Mark P. Shea's Blog, page 1338
April 15, 2011
What a surprise
Defunding Murder Inc is killed in the Senate, as you knew it would be. Among the killers, Catholic Senators.
And they say...
...there's a problem with Catholic Higher Ed.
A prof giving a seminar on Business Ethics at LaSalle hired strippers to do lap dances for him and his students.
The good news is that the guy has been suspended.
You have to wonder sometimes if these guys get up in the morning and ask, "What is the most grotesquely outrageous thing I could possible do? I wonder if I can get away with it?"
It's like the crazy sort of thing a guy would do in the middle of some huge midlife crisis. You have to wonder if he was in his right mind.
A prof giving a seminar on Business Ethics at LaSalle hired strippers to do lap dances for him and his students.
The good news is that the guy has been suspended.
You have to wonder sometimes if these guys get up in the morning and ask, "What is the most grotesquely outrageous thing I could possible do? I wonder if I can get away with it?"
It's like the crazy sort of thing a guy would do in the middle of some huge midlife crisis. You have to wonder if he was in his right mind.
The Donald
is not selling well on the whole "I care about religion and stuff" front.
It's a measure of American political culture that it still matters to most people that a President observes the pieties.
It's a measure of American political culture that it still matters to most people that a President observes the pieties.
Amazing!
Wonderful what grace human beings are capable of.
Okay. This is funny.
A reader writes:
"We've all heard it said that a million monkeys at a million keyboards would eventually bang out the works of William Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know that isn't true."
What's great about Shakespeare is that quoting him just automatically lends class to any proceeding. That, in part, is due to the fact that people typically are selective about Shakespeare. They quote his great heroes and seldom his minor comic characters. So it rare to find someone raising a toast and saying, "In the words of the Bard: 'Monster, I do smell all horse-piss; at which my nose is in great indignation.'" I suppose there might be a social occasion at which such a line would be a fitting, but I'm hard pressed to think of it.
News: archaeologists digging near the site of Shakespeare's house in Stratford-Upon-Avon have uncovered a vast labyrinth extending from beneath the property containing countless thousands of small cages, each containing a rudimentary keyboard and a skeleton, probably a primate.Reminds me of one of my favorite Internet jokes. Namely:
"We've all heard it said that a million monkeys at a million keyboards would eventually bang out the works of William Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know that isn't true."
What's great about Shakespeare is that quoting him just automatically lends class to any proceeding. That, in part, is due to the fact that people typically are selective about Shakespeare. They quote his great heroes and seldom his minor comic characters. So it rare to find someone raising a toast and saying, "In the words of the Bard: 'Monster, I do smell all horse-piss; at which my nose is in great indignation.'" I suppose there might be a social occasion at which such a line would be a fitting, but I'm hard pressed to think of it.
Evidently I hit a nerve
Some clarifications for the pitchfork wavers in my comboxes and elsewhere.
1. I never said Michael Voris is evil.
2. I never said Michael Voris told people to leave the Church.
3. I never said or suggested that Michael Voris is somehow heterodox or that he should be silenced.
4. All I said was that it was dumb to say, "if the priest even so much as breathes a word about Earth Day, throw nothing in the collection plate, finish your Sunday obligation and resign from that parish on Monday"
and it is even dumber to obey this dumb command. Today, I would add that it is also dumb to defend this dumb command with accusations of malice, satanic influence, or some plot to "destroy" Voris.
The reason I said what I said yesterday was because such dumb pronouncements sow factionalism and unthinking adherence to shibboleths instead of actual Catholic thought. Personally, I can think of a dozen ways in which one could "breathe a word about Earth Day" in the context of the Triduum that would be perfectly orthodox and even a tonic relief from the dimestore Gaia worship of Trendy People. In fact (irony of ironies) I actually wrote a little piece earlier this week (before the Voris business broke) about the curious confluence of Earth Day and Good Friday (which will post on the Register blog on Good Friday and which I guess some people will now assume was written to spite Voris, though it wasn't). But Voris' instructions to the legions knows none of this reasonableness and charity, because it is an edict calculated to teach the mob to roar at an acoustic cue, rather than to think.
