As if we need more evidence that anti-Catholicism is "the last acceptable prejudice," here comes local bigot Robin Kip Speckels again with another ill-informed, half-baked spew of vomitous hatred, courtesy of the local rag. I've written about Speckels before, the last time he decided to vent his bigotry and the local rag decided to help him, and I'm pretty sure this is the last time I will waste any energy on someone who is so obviously poisoned by his own unreasoning biases.
But you never know.
Anyhow, here's the latest. Hold your nose.
Catholicism deceives, seduces
By Robin Kip Speckels
Sioux Falls
PUBLISHED: October 15, 2007
n a Sept. 4 response letter to the Argus Leader, Michael Wensing of Brookings accused me of deliberately misunderstanding Catholic theology and traditions. For the past 10 years, I have learned all I need to know about Catholicism and its unbiblical teachings, which are too numerous to go into detail. I'm not misunderstanding anything.
I am, however, very deliberate in my attempt to unmask what is perhaps the most deceptive and seductive religious system in the world, a system which operates under the ruse of Christianity. Roman Catholicism didn't even exist until after 300 A.D. under the Roman emperor Constantine, who worshiped the sun god and was actually the first pope - not Peter. Sure, they printed Bibles, but the problem is that over the centuries, they have taken the liberty of elevating their own teachings above Scripture. This is called heresy.
Wensing claims that the Catholic Church treasures the Bible. Why then do they dishonor it by making graven images and genuflecting (kneeling) before them? It's the same thing as bowing down and is a blatant violation of the Second Commandment. Why do they pray to Mary and many other "saints" as mediators when the Bible says that Jesus is the only mediator? (1 Timothy 2:5) And what about praying the rosary, which is a vain repetition, something Jesus said not to do? (Matthew 6:7)
Catholicism isn't about Jesus Christ. It's about the Virgin Mary, whom, interestingly, the church hails as "Queen of Heaven and Earth." God condemns the worship of such a queen. (Jeremiah 44:17) I do not hate Catholics, and it isn't my intent to offend or anger them. I simply want to urge them to take a serious look at the things they've been taught in light of the Scriptures.
And now the old, old problem: Where to begin? These bigots invariably follow the same tack, viz., throw as much crap as you possibly can, making it nigh well impossible to sort it all out for any kind of reasoned refutation. But gamely we soldier on...
For starters, there's always that beloved phrase, "I have learned all I need to know..." Speckels would have us believe he has made a decade-long study of Catholicism and come to an informed conclusion. But his diatribe indicates quite the opposite, for if he had in fact pursued any reliable (un-bigoted) sources, he would not be promulgating his half-truths and outright untruths. One can but conclude, therefore, that Speckels has spent the past decade wallowing in such literary gems as support his anti-Catholic prejudice, and now having sufficiently coated himself in muck has pronounced his "education" at an end. He (I think: the byline gives no clue as to gender) knows all he needs to know. Facts will only get in the way.
Of course, Speckels's claim that Catholicism "didn't even exist until after 300 A.D. under the Roman emperor Constantine" is just silly, as is his assertion that Constantine "worshiped the sun god and was actually the first pope." The roots of Catholicism go back to the earliest days of Christianity, and have been growing and evolving ever since. I haven't the foggiest idea whether or not Constantine ever worshiped the sun god, but even if he did that hardly repudiates his conversion to Christianity: With the exception of the Jews who followed Christ, nearly all early converts to Christianity had been pagans. Anyhow, Constantine's importance in legitimizing Christianity can't be overstated...unless you announce that he was "actually the first pope." He was neither first, nor any pope at all. There was an eighth-century pope by the same name, but I'm pretty sure he was a different person altogether, unless Constantine lived to be well over 500 years old. As far as "who's on first"--well, since the pope is the spiritual leader of the Roman Catholic Church, it seems to me that it's up to the RCC, and not Speckel, to decide who their first leader was. If they say it was Peter, then it was Peter. If they say it was Superman's Pal Jimmy Olson, then it was Superman's Pal Jimmy Olson.
Part of Speckel's problem undoubtedly lies in the fact that Catholic tradition is built on a biblical foundation but also believes in the ongoing revelation of the Holy Spirit to guide the church on earth. In other words, the Bible is where you start. We believe that this ongoing revelation comes via the teaching authority of the church, at whose earthly head is the pope. I suspect that Speckels is of a fundamentalist bent, and those folks seem to cling to a belief that God wrote the Bible one day and everything--all thought, all reason, all discovery--froze at that point. And so naturally he would label anything else "heresy." Just as I would label his point of view "foolishness."
Speaking of foolishness: Are we really still hung up on that "graven images" nonsense? When was the last time (or the first) that Speckels was actually in a Catholic church? Certainly, some of the older churches are replete with statuary, but only an imbecile still clings to the belief that Catholics worship or even revere statues. If Speckels had indeed made the deep study of Catholicism that he implies, he would know that Catholics do not genuflect to any statue but rather to what we consider to be the true presence of Christ in the consecrated elements of Holy Communion, which are stored in a tabernacle, which traditionally rests upon the main altar or, in some churches, a side altar. It is true that there often is a crucifix above the main altar, and that there may be a statue of Mary or Joseph near or above a side altar, but that's coincidental. The reverence is being shown to Christ, not to any "graven image." Good grief.
Likewise, had Speckels studied anything that didn't serve to reinforce his hatred of Catholics, he would know that careful Catholics do not "pray to saints"; admittedly, we will say, somewhat colloquially, "better say a prayer to St. Anthony" or words to that effect, but a careful Catholic--and anyone who knows anything about Catholic teachings--will know that (as a priest friend of mine at the alma mater put it all those years ago) "Catholics do not pray to the saints; Catholics asks the saints to pray with us." In other words, my praying "to" St. Jude (patron saint of hopeless causes and therefore a longtime favorite of mine) is in fact my asking him to pray for and with me, just as I might well ask a friend to remember me in prayer if I am going through a difficult time. Catholics believe in eternity, therefore asking St. Jude for prayers is no different than asking your next-door neighbor for same.
I won't fall into Speckel's trap of cherry-picking Bible verses to "prove" his distortions are biblically ordained "truths," but it can't pass uncommented that his condemnations of Catholic practices depends on his first misinterpreting what Catholicism teaches and practices and then condemning that misinterpretation. So he says we pray to saints (untrue) and then condemns that--which might have merit, were the original charge true. It's the same as saying, blue-eyed men beat their wives; wife-beating is a crime; therefore blue-eyed men are criminals. B is true; A and C are lies. As is Speckel's pronouncement that "Catholicism isn't about Jesus Christ. It's about the Virgin Mary." Huh. News to me. Certainly Mary holds a special place of honor in the Catholic church, but anyone who had bothered to study the faith--or even just read the liturgy of the Mass--could not conclude that it's "about" Mary, whatever poetic honorifics are given her. Again, he sets out a lie as if it's truth, and then attacks the lie.
And then--and you gotta love this--he says, "I do not hate Catholics, and it isn't my intent to offend or anger them." Hah! Give it up, man! There is absolutely no reason whatsoever to craft a letter such as this unless your heart is filled with hate AND you want to spread it around. The vague balderdash about wanting "to urge them to take a serious look at the things they've been taught" is, well, balderdash, since obviously he can't be bothered to take such a look. His aim is to spread his poisonous bigotry.
At which point we must also look askance at the local rag. One hates to be all "victim-y," but one can't help but wonder if the rag would publish such a letter if its target was, say, Judaism, or Islam. Would not the editors see it for what it is--smearing a major religion--and shelve it rather than be complicit in spreading lies? And please don't hide behind that loaded word "censorship": For a newspaper to decline to publish a hatemongering letter is not censorshipl it is exercising editorial judgment. Indeed, I should imagine that most daily newspapers receive far more letters than they publish. Are the unpublished letters the victims of "censorship"? Of course not. The rag is under no obligation to print anyone's letter, ever...and one could cry "censorship" only if there were no other avenues to express one's skewed point of view. But there is nothing stopping Speckels from spreading his venom through other sources: He can blog, he can print flyers--hell, he can publish his own newspaper.
So obviously the local rag has decided to lend itself to this kind of bigotry, presumably in the belief that controversy sells newspapers. Its editors, then, are every bit as complicit as Speckels in their anti-Catholic bigotry.
The last acceptable prejudice, after all.
Monday, October 15, 2007
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Conservatives' Hatred
Note that that's Conservatives' with an apostrophe on the end, making it possessive, 'cause the question is about their bottomless and abiding hatred for certain people, a hatred that burns with a cold and permanent flame.
I appreciate the irony of such people, who spend a lot of time crowing about what fabulous "Christians" they are and insisting that they represent family values and moral superiority and blah-blah-blah, being stuck in permanent-hate mode, contrary to the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, whom they purport to think highly of, but that's neither here nor there.
The springboard for my musings is the would-be-comical-if-it-weren't-so-dangerous outpouring of bile and vitriol from right-wingnuts in the wake of Al Gore's winning the Nobel Prize. I commented the other day on the by-now-typical ramping up of the Conservative Smear Machine to not only hurl mud in the direction of the former vice-president but also, and mainly, to try to discredit the Nobel Prize itself. Imagine! You take an organization that for decades has been honored and revered for promoting peace (and science and literature and all that other crap) by itself recognizing people and institutions that are, you know, trying to help people...and you denigrate and ridicule and smear it when they honor the contribution of someone you don't like.
Rather, someone you hate.
What is this--junior high?
In the course of it, you (via your mouthpiece, Faux News) also take advantage of the opportunity to smear a former President of the United States and Nobel Prize recipient as "that crazy Jimmy Carter," which shows great depth of character and carefully reasoned political analysis.
(An aside: This summer, at one of my kids' events, I overheard another dad complaining to his teenager about Al Franken. He was feigning disgust over Franken's having written a book called Rush Limbaugh Is an Idiot, and pretending to be morally outraged that Franken (read: a liberal) would say something so hurtful about another human being (read: a conservative), and generally indicating that that proved liberals were evil and conservatives were high-road victims. I was tempted to turn around and point out two things: First, the title of the book is Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot (and Other Political Observations); and, second, that Rush Limbaugh is a big fat idiot. But I resisted the urge, remembering the advice of my father: "Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time, and it annoys the pig.")
Where was I? Oh, yes--morally superior "Christians'" hatred for, well, all kinds of people.
A year or so ago when Emilio Estevez's film Bobby was in release, my wife mentioned in conversation to a friend that she would like to see it. "Not me," the friend snapped. "Those Kennedys are a completely corrupt family." Yikes! Not "I never liked that Bobby Kennedy" or "I think Bobby Kennedy was a phony"; nope the whole family gets tarred as "corrupt."
And why? See, that's what I keep puzzling over--not that right-wingnut "Christians" carry these bucketloads of hatred and venom with them everywhere they go--but why they hate so much, and so deeply, and so widely, and so everlastingly.
