those lands.

It is easier for narcissistic parents. Christianity is not so clear on the separation of church and family. It is there, but the average person actually thinks Christianity and “family values” are more or less synonymous; and that the commandment to “honour thy father and they mother” is without limists and imposes no obligations on the parent. 

So it is relatively easy for the controlling narcissistic parent to convince the child, not that there is no God, but that there is, and God hates them. 

This explains too why narcissistic parents will invariably put their children into moral dilemmas or encourage them to do immoral things. This explains why they will scapegoat the more moral or dutiful child. They want to convince the child that God is on the side of the parent, and total obedience is essential.

This is again why Jesus, in the Gospels, considers moral misdirection the essential form of child abuse.

“If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea. Woe to the world because of the things that cause people to stumble! Such things must come, but woe to the person through whom they come.”

“Mental illness,” CPTSD, is the result of this moral misdirection. The way out is first to plainly see evil as evil, as Sears suggests, and pull away. Too many are trapped here by a fear of God, because they have been taught to identify God with the autocratic parent.

In such a case it makes sense to first recognize the devil, the spirit of evil, and pull away from him. And you find God as a result.

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

Western Civilization

 

What exactly is “Western Civilization”? What makes it distinct from “Eastern Civilization” or “Middle Eastern Civilization,” or come other civilization? 

Not that it is Western, certainly. Australia and New Zealand are part of “Wesrern civilization,” and New Zealand is further east than any of the lands of “Eastern Civilization.”

Which tells us that “Western Civilization” is a euphemism. What we are referring to is Christian Civilization, Christendom. “Eastern Civilization” is founded instead on the principles of Confucius, while Christendom is founded on the Old and New Testaments. Morocco is not a part of Western Civilization, as far west as it is, because it is founded on the Quran and Shariah law, not the Old and New Testaments. Indian Civilization is not “Western” because it is founded on the Vedas as its bottom line.

This being so, if Christian civilization rejects Christianity, it collapses; it ceases to be. Not instantly, but inevitably. And that is the way things are going.

It is from Christian doctrine, from the New Testament, that we get the “self-evident” truth that all men are created equal. “Self-evident” is a con; Jefferson originally wrote, correctly, “sacred and inviolable.” Locke explained: it is not that it is self-evident; it follows from one divine creator and one act of creation. As the Levellers chanted in the English Revolution, “when Adam Delved and Eve span, who then was the gentleman?” In any polytheistic culture, there is no idea of human equality. Often the king claims exclusively divine ancestry; there are castes.

It is from Christian doctrine that we get the idea of human dignity and human rights. Human dignity follows from the claim that man is made in God’s image: so each man contains that divine spark. Human rights follow from the dogma that man was created, in the Garden of Eden story, to exercise free will and choose the moral good. He must therefore at all times be allowed the widest possible freedom of choice. The individual, in short, mut be free.

It is from Christianity that we get the idea of a separation of church and state, of freedom of religion, and of checks and balances on civil power. In pagan cultures, or in Islam, the civil power is also the religious power. There is no question of challenging the actions of the state, or of holding some non-state-sanctioned religious belief. This separation of sacred and secular spheres is succinctly expressed by Jesus in the New Testament: “render unto Ceasar what is Ceasar’s; render unto God what is God’s.”

And on it goes. Kick the Christian foundation out from all these assumptions, and there is nothing to support them. Sooner or later they are questioned, then no longer honoured. We are seeing this in real time. Nor will there be anything that magically appears to  replace them—any other foundation or set of general principles to which we can appeal in case of conflicting interests. We will no longer be able to do anything together: civilizational collapse.

Perhaps some new civilization might rise from the rubble. That might take thousands of years.

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

The Weimar Dominion

 

Justin Trudeau is incompetent, corrupt, and with totalitarian and dictatorial intentions. This is apparent in a dozen ways to Sunday. It is therefore hard to accept that a large body of Canadians has voted for him in three elections, and, according to polls, a large body of Canadians would still vote for him. This does not speak well of the intelligence of Canadians.

It also condemns the Canadian elite. It has always been the Canadian way, unlike the American one, and like the British, to trust those at the top to keep things in good order: the police, the professions, the civil service, the media. In Canada democracy is seen more as a check against possible excess than the fundamental sovereign act.