The proof of this, of course, is seen in my comboxes, due to the fact that a mob was sent here by Pewsitter to roar in my comboxes and offer all sorts of speculations and accusations about my dark motives for daring to criticize a dumb thing said by Michael Voris. Did you know my real reason for criticizing Voris' dumb edict was because he's bringin' the truth and I feel threatened and jealous of an upstart? Me neither. But plenty of comboxers, by their mystic arts, have read my soul and learned this. I am also motivated by Satan himself, as are all who criticize anything Voris might say. I'm also gay, by the way, as I discovered on one board in which a reader has cleverly dubbed me "Mark Sashay" (nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more).
In all this, the mobocracy of the comboxes have abundantly illustrated my point, which is that lots of people tend to anoint some fave rave celeb--sometimes me, sometimes Voris, or Scott Hahn, or Jimmy or whoever--as their real magisterial authority and to treat any question or criticism directed at their favorite media celeb as a direct assault on our Lord Jesus and his Holy Church. That's what I was warning against.
Notice something: That means my primary complaint yesterday, was not at Voris' dumb edict. (Anybody can pop off and say something stupid. I do it all the time.) It was at those *in the comboxes* who indulge in the Cult of Celebrity while declaring "the bishops" (all of them apparently) to be "enemies" of "real Catholics". Sorry, but that is factionalism in chemical purity. It is a work of the flesh, says Paul in Galatians 5.
From what I gather, Voris' videos often provide useful information. More power to him. So far from being "jealous" of anybody who is getting the Catholic gospel out, I'm quite happy to see more voices populating the web and I wish him well. But when he starts commanding the faithful to sit there in the Mass, tapping their foot with arms crossed and a scowl on their faces, waiting in pissed-off accusatory malice for a priest to say the wrong word ("He mentioned Earth Day! That's it. I'm OUT of here!") he's out of line and fanboys harm themselves and the Church by playing along with this junk instead of rejecting it.
It is legitimate to argue about which *ideas* are "really" Catholic. But I'm much more wary about blithely declaring which members of the Church are "really" Catholic--especially on the basis of Pavlovian acoustic cues. For we are all sinners. Every one of us thinks and does things that are not really Catholic. If a Catholic defends an idea that is wrong or dumb, one can criticize that without having to declare or suggest that he is not a "real" Catholic and without having to advocate a schismatic, Protestant dream of hiving off into some fantasy of a truly true pure Catholic Church. The wheat and the weeds, the bad fish and the good, are a reality of the Church till the Last Day.
That is not, by the way, to say that one must endure real and blatant contempt for the Tradition in a parish forever. Our family chose to go to Blessed Sacrament because I wanted to make sure our kids got decent catechesis and were not exposed (as they had been at our former parish) to declarations from the pulpit that the Scripture reading was (and I quote) "a crock", that Exodus was like a Paul Bunyan story, that the Pope was worthy of contempt, and all the sundry crap one can hear in a suburban parish.
But here's the thing: when we got to Blessed Sacrament, we found a wonderful parish full of wonderful Catholics with a gorgeous liturgy, reverence for the sacraments, tremendous works of charity and formation and clergy and staff who work their butts off for us. We also found simmering resentment from an embittered nucleus of "real Catholic" malcontents for whom nothing was ever good enough. They ostentatiously wore flightline earphones to Mass. They disrupted parish meetings. They spread lies and rumors about the clergy. They treated the rest of the parish with contempt. We were half-breed, false, "not real Catholic" enemies. I quickly learned that the problem isn't *always* loony progressives with visions of the Third Vatican Council. Sometimes its bitter Donatists for whom the Church is never pure enough.
And, as with all of Satan's ruses, what I quickly learned as well was that such attacks on the unity of the Church always come in pairs that, fleeing one, we will embrace the other. Voris' counsel to abandon your parish on a hair-trigger shibboleth is as dreadfully wrong as the counsel to knuckle under and let your kids be taught goddess crap in Sunday school because that is Sister Trendy's personal obsession. Both are appeals to a cult of celebrity, which is another word for factionalism. Both should be avoided.
And that goes, as I said yesterday, double for any readers here who so much as think to turn me into an alternate magisterium. I'm an internet loudmouth with a bunch of opinions about stuff. I think I'm right, of course, otherwise I wouldn't venture an opinion. But (unless I'm citing the Church's teaching), there's no guarantee I'm right.
Oh, and in case you were wondering, I'm not gay.
