Religion

Screen Shot 2014-10-22 at 9.02.26 AM

‘How many presidents of republics have been canonized?’

At Will’s suggestion, Rob and I went to the solemn high mass for Blessed Karl, Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary last night at Old St. Mary’s. It was very beautiful, many thanks to Fr. Bradley.

Afterward we were treated to a speech from His Imperial and Royal Highness, Prince Bertrand of Orléans-Braganza  — apparently his first in English — about the life of Blessed Karl. It was probably the most reactionary speech I’ve ever heard in person. Regular readers of this blog need not be told that that is in no way a detraction. Here it is transcribed:

Holy Mother Church gives us the saints not only as intercessors to whom we can have recourse but as examples to follow.

In what ways should Emperor Karl, recently beatified, be seen as a model? He should certainly be seen as both a model Head of State and as a model head of a family.

Emperor Karl is the latest in a long series of heads of state elevated to the honor of the altar.

  • St. Louis, King of France
  • St. Ferdinand of Castile
  • St. Stephen of Hungary
  • St. Henry of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation
  • St. Vladimir of Russia
  • St. Olaf
  • St. Casimir
  • Empress Zita, already declared a Servant of God
  • Princess Isabel, my great grandmother, for whose beatification the Archdiocese of Rio de Janeiro has taken the first steps. During the absence of her father, the Emperor Dom Pedro II, when she was Regent of the Brazilian Empire, Princess Isabel signed the law abolishing slavery in Brazil. Brazilians started to refer to her as The Redemptrix and wanted to raise a monument to pay homage to her. She said: “I do not want a monument in my honor, but for the real Redeemer, Our Lord Jesus Christ, and on the Corcovado mountain top.” Today, this world famous monument, symbol of Brazil, is a World Heritage monument, Christ, The Redeemer.

I could name several other saints.

How many presidents of republics have been canonized? As far as I can recall, only Gabriel Garcia Moreno, President of Ecuador, could one day be raised to the honor of the altars. Upon hearing that the Ecuadorian president participated in Good Friday processions, barefoot, German Chancellor Bismarck ordered Garcia Moreno’s death. He was, in fact, brutally assassinated on his way from the Cathedral in Quito to the Presidential Palace.

According to Cardinal Pietro Palazzini’s Biblioteca Sanctorum, published in 1988, 21.7% of canonized saints were kings or nobles. If we consider that the percentage of kings and nobles was 1.5% of the population, we see how these data flatly contradict the black image of the nobility spread by revolutionaries.

Indeed, Prof. Plinio Correa de Oliveira, founder of the Brazilian Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property, always stressed that, according to Church teaching, compliance with the Ten Commandments is required not only of men individually, but also of States.

(more…)

American-Beauty-computer-prison

American Beauty and false liberation

I am pretty sure that behind American Beauty’s is an exercise in the Buddhist understanding of liberation. Lester Burnham, played by Kevin Spacey, is a jaded middle-aged suburban man, unhappy with his job and his marriage. At this point, the viewer might be led into thinking that American Beauty is typical Hollywood fare where the protagonist has to discover himself to defy lame old suburbia. This, thankfully, is not the case.

Lester does try to pursue his desire and experience all the novelty the world has to offer. Is he going to find truth and love and all that? He thinks so, and it seems like that. In that iconic scene, Lester fantasizes about Angela (Mina Suvari) with falling red rose petals falling. We see the color red used similarly throughout the film as a symbol for defiant passion. The Real Estate King, Buddy has red advertisements, and he is having an affair with Lester’s wife, who is defying the repression of suburban expectations. The free, directionless spirit of red is highlighted with the scene where the plastic bag is dancing on the wind in front of a red wall. Red is perhaps the color of the energy that defies civilization itself, in all of its beautiful and irrational glory.

When Lester is presented with the opportunity to have sex with Angela, she reveals that she is a virgin, despite her pretenses. Angela represents the insatiability of desire – even when she is totally his, Lester remains unsatisfied. He doesn’t even want her now, thinking of her as an innocent child. His fantasy of satisfaction set the bar far higher than could be reached.

