Was Jesus Christ a Sith Lord?

Warning: massive plot spoilers. Do not read if you don’t want to know the plot of Revenge of the Sith.

George Lucas has a wife and three children. If the Jedi mystique accurately portrays his vision of society, you wouldn’t want to be one of them. Let me explain.

Now that we have Lucas’ complete vision, we can see the story centers not around Luke, but around Anakin. That, as they say, changes everything. If Lucas’ first three efforts were about a young man learning to find himself, the last three are about marriage and family. It isn’t pretty. Only two families are portrayed in the six-film series: Anakin and his single mother, and Anakin’s own marriage to Padme (Luke’s aunt and uncle are merely plot devices who carry less than fifteen minutes of combined film time).

The contrast is stark. Even though she is enslaved, Anakin’s single mother is relatively happy. Her fatherless child, on the other hand, enters a marriage so dysfunctional that it leads to intergalactic war, the destruction of whole planets and the deaths of untold billions.

Did Lucas mean to show fatherless boys make bad husbands? Or did he mean to show how a skewed understanding of celibacy destroys lives? By the end of Revenge, it’s hard to tell. The whole story has become rather muddled.

The Evil of the Jedi

We learn that the Sith are evil because they are selfish, while the Jedi are good because they are selfless – they always serve others. This selflessness is apparently meant to explain Jedi celibacy. Jedi are not supposed to be attached to anything, “Train yourself to let go of everything you are afraid to lose,” Yoda counsels a despondent Anakin.

If this is Jedi philosophy, the Sith are right to destroy them. Persons are defined by their relationships with other persons. For that reason, marriage and family are superlative goods. In fact, marriage and procreation are so good that celibacy can make sense only if it permits us to participate in an even greater personal relationship than father and husband, mother and wife.

The only personal relationship greater than these is a personal relationship with God Himself. The pursuit of celibacy apart from a personal relationship with God is the pursuit of self-annihilation. Argue if you would like, but remember that only two kinds of religious celibates exist: the Christian celibate, who seeks more perfect union with the three Persons of the Trinity, and the Eastern mystic, who seeks to annihilate his own ego to become one with Nirvana – Nothingness.

The Jedi are Eastern mystics. For them, God is neither Person nor personal. Thus, when the Jedi require all their members to detach themselves from personal relationships, they require suicidal selflessness. This incoherence eventually destroys the movie’s plot.

The Dark Side: Marriage

Lucas’ Jedi ethic, for instance, respects the individual as an enemy, but not as a spouse. Jedi may not kill unarmed prisoners, no matter how evil, no matter how universal the suffering they caused. But they may not marry. The good of the one is greater than the good of the many as long as that one is an enemy – if it is a spouse, then abandon her.

Instead of seeing marriage as a life-long commitment to serve one’s spouse, the Jedi see marriage as a selfish attachment, a self-indulgence. Marriage is not a commitment to serve someone else, it is a commitment to make someone else a tool towards personal happiness. Anakin essentially says this when he tells Padme, “I cannot live without you.” He suffers from a failure of vision, he cannot conceive of a greater good for himself than Padme. He must have her. Marriage is how Anakin takes care of Anakin.

This explains Anakin’s attitude towards Padme’s pregnancy. Never does he inquire as to the health of the children, never does he question whether he will be a good father, nor whether he is on the path to such a goal. Padme is equally oblivious to her own condition. She cares only about his career, he worries only about her death. Rarely has the pregnancy of a protagonist, a pregnancy critical to plot development, been so universally ignored by every character in a story.

With the revelation of the pregnancy, we can see that Anakin began his walk down the Dark Side when he got married. He is angry at the Jedi Council because he broke their law against marriage. Their law has made his failures as a Jedi manifest. He is not able to think through the source of his discontent because the Jedi code virtually prohibits thought, “Follow your feelings,” he is told again and again.

When he does, he finds he has broken their law on marriage. But how could he avoid it? A Jedi cannot say “I think we should do X,” rather, he says “I feel we should do X.” A Jedi never tells people things: that implies possession of knowledge. Rather, he shares with them, which is, perhaps, why none but the Sith seem to think much.

Deadly Dogmatism

The animus against thought is the only constant theme. When Senator Palatine warns Anakin against the Jedi because they are too dogmatic and narrow-minded, when he says the Jedi need a larger view of the world, we know Anakin sees dogmatism as a bad thing. But when Anakin quotes Jesus to Obi-Wan, “You are either for me or against me” (Matthew 12:30), we find out from Obi-Wan that Jesus was a Sith Lord – “Only the Sith deal in absolutes.” The Sith are apparently evil because they are the dogmatists. Selfishness and dogmatism are equated.

Indeed, dogmatism seems to be the only thing everyone wants to avoid. As a result, the entire story line falls apart as everyone becomes a hypocrite.

Certainly the Jedi are hypocritical dogmatists. After all, we don’t see the Jedi sitting down with the Sith Lords in order to work out their differences in common council by negotiating a middle ground. Instead, the Jedi insist democracy and republics are better than emperors and empires. They prohibit killing the unarmed. They prohibit marriage, enjoin celibacy, and insist you feel your way out of a situation instead of think your way out.

Likewise, Padme is meant to represent the good, the mother-earth principle. As Anakin becomes a dark techno-geek in the most literal sense, Padme enters a white chamber to give glorious birth. Except the birth isn’t glorious. As the two are showcased in their respective surgeries, we are supposed to see some sort of contrast between them, but ironically, we see they are both cut from the same cloth.

Anakin is quite willing to slaughter innocent children and his own friends in order to save someone he has decided he can't live without (although, as the rest of the series shows, he does manage to survive without her). Likewise, Padme is willing to orphan her children because her husband is an ass. Instead of living for love, she dies from petulance.

Nobody gives a hot damn about the children. Even the Jedi preserve their lives primarily as insurance against the Sith, so they have a way to wrest back power when the children come of age. In this story, every person is a pawn to be used, in a completely objective and disinterested way, of course.

The Sith are the only honest characters in the film, in the sense that they lie, but they know why they lie and they are consistent in their lies.

In short, the whole series is not the clear-cut clash of good against evil that attracted thousands in the 1970’s. Instead, it is transformed into a sordid mess, a series of stupid people doing stupid things for stupid reasons.

But, as Mark Twain says, everyone is good for something, even if it’s only a bad example. If anyone wonders what life looks like to a pagan, watch the Star Wars series. Its incoherence, senseless violence and skewed perceptions of reality combine to demonstrate that without Christ at the center, life truly is but sound and fury, signifying nothing.

New Typology Course

Well, I thought I would put in a plug for the new typology course starting June 5th at the College of Athanasius. If you have ever wanted to learn how to stay awake during the Sunday Mass readings, this course is for you!

The four week course demonstrates how to read and understand the Scriptures using some of the same methods used by people like Scott Hahn, Pat Madrid, Karl Keating, and Tim Staples. They stole these ideas from the Fathers of the Church, so it is only fair that we steal them too. The course teaches you how to use the four senses of Scripture briefly described in the Catechism, #115-119.

You don't need to know Greek, Hebrew or Latin.
You don't need to study grammar or verb tenses.
If you can identify the noun and the verb in a sentence, you know all you need to know to succeed.

Because the course is built around a bulletin board system, you work according to your own schedule, not someone else's. But, because it is in a bulletin board system, you can also easily converse and collaborate with the other people taking the course. Best of all, it doesn't fill your e-mail box with lots of messages.

