from the Audio Archives - A Good Man is Hard to Find Pt 4

Continuing with Gil Bailie's 1989 reflections on Flannery O'Connor's story, A Good Man is Hard to Find.

From the Audio Archives - A Good Man is Hard to Find Pt 3

Continuing Gil Bailie's 1989 reflections on Flannery O'Connor's story, A Good Man is Hard to Find.

This is also how it happens.

Freedoms essential to our human dignity and a healthy democracy are being curtailed, not only in Europe by the force of Islamic intimidation, but here in this country as well by sundry partisans of the sexual revolutionaries.

Here's another eye-opener from my friend Bill Saunders, entitled:

What Happened to the First Amendment?

In case you missed it, the Supreme Court turned the old adage, “Save the best for last,” on its head when, on the last day of its term, it announced a decision that is surely one of its worst ever, and one that could prove deadly for religious freedom on campuses.

In the case of Christian Legal Society v Hastings, the Court decided that the Hastings College of Law could deny registration to a student group as a CLS chapter because it required morally upright behavior of its members and adherence to its statement of faith. Pause and consider that. “Conservative” evangelical students – unlike over sixty other associations of students – may not be recognized as an official student group because CLS wants its members to agree with the theory and practice – the raison d’etre – of the group, that is, to be good and proper evangelical Christians.

Can one imagine requiring the “animal rights” group to admit unrepentant, proselytizing fox hunters? While the majority opinion claims one can not only imagine it but that Hastings’ policy actually requires it (under an “accept all comers” policy), the dissent makes short work of that claim. This is not the place to rehearse the whole lay of the land, but suffice to note that no other group has ever been similarly treated by Hastings and that Hastings only announced the existence of this “policy” when it filed its legal brief in the case. Do you smell something fishy? Well, so does the dissent. (“Only religious groups were required to admit students who did not share their views. An environmentalist group was not required to admit students who rejected global warming.”)

The votes in the case were divided along now-familiar lines between four “liberals” (the majority in this particular case) and four “conservatives” (the dissent), with Justice Anthony Kennedy the key swing vote between the two (more or less solid) blocs. And this time he swung with the liberals (as he often does in “social issue” cases). The dissent was composed of Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia, John Roberts, and Samuel Alito, with Alito writing the dissenting opinion.

The dissent demonstrates that the majority upholds a policy by Hastings that really never existed, but was invented to provide a post hoc justification for the discrimination against CLS that had already taken place. This is clearly shown, for instance, by the fact that the dean with whom the students met, following an initial rejection by the same dean of their application to register, told them nothing about an “all-comers” requirement, but instead objected because their statement of faith was not compliant with Hastings non-discrimination policy that includes, most importantly, sexual orientation.

It’s clear what is going on. The conservative evangelical students were disfavored by Hastings because they disapprove of non-marital sexual activity, including homosexual acts. After all, what could be more offensive in the modern culture, based as it is upon the god of sexual freedom, than such a viewpoint? What could be more “offensive” to the majority of students at a liberal law school (or to the tenured faculty and administration) than those who do not equate any other sexual behavior with that between one man and one woman within the bond of matrimony?

While the majority protested (too much) that this was a “neutral” policy by Hastings, the dissent saw more clearly: “Today’s decision rests on. . .the wrong-headed] principle…[that there is] no freedom of expression [that must be respected if it]…offends prevailing standards of political correctness in our country’s institutions of higher learning.”      

Didn’t we have contentious debates about “free speech” on campus during the 1960s and 1970s? Indeed we did, and there is a case from that era that is right on point, Healy v James. That case involved a highly disfavored group, Students for a Democratic Society. When a proposed student chapter refused to disavow violence (as the national SDS refused to do), they were denied registration by a college. In deciding Healy, the Court held this was an impermissible infringement on “association rights” protected by the First Amendment.

What did the majority make of this inconvenient precedent on association rights? As the dissent notes, it ruled, in essence, that “the effects of this discrimination [which are the same in this case as they were in Healy,] were really not so bad. . . .that a little viewpoint discrimination is acceptable…” In layman’s terms, they held the constitutional infringement was not too bad.

This is rather ridiculous on its face. However, it isn’t funny because it shows what entrenched elites, both in colleges and on courts, are up to. They are determined to vanquish their most hated foe, those who adhere to traditional religious points of view, and they will bend, perhaps break, the Constitution to do so. Which is another reason, by the way, to be careful about whom we confirm for the Supreme Court.

