John C. Wright's Blog, page 134

Corner of Saint and Peter

Just a moment ago I found in my coat pocket a crumpled bit of paper, the stationary of the Hilton Hotel. For a writing workshop at a science fiction convention, the participants were called upon to write a beginning of a story within a short, set period, I think less than twenty minutes.

The tutor urged us to establish, within the first hundred words, a hook to lure the reader in, character and setting, the suggestion of a plot conflict or problem, and to raise the question which would prompt the curious reader to read on. As a professional writer, the tutor was canny enough to ask me to go last, since I had already mastered the technique the others were trying to learn.

More than one person has since that time urged me to finish the story. I give it here so that, should I ever lose the scrap of paper, the opening will not be lost.

—————————–

It was not that I minded being dead, it was the hours.

No one ever calls me up during the day, and most people decide to wait until after midnight for some reason. I am a morning person, so thse meetings in the still, dark house lost between midnight and dawn make me crabby.

This time, it was not some comfortable seance room or graveyard.

I came to the surface of mortal time on a street corner of some American city, late Twentieth or Early Twenty-First Century. You can tell from the size of the buildings that it is American, and from the fact that the road names are written on signs rather than walls. The main road was Saint Street. The small alley was Peter Way. Great. I was crossed by Saint and Peter. Twenty Third Century buildings are not lit up at night, of course.

I smelled her perfume before I saw her. I could not mistake that silhouette, slender, alluring, like a she-panther as she walked.

"Mike," she said. "You look well, ah, considering."

"Angie," I grunted. My arms ached with the desire to hug her.

She sighed. "Mike, this time, you have to tell me if you were murdered. You have to! They will not let your will out of probate if there is an investigation. And  I have bills to pay."

I took a puff on an imaginary cigarette. I have a good imagination, so the cigarette was just like it was there, odor and texture and all.  "I ain't saying."

She stamped her foot. "But I can see the wounds! You're dripping!"

"It could have been an accident, sweetie. Lots of people shoot themselves cleaning their gun."

"Have you been to the morgue to look at yourself? You took forty five slugs to the head, chest, abdomen, groin area, both legs, and one foot! You were killed with a high caliber machine-gun!"

"Lots of people shoot themselves cleaning their high caliber machine-gun."

"You don't own a machine gun, Mike!"

I took another long imaginary puff.  It's not like I have to worry about imaginary cancer, after all. "There is a lot you don't know about me, baby."

—————————–

That's all I wrote. Being a professional, and uncontrollably longwinded, I went beyond the 100 word mark.

Please note the hook technique, which I stole from Robert Heinlein: the first sentence always contains a bit of self-deprecation where the main character establishes, perhaps in a humorous way, or at least an understated way, the main character problem.  Let me use two examples from famous Heinlein novels:

"I always get the shakes before a jump." (From STARSHIP TROOPERS) Is not a boast, but a confession of fear. While understated, it immediately creates sympathy with the character, and impresses upon the reader the seriousness of the situation. The reader is curious what a "jump" is, or what the situation is that causes the hero to get the shakes: in this case, the magnificently simple and impressive science fictional idea of an orbital-to-surface paratrooper drop.

"You see, I had this space suit." (From HAVE SPACE SUIT, WILL TRAVEL) Again, mildly self-deprecating, as if the character is confessing something embarrassing, and immediately provocative: the reader is prompted to wonder where the spacesuit came from.

Here I did the same thing as he, introducing a character who is dead and griping about the hours. The reader is informed in the first sentence that this world is far from the fields we know, but not too far. I give the setting merely in a declarative sentence: American city, Twentieth Century, while letting the reader wonder what happens between now and the Twenty Third that they no longer light their buildings at night. The conflict is an old stand-by: a murder to be solved. In this case, the oddity is that the murder victim seems to be covering up the clues. Why?

In both cases, the reader is curious enough to read the first paragraph. If you can keep the reader entertained and interested through the first paragraph to roughly the third page, your chances of losing his attention after that, barring a major mishap on your part, are small.

Whether or not this story will ever have a middle and an end, that I know as little as you. I admit I am a little curious myself.

 

 

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Free Speech for Me, Not for Thee

I received this note this day in my mail.

"Mr. Wright, I find myself and my compatriots in need of assistance.I am a member in Northern Kentucky University's pro-life group, Northern Right to Life. Since our conception, every year when we put up our displays, which are obviously anti-abortion, they are vandalized and torn down.

The year we were founded, Professor Sally Jacobson took her class outside to tear down our Cemetery of Innocents (the one with the hundreds of white crosses representing the murdered children). She was let go, but the damage continues.

It has happened again this year.

Our "Onesie Display", some clotheslines with baby clothes hung and every fourth garment marked with a red X in tape for the one out of four children murdered, has been torn down twice in as many days. The cops have been notified, and  are taking measures to stop this. However, I am tired of it, and with the approval of my President have decided to start as much of a Publicity Firestorm as I can.

I have already been interviewed by the Campus Paper, though I am not sure if this will be used for article fodder. I would go to the local news, but this seems like something they would consider to small to mention.

This is where you may be able to help. If you could make some sort of mention of this on your blog, and if possible contact Marc Barnes of bad Catholic and any other bloggers sympathetic to the cause, all of us would be immensely grateful.

At your service, Mr. Nathaniel Thomas Hall

Since the display is only up until Easter, I thought I should simply post his letter and ask anyone interested in free speech and saving babies and all the things the PC-niks hate to gin up some publicity for this guy.

Here is an article on the events of last year: http://studentsforlife.org/2012/04/03/pro-life-clothesline-ripped-down-at-northern-kentucky-university/

Michelle Malkin also has a piece on last years vandalism: http://michellemalkin.com/2006/04/14/the-crosses-they-cannot-bear/ And Michelle Malkin gives additional information. Note below particularly the Professor's insistence that how she "feels" is paramount in deciding what speech shall be permitted in the public agora.

wrecking   pro-life display of crosses(via Cincinnati Enquirer):

HIGHLAND HEIGHTS – A professor at Northern Kentucky University said she invited students in one of her classes to destroy an anti-abortion display on campus Wednesday evening.

NKU police are investigating the incident, in which 400 crosses were removed from the ground near University Center and thrown in trash cans. The crosses, meant to represent a cemetery for aborted fetuses, had been temporarily erected last weekend by a student Right to Life group with permission from NKU officials.

Public universities cannot ban such displays because they are a type of symbolic speech that has been protected by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Witnesses reported "a group of females of various ages" committing the vandalism about 5:30 p.m., said Dave Tobertge, administrative sergeant with the campus police.

Sally Jacobsen, a longtime professor in NKU's literature and language department, said the display was dismantled by about nine students in one of her graduate-level classes.