They hate FDR. They hate JFK, of course, and RFK, and, apparently, the whole famn-damily, including, I presume, Kennedys who haven't even been born yet. They hate Clinton, both Clintons, all three Clintons (and I recall some truly repugnant things a certain Big Fat Idiot had to say about then-teenager Chelsea Clinton back in the day--a warm-up, apparently, for the right-wingnut "Christians'" current smear campaign against a twelve-year-old kid). Apparently they've begun to hate Jimmy Carter.
And they hate Al Gore like you wouldn't believe.
I've always suspected there was a certain element of jealousy at play, coupled with a subconscious, even subliminal suspicion that the object of vitriol might, just might, have a few things right and thus is to be reviled all the more. Jonathan Chait, writing in yesterday's Los Angeles Times, has a good handle on the Gore thing:
You might wonder why they care so much -- Gore, after all, is obviously not going to run for president, and even some conservatives now concede that global warming is real. The answer is that Gore's triumph is a measure of George W. Bush's disrepute.
Ah, yes--a certain element of jealousy, as I had always suspected. But Chait does an excellent job of measuring conservatives' hatred of Gore against the obvious failure of their darling, George W. Bush:
It's not an accident that the current celebrations of Gore come at a time when Bush's popularity has cratered. Once conservatives mocked Gore as the radical tribune of a tiny political fringe; now it is they who represent the fringe.
Their argument with Gore over global warming is a telling indicator of their weakened position. Suddenly, open debate looks better than absolute clarity. Steven F. Hayward, a global warming skeptic at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, sniffed: "The Nobel will be one more quiver in Gore's arsenal of intransigent moral authority by which he refuses to debate any aspect of the subject and declares the entire matter 'settled.' It's never a good sign when politicians declare a scientific matter settled; we all remember how well that worked out for the Vatican when they told Galileo 400 years ago that astronomy was settled."
So Gore can't declare that any scientific matter is settled? (What about the Earth revolves around the sun -- would that offend conservatives?) Funny what happens when it's your views that are out of the mainstream.
The defensiveness of Gore's critics comes because he is the ultimate rebuke to Bush. Gore, obviously, is the great historic counter-factual, the man who would have been president if Florida had a functioning ballot system. More than that, he is the anti-Bush. He is intellectual and introverted, while Bush is simplistic and backslapping.
Read the whole editorial here.
Of course, Chait's essay still leaves me with the question of why these morally superior "Christians" hate so many other people (see above in re). But I suspect the answers are probably much the same--they hate Clinton and Carter and everyone with the name Kennedy and FDR and probably Fala, too, because they have some vague inkling, some uncomfortable twinge in the brain-stem, that reminds them that maybe, just maybe someone from the "wrong" side of the spectrum has something of value to contribute, has something helpful to say, has an idea that might be--gulp!--right.
And that threatens them. In their small-minded, fear-driven world, everything is and must always be black or white, right or wrong, yes or no. There can be no ambiguities, no compromise: that makes things gray and gray is scary. And so if you disagree with them--even if you're only twelve years old--then you're the devil and must be destroyed at all costs.
This, I think, is part of the reason you don't detect this kind of hatemongering on the left end of the political spectrum. It's fair to say that we lefties have certain individuals whom we love to hate--the current tenant on Pennsylvania Avenue being one of them; Karl Rove, Ken Starr, Richard Nixon being a few others--but our list is pretty short, and pretty narrow (we might have hated Nixon, for instance, but we didn't extend that to Pat and Tricia and Julie, branding the whole clan as "corrupt"), and awfully watery (we may have hated Nixon at the time, but by his death it had degenerated into a strong dislike; certainly none of us will be ranting about him 40 years after his demise, and right-wingnuts continue to do about JFK).
So our brand of "hatred" is pretty thin compared to our morally superior family-values "Christian" friends on the right.
And--hmmm--we liberals tend not to go around trumpeting what swell "Christians" we are, either--even those of us who actually believe in God and try to follow Jesus' teachings and go to church and so on (and, yes, we do exist, as do conservative atheists). Interesting, no? Stay tuned for a future musing on my observations on that score, tentatively titled, "Dear Jesus, Save Us from Your Followers."
I appreciate the irony of such people, who spend a lot of time crowing about what fabulous "Christians" they are and insisting that they represent family values and moral superiority and blah-blah-blah, being stuck in permanent-hate mode, contrary to the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, whom they purport to think highly of, but that's neither here nor there.
The springboard for my musings is the would-be-comical-if-it-weren't-so-dangerous outpouring of bile and vitriol from right-wingnuts in the wake of Al Gore's winning the Nobel Prize. I commented the other day on the by-now-typical ramping up of the Conservative Smear Machine to not only hurl mud in the direction of the former vice-president but also, and mainly, to try to discredit the Nobel Prize itself. Imagine! You take an organization that for decades has been honored and revered for promoting peace (and science and literature and all that other crap) by itself recognizing people and institutions that are, you know, trying to help people...and you denigrate and ridicule and smear it when they honor the contribution of someone you don't like.
Rather, someone you hate.
What is this--junior high?
In the course of it, you (via your mouthpiece, Faux News) also take advantage of the opportunity to smear a former President of the United States and Nobel Prize recipient as "that crazy Jimmy Carter," which shows great depth of character and carefully reasoned political analysis.
(An aside: This summer, at one of my kids' events, I overheard another dad complaining to his teenager about Al Franken. He was feigning disgust over Franken's having written a book called Rush Limbaugh Is an Idiot, and pretending to be morally outraged that Franken (read: a liberal) would say something so hurtful about another human being (read: a conservative), and generally indicating that that proved liberals were evil and conservatives were high-road victims. I was tempted to turn around and point out two things: First, the title of the book is Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot (and Other Political Observations); and, second, that Rush Limbaugh is a big fat idiot. But I resisted the urge, remembering the advice of my father: "Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time, and it annoys the pig.")
Where was I? Oh, yes--morally superior "Christians'" hatred for, well, all kinds of people.
A year or so ago when Emilio Estevez's film Bobby was in release, my wife mentioned in conversation to a friend that she would like to see it. "Not me," the friend snapped. "Those Kennedys are a completely corrupt family." Yikes! Not "I never liked that Bobby Kennedy" or "I think Bobby Kennedy was a phony"; nope the whole family gets tarred as "corrupt."
And why? See, that's what I keep puzzling over--not that right-wingnut "Christians" carry these bucketloads of hatred and venom with them everywhere they go--but why they hate so much, and so deeply, and so widely, and so everlastingly.
They hate FDR. They hate JFK, of course, and RFK, and, apparently, the whole famn-damily, including, I presume, Kennedys who haven't even been born yet. They hate Clinton, both Clintons, all three Clintons (and I recall some truly repugnant things a certain Big Fat Idiot had to say about then-teenager Chelsea Clinton back in the day--a warm-up, apparently, for the right-wingnut "Christians'" current smear campaign against a twelve-year-old kid). Apparently they've begun to hate Jimmy Carter.
And they hate Al Gore like you wouldn't believe.
I've always suspected there was a certain element of jealousy at play, coupled with a subconscious, even subliminal suspicion that the object of vitriol might, just might, have a few things right and thus is to be reviled all the more. Jonathan Chait, writing in yesterday's Los Angeles Times, has a good handle on the Gore thing:
You might wonder why they care so much -- Gore, after all, is obviously not going to run for president, and even some conservatives now concede that global warming is real. The answer is that Gore's triumph is a measure of George W. Bush's disrepute.
Ah, yes--a certain element of jealousy, as I had always suspected. But Chait does an excellent job of measuring conservatives' hatred of Gore against the obvious failure of their darling, George W. Bush:
It's not an accident that the current celebrations of Gore come at a time when Bush's popularity has cratered. Once conservatives mocked Gore as the radical tribune of a tiny political fringe; now it is they who represent the fringe.
Their argument with Gore over global warming is a telling indicator of their weakened position. Suddenly, open debate looks better than absolute clarity. Steven F. Hayward, a global warming skeptic at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, sniffed: "The Nobel will be one more quiver in Gore's arsenal of intransigent moral authority by which he refuses to debate any aspect of the subject and declares the entire matter 'settled.' It's never a good sign when politicians declare a scientific matter settled; we all remember how well that worked out for the Vatican when they told Galileo 400 years ago that astronomy was settled."
So Gore can't declare that any scientific matter is settled? (What about the Earth revolves around the sun -- would that offend conservatives?) Funny what happens when it's your views that are out of the mainstream.
The defensiveness of Gore's critics comes because he is the ultimate rebuke to Bush. Gore, obviously, is the great historic counter-factual, the man who would have been president if Florida had a functioning ballot system. More than that, he is the anti-Bush. He is intellectual and introverted, while Bush is simplistic and backslapping.
Read the whole editorial here.
Of course, Chait's essay still leaves me with the question of why these morally superior "Christians" hate so many other people (see above in re). But I suspect the answers are probably much the same--they hate Clinton and Carter and everyone with the name Kennedy and FDR and probably Fala, too, because they have some vague inkling, some uncomfortable twinge in the brain-stem, that reminds them that maybe, just maybe someone from the "wrong" side of the spectrum has something of value to contribute, has something helpful to say, has an idea that might be--gulp!--right.
And that threatens them. In their small-minded, fear-driven world, everything is and must always be black or white, right or wrong, yes or no. There can be no ambiguities, no compromise: that makes things gray and gray is scary. And so if you disagree with them--even if you're only twelve years old--then you're the devil and must be destroyed at all costs.
This, I think, is part of the reason you don't detect this kind of hatemongering on the left end of the political spectrum. It's fair to say that we lefties have certain individuals whom we love to hate--the current tenant on Pennsylvania Avenue being one of them; Karl Rove, Ken Starr, Richard Nixon being a few others--but our list is pretty short, and pretty narrow (we might have hated Nixon, for instance, but we didn't extend that to Pat and Tricia and Julie, branding the whole clan as "corrupt"), and awfully watery (we may have hated Nixon at the time, but by his death it had degenerated into a strong dislike; certainly none of us will be ranting about him 40 years after his demise, and right-wingnuts continue to do about JFK).
So our brand of "hatred" is pretty thin compared to our morally superior family-values "Christian" friends on the right.
And--hmmm--we liberals tend not to go around trumpeting what swell "Christians" we are, either--even those of us who actually believe in God and try to follow Jesus' teachings and go to church and so on (and, yes, we do exist, as do conservative atheists). Interesting, no? Stay tuned for a future musing on my observations on that score, tentatively titled, "Dear Jesus, Save Us from Your Followers."
Saturday, October 13, 2007
Al Gore
Of course, Faux News wasted no time in smearing Al Gore's Nobel Prize award (in typical right-wingnut fashion, they slung mud not only at the former vice-president but also at the Nobel Prize Committee in general, for, among other things, having previously awarded the Peace Prize to "that crazy Jimmy Carter"), but that's to be expected: As the Propaganda Ministry for the GOP, Faux News's mission is to disseminate lies and vitriol against anyone The Government deems an Undesirable--former presidents, former vice-presidents, twelve-year-old kids, anyone who voices a contrary point of view, etc.
Meanwhile, here's this little bit of sanity from Talking Points Memo:
On Gore
Nicely done, John Marshall. Expect to be smeared on Faux News in the next day or two.