The attempts to engage passion lead to bad results. This is ultimately expressed by the neighbor, Frank, in a homoerotic-turned-violent moment with Lester. Rather than the repression imposed by his environment, Frank’s repression derives from his futile attempt to control that which cannot be controlled, whether it be his son, society, or his neighbors. Lester is shot dead and achieves some sort of analog to Nirvana. He is free from the meaningless context that he existed in and also free from the consequences of destructive passion, yet can appreciate beauty without attachment. Before credits role Lester sees past his delusional fantasy of this young girl, with the music playing with its lyrics “castles burning” alluding to Lester’s false expectations of the “American Beauty” burning away to reveal the unglamorous interior.

The suburban grind is a prison, but so is bohemianism. They are competing systems of trying to sate insatiable material appetites. Breaking out of routine and expressing yourself by dancing on a table, or something, doesn’t save you. Hollywood was wrong. Liberation isn’t a carefree journey of self-fulfillment

Liberation hurts.

7645d926b1acff61607dae2f7949136c8aeb7cc1

‘You should have listened’: Ayn Rand, Left Behind, Doom Paul, and the politics of futility

Hunter Baker wants Christians to get over their “deep ambivalence” about Ayn Rand and stop being so mean to her:

Ayn Rand deserves some of the opposition she has received from Christians and many others. But she also deserves better.

Personally, I’m not ambivalent at all about her, if anything she deserves the Cromwell treatment. But that’s just me.

Perhaps it’s fair for Baker to regret that the most prominent politician to publicly embrace Rand at one time now has to disavow it nearly every time he gives an extended interview. “I completely reject the philosophy of objectivism” is what Paul Ryan said to Jim Rutenberg recently. Is there any comparable ideology that prompts this kind of categorical condemnation from public figures? You get the sense that a politician would have an easier time if it came out that they had dabbled in Scientology or Thelema.

But this isn’t true:

Rand did have disdain for some people, but her lack of respect was not based on physical weakness, class, or color so much as it was aimed at those she thought lacked virtue. Contempt may have its place if it aims at a form of evil.

Characterizing the people of Palestine as “almost totally primitive savages” is disdain based on something other than virtue. I suppose that’s a matter of interpretation. But her war ethics, such as they were, are extremely troubling, and clearly leave the door open to genocide.

In Roy Childs’ letter trying to convert her to anarchism, he links some of these conclusions with the claim that she misunderstands the Constitution and the Cold War. Rand may have been anti-government but she was not an anarchist. Most colorfully, she supported state violence in the sense of being opposed to rules of engagement to mitigate civilian casualties during wartime. She also saw abortion as a “moral right,” which seems to me a lack of respect based on physical weakness.

So, Ayn Rand had pretty destructive views about war, the state, and human solidarity. That’s more than enough to turn me off, but maybe I don’t make enough money. More to the point, should we take it as a sign of defective character when a public figure professes admiration for a person that espouses these views? Perhaps Paul Ryan should not make us as nervous as he seems to make liberal reporters, but it’s not unreasonable, generally speaking, to think so.

(more…)

1934

Happy George Bell Day

October 3 is the feast day in the Church of England for Bishop George Bell. Here’s his collect:

God of peace, who didst sustain thy bishop George Bell with the courage to proclaim thy truth and justice in the face of disapproval in his own nation: As he taught that we, along with our enemies, are all children of God, may we stand with Christ in his hour of grieving, that at length we may enter thy country where there is no sorrow nor sighing, but fullness of joy in thee; through Jesus Christ our Redeemer, who with thee and the Holy Spirit livest and reignest, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.

Christian group that hosted Ted Cruz calling for an apology from the Weekly Standard

My latest at TheDC:

The group that hosted one of the largest ecumenical Christian gatherings to address religious persecution in years last Wednesday night, which was crashed in dramatic fashion by junior Senator from Texas Ted Cruz, is calling for an apology from The Weekly Standard for remarks made by senior editor Lee Smith on Twitter regarding the incident. Smith accused the crowd of showing its “ISIS face” when some in the crowd which included many Arab Christians booed the Senator for goading them with successively more politically-charged lines about Israel.

“There were people in that very room whose loved ones were killed by ISIS terrorists. Smith’s hate and bigotry should not be tolerated by The Weekly Standard,” IDC Senior Advisor Joseph Cella said in a statement to The Daily Caller.

The rest of his nasty comments at the link.

I emailed Bill Kristol for comment; haven’t heard back and don’t expect to. Condemning anti-Christian bigotry is not high on the Weekly Standard’s list of priorities.

What to do about Ted Cruz: Insist that he speak to possible American complicity in genocide

Ted Cruz is now raising money off his appearance deliberately provoking a crowd of Arab Christians. He is raising money off a speech that insulted the leaders of persecuted Middle Eastern churches, and Washington’s Cardinal Wuerl, by suggesting they don’t know how to follow Christ.

If you haven’t been following along, here are some links:

  • Tristyn at TheDC broke the story.
  • Jon Coppage with the transcript and a longer write-up.
  • Another account from the room.
  • Michael Brendan Dougherty and Pascal Emmanuel-Gobry at The Week; Dougherty touches on what at least appears to be coordination with the Free Beacon. Cruz attended a breakfast with Free Beacon reporters and his national security advisor earlier that morning, just before Alana Goodman’s story smearing some of the clerics in attendance as “pro-Hezbollah.” She also got the interview right after Cruz got offstage. It’s been alleged that the neocons have stage-managed stunts like this before.
  • And my great thanks to David Benkof, an Orthodox Jew and strong supporter of Israel, for writing this for us, and adapting his piece for the Times of Israel.
  • Update: Here’s Ross Douthat

The senator must think his constituents and donors are stupid; that his remarks are playing well with the evangelicals back home, and this will all be glossed over in time, with anyone who brings it up being treated as disloyal and possibly anti-Semitic. Here’s what to do to make sure that doesn’t happen.

Cruz is officially against arming the Syrian opposition, but you’d think a supposed conservative firebrand like him wouldn’t hesitate to mention the fact that we already are, and have been since probably 2012. As covered here last week, it is far from a remote possibility that weapons collected in Benghazi and transferred to Syria by way of Turkey have ended up in the hands of ISIS, meaning the United States are complicit in the genocide of Middle Eastern Christians.

This has the added bonus of undermining the neocon argument, which in spite of the chaos engulfing the region they have largely stuck to, that Assad must be toppled above all else, because it shows the consequences of that kind of monomania. Look at how the Free Beacon chides these persecuted people for daring to side, out of sheer necessity, with the autocrat who might at least keep them safe.

This should be Obama’s Iran-Contra, but sadly I think neither Cruz nor Trey Gowdy’s Benghazi Select Committee have any interest in investigating what we were doing there; they’d rather establish timelines about the night of the attack and continue to build a case for the administration’s mismanagement. Ted Cruz should not be allowed to get through a single interview without being asked about what he’s going to do to get to the bottom of whether American-trafficked weapons have ended up in the hands of ISIS. The constituents of Cruz, Gowdy, et al, and conservative groups must be prepared to hold their feet to the fire on this question. If it is true, and Cruz et al are uninterested in talking about it so as not to undermine the case for further involvement in the region, that demonstrates a moral obtuseness that even CUFI might be able to see through.

If Cruz were to demonstrate a good-faith effort to investigate this matter, then perhaps he could be forgiven for the unspeakable insult to the church that he delivered this week. He was on the warpath over weapons trafficking to Mexican gangs, and this should be no different. But pressure will need to be brought to bear: Texans who are concerned about the possibility that America, however covertly or inadvertently, aided ISIS savagery, now is the time to stand up.