William Saunders is Senior Vice President of Legal Affairs at Americans United for Life. A graduate of the Harvard Law School, he writes frequently on a wide variety of legal and policy issues.

Bill's article appeared in today's The Catholic Thing.

From the Audio Archives - A Good Man is Hard to Find Pt 2

Continuing Gil Bailie's reflections on the Flannery O'Connor story, A Good Man is Hard to Find.

This is how it happens.

 LEERDAM, The Netherlands - 23/07/10

Three paintings depicting pigs have been pre-emptively removed from a hospital in Leerdam because they might offend Muslims.

One patient, not actually himself a Muslim, made a complaint about the paintings because he wanted to avoid Muslims having confrontations with the pigs. The leadership of the healthcare institution, the Linge Polyclinic, thereupon decided to remove the paintings immediately, Algemeen Dagblad newspaper reports.

The artist, Sylvia Bosch, is astounded. "One week earlier, I had an e-mail from the clinic saying that they were getting nice reactions. After a single complaint, they had to be taken away immediately."

The Linge Polyclinic has stated that the pictures were removed because "all visitors must feel comfortable in the institution".

Thanks to (who else?) Robert Spencer.

From the Archives: A Good Man is Hard to Find - Part 1

Over the next while I will be posting sequential excerpts of Gil Bailie's 1989 reflections on Flannery O'Connor's short story, A Good Man is Hard to Find. A few weeks ago I posted the introduction to this in which Gil gave an account of his vocation at that time.

Courting Disaster

From my friend Bill Saunders:

America Needs to Wake-up About Kagan

A successful magic act hinges upon the magician's ability to distract the audience from what is really going on.  And in the current battle for a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court, Americans—distracted by tragic headlines over the last two months—seem to have turned their eyes from the news that will shape their lives for generations to come. 

Now it is time to pull back the curtain and demand that Elena Kagan receives appropriate scrutiny from our senators, or the trick will be on us.

An episode from Kagan’s Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings shows us exactly where we need to look.

Engaged analysts already know that Ms. Kagan will be an agenda-driven judge, perhaps the likes of which we've never seen. She has a long record of supporting and admiring agenda-driven judges, people who at times rejected the law to advance their personal views.

But in a Perry Mason moment during her confirmation hearings, Kagan herself tugged at the magician's curtain when answering questions about events surrounding her political work advising President Bill Clinton on partial-birth abortion.

On June 15, Americans United for Life attorneys released a legal memo that discussed Kagan's work on partial-birth abortion. The memo first raised the issue of Kagan's attempt to lobby the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) to change its position statement on partial-birth abortion to reflect her preferred language as debate on the heinous practice heated up on Capitol Hill.  A month later, ACOG's final policy statement contained Kagan's edits.  

And it didn't stop there.

On June 28, AUL attorneys released a second memo examining Kagan's efforts to lobby the American Medical Association (AMA) on the same issue.

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R.-Utah) asked Kagan at her confirmation hearing about this chapter in her career as a political operative. In an otherwise sleepy and scripted two days of hearings, it became clear from her tone and evasiveness that Hatch was on to something.

While working in the Clinton White House, Kagan wrote that ACOG's initial statement on partial-birth abortion, which stated that experts "could identify no circumstances under which [the partial-birth] procedure ...would be the only option to save the life or preserve the health of the woman," would be a "disaster."  During the hearings, Kagan "clarified" what she meant by calling ACOG's statement a "disaster."

Kagan told Hatch "the statement did not accurately reflect all of what ACOG thought.... That it was both not the only procedure [to save the life or preserve the health of the woman], but also that it was in some circumstances the medically best procedure."

That statement does not pass the straight-face test.

Kagan essentially told senators that she wasn't trying to influence the ACOG language, rather she was working to ensure that ACOG had the opportunity to paint the whole picture. This explanation doesn't square with her 1996 White House memo where it's clear that the "disaster" in question was ACOG's scientifically based view that partial-birth abortion is not medically necessary.

"I'm really stunned by what appears to be a real politicization of science," Sen. Hatch said, responding to her testimony. "The political objective of keeping partial-birth abortion legal appears to have trumped what a medical organization originally wrote and left to its own scientific inquiry they had concluded."