Meanwhile, here's this little bit of sanity from Talking Points Memo:
On Gore
10.12.07 -- 10:05AM
By Josh Marshall First, before any other yapping and commentary, a big congratulations to Al Gore.
There are several layers of irony and poetic justice wrapped into this honor. The first is that the greatest step for world peace would simply have been for Gore not to have had the presidency stolen from him in November 2000. By every just measure, Gore won the presidency in 2000 only to have George W. Bush steal it from him with the critical assistance of the US Supreme Court. It's worth taking a few moments today to consider where the country and world would be without that original sin of this corrupt presidency.
And yet this is a fitting bookend, with Gore receiving this accolade while the sitting president grows daily an object of greater disapproval, disapprobation and collective shame. And let's not discount another benefit: watching the rump of the American right detail the liberal bias of the Nobel Committee and at this point I guess the entire world. Fox News vs. the world.
And not to forget what this award is about even more than Gore. If half of what we think we know about global warming is true, people will look back fifty years from now on the claims that "War on Terror" was the defining challenge of this century and see it as a very sick, sad joke -- which rather sums up the Bush presidency.
But more than thinking only of what might have been, where can we go from here?
Nicely done, John Marshall. Expect to be smeared on Faux News in the next day or two.
Sunday, October 07, 2007
Take THAT, You Scoundrel!
Last week I got this e-mail, ostensibly from Senator Harry Reid, via the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (whose motto is Send Us Money-- oh, no wait, it's Committed to Electing a Democratic Senate. Sorry. The constant click-here-to-send-us-more-money-to-make-TV-ads-that-no-one-watches links threw me):
Wow. Pretty hard-hitting stuff, huh? I mean, all these Democratic Senators ganging up on the poor defenseless CEO of Clear Channel and--gulp!--demanding an apology! Jeepers. And then, their bloodlust running high, they further demand he make Limbaugh apologize too! It's almost hard to watch, isn't it? Have these Senators no mercy? Can't they find it in their hearts to let these poor schmucks up off the mat?
Well, look, I like an insincere apology as much as the next guy, but I'd really much rather see the Democrats in Congress try, you know, doing something for a change, and so I sent the following reply to Senator Reid, or whoever actually reads these things, if in fact anyone does:
Of course, any such saber-rattling on the part of the Democrats in Congress would produce exactly the same effect as all their saber-rattling over the war in Iraq, the president's various abuses of power, the torture of political prisoners, the vetoing of SCHIP, etc.--viz., nothing at all--but at least it's a higher level of saber-rattling, no? Demanding apologies...good grief. Apologize or what--a duel? Get real.
Anyhow, no word yet from the DSCC or Senator Reid. Any minute now, though, I'm sure.
- Subject: Rush Limbaugh
Dear William,
I normally ignore Rush Limbaugh, but his comments last Wednesday went too far for me to remain silent. It's one thing to call me "Dingy Harry" - it's another to insult our men and women in uniform, calling those who oppose the war "phony soldiers" as Rush did during his Sept. 26 broadcast.
Of course, Rush continued his tirade Monday by denying he had said anything wrong and attacking John Murtha, who served 37 years in the Marines.
This week, 41 Democrats signed a letter to Clear Channel CEO Mark Mays, demanding that Rush apologize.
You can send your own letter to Mays by clicking here.
In December 2006, a poll run by the Military Times found that only 35 percent of service members approved of President Bush's handling of the war in Iraq. Would Rush consider every other Soldier, Sailor, Airman and Marine to be phony? What about General John Batiste who retired from active duty in order to speak out against this war?
Rush has the courage to sit behind a microphone and lash out at those who oppose George Bush's misadventure in Iraq - yet when it was his time to serve, he received a deferment and has never worn a uniform.
Limbaugh's show is broadcast on Armed Forces Radio, and therefore service members around the world heard his insults. It's time for Clear Channel to make Rush apologize.
Demand that Clear Channel CEO Mark Mays take action by clicking here. Rush certainly has the right to say whatever he wants - but we have an obligation to speak out when he goes too far.
Thank you,
Harry Reid
Wow. Pretty hard-hitting stuff, huh? I mean, all these Democratic Senators ganging up on the poor defenseless CEO of Clear Channel and--gulp!--demanding an apology! Jeepers. And then, their bloodlust running high, they further demand he make Limbaugh apologize too! It's almost hard to watch, isn't it? Have these Senators no mercy? Can't they find it in their hearts to let these poor schmucks up off the mat?
Well, look, I like an insincere apology as much as the next guy, but I'd really much rather see the Democrats in Congress try, you know, doing something for a change, and so I sent the following reply to Senator Reid, or whoever actually reads these things, if in fact anyone does:
- Dear Senator Reid,
I would rather see the Democrats in the Senate put their weight behind taking Limbaugh off of Armed Forces Radio. For years now I have listened to conservatives complain about being "forced" to contribute, via taxes, to the National Endowment for the Arts, which sometimes has funded projects and artists they consider "offensive." Well, I consider the poisonous, hatemongering lies spewed by Rush Limbaugh to be "offensive," and, borrowing from our conservative friends' playbook, I'm annoyed that my tax dollars are being used to support his insults against American soldiers.
I encourage you and the other Democratic members of Congress to, instead of trying to wring empty apologies out of corporate toadies, cut to the heart of things and do something about Limbaugh, namely, kick him off of Armed Forces Radio.
Sincerely,
William J Reynolds
Of course, any such saber-rattling on the part of the Democrats in Congress would produce exactly the same effect as all their saber-rattling over the war in Iraq, the president's various abuses of power, the torture of political prisoners, the vetoing of SCHIP, etc.--viz., nothing at all--but at least it's a higher level of saber-rattling, no? Demanding apologies...good grief. Apologize or what--a duel? Get real.
Anyhow, no word yet from the DSCC or Senator Reid. Any minute now, though, I'm sure.
Tuesday, October 02, 2007
Who?
You know how Amazon.com sends you those you-might-be-interested messages, using your past buying habits to determine other things you might want to buy? A pretty clever notion, marketingwise, but as is so often the case, the best-laid schemes gang aft agley.
Our case in point: The following, which arrived today from my friendly bookseller:
Well, that's all well and good. Obviously, my friends at Amazon.com know that I have purchased books like JLA: Liberty and Justice, written by Paul Dini and illustrated by the always-excellent Alex Ross, or Dini and Ross's Batman: War on Crime with its truly breathtaking images (nothing against Dini, but it's Ross's stuff I'm buying these books for), and so they consider it logical that I might be interested in The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century by Alex Ross.
And so I might. But not for the reason they think. This is a completely different Alex Ross.
Oops.
There's Alex Ross the illustrator, who has worked with the writer Paul Dini and others. And there's Alex Ross the New Yorker music critic, who's written The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, a volume which, I have on good authority, features no super-heroes.
Here, incidentally, is an illustration by the former:
Well, these things happen, obviously. Some years ago, when I was actively writing books, I felt some consternation over Books in Print's habit of lumping together authors with the same or similar names in its listings. So it was that I had several people express considerable surprise at "discovering" that I was the author not only of a handful of private-eye novels but also of such entries as Companion to Baptist Hymnal and Songs of Glory: Stories of 300 Great Hymns and Gospel Songs.
Those who know me know how unlikely it is that I produced those two titles...to say nothing of A Joyful Sound: Christian Hymnody, also credited to "me." For of course there was another William J. Reynolds floating around out there (and he may still be, would I trouble myself to investigate). Would it be difficult to tell us apart? The "other" is a Southern Baptist minister born in 1920; I am neither of those things. But I suppose in the long run it's easier that I (and, for all I know, he) keep explaining that there is another fellow of the same moniker than to have Books in Print keep us straight. Easier for Books in Print, I mean.
Those who know me might also know that I am a "junior," but never use that appellation. It's never seemed necessary. Sure, there's sometimes some confusion, but no more so than between me and Pastor Reynolds. Occasionally there will be some odd quirk--my local public library, when I moved back to town 20-odd years ago, insisted on appending "Jr." to my file, the librarian "helping" me seemingly flummoxed by the fact that my father and I have exactly the same name! (She must have been aware of the phenomenon, however, since she was the one who came up with the "Jr." solution.) I pointed out that my father and I have different dates of birth, addresses, telephone numbers, and other vital statistics...but no. She couldn't get her head around the notion that there was already another William J. Reynolds in the system and now here comes another one!
I wish I had had the idea to ask her what she would do if the "other" and I were not related--if the "other" had been, say, Pastor Reynolds of hymnody fame. Would one of us have had to, effectively, change his name in that case, too?
So I'm in the Siouxland Libraries system as "William J. Reynolds Jr.", which, ironically, causes problems for the Siouxland Libraries system, since it obviously was not built to handle a suffix. (The suffix the librarian made me adopt!) And so when the electronic voice calls to tell me I have something overdue or available on hold, it tells my answering machine that it has "a message for William J. J.R. Reynolds. William J. J. R. Reynolds has one items overdue," etc. (The electronic voice has trouble with subject-verb agreement too.)
Which always makes me chuckle. If only that librarian had listened to me 20 years ago!
Good think the Alex Rosses don't live in the same town.
Our case in point: The following, which arrived today from my friendly bookseller:
William J Reynolds,
As someone who has purchased or rated books by Paul Dini, you might like to know that The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century will be released on October 16, 2007. You can pre-order yours at a savings of $10.20 by following the link below.
 | The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century Alex Ross
Release Date: October 16, 2007  |
Well, that's all well and good. Obviously, my friends at Amazon.com know that I have purchased books like JLA: Liberty and Justice, written by Paul Dini and illustrated by the always-excellent Alex Ross, or Dini and Ross's Batman: War on Crime with its truly breathtaking images (nothing against Dini, but it's Ross's stuff I'm buying these books for), and so they consider it logical that I might be interested in The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century by Alex Ross.
And so I might. But not for the reason they think. This is a completely different Alex Ross.
Oops.
There's Alex Ross the illustrator, who has worked with the writer Paul Dini and others. And there's Alex Ross the New Yorker music critic, who's written The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, a volume which, I have on good authority, features no super-heroes.
Here, incidentally, is an illustration by the former:
Well, these things happen, obviously. Some years ago, when I was actively writing books, I felt some consternation over Books in Print's habit of lumping together authors with the same or similar names in its listings. So it was that I had several people express considerable surprise at "discovering" that I was the author not only of a handful of private-eye novels but also of such entries as Companion to Baptist Hymnal and Songs of Glory: Stories of 300 Great Hymns and Gospel Songs.Those who know me know how unlikely it is that I produced those two titles...to say nothing of A Joyful Sound: Christian Hymnody, also credited to "me." For of course there was another William J. Reynolds floating around out there (and he may still be, would I trouble myself to investigate). Would it be difficult to tell us apart? The "other" is a Southern Baptist minister born in 1920; I am neither of those things. But I suppose in the long run it's easier that I (and, for all I know, he) keep explaining that there is another fellow of the same moniker than to have Books in Print keep us straight. Easier for Books in Print, I mean.
