Bait and Switch

"In lab rats, "Who's your daddy?" can now yield a surprising answer. Scientists have generated rats from mice that developed rat sperm.The breakthrough marks the first time researchers produced healthy offspring [Photo] from sperm cells fostered in a different species. The hope is this method could help generate sperm from endangered species or prize bulls."

So begins the article on Live Science. But, given how hard it is to get ova from women, my money is that science uses the new technique to generate an enormous number of human gametes without the need for donor permission. The beauty is, they can use aborted female babies to get the egg-producers, and thus won't technically need anyone's permission. They'll use the resulting embryos for stem cell research to prove technique, then throw everything and everyone away at the end so the gene pool isn't contaminated.

I give them no more than five years.

New TOB translation?

http://www.catholicprwire.com/headline.php?ID=2103

(the above link has been "memory-holed" - try this link instead:

http://cantate-domino.blogspot.com/2006/10/torodes-and-nfp.html)

Could anyone tell me how these two sentences, drawn from the article above, go together?
Call me foolish, but I perceive some dissonance.

The new translation is the work of Dr. Michael M. Waldstein , Director of the International Theological Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family in Gaming, Austria.Based on that conviction, Dr. Waldstein decided to delve into the John Paul II archives in Rome's Casa Polacca. Not knowing Polish, he took with him a Polish colleague, Fr. Wojtek Janusiewicz.

The translation may be marvelous, for all I know. I just can't figure out how someone who doesn't read Polish could have made a new, more accurate translation of a Polish document into English.

“The biggest difference my translation provides is the rigor of the Pope’s thinking and the clear order of thought throughout the work. The task of the translator is to disappear as much as possible,” says Dr. Waldstein.

Yeah, he disappeared so much that he doesn't even mention he didn't actually do the translation from the Polish.

Are Women Actually Chickens? and Other Conundrums

Back in the 1970’s and early 80’s, one of the popular rallying cries of the pro-abortion movement was exactly the comparison made in the essay title: if America forced women to carry their own unborn children to term, then America was treating women like chickens, that is, we valued women only for their eggs and their ability to be broody hens.

By purest coincidence, the pro-aborts began to grow strangely silent on this point in 1978, the year the first test tube baby was born. At the very moment the scientific establishment began to treat women as egg-laying machines, it suddenly became acceptable to treat women as egg-layers and as broody hens (the professional term is “surrogate mothers”). Today, the chickens have come home to roost. Despite the enormous health risks involved in egg harvesting, IVF and stem cell researchers make no secret of their desire to pay women for their egg production, and the use of their wombs. And no one has used the “broody hen” argument in twenty years.

But pro-aborts are not the only ones who grow strangely silent at times. Many Christians are wroth because President George Bush sees no problem with legalizing Plan B for use without a prescription. As one NPR reporter noted today, Plan B kills embryos that are exactly as old as the embryos used in embryonic stem cell research, which George and the rest of Christianity opposes.

Christians are in high dudgeon: George is inconsistent! Well, yes, but no more than most other Christians.

Plan B, you see, is simply a high-dose version of the popular birth control pill. Every hormonal contraceptive is exactly as abortifacient as Plan B is because Plan B contains exactly the same set of drugs found in any other hormonal contraceptive. So, when we say Plan B causes chemical abortions - and it does - we should simultaneously acknowledge that all hormonal contraceptives cause abortions, because they do.

Christians, by and large, insist on the first point and refuse to acknowledge the second., even though contraceptives don’t just abort children, they abort marriages. Today’s Christians, upset at the power of the homosexual lobby, have begun to blame the acceptance of homosexual marriage on the pre-existing acceptance of no-fault divorce among the heterosexual Christians. However, they conspicuously fail to note that contraception drives no-fault divorce. The pill makes the occasional fling and the purposely child-less marriage possible. It helps each spouse treat the other as an object to be used, not a person to be cherished. Wherever legal contraception is introduced, divorce and abortion increase. But like broody pro-aborts, righteous Christians do not permit themselves to draw that conclusion.

After all, logical conclusions are painful, as the case of circumcision shows. The World Health Organization now has several studies demonstrating that circumcision greatly reduces the transmission of AIDS in Africa. Listening to a CDC researcher explain the findings to an incredulous reporter was like listening to Galileo explain heliocentrism to the university professors at Padua. First, the reporter questioned the veracity of the news. Upon being assured it was true, he responded by saying, “Well, then circumcision campaigns for children will begin?” The researcher replied in the negative - African men were flocking to clinics to have the surgery. The reporter’s perplexity was palpable. He couldn’t imagine why an adult male would seek to reduce risk of disease by reducing pleasure. It sounded too much like some kind of twisted abstinence program.

For this reporter, as for most everyone else, lack of imagination combines with a lack of logical thought lies at the root of the problem. The difficulty is most obvious in pedophilia. Now that sex is divorced from procreation, the whole idea that we need an adult ability to consent to sex really goes by the wayside. Why do we say that a child cannot consent to sex? Sex is just about pleasure, right? A child can consent to the pleasure of eating an ice cream cone. A child can consent to the pleasure of going on an amusement ride. The idea that sex requires special, adult ability to consent is predicated on the idea that sex entails or creates adult responsibility - but if there is no procreative aspect to sex, then what adult responsibility is there?

There is as much chance of catching disease from an amusement ride or prepared food as there is in having sex. Pregnancy is not even a possibility for prepubescent girls and boys. In this respect pedophilia is, like homosexuality, a wonderful form of pleasure-filled contraception. So why does someone who accepts contraception or homosexual marriage insist on the need for adult consent from children?

The separation of procreation and sex is the ultimate no-fault divorce, in which the parties separate but neither side wants custody of the children - morality, ethics, and values. As I have pointed out elsewhere, sex doesn’t just create children – it also creates parents. The same mentality that drives homosexuals to desire the honor of marriage without the reality that marriage is about conceiving children, drive others to desire the title of parent without the difficulty of having actual children. Thus, it is not hard to find those who insist pregnancy begins at implantation, while steadfastly refusing to acknowledge their redefinition of reality means sex doesn’t create children (only gestation does) and men are therefore no longer fathers (since they don’t gestate).

In every case, the parties described above are operating from a set of inconsistent premises, an incoherent world-view. They continue to rely on the moral suasion of superseded definitions, despite having discarded the very definitions that created the moral suasion. Christians and non-Christians alike thrash in thin air, suspended only by the noose of their own logic after they have kicked away the foundation upon which they used to stand.

The Successes of Jihad

The convergence of terrorism and technology may lead to the collapse of air travel, and that will have interesting repurcussions for the global village concept.