There seems to be a clear difference between what Kagan told the Senate and what may have actually taken place. William Saletan, hardly a conservative-leaning columnist, called Kagan's explanation "bogus" in a July 3 Slate.com piece.

Americans United for Life President and CEO, Dr. Charmaine Yoest, called for a formal investigation into these discrepancies during her Senate testimony. And while the July 4th congressional recess temporarily paused the nomination process, it allows time to reset the proverbial stage.

Act Two is set to begin. As the Senate returns for business this week after the recess, the brewing storm over Kagan's partial-birth abortion scandal is certain to intensify. But this storm, some may be surprised to find, will not necessarily be a partisan one.

Kagan's apparent alteration of science raises serious ethical questions for both Republicans and Democrats. With so many outstanding questions about a political activist and advocate poised to sit on the highest court in the land, how could the Senate possibly vote on Kagan's nomination without further inquiry?

A magician's trick cannot withstand close scrutiny, and Americans are beginning to see the real Elena Kagan.

Mr. Saunders serves as Senior Counsel for Americans United for Life. The original article is here.

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Authority and Criminal Power

"Authority is progressively being destroyed by criminal power," wrote Philip Rieff at an earlier and calmer moment in the decomposition of Western civilization. In confirmation thereof, this video, a portion of which was posted earlier.

Happy Fourth of July

America! America!
God mend thine ev'ry flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law.

From Notre Dame University

 The Colloquium on Violence and Religion
Notre Dame University

If one has to be taken to the woodshed, it's a privilege to be taken there by a giant in his field, which is what happened to me today. My old friend, Fr. David Burrell, who held the Hesburgh Chair of Theology and Philosophy at Notre Dame and who is a man of extraordinary gifts and a lifetime of accomplishments in the fields of philosophy and theology, took the opportunity of our meeting at the COV&R conference to try to convince me that my concerns about radical Islam were overwrought.

I hoped he would succeed, for I would love nothing more than to cease being a source of irritation to my friends who see the world much as David does. We had a most animated conversation and we parted better friends than ever, but -- alas -- he did not succeed. But I have promised David that I will let his words continue to resonate and, Mary-like, bear all these things in my heart. 

Meanwhile, the conference has been a delight, filled with formal and informal opportunities for rich conversation and mutual exploration. Randy was able to attend the conference as well, which gave us a chance to do some Cornerstone Forum planning. The upshot of our conversations is what I hope will be an interesting new addition to what we are doing.

More of that anon.

From the Audio Archives: 2003

Since Gil and I are at the annual COV&R meeting being held this year at the University of Notre Dame I thought it might of interest to read about a response to an earlier conference held some years ago. You will hear a familiar refrain from Gil's work and also hear one of the sources of that refrain in Rene Girard's comments.


An introduction by Gil Bailie, June 22, 2003, Innsbruck, Austria:

I am writing from Innsbruck, Austria where the Colloquium on Violence and Religion has just concluded its 2003 annual conference. The conference was a rich one, with more than 70 papers delivered. The discussions both formal and informal were wonderful. It was only at the very end of the conference that an issue arose that seems to arise everywhere these days where serious attention is paid to the Gospel and its cultural consequences. In so many places today, pluralism is besieged by people who ardently feel they are defending pluralism. In fact, pluralism is being redefined as the value to which all other values must defer. But in the topsy-turvy world of postmodern thinking, it is precisely postmodernity's supreme principle of pluralism which cannot be exported to other cultures without violating the multicultural premises upon which it is currently based.

One needs to be reminded that pluralism is not a "truth," rather it is the social arrangement most suitable to the charitable quest for truth. When and where a doctrinal pluralism censures that quest, it becomes --- like so many other late-modern and post-modern "good intentions" --- a parody of itself. I say this, all too quickly no doubt (I am pressed for time in these last few hours in Austria), in order to introduce a few remarks that René Girard made at a panel discussion at the end of our conference.

One of the panelists expressed discomfort with the distinction Girard has always made between "myth" and "revelation," suggesting that by privileging "truth" Girard and Christians generally set up a conflict with those who might not affirm that truth, thereby contributing to the very violence which they purport to be resisting. René's interlocutor said that "The message of the market has become the market of the messages," implying that the free flow of this information-age exchange would be jeopardized by attempts to privilege any one message the way Christians privilege the Gospel and insist on its universality and uniqueness, and the way Girard privileges the mimetic theory as both the product of the Gospel revelation and, in turn, its best anthropological explicator.