Those who know me might also know that I am a "junior," but never use that appellation. It's never seemed necessary. Sure, there's sometimes some confusion, but no more so than between me and Pastor Reynolds. Occasionally there will be some odd quirk--my local public library, when I moved back to town 20-odd years ago, insisted on appending "Jr." to my file, the librarian "helping" me seemingly flummoxed by the fact that my father and I have exactly the same name! (She must have been aware of the phenomenon, however, since she was the one who came up with the "Jr." solution.) I pointed out that my father and I have different dates of birth, addresses, telephone numbers, and other vital statistics...but no. She couldn't get her head around the notion that there was already another William J. Reynolds in the system and now here comes another one!
I wish I had had the idea to ask her what she would do if the "other" and I were not related--if the "other" had been, say, Pastor Reynolds of hymnody fame. Would one of us have had to, effectively, change his name in that case, too?
So I'm in the Siouxland Libraries system as "William J. Reynolds Jr.", which, ironically, causes problems for the Siouxland Libraries system, since it obviously was not built to handle a suffix. (The suffix the librarian made me adopt!) And so when the electronic voice calls to tell me I have something overdue or available on hold, it tells my answering machine that it has "a message for William J. J.R. Reynolds. William J. J. R. Reynolds has one items overdue," etc. (The electronic voice has trouble with subject-verb agreement too.)
Which always makes me chuckle. If only that librarian had listened to me 20 years ago!
Good think the Alex Rosses don't live in the same town.
Saturday, September 08, 2007
Getting Edjacated
Although my kids (and my wife, who is a teacher, and even me, who is again teaching this semester at Southeast Technical Institute) have been back in school for three weeks now, most school districts, it seems drag their feet until after Labor Day, meaning that we are now inundated with after-the-fact back-to-school stuff--"news," ads, helpful tips, etc.
What always strikes me about these items is their negative tenor. Here's a recent opening line from an e-mail newsletter I subscribe to: "By now, most kids have (begrudgingly) headed back to the classroom to begin a new year of learning. Most parents have begun their silent celebrations for reclaiming their homes."
You see that sort of attitude repeated all over: Kids hate school, going back to school is a chore; parents hate their kids, getting the kids out from underfoot is a blessing.
As they say--what sort of message does this send?
Truth is, my kids have always looked forward to the start of school. I remember a few summers ago, heading toward the swimming pool at a park in our neighborhood, when the kids got to the corner where we crossed on the way to their elementary school...and they turned to head toward school. We pointed out to them that we were in fact heading the other direction, toward the pool. And they both expressed a lament that school was out, and began calculating the days left before it started.
(My wife is sometimes less enthusiastic. I have occasionally said that we need to find a way to get the kids back in school a week or two before the teachers. Still working on that one.)
The negativity expressed by the various media toward schooling undermines, I think, the importance of education. It teaches kids--and parents--that kids should dislike school, that parents should dislike having their kids around, that school is a chore, a drudgery, a drag. It erodes respect for the institution, it signals that kids who like school (a majority, in my unscientific observation) are abnormal ("weird")--and since the last thing school-age kids want is to be "weird," they quickly adopt that I-hate-school attitude. And the whole thing spirals downward.
Much the same can be said of the resolutely unfunny "comic" strip Mallard Fillmore, with its constant denigration of public education. Sure, some public schools are in bad shape. But in slavish lock-step with the right-wingnut philosophy seeks to dismantle the education system that, in large measure, has made America great, the strip's "creator" (in quotation marks because I've yet to see any creativity evinced in the strip: the guy is simply a shill, a dittohead) tars all public education with the "bad" brush, spreading the message that, by definition, all public schools are inept, corrupt, and a waste of money.
That's the point, of course: Wealthy white right-wingnuts object to having to spend tax dollars to educate unwealthy nonwhite kids. (Well, they object to having to pay any taxes at all, but that's another issue.) So they seek to undermine the system, convince everybody--most important, those who benefit from the system!--that it's "bad" and must be "fixed," i.e., done away with. Witness ye No Child Left Behind: You set artificial test standards for schools to pass--which means some schools will not pass--and then you take money away from those schools if they fail to meet the artificial standard. Fascinating...you penalize schools that are already hurting.
And then you come back and say, "See? We always told you that public education is a crock."
And then a bunch of kids say, "Yeah, what do we need this crappy school for, anyway?"
And then they drop out, and take a down-spiraling minimum-wage job, and live unexamined lives in which they never, ever think critically about--well, anything, but certainly not the private-school elitists who run things.
It is the modern equivalent of ancient Roman rulers' bread-and-circuses philosophy.
And look what happened to Rome.
What always strikes me about these items is their negative tenor. Here's a recent opening line from an e-mail newsletter I subscribe to: "By now, most kids have (begrudgingly) headed back to the classroom to begin a new year of learning. Most parents have begun their silent celebrations for reclaiming their homes."
You see that sort of attitude repeated all over: Kids hate school, going back to school is a chore; parents hate their kids, getting the kids out from underfoot is a blessing.
As they say--what sort of message does this send?
Truth is, my kids have always looked forward to the start of school. I remember a few summers ago, heading toward the swimming pool at a park in our neighborhood, when the kids got to the corner where we crossed on the way to their elementary school...and they turned to head toward school. We pointed out to them that we were in fact heading the other direction, toward the pool. And they both expressed a lament that school was out, and began calculating the days left before it started.
(My wife is sometimes less enthusiastic. I have occasionally said that we need to find a way to get the kids back in school a week or two before the teachers. Still working on that one.)
The negativity expressed by the various media toward schooling undermines, I think, the importance of education. It teaches kids--and parents--that kids should dislike school, that parents should dislike having their kids around, that school is a chore, a drudgery, a drag. It erodes respect for the institution, it signals that kids who like school (a majority, in my unscientific observation) are abnormal ("weird")--and since the last thing school-age kids want is to be "weird," they quickly adopt that I-hate-school attitude. And the whole thing spirals downward.
Much the same can be said of the resolutely unfunny "comic" strip Mallard Fillmore, with its constant denigration of public education. Sure, some public schools are in bad shape. But in slavish lock-step with the right-wingnut philosophy seeks to dismantle the education system that, in large measure, has made America great, the strip's "creator" (in quotation marks because I've yet to see any creativity evinced in the strip: the guy is simply a shill, a dittohead) tars all public education with the "bad" brush, spreading the message that, by definition, all public schools are inept, corrupt, and a waste of money.
That's the point, of course: Wealthy white right-wingnuts object to having to spend tax dollars to educate unwealthy nonwhite kids. (Well, they object to having to pay any taxes at all, but that's another issue.) So they seek to undermine the system, convince everybody--most important, those who benefit from the system!--that it's "bad" and must be "fixed," i.e., done away with. Witness ye No Child Left Behind: You set artificial test standards for schools to pass--which means some schools will not pass--and then you take money away from those schools if they fail to meet the artificial standard. Fascinating...you penalize schools that are already hurting.
And then you come back and say, "See? We always told you that public education is a crock."
And then a bunch of kids say, "Yeah, what do we need this crappy school for, anyway?"
And then they drop out, and take a down-spiraling minimum-wage job, and live unexamined lives in which they never, ever think critically about--well, anything, but certainly not the private-school elitists who run things.
It is the modern equivalent of ancient Roman rulers' bread-and-circuses philosophy.
And look what happened to Rome.
Thursday, September 06, 2007
More Anti-Catholic Bigotry
And more proof, if more proof were needed, that anti-Catholicism remains the last great acceptable prejudice.
This letter, from a Catholic priest in a nearby community, appeared the day before yesterday in the local rag:
All authority on earth is derived from God
By Rev. Michael G. Wensing
Brookings
In his Aug. 30 letter in the Argus Leader, Robin Kip Speckels used very deliberate misunderstandings of Catholic theology and tradition concerning the priesthood and other matters.
First of all, the church treasures the Bible as the word of God. In fact, the Christian Bible's canon (list of books contained as sacred) and publication were developed inside the church in the first centuries of our era. Before the printing press, which arrived about the same time as the Reformation, the Bible was copied and passed down for families and faith communities mainly by monks and religious orders that had the erudition, time, copy skills and sponsorship to ensure future ages would have Bibles in hand.
When our theology says it recognizes priests as "other Christs," we rely on Scriptures as well. In fact, we believe in seeing the image of Jesus not just in priests but in many people. In Matthew 25, the uncharitable ones questioned the Lord about not seeing him needing shelter and food, implying that if they had seen him in need, they would have ministered to him. And the Lord responded that if they did not do it to one of these least, they did not do it to him .
In the letter to the Hebrews, as Catholics believe, Jesus Christ is the one true high priest. Jesus himself instituted the New Testament priesthood whereby those he called (beginning with the Apostles) would participate in his priesthood, not substitute for it. In this sense, priests often are called "alter Christus" in Latin, or they pray and celebrate the worship of the sacraments "in persona Christi" (Latin again for "in the person of Christ").
Finally, the literal words of Jesus in Matthew 23:9 did not affirm or deny calling a biological "dad" by the name of "father." In fact, St. Paul himself understood the nature of spiritual fatherhood and how he possessed it and appealed to it in his own writing such as in 1 Corinthians 4:15 "... you have only one father. It was I who begot you in Christ Jesus through my preaching of the Gospel."
Jesus said to call no one on earth "leader" or "rabbi," either. Thus, a true understanding of his meaning must be ascertained, or Speckels would have trouble with many others in society and in our education and political systems who are leaders or teachers.
Jesus was pointing to the one absolute authority over all: our Father in heaven. And as Paul reflected (Ephesians 3:14-19 and Romans 13:1-5), all other authority is derivative from God, who is the final authority, whether it be a teacher, a biological or spiritual father or a leader.
Published: September 04. 2007 1:55AM
Nicely put. Here's the bizarre letter that set off the Father Wensing:
Earthly priesthood came to end
Robin Kip Speckels
Sioux Falls
After reading Elizabeth Strabawa's Aug. 24 letter to the Argus Leader, I was compelled to respond.
In her letter Strabawa states that Catholics are taught that a priest is "another Christ" when offering Mass and hearing confessions. Another Christ? Paul warned the Corinthian church about those who would come teaching this very same doctrine (2 Corinthians 11:4).
Furthermore, the earthly priesthood was done away with at the cross when the veil of the temple was torn in half from top to bottom, symbolizing that all may enter in (Mark 15:38). Christians now have direct access to God through Jesus Christ, who is himself the high priest and makes intercession for them in heaven (Hebrews 7:25). They need no other intermediary. And nowhere is mandatory celibacy taught in the New Testament. In fact, the opposite is true (Hebrews 13:4). Timothy warned about those who would forbid marriage in the end times (1 Timothy 4:3).
Catholics address the Pope as "Holy Father" and their clergy as "Fathers." Yet Jesus commanded his followers not to call any man on earth "Father" because they have only one Father who is in heaven (Matthew 23:9). It's important to understand that he wasn't referring to biological fathers but rather spiritual authorities within the church. Catholic hierarchy, however, doesn't hold the Bible as the final authority, and consequently they develop their own extra-Biblical dogma, a practice forbidden by God (Proverbs 30:6).