This four week course on Scriptural typology starts Sunday, June 5 and ends July 1.

Information on the content can be obtained at
http://www.athanasiuscollege.org/course-typology1.htm

If you want see the first (and longest) reading assignment, get the PDF document at:
http://bridegroompress.com/snippets/TRSenses.pdf

Cost is $25 for the four-week course.
The textbook is Scripture.
If you go to the course outline link above, you will be pointed to a free electronic Bible with Strong's concordance. Strictly speaking, you don't need it, but some people might find it useful and I have found that software more than adequate for my needs. I especially like having Strong's at my fingertips for free.

If this course proves successful, we will be offering at least one, possibly two, follow-ups:
Option A) Using typology in the interpretation of medieval and Renaissance art
Option B) Identifying New Testament typology in modern literature.
In both of the follow-up courses, you will use what you learned in this first course to investigate why certain cultural icons are so powerful.

On Political Parties

America’s three-party system is mutating yet again, but it is unclear exactly how the game will play out. Hmmm….? Yes, you read that right. America’s three-party system.

America never really had a party system until roughly the middle of the 1800’s, when the Whigs and the Democratic-Republicans faced each other during and after Andrew Jackson’s presidency. The Whigs had formed to oppose Jackson’s policies, but the issue of slavery was as fractious then as the issue of abortion is today. It shattered the party into two wings, with the anti-slavery wing eventually mutating into today’s Republican party.

Unfortunately, Jackson’s presidency also shattered the Democratic-Republicans. Jackson’s party eventually mutated into today’s Democrats. By the end of the Civil War, only two major parties were left standing: the Republicans and the Democrats.

But the Civil War created a third political party. After all, the war had created the system of railroads and telegraph lines that made fast news transmission possible. With the post-war ubiquity of the telegraph, America developed the modern news media.

As Joseph Pulitzer, of Pulitzer prize fame, and William Randolph Hearst, founder of the Hearst newspaper empire, pointed out, they could manipulate public opinion at will and start wars as they saw fit. And they did. The Spanish-American War was largely an invention of Hearst’s desire to sell newspapers. Then, as now, making the sale was more important than saving lives.

These three parties, two voted into power by ballot, the third voted into power by sales, faced each other off in shifting alliances over the next century. The third party was voted into power because the American people chose it. We liked hearing one kind of news as opposed to another kind, delivered in a yellow-journalism style as opposed to a different style; we chose what kind of lies we most liked to hear and we empowered the ones who pleased us with lies to keep at it.

The industrialists of the time recognized this. They went with the flow by creating the compulsory mass school system. Invented by men like Carnegie and Rockefeller at the turn of the 1900s, the mass school system was designed to stratify society into a hierarchical social class system. The schools trained most people to be nothing more than factory workers, with concomitantly low literacy and intellectual skills. The unions that the industrialists fought so hard against were slowly destroyed by the industrialists’ new right-to-work card, the college degree.

Universities became the new apprenticeships, replacing both the agrarian small-business apprenticeship model and the union card. Whereas the earlier systems placed an apprentice into a job according to biological nepotism, the new system places people according to intellectual nepotism – only those who think the right thoughts will move into positions of power. As a result, university professors have become the gatekeepers to society. The newest political party, the university, fills the empty slots in political, judicial and media positions.

But new and interesting possibilities appear on the horizon. Hearst and Pulitzer dominated the political situation in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The mainstream media and Hollywood dominated it in the latter half of the twentieth. Even now, Microsoft is positioning itself to dominate the news distribution of the early twenty-first. Whether control of the mechanism by which information is distributed turns out to be as critical as control of the informational content itself remains to be seen. Clearly, though, the monopolies are changing.

Newsweek Lied, People Died

In an unexpected turn of events, Newsweek has revealed their recent story concerning false allegations that military interrogators flushed the Koran down a toilet was actually funded by the National Endowment for the Arts.

“I’ve always loved Andres Serrano,” said one of the Newsweek reporters who broke the story, “In fact, he personally taught me how to fill a urine cup. I had one of his autographed cups gilded. It’s on my mantelpiece today. I figure it’s worth maybe a quarter million.”

Serrano, well-known for his marvelous artistic work, “Piss Christ,” which submerged a crucifix into a jar of his own urine, applauded his student’s work. “Well, of course people died!” he replied in response to this reporter’s queries, “That’s the essence of art. That’s what I love about the Arab street - Moslems have the hearts of artists. What I’ve been teaching for years is that we need to ascend to a radically new level of performance art and now we’re beginning to get there.”

Accomplished artist Chris Ofili agreed. Ofili is well-known for his spectacular rendition of the Holy Virgin Mary, which represents her exposed breast as a ball of elephant dung, and replaces the angels that traditionally crowd around her with cut-outs of human buttocks.

“The problem with American Catholics is they don’t understand art. They look at this work of mine, they see it, and what do they do? They write letters of protest! I mean, is that it? That’s all?? I’m trying to provoke a real involvement in society, maybe a riot, maybe some arson, and all I get is letters and a couple of white folk carrying signs.”

“I was really in a funk about that for a long time.” Ofili continued, “I had just about given up on America. But then this happens! Newsweek reporters are my kind of people. The NEA drops a dime on one of my students and Newsweek was there to play this into a big happening. I wish I could have been in Afghanistan to see the blood flow!”

German anatomist and chemist Gunther von Hagens was also highly enthusiastic about the Newsweek work. Hagens, who calls himself the Plastinator, takes dead human bodies, peels away the skin, extracts all water and fat and injects them with silicone and other polymers, and then presents them, flayed for better viewing, in various states of dismemberment. This exhibit has toured art museums internationally.

“What I want to do now is get those corpses, plastinate them, and continue Newsweek’s work,” said Hagens. “The problem is, we didn’t get enough bodies. I’m working with reporters at Newsweek, Time and CBS right now to finish another grant proposal to the NEA. Flushing the Koran was a good first step, but it’s time to move on. We’re proposing one of those suicide bombers detonate himself near the Ka’aba.”

The Ka’aba is the holiest site in Islam, a meteorite which has been at the center of Arab worship since well before Mohammed.

“Take out the Ka’aba and the Moslems will go NUTS!" Hagens said, "That should get us the kind of body count that today’s art demands. In fact,” he added, “we don’t even have to take it out. We just publish an article saying that Bush has targeted it for destruction. Everybody who reads our stuff already has the vision of Bush that we want them to have. It will be easy!”

“This is what art is all about,” enthused an NEA board member, “Art builds on reality. When we first saw the Newsweek proposal to invent a story about desecrating the Koran, I have to say I was not very excited. In America, we have desecrated everything we could think of and it never got us more than a few nasty notes from some ignorant hotheads.”

“We have been striving to evoke the 60’s again, to bring back the riots, the smell of tear gas, the rubber bullets. All of this is an important part of American culture. It’s hard to believe, but many young people today have literally never run down the street with their clothes on fire from an exploding smoke grenade.”

Other NEA members agreed, “Americans are too willing to take anything we dish out. Every bit of artwork we’ve funded, from ripping apart children in the womb to paying off judges to hijack the Constitution, it doesn’t matter. Nothing works anymore. We needed to find people with backbone, people who would stand up to us so we could laugh as we crushed them. We can’t get Americans to riot anymore.”

“Oh, sure, killing Schiavo was fun,” added another, “and we don’t regret a dime of the money we spent on our best up-and-coming artists, men like George Felos and Judge Greer, but that was a one-time thing. The NEA has finally found a way to take performance art worldwide. We’re done with wrapping islands in plastic. Let’s start wrapping the Koran in dog vomit!”