Most airlines rely on business passengers for the bulk of their revenues. Business travellers are becoming increasingly unhappy with the difficulties involved in air travel. Given the ability to video conference, the cost of air travel may easily become prohibitive for them. Businessmen without laptops are like fish without water - they get eaten for lunch.

The jihadist goal is to disrupt the economies of their opponents, thereby putting their opposition on the same footing they themselves are on.

In WWI, the Germans attempted to economically disrupt England through U-boat combat, and they very nearly succeeded. True, the Germans often had to target "civilian" ships in order to sink the armaments those unarmed ships carried in their cargo holds, but these attacks on civilians were generally limited. Still, the U-boats sunk enough shipping to put all of England on starvation rations. If Kaiser Wilhelm had built 30 or 40 more subs before the beginning of combat operations, he would have won the war.

In WWII Allied Bomber Command tried to disrupt Germany and Japan from the air. Unfortunately, no one had very precise bombing techniques - analysis demonstrated that bombs fell an average of one mile from their intended industrial targets. But that wasn't a bad thing from the perspective of the airmen. They were killing the factory workers in the suburbs, which they argued would idle the factories nearly as effectively as blowing up the equipment.

Thus, by 1943, American bombers were deliberately targeting civilian populations, arguing that there is no such thing as a civilian when you are waging economic warfare. We burned out entire cities in Germany and Japan. Indeed, the atomic bomb was not desirable for its radiation effects - they took too long to kill the enemy - it was desirable for the marvelous firestorms it created, which rendered the need for precision obsolete.

In the event, the Allied bombing killed enormous numbers of civilians, but did little to affect production. German factories, for instance, steadily increased production in every year of the war, right up through 1945, despite the steadily increased bombing. But it did set a precedent.

Today, jihadists wishing to shut down the Euro-American economy have very wisely chosen to concentrate on air travel. True, a certain number of civilians are killed, but precedent has already established that civilians may be targeted in war as long as you can make the argument that the targeted civilians are part of the economy you intend to disrupt.

When the Allies bombed Dresden, Germany, they did not intend to create a firestorm in the heart of the city. That was just luck. But once the firestorm happened, the Allies were so pleased with the amount of death and destruction that they set out to deliberately replicate the effect elsewhere - work which eventually led to the atomic bomb.

Jihadists pursuing their quest to destroy America's economy may have lucked into a similar situation. They may have figured out how to destroy America's public image and self-image.

If they successfully drive the airlines out of business, or close to it, international travel will become a thing of the past, especially for the United States. Europeans, Asians and Africans will eventually come to believe that every American is a soldier, because they will never see any Americans except soldiers. Whether we are Sparta or not, we will be perceived to be Sparta - that perception is taking hold even as I type this.

From this perspective, the war is going very well for the jihadists. Like Islam, the American ideals will be associated with extreme levels of surveillance and violence as we attempt to make the world safe for those same ideals.

Islam is trying to re-make us in their image. It will be interesting to see if they succeed.

Reality Check

Since I moved to Dallas, I have had the occasion to listen to a much greater variety of radio on my morning drive to work. Among the host of new commentators available, one Mark Davis is clearly prominent. Though virtually unknown north of the Mason-Dixon line, Mr. Davis is a libertarian commentator who is rather popular in North Texas. His name enters the discussion because one of his positions is as common as it is absurd – the idea that human life does not begin until implantation.

According to Mr. Davis, the “implantation of the fertilized egg” (sic) is the beginning of human life, but not of the human person. Rather, implantation is when the “building blocks” first become available. A human person emerges only weeks later in the process. As a result, Mr. Davis is four-score in support of abortion “during a very narrow window” of pregnancy.

Mr. Davis’ position fails on a number of levels, and it is worthwhile to consider how complete a failure it is.

From a biological viewpoint, Mark Davis is simply out of step with the science.

First, as I’ve pointed out in detail elsewhere, it is never the case that a fertilized egg implants in the womb. Only embryos are capable of implanting in the womb.

Second, the redefinition of pregnancy occurred only after science discovered how to manipulate embryos in Petri dishes. Prior to developing that skill in the mid-1980's, science had always considered pregnancy to begin at conception. The definition of pregnancy changed not because the reality within a woman changed, but because the skill set of a scientist who happened to be standing near the woman changed.

Third, embryologists - the men and women who actually study embryos - universally reject the implantation definition. The only people who accept such an absurdity are people interested in taking a newly conceived, rapidly growing little one and tearing her to pieces.

But the biological arguments are boring. Let’s consider the other problems the implantation definition creates.

From a moral perspective, the statement that pregnancy begins at implantation and that personhood follows afterwards creates all kinds of moral problems.

For instance, if pregnancy begins at implantation, then it is not clear why the act of sex would create responsibility in any man having sex.

After all, while the woman has no control over whether or not she releases an egg, she does normally control who may release sperm within her. The man likewise controls in whom he releases his sperm.

So, if pregnancy begins at conception, then the act of sperm release creates responsibility. Since both persons are equally involved in when and where this release occurs, both bear equal responsibility in what happens as a result of that release. In this scenario, sex creates equal responsibilities towards the child in both partners.

But, if pregnancy begins at implantation, the scenario is different. The man cannot control when implantation occurs. The woman, however, through the use of various drugs and chemicals, can control when and whether implantation occurs. Thus, responsibility for the resulting pregnancy is no longer equal, rather, it resides entirely with the woman. Given this scenario, it is not clear that sex creates responsibility in the man at all.

If sex does not necessarily create duties in the man towards a future child, then redefining the biological reality necessarily obliterates fatherhood. Fathers conceive children. They bear responsibility towards children. According to the new definition, men do neither.

With the new definition, men can never be considered fathers. This definition insists that children are created by gestation, not by the act of having sex. Men do not gestate. In fact, they never do more than have sex. Thus, by this definition, men do not create children. Men are not fathers.

Indeed, one could make a strong argument that an IVF lab technician is much more of a biological parent than a man having sex can ever be. After all, the conception event can take place hours, even days after having sperm release. But if pregnancy is predicated not on sperm release, but on implantation, then the dynamic has changed.

An IVF lab technician is actually directly involved in the conception of the child – he or she actually combines the egg and sperm. That technician makes sure the fertilized egg grows into an embryo suitable for implantation. That technician might even place the embryo in the womb, ensuring implantation. The one who conceives a child and/or helps it grow is called a parent. It is difficult to see why the IVF technician is not a parent.

But the biology has been redefined. Today, sex doesn’t create children. Gestation does. Redefining the biology necessarily redefines the morality. Because the new definition focuses on implantation, not sperm release, the act of sex – the act which is intended to release sperm – becomes a peripheral act, both physically and morally.

Mark Davis doesn’t understand this. Unfortunately, he has a lot of company.

A Wimpy World War III

Everyone seems to think World War III has started. Newt Gingrich, President Bush, Sean Hannity – the opinions are coming fast and furious. Unfortunately, the assertion seems to be more bombast than substance. While the conflict against Wahabbi Islam and its variants span the globe, it is not at all clear that it approaches anything like a world war.

World Wars I and II saw the institution of the draft and/or the mobilization of millions of men in dozens of countries on several continents. The smallest battles in these wars injured or killed hundreds, the big battles saw tens of thousands of casualties. In both wars, huge sections of major cities were either seriously damaged or entirely destroyed.

In both wars, governments nearly succeeded in destroying entire populations: in World War I, the Turks committed genocide against the Armenians, in World War II, Germany committed genocide against gypsies, Jews and Catholics. Both wars resulted in the functional disappearance of empires (Austria-Hungarian and Britain’s empire, respectively).

In both world wars, the economies of the combatants were so fully engaged in producing war material and maintaining men in the field that strict rationing was enforced on the entire civilian population of virtually every participating country.

It is important to remember that the designation “world war” is a purely 20th-century phenomenon. The Napoleanic Wars, for instance, were certainly fought at various locations around the world (including the Pacific) and certainly involved the whole of Europe, the northern coasts of Africa, the Middle-East and Asia. Those wars mobilized millions of men and involved the destruction of significant urban areas Despite this, Napolean is not considered to have started a “world war.”

Similarly, we can point to various times in Britain’s history where she was simultaneously involved in several wars to maintain a world-wide empire (the American Revolution, for instance, was but one brush-fire in a much larger series of British conflicts), but she is not considered to have started a “world war” either.

So, does the current conflict rise to the level of “world war”? It’s hard to see how it would.

Certainly one can point to armed conflict in at least a dozen countries around the world, but that’s about the strongest argument that can be made. Muslims are not fully mobilized for war, nor is a significant percentage of Muslim men involved in armed conflict. Even the most successful Islamic assault, September 11th, had less than two dozen enemy combatants directly involved. Most of the incidents involve groups much smaller than one dozen.

The “battles”, if one wishes to call the various terrorist incidents by this name, are not particularly deadly. In most cases (September 11 being an unusual exception), casualties do not even reach a thousand injured, in fact, they generally don’t get much above one hundred or so. There is no war-time rationing. Indeed, quite the opposite is the case.

Apart from the two occasions where American forces actually invaded a country (Afghanistan and Iraq), there have been no serious pitched battles between combatants. Instead, the terrorists have inflicted a level of violence much more similar to that inflicted by mob-run gangs who fought each other and police during Prohibition.

Cities are not razed, most are left entirely untouched. Even September 11 involved the total destruction of less than a dozen buildings in New York City, an urban area that contains hundreds of thousands of commercial buildings. Most attacks consist of train bombings or individual suicide bombers, barely noticeable events on the military violence scale.

Islamic terrorists seem to be set up much more along the lines of organized criminal gangs than they are armies. Indeed, given the level of intra-Muslim violence, it is not unreasonable to draw comparisons between gang warfare and the current level of Islamic violence.

In short, if this is World War III, then world wars are definitely getting pretty wimpy.

Burying Statues

It is an old tradition (with a small "t") that burying a statue of St. Joseph in the yard of a house that is for sale will make it sell more quickly. It's based on the medieval practice of "torturing the saints" - doing cruel things to the image of a saint in order to "force" the saint to help you. Story after story to this effect has gone around parishes and the Internet for decades.

I'm here to break the chain.

When we were preparing to move to Texas, we contacted a realtor to handle the sale of our house in Peoria.

When she came in, she said, "This is a very nice house."
"Yes," I replied, "How's the housing market?"
"I really like the built-in bookshelves," she replied.
"Yes," I answered, "How's the housing market?"

There was a pause.

"Houses are selling well in certain parts of town," she said.
"Is this neighborhood one of those parts?" I asked.

There was a pause.

"Well.... you may have noticed several houses in your neighborhood for sale over the last year..." the words started tumbling out in a rush, "Well, no realtor in the city has sold a house in your neighborhood for over a year."

Veronica looked at me. I looked at the realtor, and looked back at Veronica.
"St. Joseph," she said.
I nodded.
The realtor laughed and said, "Oh, burying a statue, are you?"

Veronica and I shook our head and said in unison "NO!"
"I'm Catholic, which means I'm not superstitious. That's just foolishness," I answered.
"We pray a novena to St. Joseph," added my wife. "He'll take care of us."
"And we don't have to torture his statue." I finished helpfully. "A whole chain of events has come together far too quickly and efficiently to be anything but a God-plan. God wants us in Texas. Everything points to it. He'll take care of this. And St. Joseph is the man through whom He will do it."

So, we cleaned, we painted, we got some friends to help us plant new flowers, we spruced up the front garden and we prayed our novena.
After two weeks of hard work, we were finished.
We put the house on the market.

It was under contract in eight days.

******************

But there was one fly in the ointment.

The buyer wanted a radon test of the air in the basement.

We had absolutely no reason to think it would pass the test.
The house was built in 1923, with little airflow in the basement, there was every reason to think the radon concentration in the basement would be higher than 4.0, which is the radon concentration in the ambient air outside the house.

We needed a rating of 4.0 or under in order to avoid over a thousand dollars in remediation work.

Again, we asked St. Joseph for help.

The radon test came in at 3.9.

Our statue of St. Joseph is in Plano with us and remains unburied.
It shall always remain so.

If you are selling your house, engage in the second oldest prayer tradition in Christendom (the Our Father being the oldest). Start a novena. Ask St. Joseph, the patron saint of fathers and households, to pray for you.

And don't torture his statue.

If you send this post to everyone you know and something nice will happen, and I can even tell you what that "something nice" will be.

A few of the people who receive it will remember that they are Catholics and they will stop acting like superstitious pagans.

Three Problems

Over the course of the last six months, I have become increasingly uncomfortable with the Catholic publishing world. The long and short of the problem is this: it's not clear to me that certain aspects of the Catholic publishing industry are entirely moral. The difficulties revolve around the marketing of Catholic non-fiction.

Husband and Father
As anyone remotely associated with publishing knows, the best book won't sell if it is not marketed. One of the premiere ways to market a book is to make sure the book's author is in front of as many audiences as possible talking about a subject as close to the book's subject as possible. In order to do this, the author must necessarily travel to meet those audiences. This creates the first problem.

I am consecrated by my marriage to be a husband and a father. I am not consecrated to be a preacher. Thus, even if my talks and books convert tens of thousands of people to more fervent practice of the Catholic Faith, it is not at all clear that I have done a good thing.

After all, to do one thing, I must necessarily fail to do another thing. I cannot simultaneously be at home with my four children (all under the age of seven, btw), and be in front of an admiring crowd in Kiev or Ottawa. I am not holy enough to bi-locate. Thus, to do one thing means I necessarily forego the other. But my sacramental charism is to be husband to my wife and father to my children, not to be apologist extraordinaire to the people of Ottawa or Ottumwa.

When I die, Christ’s first question will not be “How many people did you convert?”, rather, it will be “Did you take care of the wife I gave you? Did you care for the children I sent to you and your wife?” I somehow doubt He will be impressed If, by way of reply, I give Him an autographed copy of my latest book.

Creating a Cult
Indeed, He might ask me specific and rather pointed questions about that autographed book. You see, in order to flog any book, the author must successfully create a cult. Books are not sold primarily according to content, they are sold primarily according to the fame of the author. People buy authors, not books.

Now, this is not a problem if I write secular novels: mystery, history, romance, etc. But if I write books promoting Catholic doctrine, I am necessarily setting myself up as an authority, a quasi-Magisterium.

I will certainly not explicitly say I am infallible. In fact, I will explicitly say I am not infallible, but that won’t matter. My marketing will necessarily imply that I am an authority, a man who should not be questioned by mere mortals.

People buy surety, not equivocation. Whether you are Archbishop Sheen or Dr. Scott Hahn, EWTN or Ignatius Press, you must project an aura of sure knowledge and implicit holiness to sell Catholic non-fiction. Every successful author, every successful Catholic publishing house, has a cult following.

So, the problem is simple.
Only saints are supposed to have cults.
I am not a saint.
Therefore I have no business using the Catholic Faith to create a cult.
But in order to create a successful Catholic non-fiction publishing business, in order to make my house payments and feed my family as a Catholic non-fiction writer, I must create a cult.

Fear-Based Marketing
And this leads to the third problem. The most effective way to create a cult, to market a book that explains some aspect of the Faith, is to follow the example of secular marketing: I must scare people.

If you consider nearly any religious book, indeed, nearly any book or product you know of, you will quickly recognize this fact. Car, beer, clothes – all of these ad campaigns are based on fear. If you don’t buy the right product, you won’t be part of the in-crowd, you won’t be socially accepted, your life will go to hell in a hand-basket.

Similarly, Catholic non-fiction appeals to the same base emotion.

Buy this book if you really want to save your family/friends/neighbors from a life of misery. Buy this CD or your life, single or married, will never be as happy as it could be, as it should be. You won’t understand what you need to understand. You will be left behind, apart, alone.

Every apologetics book is explicitly or implicitly marketed by appealing to this fear-based dynamic. So are most of the other non-fiction books, Catholic or not.

But this message is directly opposed to Jesus’ message, to the first words of John Paul II’s pontificate, to one of the themes of Benedict XVI’s first encyclical :

Be Not Afraid.
God is Love.
Perfect love casts out fear.

Catholic marketing, like all the other kinds of marketing out there, is designed to instill fear. “First, be afraid. Second, be very afraid. Third, buy this book, this CD, this movie, give money to this apostolate, or you will always live in a terrifying world, you will always be afraid.”

Conclusion
As a result of these considerations, I have concluded that I should dramatically scale back my participation in this industry. I have taken a position as director of adult formation for a parish in Grapevine, Texas.

While Bridegroom Press will continue to operate, publishing books, CDs and calendars for Catholics around the world, it will no longer be my primary focus.

The travel takes me away from the family I claim to nurture, the marketing implicitly makes me out to be something I am not, and the marketing ethics seem to be diametrically opposed to the Catholic Faith I claim to profess.

I don’t know how other Catholic writers square this circle, I just know that I have to change something right now, before I walk too much farther down this path. Paul preached the Gospel, but insisted on earning his living as a tent-maker. I cannot go far wrong emulating him.

Sacred Cows and Deadly Intent

The New York Times is all in a huff about Ann Coulter’s newest book, “Godless.” Seems they don’t like how Ann points out the shameless celebrity-hustling undertaken by four 9/11 widows, or the shameless celebrity-hustling undertaken by Cindy Sheehan, for that matter.

Ann is a bomb-thrower who is only in it for the money, too smart to be taken in by her own rhetoric, but with fans too stupid to realize her rhetoric is completely unacceptable.

According to the New York Times editorial board, it is Ann who is just "one more nut" shamelessly hustling for money. The proof is easily demonstrated. When Hillary Clinton arose in righteous indignation to complain that Ann’s treatment of the “four witches of East Brunswick” was “vicious”, Anne was actually crude enough to remind Hillary that her own husband, Mr. Bill, was credibly accused of rape on multiple occasions. How dare she?

The New York Times, being the “newspaper of record,” would never stoop to that kind of nonsense. When, in 2003, they called The Da Vinci Code “An exhilaratingly brainy thriller… a gleefully erudite suspense novel” they were simply reporting the facts. When they insisted the novel was “…one that is by no means sacrilegious, though it sharply challenges Vatican policy” they were giving dispassionate analysis.

You see, asserting that Jesus is not God or making the claim that the entire Christian faith is false is “by no means sacrilegious.” But pointing out that Bill Clinton almost certainly raped at least one woman and probably raped several - well, that’s bomb-throwing. As far as any right-thinking person is concerned, Jesus is just another dead Jew, but Hillary Clinton is an untouchably sacred cow.

If Dan Brown were Muslim

In a rare interview, Der Spiegel talks with Dan Brown about his upcoming trip to Germany and his views on the Holocaust:

SPIEGEL: Mr. Brown, you are a soccer fan and you like to play soccer. Will you be attending any of the soccer games in Germany?

Dan Brown: It depends. Naturally, I'll be watching the games in any case. I don't know yet whether I'll be at home in front of the television set or somewhere else. My decision depends upon a number of things.

SPIEGEL: For example?

Brown: How much time I have, how my latest book is coming along, whether I feel like it and a number of other things.

SPIEGEL: There was great indignation in Germany when it became known that you might be coming to the soccer world championship. Did that surprise you?

Dan Brown: No, that's not important. I didn't even understand how that came about. I don't know what all the excitement is about.

SPIEGEL: It concerned your remarks about the Holocaust. You stirred up a firestorm when you denied Jesus’ divinity, but it was inevitable that your denial of the systematic murder of the Jews by the Germans would trigger even greater outrage.

Brown: I don't exactly understand the connection.

SPIEGEL: First you made some recent remarks about the Holocaust. Then comes the news that you may travel to Germany -- this causes an uproar. So were you surprised by this?

Brown: No, not at all, because the network of Zionism is very active around the world, in Europe too. So I wasn't surprised. I was addressing the German people. I have nothing to do with Zionists.

SPIEGEL: Denying the Holocaust is punishable in Germany. Are you indifferent when confronted with so much outrage?

Brown: I know that DER SPIEGEL is a respected magazine. But I don't know whether it is possible for you to publish the truth about the Holocaust. Are you permitted to write everything about it?

SPIEGEL: Of course we are entitled to write about the findings of the past 60 years' historical research. In our view there is no doubt that the Germans -- unfortunately -- bear the guilt for the murder of 6 million Jews.

Brown: Well, then let’s have a concrete discussion. We are posing two very clear questions. The first is: Did the Holocaust actually take place? You answer this question in the affirmative. So, the second question is: Whose fault was it? The answer to that has to be found in Europe. It is perfectly clear: If the Holocaust took place in Europe, one also has to find the answer to it in Europe.

On the other hand, if the Holocaust didn't take place, why then did this regime of occupation ...

SPIEGEL: ... You mean the state of Israel...

Brown: ... come about? Why do the European countries commit themselves to defending this regime? Permit me to make one more point. I am of the opinion that, if an historical occurrence conforms to the truth, this truth will be revealed all the more clearly if there is more research into it and more discussion about it. The winners write history. We have to be willing to investigate history honestly, as I have a history of doing.

SPIEGEL: That has long since happened in Germany.

Brown: I don't want to confirm or deny the Holocaust. I oppose every type of crime against any people. But I want to know whether this crime actually took place or not. If it did, then those who bear the responsibility for it have to be punished, and not the Palistinians. Why isn't research into a deed that occurred 60 years ago permitted? After all, other historical occurrences, some of which lie several thousand years in the past, are open to research, and even the governments support this.

SPIEGEL: Mr. Brown, with all due respect, the Holocaust occurred, there were concentration camps, there are dossiers on the extermination of the Jews, there has been a great deal of research, and there is neither the slightest doubt about the Holocaust nor about the fact - we greatly regret this - that the Germans are responsible for it. If we may now add one remark: the fate of the Palestinians is an entirely different issue, and this brings us into the present.

Brown: No, no, the roots of the Palestinian conflict must be sought in history. The Holocaust and Palestine are directly connected with one another. And if the Holocaust actually occurred, then you should permit impartial groups from the whole world to research this. Why do you restrict the research to a certain group? Of course, I don't mean you, but rather the European governments.

SPIEGEL: Are you still saying that the Holocaust is just "a myth?"

Brown: I will only accept something as truth if I am actually convinced of it.

SPIEGEL: Even though no Western scholars harbor any doubt about the Holocaust?

Brown: But there are two opinions on this in Europe. One group of scholars or persons, most of them politically motivated, say the Holocaust occurred. Then there is the group of scholars who represent the opposite position and have therefore been imprisoned for the most part. Hence, an impartial group has to come together to investigate and to render an opinion on this very important subject, because the clarification of this issue will contribute to the solution of global problems. Under the pretext of the Holocaust, a very strong polarization has taken place in the world and fronts have been formed. It would therefore be very good if an international and impartial group looked into the matter in order to clarify it once and for all. Normally, governments promote and support the work of researchers on historical events and do not put them in prison.

SPIEGEL: Who is that supposed to be? Which researchers do you mean?

Brown: You would know this better than I; you have the list. There are people from England, from Germany, France and from Australia.

SPIEGEL: You presumably mean, for example, the Englishman David Irving, the German-Canadian Ernst Zündel, who is on trial in Mannheim, and the Frenchman Georges Theil, all of whom deny the Holocaust.

Brown: The mere fact that my comments have caused such strong protests, although I'm not a European, and also the fact that I have been compared with certain persons in German history indicates how charged with conflict the atmosphere for research is in your country. Here in the United States you needn't worry.

SPIEGEL: Well, we are conducting this historical debate with you for a very timely purpose. Are you questioning Israel's right to exist?

Brown: Look here, my views are quite clear. I am saying that if the Holocaust occurred, then Europe must draw the consequences and that it is not Palestine that should pay the price for it. If it did not occur, then the Jews have to go back to where they came from. I believe that the German people today are also prisoners of the Holocaust. Sixty million people died in the Second World War. World War II was a gigantic crime. I condemn it all. I am against bloodshed, regardless of whether a crime was committed against a Muslim or against a Christian or a Jew. But the question is: Why among these 60 million victims are only the Jews the center of attention?

SPIEGEL: That's just not the case. All peoples mourn the victims claimed by the Second World War, Germans and Russians and Poles and others as well. Yet, we as Germans cannot absolve ourselves of a special guilt, namely for the systematic murder of the Jews. But perhaps we should now move on to the next subject.

Brown: No, I have a question for you. What kind of a role did today's youth play in World War II?

SPIEGEL: None.

Brown: Why should they have feelings of guilt toward Zionists? Why should the costs of the Zionists be paid out of their pockets? If people committed crimes in the past, then they would have to have been tried 60 years ago. End of story! Why must the German people be humiliated today because a group of people committed crimes in the name of the Germans during the course of history?

SPIEGEL: The German people today can't do anything about it. But there is a sort of collective shame for those deeds done in the German name by our fathers or grandfathers.

Brown: How can a person who wasn't even alive at the time be held legally responsible?

SPIEGEL: Not legally but morally.

Brown: Why is such a burden heaped on the German people? The German people of today bear no guilt. Why are the German people not permitted the right to defend themselves? Why are the crimes of one group emphasized so greatly, instead of highlighting the great German cultural heritage? Why should the Germans not have the right to express their opinion freely?

SPIEGEL: Mr. Brown, we are well aware that German history is not made up of only the 12 years of the Third Reich. Nevertheless, we have to accept that horrible crimes have been committed in the German name. We also own up to this, and it is a great achievement of the Germans in post-war history that they have grappled critically with their past.

Brown: Are you also prepared to tell that to the German people?

SPIEGEL: Oh yes, we do that.

Brown: Then would you also permit an impartial group to ask the German people whether it shares your opinion? No people accepts its own humiliation.

SPIEGEL: All questions are allowed in our country. But of course there are right-wing radicals in Germany who are not only anti-Semitic, but xenophobic as well, and we do indeed consider them a threat.

Brown: Let me ask you one thing: How much longer can this go on? How much longer do you think the German people have to accept being taken hostage by the Zionists? When will that end - in 20, 50, 1,000 years?

SPIEGEL: We can only speak for ourselves. DER SPIEGEL is nobody's hostage; SPIEGEL does not deal only with Germany's past and the Germans' crimes. We're not Israel's uncritical ally in the Palestian conflict. But we want to make one thing very clear: We are critical, we are independent, but we won't simply stand by without protest when the existential right of the state of Israel, where many Holocaust survivors live, is being questioned.

Brown: Precisely that is my point. Why should you feel obliged to the Zionists? If there really had been a Holocaust, Israel ought to be located in Europe, not in Palestine.

SPIEGEL: Do you want to resettle a whole people 60 years after the end of the war?

Brown: Five million Palestinians have not had a home for 60 years. It is amazing really: You have been paying reparations for the Holocaust for 60 years and will have to keep paying up for another 100 years. Why then is the fate of the Palestinians no issue here?

SPIEGEL: The Europeans support the Palestinians in many ways. After all, we also have an historic responsibility to help bring peace to this region finally. But don't you share that responsibility?

Brown: Yes, but aggression, occupation and a repetition of the Holocaust won't bring peace. What we all want is a sustainable peace. This means that we have to tackle the root of the problem. I am pleased to note that you are honest people and admit that you are obliged to support the Zionists.

SPIEGEL: That's not what we said, Mr. Brown.

Brown: You said Israelis.

Looking for Baby Jane

Want to know why the government refuses to stop illegal immigration? Read the US Census Bureau numbers.

Non-Hispanic whites make up 67 percent of the population, but they accounted for only 19 percent of the nation’s total population growth. While the nation as a whole is 36.2 years old, the white majority is, on average, 40.3 years old. Only 22% of the white population is under the age of 18, even though 25% of the total population is under 18.

What It Means In English
America's Caucasian population is, by and large, over 40, and they are getting older, not younger. They haven’t had enough children over the last twenty years. They are largely past all opportunity to have any more. They're done.

The Whining Generation can complain all it wants about the changes in America’s culture, but it is kind of absurd. They got what they asked for – a life of partying and little responsibility. As a result, the next generation won’t look like them. Sorry.

America’s blacks are somewhat better off, but only on a theoretical basis. Blacks account for about 17% of total population growth, that is, they are growing even more slowly than the Caucasian population. American blacks have roughly three times as many abortions as American whites, so the fact that the two groups have similar rates of population growth is a strong statement about lost opportunities.

Black America's future is bright on paper. The median age of black America is 30 years old, compares to 36.2 for the whole nation. There are still lots of young blacks, enough to have a chance to recover. But, in order to do that, they have to stop killing their babies.

Given the enormous social pressure on blacks to abort, this seems unlikely. It is estimated that up to 70% of Planned Parenthood’s abortion clinics are deliberately located in minority neighborhoods. Indeed, in 1993, Ron Weddington, one of the lawyers who litigated Roe V. Wade in front of the Supreme Court, wrote a letter praising President Clinton’s support for abortion, since it reduced the black population.

These pressures have created a forty-year habit of abortion in America’s black culture. As a result, it seems unlikely that blacks will be able to reverse the cultural trend. They may have the youth, but legal abortion will see to it that America’s black population continues to decrease as a percentage of the total population.

Similarly, while Asians, American Indians and Pacific Islanders all have much younger populations (median ages of 33, 30.7 and 28.2, respectively), their actual numbers are so low to begin with that it hardly matters. They won’t be contributing much to the structure of the culture in the next few decades.

The Baby Pay-Off
When we look at the various subpopulations in the United States, there is no way to generate enough children to support white baby boomers in their old age. American politicians will only be re-elected if the elderly vote for them. The elderly will vote for them only if they have all their needs met, i.e., servants taking care of them.

Thus, politicians recognize that they need a population with an enormous economic incentive to have children in the United States. Whites are too old and too comfort-driven to have children, black children aren’t wanted, and the rest of the subpopulations are too small in terms of actual numbers to have any real effect on increased fertility.

Enter the Hispanic “anchor baby.”

The Great White Hope
The people who will shape America’s culture for the foreseeable future are the Hispanics. They accounted for 49% of America’s population growth: 800,000 births, 500,000 immigrants. With a median age of 27.2 years, Hispanics have the youngest of all the populations in the United States. While roughly one-fourth of the general population is under 18, one-third of the Hispanic population fits in that category.

Now, why do we allow all that illegal immigration? Look around.

Russia pays its women to have babies but finds no takers. Norway and Sweden have only been marginally more successful, while even France – which has provided the most successful payoff of the bunch – cannot get the fertility rate up to replacement level.

The populations of all European countries are (a) dropping and (b) becoming Muslim. Within fifty years, we will be faced with a much smaller Europe that is much more Islamic and probably more militant. America answers this problem by creating enormous incentives for Hispanics to enter the country and have babies here instead of in Mexico. If the plan works, the elderly white baby boomers will all have their noses wiped at appropriate intervals by young Hispanic nurses and will therefore keep today's politicians in office. But there is more.

The white baby boomers will all be dead in fifty years, either via natural causes or euthanasia. But if the Hispanic replacement population is successfully purchased from Mexico (which will experience its own population replacement problems within the next decade), America’s population will (a) not drop and (b) still be Judeo-Christian.

Americans who know how to read the numbers and who want America to survive an increasingly Islamic century understand this. Today, the person who is doing the most to assure America's future is the pregnant illegal immigrant. Too lazy to have children ourselves, we have created an unofficial "rent-a-womb" guest worker program.

So, while the Whining Generation throws a tantrum, screaming that it is unjust to expect anyone their age to learn the Spanish word for “fajita,” George W. Bush and subsequent presidents will continue to make sure America’s borders remain porous. There really isn’t anything else to do.

AP Wire Story

This just in from the AP wire desk:

(Los Angeles) - Cities across the nation are in upheavel as Catholics, Christians and Jews riot over the imminent release of the Da Vinci Code movie.

Catholics and Christians call the movie "a blasphemous cartoon" image that asserts Jesus is not God.

Jews are offended by the work's anti-Semitism, not the least of which is its assertion that Hebrews held orgies in the Temple and that Yahweh had sexual relations with the Shekinah. The idea that God has a body is blasphemy in both Christian and Jewish theology.

As thousands gathered around Sony studios, holding placards and chanting "Death to the Great Satan" police stood by in full riot gear. Violence erupted when firebombs were thrown over the studio walls and the crowds rushed the gates, throwing security men to the ground. At least one sound studio was torched as firefighters and police officers fought to maintain control.

