Mark P. Shea's Blog, page 1411

Speaking of Perverters of Language

It's time once again for timid bureaucratic ninnies to change "Christmas" into "Holiday" or "Sparkle".

One of the things that always sets off alarm bells for me

is a love of euphemism. When people are constantly renaming something, it generally tells me they are shady and very likely liars. So, for instance, the constant goal-post moving that lies behind global warming climate change global climate disruption tells me that a swindle is in progress. Similarly, the BS behind rebranding torture as "enhanced interrogation" tells you all you need to know about the filthy liars who authorized it. Not unlike the BS by which Soviets rebranded "murder" as "liquidation".

Sometimes, a euphemism will break down and simply become another synonym for the reality it was meant to befog. So, for instance, "abortion" was intended as a sort of gleaming scientific euphemism for what used to be "child murder". Now it just means "child murder" again. "Waterboarding" was meant to sanitize the more blunt "simulated drowning". Now they are having to call it "dunking" because "waterboarding" is recognized to mean "simulated drowning" and "drowning" means "torture" not "enhanced interrogation".

In a similar vein, the shady utopians called Neoconservatives are busily scurrying like roaches from a kitchen light and trying to pretend that there is no such thing as a neoconservative. That whole big political movement of the past decade that launched a war to End Evil and remake the Middle East with the salvific power of democratic capitalism at the point of a gun? The one that spawned books by and about self-described neoconservatives telling you all about their glorious Project for a New American Century?

Funny thing that. Once the whole thing led to disaster and the Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter returned, all of a sudden the old standard bearers for neoconservatism want you to believe they never existed. The ongoing disaster of our wars of empire. The ineptitude of the "deficits don't matter" crowd. It never happened and they didn't cause it during the eight years they were running the show. Of course, they don't want you to stop supporting their ideas or making excuses for their disastrous failure. In fact, they very much want you to cheer for them as they continue to present those ideas (under some new brand name) via the newly elected Bourbon GOP, which remembers everything and learns nothing.

The point is, you can trust them.

Recommended reading: Politics and the English Language.

Godliness is Darwinian

Turns out that if you believe that whole "be fruitful and multiply" thing you wind up inheriting the earth from population planners with a death wish for themselves.

Saved by Christ, Not by Rules

In which we look at the congenital habit of human beings for assuming that some system, rather than Jesus, will save us.

Systems can be mastered. Jesus, not so much. That's why we like systems.

This is one of the reasons why, when I am asked if I believe in organized religion, I always reply, "No. I'm Catholic."

Back in the Days of Superstition

Unscientific people believed in astrology to predict the future. They had this silly notion that astronomical bodies somehow affected our destiny.

Today, our gleaming scientific world has abandoned all that. Now we watch sunspots to predict trends in the stock market, which is nothing at all like saying that astronomical bodies somehow affect our destiny.

By the way, since it's nearly the season, here is a rather more nuanced take on the relationship of astrology to the Faith, excerpted from Mary, Mother of the Son, Volume 1: Modern Myths and Ancient Truth. As we join the narrative, we are dealing with the common Evangelical dread that the Catholic faith is nothing but a warmed-over chunk of Babylonian paganism:

[T]he early Catholic Church really did borrow something from pagans. And not just any pagans, mind you, but actual adherents of Babylonian Mystery Religion. And most amazingly, the early Catholics' decision to do so receives the complete approval of, and even hearty defense by... Evangelicals.

We Three Kings of Orient Are/Astrologers Who Traverse Afar

As a young Evangelical, one of the things I routinely heard from critics of Christianity was that "everybody knows" the story of the Magi in Matthew 2 is a pious fiction invented by the Evangelist. Since Evangelicals take a very high view of Scripture and believe (like the Catholic Church) that "Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation," it mattered to me whether Scripture was preserving truth or was just a bunch of legends. And since my first investigation, subsequent reading has only added to my conviction that there are ample historical grounds for the story of the Magi.

First—and often overlooked by moderns who have an irrational prejudice against treating Scripture as one source of ancient historical testimony—is Matthew 2 itself, which says "wise men (Greek: magoi) from the East" appeared in Jerusalem one day, seeking "he who has been born king of the Jews." They claimed to have "seen his star in the East" and came to worship him. Matthew tells us they brought gold, frankincense, and myrrh as gifts and that their visit provoked the paranoid Herod to kill all the boys in Bethlehem under two years old. Matthew also notes they returned to their own country in secret after having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod.