René responded with remarks that lasted slightly over four minutes. The recording I was able to get of his response is not of the very highest quality, but I think you will find its mediocre audio quality a small price to pay for the profound but perfectly simple and obvious truth to which he calls our attention.

Rene Girard:

"You know I find this debate very interesting on a certain level, but unconnected at all with the mimetic theory at other levels To put, in a way, all these messages more or less on the same level without asking the question of truth and falsity is the basis of our entire culture today. So there the mimetic theory is totally misunderstood in the sense that the mimetic theory is entirely about the question of truth or falsity. Therefore it has to disregard, in a certain way, the question of whether it’s going to cause controversy or not. I think one has to take a scapegoat example which would be modern enough to still be meaningful to us in terms of being for or even against injustice, and in those cases I always take the Dreyfus case.

"In the Dreyfus case you can see that the anti-Dreyfus argument which triumphed in France for years supported by the government and so forth was a perfect myth in the sense that there was a victim who everybody thought was guilty and who in reality was innocent. The first people who said that this victim was innocent suffered for it in the same sense we might say that the prophets suffered for the truth, Christ suffered for the truth. In the Dreyfus vision of mythology is the exact counterpart of the anti-Dreyfus…they resemble each other extremely. But there is one little difference the importance of which we don’t see in the case of religion and we see very well in the case of Dreyfus. Was the victim really innocent? Did he deserve to be punished or not? The only question is that. Oedipus is supposed to be guilty ? this is a myth. Judaism and Christianity always call myths lies and they are right! And Judaism and Christianity say that the opposite, the vindication of the victim, is true, period. Nothing else matters. And that’s all. See what I mean? If you get away from that you’re off course. We are all trying to get along on avoiding the question of truth, and in a way it is very understandable and it’s still the philosophical way. We should avoid talking about religious violence; you know-- the Platonic way. We are all for it because our instinct tells us, in a way, it is the only way you can have peace today. But I think at the same time it’s false in the sense that the account of the passion, if you read it, is exactly the truth of these myths which these myths do not give you. I think there is one man who understood this Christological sense, paradoxical, of the Dreyfus case and his name is Charles Peguy and he saw it as a Christological affair, which is very mysterious to a lot of people ? ‘vindication of that Jew’ and so on ‘shouldn't we be anti-Semitic’, ‘we’d be better Christians’ and so forth….no, only the truth counts. This is it.

"Either the mimetic theory has nothing to do with what I have just said, in that case its pure bunk, and has no interest whatever, or it has something to do with it. And of course I think it has a lot to do with it, that it is really the same thing."

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....

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.

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.

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

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.

UN Human Rights Double Standard

Hillel Neuer of UN Watch:



Thanks to Robert Spencer.

Welcome to Dearbornistan

For more, go here.

Self Indulgence on Father's Day

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

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."

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

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

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

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.

Memorial Day PPS

On a less happy note, Dennis Prager had a piece last week on the worldwide moral decline, complete with a sad but utterly convincing catalog of examples, among them this:

Europe long ago gave up fighting for or believing in anything other than living a life with as much economic security, as many days off, and as young a retirement age as possible. World War I killed off European idealism; whatever remained was destroyed by World War II. What I have written about the Germans is true for nearly all of Europe: Instead of learning to fight evil, Europe has learned that fighting is evil.

Other consequences of European secularism and the demise of non-materialistic ideals there include a low birth rate (children cost money and limit the number of fine restaurants in which one can afford to dine) and appeasement of evil. Thus most European nations are slowly disappearing and nearly every European country has compromised Western liberties in order to appease radical Muslims.

Meanwhile, the round-up of news this Memorial Day weekend confirms again that the universality of Original Sin remains Christianity's most empirically demonstrable doctrine. Edmund Burke's corollary, that: "All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing," is, I'm afraid, one that will soon be made all too clear to us.

Part of remembering is recognizing what we have lost and how we have betrayed those, as Dante put it, who will look on these as the ancient times -- the moments when decisions were made or evaded, decisions which will very significantly determine the kind of world in which our children's children will live.

Memorial Day PS

Inasmuch as remembering those we have loved and lost -- and to whom we owe so much -- is a sign of spiritual and cultural health, I am happy report that the biggest traffic jam in Worcester, Massachusetts today was at the cemetery where Liz is buried.

Remembering . . .