1. I never said Michael Voris is evil.
2. I never said Michael Voris told people to leave the Church.
3. I never said or suggested that Michael Voris is somehow heterodox or that he should be silenced.
4. All I said was that it was dumb to say, "if the priest even so much as breathes a word about Earth Day, throw nothing in the collection plate, finish your Sunday obligation and resign from that parish on Monday"
and it is even dumber to obey this dumb command. Today, I would add that it is also dumb to defend this dumb command with accusations of malice, satanic influence, or some plot to "destroy" Voris.
The reason I said what I said yesterday was because such dumb pronouncements sow factionalism and unthinking adherence to shibboleths instead of actual Catholic thought. Personally, I can think of a dozen ways in which one could "breathe a word about Earth Day" in the context of the Triduum that would be perfectly orthodox and even a tonic relief from the dimestore Gaia worship of Trendy People. In fact (irony of ironies) I actually wrote a little piece earlier this week (before the Voris business broke) about the curious confluence of Earth Day and Good Friday (which will post on the Register blog on Good Friday and which I guess some people will now assume was written to spite Voris, though it wasn't). But Voris' instructions to the legions knows none of this reasonableness and charity, because it is an edict calculated to teach the mob to roar at an acoustic cue, rather than to think.
The proof of this, of course, is seen in my comboxes, due to the fact that a mob was sent here by Pewsitter to roar in my comboxes and offer all sorts of speculations and accusations about my dark motives for daring to criticize a dumb thing said by Michael Voris. Did you know my real reason for criticizing Voris' dumb edict was because he's bringin' the truth and I feel threatened and jealous of an upstart? Me neither. But plenty of comboxers, by their mystic arts, have read my soul and learned this. I am also motivated by Satan himself, as are all who criticize anything Voris might say. I'm also gay, by the way, as I discovered on one board in which a reader has cleverly dubbed me "Mark Sashay" (nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more).
In all this, the mobocracy of the comboxes have abundantly illustrated my point, which is that lots of people tend to anoint some fave rave celeb--sometimes me, sometimes Voris, or Scott Hahn, or Jimmy or whoever--as their real magisterial authority and to treat any question or criticism directed at their favorite media celeb as a direct assault on our Lord Jesus and his Holy Church. That's what I was warning against.
Notice something: That means my primary complaint yesterday, was not at Voris' dumb edict. (Anybody can pop off and say something stupid. I do it all the time.) It was at those *in the comboxes* who indulge in the Cult of Celebrity while declaring "the bishops" (all of them apparently) to be "enemies" of "real Catholics". Sorry, but that is factionalism in chemical purity. It is a work of the flesh, says Paul in Galatians 5.
From what I gather, Voris' videos often provide useful information. More power to him. So far from being "jealous" of anybody who is getting the Catholic gospel out, I'm quite happy to see more voices populating the web and I wish him well. But when he starts commanding the faithful to sit there in the Mass, tapping their foot with arms crossed and a scowl on their faces, waiting in pissed-off accusatory malice for a priest to say the wrong word ("He mentioned Earth Day! That's it. I'm OUT of here!") he's out of line and fanboys harm themselves and the Church by playing along with this junk instead of rejecting it.
It is legitimate to argue about which *ideas* are "really" Catholic. But I'm much more wary about blithely declaring which members of the Church are "really" Catholic--especially on the basis of Pavlovian acoustic cues. For we are all sinners. Every one of us thinks and does things that are not really Catholic. If a Catholic defends an idea that is wrong or dumb, one can criticize that without having to declare or suggest that he is not a "real" Catholic and without having to advocate a schismatic, Protestant dream of hiving off into some fantasy of a truly true pure Catholic Church. The wheat and the weeds, the bad fish and the good, are a reality of the Church till the Last Day.
That is not, by the way, to say that one must endure real and blatant contempt for the Tradition in a parish forever. Our family chose to go to Blessed Sacrament because I wanted to make sure our kids got decent catechesis and were not exposed (as they had been at our former parish) to declarations from the pulpit that the Scripture reading was (and I quote) "a crock", that Exodus was like a Paul Bunyan story, that the Pope was worthy of contempt, and all the sundry crap one can hear in a suburban parish.