Not that there's no hint of legend attaching to the Magi, of course. Matthew doesn't tell us how many Magi there were, nor does he claim any of them were royalty. So how did they attain their legendary crowns and fixed number of three?

The number part is pretty easy: three gifts, three magi. As to their alleged royalty, this is more complicated. Beyond the biblical record, there's other evidence about them. The historical magoi appear to have been a priestly caste in eastern lands. The Greek historian Herodotus tells us Magi were the sacred caste of the Medes. And Jeremiah refers to one of these eastern priestly figures, a Nergal Sharezar, as Rab-Mag, "Chief Magus" (Jer. 39:3, 39:13). Magi had long been involved in the various religious and political struggles of Persia and their influence continued through the Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, and Parthian empires. By the time of Jesus, they had long provided priests for Persia and been a major religious influence in the region. One ancient writer named Strabo says Magian priests formed one of the two councils of the Parthian Empire.

Magoi is, of course, related to our English word "magic" but it's not really accurate to speak of Magi as "magicians". They lived in an age which hadn't yet distinguished between the attempt to understand and control nature by what we now call "science" from the attempt to understand and control nature by what we now call "magic". So we might say the Magi practiced the rudiments of astronomy and the rudiments of astrology.

Precisely what star they saw, and whether it was a natural or supernatural event, we do not know. We do know Jupiter conjoined Saturn three times in seven months in 7 B.C. We also know Mars joined them and produced a very striking configuration at about that time. Further, there's some speculation that the Star of Bethlehem may have been an occultation of Jupiter by the moon that occurred in 6 B.C., with the royal planet dramatically re-emerging from behind the moon. We even have an ancient Chinese chronicle, the Ch'ien-han-shu which states that an object, probably a nova, or new star, was observed in March in 5 B.C. and remained visible for 70 days.

Evangelicals who assume that any contact between biblical and pagan beliefs can only lead to corruption of biblical teaching should note that there's very good reason to think the Magi's beliefs were a mix of Persian astrology and messianic ideas floating around their country, courtesy of the significant Jewish population that had lived there since the days of Nebuchadnezzar, five centuries before. An American culture that's quite familiar with "Fiddler on the Roof" or the tales of Isaac Bashevis Singer should not marvel that, after 500 years, stories far more sacred to the Jews than these folk tales would be widely known among the educated elite in Persia. And a Magian knowledge of sacred Jewish texts certainly fits with Herod's behavior in slaughtering the innocents of Bethlehem.

Some critics have found this story of Herod's brutality absurd. Yet we know from non-biblical sources that Herod was indeed profoundly paranoid about rivals to his throne. He had his own children put to death to protect it (whereupon Augustus, who had granted Herod his puppet kingdom, remarked that since Herod observed kosher laws to placate his Jewish subjects, "It is better to be Herod's pig than Herod's son" ). But beyond this psychological evidence, there is in Scripture itself a tantalizing suggestion about why Herod would react so ferociously to the news of a newborn "king of the Jews"—a reason that dovetails remarkably well with what we know of the Magi.

You see, Herod—the "king of the Jews"—was not a Jew. He was an Edomite, or Idumaean, as they had become known by the time of Christ. Edomites were descendants of Esau, Jacob's brother. Jacob, you will recall, received the blessing and birthright from Isaac that Esau was supposed to get (Gen. 27). From that time on, rivalry existed between the brothers (and their descendants).

Centuries after Jacob and Esau, when Israel escaped from Egypt and was journeying to the Promised Land, Moses requested passage through the land of the Moabites (a people closely allied with the Edomites) and was refused. In fact, the Moabites tried to destroy Israel. As part of their plan, the Moabite king, Balak, hired Balaam the prophet to curse Israel (Num. 22-24). However, as hard as Balaam tried, he found he could only bless the Chosen People.