Christians today need to be more like the noble people of Berea, who searched the Scriptures daily to make sure Paul was preaching the truth to them (Acts 17:11).
You know, every so often I fall into the lazy habit of thinking that we as a people have progressed to a certain level, that we've figured some things out, that we've gained some understanding and maturity. And then someone like the above-quoted Speckels comes along to remind me that, no, people are just as stupid and ignorant and prejudiced and hate-filled as ever.
This business about Catholics being in opposition to Jesus because we call our clergy "father" has been bandied about for at least the past 50 years that I can attest to. And for much of that half-century, I have asked myself:
1. If no one is supposed to call anyone but God "father," what do people like Speckels call their biological parent of the Y-chromosome persuasion?
2. Why is it that the likes of Speckels, et al., single out the Roman Catholic Church for condemnation? I believe that members of the Episcopal Church refer to their ministers as "priests" and as "Father"; and I think that many if not most if not all of the Orthodox churches do so as well. So why is the Roman church always singled out?
Well, here's why: Prejudice. Anti-Catholic bigotry. Hatred. And general stupidity.
And here, tracing the thread all the way back, is the letter that seems to have started the hubbub in the first place:
Catholic church helps abused
By Elizabeth L. Strabawa
Chancellor
Published: August 24, 2007
It is courageous for any victim of abuse to come forward, whether the perpetrator of the abuse be a priest, minister, counselor, teacher, Scout leader or family member. All of the aforementioned hold power over those who are vulnerable and reach out to them.
Catholic priests (the more than 98 percent who are faithful to their vow of celibacy), however, have been victimized by poorly informed people such as Barbara Dorris of SNAP.
Catholics are not taught that "a priest represents God on earth and holds the keys to the kingdom of heaven." Catholics are taught that a priest is "another Christ" when he offers Mass and when he hears confessions.
Our Holy Father, the pope and successor of Peter, was given the keys to the kingdom of heaven. When speaking in union with the bishops, offering Mass and hearing confessions are the only times that he is not speaking simply as a human being - albeit a holy human being.
The Catholic church has opened its arms to the abused and provided many ways for the victimized to begin the healing process. It is the hope of the church that all in that category will come forward to seek that help.
That's about as far as I'm willing to take things; I'm not about to ferret out whatever "poorly informed people such as Barbara Dorris of SNAP" might have had to say. I imagine it was something against priests who have demonstrated themselves to be sexual predators, and their fellow priests, bishops, cardinals who have helped them hide--all of whom belong behind bars, by the way--which seems to have prompted Strabawa to mount a more-or-less uncritical defense of all priests.
(Disclaimer: I have known a great many priests in my time. Several of them have been great men, true exemplars. Many have been jerks. None, to my knowledge, has been a sexual deviant. I hate to see all of them tarred with the same brush because I personally know priests who certainly don't deserve it...but I'm equally unwilling to give them all a free pass just because they claim to be "doing God's work." Indeed, I take great comfort in my belief that there is an extra-special little corner of hell reserved for people who, metaphorically and otherwise, fuck people over in God's name.)
Anyhow. Roman Catholic do view their clergy in a different way than most other Christian faiths seem to; likewise we see their call as something different than, say, a Protestant minister sees his or hers. But I don't believe I have ever heard this "another Christ" business that Strabawa refers to, and I doubt very much that it's doctrine. In my time, the teaching was that priests are emissaries of Christ, stand-ins, if you will--not "another Christ" in any way, the very notion of which seems heretical.
But of course that's not what Speckels objects to; instead he concocts that tired, pointless old biblical "reason" that Catholics are bad because they call their ministers "Father." That's it?? That's the worst you can come up with to say against us?? ZZZZZzzzz. See above re other churches who use the same terminology but never seem to get lambasted in letters to editors, and all one can conclude is that we're dealing with someone who hates Catholics and who seeks any opportunity to display that irrational hatred.
One does wonder, however: If Spreckels had written a similarly hateful and uninformed diatribe against, say, Jews, or Muslims, or even Presbyterians, would the local rag have published it? Or would the editors have recognized it for what it is--hate-mongering--and put it in the circular file where it belongs?
Impossible to know, obviously. But, as I say, one does wonder...
This letter, from a Catholic priest in a nearby community, appeared the day before yesterday in the local rag:
All authority on earth is derived from God
By Rev. Michael G. Wensing
Brookings
In his Aug. 30 letter in the Argus Leader, Robin Kip Speckels used very deliberate misunderstandings of Catholic theology and tradition concerning the priesthood and other matters.
First of all, the church treasures the Bible as the word of God. In fact, the Christian Bible's canon (list of books contained as sacred) and publication were developed inside the church in the first centuries of our era. Before the printing press, which arrived about the same time as the Reformation, the Bible was copied and passed down for families and faith communities mainly by monks and religious orders that had the erudition, time, copy skills and sponsorship to ensure future ages would have Bibles in hand.
When our theology says it recognizes priests as "other Christs," we rely on Scriptures as well. In fact, we believe in seeing the image of Jesus not just in priests but in many people. In Matthew 25, the uncharitable ones questioned the Lord about not seeing him needing shelter and food, implying that if they had seen him in need, they would have ministered to him. And the Lord responded that if they did not do it to one of these least, they did not do it to him .
In the letter to the Hebrews, as Catholics believe, Jesus Christ is the one true high priest. Jesus himself instituted the New Testament priesthood whereby those he called (beginning with the Apostles) would participate in his priesthood, not substitute for it. In this sense, priests often are called "alter Christus" in Latin, or they pray and celebrate the worship of the sacraments "in persona Christi" (Latin again for "in the person of Christ").
Finally, the literal words of Jesus in Matthew 23:9 did not affirm or deny calling a biological "dad" by the name of "father." In fact, St. Paul himself understood the nature of spiritual fatherhood and how he possessed it and appealed to it in his own writing such as in 1 Corinthians 4:15 "... you have only one father. It was I who begot you in Christ Jesus through my preaching of the Gospel."
Jesus said to call no one on earth "leader" or "rabbi," either. Thus, a true understanding of his meaning must be ascertained, or Speckels would have trouble with many others in society and in our education and political systems who are leaders or teachers.
Jesus was pointing to the one absolute authority over all: our Father in heaven. And as Paul reflected (Ephesians 3:14-19 and Romans 13:1-5), all other authority is derivative from God, who is the final authority, whether it be a teacher, a biological or spiritual father or a leader.
Published: September 04. 2007 1:55AM
Nicely put. Here's the bizarre letter that set off the Father Wensing:
Earthly priesthood came to end
Robin Kip Speckels
Sioux Falls
After reading Elizabeth Strabawa's Aug. 24 letter to the Argus Leader, I was compelled to respond.
In her letter Strabawa states that Catholics are taught that a priest is "another Christ" when offering Mass and hearing confessions. Another Christ? Paul warned the Corinthian church about those who would come teaching this very same doctrine (2 Corinthians 11:4).
Furthermore, the earthly priesthood was done away with at the cross when the veil of the temple was torn in half from top to bottom, symbolizing that all may enter in (Mark 15:38). Christians now have direct access to God through Jesus Christ, who is himself the high priest and makes intercession for them in heaven (Hebrews 7:25). They need no other intermediary. And nowhere is mandatory celibacy taught in the New Testament. In fact, the opposite is true (Hebrews 13:4). Timothy warned about those who would forbid marriage in the end times (1 Timothy 4:3).
Catholics address the Pope as "Holy Father" and their clergy as "Fathers." Yet Jesus commanded his followers not to call any man on earth "Father" because they have only one Father who is in heaven (Matthew 23:9). It's important to understand that he wasn't referring to biological fathers but rather spiritual authorities within the church. Catholic hierarchy, however, doesn't hold the Bible as the final authority, and consequently they develop their own extra-Biblical dogma, a practice forbidden by God (Proverbs 30:6).
Christians today need to be more like the noble people of Berea, who searched the Scriptures daily to make sure Paul was preaching the truth to them (Acts 17:11).
You know, every so often I fall into the lazy habit of thinking that we as a people have progressed to a certain level, that we've figured some things out, that we've gained some understanding and maturity. And then someone like the above-quoted Speckels comes along to remind me that, no, people are just as stupid and ignorant and prejudiced and hate-filled as ever.
This business about Catholics being in opposition to Jesus because we call our clergy "father" has been bandied about for at least the past 50 years that I can attest to. And for much of that half-century, I have asked myself:
1. If no one is supposed to call anyone but God "father," what do people like Speckels call their biological parent of the Y-chromosome persuasion?
2. Why is it that the likes of Speckels, et al., single out the Roman Catholic Church for condemnation? I believe that members of the Episcopal Church refer to their ministers as "priests" and as "Father"; and I think that many if not most if not all of the Orthodox churches do so as well. So why is the Roman church always singled out?
Well, here's why: Prejudice. Anti-Catholic bigotry. Hatred. And general stupidity.
And here, tracing the thread all the way back, is the letter that seems to have started the hubbub in the first place:
Catholic church helps abused
By Elizabeth L. Strabawa
Chancellor
Published: August 24, 2007
It is courageous for any victim of abuse to come forward, whether the perpetrator of the abuse be a priest, minister, counselor, teacher, Scout leader or family member. All of the aforementioned hold power over those who are vulnerable and reach out to them.
Catholic priests (the more than 98 percent who are faithful to their vow of celibacy), however, have been victimized by poorly informed people such as Barbara Dorris of SNAP.
Catholics are not taught that "a priest represents God on earth and holds the keys to the kingdom of heaven." Catholics are taught that a priest is "another Christ" when he offers Mass and when he hears confessions.
Our Holy Father, the pope and successor of Peter, was given the keys to the kingdom of heaven. When speaking in union with the bishops, offering Mass and hearing confessions are the only times that he is not speaking simply as a human being - albeit a holy human being.
The Catholic church has opened its arms to the abused and provided many ways for the victimized to begin the healing process. It is the hope of the church that all in that category will come forward to seek that help.
That's about as far as I'm willing to take things; I'm not about to ferret out whatever "poorly informed people such as Barbara Dorris of SNAP" might have had to say. I imagine it was something against priests who have demonstrated themselves to be sexual predators, and their fellow priests, bishops, cardinals who have helped them hide--all of whom belong behind bars, by the way--which seems to have prompted Strabawa to mount a more-or-less uncritical defense of all priests.
(Disclaimer: I have known a great many priests in my time. Several of them have been great men, true exemplars. Many have been jerks. None, to my knowledge, has been a sexual deviant. I hate to see all of them tarred with the same brush because I personally know priests who certainly don't deserve it...but I'm equally unwilling to give them all a free pass just because they claim to be "doing God's work." Indeed, I take great comfort in my belief that there is an extra-special little corner of hell reserved for people who, metaphorically and otherwise, fuck people over in God's name.)
Anyhow. Roman Catholic do view their clergy in a different way than most other Christian faiths seem to; likewise we see their call as something different than, say, a Protestant minister sees his or hers. But I don't believe I have ever heard this "another Christ" business that Strabawa refers to, and I doubt very much that it's doctrine. In my time, the teaching was that priests are emissaries of Christ, stand-ins, if you will--not "another Christ" in any way, the very notion of which seems heretical.
