Carl E. Olson's Blog, page 312

"Present In Every Person": On the Nature and Mission of Catholic Universities

"Present In Every Person": On the Nature and Mission of Catholic Universities | Fr. James V. Schall, S.J. | Ignatius Insight | June 11, 2011

"Dear Friends, faith and culture are permanently connected heights, a manifestation of that desiderium naturale videndi Deum (natural desire of seeing God) which is present in every human person." — Pope Benedict XVI, "A New Humanism," (Address on the 90th Anniversary of the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan, May 21, L'Osservatore Romano, English, May 25, 2011.)

I.

I recently saw an American report on the "success" of higher education in this country. The criterion used the average salary of graduates from the different disciplines. This criterion was used to indicate the better and the worst "majors" in a college curriculum, at least for making money. But if this financial standard is to be used as the norm for judging the nature or importance of "higher" education, for advising students as to what to study, then we might as well close the shop and turn everything into a training school. Let the mind go somewhere else where it is free to pursue the truth.

Socrates was famous precisely because he did not mind being poor if he could pursue truth. And those who wanted the truth were not particularly concerned with riches. The effort to make truth pay a higher annual income than engineering is probably a one of those deranged wishes that, if they came true, would end up destroying the very point of humanities, namely, that there are things beyond comparative income.

Pope Benedict XVI touches on this very issue when he gave a brief, but incisive, analysis of the mission and nature of a Catholic university in the context of what a university is to the rector, administrators, faculty, students, and alumni of the famous "La Cattolica" university in Milan, meeting with him in Rome.

"The humanities culture seems to be affected by a progressive decline," he said, "while the so-called 'productive' disciplines, such as technological and economic studies, are emphasized." The question arises: How are we to compare the worth of humanistic studies with those that result in production or the increase of wealth? Catholicism is not hostile to the notion that mankind should be able to produce and distribute a sufficiency, even abundance, of goods and services for ourselves and others. This end surely is one of the purposes of human civil life. But the Aristotelian question remains: Are there things that transcend politics and economics even for the politician and economist?

"There is a tendency to reduce the human horizon to a measurable level and, to eliminate the fundamental question of meaning from systematic and critical knowledge," the pope remarks. Not only are the humanities downplayed but religion itself is simply not considered to be worthy of serious study. "There does not seem to be much room for the reasons to believe; therefore the religious dimension is exiled to the realm of opinion and personal choice." The implication is that no truth can be found in religion. Truth is defined to be what we can learn by measurement and scientific method which itself dubiously presupposes that only what is measurable in quantity is scientific or true.

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Quote of the Day

An Eric Voegelin quote within a Jonah Goldberg quote, from Goldberg's weekly e-letter:

When you remove the power and symbolism of religion in our daily lives, religious impulses start creeping in from other directions and sources (which might explain why Jill Abramson recently explained that the New York Times substituted for religion in her house growing up). As Eric Voegelin puts it: "When God is invisible behind the world, the contents of the world will become new gods; when the symbols of transcendent religiosity are banned, new symbols develop from the inner-worldly language of science to take their place. Like the Christian ecclesia, the inner-worldly community has its apocalypse too."

The quote actually continues, "yet, the new apocalyptics insist that the symbols they create are scientific judgments." Thank goodness there's none of that these days!

Fr. Robert Spitzer will be a guest this Monday...

... on the "Drew Mariani Show" on Relevant Radio. He will be on the program on Monday, June 13th from 4:15 - 5:00 pm (Eastern) to talk about the Napa Institute conference, "Catholics in the Next America", which will be held July 28–31, 2011, in Napa, California. You can listen to the program via the internet.

Fr. Robert J. Spitzer, S.J., Ph.D., is Founder and President of Magis Institute, the author of several books, and one of the several presenters at the conference.

Steve Cavanaugh, editor of "Anglicanism and the Roman Catholic Church", will be...