What's significant about this is Balaam's third blessing on Israel. For he declared (in a prophecy that was, by Herod's time, widely regarded as messianic):

I see him, but not now;
I behold him, but not nigh:
a star shall come forth out of Jacob,
and a scepter shall rise out of Israel;
it shall crush the forehead of Moab,
and break down all the sons of Sheth.
Edom shall be dispossessed,
Seir also, his enemies, shall be dispossessed,
while Israel does valiantly.
By Jacob shall dominion be exercised,
and the survivors of cities be destroyed!" (Num. 24:17-19; emphasis added)

"Edom shall be dispossessed" by a "star . . . out of Jacob." Would a paranoid Edomite king with Herod's psychological track record be unnerved by the Magi's report of a star and their question, "Where is he who has been born king of the Jews?"? Would such a king, who had proved himself willing to murder his own son to protect his throne, hesitate to slaughter the children of nameless peasants in an obscure village if he thought it would keep him from being "dispossessed"? To paraphrase Augustus, in such a situation, it would be better to be Herod's pig than Herod's subject.

So it turns out there's good reason, both biblical and extra-biblical, to think that—in an age especially inclined to look for signs and portents in stars and holy books—Persian astrologers would have seen such signs and portents in the skies and sacred books of Israel and Herod would have acted upon them.

Other biblical figures make the same kind of connections. In Revelation 4 and 5 we meet the "four living creatures"—angelic beings John describes as looking like a lion, an ox, a man, and an eagle. These images, in turn, refer us back to the vision of Ezekiel 1 where the prophet (in exile in Babylon some six centuries before John) sees an identical vision. But there's also strong evidence to link these four images to the constellations of the zodiac. For the biblical writers indicate a high degree of familiarity with the constellations, with the exception that Scorpio was probably known to them as the Eagle. The four cherubim mentioned in Revelation 4:6-7 are very likely the middle signs in the four quarters of the zodiac: The lion is Leo, the ox is Taurus, the man is Aquarius, and the eagle corresponds to Scorpio. John lists them in counter-clockwise order, backward around the zodiac.

This is not, however, an example of star worship on John's part any more than Matthew's gospel is a tribute to Babylonian astrology. Rather, it's just another example of the common biblical understanding that the heavens, like all the rest of creation, are a sign made by God and pointing to God. In the words of Psalm 19:1, "The heavens declare the glory of God." To the people of biblical times, the stars' groupings are not random for the simple reason that nothing in creation is random. Rather, they thought the macrocosm of creation showed the glory of God writ large across the heavens just as the microcosm of the tabernacle (and, later, the temple) showed it on a smaller, more intimate scale.

So it should be no surprise to us that John's star imagery borrows, not from paganism, but from Jewish Scripture. For in the Old Testament (cf. Num. 2), the arrangement of the twelve tribes of Israel around the tabernacle probably corresponded to the zodiac and its twelve signs. In fact, at least six ancient synagogues (at Hammat Tiberias, Beit Alpha, Huseifa, Susiya, Naaran, and Sepphoris) are decorated with the zodiac. The hope of the twelve tribes of the Chosen People is that Israel is the beginning of the new order of things, whose destiny and divine authorship is symbolized by the twelve constellations. Indeed, the link between the "heavenly host" ruled by Yahweh Sabaoth (the "Lord of Hosts") and the nation of Israel is very strong. For the heavenly host, or army of angelic powers symbolized by the stars, is ruled over by the very same God who commands the armies of Israel or the "earthly host." The earthly tabernacle was understood by Israelites to be a miniature of God's heavenly dwelling: both were attended by the armies of the Lord, composed of the angels and the people of Israel.

So the Jews spoke of the earth as having four corners (Rev. 7:1), not because they thought the earth was square, but because the altar in the tabernacle and the temple had four corners and they regarded the earth as a gigantic altar, just as they thought the temple to be a miniature cosmos. Similarly, in Genesis 37:9, Jacob and his family are likened to the sun, moon, and twelve stars. The book of Judges also reflects the notion that the "heavenly host" of God and the earthly host of Israel are all members of the army of God. That's why Judges 5:20 celebrates the defeat of Jabin and his general Sisera by singing, "From heaven fought the stars, from their courses they fought against Sisera." John, like Matthew, stands firmly in a Jewish and biblical stream of thought, even as he ponders images of Persian astrology.

What the Church Does and Does Not Learn From the Magi

This brings us back to the main issue. One curious thing to note about these scriptural treatments of Magian astrology is where they do not lead us. Contrary to what Dan Brown, Alexander Hislop and Tim LaHaye contend, they do not result in a "hybrid" religion where pseudo-Christian Catholics worshipped stars or goddesses. Matthew doesn't leave us with the idea that we ought to practice the religion of Babylonian astrologers, and, as we have seen, John's gaze is fixed firmly on Genesis, Numbers, Ezekiel, and the God those Jewish holy books proclaim.