But of course that's not what Speckels objects to; instead he concocts that tired, pointless old biblical "reason" that Catholics are bad because they call their ministers "Father." That's it?? That's the worst you can come up with to say against us?? ZZZZZzzzz. See above re other churches who use the same terminology but never seem to get lambasted in letters to editors, and all one can conclude is that we're dealing with someone who hates Catholics and who seeks any opportunity to display that irrational hatred.
One does wonder, however: If Spreckels had written a similarly hateful and uninformed diatribe against, say, Jews, or Muslims, or even Presbyterians, would the local rag have published it? Or would the editors have recognized it for what it is--hate-mongering--and put it in the circular file where it belongs?
Impossible to know, obviously. But, as I say, one does wonder...
Who Owes Whom?
This appeared today on Forbes.com:
Market Scan
Steve Jobs: iSorry
09.06.07, 4:40 PM ET
Ah, nostalgia: I am reminded of those idyllic days of old, the days of the "user group" and the evangelical fervor (anyone remember when Apple actually had "evangelists" on the corporate masthead?) surrounding the Macintosh...and the near-fanatical belief that some Mac owners had that Apple "owed" them something that transcended the ordinary producer-consumer relationship.
The rationale went something like this: I shelled out my hard-earned dough to buy X (hardware, software, whatever) when X first came out, and if not for early-adopters like me, X would not have been successful. Since it's thanks to me and the other early-adopters that it was successful, I should not not be expected to shell out yet again for X.2 or X Enhanced. It was as if they expected a for-life free ride because they had bought, say, the original Mac when it first came on the market.
Well, so did I...but I never figured that Apple owed me anything but a working Mac.
Granted, it's always nice when, say, a software publisher offers an attractive upgrade option, something that seems to be becoming a rarity these days. And it's good marketing, good customer relations. But it's hardly mandatory.
Ditto with the iPhone. Its early-adopters had to be the first kids on the block to have one, and they were willing--nay, eager--to pay a premium for it. Now the premium has turned into a discount and they're crying foul. Huh? How do you figure? You paid the price that it carried when you bought it; if you wanted a discount, you should have waited. Your impatience is hardly Steve Jobs's fault, or responsibility.
Even if it's "a mere two months after its release." What's the significance of two months, anyhow, that Four months? Six? And why?
Here's my advice to disgruntled early adopters: Next time, don't be in such a big freakin' hurry.
Market Scan
Steve Jobs: iSorry
09.06.07, 4:40 PM ET
They say love means having to never say you're sorry, but if so no one told Steve Jobs. On Thursday Apple's head sent a letter of apology to the iPhone's early adapters, hoping to make them feel a little less jilted after he dropped the price on 2007’s “It-product” from $599 to $399 on Wednesday, a mere two months after its release.
In the open letter Jobs wrote that after receiving hundreds of emails from customers upset about the $200 price drop he decided to offer every iPhone customer who purchased the gizmo at full price from either Apple (nasdaq: AAPL - news - people ) or AT&T (nyse: T - news - people )a $100 store credit toward any product at Apple’s retail or online stores.
By turns, Jobs was both boastful and contrite in the letter, as he addressed both iPhone customers, and, by extension, Apple investors. "iPhone is a breakthrough product, and we have a chance to 'go for it' this holiday season," he wrote. "iPhone is so far ahead of the competition, and now it will be affordable by even more customers."
But, ultimately, Jobs dropped the justifications, and simply apologized. "Our early customers trusted us, and we must live up to that trust," he wrote. How he plans to do this has yet to be worked out, exactly. “Details are still being worked out and will be posted on Apple’s website next week. Stay tuned.”
After rising to $137.24 a little after 3:00pm, the shares of the Cupertino, Calif.-based company fell to $135.20, a total 1.2%, or $1.69, drop from Wednesday’s closing price.
The week has been intense for the company. On Wednesday, Jobs gave a much-publicized presentation of Apple’s new line of iPods, along with cutting the price of the 8GB iPhone, as well as ceasing sale of the 4GB model (See “Apple Introduces New iPods”).
On Tuesday, shares of the company lifted 4.1% after Gene Munster, senior research analyst at Piper Jaffray, spent 50 hours counting iPhone and Mac sales in Apple retail stores across the country and found them to be in-line with his estimate (See “Traders Take A Bite Of Apple”).
Also, Apple recently weathered a dispute with NBC over iTunes contract to sell downloads, which ultimately led to Apple announcing last Friday that it will pull NBC shows from iTunes in September, three months early (See “The Apple-NBC Battle Won’t Amount To Much”).
Ah, nostalgia: I am reminded of those idyllic days of old, the days of the "user group" and the evangelical fervor (anyone remember when Apple actually had "evangelists" on the corporate masthead?) surrounding the Macintosh...and the near-fanatical belief that some Mac owners had that Apple "owed" them something that transcended the ordinary producer-consumer relationship.
The rationale went something like this: I shelled out my hard-earned dough to buy X (hardware, software, whatever) when X first came out, and if not for early-adopters like me, X would not have been successful. Since it's thanks to me and the other early-adopters that it was successful, I should not not be expected to shell out yet again for X.2 or X Enhanced. It was as if they expected a for-life free ride because they had bought, say, the original Mac when it first came on the market.
Well, so did I...but I never figured that Apple owed me anything but a working Mac.
Granted, it's always nice when, say, a software publisher offers an attractive upgrade option, something that seems to be becoming a rarity these days. And it's good marketing, good customer relations. But it's hardly mandatory.
Ditto with the iPhone. Its early-adopters had to be the first kids on the block to have one, and they were willing--nay, eager--to pay a premium for it. Now the premium has turned into a discount and they're crying foul. Huh? How do you figure? You paid the price that it carried when you bought it; if you wanted a discount, you should have waited. Your impatience is hardly Steve Jobs's fault, or responsibility.
Even if it's "a mere two months after its release." What's the significance of two months, anyhow, that Four months? Six? And why?
Here's my advice to disgruntled early adopters: Next time, don't be in such a big freakin' hurry.
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
You Know What They Say
Yes, time for a few more quotations, culled, as usual, from the delightful A Word a Day:
All religions are the same: religion is basically guilt, with different holidays. -Cathy Ladman, comedian, writer, actress (1955- )
Wit is educated insolence. -Aristotle, philosopher (384-322 BCE)
I shall allow no man to belittle my soul by making me hate him. -Booker T. Washington (1856-1915)
Conceal a flaw, and the world will imagine the worst. -Martial (Marcus Valerius Martialis)
Appeal, v.t. In law, to put the dice into the box for another throw. -Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary (1906)
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? -T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)
Along this tree / From root to crown / Ideas flow up / And vetoes down. -A senior executive, quoted by Peter Drucker
Which of us is not forever a stranger and alone? -Thomas Wolfe, novelist (1900-1938)
Books are the compasses and telescopes and sextants and charts which other men have prepared to help us navigate the dangerous seas of human life. -Jesse Lee Bennett
The man who thinks he can do without the world is indeed mistaken; but the man who thinks the world cannot do without him is mistaken even worse. -Francois, duc de La Rochefoucauld, writer (1613-1680)
We love flattery, even though we are not deceived by it, because it shows that we are of importance enough to be courted. -Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)
It is difficult to begin without borrowing, but perhaps it is the most generous course thus to permit your fellow-men to have an interest in your enterprise. -Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862)
All religions are the same: religion is basically guilt, with different holidays. -Cathy Ladman, comedian, writer, actress (1955- )
Wit is educated insolence. -Aristotle, philosopher (384-322 BCE)
I shall allow no man to belittle my soul by making me hate him. -Booker T. Washington (1856-1915)
Conceal a flaw, and the world will imagine the worst. -Martial (Marcus Valerius Martialis)
Appeal, v.t. In law, to put the dice into the box for another throw. -Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary (1906)
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? -T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)
Along this tree / From root to crown / Ideas flow up / And vetoes down. -A senior executive, quoted by Peter Drucker
Which of us is not forever a stranger and alone? -Thomas Wolfe, novelist (1900-1938)
Books are the compasses and telescopes and sextants and charts which other men have prepared to help us navigate the dangerous seas of human life. -Jesse Lee Bennett
The man who thinks he can do without the world is indeed mistaken; but the man who thinks the world cannot do without him is mistaken even worse. -Francois, duc de La Rochefoucauld, writer (1613-1680)
We love flattery, even though we are not deceived by it, because it shows that we are of importance enough to be courted. -Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)
It is difficult to begin without borrowing, but perhaps it is the most generous course thus to permit your fellow-men to have an interest in your enterprise. -Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862)
Sunday, August 19, 2007
Pettiness on Pennsylvania Avenue
One of the most reliable of The Far-Flung Correspondents, Jerry, sends this clip from an Atlantic Monthly article, "The Rove Presidency" by Joshua Green. Having not read the entire article, I'm not sure why Green says this story "captures the exquisite pettiness of most members of Congress and the arrogance that made Bush and Rove so inept at handling them"; this snippet, at least, seems rather to capture the pettiness and arrogance of the current tenant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington D.C. 20500.
And on everything else, just plain deaf.
- The Rove Presidency
Joshua Green
Atlantic Monthly
September 2--7
Dick Armey, the House Republican majority leader when Bush took office (and no more a shrinking violet than DeLay), told me a story that captures the exquisite pettiness of most members of Congress and the arrogance that made Bush and Rove so inept at handling them. “For all the years he was president,” Armey told me, “Bill Clinton and I had a little thing we’d do where every time I went to the White House, I would take the little name tag they give you and pass it to the president, who, without saying a word, would sign and date it. Bill Clinton and I didn’t like each other. He said I was his least-favorite member of Congress. But he knew that when I left his office, the first school kid I came across would be given that card, and some kid who had come to Washington with his mama would go home with the president’s autograph. I think Clinton thought it was a nice thing to do for some kid, and he was happy to do it.” Armey said that when he went to his first meeting in the White House with President Bush, he explained the tradition with Clinton and asked the president if he would care to continue it. “Bush refused to sign the card. Rove, who was sitting across the table, said, ‘It would probably wind up on eBay,’” Armey continued. “Do I give a damn? No. But can you imagine refusing a simple request like that with an insult? It’s stupid. From the point of view of your own self-interest, it’s stupid. I was from Texas, and I was the majority leader. If my expectations of civility and collegiality were disappointed, what do you think it was like for the rest of the congressmen they dealt with? The Bush White House was tone-deaf to the normal courtesies of the office.”
And on everything else, just plain deaf.
Although Clearly Fox Noise Is the Worst!
