Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Audio Archive - 2002 continued...

Continuing with the post from yesterday, this excerpt picks up where Gil left off, introducing Rene Girard with a story from GK Chesterton....













Tuesday, June 29, 2010

More from the Archives...

Gil Bailie and I will be away at the Colloquium on Violence and Religion conference at the University of Notre Dame through July 4th. We will attempt to post some items from the conference if time and technological facility allow. But for my part I am posting again with an item from our archives.

The following audio player has Gil Bailie speaking to a group of supporters at Stanford University in 2002. Here as in my previous post, Gil is reflecting on his vocation. This time 13 years later you can hear some of the same themes but I think with more maturity and even greater awareness of his calling. This piece ends at a point where he is going to introduce Rene Girard. My next post will include Professor Girard's comments, also from this Stanford presentation, on Gil Bailie's place as a major exponent of his work.

And thank you to those who have kindly welcomed me to the blog I truly appreciate the thoughts.














Sunday, June 27, 2010

The Gathering Storm . . .

Pro-Hamas Rally in Turkey
(Ellerinize Saglik is a common expression of gratitude).

In an earlier posting I quoted from a two-part National Review Online article by David Horowitz and David Laksin: They wrote that the world:
. . . is witnessing a reprise of the 1930s, when the Nazis devised a “final solution” to the “Jewish problem,” and the civilized world did nothing to halt its implementation. This time, the solution is being proposed openly in front of the entire international community, which appears unruffled by the prospect. It has turned its collective back on the Jews, and refuses to recognize the gravity of the threat.
This trend will almost certainly end in a catastrophe.  I urge those who have the patience to read the entire piece. It ends with this lament:
During the year and a half Obama has been in office, he has indeed brought change to America and to the world. He has transformed a nation that had been the world’s bulwark of democracy and freedom into an enabler of the very forces that are intent on destroying them. He has helped to isolate America’s only ally in the Middle East, its sole democracy and most vulnerable people. And he has brought the impending war of annihilation against the “crusaders” and the Jews, which the jihadists have promised, measurably closer to its nightmare fruition.
If that seems an overstatement, I urge my friends to read the entire piece. Part I is here, and Part II here. As I'm sure you will, feel free to respond in this space as you see fit. 

Photo from Religion of Peace.

Friday, June 25, 2010

From the Archives...

My name is Randy Coleman-Riese, but my nom de plume on this blog is Romanus. This is my first post on Gil Bailie’s blog. Gil has invited me to make periodic contributions here during this time of transition, both personally and professionally, as he moves into a new phase of life in southern California and as he begins to turn his attention to fashioning a manuscript out of his work over the past number of years.

By way of introduction, I have known Gil for over 20 years as a friend and teacher; and have worked with him both as board member of the Florilegia Institute/Cornerstone Forum and for the past eight years as co-worker at the CF offices under the exalted title of executive director. However, the only staff I direct is me. It is my job to take the day to day responsibilities of the operation of a small non-profit organization from his shoulders while allowing him to give expression to his gifts as a speaker and writer explicating the truth, goodness and beauty of the Catholic Christian tradition - especially by means of the tools made available in the work or René Girard.

The use of the pseudonym is intentional in that I will not be posting ‘in my own name’ but rather will be making available on the blog excerpts from the large library of audio archival material Gil Bailie has accumulated over the past 30 years of work. I may add editor’s notes and comments that I feel will aid the understanding of the material on offer, but that is all.

I thought for this first post it would be interesting for folks to hear about Gil’s understanding of the ‘point of view of his work as an author’ or more precisely, his vocation. It has been a perennial challenge for us here to come up with what is known in the non-profit world as a ‘case statement’ – a concise and pithy paragraph that describes what it is we do and why it is important ( and better yet, why it is important to support this work!). Needless to say we are still working at it…

Below is a link to a streaming audio player of Gil speaking in 1989 about his vocation. This piece from 21 years ago came from an introduction to a talk he gave here in Sonoma entitled “The Sacrificial Cult and The Sacramental Church”.














Arrested for being a Christian

Thursday, June 24, 2010

Apropos the prior posting . . .

This from David Horowitz:
The [United Nations] Human Rights Council was created in 2006. In its first year, the council listed only one country in the entire world as violating human rights: Israel. It condemned Israel despite the fact that Israel is the only state in the Middle East that recognizes human rights and protects them. Not one of the world’s other 194 countries was even mentioned, including North Korea, Burma, and Iran — the last of which hangs gays from cranes for transgressing the sexual proscriptions of the Koran. The reason for these oversights is no mystery. The U.N. Human Rights Council has been presided over by representatives of such brutal human-rights violators as Libya, China, Saudi Arabia, and Cuba, and it was such a travesty from its inception that it was boycotted by the United States until Barack Obama decided this year to join its ranks. This decision by the Obama administration, along with its overtures to Syria, Iran, and other noxious regimes, lent a stamp of legitimacy to the hypocrisy of the council and encouraged its malice.

In these sinister developments, the world is witnessing a reprise of the 1930s, when the Nazis devised a “final solution” to the “Jewish problem,” and the civilized world did nothing to halt its implementation. This time, the solution is being proposed openly in front of the entire international community, which appears unruffled by the prospect. It has turned its collective back on the Jews, and refuses to recognize the gravity of the threat. Moreover, by enforcing the fiction that there is a “peace process” that needs to be brokered between the sides, and ignoring the overt preparation for Israel’s destruction by the Palestinian side, the “peacemakers” lend their support to its deadly agenda.

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Monday, June 21, 2010

Sunday, June 20, 2010

Self Indulgence on Father's Day

This from my daughter Anã. A Father's Day remembrance:
Dad, Hunt, Allyson, Anã
Twenty odd years ago.

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

This is where it leads . . .

This is what civil war looks like in its larval stage, and responsibility for it lies with those sentimentalists who willfully subordinated anthropological and cultural reality to rhapsodies about multiculturalism and the Western self loathing that sustained it.



The London Daily Mail reported: "Screaming hate and brandishing vile placards, Muslim extremists and far-Right groups clashed yesterday in ugly scenes that marred a parade by soldiers."

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Christian Humanism and Its Parody

"The outer ring of Christianity is a rigid guard of ethical abnegations and professional priests; but inside that inhuman guard you will find the old human life dancing like children and drinking wine like men; for Christianity is the only frame for pagan freedom. But in the modern philosophy the case is opposite; it is its outer ring that is obviously artistic and emancipated; its despair is within." -- G. K. Chesterton

Monday, June 14, 2010

Restoring the Source and Summit

Thanks to my friend Athos.

Relativists in Jackboots

"Authority per se is never in question. ... An established authority is only attacked with troops that are in the service to other authority. And as everyone knows, there is no more severe, ruthless and tyrannical discipline than that of revolutionaries." -- Lucien Laberthonnière

Saturday, June 12, 2010

Mirror Neurons

Rene Girard has a slightly more nuanced and anthropologically fascinating explanation of mirror neurons, but one that is in most respects entirely compatible with this interesting -- and extremely succinct -- explanation.



Thanks to my friend Philip Hunt

Tuesday, June 01, 2010

Epochal Upheaval . . .

"I believe that we are on the eve of a revolution in our culture going beyond all expectation and that the world is headed for a change in comparison to which the Renaissance will dwindle to nothing." -- René Girard
Those who think Girard is being optimistic here are not familiar with his most recent writing.