But here's the thing: when we got to Blessed Sacrament, we found a wonderful parish full of wonderful Catholics with a gorgeous liturgy, reverence for the sacraments, tremendous works of charity and formation and clergy and staff who work their butts off for us. We also found simmering resentment from an embittered nucleus of "real Catholic" malcontents for whom nothing was ever good enough. They ostentatiously wore flightline earphones to Mass. They disrupted parish meetings. They spread lies and rumors about the clergy. They treated the rest of the parish with contempt. We were half-breed, false, "not real Catholic" enemies. I quickly learned that the problem isn't *always* loony progressives with visions of the Third Vatican Council. Sometimes its bitter Donatists for whom the Church is never pure enough.
And, as with all of Satan's ruses, what I quickly learned as well was that such attacks on the unity of the Church always come in pairs that, fleeing one, we will embrace the other. Voris' counsel to abandon your parish on a hair-trigger shibboleth is as dreadfully wrong as the counsel to knuckle under and let your kids be taught goddess crap in Sunday school because that is Sister Trendy's personal obsession. Both are appeals to a cult of celebrity, which is another word for factionalism. Both should be avoided.
And that goes, as I said yesterday, double for any readers here who so much as think to turn me into an alternate magisterium. I'm an internet loudmouth with a bunch of opinions about stuff. I think I'm right, of course, otherwise I wouldn't venture an opinion. But (unless I'm citing the Church's teaching), there's no guarantee I'm right.
Oh, and in case you were wondering, I'm not gay.
Stephen Colbert is often quite funny
...but he's also wrong at times, particularly in his partisan defenses of Murder, Inc. (quite obviously done in order to man the barricades for the Dems during the recent budget hoohah).
Some reality: Planned Parenthood does not provide mammograms.
Almost 37% of the income generated by Planned Parenthood health centers comes from abortion. The 3% figure Colbert cites is extremely misleading.
The mistake that Kyl made is that over 90% of what Planned Parenthood does TO PREGNANT WOMEN is abortion.
Actually, the figure is 97.6% in 2009.
More reasons to avoid the cult of celebrity.
Some reality: Planned Parenthood does not provide mammograms.
Almost 37% of the income generated by Planned Parenthood health centers comes from abortion. The 3% figure Colbert cites is extremely misleading.
The mistake that Kyl made is that over 90% of what Planned Parenthood does TO PREGNANT WOMEN is abortion.
Actually, the figure is 97.6% in 2009.
More reasons to avoid the cult of celebrity.
574 Followers!
Today, my minions, I bid you come with me to RIO!
In your imagination, I mean. While you sit chained in your fetid cells in my Pit of Despair. You can think about me on the beach. We Dark Lords need our down time. All your wailing and gnashing of teeth can really starts to get on the nerves. What about me? What about MY needs?
However, because I am a warm and fuzzy tyrant, I will give you this to listen to in your stygian gloom while I party: the Judge John Hodgman podcasts, in which Famous Minor Celebrity John Hodgman adjudicates some of the great questions of our time. Below, for instance, he tackles the burning issue of what is the correct way to peel a banana. I have my own extremely strong views on this which my wife and kids--who are WRONG--do not share. I'm sure that you, my cringing lickspittles, will agree with me. Enjoy!
The Sound of Young America
That is all!
In your imagination, I mean. While you sit chained in your fetid cells in my Pit of Despair. You can think about me on the beach. We Dark Lords need our down time. All your wailing and gnashing of teeth can really starts to get on the nerves. What about me? What about MY needs?
However, because I am a warm and fuzzy tyrant, I will give you this to listen to in your stygian gloom while I party: the Judge John Hodgman podcasts, in which Famous Minor Celebrity John Hodgman adjudicates some of the great questions of our time. Below, for instance, he tackles the burning issue of what is the correct way to peel a banana. I have my own extremely strong views on this which my wife and kids--who are WRONG--do not share. I'm sure that you, my cringing lickspittles, will agree with me. Enjoy!
The Sound of Young America
That is all!
April 14, 2011
Speaking of Catholic Colleges...
...a large number are complete frauds. If you are an alum of one of these fraudulent Catholic colleges, you might consider directing your giving to a real Catholic college. Cowards in academic administration respond to threats to the wallet.
Notre Dame...
doesn't want to be all prolife or anything. Think of how it would make them look!
"Waiting for an outbreak of civic courage among academics is steady work." - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus
"Waiting for an outbreak of civic courage among academics is steady work." - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus
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