Gilbert Hunt Bailie
Killed in the Battle of the Bulge
January 7, 1945

I visited the cemetery in Belgium where my father's body was buried for three years, until it could be returned to the United States. It was in a vast sea of crosses -- and an occasional star of David -- for as far as one could see. From reading my father's letters to my mother, it is clear that these were young men who instinctively knew that the challenge they faced with precisely the preservation of civilization.

He attended Mass on the morning of his death, something that gave my mother great consolation.

We own men of his generation a great debt.

For Trinity Sunday

"... the true Christian ... is a puzzle to the psychoanalyst. ... [T]he key to understanding is buried deeply in the mystery of the Trinity and the Incarnation." -- Hans Urs von Balthasar

Fr. Vincent's Ordination

Brother Vincent of St. Joseph's Abbey was ordained today by Bishop Robert McManus. Father Vincent will be a very fine priest, joining a community blessed with some of the finest priests and brothers one can imagine.

It was a privilege to share in the celebration.

Don't be fooled by the bottled water and coffee cups.
The wine was flowing.
Please keep Fr. Vincent in your prayers.

It is always paradoxical

"Being a Christian is hard. The Christian cannot copy Christ because he is unique, but he should nevertheless follow him. This will give him confidence to live the paradox of being a child as well as a mature adult, 'remaining humble, while knowing that he is one who is sent,' and, yes, of being both father and brother." -- Hans Urs von Balthasar

Faith Leads to Knowledge

"... it was my work that oriented me towards Christianity and convinced me of its truth. It is not because I'm a Christian that I think as I do; it is because of my research that I became a Christian. I also question the distinction between an intellectual and an emotional conversion. As for St. Paul, the word 'spirit', for me, includes the emotional and the intellectual side of a human being; and rather than 'intellectual', the expression 'the life of the mind' should be used in this instance. Conversion is a form of intelligence, of understanding." -- René Girard

Cultural coherence . . .

"The historical task of culture is always and everywhere the same: the creation of a world in which its inhabitants may find themselves at home and yet accommodate the stranger without yielding their habitus to him." -- Philip Rieff

Thanks for all the kind words and prayers

Thanks to everyone who wished us well and kept us in your thoughts and prayers on May 8th. We are slowly returning to something resembling ordinary life. Here are some photos from the luncheon following our wedding.

Gil hamming it up and teasing Kathleen

Gil Toasting Kathleen

(To make up for the teasing)

Saying goodbye to our friends

With hearts full of gratitude . . .

Kathleen and Gil
Today we exchange our wedding vows.
St. Francis Solano Catholic Church
Sonoma, California

"The Holy Spirit," wrote Romano Guardini, "carries holy life to man, lifting him back to the pristine purity of beginning."

This may at first sound like pious fancy. But in human existence there is an allegory for it: love. Take for example a man of a specific nature, occupation, environment, who has reached maturity within a specific set of conditions. For him all these things belong together, forming a unit, himself; all other people are another unit, ‘the others,’ who live ‘over there.’ Our man may be considerate, friendly, neighborly, but unconsciously he will always draw a line between himself and them: I, mine – as distinct from you, yours; them, theirs. But when he falls in love something astonishing occurs. The I-not-you, mine-not-thine barrier begins to dissolve. Now no particular virtue or effort is necessary to join the beloved; he is already ‘there.’ What is his suddenly belongs to the other, and what affects the other suddenly touches him, for a new unit has been created. It has not been superficially tied, nor has it come into being by a mixing or blending of the two; it was born, and its name is love. Something similar, however divinely different, happens between man and God, though here it is the love of God himself which is active, the Holy Spirit.

Well-lived Lives . . .

My aunt Martha and her husband Andy

Two of the kindest, most joyful and loving people I have ever know, Martha and Andy were drowned in their Nashville home in last week's flash floods. Please keep them in your prayers.

Why Would Anyone Want to Blow Up Times Square?

Asks Daniel Pipes, whereupon he provides a depressing litany of predictable prattle by those who fear giving credence to non-liberals more than they fear those determined to wipe out the last vestiges of classical liberalism.

When news comes of Muslims engaging in violence, politicians, law enforcement, and the media invariably presume that the perpetrator suffers from some mental or emotional incapacity. (For a quick listing of examples, see my collection at “Sudden Jihad or ‘Inordinate Stress’ at Ft. Hood?”)