... giving an address on Anglican and Gregorian chant at Thomas More College on July 6th. Here are the details, forwarded to me by the very talented David Clayton, Artist-in-Residence and Lecturer in Liberal Arts at the college:

Wednesday 6th July at 7.15pm, the Helm Room, Thomas More College of Liberal Arts, Merrimack, New Hampshire

Steve Cavanaugh will speak about the sources of Anglican chant in the Gregorian chant of the Roman and Sarum psalters, and the contemporary forms of vernacular chant in English, both Catholic and Anglican, with a special look at the possibilities presented by the Personal Ordinariates coming into being under the aegis of Pope Benedict XVI's Anglicanorum coetibus.

Mr. Cavanaugh is the editor of Anglicanism and the Roman Catholic Church: Reflections on Recent Developments (Ignatius Press, 2011) and of Anglican Embers, the quarterly journal of the Anglican Use Society. Copies of both the book and the journal will be availble for inspection after the talk.

Presented as part of the Way of Beauty Atelier Summer Program, this lecture is open to the public

For more information about Anglicans and the Roman Catholic Church: Reflections on Recent Developments, read the Introduction, "Ecclesia Anglicana", written by Fr. Allan R. G. Hawkins.

One bad of a hell argument

I recently received a review copy of God Behaving Badly: Is the God of the Old Testament Angry, Sexist and Racist? (IVP, 2011), by David T. Lamb, who is associate professor of Old Testament at the Evangelical school, Biblical Theological Seminary in Hatfield, Pennsylvania. It opens with this clever question:

How does one reconcile the loving God of the Old Testament with the harsh God of the New Testament?

Lamb notes that when he asks this question of his students, they are shocked, and "then most assume that I have simply misspoke, as I am prone to do." But he points out to them that, "God in the Old Testament is consistently described as slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, but Jesus speaks about hell more than anyone else in Scripture"—that is, in either the New or Old Testament. He points out that the specific word "hell" doesn't even appear in the Old Testament.

Off the top of my head, I guessed that 75% or so of New Testament references to hell ("Gehenna", "hades", etc.) were from the mouth of Jesus. I was off a bit: it is 73% according to Lamb. Anyhow, I bring it up because a month ago or so I had started to write a post in response to a young agnostic, James Kirk Wall, who was intent on showing me up because I dared to criticize his weak attacks on Christianity (specifically, the Christian belief in hell) as "flippant, theologically-challenged, and historically-illiterate snarkiness". In fact, the brave lad wrote on his Facebook page: "I will crush him [that is, me] in argumentation." I don't recall being crushed in any manner whatsoever, but will give him the benefit of the doubt, as the only thing he seems adept at is doubting.

Anyhow, I was going to respond to this comment he left on May 3rd on the Insight Scoop:

As for hell itself, the Old Testament does not contain the New Testament concept of hell, and Eastern religions do not either. I maintain that the New Testament concept of hell was created as a marketing tool and is a direct contradiction to the tolerance and love taught by Jesus Christ.

Normally I don't pick on silly comments (okay, I sometimes don't pick on silly comments), but I thought this one was worth the effort because Wall sums up very well a common and completely false belief about the teachings of Jesus. The ol' "nasty God of the OT vs. the non-judgmental Jesus of the NT" is common fare among skeptics, liberals, and people who never read the Bible, which includes, alas, a lot of self-described Christians.

One of the more memorable instances of this is the description by atheist Richard Dawkins in his best-selling book The God Delusion of the God of the Old Testament as "arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully." As I wrote in one of my "Opening the Word" columns, "That remark indicates far more familiarity with the dictionary than with the Bible." To make this point, here's a quick quiz: which of the following statements is made by or about God in the OT and which were made by or about Jesus in the Gospels?

1. "But I say to you that every one who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother shall be liable to the council, and whoever says, 'You fool!' shall be liable to the hell of fire."

2. "But thou, O Lord, art a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness."

3. "And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell..."

4. "Light rises in the darkness for the upright; the LORD is gracious, merciful, and righteous."

5. "You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell..."

6. "The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness..."

7. "And you, Caper'na-um, will you be exalted to heaven? You shall be brought down to Hades. For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day."

8. "I will recount the steadfast love of the LORD, the praises of the LORD, according to all that the LORD has granted us, and the great goodness to the house of Israel which he has granted them according to his mercy, according to the abundance of his steadfast love."