Accordingly, Trudeau’s ascension to and persistence in power is disillusioning in what it says about the Canadian elites. They have not stopped him, nor pointed out how harmful he is for the nation. Following the Westminster system, there should have been a cabinet revolt long before now—as happened recently to Boris Johnson, or happened in his day to John Diefenbaker. Instead, when Jody Wilson Raybould resigned, only one cabinet member, shamefully, went with her. 

Had that not happened, there should have been a caucus revolt, as took down Erin O’Toole, or Liz Truss, or Theresa May. Prime ministers and party leaders, after all, are supposed to serve at the pleasure of their members.

Had that not happened, the big donors—Bay Street, Power Corp. and such—should have pulled the plug on Liberal Party finances. 

Had that not happened, the party brass, the backroom armies, the volunteers, should have pulled their services to force Trudeau out.

Had that not happened, the press and media mavens should have been pointing out on air and in print how irregular and improper Trudeau’s speeches and measures have been. A few have—Rex Murphy, Conrad Black, a brace in the new media. But where is Andrew Coyne, say, or Chantal Hebert? Even those who do speak out regularly against Trudeau, like John Ivison or Brian Lilley, seem to me on the whole to be soft-pedalling it.

All these systems seem to have failed. How come?

Each of these groups seems to have been acting in their own personal or class interests, in disregard of the greater public interest. If not positively and voluntarily benefitting from logrolling with the regime, everybody found it to their advantage to leave the battle to somebody else.

John Adams said, of the nation he had partly founded, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” This is probably true of any system of government: it succeeds or fails mostly on the morality of the people, and of the leadership in particular. The secret to British success over the last few centuries was the strict code of gentlemanliness and “fair play” that had been imbued in the upper classes. Such things are not instinctive, and cannot be presumed. They have to be carefully taught.

We have seen a collapse in morality in Canada and the rest of the West over recent generations—in “conventional morality,” as its opponents call it—and a collapse in moral education. Social collapse is bound to follow.

It can only be averted by a religious revival, which is then applied to the education system.

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

Vivek Ramaswamy

 

Vivek Ramaswamy is getting some traction as a presidential candidate. 

This my not mean much. Most times, dark horses rise and fall in the course of the presidential season. Herman Cain, Howard Dean, Michelle Bachman, Pete Buttigeig, Ben Carson; all had their day.

But just in case, it seems worth pointing out that some of his positions are alarming.

He wants to impose a “civics test” to allow 18 to 24-year-olds to vote. This is plainly discriminatory: the right to vote is inherent and follows from every man’s right to decide what is best for himself. Moreover, the content of any “civics test” could be skewed to exclude voters of a given opinion. No government should be allowed to choose its own voters.

Ramaswamy also wants to extend the use of executive orders. This subverts the legislative branch, reduces checks and balances, and moves the US in the direction of a dictatorship, if an elected dictatorship.

I imagine Ramaswamy is well-intentioned, but some of his instincts are bad.

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

Safely Dead

 

There are a lot of YouTube videos recounting “near-death experiences” (NDEs). In one I was watching recently, the woman reported feeling an overwhelming feeling of relief, a sense that she had made it safely.

Safely? She’s dead. Safe from what?

She does not say, and perhaps does not know. But the answer is obvious. Safe from sin, safe from hell. I expect the sense is instinctive. 

“Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”

We all die. That is not the struggle for which we live. 

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

Merit and Class

 

Kathy Shaidle

David Brooks’s NYT essay “What If We’re the Bad Guys Here?” is stirring much attention. Link was posted here yesterday. This seems to mark an inflection point in the ongoing collapse of the ancien regime. Members of the Second Estate are starting to move over, to acknowledge that the Third Estate has legitimate grievances. They are not just deplorables, bitter clingers, rednecks, racists, unwashed peasants,

However, Brooks does not fully get it. He argues that the problem is the “modern meritocracy,” “that sorts and excludes people on the basis of the quality that we [sic] possess most: academic achievement. Highly educated parents go to elite schools, marry each other, work at high-paying professional jobs and pour enormous resources into our children, who get into the same elite schools, marry each other and pass their exclusive class privileges down from generation to generation.”

