Monthly Archives: April 2015

Public-Personal

Sometimes Reason Must Raise Her Voice

Robert George has a trenchant call for the unity of reasonable people in the face of the torch-and-pitchfork crowd’s endless and irrational animus:

The lynch mob came for the brilliant mild-mannered techie Brendan Eich.
The lynch mob came for the elderly florist Barronelle Stutzman.
The lynch mob came for Eastern Michigan University counseling student Julea Ward.
The lynch mob came for the African-American Fire Chief of once segregated Atlanta Kelvin Cochran.
The lynch mob came for the owners of a local pizza shop the O’Connor family.
[…]
[W]ho if anyone will courageously stand up to the mob? Who will resist? Who will speak truth to its raw and frightening power? Who will refuse to be bullied into submission or intimidated into silence?

(source: Who Will Stand? | Robert P. George | First Things — links added, PGE)

Of course, George knows that shouting futilely at the darkness is not half as effective as shaming the mob.  Nonetheless, it is important to remember that one of the basic features of mob action, of hateful incitement, is the disinhibiting effect–the intoxication–of being one of the crowd, of yielding to passions without restraint or consideration.  This is most intense among mindless people caught up in a stampede of violence, but it is easier when the disinhibiting effect of pleasing the herd is multiplied by the disinhibiting effect of pseudo-anonymous online interaction.

It is also important to understand that nothing about the way the torch-and-pitchfork crowd operates—at every level–suggests any limiting principle to their lawlessness; its only consistent principle is opportunistic nihilism.  As George says:   Continue reading »

Reflections

He is; I do.

Christ is risen!

He is risen, indeed!

So you can be sure it is worth it to live for Him, in a day when so many are dying for Him:

On Friday, during the Via Crucis procession at Rome’s Colosseum, Francis denounced the “complicit silence” of the international community before the massacres of Christians in many parts of the world by Islamic extremists. The latest was the Kenya university attack by al-Qaida-affiliated Somali militants that left nearly 150 people dead, many of them Christians.

(source: Pope presides over Easter Vigil service amid martyr concerns – Yahoo News)

Worth it:   Continue reading »

Quotables

Wooing Young Minds

“To form leaders of faith, to be the places where the Church does her thinking, to fight against the caricature of God proposed by our secular culture, Catholic universities must offer more than ‘Theology Lite,’” Woo wrote. “In all the efforts to define learning goals for a Catholic university, how about ‘to know God’ as a starter?”

It’s a powerful argument, especially from a Catholic leader who is so widely respected. Woo was dean of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business from 1997 to 2011, which earned the top ranking among U.S. business schools during her tenure, and she previously was associate executive vice president for academic affairs at Purdue University. She was the first female to chair the national accrediting association for business schools and has served on numerous corporate and nonprofit boards. Since 2012, Woo has been CEO of Catholic Relief Services (CRS), earning admiration for taking steps to strengthen the agency’s Catholic identity amid concerns from pro-life and Catholic organizations.

(source: Prominent CEO Carolyn Woo Speaks Out for Faithful Catholic Education)

(source: ND Theology Dept.)

The primary task of a Catholic college is to help students come to know God, Woo said. This means that colleges must not stop at simply “hiring for mission”—requiring support for the mission of the college as a condition for employment. Even more, she said, Catholic colleges must strive to be places of genuine Catholic culture where the Catholic identity is woven into the very life of the institution.

“I think hiring for mission is necessary and it means more than just hiring Catholics, as many may not practice nor are committed to mission,” she said. “Hiring for mission means recruiting those who share the commitment to mission and have the ability to contribute to the foundations of faith as a daily, integral institutional reality.”

An integrated Catholic identity is something that must penetrate all aspects of the university, Woo explained, including academics, student life, finance, human resources, development and leadership.

“I think that everyone involved—not just the teachers, but the administration, alumni, and everyone—has a role in saying that this is an approach to life that we buy into,” Woo said. Even non-Christians among the faculty, staff and students can recognize and encourage the immense good that Catholic colleges contribute to society.

(source: Prominent CEO Carolyn Woo Speaks Out for Faithful Catholic Education)

Public-Personal

Kulturkampf is just what it says

You don’t have to be eager for conflict to find that you are in one.  It is folly to believe that all wars are optional, that all deployments of violent rhetoric and forceful means are to be met with anxious soul-searching rather than honest refusal to cave in and kowtow to the mob’s anointed.

So Rod Dreher:

Today’s Indianapolis Star front page uses the headline approach usually reserved for war. Because that’s what this is: culture war, and the mainstream media, as a vital part of the progressive movement, is waging total war for a cause they believe is holy. I’m not exaggerating. To most of the media, there is no other side in the gay marriage debate, or on anything to do with gay rights. There is only Good and Evil. And so we have the spectacle of a moral panic that makes a party that is a chief beneficiary of the First Amendment — a newspaper — taking unprecedented steps to suppress a party that is the other chief beneficiary of the First Amendment: religious dissenters. In my experience, it is impossible to overstate how sacred this cause is to American elites, especially journalists.

If you thought this was ever about fairness, justice, tolerance, or reason, you now ought to have had your eyes opened.

(source: Indiana: The Holy War of the Left | The American Conservative)

It is always unwise to ignore how much our culture owes to the totalitarianism envisioned by Bismarck and his enablers, the likes of Virchow.  Kulturkampf was originally a specific phase of German politics, but it was always a deliberate “war of choice,” an intentional violence of the regime against the Church and her faithful.

(source: rbb Prussia Chronicle | Image: The end of the Kulturkampf)

It is easy to get “separation of Church and State” if you really want it:  Continue reading »

Reflections

Stand and Wait

The painter Salvador Dalí had a particular attachment to Millet’s The Angelus, and he also had a premonition about it. He saw in the shape of its figures and the hue of its light a scene of mourning, not just work and prayer. This was not a widely accepted interpretation until, sure enough, the Louvre had the painting examined by x-ray, and the outline of a child’s coffin could be seen under the basket of potatoes. The steeple in the distance, too, was a late addition.

We don’t know why Millet replaced a burial with the Angelus; perhaps, simply, it would make the canvas more sellable to the pious. But Dalí’s insight, and the revelation that followed, implies a certain continuity between ordinary mortality and the prayer, which thwarts the work-day’s ruse to either mechanize or aggrandize us. It announces that the worker is still, and will insist on remaining, human.

(source: The Angelus at Work | America Magazine)

Dali’s interpretation of Millet:

(source: Archeological Reminiscence of Millet’s “Angelus”)

We must work the works of him who sent me, while it is day; night comes, when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.

(source: John 9 RSVCE)

Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation; the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.

(source: Mark 14 RSVCE)