"I did, outside of class during the break, invite students to express their freedom-of-speech rights to destroy the display if they wished to," Jacobsen said.

Asked whether she participated in pulling up the crosses, the professor said, "I have no comment."

She said she was infuriated by the display, which she saw as intimidating and a "slap in the face" to women who might be making "the agonizing and very private decision to have an abortion."

Jacobsen said it originally wasn't clear who had placed the crosses on campus.

She said that could make it appear that NKU endorsed the message.

Pulling up the crosses was similar to citizens taking down Nazi displays on Fountain Square, she said.

"Any violence perpetrated against that silly display was minor compared to how I felt when I saw it. Some of my students felt the same way, just outraged," Jacobsen said.

NKU President James Votruba said any evidence of criminal conduct in the incident will be turned over to prosecutors. He said he appreciated the emotional nature of the abortion debate and was glad that diverse viewpoints are represented at the school, but he condemned the destruction of the crosses.

"Freedom-of-speech rights end where you infringe on someone else's freedom of speech," Votruba said.

"I don't buy the claim that this is an act of freedom of speech, to destroy property."

He said he was gathering information about the extent of Jacobsen's participation.

"I don't know if she was pulling up the crosses, but I think she was out there with the students. If so, as far as I'm concerned, she went outside the conditions of her employment," Votruba said.

He declined to say what consequences she might face. Jacobsen is a tenured professor who has been at NKU since 1980.

 

Come on, New Media! No one else will spread this story!

Andrew Breitbart was right: THE MEDIA ARE THE ENEMY. If you need proof of the statement, look here: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/trayvon-martin-nbc-news-editing-911-call-306359 (NBC has since apologized. But they continue to pretend they are objective newsmen, not partisan propagandists.)

ADDENDUM

Mr Hall adds this comment to his previous letter:

At my own Northern Kentucky University, the campus pro-life group (Northern Right to Life) currently has a display against Abortion up.

It is an entirely legal and approved display in the correct provided display area.

And yet someone, or some group of people, has decided that it is not okay for us to have such threatening things as baby clothes, red tape, and a sign explaining that 1 out of 4 babies is murdered through abortion. They have vandalized our display twice in as many days.

Both times the damage was done under cover of darkness, with only the eyes of their possible fellow transgressors and God upon them as they went about their criminal business.

Those who shriek the loudest for Freedom and Truth and Fairness are those who are denying myself and my associates the Freedom of Expression, our right to assert what we believe as Truth, and our ability to fairly represent ourselves.

This sort of behavior has been a part of the local environment since the founding of the campus pro-life group, when a certain Professor Sally Jacobson, who was let go on account of her behavior, took her class outside to tear down the crosses in our Cemetery of of Innocents display.

There has not been a year when flyers, crosses, and other displays have not been torn apart or broken. Some of our members have caught people in the act of tearing down our flyers. We have endured despite this, and we shall continue to do so. Though of different creeds, we are united in purpose.

We will not stop until Abortion is dead, or we are, even if it takes our whole lifetime and the lifetimes of those that shall take our place when we pass on. We will take buffets, spitting, and curses.

You can beat us, chain us, gag us, even slay us. We shall not be silent. We shall not admit defeat. This is our resolve.

To those of you who side with us, pray to whatever God or gods you serve, and be prepared for the fight of your lives.

To which I say, Amen.

 

 

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In Free Market Competition against Socialism, People Buy Socialism

Just a short thought today, instead of my normal four and five page essays:

Let me ask whether there is an inherent and innate weakness of democracy: namely, that free enterprise encourages as if by natural selection, the creation of a large number of consumer-minded short-sighted and unthrifty individuals. It encourages selfishness. In times of rough going, among a Christian society, the Church and the nature of reality keep the innate selfishness endemic to capitalism in check. But when times are fat, and Christianity is despised as being too judgmental and harsh and unscientific, nothing keeps the selfishness in check.

The theory runs that selfishness naturally begets socialism, since the appeal of socialism is that another man not only pays for your living, he also pays for your altruism, so you get the lifestyle of a robber AND the self esteem of a philanthropist. Under socialism, the Ayn Rand-style looter-moochers bathes in the glowing self-esteem of self-righteousness, because he favors forcing other man then himself to do right by the poor and oppressed. It is, from a purely game theory point of view, a win-win situation. And all one need to do is sell one's soul, that is, renounce integrity of character and logical coherence of thought (a renunciation which all modern philosophy, by no coincidence, stands ready and eager to aid one to do.)

My worry about democracy is as old as democracy. John Adams fretted that the wealth a system that prospers would create would corrupt the system itself.

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Hypocrisy and Moral Inversion by Bruce Charlton

These paragraphs are taken from a Blog called Bruce Charlton's Miscellany – http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/ – published as a 2010 booklet called DECLINE OF THE WEST EXPLAINED. I strongly recommend any reader curious about the peculiar oddities and insanity afflicting Western society to read it. It is available online here.

I reprint here two of his pensées in hopes of stirring up some interest in this writer's remarkable thoughts: one on Hypocrisy and one on Moral Inversion.

Hypocrisy

Hypocrisy regarded as the worst moral transgression

For secular modern societies hypocrisy is the worst sin.

Traditional Christian morality is that to sin is bad, but everyone sins since we are naturally worldly and self-loving (prideful) – what is important is to repent the sin.

And, traditionally, denying sin or defending sin or advocating sin in others are all very bad sins indeed.

In other words, although we cannot ever wholly stop ourselves from 'transgressing', we should never encourage others to transgress; people should aim at the highest standards; should publicly defend the highest standards – although they will not be able themselves to attain the highest standards.

Therefore, in the modern loose usage of the word, 'hypocrisy' is inevitable.

*

In secular modern societies, morality is regarded as being something invented and chosen; and Christianity in particular is vehemently rejected.

Yet there is a natural morality, natural law – or what C.S Lewis called the Tao in perhaps his greatest lecture series The Abolition of Man – http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/lewis/abolition3.htm

Natural morality is spontaneous in all humans at all points in history (quite possibly it is an evolutionary legacy, related to humans being social animals), and everyone (who is not a conscienceless psychopath) knows when he is transgressing it.

But secular modernity does not recognize the validity of natural morality, and the morality of secular modernity contradicts natural morality in many respects (usually with a utilitarian rationale) – this is what can be termed 'moral inversion' – where bad (according to natural morality) is re-labelled good and vice versa; bad people and good people are reversed in public esteem.