Putting the "faux" in Faux News, right-wingnut and all around creepy guy Bill O'Reilly has taken to simply making up "facts" to support whatever wackydoodle position he decides to adopt. Or, I dunno, maybe he's always done so. This from Wednesday's Media Matters for America:
O'Reilly claimed poll shows most Americans "won't vote" for candidate endorsed by "a gay rights group"
O'Reilly claimed poll shows most Americans "won't vote" for candidate endorsed by "a gay rights group"
During the August 13 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, discussing the recent Democratic presidential candidates' appearance on the gay and lesbian-oriented cable channel Logo, host Bill O'Reilly claimed that "a new poll" -- which he said was issued by "Pew Research or something like that" -- "says that most Americans won't vote for you if you get an endorsement by a gay rights group." In response, Fox News correspondent Kirsten Powers asserted, "I have to say I find that very difficult to believe. Maybe if they're asked that question in a poll, but most Americans don't have any idea who's endorsing candidates." O'Reilly responded: "OK, but say a gay -- the question posed, 'If a gay rights organization endorses you, would that make you more or less likely to vote?' [sic] And most Americans said less likely."
A Media Matters for America search turned up no Pew Research Center poll on the topic nor any poll asking a nationwide sample whether respondents would be more or less likely to vote for a candidate endorsed by a gay rights organization. However, as the News Hounds blog noted in response to O'Reilly's claim, an August 6-8 Quinnipiac Poll of voters in Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania found that a majority of voters in each state responded that support for a presidential candidate by "gay rights groups" "doesn't ... make a difference" in their level of support for the candidate.
And Not Just Fox Noise, Either!
And speaking of Wikipedia (see previous post), here's another reason to approach same with the salt-shaker handy: A report in Saturday's New York Times, "Seeing Corporate Fingerprints in Wikipedia Edits" by Katie Hafner, tells of how Big Business has gotten in on "editing" Wikipedia entries to make them more "friendly" to, well Big Business. In part:
Last year a Wikipedia visitor edited the entry for the SeaWorld theme parks to change all mentions of “orcas” to “killer whales,” insisting that this was a more accurate name for the species.
There was another, unexplained edit: a paragraph about criticism of SeaWorld’s “lack of respect toward its orcas” disappeared. Both changes, it turns out, originated at a computer at Anheuser-Busch, SeaWorld’s owner.
Dozens of similar examples of insider editing came to light last week through WikiScanner, a new Web site that traces the source of millions of changes to Wikipedia, the popular online encyclopedia that anyone can edit.
The site, wikiscanner.virgil.gr, created by a computer science graduate student, cross-references an edited entry on Wikipedia with the owner of the computer network where the change originated, using the Internet protocol address of the editor’s network. The address information was already available on Wikipedia, but the new site makes it much easier to connect those numbers with the names of network owners.
Since Wired News first wrote about WikiScanner last week, Internet users have spotted plenty of interesting changes to Wikipedia by people at nonprofit groups and government entities like the Central Intelligence Agency. Many of the most obviously self-interested edits have come from corporate networks.
Last year, someone at PepsiCo deleted several paragraphs of the Pepsi entry that focused on its detrimental health effects. In 2005, someone using a computer at Diebold deleted paragraphs that criticized the company’s electronic voting machines. That same year, someone inside Wal-Mart Stores changed an entry about employee compensation.
Fox Noise Does It Again!
Astonishingly, I still hear Ordinary Citizens opine that they like Faux News because it's "more balanced" than other sources. I assume, in this context, "balanced" means "tells me what I want to hear" and "hates the same people I hate." Anyhow, I would like to think that this, from Friday's edition of The Carpetbagger's Report, would change their minds. But I know better.
- Fox News got caught this week fiddling with Wikipedia pages, editing content that didn’t fit with the partisan network’s political agenda. Not surprisingly, Fox News then ran a segment last night blasting Wikipedia’s reliability because some people manipulate the online encyclopedia due to “self-serving agendas.” The irony was rich.
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
A Childhood Disappointment
When I was a lad, growing up in an almost-exclusively Catholic neighborhood in a heavily Catholic town, nearly every household (except ours, oddly) seemed to have this picture prominently displayed somewhere:
It so happened in those days that our next-door neighbor was a teacher, and, as is often the case with teachers, had to seek part-time employment, especially during the summer months, in order to make a living. (Then as now, the concept of paying mere teachers a living wage was alien.) So he worked part-time as a painter.
Well, you know how it is with kids: They're stupid. So somehow, when I was five or six, I put together that our next-door neighbor, Lew, was a painter; the family had the above-featured portrait of Jesus hanging in their living room; therefore, Lew had painted it.
It was only some years later that I realized that Lew worked part-time as a house painter; that the portrait was available at any Christian bookstore; and that Lew was not the artist.
Over the past 40 or 45 years, I've slowly come to terms with this disappointment. No idea how Lew's doing with it, though.
It so happened in those days that our next-door neighbor was a teacher, and, as is often the case with teachers, had to seek part-time employment, especially during the summer months, in order to make a living. (Then as now, the concept of paying mere teachers a living wage was alien.) So he worked part-time as a painter.Well, you know how it is with kids: They're stupid. So somehow, when I was five or six, I put together that our next-door neighbor, Lew, was a painter; the family had the above-featured portrait of Jesus hanging in their living room; therefore, Lew had painted it.
It was only some years later that I realized that Lew worked part-time as a house painter; that the portrait was available at any Christian bookstore; and that Lew was not the artist.
Over the past 40 or 45 years, I've slowly come to terms with this disappointment. No idea how Lew's doing with it, though.
Sunday, August 12, 2007
And Then Jesus Didn't Say...
Awhile back, the local rag published this from a nearby citizen:
Well, this could not be allowed to pass unchallenged, and so I drafted the following, which the local rag saw fit to publish a few weeks later (at about the point where I had decided they would not):
But as I subsequently shared with one of my far-flung correspondents, I restrained myself pretty virtuously. For instance, I omitted mentioning that the Bible was written--and translated, and altered whether by accident or by design--by people, not by Jesus, and not by God. All you get when you bring that up is a bunch of people who erroneously conclude that you’re "against" the Bible or God or religion or maybe all of the above, and then you’re hopelessly off-topic.
I also skipped getting into how the "logic" of the original letter forces us to conclude that Jesus supports abortion.
No fooling. Read the letter again: He says, "Jesus allows the thief to die but promises him that his soul will be saved." (My emphasis.) The word "allows" is not there by accident, I’ll wager. I've no doubt that the author and the rest of the God-wants-blood crowd would make the argument that Jesus had it in his power to spare the thief but didn't (thus the word "allows"), thereby "proving" that God supports the death penalty.
Welllll...God thus appears to "support" abortion, since he isn’t stopping them (and the right-wingnuts assure me abortions are happening all the time).
And, with this kind of "logic," one might conclude that Jesus "supports" suicide, since, presumably, he could have spared himself but didn't.
One might also use this "logic" to "prove" that God "supports" war, since… Oh. Wait a minute. The right-wingnuts do use that sort of "logic," all the time. Never mind.
You see the rhetorical sleight-of-hand, I hope--the quick, easily missed substitution of supports for accepts.
There is a difference, and it’s important, indeed essential. That Jesus, for instance, occasionally indicates an acceptance of civil authority's actions does not constitute support for same, no matter how hard the right-wingnuts try to make it so. I accept that the state has asserted for itself the "right" to kill certain people for certain reasons; I certainly do not support or endorse same. I accept that sometimes wars are inevitable; I do not support or endorse war. The specious arguments put forward by the likes of this world's Austin Vanderzees are meant to convince us that God's/Jesus' apparent refusal to put a stop to something translates into support. But as I mention above, that sort of argument leads us to conclude that God "supports" abortion, homosexuality, pornography, and all the other bêtes noires of the right wingnuts--including, speaking of bêtes noires, bestiality, too, I imagine--since, after all, these things and plenty more exist in the world...or, to borrow Vanderzee's unsubtle phraseology, God allows these things to be.
But obviously the right wingnuts would argue vehemently that God most certainly does not support these things. And so I have once again runs rings round them logically.
For all the good it does. Logic never trumps viscera, and I am of the opinion that the right wingnuts--especially those who take such pains to assert their "Christian" credentials--behave almost exclusively in accord with their viscera and almost never employ heart or mind.
Perhaps this is what Cromwell meant by "the bowels of Christ"...
I did point out to one of my far-flung friends, Jerry, that one of several questions I beg in my response is the central question of biblical "authority"--or, indeed, "authenticity." (See above re who wrote the Bible...and who didn’t.) Although I consider him something of a grandstander, Bishop John Spong (Why Christianity Must Change or Die: A Bishop Speaks to Believers In Exile; The Sins of Scripture: Exposing the Bible's Texts of Hate to Reveal the God of Love; etc.) does have the gist of it when he (frequently) writes phrases such as, "In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus is made to say..." and so on. Jesus did not write the Bible. And as Bart Ehrman (Misquoting Jesus) and others have pointed out, a goodly portion of that which is ascribed to the Apostles and the Evangelists are of dubious authorship. Given all of this, even if the Bible were to quote Jesus explicitly as favoring the frequent application of the electric chair, inquiring minds would have to wonder...
But those who are comfortable asserting that God invariably agrees with them seldom, in my observation, fall into the "inquiring minds" category.
Meanwhile, the last line of the original letter--"God's words - not mine"--might cause me to conclude that its author is a fan of The West Wing, though that seems unlikely. I’m reminded of this now-famous (or infamous, in conservative camps) exchange with "Dr. Jenna Jacobs,” clearly a stand-in for Dr. Laura Schlesinger, in the second-season episode “The Midterms”:
- Righteous difference is clear
By Austin E. Vanderzee
TeaPublished: July 20, 2007
I want to educate Christians who believe that Jesus would not support the death penalty. Let me encourage you to do something: Read your Bible.
Read about King David being an accessory to murder and stealing another man's wife and being told he was forgiven but still experiencing the consequences of his sin.
Read about the thief hanging next to Jesus on a cross who said, "We are getting what we deserve." Jesus allows the thief to die but promises him that his soul will be saved.
Read the dozen or more Levitical laws that, if broken, were punishable by death. Many of those laws were not even capital crimes.
In Romans 13, Paul writes that our God-ordained governments do not bear the sword in vain. Therefore, do what's right and you have nothing to fear.
Read Acts 5, where Peter executed two people for lying.
And try to remember this: God wants his children to clearly see the righteous difference between murdering the innocent and punishing the guilty. One is a sin in need of repentance, and the other is justice that needs none.Do what's right, and you have nothing to fear. God's words - not mine.
Well, this could not be allowed to pass unchallenged, and so I drafted the following, which the local rag saw fit to publish a few weeks later (at about the point where I had decided they would not):
- One must always approach with caution those who assure us that they know what Jesus would or would not do, what God does or does not favor. A recent letter from Austin E. Vanderzee ("Righteous difference is clear") is a case in point.
Mr. Vanderzee says he wants "to educate Christians who believe that Jesus would not support the death penalty," and suggests we read the Bible.
He then supplies several Bible verses and scenes that purport to support his point of view. Curiously, none of the verses he sites actually quotes Jesus! He references Paul; he references Peter; he references the Old Testament...but his only reference to Jesus actually quotes "the good thief" who was being crucified with Jesus, not Jesus himself.
I draw from Mr. Vanderzee's examples that King David was in favor of the death penalty; that the apostles Peter and Paul were okay with it; and even that "the good thief" had accepted it, but certainly not that the Prince of Peace would elbow the hangman out of the way so he could pull the gallows lever himself.