Instead, they should begin with a presumption of jihadi intent. That is, the default expectation should be ideological passion, not insanity. Spreading Islam and applying Islamic law are the goals. Of course, some insane Muslims exist and they do engage in violence, but they constitute a microscopic percentage of the 15,247 Muslim terrorist incidents since 9/11, as counted here.
 

The failed effort to blow up an SUV in New York’s Times Square prompted speculation about the would-be bomber’s motives even before the identity of Faisal Shahzad, an immigrant from Pakistan, had been made public. The Nation’s Robert Dreyfuss discounted the possibility of a jihadi from the Pakistan-based Taliban: “It seems far more likely to me [he] was either a lone nut job or a member of some squirrely branch of the Tea Party, anti-government far right.”

Then, just hours after Shahzad had been arrested, authorities rushed to assure the public his action had nothing to do with Islam. Examples from May 4:

· Mike Bloomberg, mayor of New York City: The bomb could have been placed by “somebody with a political agenda who doesn’t like the health care bill or something. It could be anything.”

· Mahkdoom Qureshi, Pakistan’s foreign minister: “This is a blow back [for U.S. military activities in Pakistan]. This is a reaction. This is retaliation. And you could expect that. Let’s not be naive. They’re not going to sort of sit and welcome you eliminate them. They’re going to fight back.”

· Nadeem Haider Kiani, spokesman for the Pakistani embassy in Washington: It’s too soon to tell exactly what motivated the bomber, but early indications suggest he is “a disturbed individual.”

· Cable News Network: “It can confirmed that his house has been foreclosed in recent years. I mean, one would have to imagine that brought a lot of pressure and a lot of heartache on that family.”

· CBS News: “It isn’t clear if more suspects are at large or what the motive could be.”

· The Washington Post: Under the title, “The economic crisis meets terrorism,” Ezra Klein notes that Shahzad’s house was foreclosed and comments: “This guy is like string theory for the media: He brings together the seemingly incompatible stories that drove the past decade. That said, you of course don’t want to speculate on why someone ‘really’ did something. The hearts of men are opaque, and motives are complex.”

And here’s a collection from today’s papers:

· Law enforcement (as reported by NY1): “Investigators say they still have no motive for Shahzad’s actions.” (May 5, 2010)

· Kifyat Ali, a relative of Shahzad’s: “We are shocked. He had no connection with any political party or jihadi group.” (May 5, 2010)

· Associated Press headline: “NY car bomb suspect cooperates, but motive mystery.” (May 5, 2010)

· Associated Press story: “Federal officials aren’t talking about a motive in the arrest of a naturalized U.S. citizen charged with attempting to set off a bomb in New York’s Times Square.” (May 5, 2010)

· New York Post “exclusive”: Shahzad “said he was driven to evil by the slew of deaths among leaders of the terror group, law-enforcement sources revealed yesterday. Sources said he was an eyewitness to the onslaught throughout the eight months he spent in Pakistan beginning last summer.” (May 5, 2010)

· USA Today headline: “Motive of NYC car bomb suspect remains a mystery.” (May 5, 2010)

· The Guardian headline: “Times Square bomb: Pakistanis puzzled by bomber’s motives.” (May 5, 2010)

Comments:

1. Some of these interpretations say the motives are mysterious, some of them speculate about one thing or another — but all assiduously avoid the elephant in the room.

2. You can’t win a war if you don’t have the courage to name the enemy.

3. Naming the enemy means changing some of the more pleasant aspects of Western life, and so is tough to do.

4. I expect that naming the enemy will occur only after a cataclysm ends our patience with minced words.

Is it any wonder that people have abandoned the old media and the commentariat it turns to for this kind of analysis?

Source: National Review Online: The Corner

The Vine and the Branches . . .

Today's gospel reading has weighty civilizational implications:

Jesus said to his disciples:

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine grower.

He takes away every branch in me that does not bear fruit,

and everyone that does he prunes so that it bears more fruit.

You are already pruned because of the word that I spoke to you.

Remain in me, as I remain in you.

Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own

unless it remains on the vine,

so neither can you unless you remain in me.

I am the vine, you are the branches.

Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit,

because without me you can do nothing.

Anyone who does not remain in me

will be thrown out like a branch and wither;

people will gather them and throw them into a fire

and they will be burned.