9."There you will weep and gnash your teeth, when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God and you yourselves thrust out."

10. "Nevertheless in thy great mercies thou didst not make an end of them or forsake them; for thou art a gracious and merciful God."

Yep, you guessed it: 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9 are statements made by Jesus in the Gospels, and 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10 are statements by or about God found in the Old Testament. The basic point is that both the Old and New Testaments speak of judgment and mercy, punishment and love, communion with God and separation from God. And the word "hell" is just one way of describing or referring to eternal separation from the presence, life, and love of God, just as "heaven" is one of many ways to refer to everlasting communion with God. While the Old Testament does not contain the word "hell", it most certainly describes the painful, everlasting punishment that comes upon those who rebel against God and reject his commandments. For example:

For a fire is kindled by my anger, and it burns to the depths of Sheol, devours the earth and its increase, and sets on fire the foundations of the mountains. And I will heap evils upon them; I will spend my arrows upon them... (Deut. 32:22-23)

The sinners in Zion are afraid; trembling has seized the godless: "Who among us can dwell with the devouring fire? Who among us can dwell with everlasting burnings?" (Isa. 33:14)

A stream of fire issued and came forth from before him; a thousand thousands served him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him; the court sat in judgment, and the books were opened. I looked then because of the sound of the great words which the horn was speaking. And as I looked, the beast was slain, and its body destroyed and given over to be burned with fire. (Dan. 7:10-11)

To put it rather simplistically, what we see in the Old Testament is a pedagogical arc in which a deepening understanding of God, man, justice, and sin is reflected in a growing comprehension of an afterlife in which the righteous attain to life in God while the unrighteous and unjust are separated from that same life. This separation is judgment on those who are unrepentant, sinful, rebellious, unjust—and this is described in numerous ways. This includes terms such as "hell" and "Gehenna" and "lake of fire", the latter further described as "the second death"—that is, as the Catechism says, "the state of definitive self- exclusion from communion with God" (par. 1033).

The main point here is that a careful reader of the Bible will note there is a deep and rich continuity between the Old and New Testaments when it comes to these matters of eternal judgment, mercy, sin, love, damnation, and forgiveness. Which is one reason that this sentence by Wall is so off the mark: "I maintain that the New Testament concept of hell was created as a marketing tool and is a direct contradiction to the tolerance and love taught by Jesus Christ."

Another reason it is incorrect is that it's impossible to reject "the New Testament concept of hell" and claim affection for "the tolerance and love taught by Jesus Christ" since the New Testament concepts of hell and judgment come directly from the lips, person, and teachings of Jesus Christ! And they are clearly rooted in an Old Testament understanding of the role of the prophet: to foretell the judgment of God on those who reject his commandments and break his covenant. The main lines of these truths are presented quite nicely in these two paragraphs from the Catechism:

We cannot be united with God unless we freely choose to love him. But we cannot love God if we sin gravely against him, against our neighbor or against ourselves: "He who does not love remains in death. Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him."  Our Lord warns us that we shall be separated from him if we fail to meet the serious needs of the poor and the little ones who are his brethren.  To die in mortal sin without repenting and accepting God's merciful love means remaining separated from him for ever by our own free choice. This state of definitive self- exclusion from communion with God and the blessed is called "hell."

Jesus often speaks of "Gehenna" of "the unquenchable fire" reserved for those who to the end of their lives refuse to believe and be converted, where both soul and body can be lost.  Jesus solemnly proclaims that he "will send his angels, and they will gather . . . all evil doers, and throw them into the furnace of fire,"  and that he will pronounce the condemnation: "Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire!" (par. 1033-34)

When an agnostic or atheist claims that the Christian belief in hell is "intolerant" or "mean-spirited" or "hateful", he is making a perfect case for Fr. Thomas Dubay's statement, "The atheist's vision is often so narrow that he does not see how necessarily assumes a metaphysics in order to deny metaphysics" (Faith and Certitude, p. 214). In other words, they claim to have an objective basis—belief in "justice"—for making a judgment against the only ground for such an objective basis. If "justice" is a human creation, it can mean whatever humans want it to mean. Nothing more. So the real issue is not that atheists reject belief in God but that they reject the truth of the moral order that flows from the very nature of God, which is why the supposed "injustices" of Christian morality always align with the latest immoral fads. In the end, as Fr. Dubay writes, "The only logical, consistent alternative to theism is nihilism", for this "doctrine declares that reality is empty, worthless, meaningless, valueless, absurd. ... Even moral values are decadence for they are turned against our instincts and have behind them nothing but nothingness."