Buchanan Cuts to the Chase

If you get a chance to read Pat Buchanan's latest piece on World War II, do it.

I have noted more than once in this space that Nazi eugenics policies were made in America. Today, the policies we fought to destroy in Germany are sixty years ago are firmly ensconced here.

Buchanan points out that our military "victory" in WWII was anything but.
Sure, we killed a small man with a mustache, but all we got in exchange was a Russian with a mustache, a man who was a more skilful despot and killer.

We didn't win WWII.

We lost it, both militarily and philosophically.
But we're so stupid, it's taken us six decades to realize it.

Second-Hand Estrogen

For years, we have been warned of the dangers of second-hand smoke. We are told that second-hand smoke blackens lungs, causes cancer, offends women, injures children, creates untold medical expense and causes the clock on your VCR to blink (alright, I made the last one up). As the formerly asthmatic son of a life-long smoker, I must admit that I have no love for the smell of cigarette smoke, but I must also admit that the evidence for the wealth of claimed dangers has never been particularly strong. Still, on the basis of rather tenuous evidence, smoking has been banned on airlines, in workplaces and in public areas around the nation. Who wants to breathe air someone else has fouled?

Ralph Waldo Emerson famously said that foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. At the risk of summoning hobgoblins, let us apply the standards that we hold so dear for community air to community water. Certainly the environmentalists could not be offended by the principle. Or could they?
What if we were to speak not of industrial corporations spewing waste into streams, nor of run-off from agriculture fertilizer that contaminates so many water tables, but of another source of deliberate contamination? Let us strike a little close closer to home – let us open the door on the family medicine cabinet.

Or, to be more precise, let us open the door on the American individual’s sterility cabinet, for it is the synthetic female estrogen and progesterone hormones that have allowed this country to become the great and childless nation that it is today.

But to properly savor the experience, we must first recall to mind a few facts concerning hormonal contraceptives in pill, patch, shot and now ring. When the birth control pill was first released, it was so dangerous that reports of its side effects created the Congressional committee which developed the now-ubiquitous drug package insert. The pill caused strokes, blood clots, liver problems, vitamin and metal imbalances, headaches, weight gain, hair loss and decreased libido, and those are just the highlights.
Just as the tobacco industry was forced to develop the low-tar and filter cigarettes to fend off critics of early death, so the pharmaceutical industry was forced to develop low-dose estrogen and progesterone only pills.

The problem, of course, is that the new drug formulations do not prevent ovulation. Instead, they prevent pregnancy by preventing the embryo from implanting. They cause abortions.

The pharmaceutical companies, realizing the problem, fought hard to implement a solution. They wanted to re-define when life begins. After all, this is easier than formulating a safe hormonal contraceptive.
They succeeded. Newsmakers in the medical community now insist pregnancy only begins at implantation, thus everyone can say with a straight face that hormonal contraceptives do not cause abortion.

But the problems didn’t stop there. Just as the cigarette companies had diversified their market by advertising to younger and younger audiences, the pharmaceutical companies began a similar diversification. They not only began to market to younger and younger audiences, but also to the aged. Tobacco helps us lose weight; synthetic estrogens, according to the pharmaceutical companies, were just the thing for the treatment of menopause, a biological condition which apparently is now a disease.

Unfortunately, as with the tobacco companies, science intervened. Not one but two massive national studies had to be shut down as initial data showed that hormone replacement therapy (HRT) was massively lethal to older women. The mainstream news media were at pains to ignore the fact that virtually the same estrogens were used in both HRT and every hormonal contraceptive. Why such drugs would be acceptable for younger and middle-aged women while being unacceptable for older women was never commented on, much less explained.

So, why does all this matter? Well, ask the environmentalists. For years, environmental scientists have known that the synthetic hormones from birth control pills are being flushed into aquifers, rivers and streams and have been causing catastrophic feminization in fish and wildlife populations.

Between 30 and 60% of the synthetic hormones and the biologically active metabolites from the birth control pill are excreted in the urine of a drugged woman. Sewage treatment plants do not remove this drug effluent. Septic tanks do not remove it either. The patch and the estrogen ring are even more concentrated sources of synthetic hormones, containing as much as three to six month’s concentrated supply of synthetic, biologically active hormone. Rainwater seeping through garbage dumps rinse the drugs out into the water table, assuming the septic tanks and treated sewage water haven't gotten there first.

Recent studies show that these same synthetic estrogens cause prostate deformities in men and kidney disease in both sexes. Since cancer cells are notorious for the proliferation of estrogen receptors, these hormones are also actively suspected as being the fuel for many cancers. They are likewise suspected as a principle culprit in reports of falling sperm counts throughout the developed world.

So, the next time you raise a glass of drinking water to your lips, think about the millions of individual, sexually active women who flush their toilets five times a day and thereby contributed to the contents of your glass. If we ban cigarettes because of their health risk, certainly our liberal friends would want to ban hormonal contraceptives. Or is second-hand estrogen a cow too sacred to touch?

Postscript:
Many people have asked me if I can back up my absurd charge that synthetic estrogens from oral contraceptives are disrupting the environment.

Here's but a few of the hundreds of URLs that can be brought forward:

http://www.aperc.org/docs/bulletin01-16-02.htm

http://sports.espn.go.com/outdoors/bassmaster/news/story?page=b_fea_bt_0412_news_pollution_girly_bass

http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/fish/innews/fishfert2003.htm

http://www.anapsid.org/cnd/hormones/estrogen5.html

http://www.healthfinder.gov/news/newsstory.asp?docID=522249

http://www.eurekalert.org/features/doe/2003-07/dnnl-see082703.php

http://pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/trib/regional/s_354359.html

http://www.ourstolenfuture.org/press/2003/2003-0627-KR-estrogenizedfish.htm

http://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2001AM/finalprogram/abstract_25760.htm

http://www.jcaa.org/JCNL0411/MutantFish.htm

Note in the MSNBC piece that estrogens are said to be a “natural” part of sewage, but no one talks about how it gets in there.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6436617/

This is an extremely well-known problem among experts in waste management. Sadly, most of us prefer to concentrate on the evils of big manufacturing plants rather than our own contributions through the use of hormonal birth control drugs.

The Power of Scripture

It must make the secular humanists grind their teeth at night. Mitch Albom wrote a recent best-seller entitled The Five People You Meet in Heaven. The protagonist dies and meets five different people in the afterlife; people who help him understand what his life was about. The success of the novel would be unremarkable, except for a couple of things. First, the book’s plot is shot through with New Testament imagery. Second, Mitch Albom is Jewish.

Why would Albom write a novel that re-tells the Gospel? Because people desperately need to hear it and they know it. Disney’s Hyperion imprint bought the manuscript, reviewers gushed over the book; Hallmark even created a made-for-TV movie adaptation, but no one seems to have realized the origins of the novel’s success. For those who haven’t read the novel and would like to, be warned that the plot is given away in the next few paragraphs. For those who want to consider what this means, keep reading.

To see how Albom did it would take a book, but we can briefly consider each of the novel’s five encounters. Some may think it a stretch to see in the Blue Man, the first encounter, a rendition of the Old Testament relationship between Yahweh and His Chosen People, but when the second encounter involves a soldier whose remains are hung in a tree, our suspicions grow. The third encounter is set at a diner, where a son tries to communicate with his father, with a mediator named Ruby, after the blood-red mineral; clearly a Last Supper resonance.

The fourth encounter with its wedding sequences reminds us of Christ the Bridegroom, especially since the wife he meets carries the French rendition of the name Daisy – the flower which has always symbolized the Christ child. The final encounter, though, puts the icing on the cake. Here he meets an innocent, a girl with the Filipino name for “star” standing on a white rock near a river. The white rock, the river, and the pure woman crowned with stars are all found in Revelation, as is the wedding feast from the preceding encounter. Supporting details make it clear these scenes were not accidental.

But his is not the only popular book to leverage the message of Scripture. While many people have attacked Dan Brown’s novel for it’s incredible historical inaccuracies, and rightly so, few have noted that he endorses three very Biblical principles: sex is holy, marriage is holy and women should be treated like an image and likeness of God (i.e., goddesses). True, these principles are dressed up in pagan garb, but their Scriptural relevance is no less weighty in the new disguise.

Once one gets used to reading the symbols, it is remarkable how much popular literature and movies simply re-hash the New Testament (the first Matrix movie, for instance, or the first edition of Blade). But this is nothing new. Consider Les Miserables, possibly the most successful novel of the mid-1800’s. A criminal, imprisoned for stealing a loaf of bread (Eucharist), escapes from jail and is set free from the police during his flight by a bishop’s silver. “Jean Valjean, my brother,” whispers the bishop as he sets him free, “you no longer belong to evil, but to good. It is your soul that I buy from you… and I give it to God.”

From that moment on, Jean Valjean is the major Christ figure in the book (there are several), pursued relentlessly by the Old Testament law, which finds its embodiment in the son of the prostitute, the police officer Javert. Valjean will rescue the daughter of a prostitute and raise her as his own. He will even toil through the sewers of Paris, just as Christ descended into Hell, in order to assure the marriage of the virgin he saved to her promised bridegroom. Meanwhile, Javert will complete the book and the baptismal imagery by drowning himself in the Seine thereby releasing Jean Valjean forever.

The stories that move us most deeply are not the bodice-rippers or the Vagina Monologues. They are, instead, those works that answer our crying need for God. “Sophisticated” readers simply require the Gospels to be hidden a little more deeply, so that we are not frightened by His too-near presence. Thus, despite all the well-founded worries to the contrary, there is something comforting in the fact that Albom and Brown are so popular. All hope is not lost. As Christians, you would think we would know that.

This essay is based on information that can be found in “Effective Habits of the Five People You Meet in Heaven” and “Fact and Fiction in the Da Vinci Code”, both by Steve Kellmeyer.

I'm on Television

Amazing, isn't it? I am interviewed on Grizzly Adams Productions new DVD, Breaking the Da Vinci Code. Since they are going to run that show during sweeps week on PAX TV, that puts me on the little box. So, if you want to see me yammer, May 11th, 9 Eastern/Pacific, 8 Central/Pacific is the predicted event time.

The fantastic irony of the thing is that I won't see it. We not only don't have cable, we don't have a TV antennae. The only thing we watch on our television is DVDs and videos. Actually, not even the latter right now, since the VCR broke about a month ago and we haven't gotten around to getting a new one.

But the situation is worse than that. To be perfectly honest, I'm not exactly sure where the TV or DVD player is. When we REALLY want to watch something (which happens about once every three days or so), we put a DVD into the laptop. So, I'm in the peculiar position of promoting a cable TV program with me in it that I am nearly certain no one in my immediate family will actually watch.

The only reason I thought to mention it now is this: I just got off the phone with someone else who is contemplating putting me in front of the unblinking eye again for another project. When he went to check my speaking schedule on the website (Bridegroom Press), he asked why I hadn't put the program listing up on the site.

I told him the obvious reason: I'm stupid. It simply never occurred to me.

So, I have taken the trouble of putting this up in order to show that I am not as stupid as I look ("couldn't be!" comes the cry from the back) and I do, indeed, have some marketing savvy.

Or something.

Anyway, if any of this makes you interested in buying my book, Fact and Fiction in the Da Vinci Code (it is new and improved from the first printing, by the way), please feel free to click on over and buy a copy or two or three. If you want more, call me. I 'll give you a discount on volume purchases. Give it to friends, neighbors, enemies, as birthday, baptism and bar mitzvah presents. In case quantities, it makes a great doorstop and a substantial boat anchor, etc., etc., etc.

It also allows me to make my house payments and feed my growing family. Sniffle.

So, lots of reasons to watch the program, be impressed by my (semi-scripted) brilliance and buy a tome or two from the website, not necessarily in that order.

E-Bay Does the Right Thing!

Thank you for your email regarding the sale of the Holy Eucharist by one of our community members. We respect and appreciate your comments regarding this sensitive matter.

As you may know, eBay does not sell items itself. Rather, we are a global marketplace for sellers and buyers who transact directly with one another. Each day eBay’s sellers list 5 million items on the site, and those sellers decide what items they want to list. eBay did not possess, list or approve the sale of the Eucharist. The buyer and seller completed the Eucharist transaction on April 11th, before eBay even became aware of the listing.

As a marketplace, we strive to respect the diverse perspectives of our sellers. We also work hard to promote an open environment for trade. That said, eBay has policies in place to remove listings for illegal items as well as highly offensive listings that promote hate or intolerance.

We understand that the listing of the Eucharist was highly upsetting to Catholic members of
the eBay community and Catholics globally. Once this completed sale was brought to our
attention, we consulted with a number of our users, including members of the Catholic Church, concerning what course we should take in the future should a similar listing appear on our site. We also consulted with members of other religions about items that might also be highly sacred and inappropriate for sale. As a result of this dialogue, we have concluded that sales of the Eucharist, and similar highly sacred items, are not appropriate on eBay. We have, therefore, broadened our policies and will remove those types of listings should they appear on the site in the future.

As always, we welcome and appreciate the assistance of the community in upholding the rules of our site. Should you see another Eucharist listed on our site, we encourage you to notify us so we can take appropriate action. Further, we encourage you to directly communicate with the seller. Members are often unaware that a particular item is offensive to others. A respectful e-mail to the seller is often all that is needed for the seller to voluntarily remove the item. We believe this modification strikes the appropriate balance between respect for our community’s values and our goal of providing an open marketplace offering practically anything on earth.

Again, we sincerely appreciate your concern and thank you for communicating your views with us. Your input has helped us frame a policy that will enable us to better serve our diverse community of users around the world.

Regards,
Shea on behalf of Bill Cobb
Community Watch Team
eBay Trust & Safety

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Abnormality, Thy Name is Homeschool

For most Americans, homeschooling seems rather odd. Why bother with it? We have had public and private schools with us all of our lives, as have our parents before us and their parents before them from time immemorial. Why not stick with what works? The thought would be touching, if it were historically accurate. It isn’t.

The concept of compulsory schools with mass attendance is a radically new idea to Western civilization, no older than industrialization. Indeed, industrialization arguably could not have taken place without the mass school, and therein lies a tale.

As John Taylor Gatto points out in his impressive work, The Underground History of American Education , America’s schools were not very much used prior to 1870. The reason is simple.

The printing press was invented less than 50 years before America was discovered. The press enabled the Protestant Reformation. Because Protestant Faith argues that Scripture alone is authoritative, Protestants have a strong drive to be literate. The religious wars in Europe also drove many Protestants to find safe haven. The discovery of America was fortuitous in that it gave Protestants, that is, literate men, a place to flee.

As a result, the United States had a uniquely literate population. As numerous commentators of the time noted and US Census figures confirm, white men in America were essentially 100% literate prior to 1870. While schools existed, they were not much used. Like children from time immemorial, American children were educated at home and self-educated, not schooled.

The first compulsory school law was passed in Massachusetts in 1852. The second law would not be passed until 1864, in Washington D.C. The great wave of compulsory school laws were passed between 1870, with the last falling into place in 1917.

In 1860, one-third of the 300 high schools in the country were located in Massachusetts, where the school year was twelve weeks long, and only six of those weeks were consecutive. Even by 1890, the school year was only twelve to twenty weeks. Even by 1900, only six percent of American teenagers had graduated high school, only two percent of Americans 18 through 24 were enrolled in a college.

While most Americans had attended an elementary school of some sort prior to 1900, they spent no more than two to three years in it, if that – perhaps forty weeks total. While in school, they were generally not learning to read. They learned that at home.

Instead, they were reading. Fifth grade basal readers included works from William Shakespeare, Henry Thoreau, George Washington, Sir Walter Scott, Mark Twain, Benjamin Franklin, Oliver Wendell Holmes, John Bunyan, Daniel Webster, Samuel Johnson, Lewis Carroll, Thomas Jefferson, Ralph Waldo Emerson.

The late-nineteenth century mass school system was America’s response to two enormous driving changes in American society: industrialization and massive immigration. Waves of Irish and German immigrants broke upon American shores between 1830 and 1860, with another massive wave entering from the Southern Mediterranean and Eastern Europe between 1890 and 1910. These immigrants tended to be poor, illiterate and Catholic.

As I noted in a previous essay, the agrarian model of instruction required apprenticeships. For reasons beyond the scope of this article, Protestant American industrialization had to destroy that agrarian apprenticeship system. It did.

First, the states passed child labor laws, throwing young immigrant men and women out of apprenticeships and out of work. Once the streets were flooded with these legally invented delinquents, compulsory school laws were passed, requiring these same young men and women to attend school. These schools were consciously modeled on insane asylums. The youth who were to be housed in them were, after all, immigrants, poor illiterate wastrels, often swarthy non-whites (Italians, Greeks and their neighbors can take a bow here), and worst of all, Catholic. They had no rights which a white man was bound to respect.

While compulsory school laws were passed, compulsory attendance was not popular. Armed troops were required to pacify the Massachusetts countryside as nearly eighty percent of the population fought the state government. As late as 1882, thirty years after the state had passed the compulsory attendance law, the militia had to march children to school. New York City parents rioted in 1917. The examples could be multiplied. The literacy rate began a steady decline that has reached its nadir today.

The school system is so effective at passing on knowledge and forming young minds that this entire history is lost to most of the Americans who pass through its gates. We no longer remember how or why today’s school system came to be what it is. The modern college student is radically less well-read and radically less moral than the average twelve-year old was in colonial America.

So, yes, homeschooling does seem a little odd to many. It seems unnecessary, not a good fit for most families. And in a certain sense, that assessment is correct. Homeschooling is not a good fit for the modern family, if only because the family has, in modern times, ceased to exist. Family cohesion has been obliterated by the mass school.

Our society requires massive consumption. Needy, ignorant people consume more goods and services than educated, emotionally stable people do. The quickest way to create needy people is to obliterate the family. The quickest way to create ignorant people is to divorce them from their parents. The mass school is an excellent exercise in creating a market for your goods, whatever those goods might be. Unfortunately, what counts as goods for the market does not count as goods for the family.

This essay is based in large part on the soon-to-be-released book Deception: Catholic Education in America" and John Taylor Gatto’s "Underground History of American Education."

Catholics Are Stupid

With the election of Benedict XVI and the evident jubilation at his reign in many Catholic quarters, the intellectual elite has again returned to its habit of bashing the intelligence of Catholic laity. To be fair, this is hardly a new phenomenon. For centuries, non-Catholic Christians have remarked on the evident sheep-like ignorance of Catholics. The papists have a robot-like obedience to a pontiff that thinks for them because they are too ignorant to think for themselves.

Stereotypes

It is often remarked that stereotypes do not arise out of nothing. No matter how slanderous the stereotype, at least some small part of it must have its origin in reality or the stereotype would not be adopted as true by the culture.

Consider, for instance, that slaves who are regularly whipped tend to be less than enthusiastic workers. This is a fact. It is also the origin of an American stereotype concerning men with dark skin. Similarly, Jews were, for centuries, lawfully forbidden from working in most trades. About the only profession they were permitted to work in was banking. A man’s got to make a living, but those who had reason to be dissatisfied with bankers rarely noticed this. Instead, they noticed that most of the bankers they worked with had a specific non-Christian origin. Today, suicide-bombers and other terrorists tend to be a different kind of non-Christian. While most members of Islam do not blow themselves up in crowded cafes, the stereotypical Muslim is the suicide bomber.

In much the same way, the stereotypical Catholic is stupid. Why? The answer is quite simple, and quite well-known to an industrial society: it is the classic “legacy system” problem.

The History of Ignorance

Prior to the invention of the printing press in 1450 AD, literacy was an expensive hobby. A book the size of a Bible cost as much as a private airplane does in today’s dollars. Vellum and parchment writing materials were made of calf, kid or lamb-skin. It took an entire herd of animals to supply enough skin for a single book. Only rich men could afford that kind of wholesale slaughter, or the expense of hiring a writer who could copy the book out by hand over the course of months or years.

Just as most of today’s population knows nothing about flying airplanes, so most medievals knew nothing about reading. They didn’t need to.

The printing press and Luther changed all that. By 1500, the cost of a book had dropped to two percent its former value. As literacy began to grow, Martin Luther proposed a novel idea (pardon the pun). The words of Scripture meant not what the Catholic Church said they meant, rather, those words meant whatever you wanted them to mean. Luther was the first deconstructionist.

St. Jerome famously said, “Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ.” Since less than ten percent of the Roman population could read, we can be sure that Jerome was not insisting on literacy. While Catholics can practice their faith regardless of literacy rates, Protestants suffer no such luxury. It is nearly impossible to be an illiterate Protestant.

This put America in a unique situation. Protestants colonized America, which is to say, literate men colonized America. Prior to 1800, over 99% of the inhabitants of the British colonies were Protestants. America didn’t have a legacy system to maintain. Europe did.

Legacy Systems

As even the lowliest technician knows, the biggest impediment to upgrading a computer network is the legacy on the desktops. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of older machines are out there. They all have to be upgraded or replaced before new software can be rolled out.

A company that has just formed does not have this upgrade issue. It can buy the newest, cheapest equipment and begin operations before a well-established company has even finished filling out its purchase orders.

America had no illiterate legacy population. Precisely because of its peculiar foundation, American literacy ran above 95% even before the Revolution. This level was maintained through roughly 1870. Immigrants were the only fly in the “total literacy” ointment. When European immigrants came across the water, they tended to be illiterate. Literacy might have been growing rapidly in Europe, all things considered, but Americans didn’t consider all things. Instead, they simply noted that the Catholic immigrants were mostly poor and unable to read. Catholics were stupid.

Catholicism in America did not grow through conversion. It couldn’t. The Catholic population was too poor, too small and spread too thin. Few Catholics knew their own Faith well enough to proselytize even if the American population had been open to such a thing, and American Protestants weren’t. No, Catholicism in America grew almost entirely through immigration. Even as late as 1920, an estimated 75% of the American Catholic population were European immigrants.

Catholics may have founded nearly every major university in Europe, their monasteries may have kept the very skill of literacy alive during the Black Plague and the famines, they may even have invented the printing press which allowed literacy to become commonplace, but none of that mattered. Americans only knew poor, illiterate Catholics. Thus, Catholics are stupid.

The Importance of Literacy

Christ preached to a population that was between one and ten percent literate. The most literate of that population, the scribes and lawyers, rejected Him. Catholic Faith spread through the lower echelons of Roman society first, the segments least likely to be literate. It was the literate segments of Roman society that ferociously maintained their pagan ways. It was the literate population that fueled the Arian heresy. It was the secular literati of European society who insisted on burning witches and following socialism, both in its national (Nazi) and international (Communist) forms.

So, when we see modern intellectuals make snide remarks, we should not be surprised. “Anyone who has not read Foucault, Derrida or Andrew Sullivan is really not literate,” they say. Let us grant the statement without argument, as we have already granted similar statements concerning Arius, Marx and the rest. It hardly matters. As was noted before, faithful Catholics don’t need to be literate, as the world views literacy, in order to be faithful to Christ.

This essay is taken in part from information available in Deception: Catholic Education in America.

Back to the Ghetto

“Catholics have no rights a white man is bound to respect.” This is essentially the position of Illinois Governor Ron Blagojevich and numerous other commentators on the issue of prescription abortifacients, also known as hormonal birth control drugs. Those who argue that Catholics cannot be pharmacists join the chorus arguing that Catholics cannot be judges, doctors, nurses, and in the most recent revelation from Florida’s Judge Greer, cannot act as parents. Not since the Middle Ages has there been such a determined push to outlaw the right of a religious group to work in certain trades.

Federal law stipulates that a business cannot refuse to employ or trade with someone on the basis of race or creed, but it is perfectly legal for a business to refuse to trade in a specific item. If the local restaurant refuses to serve pancakes after ten o’clock, if the local burger shop will sell fish sandwiches only on Fridays or perhaps not at all, no customer can sue them for these lapses. A business is permitted to refuse the sale of any item it pleases so long as that refusal is based on the item and not the customer requesting the item.

If an employee decides not to sell an item, the business owner may take what steps he deems against that employee, especially in the state of Illinois, where “at-will” employment holds sway. Perhaps a business owner hires Bartleby the Scrivener for his marvelous accounting skills and, as a side benefit, has him man the store counter as well. Perhaps the businessman discovers that Bartleby prefers not to sell playing cards on alternate Thursdays, and cannot be induced to do so. The man can fire Bartleby or accommodate him, but how is it the state’s business which course of action he chooses?

This is especially true when we consider the doctor-patient relationship. Those who insist this relationship is private fail to consider that the pharmacist is a doctor. When a woman’s medical doctor writes a prescription, he thereby transmits a privileged medical communication from himself to another doctor. The prescription is a request for a second opinion. The first doctor writes out his opinion concerning proper treatment and asks the doctor of pharmacy if he concurs. The patient is the courier for the communication. The professional judgement of the doctor of pharmacy concerning appropriate drug usage is critical to the entire medical profession, yet Illinois governor Ron Blagovich has arbitrarily decided that pharmacists are not doctors and have no professional judgement.

Thus, the same people who insist that the government has no right to interfere in medical practice applaud Illinois government’s interference in medical practice. Apparently, the right to privacy between doctor and patient is sacrosanct except when the doctor determines that she cannot, in good conscience, collaborate in a specific kind of treatment the patient insists on having. It was not illegal for doctors to refuse to work with chiropracters, and it still is not, but it has become illegal for doctors to work with Catholics and other Christians.

In America’s early years, Catholics made up less than one percent of the population. Before 1800, one in eight Catholics in that one percent was a slave; most of the rest were poor farmers. Because they had no political clout, because they were manifestly hated by the Protestant majority, Catholics paid a double taxation and were forbidden the right to vote or hold office. Catholic churches, convents and homes were burnt; mobs harassed or murdered adherents to the Faith.

Many claim that this kind of attitude no longer holds in an America where John Kennedy won the presidency. Few people bother to note that Kennedy won the election only through his insistence that he was an avowed apostate from the Faith. To be elected, he first had to insist that he would consider his Catholic convictions useless when it came time to act on any matter.

During the course of this year, America will lose its numerical Protestant majority. It will not lose its anti-Catholic bigotry. Thus, we watch Governor Blagojevich viciously attack a woman’s right of conscience. We wait in vain for the National Organization of Women to support an Illinois doctor of pharmacy in her decision to refuse to dispense what she considers a dangerous drug. We wait for the courts to rule that Catholics should return to the ghetto from whence they came.

Caretaker Pope

Having no television, I've been listening to the streaming audio from NPR. All the commentators keep insisting that Benedict XVI is a caretaker pope.

Methinks they dost protest too much.

Vive il Papa!

Stealing Home

With the new Minuteman Project, illegal immigration is in the headlines again. The debate isn’t new, of course. 150 years ago, it wasn’t the Hispanics that worried us; it was the Chinese and the Irish. The irony is enormous. We created the very problem that vexes us.

Consider the history. Our problem with Mexico began in 1846 with the Mexican-American war, a war literally invented by the United States. We simply took the Mexican territory that is now New Mexico, Arizona and California. In his Memoirs, President Grant, who fought in the Mexican War, said, "For myself, I was bitterly opposed to the measure, and to this day regard the war, which resulted, as one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation. It was an instance of a republic following the bad example of European monarchies, in not considering justice in their desire to acquire additional territory." Abraham Lincoln denounced the war as a fraud, and John Quincy Adams lamented the intentional dismemberment of Catholic Mexico.

The 1849 California Gold Rush occurred one year after the war’s end. This brought thousands of Chinese into what had been Mexico but was now, through fraud and force of arms, the United States. American California responded by making it illegal for Chinese immigrants to testify against whites. Congress responded by forbidding American ships from transporting Chinese immigrants. But due to a silver strike in Nevada, Chinese laborers were needed to build the transcontinental railroad, so they were brought in despite the laws.

Thousands of Chinese died in the construction effort of the transcontinental railroad. One year after the 1869 celebration of its completion, America commemorated the event by refusing to allow any Asian to become an American citizen. The subsequent 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act restricted their ability to even set foot on American soil. The Chinese would not be permitted to become Americans until 1943, two years after we had joined China in its WW II fight against the Japanese. Japanese had been permitted to become citizens in 1924. Restrictions on immigration from the rest of Asia would not be removed until 1968.

But, while Protestant America hated Asians, it had hated Catholics first. Between 1776 and 1830, Catholics made up roughly one percent of the U.S. population. At that time, one in eight Catholics was a slave. Most of the rest were poor farmers. The U.S. Catholic population increased to today’s 24% primarily through immigration and annexation. First, we stole Catholic Mexican territory, then Irish and German Catholics flooded in due to famines in their home countries in the 1830’s and 1860’s. We annexed Catholic Spanish territory like the Philippines in the 1898 Spanish American War but did not allow (Catholic) Filipinos to become American citizens until 1924.

And even as we let the Filipinos in, we shut Mexican and European Catholics out. A large influx of southern Mediterranean and Eastern European Catholics had streamed in around 1900. In 1892, New York’s Ellis Island opened as the primary processing station for the East Coast. By 1903, attempts were made to require inspection of aliens (Catholics) crossing the Mexican border. By 1907, Arizona, New Mexico and a large part of Texas was reorganized into the Mexican Border District in stricter attempt to stem the flow of Catholics across that border. It wasn’t enough. The per capita immigrant rate was still four times higher in 1913 than it is today.

So, by 1921, the attempt to keep Jews and Catholics out (Germans, Poles and Italians) was further strengthened through immigration quotas, quotas that became even tighter in 1924 - the same year Catholic Filipinos were finally permitted to naturalize. Those anti-Catholic quotas stayed in effect until 1965. They were justified in part by safety concerns. After all, President McKinley had been assassinated by a Polish anarchist in 1901. To a WASP, there was really no difference between an anarchist and a Catholic.

People like to portray the history of American immigration law as a history of racism. While it certainly was that, it was equally a history of anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic hysteria.

This year, for the first time in history, Protestant Christianity will no longer be the majority religion in the United States. However, even before it lost its dominance, secular humanistic atheists wielded abortifacient contraception, euthanasia and surgical abortion like swords, legally murdering America’s inconvenient and disabled. WASPs and atheists still export the American culture of death across the world.

But even as they labor to build their slaughterhouse, hundreds of thousands of Catholics steal across the border into the United States. Like the parable of the thief who breaks into the house to tie up the strong man, like the God who stole quietly into the virgin’s womb to overthrow the prince of this world, these illegals steal in to America. They are, after all, devoted to the Patroness of the Unborn, the Virgin who was herself an immigrant into the idolatrous land of Egypt.

So, here's a bit of information for the Minutemen to contemplate. When Hispanic Catholics look to the crucifix, they remember one critically important fact: God blessed the thief.

News Update on Terri Schiavo

The Empire Journal found a neurologist who says Terri Schiavo's brain scans while in the hospital were initially normal. He alleges that she suffered a blow to the cranium while in the hospital, thus the problems in later brain scans.

http://theempirejournal.com/14902_new_evidence_of_alleged_as.htm

Allegations are that employees of DCFS intentionally collaborated in a cover-up of the evidence.

Of Living Wills

Pope John Paul II was schizoid. At least, that’s what George Negus said in his interview with Cardinal Pell. “There was this man who was incredibly conservative on social issues, domestic church issues - like celibacy, like abortion, like birth control, like marriage, married priests, like AIDS, like homosexuality, that was one Pope John Paul II. The other Pope John Paul II was this man who was very aggressive on the international stage. He's opposed the war in Iraq. He's said that the pre-emptive strikes are not morally justifiable, etc. He's spoken out against the Third World debt. He's campaigned against racism and world poverty. So there were - he was almost a schizoid figure and I use that term advisedly.”

How do we reconcile these two faces of the man? The question is rather reminiscent of one posed by James Thurber, “ ‘I don't understand’, said the scientist to the lemming, 'Why you lemmings all rush down to the sea and drown yourselves.’ ”

“ ‘How curious,’ said the lemming. ‘The one thing I don't understand is why you human beings don't.’ ”

We can make the point more bluntly. It is certain that there is schizophrenia in the world. The question is, who suffers from it: the Pope and his people or George Negus and his associates or both?

An objective observer might find it initially difficult to choose between the two. On the one hand, we have a man whose Christian Faith finds the sense of his guiding document (Scripture) forbids things like contraception, abortion and homosexual marriage while it embraces things like indulgences, the sacrament of confession and the Real and Substantial Presence of God in the Eucharist. On the other hand, we have men whose secular humanism finds the sense of their guiding document (this or that national constitution) requires contraception, abortion and homosexual marriage while it denies God’s central relevance at all.

In both cases, people have asserted that the documents themselves deny what the men involved claim they teach. For instance, many assert Scripture says not a word against contraception or for indulgences, while others assert the US Constitution, for example, says not a word requiring legal abortion or denying God’s grace. What to do?

There are many ways to differentiate one group from the other, but one way is compelling: the assignment of purpose. The Pope and his people believe that both the Church and every human being have an enormously important purpose to accomplish. The purpose is single, that each person accomplish it is of the highest importance and that the Church is necessary to each individual’s accomplishment is unquestionable.

From John Paul II’s point of view, he was the head of an organic whole that has to exist. If the Church did not exist, no man could attain what he needed to attain: heaven. John Paul II knew he existed in order to assist every man, woman and child alive. He knew the purpose each person fought to attain was critically important, and he was a critical part of attaining it.

George Negus and associates believe in purpose as well, but the purpose is not single. For some, the purpose is to maximize pleasure, others mean to maximize wealth or power, none have purpose beyond the grave. Because of this, each who carry Negos’ worldview believes his own purpose to be the most important. Those who agree with him are better men. Those who do not are not. Consequently, some men and women are more important than others.

The Pope opposed contraception, abortion, homosexual marriage and simultaneously opposed racism, world debt and poverty. He knew each of these things to be a stumbling block to attaining the only important thing. Negus and company, in contrast, oppose racism, debt and poverty only insofar as they reduce the chances of attaining personal objectives, whatever those objectives might be.

The infamous example of seven people in a six-man lifeboat comes to the fore. In the Pope’s understanding, it is better that he himself, or all aboard, starve than that any one aboard treat another one as expendable or less important than another. For Negos, it is different. He would never volunteer to die. He would expect someone else – someone who does not share his principles, someone less important – to die in his place. For John Paul, each of us was as important or more important than himself. For Negos, each of us is less important than himself.

In a certain sense, the Pope doesn’t understand why the rest of us would commit suicide. Negos and his friends don’t understand why the rest of us won’t.

Thus, the ACLU helps a husband kill his injured wife. She can find no more pleasure in life, and he can; indeed, he already has, so she must be thrown overboard. The judges who look to a national constitution instead of a living God will always make sure it is so. They can do no less. They must act so because they are themselves expendable.

You see, in Negos’ worldview, the US Constitution, any national constitution, does not need to exist. I can, if I am smart enough, obtain my goal of maximizing sensual pleasure, wealth, power, even in anarchy. The laws, the judiciary, these are tools to help me get my way. Insofar as they assist me, I will allow them to exist. Insofar as they do not, I will crush them. The executive branch, the legislature, the judges know this. If there is no God, no single purpose, then each must bow to Negos and company or be crushed.

Because they are one with Negos in worldview, they are each prospects for enforced suicide. The only way to avoid being forced to open one’s own veins is to open someone else’s first. Christianity sees a Great Chain of Being, in which each lower creature supports and glorifies the one above it. Secular humanism sees a Great Chain of Being in which each higher creature consumes the lower.

The Scriptures, the US Constitution, and a living will have this much in common: each embodies a purpose. The purpose of each is known only through the interpretation given to it. If each man is his own Pope, if each man ultimately seeks to be free of the intrusion of all government, then each man will interpret these documents as he will. But, if there is only one Pope, if Church government is necessary, then there is but one purpose, and each document will be interpreted to contribute towards that purpose.

As one of the documents points out, there are ever only two choices, thus, for the objective observer there can be only one question: who would you rather have as the interpreter, John Paul II or George Negos?

Gift for Blog Readers

I've been working on several projects recently, one of which is a new coupon system at Bridegroom Press. For those of you who might be interested, I am currently offering a free $5 coupon off any book purchase made at www.bridegroompress.com.

You get a chance at reading more of my stuff without spending nearly as much money, while I get a chance to make sure this thing actually works in more than a test mode... :)

The coupon code is GMCHE and it is good through the end of April (only one use per user, but feel free to give the code to anyone who might be interested).

Musical Tribute

If you would like to watch a musical tribute to the Pope, check out
www.bridegroompress.com/jpii-tribute.wmv.