"Without me you can do nothing." The thinly disguised nihilism that passes for secular sophistication today is precisely that nothingness, awaiting the inadvertent spark or the terrorist's torch. The greater the culture's historical dependency on Christianity, the greater the price for abandoning it. It will go easier for Sodom and Gomorrah than for a formerly Christianized civilization that has turned itself into an effete and sanctimonious facsimile of Sodom and Gomorrah.

The pruning by Truth (incarnate) of the rank growth of self-will and self-delusion is infinitely preferable to the only alternative to it: the conflagration that the children of the self-deluded will otherwise undergo. But nothing is more antithetical to the spirit of the age than the very idea of pruning.

Another great piece by Thomas Sowell

In which he says:

Recent stories out of both Philadelphia and San Francisco tell of black students’ beating up Asian-American students. This is especially painful for those who expected that the election of Barack Obama would mark the beginning of a post-racial America.

While Obama’s winning majorities in overwhelmingly white states suggests that many Americans are ready to move beyond race, it is painfully clear that others are not.

Those who explain racial antagonisms on rational bases will have a hard time demonstrating how Asian Americans have made blacks worse off. Certainly none of the historic wrongs done to blacks was done by the small Asian-American population; for most of their history in this country, they have not had enough clout to prevent themselves from being discriminated against.

While ugly racial or ethnic conflicts can seldom be explained by rational economic or other self-interest, they have been too common to be just inexplicable oddities — whether in America or in other countries around the world, and whether today or in centuries past.

Resentments and hostility toward people with higher achievements are one of the most widespread of human failings. Resentments of achievements are more deadly than envy of wealth.

The hatred of people who started at the bottom and worked their way up has far exceeded hostility toward those who were simply born into wealth. None of the sultans who inherited extraordinary fortunes in Malaysia has been hated like the Chinese, who arrived there destitute and rose by their own efforts.

Inheritors of the Rockefeller fortune have been elected as popular governors in three states, attracting nothing like the hostility toward the Jewish immigrants who rose from poverty on Manhattan’s Lower East Side to prosperity in a variety of fields.

Others who started at the bottom and rose to prosperity — the Lebanese in West Africa, the Indians in Fiji, and the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, for example — have likewise been hated for their achievements. Being born a sultan or a Rockefeller is not an achievement.

Achievements are a reflection on others who may have had similar, and sometimes better, chances but who did not make the most of their chances. Achievements are like a slap across the face to those who are not achieving, and many people react with the same kind of anger that such an insult would provoke.

Rene Girard has shown us how mimetic desire produces such envy and resentment, but politicians (sadly) have shown us how easily it can be exploited in ways that seem to be sympathetic to the less fortunate, but which ultimately condemn them to permanent disadvantage.

Sowell's whole piece is here.

Melanie Phillips weighs in . . .

The British boot stamping
on the face of Christian belief

Terrifying as this may seem, the attempt to stamp out Christianity in Britain appears to be gathering pace.

Dale McAlpine was preaching to shoppers in Workington, Cumbria, that homosexuality is a sin when he found himself carted off by the police, locked up in a cell for seven hours and charged with using abusive or insulting words or behaviour.

It appears that two police community support officers — at least one of whom was gay — claimed he had caused distress to themselves and members of the public.

Under our anti-discrimination laws, such distress is not to be permitted. And so we have the oppressive and sinister situation where a gentle, unaggressive Christian is arrested and charged simply for preaching Christian principles.

It would appear that Christianity, the normative faith of this country on which its morality, values and civilisation are based, is effectively being turned into a crime.

Surreally, this intolerant denial of freedom is being perpetrated under the rubric of promoting tolerance and equality — but only towards approved groups.

Never has George Orwell’s famous satirical observation, that some people are more equal than others, appeared more true. 

Robert Spencer Interview - Part 3

Robert Spencer - Part 3
- Watch more Videos at Vodpod.

My Granddaughter . . .

Ana and Mike's first child

You can't make this stuff up ...

Go here.

Science? Who needs it?

This is the image on the masthead of the student newspaper.
Appropriate enough.

This from the campus newspaper at Oklahoma State University:

Tuesday, the Oklahoma Senate succeeded in overriding Gov. Brad Henry’s veto of two pieces of landmark legislation, one day after the House did the same. The bills became law immediately.

The controversial House Bill 2780 has garnered national attention, requiring that women seeking abortions undergo an ultrasound at least one hour prior to the procedure. The bill also requires that the healthcare provider describe fetal development as evidenced by the ultrasound, including discussing the heart beat and the presence of limbs or organs.