This is a normal aspect of political correctness, where monogamous heterosexual marriage among family orientated, law-abiding and hard-working people is loathed on the grounds of its hypocrisy and judgmental-ness; while open advocacy and practice of transgressive behaviours (i.e. transgressive according to natural morality) is morally aggrandized as being 'honest' and tolerant.

*

The moral inversion of PC seems to spring from its generally 'rebellious adolescent' mind set. Adolescents are (naturally) the worst behaved group in society – in terms of the psychology of personality across lifespan, it is during adolescence that a person will (on average) reach their highest levels of neuroticism, impulsiveness and extraversion, their lowest levels of empathizing/ agreeableness; and aggression levels peak around the mid teens.

The youth culture – driven by pride – has therefore evolved a new morality which makes adolescents the best people instead of the worst: the teenager as moral exemplar – the sensitive adolescent – impatient, full of angst, with multiple sensitivities, with easily bruised ego, lonely yet yearning for love – as the moral hero and compass for the rest of society…

Secular modernity (with its psychological neoteny – its essential adolescence, its suspended immaturity) therefore performs a moral inversion which relabels its own faultsas virtues, and reframes morality as primarily a matter of 'honesty'. Honesty means living by chosen standards. The square adult world is accused of hypocrisy – of failing to live up to the high standards it advocates – and this sin is seen as invalidating all else.

Adolescent 'honesty' is not, therefore, about telling the truth – but about advocating very low standards of behaviour, then exceeding them!

Only adolescents, so the story goes, are really moral – because only they adopt an 'honestly' low standard of behaviour which they – and everyone else – can truly live-up-to, can even exceed (and exceed gratuitously! – as a pure act of surplus goodness – not underpinned by religious or otherworldly rewards or sanctions).

This is perhaps the essence of moral inversion in modernity.

*

For example; for secular modernity; the open, explicit advocacy of impulsive sexual promiscuity is regarded as in itself morally admirable – since it is a standard that anyone can live up to (and gratifies at least the person doing it – the main problem being to convince the victims of assembly-line seduction that they too are being made happy and morally-enhanced by their exploitation).

Indeed, anyone who exceeds the very low moral standard, and behaves somewhat in the direction of natural morality, may be regarded as a genuine moral exemplar – e.g. a ruthless, manipulative, serially promiscuous individual who nonetheless maintains a long-term and affectionate relationship.

*

In sum, the morality of secular modernity 'solves' the ancient problem of the inevitability of human sin by denying the sinfulness of most attitude or acts – the inevitable gap in behaviour between spontaneous morality and actual human behaviour is dealt with by down-grading the definition of moral behaviour until it is low enough that anyone can attain it.

But because humans cannot stop making moral evaluations, sin is not actually eliminated, rather the location of sin is displaced.

Evaluative neutrality is impossible for humans (we cannot be 'non-judgmental'; we are judging or evaluating animals), and because societal manipulations of natural morality are pushing against human nature, the displacement of sin is only possible with a high level of social coercion. The freedom to live a hedonic, gratification-oriented life becomes *moral advocacy* of a life of self-gratification.

The displaced sin then becomes the advocacy of high standards. High standards are regarded as aggressive because high standards will not be met, which will make people feel guilty, which makes them intractably miserable (because in secular modernity there is no forgiveness for guilt – only an attempted denial of the basis for guilt).

In a utilitarian society, to behave in a way that makes other people intractably miserable is regarded as the worst of sins…

*

In secular modern societies, people that advocate a high level of morality, especially natural morality, are seen as aggressors against the happiness of the majority – even or especially when such people actually achieve significantly higher standards of behaviour than the rest of society. The point is that their behaviour is not perfect, therefore they are hypocrites; which is the worst thing to be.

And of course such people really are 'hypocrites' in the sense that with high standards some level of degree of failure is inevitable.

*

So we get the profound moral inversions of secular modernity, in which exemplary citizens who advocate high moral standards – like Mormons and devout Evangelicals – are the primary hate figures.

While people who both advocate and practice lives of aggressive, exploitative, manipulative self-gratification are regarded as moral heroes.

Because so long as their explicitly advocated standards of behaviour are set even-lower than their actual behaviours; arrogant, selfish pleasure-seekers are immune against being regarded as that worst of modern villains: the hypocrite.

———————————————————-

Moral inversion

The most striking aspect of modern secular society, which would have amazed and horrified our ancestors, is the moral inversion by which have redefined bad as good, sin as virtue.

This has happened as part of the modern rejection of Christianity, and as a solution to the fundamental paradox of the human condition – the conflict between spontaneous human desire and spontaneous human morality.

It is, at root, this moral inversion which is causing secular modern societies to commit suicide by a combination of denial of danger and by deliberate policy.

*

It seems that our literate ancestors (such as the ancient Jews) all spontaneously recognized that for a person to live according to their spontaneous desires – living primarily for seeking gratification and avoiding (or minimizing) suffering – was morally wrong.

This was so obvious that it needed (and indeed needs) no argument – it is the natural moral law for humans that a life aiming at selfish hedonism is intrinsically wicked: that is wicked as a basic stance, not merely in terms of its consequences (which vary according to specific circumstances).

Yet it was also recognized that at some level, for humans as they are now, it is also natural and spontaneous to be selfish and hedonic.

So there was a conflict between the way that humans were 'set-up' to be self-gratifying and the moral sense by which we knew that this way wrong.

*

This was the basic situation, the human condition, as perceived by pretty much all humans throughout history – that of conflict.

And therefore the situation was bleak in the extreme, since there seemed to be no solution.

Of course, all humans also believed (in some sense) in the soul, and its potential persistence after death (in some form, perhaps as a ghost, perhaps in Hades – not the same as hell, perhaps returning to be recycled or reincarnated)

The ancient Jews attempted solution was The Law, which prescribed morality in terms (essentially) of behaviour. If a man could live according to the law, his life (in this world) would be good – although the end was the same for all – good and bad – the ghostly and depersonalized realms of Sheol/ Hades.

However, actually men could not live by the law. It was impossible, because of their nature. They could never achieve that to which they aspired. The human condition was tragic.

*

This was the basic human situation, about which humans could do nothing, and from which humanity needed to be rescued.

The Christian solution, the Good News, was that God's Grace had provided a solution, since the incarnation meant that God had taken-up humanity; and if a person proclaimed in their heart Jesus as Lord, and repented of his (inevitable) sinly nature, then there would be forgiveness and the soul would (instead of losing humanity in Hades) be granted eternal life with God.

Man's soul after death would become God-like instead of a gibbering, depersonalized ghostly form of persistence.

So, the Christian message is that belief and repentance in this life can lead to a solution of the fundamental paradox, but only in the next world, after death (however this life is temporary, while life after death is eternal).

*

For whatever reason, the Western elite ruling class became increasingly atheist from the advent of modernity (?c 1700). Since the elite ruling class disbelieved in the soul, they were this-worldly; and since they were this-worldly they wanted as much satisfaction from life as possible (there being nothing else).

But spontaneous natural morality gets in the way of worldly self-gratification – so spontaneous natural morality must (somehow or another) be rejected.

Yet since morality really is spontaneous, it cannot be rejected.

*

So emerged moral inversion: the morality that (contrary to the instinct of spontaneous morality) this-worldly self-gratification is the proper primary aim in life.

From this derives the many specific new 'Laws' of modernity; which state that what we used to think was necessary is actually un-necessary, that what we thought was bad was actually good, and what we used to think was good was actually bad.

For secular moderns the only *real* sin is to believe in the reality of sin.

*

This is the current situation, this the secular modern 'solution' to the fundamental paradox of the human condition – that life in this-world can be, should be, harmonious – *if only* we recognize that our spontaneous self-gratification is actually morally necessary and should be the primary explicit goal of human endeavor.

And because this solution actually solves nothing, and is merely a statement, a wish-that-this-was-so; it has necessarily been embodied in the coercive beliefs, practices and laws of atheist totalitarian states (notably the USSR, National Socialism and Communist China) and this process is now advanced in all Western societies (by enforcement of what is termed 'Political Correctness').

So the citizens in modern secular societies are not merely encouraged to flout the natural morality which they cannot help but feel, they are increasingly forced to flout natural morality. They are compelled to live (and to think and to believe) as if hedonic gratification was the primary value in a life which ends with death and extinction.

And there is no hope of resolution in this world, nor the next world (the existence of which is denied).

*

Since there is no hope of resolution, the only alternative is distraction – to lose oneself in hedonic gratification: such that intense, continuous self-gratification obliterates our awareness of the fundamental paradox.

Despair, distraction, denial, self-indulgence… and if these do not work, then some kind of suicide of awareness.

By this analysis, the Decline of the West is a willed societal suicide driven by the mass psychological consequences of top-down, enforced moral inversion.

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Vote Prospero!

A message from the beautiful and talented Mrs Wright

Hey Folks,

I have made it to Round Five of the Six Rounds of the Book Tournament. This means that I actually won the bracket I was in. I was the top book out of the 16 books.

I am now up against the top book of another bracket. This book got twice as many votes last time as I received. So my chances are slim. In the hope of doing my best, I would like to ask that, not only will those of you who are willing to support me go vote…but if you might be so kind as blog, repost on Facebook, or Tweet this link and ask friends and followers to vote, I would be most grateful!

http://www.bookspotcentral.com/2012/0...

Voting for the consolation round begins Tuesday, April 3, and the championship polls open April 4.

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Catholics Talking About Sex Again!

Marc Barnes, who at the tender age of eighteen has as much wit and wisdom as an octogenarian, writes an insightful article on the shibboleth that the rituals of Heaven are boring: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/badcatholic/2012/03/christopher-hitchens-and-groaning-during-sex.html An excerpt:

If Heaven is merely an eternal choir, it may as well be a Hell. Any action infinitely repeated would be intolerable. I swear, if I get handed a harp and am told to "start playing, never stop," I'm pulling a Paradise Lost, Book 6.

Thankfully, it's a ridiculous understanding of Heaven. (I'm surprised Hitchens never stopped to realize that the only people agreeing with his interpretation were literalist Christians.) He should have paid less attention to bad theology and more attention to having sex.

A sex life is monotonous. It is repetitive. It is ritualistic. It is the carrying on of certain motions that lead to certain results, again and again, forever and ever, till death do you apart, or some other tragedy occurs. It is a routine (more and more so as the children grow up, I imagine. (I know a girl who at 20 just figured out what her parents daily nap-time was all about. (Sorry if I just scarred any one for the rest of their lives. (Please still read my blog.)))) But you'd be slapped — and rightly so — if assumed that all this monotony means that the act is boring.

Sexual union in its fullness – and unfortunately I can only go by literature here — is not a limited thing, but an experience of infinity. No couple views sex as a finalized experience (it's this awesome and no more), but as an attempt at infinite joy. Thus everyone, atheist or otherwise, naturally gasps things like "more," "God," and other such infinities during the act. Ritual unveils the infinite.

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Amateur Theology Hour: On Irenicism and Heresy

After my conversion, and having no loyalty one way or the other for any particular communion, and, being an American, having a Constitutional right to join which ever I pleased without fear of legal retaliation, I was in the position of an orphan who, having just discovered that his parents are alive after all, rushes to their arms only to find them divorced, and commanding to chose whether he will live with father or mother. He is put in the position of a judge between them, despite not being trained to judge such disputes, nor being inclined by temperament to do so.

I discovered that you Christians, you foolish Christians, had shipwrecked and severed your Church, and the world is scandalized. The mocking atheist points at this as evidence that She is merely a human institution, no more sacred than the local Zoning Commission, and he says, "Those who preach love and altruism fight over homoousianism and homoiousianism, the difference of an iota! Religion breeds division rather than quells."

Being a local and lawyerly thinker, I looked to the sources of dispute.

That the Protestants find the Real Presence to be scandalous was no concern to me: I did not see why, if almighty God can incarnate Himself as a Jewish Rabbi, He cannot incarnate Himself as a loaf of bread. Is one so much more dignified than the other?

The existence of icons and statutes likewise meant nothing to me. It was clear even to an outsider that these were objects of reverence but not worship, no more idolatrous than singing a hymn.

I had no enmity against St Mary. I was raised Lutheran, and to this day am not sure what the point of the contempt for St Mary is, or why the mother of the savior merits being ignored.

Whether or not man was justified by works of faith or by faith that produced works was of no moment to me, since I intended both to have faith and to do good works, as do all true Christians.

These were all non-issues, not worth writing a paragraph to discuss, much less write a book, much less fight a war.

So, to me, the only point in contention worthy of consideration was the doctrine of Sola Scriptura. My reasoning was as follows.

It is a paradox for a Christian to hold the Bible to be the sole authority settling all matters of Christian dispute. There is no paradox to hold it as a final authority, and that any doctrine which contradicts unambiguous scriptural teaching, such as the prohibition on divorce and remarriage, is doctrine of men and condemned.

But those who propose the Bible to be the sole authority, and the traditions of the Church to mean nothing, propose either a seeming impossibility or a real impossibility. If it is a seeming impossibility, he who proposes the paradox must resolve it, and show us a way out of the dilemma. The paradox is this: the Gospels cannot have more authority, cannot be trusted, more than the Church who wrote it, compiled it, protected and transmitted it, interprets it and teaches from it. No water can rise higher than its source.

The usual way out of this paradox is to propose that the Church at one time, the Early Church had the authority to write the Gospel, but since has grown corrupt and untrustworthy, as proof of which there is much the Church teaches, such as prayers for the dead or the perpetual virginity of Mary, not found in the Gospels. But this is making an historical claim: one must select a date after which the increasing corruption removes the authority of the Church.

The earlier one pushes this date, the less believable is the claim. If Polycarp and other Fathers who learned from the feet of the Apostles in the early Second Century got the message wrong, and if the only message we have is the message they preserved and taught, there are no grounds to assume a theologian or visionary in the Sixteenth or Nineteenth Century somehow can get the message right. Gnostics say the Apostles themselves got the message wrong, before any of them took pen to paper.

Unfortunately, an investigation of the earliest surviving Church writings shows a continuity rather than a discontinuity with current teaching. I refer the curious reader to Cardinal Newman's essay on the Development of Christian doctrine.

The error with the argument about Church corruption is Donatism, namely, that if the Church is somehow held responsible for the existence, say, of the Spanish Inquisition, and is said to lack teaching authority on that ground, then once the Spanish Inquisition is disbanded, why does the authority not return? Why did the authority lapse in any territory beyond Spanish control?

Or to put it another way, if some bad men mislead an overly worldly Church in days of yore, what does that mean to me, if those bad man are centuries gone, and the Church no longer worldly? Was the Real Presence in the Eucharist up until the time of Ferdinand and Isabella, then it fled?

And since there is no uncorrupted denominations to which to turn in contrast, the question is moot.

So we are left with two theories: one is that the Church became heretical beyond redemption at a particular point in time, and the other is that the Protestants are heretics no different from any others, with the sole exception that they were more successful in their rebellion against their fathers and teachers.

Now, for personal reasons, this is a difficult subject for me to discuss. As an ex-atheist, I have trouble distinguishing any real difference between the Church and the various schisms and heresies that broke off from her are almost invisible to me.

Having said that, I do know that there are major differences between the various opinions of Christianity, differences vehement enough to provoke wars and persecutions, and an endless flood of letters. Nothing else can be expected: if Christian teaching is correct, it is the only light in the world, and the enemy has no other weapon aside from heresy and division to quench that light.

What I cannot see is why the Protestant ideas are any more authentic and original than those of other break away sects. I agree that they were more successful, but are the obviously so much more reasonable than say –

certain Gnostics, who interpreted Jesus as a purely spiritual being;

the Ebionates, who interpreted Jesus as being a Jewish rabbi and prophet and nothing more;

the Marcionites, who interpreted Jesus are being not Jewish at all, and repudiated the Old Testament;

the Monainists, who interpreted the Church as being the province of private revelation of the Holy Spirit;

the Donatists, who quite reasonably said that no one who betrayed the Church could ever hold Church office again, nor were any of their sacraments valid;

the Arians, who quite reasonably said that if God is One and God is the Father, Jesus was not God, not eternal, but some lesser (but still very dignified) created being;

Pelagius, who, quite reasonably said that the sins of Adam did not necessarily contaminate all human nature, since it would be unfair to punish a son for the sins of the father;

Nestor, who, quite reasonably said that Jesus must be both God and Man, and that the godhead absorbed the human nature (or maybe that is monophysite–I get them confused);

the Monophysites, who, quite reasonably said that Jesus was one being with one nature, and that was a divine one(or maybe that is a Nestorian–I get them confused);

Shall I go on? I am only up to the Fifth Century, and I have not listed the heresies of Menander, Cerenthis, Saturnalius, Basilides, the Nicholites in the First Century;

nor Corpocrates, Valentine, Epiphanes,  Prodicus, Tatian, Severus,  Cerdonius, Marcion, Apelles, the Cataphrigians, Artotirthrites, Peputians, Ascodrogites, Pattalorinchites, Bardesanes, Theodotus the Currier, Artemon, Theodotus Argentarius and Hermogenes in the Second Century;

nor have I mentioned the heresies of Praxeas, Sabellius, Paul of Samostata, of Manes, nor Tertullian and Origen (both of whose whose writings are preserved and respected by the Church nonetheless) nor the heresies of Novatus and Novatian, nor Nepos and the Angelicals in the Third Century;

nor the Circumcellionists of the Fourth Century, who were total nutbags, going around trying to get people to martyr them, and beating and robbing them when they wouldn't.

Now, at some point, the mind starts aching at all this river of diverse opinion, and one either says, as an atheist does, that it is all imaginary nonsense and there is no truth whatever to be had in this morass, or one says, as the orthodox and catholic Christian does, that there is a malign spirit in the world attempting to stir up controversy and division — because this amount of divergent opinion on these matters, the degree of hair splitting, the degree of hatred, is unusual.

But if one says that each individual man is, by himself, armed only with his own natural wits and a copy of the Bible translated by someone, somewhere, whose names only scholars know, can negotiate this mass of refined and excruciating theological and technical arguments, guided only the Holy Spirit, one also has to say, as many Protestants do, that God does not desire the unity of His Church.

However, nothing in the Bible nor the early Church writings indicates that the Lord desires a marketplace of ideas and a flock without a shepherd.

I admit it is possible that God does not desire a unified Church — Allah certainly does not. Not having a clergy is one of the distinguishing marks to draw the Christians of African and Near Eastern provinces of the Roman Empire into Muslim society. I limit myself to the statement that the scripture and the Patristic writings do not confirm this theory.

I do not see a remarkable difference between Luther and Calvin and any of these other enthusiasms which carried men away from the mainstream Church. The argument in favor of no Real Presence in the Eucharist or in favor of Sola Scriptura has even less evidence, in terms of proof texts from scripture or Patristic writings, than the argument for Arianism.

Worse, I do see that each and every heresy I've looked at in detail, with the sole exception of Gnosticism, the first and oldest, was based on political and cultural considerations: Donatism was Romans versus Egyptians, for example, Filioques was Greek-speakers against Latin-speakers, Lutheranism was Germanic Princes on the fringe of civilization against civilization of the Mediterranean, the Holy Roman Empire.

The rebellion of the Anglicans under Henry VIII was not even given the dignity of being hidden behind a theological dispute: it was a naked power grab by the nobles of England, who looted the monasteries that owned most of the land, and the rich dispossessed the poor because no one was strong enough to stop them.

So I firmly pray all the various branches of the tree planted by Christ would gather back together. I doubt it will happen before the end of the world.

The reason for my loyalty to the Roman Catholic Church is merely my human reason telling me that if Christianity means anything at all, it means what the Church teaches; and, given the painfully obvious weakness of men for heresy, the Church must have a legal process for determining what the Church teaches, such as by General Councils.

Following the opinion of a man with a new idea about why the Church should be stricter than she is, is not, and cannot be that process. Following a man with a private revelation, like Joseph Smith, or a radical new theory of healing, like Mary Baker Eddy, cannot be that process.

So, by all means, let us embrace each in only love, as brothers, despite our differences of opinion. Let us also be aware that not just the worldly powers like German princes and English kings want to tear the Church in sunder, otherworldly princes of Hell wish it also, creatures well able to deceive the wise and great.

A little bit of love and good will despite our differences annoys the worldly powers more than anything.

View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.

More Interview! More Dimmest Secrets!

Here is part two of the interview with raygun revival:

http://www.raygunrevival.com/sffwrtcht-interview-author-john-c-wright-part-two/

An excerpt:

SFFWRTCHT:  How do you deal with writer's block?

JCW: By not believing that there is such a thing. Writer's block is the muse trying to tell you that you have made a mistake and are lying down railroad track going the wrong way. The only thing to do is swallow your ego and rip up the track, go back to wherever the wrong turn was, and start again. If you cannot do that, then you will suffer writer's block.

SFFWRTCHT:  What future projects are you working on that we can look forward to?

JCW: [...] The paratime fantasy mentioned (tentatively titled SOMEWHITHER) above was born when I wanted to write something set in a Dan Brown-style background, or, rather, the opposite background, with clerical assassins from archaic and hidden orders of the Church as the good guys, and the Harvard trained symbologist as the mad scientist with a beautiful daughter.

I also wanted monkey-masked ninja-girl, a Haunted Museum, a voluptuous sea-witch, a talking falcon, the Holy Grail, primordial Ur-Language of Man, the Ring of the Nibelungs, monsters from the antipodes, sardonic Latin werewolves, haughty Hellenic blood-quaffers, high-energy physicists, evil astrologers from a parallel world where astrology actually works, nihilistic Babylonians, the Tree of Life, the Simurgh of Persia, a magic katana, an unkillable hero, the Deep of Uncreation, and a prayer-powered mecha made from the abandoned celestial armor of a forty-four story high archangel hidden in the depth of the Great River Euphrates.

So SOMEWHITHER is basically a gentle and meditative love story about the ineffable beauty of … oh, no, wait. It is an action-adventure story about a goofy teen with buck teeth and a puppy love crush on his busty girl boss who gets tossed down a rabbit hole into another dimension and finds himself in a fight scene about once every two or three chapters, with gratuitous blood gushing every which way. He has got to solve the mystery, save more worlds than one, and rescue the girl, and she cannot remember his name. It is one of those kind of stories. Grim and serious it is not.

View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.

Hunger Games

The HUNGER GAMES is a mediocre movie which has been hyped to the point of hyperventilation. I am impressed with the marketing campaign, even to the point where the dictionary site I visit had a picture of the heroine from the film.

I saw it this week, and have not read the book on which it is based, and I acknowledge that this is merely the first third of the trilogy, but, even so, I was disappointed.

SPOILER WARNING! I give away several important plot twists, including the ending, so read no further if you mean to see this movie!

Now, I know that the problem with an overhyped film is that it cannot live up to the hype. For the same reason that I liked the third MATRIX movie, I was disappointed by HUNGER GAMES. Namely, I had heard so much bad press about the third MATRIX movie, that unless a vent of pure sewage had erupted from the screen, it would have been better than advertised. Likewise, after all this hype, fire should have shot from the screen.

There was a little fire, at least. Jennifer Lawrence was easy on the eyes.

But being forewarned against the danger of over-expectation, I was nonetheless expecting a movie better than JOHN CARTER OF MARS, which bombed badly, but which to me seemed like a perfectly enjoyable sci-fi action flick, based vaguely on a beloved pulp classic by Edgar Rice Burroughs . This was not even up to that level.

Or, to be fair, since I knew I was not in the target audience range, I was expecting a gripping drama, something at least as moving as, for example, A WRINKLE IN TIME by Madeleine L'Engle, or perhaps ENCHANTRESS FROM THE STARS by Sylvia Louise Engdahl.

For those of you who from planet Barsoom ergo out of reach of the hype campaign, the conceit of HUNGER GAMES is Shirley Jackson's THE LOTTERY meets THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME by Richard Connell and rips off BATTLE ROYALE by Koushun Takami.

The premise is that is that in a dystopian future, the Pan-American state of Panem, in order to punish the outlying districts for rebellions of seventy years past, select two children from each of twelve districts by lottery, who are set into a combination gladiatorial game and wilderness survival test, and the twenty-four children kill each other or dies from starvation or exposure to the elements until there is but one survivor.

Sponsors in the viewing audience have the right from time to time to drop packages of food or medicine into the woods to support their favorite. The games are surrounded with appallingly shallow media circus atmosphere, with the gladiators of 'tributes' feted and treated like athletic stars, and forced to play to the sympathies of the crowd in order to win sponsors. The masters of ceremonies basically control the outcome of the game, since they can introduce artificial disasters and dangers, such as forest fires and vicious beasts, in order to herd gladiators back to the fray, or to increase the drama for the viewing audience.

The heroine, Katniss Everdeen is a bow hunter and poacher from District Twelve, a Hooverville-lookalike coalmining town, who volunteers to take her younger sister's place when she loses the lottery.

The balance of the film concerns her training by her handlers to make her into an athletic star pleasing to the mob, and the various dangers, alliances, betrayals, and acts of kindness or cruelty which play out during the Hobbesian war of all against all.

Let me list what I liked about the film before listing the sources of my discontent.

The basic concept is simple, dark, and powerful, a ghastly indictment of the voyeuristic craving for blood and death which underpins violent and dangerous contests. The updating of Roman gladiatorial circus shows with modern sporting event commentaries or 'Reality TV' tropes is clever and trenchant. The audience should be a little uncomfortable enjoying a violent show about how bad it is to enjoy violent shows.

Also, the plot is solid, well constructed, with unexpected turns and betrayals, and the events follow logically one from another, without any deus ex machine moments or plot holes. The characters were sharply and clearly drawn and the acting was top-notch.

Second, the main character's defining moment comes when she steps into her sister's place to take her death upon herself right in the first act. It is heroic and self-sacrificial. That is certainly to be applauded in any film.

Third, the "look" of the film the art direction and so on, was perfect. It looked convincingly like what it was supposed to look like: a frivolous and ultrawealthy elite at 'the capitol' tyrannizing outlying districts of grinding poverty with a sadistic public spectacle. The clothing and costuming of the elites was as artificial and absurd as the powdered wigs and painted faces of the courtiers of Louis XIV. Meanwhile, the proletarians of District Twelve could have stepped off the pages of a John Steinbeck novel.