It is often said—and rightly so—that there is hell here on earth for innocent people; there is murder and genocide and rape and molestation. But denying the existence of a loving God and the reality of an afterlife does not solve or soften these horrible injustices, but only marks them as gross, pathetic jokes that emerge as vile laughter from the dark underbelly of a mechanistic universe and drown us in a sea of meaninglessness. Yet we know there is meaning; we know that justice and injustice are real things. Which means, ultimately, that hell is not a marketing tool, but an instrument of cosmic justice and of divine love, allowed by the true God who gives us life, free will, and the ability to know, to choose, and to act as a moral creature.

Related Ignatius Insight Links:

• Hell and the Bible | Piers Paul Read
• The Brighter Side of Hell | James V. Schall, S.J.
• Socrates Meets Sartre: In Hell? | Peter Kreeft
• Are God's Ways Fair? | Ralph Martin

"It was a good move on my part as I was thoroughly immersed in all three stories."

JoAnna, writing for the Catholic Phoenix, recommends Ann Margaret Lewis's collection of short stories, Murder in the Vatican: The Church Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes, as a summer reading pick:

After months of telling myself, "I really need to get that book," I saw it on sale at Ignatius Press and impulsively ordered a copy. It was a good move on my part as I was thoroughly immersed in all three stories. I especially enjoyed the little tidbits of Church history that were slipped into the narrative here and there, as well as nuggets of Latin and references to older prayers and practices common to that era of Catholicism, including many that aree still in use today. Holmes, for example, mentions the newly-penned Prayer to St. Michael to Watson and tells the story of Leo's impetus for its creation.

In "The Death of Cardinal Tosca," the main character to emerge is Pope Leo XIII, who summons Holmes and Watson away from a Roman holiday to request aid in the murder of one of his cardinals. The story is rich in detail, from the architecture of the Vatican to the various robes and regalia worn by the pope and his servants, but the character of Leo stands out. He verbally spars with Holmes in the gentlest manner, quoting Thomas Aquinas to the great detective, and takes the opportunity to explain the concept of papal infallibility to a skeptical Watson. He even assists the famed pair by going undercover to help bring the murder to justice, and mentions, in passing, how impressed he was by the devotion of a young fifteen-year-old girl who begged to enter the Carmel convent.

Holmes himself sums up the character of His Holiness by telling Watson, "He enjoys putting me on the spot as you see, but only because he is genuinely pious. He is also imperious, but in a most endearing way."

"Yes, well," Watson quips in reply, "I'm used to that."

"The Vatican Cameos" is intriguing in that Leo XIII acts as a Dr. Watson to Holmes, as Watson himself is attending the complicated childbirth of a devout Catholic woman (for whom he requests the Pope's prayers). The narrative is told almost entirely from Leo XIII's perspective, as the construct of the story is a written account of the adventure that Leo sent to Watson after the latter made inquiries to the former, asking for details that Holmes would not provide. Also enjoyable is the cameo (no pun intended) of a young "Deacon" Brown, who is nearly ready to be ordained a priest. Leo's account sparkles with wit and humor, and at its conclusion we discover the role the Vatican played after Sherlock Holmes' "death" at the hands of Professor Moriarty.

Read the entire review.

"First, when one gives one's self away and declines self aggrandizement, it makes one more just..."

... The regular practice of selflessness transforms one's soul. In the transformation, one becomes more aware and respectful of others. For the lawyer who takes this path of human flourishing, it nourishes a deeper respect for each person's fundamental human rights. The right to life is the most fundamental of human rights. All other rights depend on the right to life. The Torah contains many provisions about the right to life. In the development of Western culture, the Jewish respect for life stood in contrast to the pragmatic brutality of Greek and Roman antiquity. The Talmud famously states: "one who saves a single life, saves the world." (Talmud, Sanhedrin, 4:5). The way that a society treats the child in the womb, the severely challenged human being, and the elderly and infirm is the measure of that society's commitment to fundamental human rights. It follows that a different kind of lawyer serves as the advocate for society's poor and powerless and especially for those whose very right to life is questioned. Imbued with the sense of justice that derives from self-donation, a different kind of lawyer knows that there are no disposable human beings.

Second, to give one's self away for others makes one more merciful. In the Quran, we read that Allah is all merciful, and he tells the Prophet: "We sent thee as not but as a mercy for all creatures." (Quran, 21:107). Saint Thomas Aquinas distinguished between mercy as mere sentimental emotion (misericordia passionis) and mercy ruled by reason (misericordia rationis) because he understood mercy ruled by reason to be the perfection and fullness of justice. (Summa Theologica, II-II, 30, 3). In the immortal English prose of the bard Shakespeare, mercy "droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven . . .Tis mightiest in the mightiest. . . mercy is above this sceptered sway. . . It is an attribute of God himself; And earthly power doth then show like God's when mercy seasons justice." (Merchant of Venice, Act iv, Scene 1, Lines 180-192). The libertarian secular ethicist, Jacob Appel, observes: "One of the glaring -- yet too often overlooked -- failings of contemporary America is that we have become a nation obsessed with justice and retribution. . . .What a sea change it might be in our public discourse and our civic life if we focused instead upon mercy and forgiveness. A merciful and forgiving culture might find itself with less anger, less social disruption, and even less crime." (available at: www.huntingtonpost.com/jacob-m-appel). I neither agree with all of Appel's libertarian and secular views, nor do I necessarily think his quoted words are necessarily an adequate description of American social reality. Nonetheless, I think his words invite reflection by attorneys. It seems to me that a different kind of lawyer would be concerned with mercy for the immigrant, the imprisoned, the isolated, and the broken. To be sure, I agree with Thomas Aquinas: "that mercy does not destroy justice, but in a sense is the fullness thereof." (Summa Theologica, I, 21, 3).

That is from the May 21, 2011, commencement address given to graduates of Notre Dame Law School by Fr. John J. Coughlin, O.F.M., who is Professor of Law and Concurrent Professor of Theology. His good words, of course, apply just as well to non-lawyers as lawyers. The entire address is available as a PDF file from the Notre Dame website.

The Holy Spirit, Iconographer of Divinization

From The Wellspring of Worship (Ignatius Press, 2005), by Jean Corbon, O.P.:

In the economy of salvation everything reaches completion in Jesus through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit; in the liturgy as celebrated and as lived everything begins through the Holy Spirit. That is why at the existential origin of our divinization is the liturgy of the heart, the synergy in which the Holy Spirit unites himself to our spirit (Rom 8:16) in order to make us be, and show that we are, sons of God. The same Spirit who "anointed" the Word with our humanity and imprinted our nature upon him is written in our hearts as the living seal of the promise, in order that he may "anoint" us with the divine nature: he makes us christs in Christ. Our divinization is not passively imposed on us, but is our own vital activity, proceeding inseparably from him and from ourselves.

When the Spirit begins his work in us and with us, he is not faced with the raw, passive earth out of that he fashioned the first Adam or, much less, the virginal earth, permeated by faith, that he used in effecting the conception of the second Adam. What the Spirit finds is a remnant of glory, an icon of the Son: ceaselessly loved, but broken and disfigured. Each of us can whisper to him what the funeral liturgy cries out in the name of the dead person: I remain the image of your inexpressible glory, even though I am wounded by sin!" [3] This trust that cannot be confounded and this Covenant that cannot be broken form the space wherein the patient mystery of our divinization is worked out.

The sciences provide grills for interpreting the human riddle, but when these have been applied three great questions still remain in all that we seek and in all that we do: the search for our origin, the quest for dialogue, the aspiration for communion. On the one hand, why is it that I am what I am, in obedience to a law that is stronger than I am (see Rom 7)? On the other, in the smallest of my actions I await a word, a counterpart who will dialogue with me. Finally, it is clear that our mysterious selves cannot achieve fulfillment on any level, from the most organic to the most aesthetic, except in communion. These three pathways in my being are, as it were, the primary imprints in me of the image of glory, of the call of my very being to the divine likeness in which my divinization will be completed. The Holy Spirit uses arrows of fire in restoring our disfigured image. The fire of love consumes its opposite (sin) and transforms us into itself, which is Light.

We wander astray like orphans as long as we have not accepted him, the Spirit of sonship, as our virginal source. All burdens are laid upon us, and we are slaves as long as we are not surrendered to him who is freedom and grace. And because he is the Breath of Life, it is he who will teach us to listen (we are dumb only because we are deaf); then, the more we learn to hear the Word, the better we shall be able to speak. Our consciences will no longer be closed or asleep, but will be transformed into creative silence. Finally, Utopian love and the communion that cannot be found because it is "not of this world" are present in him, the "treasure of every blessing", not as acquired and possessed but as pure gift; our relationship with others becomes transparent once again. This communion of the Holy Spirit is the master stroke in the work of divinization, because in this communion we are in communion also with the Father and his Son, Jesus (2 Cor 13:13; Jn 1:3), and with all our brothers.

Following these three pathways of the transfigured icon, we are divinized to the extent that the least impulses of our nature find fulfillment in the communion of the Blessed Trinity We then "live" by the Spirit, in oneness with Christ, for the Father. The only obstacle is possessiveness, the focusing of our persons on the demands of our nature, and this is sin for the quest of self breaks the relation with God. The asceticism that is essential to our divinization and that represents once again a synergy of grace consists in simply but resolutely turning every movement toward possessiveness into an offering. The epiclesis on the altar of the heart must be intense at these moments, so that the Holy Spirit may touch and consume our death and the sin that is death's sting. Entering into the name of Jesus, the Son of God and the Lord who shows mercy to us sinners, means handing over to him our wounded nature, which he does not change by assuming but which he divinizes by putting on. From offertory to epiclesis and from epiclesis to communion the Spirit can then ceaselessly divinize us; our life becomes a eucharist until the icon is completely transformed into him who is the splendor of the Father.

Read more from the same book:

No surprise: radical feminists employ double-standard. Surprise: they have standards?

James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal marvels at the double-standard employed by certain feminists in the matter of Rep. Anthony Weiner and his text scandal:

"You know, I look kind of stupid," Salon's Joan Walsh said last night on MSNBC's "The Ed Show," owning up to her mistake last week in defending Anthony Weiner the Turgid Tweeter. She then proceeded to defend him again: "This is private business," Walsh said. "You can't accuse him of hypocrisy, he's not a family values moralizer. You can't accuse him yet of breaking the law."

So wait, the only people you can accuse of hypocrisy are "family values moralizers"? That would seem to be the prevailing view on the feminist left.

He then points to this piece on AlterNet.org by feminist author Amanda Marcotte, which contains this tortured if revealing attempt to justify letting Weiner off the hook:

Prior to this scandal, the media and political operatives had to at least pretend that a politician's sex life had some bearing on the public interest before they picked up the pitchforks.  Being an adulterer wasn't, in and of itself, a matter of public interest. There had to be a hook. If you were a social conservative who advocated for using the government to control the sexual behavior of consenting adults, for instance, then you were held to your own standard and your adulteries were considered public business. If you opposed gay rights, your own history of same-sex relations was fair game. If you broke an anti-prostitution law you vigorously enforced on others, like Eliot Spitzer, you had no reasonable expectation of privacy. Arnold Schwarzenegger had a long past of being accused of sexual harassment, so the state of the marriage he used as a shield matters. Even at the height of the national panic over Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, Clinton's detractors claimed that it wasn't the sex that was the issue, but the perjury. No one believed them, of course, but the claim at least paid tribute to the idea that the private sexual choices of those who support sexual privacy are not the public's business.

But with this Weiner scandal, there's not even the veneer of an excuse in play. Weiner has an outstanding record supporting sexual rights of others, with100% ratings from NARAL and Planned Parenthood,and has a strong record of support for gay rights. No laws seem to have been broken, no public trust compromised, no campaign irregularities indicated, and there's been no suggestion that his flirtations interfered with his ability to do his job. The entire rationale for the scandal is that Weiner isn't living in accordance with strict social mores regarding monogamy, and that's it. Even the whining about how he lied when initially confronted is hollow. In the past, lying when someone asks nosy questions that are none of their business was considered a socially acceptable white lie.

Which means, I guess, one of two things: a liberal such as Weiner is held to a lower standard because he is a tool who serves the right causes, or that he is held to a lower standard because he personally doesn't have a standard when it comes to marriage and sexual relations. Both seem to be true, in large part because feminists such as Marcotte's view marriage mostly as a political institution to be subverted for trendy causes such as "gay marriage".

But this is also a case of Weiner's behavior being dismissed as harmless because Marcotte only holds him to the standard of the lowest common denominator, so to speak, which is the law ("No law seem to have been broken..."). Yet the public outrage is not aimed, of course, so much (if at all) at overt law-breaking as it is toward Weiner's disgusting trampling of foundational moral standards and beliefs about promises, namely, his wedding vows. Do Americans sometimes have a split personality when it comes to such things? Yes, without a doubt. And it can be maddening. But most Americans find it simply creepy, if not morally repugnant, to learn that a man recently married to a beautiful woman is spending his time sending sleazy, crude tweets (and photos) to multiple women, acting like a wild dog in heat. As for "strict social mores regarding monogamy", does it need to be pointed out that inherent to any basic definition of monogamy is the notion of "mono"—that is, "one"? Sure, legally speaking, Weiner is still just married to one woman. But, again, this isn't about breaking the law; it's about acting like a civilized, mature, and trustworthy man, regardless of political party or ideological persuasion. Because, frankly, if this is simply "about politics", we're all in big trouble.

A wonderful interview with T.M. Doran, author of "Toward the Gleam"...

... is now up on the HogwartsProfessor.com (HogPro) site (warning: spoilers alert!):

As I mentioned, Gleam is something of a survey course of Modern philosophy. John, the story hero, visits with a host of heroes and stand-ins who give voice to the worst of modern thinking or the traditional response to these errors. Two

questions on this philosophy seminar told in story: you don't give the full names of characters who are historical figures though they are familiar from their first names and ideas, i.e., Gilbert for Chesterton, Edith for Edith Stein, Jack for C. S. Lewis, etc. Why did you choose to leave the surnames out of this cavalcade of celebrities?

I elected to leave the surnames out to maintain a respectful "space" between these literary characters and their historical counterparts, and to emphasize that they were not one and the same. I also wanted to avoid the hyper-realism that would have constrained the story that I wanted to tell. Finally, I wanted the story to be layered with many mysteries, big ones and smaller ones, including the identities of the historically-based characters.

On a more substantial note, you seem to be less "smuggling the Gospel" here than "smuggling" a response from tradition to conventional philosophical errors. In this respect, the book is less about the 'Inklings and Company' than a story told to illustrate their core beliefs, a story only coincidentally (and conveniently) using them as characters. David Downing does something similar in his wonderful Looking for the King. I especially enjoyed the deft way you wove Edith Stein into the story and her 'phenomenal' argument with the positivist strawman 'Krieger' in the Heidelberg café. Frankly, I loved seeing the thinking mistakes of our times embodied in the bad guys of adventure stories so reading about them acts as something like an immunization. I assume this was your tip of the hat to Tolkien, Lewis, and company and to their fictions, stories which work in much the same way?

I desired to expose these crooked ideas while, as Tolkien might have said, respecting the freedom of readers to reach their own conclusions. I wanted the malignant characters in the story to be more than one-dimensional, even if they were unattractive; in this mission, I struggled as Lewis described struggling with The Screwtape Letters. Like Tolkien, Lewis, and Chesterton, I wanted readers holding different beliefs to be able to ponder and reflect on the ideas in the story, while still enjoying a (hopefully) rousing story. I've studied Husserl and phenomenology, a challenging philosophical system, and I wanted to juxtapose Edith with a spokesman (Krieger) for the Nazi's virulent strain of neo-paganism.

Read the entire interview. For more information about Toward The Gleam, visit the novel's website.