The woman or her family can sue any physician who doesn’t comply with these requirements. The physician would face fines up to $100,000 and would be legally barred from performing abortions in the future.

Women are not required to look at the ultrasound image, and cases in which abortion is necessitated by medical emergency are exempted from these requirements.

The Center for Reproductive Rights immediately filed a lawsuit in Oklahoma County District Court, calling this one of the nation’s strictest anti-abortion measures.

Informed consent. Remember that? Science not religion. Remember that?

Robert Spencer Interview - Part 2

Robert Spencer - Part 2
- Watch more Videos at Vodpod.

European Suicide . . .

The European Crisis continues to deepen. Blinded by a multicultural mythology, dogmatic secularists are sawing off the Christian limb on which they have been sitting. At least Rowan Williams' predecessor retains a clear head.

LifeSiteNews reports:

The clash between Christians and the state has intensified, with a UK court now having upheld the dismissal of a Christian psychologist who refused to give advice on sexual intimacy to homosexual couples - a decision the former Canterbury Archbishop Lord Carey has denounced as a prelude to “civil unrest” between Christians and the secular government.

Gary McFarlane, 48, a Bristol solicitor, father of two, and evangelical Christian, had worked part-time as a psychological counselor with Relate for five years, during which time he even gave advice to homosexual couples working out basic relationship problems. However, he was sacked from his job in 2008 when he qualified as a psychosexual counselor, because he said he could not give advice in homosexual intimacy as this violated his conscience and beliefs. . . .

The disenfranchisement of Christians in the United Kingdom continues apace under the anti-discrimination laws introduced by Labour. In the past several years numerous reports of Christians losing their jobs or even being arrested simply for expressing their Christian moral views have surfaced – events that appear shocking in light of the 70th anniversary this year of Winston Churchill’s famous “Finest Hour” speech from the Second World War.

The famed British Prime Minister had rallied the British people on the eve of the Battle of Britain in June 1940 saying, “upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization.” He warned that if they failed, “all that we have known and cared for will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.”

Watching Europe commit cultural suicide is one of the saddest and most ominous experiences of our time.

"No enemies on the left"

The old motto seems to be holding.

The pompom media has been frantic in alerting us to the danger posed by all those potentially violent tea-party protesters and almost silent on past and present "protests" of the left which make the tea-party crowd look like your average citizen -- which, it turns out, is what they are.

Here's the lede for the San Jose Mercury News about last night's May Day protest-riot in Santa Cruz:

A large group of protesters demonstrating at a May Day rally for worker's and immigrant rights downtown broke off into a riot vandalizing about a dozen businesses around 10:30 p.m. Saturday, police said.

Many in the group were carrying makeshift torches as they marched, breaking storefront windows and writing "anarchist graffiti" on buildings, according to Capt. Steve Clark. Many businesses sustained multiple broken windows including very large storefront windows at Urban Outfitters and The Rittenhouse building. Police believe at least 15 businesses suffered damage.

The violence was initiated from a group holding a rally at the town clock for May Day. Windows at Jamba Juice and Velvet Underground were left shattered and graffiti including anarchy signs were tagged onto buildings.

Because of the size and violent demeanor of the crowd, Santa Cruz police asked for help from all agencies in the county to break up the riot. At one point, protesters lit a fire on the porch of Caffe Pergolesi and blocked access to firefighters, officers said. Police were able to clear out the demonstrators before more damage was caused.

Here's a look:

Anybody on the official press bus notice things like this? There are -- and have been -- loads of them. And they're met with relative -- and from many: total -- silence. "Over here! over here! ... (these people with their American flags and their folding lawn chairs) -- we'd better be wary of them!"

Hat Tip: Gateway Pundit

Robert Spencer Interview - Part 1

The Spiritual, Civilizational Challenge ...

Robert Spencer Interview - Part 1
- Watch more Videos at Vodpod.

A Palate Cleanser . . .

You can infantilize some of the people all the time and all of the people some of the time, but you can't infantilize all the people all the time.

Manning one's station . . .

"If there were nothing original in my work there would remain only the passion with which it hands on what it has received, because it is unknown to so many, and the assignment to do this for the missions one is given, more than one's talent, are what individuate the Christian." -- Hans Urs von Balthasar

Visualizing the Numbers

My friend Jill Fallon at Business of Life passes this video along: