Mark P. Shea's Blog, page 1356

Want to absolutely shock people?

Take words like "guilt", "penance" and "mortification of the flesh" seriously.

The outraged reactions in the comboxes from atheists, fundamentalists and moralistic therapeutic deists are all quite funny.

The "experiment" the article talks about seems to me to be highly dubious and dodgy, but the notion that, yes, penance does involve denying the desires of the flesh is, after all, something that every serious religious tradition in the world affirms. Over against it, we have the radical stupidity of our age, which looks straight at the colossal crimes of the 20th and 21st centuries and concludes there is no such thing as guilt, nor any need for spiritual discipline.

Remember...

...way back in January when lefties were oh-so-concerned about the murderous climate of violence that was being inspired by obscure political graphics? After all, who wouldn't look at this



(oh, wait, sorry!) this!:



and go right out and shoot somebody? It's as potent a psychological signal to a dedicated Right Winger like Jared Loughner as the Queen of Diamonds in the hands of evil Angela Lansbury! I'm taking a huge risk even showing it on my blog since the very sight of it could trigger the countless murderous sleeper agents scattered around the country by Sarah Palin, perhaps the most cunning and ruthless killer in the history of the Republic and a clear and present danger to mankind!!!!!

Hold on. There's a new transmission coming in from Dem headquarters (they send me my monthly paychecks written in human blood, for which I duly render service by making fun of Republicans).

Mmm hmm. Mmm hmm. Yeah. Okay. Got it. Change of plans. Okay. Bye.

Climate of violence? That is sooooo January! Get with the program! The new political reality is that it's fine to inspire a murderous political climate of violence--if you are a lefty.

Saul Alinsky, SATAN WORSHIPPER!

...is an urban legend.

Just for the sake of clarity, Alinsky was not a "quasi-satanist". He was an old school Comsymp lefty rabble rouser. His dedication of Rules for Radicals to Lucifer was as much "satanism" as eating devil's food cake is a blasphemous sacrament offered to the prince of darkness. He was an atheist who liked sticking it to the man and who naturally sided with rebels in any fight. Lucifer is the biggest rebel of them all, so he offered a tongue in cheek encomium to Old Scratch. The urban legend that he was a serious devil worshipper is pure pseudoknowledge.

Not that this justified his all-American Lefty consequentialism, of course. Like all Commies (and most Americans), he believed in doing evil for a good end. But I think this particularly lurid myth just muddies the waters. Indeed, Alinsky had a long friendship and correspondence with Jacques Maritain, one of the better Catholic writers of the 20th century and they were genuinely fond of each other. I sometimes like to hold out hope that he was saved through the prayers of this good Catholic man he liked so well.

If you are interested in learning about the actual human being Alinsky as distinct from the demonic bogeyman of the Hannitized mind, you can find a nice review of The Philosopher and the Provocateur. The Correspondence of Jacques Maritain and Saul Alinsky over at the New Oxford Review (scroll down). Here's a taste:

Life, of course, takes us beyond our great causes and the pranks that tighten their load. The most poignant exchanges between these friends come when each faces the death of a beloved wife. Helene Alinsky dies in an act of heroism: She drowns while saving her daughter and a playmate from one of Lake Michigan's treacherous undertows. Maritain writes his shattered friend: "Saul, she died in love and by love." Raissa Maritain, left aphasic by a stroke, dies imprisoned by silence. Intimate with grief, Alinsky writes of his wish to "reach out with my heart and hands of love and devotion and abject misery because of your suffering." Though Alinsky never came to share Maritain's Catholic faith, he grasped its terms: that we will be led where we do not want to go.

...

A second lesson is that the work of justice, whether Christian or humanist, is carried on in the shadow of the eternal. Alinsky wrests this truth from the agony of Helene's death. He confides that "once you accept your death, then you are suddenly free to live...emancipated from the shackles of values and fears of the world about us." He could admit this openly to the friend who had said, and meant, of Helene that, "She is your guide and teacher forever. She sees God...."

A final lesson comes with our listening in, as it were, to Maritain and Alinsky struggling with the question of means and ends. They are in fundamental agreement, especially in practice. Yet Alinsky is nervous about principles and insistent on the texture of particular circumstances. Maritain, in contrast, wants the moral principles clearly articulated. Nothing, he reminds us, justifies torture -- or indiscriminate bombing.

Ironic, ain't it, that the Hannitized Mind is now fully in Alinsky's court vs. pantywaist Catholics like Maritain when it comes to torture and indiscriminate bombing when the ends seem to justify the means? His legacy lives on in not only on the Left, but in the Thing that Used to Be Conservatism as well.

Alinsky was a minor footnote to American history until, about 3 years ago, he suddenly became useful as a cudgel for beating Obama and was elevated to Satanic Mastermind status by people who somehow manage to persuade themselves that Obama is, all at once, a godless atheist Commie with nothing but contempt for the supernatural, a devout Muslim, *and* a covert devil worshipper. Can't the man's policies be bad enough without this sort of absurd piling on?

The People's Democratic National Security State of Heaven

The more I think about Kevin O'Brien's post about his change of heart concerning James O'Keefe's "citizen journalism" the more one part of it sticks out to me. You might think it's the passage where O'Keefe nakedly voiced his rejection of the immemorial teaching of the Church:

During the Q & A, O'Keefe was asked point-blank, "How do you justify lying to others in your videos – leading them to believe you're someone you're not?" O'Keefe replied bluntly, "The end justifies the means. We are lying to serve truth."

...or the passage where his confrere explains that their high and lonely destiny exempts them from obey the teaching of the Church in the immortal words, "We are not bound by what the Catechism teaches."

These are, of course, bad (and completely give the game away when apologists try to say "Nobody's talking about lying or the ends justifying the means here"). And they are, indeed, the germ of the cancer.

But what really sticks out for me is simply this: that O'Keefe, who had dazzled the American Chesterton Society (as lovely a bunch of Catholics, eccentrics and saints as you could ever want to meet) and gone to the dinner after the conference (always a jolly affair) and been treated with the generosity and kindness that characterizes that crowd of wonderful folk. So how did he repay their goodness? Kevin found out after the story of O'Keefe's bizarre attempted seduction of a CNN reporter, Abbie Boudreau:

It was then that I learned that O'Keefe had secretly recorded his conversation with Dale Ahlquist, David Zach and me at the closing banquet of the Chesterton conference months earlier! It was not clear why – but it was certainly disturbing that what we thought were private conversations, all aimed at James for his benefit and encouragement, were being recorded by him for whatever reason. I was sorry that I myself hadn't at that time "faux seduced" James at the banquet, as he was soon to attempt to "faux seduce" Abbie Boudreau on his boat, for the resulting tapes would have been much more entertaining and funny than whatever it was we had said to him in earnest.

In that incident, we are no longer looking the germ of the cancer. Now we are seeing the visible tumor as it metastasizes into routinely deceitful behavior directed even against friends.

That's what has been continually overlooked in this discussion. Lying doesn't simply deceive other people: it corrupts the liar.

Among other things, a spirit of lying erodes the bonds of trust that make a free society free. In place of the safety God promises us under the shelter of his wings we get the iron eagle of the Security State, where citizens spy on and report on each other. Love and even common decency get eaten away and the spirit of fear--of being watched--comes in its place. You think you are getting safety, or defeat of your ideological foes at NPR or PP, or whatever good end you want. But, as with all Faustian Bargains, what you are actually doing is selling your soul and getting *nothing* in return--certainly not safety. Lying for Jesus is a Faustian Bargain. It begins with lying to Planned Parenthood for the best of intentions. It proceeds on to secretly taping your friends because you think God Almighty has appointed you as his spy to root out impurity among those who, after all, "have no right to the truth". If they did, you, God's Righteous Servant, wouldn't be spying on them and secretly recording them, would you?

I don't want to live in the People's Democratic National Security State of Heaven. I prefer the Kingdom of Heaven, where free people live in mutual love and respect for the dignity of other people and do not make recourse to soul-destroying and trust-corroding strategems of lying.

Joey Odendahl, Fearless Manalive Director, wrote me yesterday...

This is the anniversary of the day we shot the lunch scene... They day Kirk stayed home with a 104 temp. Katherine's computer broke. Camera B broke. And our financier, Ann Petta died. You, Ashley and Eric went off to pray for the movie. And it turned into a surprisingly smooth day of shooting.

It's also Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the Burger King fish sandwich season! Hurrah!

I remember! And I had *two* fish sandwiches last night to break the fast! Good times, good times…

When the movie comes out, it will be fun to see it simply because, for me, it will be like going through a photo album, remembering all the peeps and how fun it was to shoot! It's a very different experience for an actor than for an audience member, which never occurred to me before. All the audience sees are the snippets of time between "Action!" and "Cut!" The whole trick of a movie is to persuade the audience to suspend disbelief and enter the story. But I remember all the stuff between "Cut!" and "Action!" too. I remember all the hilarious takes that were blown. I remember Ashley and Erin obsessing over Twilight, and Eric's knack for accents, and Andrew introducing me to Flight of the Conchords, and you laughing and sighing, and dinner with Kevin and Fr. Firmin out on the coast with all the tiny flies, and what a nice guy Henry Bazemore was, and those giant dogs, and that huge rainstorm the turned the intersection into a mini-lake, and that guy who got shot in the alley behind the house and fried eggs in that tiny kitchen and the green water fountain and the lovely walk we all took to the grave of Button Gwinnett and the Cathedral and countless other things.

Thanks be to God, not just for hearing our prayers that day, but for the chance to do all those other things and meet all those wonderful people. Thanks, also, to you for your hard work and dedication to the project that made the whole thing possible, Joey! Good job, dude!

A reader writes...

Fr. Don Hying, the Rector of St. Francis Seminary in Milwaukee and one of the finest priests I know, recently blogged about his interaction with an abortuary employee.  The comments by one reader are quite interesting.   Apparently, Fr. Don is "inauthentic", "hateful", "closed-minded", and "passive aggressive" for wishing to pray for the employee's conversion.  If you see fit to post this, I would like to invite others to read   Fr. Don's account and the comments (to which I have added my own tuppence worth) for themselves.

Have at it, combox warriors!

Combox whiplash

Yesterday, I was denounced for saying a good word about Lila Rose's obvious heroic dedication to saving the lives of the innocent. Today, in order to restore universal cosmic balance, I get this:

The comments show how it struck a nerve with some out there who just don't what to acknowledge the truth, including Mr. Shea, whom I stopped reading some time ago because I became convinced he supports abortion rights because of his ridiculous accusations of republicans , trying to convince his readers to not vote republican, which is only going to keep abortion legal.. Notice how he portrays Lila Rose as a liar, like he doesn't understand undercover reporting involves the art of deception, it's obvious he doesn't like her exposing planned parenthood for what it is.........

It's like he can read my very soul. Curses! Exposed!

FWIW, I don't care if you vote Republican or Democrat, just so long as you don't vote to support grave intrinsic evil. The trick is finding pols who don't do this on the national level. Locally, you can vote for a democrat or a republican dog catcher or water district commissioner and his views on abortion or unjust wars don't matter much.

Interview with Sister Rosalind Moss

...as she leaves for Tulsa to continue the founding of her religious community. She reveals that her order will have regular recourse to the Extraordinary Form as well as the Ordinary Form, and that all Masses in both forms will be celebrated ad orientem.

Don't tell anyone you heard it here, because it is common knowledge among... oh, you know, *everybody* that I hate the Extraordinary Form and would never do anything to promote it.

The indomitable Greg Willits...

is having a fun idea:




Use the the lick clickageability under the graphic to find out more!

I think I gotta get me one of them new Pope books

Had the chance to listen in on a phone conference call yesterday with a panel of Theological Heavy Hitters (Fr. Fessio, Mark Brumley, Rabbi Jacob Neusner, Ben Witherington, Brant Pitre and a number of others) who were all giving their extremely excited impressions of the Pope's new Jesus of Nazareth book. Everybody, Catholic, Protestant and Jewish, was raving about it. I'm not surprised. The man is a fine biblical scholar and a fine writer. He knows how to handle the tools of Scripture study like an artist and a fine craftsman and he knows (best of all) which tools are appropriate when rather than (like so many biblical scholars) taking up one tool like a hammer and treating every text like a nail. He shows us the way in terms of engaging the text as both historical *and* as a theological treatment of history instead brutally sawing our Lord in two and proclaiming the bloody halves of his corpse to be the Jesus of History and the Christ of Faith. He gives us back Jesus who is the God who invades our history: fully man and fully God.

So lovely to have him as Pope!