But at the same time, unlike many Evangelicals, the authors of Scripture also do not conclude that every contact between biblical faith and paganism can only result in the corruption of Christianity. Instead Matthew, John, and the Catholic Church after them take a very sensible third way. To the Evangelical afraid of defilement by any contact with pagan Babylonian astrology, the evangelists say, "The Magi were right to think there was something connecting all of creation. Our own fathers recognized the same and reflected it in their inspired writings. So God met the Magi where they were, just as he met our fathers where they were, and worked within their limitations to lead them to Bethlehem."

But to the pagan-minded like Dan Brown, who tries to claim Christianity is just warmed-over Babylonian astrology, the Church also insists the astrologers were wrong about what kind of connection exists between Heaven and earth. It is not the stars connecting creation: it's the Creator himself. Heaven and earth meet when God becomes human in Jesus Christ, not when Jupiter aligns with Mars. So, says the Church, for the Magi (or more to the point, anyone) to go back to astrology after finding Jesus would be like going back to stand at the road sign instead of going on to the destination to which the sign points. Once God has given you himself, turning back to astrology or anything else is like opting to go back to the miserable mud hut you came from in the broken-down ox cart you came in, while God stands there holding out a credit card, the keys to a Maserati with a full gas tank, and a floor plan of the gorgeous estate he wants you to have. Like all sin, that choice requires a whole lot of stupidity.

That's why Matthew records how the Magi brought the best they had to the Christ Child and then "fell down and worshipped him" (Matt. 2:11). The Magi didn't stand gawking at the astrological road sign; they found and worshipped the Christ it signified. And the Church likewise quickly saw in them an image, not of Babylonian Mystery Religion, but of repentance and completion—a turning away from what was false in their pagan beliefs and a confirmation of what was true. The Magi make a sacrificial offering of the best they had to offer, not to Babylonian deities, but to the newborn King of the Jews. Indeed, in these offerings, the Church sees the truth of Jesus himself: gold for his Kingship, frankincense for his Priesthood, and myrrh for his burial.

Note the curious spiritual jiu-jitsu at work here. The scriptural pattern never takes biblical forms and fills them with pagan substance. It sees pagan life as a confused mixture of human thought and imagination, demonic deception, and divinely-led intuition. Thus, where necessary, the Church upbraids paganism for worshipping the creature instead of the Creator but, where possible, she affirms the human wisdom of Aristotle and Plato, honors the ordinary feasts and fasts of the peasant, and appropriates some pagan forms if she can fill them with Christian substance and thereby reclaim the creature for the proper service of the Creator.

If you are interest in learning a lot more, go here and get the whole trilogy. It's a great Christmas--or Epiphany--present.

I like and highly respect Eve Tushnet

She's one of the most original thinkers I know and seems to me to be obviously committed to trying to be a serious disciple of Jesus in the Catholic Church. I think the Church could use a million like her, but I also think God doesn't bless us with folks like her all that often, alas.

I say all that because I don't want the following to be taken as some sort of criticism of her. Rather I want it to be read as the crie de coeur it is intended to be toward the "arts community". I empathize with her desire to see good art and I will take her word for it that there was more to the Smithsonian's recent display than was seen through the ideological filters of the press. But still... well, here's the conversation from the combox on this blog entry:
Eve writes:

OK, since I've actually seen the exhibit twice, a few points:

1. How is it a "Christmas season" exhibit? It opened before Advent and IIRC closes after Epiphany. Anyway, would CNS approve of this exhibit if it were confined to Ordinary Time?

2. While most of the portraits alluded to in the article's title aren't very good, the "genitalia" are just normal nude portraits, often classical in composition and not pornographic. It's a portrait exhibit; some of the subjects are naked.

3. There's no question (...in my mind) that the images do represent "how questions of biography and identity went into the making of images that are canonical." The exhibit features both "canonical" portraitists (John Singer Sargent, Walker Evans, Lee Miller, Andy Warhol, Romaine Brooks, Georgia O'Keefe, Thomas Eakins, the guy who did "American Gothic" and whose name I can't recall, Carl Van Vechten, Marsden Hartley, Jasper Johns) and portraits of "canonical" authors/artists (Frank O'Hara, Arthur Rimbaud [in allusion], Djuna Barnes, Joseph Cornell, etc etc). A huge theme of the exhibit is how gay/same-sex-attracted/we-don't-know artists formed their own identities and aesthetics by finding historical precedents and/or friends with similar orientations and sensibilities, and then paid tribute to these predecessors/comrades. It really is about that.

4. Much of the artwork is elegiac, and many of the memorial portraits commemorate friends rather than lovers. Chaste (as far as we know) friendships: Even gay men do have them!

I found it an immensely moving exhibit even though the only artist whose work I really loved was Brooks.

Oh and 5. There's a sign noting that there's graphic imagery, or something like that, so if you took your children to see it you are told going in that it is not an exhibit of portraits of Koko the gorilla cuddling kittens.

Sorry to write at such length, but it's frustrating to see a genuinely thoughtful and poignant exhibit reduced to such crude descriptions.

She then follows herself by adding:

Argh, replying to myself: Now that I've read the entire CNS piece, I do agree with them that a "Family and Friends" day is completely inappropriate for this exhibit. I have no idea how they thought they could, or why they thought they should, make such a grim, death-haunted, and sexually-provocative exhibit "family-friendly." It's like taking your kids to an Italian horror movie.

I reply:

Perhaps because those in the Art Bubble are a tiny elite that is out of touch and contemptuous of the great mass of humanity outside the Bubble--particularly if they are Christian heterosexuals?

Which was more or less my point.

Eve answers:

Fair enough, definitely. I think my point was that returning the contempt--or, I think on both sides, the misunderstanding--doesn't do much good either. And doesn't, I think, help those of us trying to make Catholic art.

I respond:

Art is supposed to be a form of communication. Communication depends on not making your audience feel as though they are insects whom the artist utterly despises at the atomic level. Given that so much of the 'art community' (who are, after all, the *professionals* at communicating ideas, thoughts and feelings) communicates precisely this in one insult after another directed against the deepest beliefs of a huge percentage of the public, I humbly suggest that artists who are serious about getting out of the Bubble should consider creating art that does not look much of a muchness with all the other Christ-blaspheming rubbish we out in the Great Unwashed Public are constantly beaten over the head with. Lots of us have been punched in the nose by artistic works and then told, "You need to be more appreciative of my genius" by the artist. It's a communication strategy with limited returns. And it tends to engender "Oh no, not another one" responses in people like me, who lack the time, patience or inclination to discriminate the fine shades of nuance between an artist to who puts Jesus in piss and one who covers him in ants. It would be nice if artist suggested a small amount of love for our Lord and his followers instead of the normal contempt of the federal tit sucker for us slobs who are frog-marched to the IRS trough and made to cough up his commission while he craps in our Wheatie Bowl.

I'm acutely sensitive to the reality of Right Wing demagoguery about Christian sensitivities. We are just heading into the thick of the War on Christmas frenzy that the Bill O'Reillys and Sean Hannitys use each year to gin up ratings and sell beer and shampoo while living in contempt for Catholic teaching that inconveniences them. I'm aware of the way in which those guys exploit well-meaning Christian sensitivities.

But here's the thing: the Talk Radio heads who periodically whip disaffected Christians into a frenzy about things know that their audience is, in fact, regarded with complete and utter contempt by our Manufacturers of Culture. Casual blasphemy of Christ, Sister Boom Booms, juvenile mockery of Christians, and the quiet cocktail party atmosphere of disdain is endemic in the circles known as "polite company" in DC, NY and LA. Everybody knows it. Serious belief in Christ is a gaffe, a social faux pas, and a grave liability. So when an exhibit like this looks for all the world to be sounding the same old gong of contempt, I don't think the onus is on the *audience* to sit there and take it or be charged with philistinism. If an artist wants to *really* be courageous, he should break with the Herd of Independent Minds and create art that will not be immediately perceived as the umpteenth voiding of spittle on the Body of Christ. But waiting for an outburst or *real* courage from the "Arts Community" is steady work.

Jesus' Return Set for May 21, 2011

This could put a real crimp in our Memorial Day Vacation Plans.  On the bright side, I won't have to finish paying down the mortgage on the house.  And no more sunburns!

Never a people to let their theology get in the way of the bottom line, some American Christians are finding ways to work in some good old-fashioned capitalism to the Consummation of All Things:



Yes. That's a real ad.

When the gospel went to Greece, it became a Philosophy.
When it reached Rome, it became an Empire.
When it reached Europe, it become a Civilization.
When it got to America, it became a Business.

Much as I Enjoy Watching Pol Squirm in Broad Daylight

This guy has some sensible questions for Lone Ranger and Paladin of Information Openness Julian Assange and the people clustered around him:

For WikiLeaks and Julian Assange:


•When are you going to focus your relentless and often valuable energies on other governments, especially the ones that are even more noted for secrecy than the United States government, not to mention more repressive. Could you kindly find someone to liberate internal documents from, say, the Chinese government?

•You're more secretive than the people you target, by far. When will you be more open about your own workings. And are you ready for the day when someone leaks your own internal records, beyond the relatively tame exposing (which you did post, to your credit) of some donor information?

•What kind(s) of deals are you making with news organizations, anyway? CNN said it refused the latest documents because it wouldn't sign a confidentiality agreement. Then we learned that the Guardian shared the trove with the New York Times. Did the Guardian have a different agreement with you than the one CNN rejected?

•Some government is going to play you -- and by extension the rest of us -- for suckers, if this hasn't already happened, by arranging a strategic leak of disinformation. How are you preparing for that?

For the U.S. government:

•Why did some 3 million people have access to much if not most of the diplomatic trove? That's hardly keeping things confidential.

•(Update) Do you really believe WikiLeaks is better at ferreting out information than the secret services of semi-hostile powers such as Russia, Iran and China? Do you suppose they've long since had access to this stuff?

•Is stamping "Secret" on everything that moves helpful or detrimental to our national security?

•When it comes to invading other people's lives, with increasingly oppressive security and surveillance, your mantra is "You have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide." Will you give that a little more thought in the future?
For journalists who get the documents directly from WikiLeaks:

•You are treating WikiLeaks as much as a partner as a source, no matter how much you might deny this. How comfortable are you in this bargain?

•Why does it take WikiLeaks to get the information you agree is so worthy of public exposure? Why aren't you doing your own jobs better in the first place?

•Why aren't you stressing, in your voluminous coverage, that these cables are not the final word on what has happened. They are often pure gossip. Do you have an obligation to provide more context for the material you're publishing and discussing?

(Update) For Sarah Palin, who (or, perhaps, a staffer) tweeted today: "Inexplicable: I recently won in court to stop my book "America by Heart" from being leaked,but US Govt can't stop Wikileaks' treasonous act?":

•Treason is an act against one's own country. Are you aware that WikiLeaks is not based in the United States, and that Assange is not a U.S. citizen?

•Are you saying you could have stopped Web and newspaper reports from other countries with U.S. court order? Can you find even one lawyer who agrees?

I'm particularly struck by the questions to Assange.  I'm as much an enemy as any decent citizen should be to the closed door and increasingly authoritarian way in which our Ruling Classes lord it over us.  That said, it's easy to be courageous in exposing the (relatively) free states.  Julian Assange owes *everything* to the technological society with free exchange of information upon which he is focusing all his attacks.  The real measure of the man's mettle will be when he uses his tech savvy to expose the vast caches of information in Russia, China, North Korea, and anywhere in the dozens of repressive regimes of the Islamosphere.

Still, I'm largely lovin' watching the roaches scurry from the light here in the free world.  To paraphrase Uncle Billy, "Not *every* heel is in Iran or North Korea."

Some Legal Scholar Who Thinks He's a Theologian

writes a silly blog entry in which he holds forth on the Catholic Church and proves that, as a theologian, he's a legal scholar.

Stephen Bainbridge, who is a legal scholar and a Catholic who actually knows what he's talking about, offers gentle counsel and correction in this hour of embarrassing spectacle.

Then, after some thought, he revisits Posner's daft kibitzing and takes it apart with rather more gusto.

Posner's dumb remarks are one more pebble thrown on the Himalayas of evidence that it is impossible to simply be neutral about the Catholic Faith. Jesus Christ has friends and enemies. He has no mere "observers".

Humble Public Servants Saving the World

They are so *good*. We are not worthy to have a ration of their table scrapings.