Fourth, establishing that the protagonist is a bow hunter with woodcraft skills takes a large edge off the disbelief I would have otherwise felt at her chances to survive.

Fifth, the film was subtle in several places where it could have been blatant. By this I mean, unlike, say, TITANIC by James Cameron, the audience never had its intelligence insulted. The touches could be as subtle as a failed flunky being locked in a room with a bowl of berries and a look of fear on his face, or the reaction of a gladiator trainer seeing a boy being given a toy sword as a present: and only from the context is the audience expected to understand how horrible or significant these things are.

Do you how annoying voice overs keep getting put into films like BLADE RUNNER or DARK CITY when they are not needed, and are, indeed, distracting, because the suits think the audience is too dumb to get the point? Well, there are not explanatory voice overs in this film. Kudos to them for that. Likewise, the sound track was unobtrusive, and the background music was silent during certain moment of high drama.

One subtlety I liked was a mention only in a throwaway line of how often one character has 'put his name' into the lottery for the games. The state will give food to the starving each time a hungry child puts his name into the lottery jar. It shows both the cruelty and the indirect nature of the tyranny.

When a main character asks, "Why don't we just not watch this year? They wouldn't have them if nobody watched." his words, with the lighthanded touch typical of the film, condemn the whole participation of the people in their own tyrannization.

This lighthandedness is well served in the violent scenes, by which I mean that the fights were not choreographed ballets of unrealistic wire-fu: they were kids rolling on the ground groping for a knife. The blood and viscera typical of action films was thankfully not present.  The audience sees one or two wounds.

Which serves to introduce what I misliked about the film.

First, the shaky-camera technique leaves me seasick. The fight scenes looked like the cameraman simply somersaulted along the ground. There is no way to tell who is doing what to whom. The camera shoot and blurred and zoomed unsteadily even during non-action scenes, as when a character walks upstairs or enters a train car.

Second, the dystopia was not dystopic enough for my taste. Forgive me for being a science fiction fan, and, yes, I know that this is not really a science fiction movie, but science fiction fans like explanations for things. Orwell's NINETEEN EIGHTY FOUR was an exaggeration of thoughts current in his own day, or perhaps not so much an exaggeration, of a Soviet-like tyranny. Big Brother had a definite philosophy and point. Huxley's BRAVE NEW WORLD was a dictatorship of the opposite tack, a paradise of total control and total hedonism, where all physical suffering was eliminated, a spiritual rather than a physical nightmare. But again, the dystopia there is guided by a specific philosophy of 'Fordism' which is the treatment of human beings like assembly line products.  By way of contrast, in the movie, Panem does not seem to be the way it is for any reason. We see riot police and elites and proles, but no indication of how things got that way , or why the Powers That Be want to keep them that way. (As I say, I have not read the books, which may provide this missing element.)

Third, the heroine was not heroic enough for my taste. When Captain Kirk is placed in an arena by the Metrones, or by the Gamesters of Triskelion, he steadfastly refuses to kill anyone merely for the entertainment of his captors. Here, Katniss is perhaps mildly unwilling to kill, but she is willing to drop a nest of venomous wasps on her opponents, and when a boy ambushes her, she puts an arrow into him, slaying him in one shot, but with no expression of remorse or regret after.

Along the same lines, Katniss is willing to cuddle up and play kissy-face with the boy from her district, Peeta, and it ambiguous whether she is doing this merely a cynical survival technique, to win the sympathy of the viewers. If so, it is particularly cruel, because Katniss has a boy back home who is watching the games. Again, it is not clear if Peeta actually has a longstanding crush Katniss, or is merely playing to the cameras for sympathy.

In either case, this is not the type of behavior drama expects from heroes and heroines, albeit, to be sure, the characters in dystopian novels are always trampled victims, never heroes.

Fourth, I simply disbelieved that Katniss was the first volunteer in this system, assuming volunteering to take another's place had been legal for seventy years. I simply do not believe every single healthy and morally straight seventeen year old boy in an entire district population would stand idly by and watch a thin thirteen year old picked at random get hauled off to certain death. Teens commit suicide for many more frivolous reasons than this. I would have liked an explanation as to why this should be.

Fifth, I found it distracting that the film never makes it clear to what degree the Hunger Games are meant to be arbitrary and unfair. The umpires change the rules at least twice during the games, and do things like herd one gladiator into an ambuscade, or drop supplies or gifts to aid one side or the other.

I assumed it was intentional but here is one time I wish the writing had been blatant rather than subtle. Because if the winners and loser are picked by the interference of umpires and audience sponsors, then the drama of the final battle is resolved only because umpire interferes, herding the final three survivors together.

Finally, and related to this, the children are between twelve and eighteen, and half of them are girls. Now, if it were the policy and cruelty of the tyrants to kill twelve or more girls and small children at the hands of young men old enough to enter boot camp, that would be understandable. It is just an execution.

If, again, it was the cruel practice of the tyrants to throw sixteen and fourteen year old girls into the gladiatorial games so that the boys old enough to enter boot camp would waste time and energy protecting them, as the natural chivalry of the young male (visible in all ages of human history but ours) would not allow them to fight and murder girls.

We are not talking about a thirteen year old girl with a gun facing a sixteen year old boy with a gun. We are talking about youths the age of Naval Academy midshipmen fighting girls young enough to be watching MY LITTLE PONY with knife and short sword.

Examine the two pictures following, and tell me who you think would win a round of fisticuffs followed by a quarterstaff bout with baseball bats?

Rue from HUNGER GAMES

 

Cato from HUNGER GAMES

For those of you interested in history, female gladiators, known as gladiatrices, did exist in ancient Rome. The practice was unseemly enough that even the Roman Emperors after Nero could not tolerate the spectacle: it was reformed out of existence. There is no evidence they ever fought male gladiators, perhaps for the same reason we Americans do not have any women as linebackers in NFL teams.

But I do not think this is what the filmmakers had in mind. I assume I was seeing a politically correct 'Xena Warrior Princess' world where the young stalwart, strong enough to lift and throw heavy weights the other children cannot, is right to think that the girl fifty pounds lighter and half a head shorter than he is likely to defeat all comers including himself and emerge the victor.

The film attempts manfully to support this absurd expectation, by reciting the statistics from previous games, saying how many children died of thirst or exposure rather than violently under the blades of others, but the film belies this by having every death be a violent one, or a poisoning.

Like I said, I am assuming the film makers had in mind that whoever drew the short straw during the lottery was sending a little girl to be beaten to death by a stalwart youth, perhaps with the additional psychological torture of making boys kills girls. But, again, I cannot tell for sure if that was what the writer had in mind, because, if so, some sort of hint, one line of dialog, to show that the two sexes and all ages are not equal on the battlefield would have calmed my uncertainty.