To describe this system as a “meritocracy” is to add insult to injury. A system that preserves class privileges generation to generation is the opposite of a meritocracy: it means success is by birth rather than merit.

Arguably, one reason why things do not seem to work as well as they used to, in Canada or in the US, is that we have in recent decades abandoned merit in favour of inherited privilege. Some of this privilege is enforced by “affirmative action,” discrimination on the basis of race or sex rather than merit. But most of it comes from the growing emphasis on, as Brooks says, “academic achievement.”

Academic achievement is not merit, and is not necessarily related to it. Merit means being the best at doing the given job. Free markets tend to do that. Credentialism (“academic achievement”) and such similar regulations and restraints on trade work against that.

Journalism is a case in point. As Brooks points out:

“When I began my journalism career in Chicago in the 1980s, there were still some old crusty working-class guys around the newsroom. Now we’re not only a college-dominated profession, we’re an elite-college-dominated profession. Only 0.8 percent of all college students graduate from the super elite 12 schools (the Ivy League colleges, plus Stanford, M.I.T., Duke and the University of Chicago). A 2018 study found that more than 50 percent of the staff writers at the beloved New York Times and The Wall Street Journal attended one of the 29 most elite universities in the nation.”

This parallels a clear decline in the quality of North American journalism, which surely everybody who loves the smell of wet ink can see, and which is reflected in the subscription numbers. And the rising competition that is eating this legacy media’s lunch is, just as in the glory days of journalism, most often card-carrying members of the working class who never attended university, let alone journalism school: Kate MacMillan, Kathy Shaidle, Matt Drudge, “Clyde Do Something,” “the Pleb,” and the like.

Journalism is a highly-skilled occupation: perhaps the most highly skilled. Language is itself mankind’s most sophisticated invention, underlying and comprehending everything else we have accomplished. A journalist must be master of it: able to write both well and fast, on any topic, on demand. Moreover, he must know how to become an instant expert on any topic.

Being able to do it well is the acid test. On the whole, more members of the “working class” can than members of the professional class. This is a strong indication that the professional class collectively is not more intelligent than the working class. The magnificent organization of the recent “Freedom Convoy” to Ottawa, all done on the fly, is another.

Our growing demand over recent decades for formal academic credentials has worked to weed out the people who can do journalism well. It weeds out the best and brightest, no doubt, in other fields too. 

It works against merit in a number of ways. 

First, one’s family must have a good bit of money, and be prepared to invest it in you, for you to be able to stay out of the workforce for four, six, or nine years gathering some academic credential. This would be true even if higher education were free. This favours established wealth over ability.

Second, higher education is of course not free. Brooks notes that the journalists at the top newspapers come not just from universities, but from the top 29 most elite universities. He cites the Ivy League, MIT, Stanford, Duke, and the University of Chicago. These are all private universities, with astronomical tuition—tuition growing ever higher, vastly faster than the rate of inflation. Your parents must be wealthy to afford you this entry ticket—even leaving aside the common “legacy” preferences. The rich thus stay rich, and the poor, poor.

Third, even if higher education were free, and students could earn money while attending, the skills required to succeed in a classroom are usually different from the skills needed to succeed in a given job. And this is true not just in the trades. As a sometime teacher of language, I am acutely aware that a classroom is about the worst place possible to teach someone to speak a language. The best place, obviously, is out in the street, where one has a chance at actual conversation. A classroom is designed for lectures. As a sometime teacher of writing, I am acutely aware that writing is the same. It cannot be taught by rote and rule, because once any rule is commonly followed, breaking it is desirable: it makes the reading more interesting. Moreover, since writing is the hardest brain exercise available to mankind, doing anything else but sitting down and starting to write is less effective at learning the craft than the craft itself.

Good students, overly devoted to rote and rule, are almost automatically going to be bad writers, and bad journalists. They will be bad, or not particularly good, at any number of other things. They are inclined, to speak bluntly, to be drudges.

Fourth, as any intelligent teacher must realize, or any intelligent person prepared to think about it, in a classroom, some students are always left behind. Because students will always vary in their abilities, and in their prior knowledge, a teacher must pitch the lesson to some, and ignore the needs of others. A classroom ends up working best for those of average intelligence and ability. The less intelligent or less well prepared get left behind, and either fail out, or keep moving up the queue without ever learning the material—because the class has moved on before they have had time to grasp it. The more intelligent are left bored and with nothing to do—the time spent in class actually hinders their learning and holds them back. They learn to be lazy, or begin to rebel. As often as not, they too fail out, or drop out.

While there is much public sympathy and concern for less intelligent or less prepared students, and programs to supposedly help them, there is virtually nothing for the most intelligent—if anything, they are resented. Worse, if teachers or administrators, exercising their exquisite social conscience, insist on pitching the lesson or curriculum lower to make sure the slow students get it, necessarily, more students towards the top of the spectrum get left behind.

Therefore, beyond a certain point, a little above average intelligence, academic achievement weeds out not just the lower end of the intellectual spectrum, but the higher end, and produces mediocrity.

Journalism used to be an opportunity for those brightest students who could not tolerate high school, or were too poor to get to college. That is now lost, and journalism is in crisis as a result. So too with a number of other occupations, that are just not getting done what they once could do. Teaching is another example. I am sure readers know others, based on their own professional experience.

Fifth, our public schools are actually designed, since the beginning of the 20th century, to turn out factory workers. They are designed to produce conformity and submission, not to educate as such, and certainly not for leadership or initiative. Those who succeed in this system will be good soldiers, but too easily led. 

The original plan was that expensive private schools would teach leadership, keeping the ruling elite in power. This was bad enough; but, over time, the same philosophy has seeped into the private schools, through the ed schools and legal requirements for private schools to hire only “qualified” teachers, so that now everybody is trained for obedient conformity.

It is not, as Brooks blithely assumes, the educated elite that “invent new technologies that privilege superskilled workers.” Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were college dropouts. Orville and Wilbur Wright were bicycle mechanics. Albert Einstein was a patent clerk. New inventions and new ideas are more likely to come outside than inside the established academic institutions. Academic institutions are innately conservative—not necessarily or always a bad thing; they are supposed to be there to preserve and to pass on established wisdom. A task at which they are now failing.

I’m not sure Brooks quite understands why “it’s not the entrepreneurs who seem most threatening to workers; it’s the professional class.” They see Trump, a rich entrepreneur, as their champion. This confuses the professional elite. Based on their Marxist ideology, the working class should see such a “rich capitalist” as the enemy, keeping them down. While the socialist professional elite should be seen as the allies of the working class. Even if they would not be caught dead in their vicinity

But, while Trump may not have started from the bottom, the thing about entrepreneurship is that it is indeed a pure meritocracy. 

It is not any lack of merit that is keeping the working class down.

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

A Half-Woke Essay

 

Originally appearing in the New York Times.

"What If We're the Baddies?"

People are slowly wake up, including members of the professional elite. 

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

What's That Smell?

 

Justin Trudeau and his wife Sophie have announced their legal separation. I think Trudeau is an awful human being, but as far as his marital situation goes, none of us on the outside can know the rights and wrongs. We should not gloat or take sides. All we can say is that every divorce is a tragedy, and divorce is too frequent in our culture.

Tangentialy related, Viva Frei suggests that Justin Trudeau probably smells bad, and that may have had something to do with the separation. Bad people, he says, generally smell bad.

That is too crazy a comment for me to ever make, but since Viva has raised it, I have always found the same: bad people smell bad. Perhaps not always, but usually. I have often pondered why. Is it because, loving themselves, they also love their own smell, and so do not think much about personal cleanliness? No: I know of one who showered at least once a day, but still stank. Is it because they are chronically nervous, fearing their conscience, and therefore sweat more than the rest of us? This could be; lie detectors work on something like this principle. 

Or is it something supernatural?

After all, good people conversely often smell good. Including, I read, their uncorrupted corpses. This must be more than the absence of perspiration. And I also find that bad people look different: they have a dark, sickly pall about them. I do not mean a dark skin tone-their skin can be quite pale. It is more like shadows on their face. Something about them looks less lifelike, more waxen.

Okay, it sounds crazy. But Viva Frei apparently notices it too. Perhaps others do.

It might be that many others experience this, but it does not register, because they are committed to the belief that there is no such thing as good and bad people.

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