You need Windows Media Player to view it and a broadband connection will be helpful.

Papabile

Many people are trying their hand at prophecy, making guesses at who will be elected the next pope. Study the history and the problem becomes a lot easier to solve.

Pope Pius XI was elected in 1922, a scant year before Hitler forced the Nazi movement into the public spotlight through his failed Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. The Nazi movement was an on-again, off-again threat during the 1920’s, marginalized almost to insignificance by 1929. Unfortunately, the world-wide economic depression of the early 1930’s brought them roaring back from the grave. Though the Nazis never received an electoral majority, electoral politics and the miscalculation of several prominent political figures in Germany convinced German President Hindenburg to appoint Hitler to the office of chancellor.

Thus, upon Pius XI’s death in 1939 the world was faced with a crisis of evil in the heart of Europe. The cardinals responded by electing to the papacy a man who had been the papal nuncio in Germany for over a decade (1917-1929). He knew Germany and the German people intimately; he knew perfectly well that the new-pagan Nazi regime was thoroughly evil. Of the forty-four speeches the papal nuncio had made on German soil, forty of them attacked the Nazis. In March, 1939, this papal nuncio became Pope Pius XII.

Pius XII was the only man in Europe willing to stand up to Hitler. Germany’s Nazi government immediately repudiated his election. The New York Times declared him the “lone voice” in Europe objecting to Nazism. Reinhard Heydrich of the Reich Central Security Office warned, “In a manner never known before, the Pope has repudiated the National Socialist New European Order...the Pope does not refer to the National Socialists in Germany by name, but his [1942 Christmas] speech is one long attack on everything we stand for.”

Pius XII helped coordinate the communications of the group that attempted to assassinate Hitler. Hitler became so frustrated at his inability to silence this thorn in his side that the Nazis drew up secret plans to kidnap him. Pius' efforts saved more Jews than all other European efforts combined. The anti-Semites who assert differently implicitly call the Jews who lived through the war liars, for these same Jews uniformly praised Pius XII for his uniquely heroic efforts. The Nazi threat was ground into dust during his reign and due in no small part to his witness.

However, with Nazism crushed, a different menace arose. Communism grew through the post-war years to reach a crisis point during the late 1970’s, as Jimmy Carter’s ineffectual presidency exacerbated problems throughout the world. In 1979, as the crisis reached its height, the cardinals elected to the papacy a man who had lived through both Nazi and Communist totalitarian regimes, a man who understood the communists intimately and had fought them to a stand-still time and again in his native Poland.

Pope John Paul II was virtually the only man in Europe willing to stand up to the Communists. Though he never attacked a specific Communist regime by name, he secretly assisted Poland’s Solidarity movement and diplomatically outflanked every move the totalitarians made. He frustrated the communist hierarchy to such an extent that the famous assassination attempt on his life is still suspected by many to have been the result of a Communist-inspired contract on his life. Today, the world praises him for his uniquely heroic efforts against the totalitarians. The Communist threat was ground into dust during his reign and due in no small part to his witness.

Today, there are crises developing on many fronts. Biotechnology issues, such as cloning, IVF, stem cell research and euthanasia rock through the headlines, threatening the sanctity of human life. On the political front, violent members of the Muslim community seriously threaten world peace. On the religious front, new strains of paganism run throughout Europe while the Orthodox communities crack and fall away from ancient Christian practice under the assault of secular sensibilities.

So, who will be Pope? It will be the man ready to deal with the next real crisis. Perhaps a man who knows the ways of medical science intimately, or who is thoroughly acquainted with the Muslim community. A man who intimately understands the defects of pagan philosophy or who is capable of permanently re-uniting the Orthodox and Catholic faiths. Study the background of the next Pope, and you will discover what the real world crisis is. Then wait and watch. You will see the ones who fomented the crisis crushed under the heel of the Vicar of Christ.

Necrophilia

In his book Breaking the Thread of Life, Robert Barry reminds us the slightest difficulty or insult is sufficient to provoke those without a good understanding of God into suicide. As history shows and modern psychology confirms, suicide is contagious. When one person commits suicide, hordes of others typically follow.
Consider the Romantics, for instance. Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) claimed that he dreamed of suicide and he and his friends “lived in a strange world, I assure you; we swung between madness and suicide; some of them killed themselves… another sterangled himself with his tie, several died of debauchery in order to escape boredom; it was beautiful.”
A young Frenchman of the period pushed his pregnant wife into the Seine and watched her drown. At his trial, the man defended himself by saying that this was an age of suicide.
Today, many would agree. Suicide is the third leading cause of death among teenagers. But sometimes death needs help.
Dr. Verhagen of University Medical Center Groningen, Netherlands has participated in the intentional killing of four infants. He has watched one child die and was there moments later for the three others. All had severe forms of spina bifida.
"The child goes to sleep," he said. "It stops breathing… I mean, it's difficult to give the right emotion there, but it's beautiful in a way…"
"Abortion, it's beautiful,” said Chris Rock, the comedian who hosted this year’s Oscars, “it's beautiful abortion is legal. I love going to an abortion rally to pick up women, cause you know they are f------,"
"I will tell you that as it appears to me, Mrs. Schiavo's death is not imminent by any means," George Felos told the Associated Press Saturday. "She is calm; she's peaceful, she is resting comfortably… Frankly when I saw her ... she looked beautiful. In all the years I've seen Mrs. Schiavo, I've never seen such a look of peace and beauty upon her," said Felos.
One explanation for Felos' comments is suggested in the attorney's own 2002 book, Litigation As Spiritual Practice. Felos, a longtime volunteer hospice worker, discovered killing as a spiritual experience:

"As I continued to stay beside Mrs. Browning at her nursing home bed, I felt my mind relax and my weight sink into the ground. I began to feel light-headed as I became more reposed. Although feeling like I could drift into sleep, I also experienced a sense of heightened awareness. As Mrs. Browning lay motionless before my gaze, I suddenly heard a loud, deep moan and scream and wondered if the nursing home personnel heard it and would respond to the unfortunate resident. In the next moment, as this cry of pain and torment continued, I realized it was Mrs. Browning.
I felt the mid-section of my body open and noticed a strange quality to the light in the room. I sensed her soul in agony. As she screamed I heard her say, in confusion, 'Why am I still here … why am I here?' My soul touched hers and in some way I communicated that she was still locked in her body. I promised I would do everything in my power to gain the release her soul cried for. With that the screaming immediately stopped. I felt like I was back in my head again, the room resumed its normal appearance, and Mrs. Browning, as she had throughout this experience, lay silent.
I knew without a doubt what had transpired was real and dispelled the thought as intellect’s attempt to assert its own version of reality."

In the twelfth century, the Catholic Church fought the incredibly pernicious Cathar, or Albigensian, heresy. For Cathars, the world, the flesh, all of it is pure evil, a hellish existence from which we can only be released through death. Cathars saw procreative sex as evil because the ensoulment of the body trapped the divine spark of the human person in the hell of the material world. It had one sacrament, the consolamentum, which was immediately followed by the endura, ritual suicide by starvation.
The heresy became so popular in southern France that entire geographical regions were depopulating through decreased family size and ritual suicide. It was so pernicious that the Cahtolic Church had to create the Inquisition, the Crusades and St. Dominic's new order of priests to stop the spread of the suicidal sect. Even so, it continued to have adherents through the 1400's.

The power of the Catholic Church to intervene in the culture is largely gone. Secular government will have to deal with today’s Cathars. Sadly, there is no evidence we really understand what we are up against.