Frankly, I was expecting the main character to defy the rules of the games at some point, win over the hearts of the viewing audience, and trigger a rebellion or something of the kind. There was something that was supposed to be something like that at one point, but it was too subtle for me: I did not see why either the crowd or the umpires reacted as they did at the film's end.

The third act annoyed my Christian sensibilities for two reasons.

First, when a fellow tribute dies before her eyes, Katniss, covers the corpse thoughtfully with flowers and cries, but does not say and prayers over the body. I assume this was done to spare the sensibilities of the antichristians in the audience, but the idea that rural coalminers don't have any vestiges of religion struck me as needing some sort of explanation.

Second, the umpires, in order to boost ratings, because Katniss and Peeta are a popular couple with the viewers, announce a change in rules, allowing for two survivors rather than one. Then when they emerge alive from the final battle, the umpires change the rule again, saying only one can survive. They both prepare to commit suicide by eating poisonous berries, and the umpires change the rules a third time, asking them to stop and telling them they both can win.  So threatening suicide wins the day. Yeah, suicide!

Very noble and pagan, I am sure, but it should have been explained why the two children did not simply throw their weapons down. Whatever the penalty was for refusing to fight should have been made clear.

And then both children meekly accept laurels and plaudits from the hands of the tyrant, and continue to play along with the pretense that they are athletic stars when they no longer under any apparent threat of death.

A final thing I missed was any character arc. I did not see that Katniss was anything but a worse person after this drama, albeit I admired that she was more noble and forgiving than other children trapped into the games. But if someone told me that the story in the book had been about the Stockholm Syndrome, where prisoners sympathize with their own oppressors and kidnappers, I would not have expected to see the events in the movie played out any differently.

The point of the story seemed to be that one should do whatever it takes to survive, no matter how demeaning. This is made explicit when Peeta says he does not want "them" to change him, that if he is to die, he would prefer to die without being a different person, by which he means, I assume, without a compromise of his virtue and integrity. Katniss answers that she does not have that luxury.

Hmph. Since there are sequels due out, I will not complain about the lack of closure on the two major plotlines, but so far, while it is a well acted piece, nothing in it struck me as (1) particularly original from a science fiction point of view, or (2) particularly romantic or noble from a dramatic point of view, or (3) uplifting from a moral point of view, or, (4) unlike other dystopia novels, did there seem to be a warning for our own times of what might happen if any dangerous trends are not countered. Is it a warning against glamorizing violent sports? I saw the same thing in DEATH RACE 2000 and ROLLERBALL and THE RUNNING MAN.

I would say the film was worth renting from Redbox, but not worth the ticket price of a matinee at a theater.

 

View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.

Applied Amateur Theology: Do Women Sin?

A reader named Nate Winchester sent me this link to the following article (http://www.drurywriting.com/keith/Do.Women.sin.htm)

It's happened to me three times now so I need to ask you about it.  All three times were so similar it's eerie.

In a spiritual formation class we work on how Christians can get victory over sin as a part of their spiritual growth. To start the unit I ask students to list the sins Christians face most today.  They list four sins immediately:

Internet Porn
Pride
Lust
Anger

Then they pause…they run out of sins.  These four got listed quickly each time. In fact I've come to call them the "foul four" sins.  Then they run out of gas and just sit there thinking.

At the pause I usually ask, "OK, for each sin on our list let's decide as a class if men or women are more inclined to this sin.  In all three classes they have agreed that while women are sometimes tempted in these areas men are more inclined to these four sins.

So I say, "Only women participate now—decide among yourselves what four sins you'd add to the list to that you think women are more inclined toward.   Silence.  Furrowed brows. Thinking… [long pause]

Really!  Each time the women who (along with the men) had quickly offered the "foul four" are at a loss to quickly add "besetting sins" that women seem more inclined toward.   And now for the part that got me to write on this subject.

The last two times I did this activity the women unanimously agreed on what they considered the chief besetting sin of women:

Lack of self esteem

I'm serious.  So were they.  The last two times I did this when a women offered "Self esteem" the entire group of women audibly responded, "Yeah—that's it!"

You see where I'm headed?   Lack of self esteem?   To the men in the class these co-eds were saying, "While you men struggle with pornography, lust, pride and anger we women struggle with not thinking highly enough of ourselves."  (Several men in the class always visibly roll their eyes.)

To be fair, the women (after considerable time) usually add three other sins: resentment, bitterness, and lack of trust.  But even their expanded list appeared to the guys in the class that men struggle with really bad sins while women fight minor sins.  This male response was actually summed up the last time I did this. One male student exclaimed, "Gee, if I just struggled with those sins I'd be a saint!"

Nate Winchester comments: Seems like the church (all of us) needs to start teaching original sin some more.

My comment: lack of self-esteem, sometimes called humility, is a feature and not a bug. Let a woman esteem herself for her virtue and chastity in her youth, for her maternal love and self-sacrifice after marriage, for her wisdom in her old age, but let her not esteem herself for the sake of self esteem, lest it swell into pride, which is a sin.

G.K. Chesterton's comment (which is wiser and wittier than either of ours):

Modern masters of science are much impressed with the need of beginning all inquiry with a fact. The ancient masters of religion were quite equally impressed with that necessity.  They began with the fact of sin–a fact as practical as potatoes.  Whether or no man could be washed in miraculous waters, there was no doubt at any rate that he wanted washing.

But certain religious leaders in London, not mere materialists, have begun in our day not to deny the highly disputable water, but to deny the indisputable dirt.

Certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved.  Some followers of the Reverend R.J. Campbell, in their almost too fastidious spirituality, admit divine sinlessness, which they cannot see even in their dreams.  But they essentially deny human sin, which they can see in the street.

The strongest saints and the strongest sceptics alike took positive evil as the starting-point of their argument.  If it be true (as it certainly is) that a man can feel exquisite happiness in skinning a cat, then the religious philosopher can only draw one of two deductions. He must either deny the existence of God, as all atheists do; or he must deny the present union between God and man, as all Christians do.

The new theologians seem to think it a highly rationalistic solution to deny the cat.

My comment again: Here we have seen a triumph of what Mr Chesterton called the new theologians. The ladies being asked above to list their sins cannot do it.

The wisdom of having parishioners go to weekly confession and the sacrament of penance gains  additional weight from this example.  When done correctly, one is supposed to examine one's conscience in the light of the Ten Commandments and the Beatitudes, in what one as done and what one has failed to do in thought and word and deed.

View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.