The Jesus of whom I read in my Bible preached love, forgiveness, peace, and tolerance—not death, retribution, and revenge. That’s the Jesus whom I strive, in my feeble way, to imitate.
But as I subsequently shared with one of my far-flung correspondents, I restrained myself pretty virtuously. For instance, I omitted mentioning that the Bible was written--and translated, and altered whether by accident or by design--by people, not by Jesus, and not by God. All you get when you bring that up is a bunch of people who erroneously conclude that you’re "against" the Bible or God or religion or maybe all of the above, and then you’re hopelessly off-topic.
I also skipped getting into how the "logic" of the original letter forces us to conclude that Jesus supports abortion.
No fooling. Read the letter again: He says, "Jesus allows the thief to die but promises him that his soul will be saved." (My emphasis.) The word "allows" is not there by accident, I’ll wager. I've no doubt that the author and the rest of the God-wants-blood crowd would make the argument that Jesus had it in his power to spare the thief but didn't (thus the word "allows"), thereby "proving" that God supports the death penalty.
Welllll...God thus appears to "support" abortion, since he isn’t stopping them (and the right-wingnuts assure me abortions are happening all the time).
And, with this kind of "logic," one might conclude that Jesus "supports" suicide, since, presumably, he could have spared himself but didn't.
One might also use this "logic" to "prove" that God "supports" war, since… Oh. Wait a minute. The right-wingnuts do use that sort of "logic," all the time. Never mind.
You see the rhetorical sleight-of-hand, I hope--the quick, easily missed substitution of supports for accepts.
There is a difference, and it’s important, indeed essential. That Jesus, for instance, occasionally indicates an acceptance of civil authority's actions does not constitute support for same, no matter how hard the right-wingnuts try to make it so. I accept that the state has asserted for itself the "right" to kill certain people for certain reasons; I certainly do not support or endorse same. I accept that sometimes wars are inevitable; I do not support or endorse war. The specious arguments put forward by the likes of this world's Austin Vanderzees are meant to convince us that God's/Jesus' apparent refusal to put a stop to something translates into support. But as I mention above, that sort of argument leads us to conclude that God "supports" abortion, homosexuality, pornography, and all the other bêtes noires of the right wingnuts--including, speaking of bêtes noires, bestiality, too, I imagine--since, after all, these things and plenty more exist in the world...or, to borrow Vanderzee's unsubtle phraseology, God allows these things to be.
But obviously the right wingnuts would argue vehemently that God most certainly does not support these things. And so I have once again runs rings round them logically.
For all the good it does. Logic never trumps viscera, and I am of the opinion that the right wingnuts--especially those who take such pains to assert their "Christian" credentials--behave almost exclusively in accord with their viscera and almost never employ heart or mind.
Perhaps this is what Cromwell meant by "the bowels of Christ"...
I did point out to one of my far-flung friends, Jerry, that one of several questions I beg in my response is the central question of biblical "authority"--or, indeed, "authenticity." (See above re who wrote the Bible...and who didn’t.) Although I consider him something of a grandstander, Bishop John Spong (Why Christianity Must Change or Die: A Bishop Speaks to Believers In Exile; The Sins of Scripture: Exposing the Bible's Texts of Hate to Reveal the God of Love; etc.) does have the gist of it when he (frequently) writes phrases such as, "In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus is made to say..." and so on. Jesus did not write the Bible. And as Bart Ehrman (Misquoting Jesus) and others have pointed out, a goodly portion of that which is ascribed to the Apostles and the Evangelists are of dubious authorship. Given all of this, even if the Bible were to quote Jesus explicitly as favoring the frequent application of the electric chair, inquiring minds would have to wonder...
But those who are comfortable asserting that God invariably agrees with them seldom, in my observation, fall into the "inquiring minds" category.
Meanwhile, the last line of the original letter--"God's words - not mine"--might cause me to conclude that its author is a fan of The West Wing, though that seems unlikely. I’m reminded of this now-famous (or infamous, in conservative camps) exchange with "Dr. Jenna Jacobs,” clearly a stand-in for Dr. Laura Schlesinger, in the second-season episode “The Midterms”:
- President Bartlet: Forgive me, Dr. Jacobs. Are you an M.D.?
Jenna Jacobs: Ph.D.
Bartlet: A Ph.D.?
Jacobs: Yes, sir.
Bartlet: In Psychology?
Jacobs: No sir.
Bartlet: Theology?
Jacobs: No.
Bartlet: Social work?
Jacobs: I have a Ph.D. in English Literature.
Bartlet: I'm asking, 'cause on your show, people call in for advice and you go by the name of Dr. Jacobs on your show. And I didn't know if maybe your listeners were confused by that, and assumed you had advanced training in Psychology, Theology, or health care.
Jacobs: I don't believe they are confused, no sir.
Bartlet: Good. I like your show. I like how you call homosexuality an abomination.
Jacobs: I don't say homosexuality is an abomination, Mr. President. The Bible does.
Bartlet: Yes, it does. Leviticus.
Jacobs: 18:22
Bartlet: Chapter and verse. I wanted to ask you a couple of questions while I had you here. I'm interested in selling my youngest daughter into slavery as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. She's a Georgetown sophomore, speaks fluent Italian, and always clears the table when it was her turn. What would a good price for her be? While thinking about that, can I ask another? My Chief of Staff, Leo McGarry, insists on working on the Sabbath, Exodus 35:2, clearly says he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself or is it okay to call the police? Here's one that's really important, 'cause we've got a lot of sports fans in this town. Touching the skin of a dead pig makes us unclean, Leviticus 11:7. If they promise to wear gloves, can the Washington Redskins still play football? Can Notre Dame? Can West Point? Does the whole town really have to be together to stone my brother, John, for planting different crops side by side? Can I burn my mother in a small family gathering for wearing garments made from two different threads?
Think about those questions, would you? One last thing, while you may be mistaking this for your monthly meeting of the Ignorant Tightass Club, in this building, when the President stands, nobody sits.
Friday, July 27, 2007
An Unanswerable Question?
- CITY. Which of the following cities do you live nearest to? (Check one only)
- None of the Above
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
So It's Said
Here's another batch of quotations; all of them this time from the excellent A Word A Day:
My kind of loyalty was loyalty to one's country, not to its institutions or its officeholders. -Mark Twain, author and humorist (1835-1910)
The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion. -Arthur C Clarke, science fiction writer (1917- )
A society that gets rid of all its troublemakers goes downhill. -Robert A. Heinlein, science-fiction author (1907-1988)
You can't live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you. -John Wooden, sports coach (1910- )
For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery. -Jonathan Swift, satirist (1667-1745)
Strike an average between what a woman thinks of her husband a month before she marries him and what she thinks of him a year afterward, and you will have the truth about him. -H.L. Mencken, writer, editor, and critic (1880-1956)
How can a society that exists on instant mashed potatoes, packaged cake mixes, frozen dinners, and instant cameras teach patience to its young? -Paul Sweeney
There's so much pollution in the air now that if it weren't for our lungs there'd be no place to put it all. -Robert Orben, magician (1927- )
The great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages you've been. -Madeleine L'Engle, writer (1918- )
There are two things to aim at in life; first to get what you want, and after that to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second. -Logan Pearsall Smith, essayist (1865-1946)
When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stone-cutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it would split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before together. -Jacob A. Riis, journalist and social reformer (1849-1914)
If the truth doesn't save us, what does that say about us? -Lois McMaster Bujold, writer (1949- )
An open mind is a prerequisite to an open heart. -Robert M. Sapolsky, neuroscientist and author (1957- )
Be careful how you interpret the world: it *is* like that. -Erich Heller, essayist (1911-1990)
When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stone-cutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it would split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before together. -Jacob A. Riis, journalist and social reformer (1849-1914)
Never eat more than you can lift. -Miss Piggy, a character in the cartoon The Muppet Show
Nothing produces such odd results as trying to get even. -Franklin P. Jones
Let your capital be simplicity and contentment. -Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862)
One must think like a hero to behave like a merely decent human being. -May Sarton, poet and novelist (1912-1995)
I don't trust a man who uses the word evil eighteen times in ten minutes. If you're half evil, nothing soothes you more than to think the person you are opposed to is totally evil. -Norman Mailer, author (1923- )
If an animal does something, we call it instinct; if we do the same thing for the same reason, we call it intelligence. -Will Cuppy, journalist (1884-1949)
We have in fact, two kinds of morality, side by side: one which we preach, but do not practice, and another which we practice, but seldom preach. -Bertrand Russell, philosopher, mathematician, author, Nobel laureate (1872-1970)
Language is the archives of history. -Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)
My kind of loyalty was loyalty to one's country, not to its institutions or its officeholders. -Mark Twain, author and humorist (1835-1910)
The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion. -Arthur C Clarke, science fiction writer (1917- )
A society that gets rid of all its troublemakers goes downhill. -Robert A. Heinlein, science-fiction author (1907-1988)
You can't live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you. -John Wooden, sports coach (1910- )
For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery. -Jonathan Swift, satirist (1667-1745)
Strike an average between what a woman thinks of her husband a month before she marries him and what she thinks of him a year afterward, and you will have the truth about him. -H.L. Mencken, writer, editor, and critic (1880-1956)
How can a society that exists on instant mashed potatoes, packaged cake mixes, frozen dinners, and instant cameras teach patience to its young? -Paul Sweeney
There's so much pollution in the air now that if it weren't for our lungs there'd be no place to put it all. -Robert Orben, magician (1927- )
The great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages you've been. -Madeleine L'Engle, writer (1918- )
There are two things to aim at in life; first to get what you want, and after that to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second. -Logan Pearsall Smith, essayist (1865-1946)
When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stone-cutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it would split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before together. -Jacob A. Riis, journalist and social reformer (1849-1914)
If the truth doesn't save us, what does that say about us? -Lois McMaster Bujold, writer (1949- )
An open mind is a prerequisite to an open heart. -Robert M. Sapolsky, neuroscientist and author (1957- )
Be careful how you interpret the world: it *is* like that. -Erich Heller, essayist (1911-1990)
When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stone-cutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it would split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before together. -Jacob A. Riis, journalist and social reformer (1849-1914)
Never eat more than you can lift. -Miss Piggy, a character in the cartoon The Muppet Show
Nothing produces such odd results as trying to get even. -Franklin P. Jones
Let your capital be simplicity and contentment. -Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862)
One must think like a hero to behave like a merely decent human being. -May Sarton, poet and novelist (1912-1995)
I don't trust a man who uses the word evil eighteen times in ten minutes. If you're half evil, nothing soothes you more than to think the person you are opposed to is totally evil. -Norman Mailer, author (1923- )
If an animal does something, we call it instinct; if we do the same thing for the same reason, we call it intelligence. -Will Cuppy, journalist (1884-1949)
We have in fact, two kinds of morality, side by side: one which we preach, but do not practice, and another which we practice, but seldom preach. -Bertrand Russell, philosopher, mathematician, author, Nobel laureate (1872-1970)
Language is the archives of history. -Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)
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