Meanwhile, at least twenty cities across the United States saw thousands of cars and buses burned, metro stations firebombed and figures of Dan Brown burned in effigy. Catholic bishops and orthodox rabbis issued calls for Dan Brown's immediate execution. Government officials moved quickly to outlaw the release of the movie and to ban further sales of the book, as Congressmen united in their calls for a Congressional investigation of the fact-checking processes in the publishing industry.


Update:
Contrary to earlier reports, the news of Christian riots appears to have been somewhat exaggerated. The Associated Press regrets the error.

Bootleg Liquor

In the early twentieth century, social justice types decided that liquor was evil and must be banned. Laws were duly passed outlawing demon rum and its cousins. Because nothing had been done to reduce demand, the laws simply created a thriving market for the bootleg variety. After battling the problem for several years, the nation eventually scrapped the whole experiment as a failure.

American immigration laws have had a longer run, but they are very likely to end up on precisely the same scrap-heap of history, and for pretty much the same reasons.

Outsourcing

Although outsourcing jobs to foreign countries has long been a contentious issue for the American public, most American economists see no problem with it. As both Walter Williams and Thomas Sowell like to point out, there is no functional economic difference between outsourcing a job to Korea and automating that same job through the purchase of a computer whose parts were made in Korea. In both cases, the job is no longer available to the American worker. Let’s examine this a bit more thoroughly.

Technology not only permits a computer to replace a local worker, it permits a worker half a world away to replace a local worker. Modern shipping, built on modern technology, has long been rapid and reliable enough to replace the local worker just as assuredly as a machine would. But transportation of goods is not always sufficient to solve the problem.

When Walmart buys a shipload of goods from Thailand or Reebok sews sneakers in Singapore, the corporation leverages third world muscle. The practice works because the corporation moves goods and not people. But, from a purely economic perspective, there is essentially no difference between outsourcing factory jobs to people in the South Seas and importing South Seas citizens to fill factory jobs in the United States.

In both cases, the American worker has been replaced. In the first case, he has been replaced by someone who ships goods subject to tariff into the country. In the other, he has been replaced by someone who pays tariff (sales tax, income tax, etc.) to live in the United States.

From the viewpoint of strict economics, whichever is the more cost-effective solution is the better solution.

Insourcing

Reebok imports goods rather than people primarily because it is cheaper to import goods rather than people. Not every industry is so blessed. Agriculture, for example, is tied to the land. The fields on which they produce goods cannot be transported to the laborers, so the laborers must be transported to the fields. Similarly, the slaughter of livestock or the remodeling of houses is tied to geography. Even if it were possible, it would make no economic sense to ship this raw material to the laborers.

Thus, corporations in the business of selling easily transportable goods have an economic advantage over corporations that depend on goods with fixed geographic locations. Reebok is driven to reduce costs. It does so by employing cheap foreign labor. By a quirk of fate, it is able to do so without running afoul of US immigration law. Tyson Foods, the immense chicken farming conglomerate, is driven by the same pressure to reduce costs, but enjoys no such legal economic advantage in producing its end-product. So, it levels the playing field by employing foreign labor anyway: illegal immigrants.

But, this isn’t the whole story.

Homesourcing

As a recent survey points out, using illegal immigrants as day laborers is not limited to the corporations involved in harvesting livestock or produce. As it turns out, illegal immigrants make up a substantial portion of day laborers, and the number one employer of day laborers is homeowners.

Now, the homeowner is the smallest of the small-scale economic players. From an economic point of view, illegal immigration allows Joe Q. Public to leverage the economic advantages of cheap foreign labor in exactly the same way that Reebok and Walmart do, but without the shipping costs incurred by either corporation.

Thus, illegal immigration not only helps large, geographically fixed corporations, it also gives small business, especially the micro-business that is a family household, an edge. In fact, it gives micro-businesses the edge necessary to stay competitive with corporate giants who can afford massive just-in-time inventory control and the economy of scale possible through massive bulk purchases of items.

The illegal immigrant is the poor man’s automation. But why would small business need this kind of automation? Because the government has outlawed low-wage jobs.

Bootlegging

Now, keep in mind that fully 99% of all enterprises employ less than 500 people. 52% of all workers are employed in small business. Small businesses produce three-quarters of the new jobs, and are much more economically nimble, able to respond to market pressures more rapidly than large corporations. Unfortunately, this is precisely the sector hit hardest by the minimum wage.

The minimum wage law is essentially a tax, a tariff on low-cost goods and services. The Smoot-Hawley tariff on foreign goods that economists have long lamented has been transformed today into the minimum wage tariff on low-end jobs, a government-imposed tax which not only outlaws low-wage jobs, it forces businesses who offer such jobs to pay the cost of enforcing the laws.

By taxing low-wage jobs, the minimum wage thereby abolishes such jobs. How? It artificially transforms them into high-wage jobs. At least, that's the theory.

In fact, the government actually creates a black market for low-paying, low-end jobs that cannot be legally filled by entry-level workers. But, on closer examination, the law actually does something much worse than this. Because it essentially outlaws low-wage jobs, it creates in those same entry-level workers the belief that low-paying, low-end jobs should not exist at all.

That is, the artificially imposed minimum wage creates in the American public an erroneous notion of what constitutes a just wage. This notion is not shared by most of the rest of the world. As a result, neighbors who do not accept the American government’s notion of what constitutes a just wage are more than willing to step in and do the job for what the job is actually worth, rather than demand the price of the job plus the government tariff.

Thus, perversely, while large corporations do employ illegal immigrants, the economic necessity which creates illegal immigration is not created by the corporations themselves. It is, instead, created by Joe Q. Public via the day labor market and the small business community in reaction to the government interference in the marketplace. Illegal immigration enhances the economic clout of the average American consumer by allowing a lower price for goods and services than would otherwise be possible.

Given the American appetite for low-cost comfort, an appetite which has caused Americans to essentially stop having children, illegal immigration is both inexorable and inevitable. Stopping illegal immigration would require a change in American attitudes towards their own comfort and bank accounts, and that simply won’t happen. A nation which can't be convinced to stop killing one-third of its children will certainly not want to give up its cheap lettuce, no matter what the demagogues say.

Pagan Flesh, Protestant Bones

As with the recent frothing at the mouth over Christmas, the Christian concern about the Da Vinci Code is rich in irony. As I recently noted, the assault on Christmas was begun not by secular humanists, but by Christians. Non-Catholic Christians opposed the Catholic Church and its liturgical holy days, its celebration of the Mass. They worked hard to take the “Mass” out of Christ’s Mass – Christmas. They succeeded.

But, when secularists wanted to take Christmas out of the year entirely, the same Christians grew perversely angry. How dare anyone strip away the skeleton whose Flesh we stripped away! We must keep the white-washed tomb!

Similarly, many Christians have blamed the success of the Da Vinci Code on Gnosticism not because the Da Vinci Code is Gnostic - it isn’t - but because the Gnostics are safely dead. As a moment’s study shows, the Da Vinci Code is simply the Protestant Christian take on history, warmed over. Consider the congruence.

The Great Apostasy
1) “The Roman Emperor Constantine invented the Catholic Church in order to crush True Believers!” This is the standard Protestant line, most popular among fundamentalist Christians like the Baptists and the Assemblies of God, but not unknown even among evangelicals and mainline Protestants. In this mish-mash of historical fact and pure invention, Christians were an essentially unmolested minority until the dastardly Emperor Constantine invented the Catholic Church in order to crush the True Believers.

The True Believers are invariably whoever happens to be telling the story: Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Seventh Seed Baptists, Jack Chick, etc. This is how all of those groups explain the fact that all the early Christian documents show early Christians engaged in Catholic worship. The Whore of Babylon (i.e., the Catholics) burned all the True Believer’s and their documents!

Winner Takes All
2) "The failure to find True Believers in ancient history is due to the fact that the winners write history." As is obvious from the previous point, this is a purely Protestant theme.

Dan Brown kept his mother’s Protestant story line; he just swapped out the identity of the True Believer. Pre-DVC the True Believers were Jack Chick aficionados. Post-DVC the True Believers are the Wiccans. In every other respect, the story is the same. Every apostasized fundamentalist immediately recognizes the playbook, despite Brown’s change of players.

Change the Bible
3) Few people realize that the Old Testament existed in two versions at the time of Christ: a Hebrew original and a Greek translation, the Greek version being called the Septuagint. Due to some odd events in history, the Greek version of the Old Testament not only has books that the Hebrew version does not, many of the passages in the two are not the same: Isaiah and Jeremiah, for instance, are notably different in several places. Which version did Jesus and the apostles use? Well, 80% of the Old Testament verses that are quoted in the New Testament are demonstrably from the Greek version. Jesus clearly preferred the Greek translation.

Not so Martin Luther. Although Luther was a rabid anti-Semite, he was more than willing to accept the Jewish opinion on one point: what constitutes the Old Testament. Why? Well, if Luther accepted the version that Jesus used, he would be forced to accept that his faith-alone theology was not Scriptural. The Greek Septuagint clearly accepted the existence of Purgatory, for instance, a place that has no place in "faith-alone" theology. So, Luther threw away seven books in the Old Testament and parts of two others. Not content with that, he was preparing to discard several New Testament books as well - Hebrews, James, Revelation - and was only barely talked out of it by Melanchthon.

So, Luther essentially argued that the decision about which Old Testament books prophesied Christ's coming (i.e., which books were really inspired Scripture) was best decided by the subset of Jews who refused to accept Christ as Saviour. The argument is ludicrous, but it was the only way to save Protestant theology.

Protestants change the Bible to suit their theology. So does Dan Brown. The only difference? Instead of taking away books to make the theology fit, Danny wants to add some books. But the principle by which he argues for the change to Scripture is thoroughly valid in Protestant thought, as Martin Luther demonstrated nearly 500 years ago.

Get Rid of Peter
4) "Peter isn't the true head of the Church!" Catholics yawn at this one. Non-Catholic Christians have always either steadfastly denied the supremacy of Peter among the apostles or they steadfastly denied the possibility that Peter’s office could be passed on to any successor. Even the Eastern Orthodox sympathize with this position.

Again, Dan Brown took that line straight out of the Christian playbook. All he did was swap Mary Magdelene in for St. Paul as the real lead apostle.

Get Rid of Celibacy
5) “Jesus was not celibate.” Martin Luther insisted celibacy was non-Scriptural. He left the Augustinian priesthood in order to marry a nun and have children. Thus, it is no stretch for non-Catholic Christians to say that Jesus was not celibate. Indeed, many DVC debunkers don’t fight this assertion. They find his marital status irrelevant to his salvational work.

Putting the celibate Jesus into a marriage with children, simply makes Jesus a prototype for Martin Luther. Dan Brown’s major break with the Protestant version of history is not in the marriage, rather, it is in his handling of marriage. Luther insisted marriage was in no way holy, rather, it was just a legal fiction, a means by which God allows us to slake our lust without sinning. Brown was smart enough to throw THAT demotion away.

He returned instead to the Catholic understanding of marriage and sex: marriage is holy, a sacramental encounter with the divine. Sex is sacred. These Catholic alterations to an otherwise Protestant take on sexuality is central to what sells his book. After all, most modern conservative Christians reject Luther’s assertion that marriage is just a legal fiction.

Why? Well, they have finally realized that Luther's position leads directly to homosexual marriage and polygamy (something Luther understood and accepted). Thus, Martin Luther’s original theology of marriage – identical to the modern secular humanist understanding of marriage – is rejected by most non-Catholic Christians. Ironically, non-Catholic Christians are again embracing the Catholic understanding that marriage is a sacrament. Dan Brown simply builds on that Catholic embrace.

Market Share
Now, of the two dozen or so books that debunk the Da Vinci Code, not one of the non-Catholic Christian books point out any of these similarities between DVC's paganism and historical Protestantism. Of the four Catholic books on the market, three do not point out any of these similarities.

Why not? Well, it would hurt market share. Both non-Catholic and Catholic Christians find it much safer to follow Protestant professors and blame Dan Brown’s theology on Gnosticism. It doesn’t matter if the rebuttal is thereby rendered theologically incoherent – we are on the side of the angels, don’cha know.

In fact, the failure to recognize these points of coherence means we are not rebutting essential points of Dan Brown's work. Instead, we are just doing his advertising for him. By insisting his work has Gnostic roots, we freely give to his work the same ancient veneer that Protestant Christianity has always sought, an ancient veneer neither Protestantism nor Dan-Brownism has ever actually possessed.

Dan Brown played Christians like a violin. And we played along. You may hate his book, but you’ve got to admire his marketing. It is simply brilliant.

Killing Them Softly

Killing Them Softly

“My sister, Andrea Clark, is soon going to be REMOVED FROM LIFE SUPPORT At St. Luke’s Hospital in Houston, despite the fact that she is FULLY INSURED, despite the fact that her FAMILY UNANIMOUSLY AGREES SHE SHOULD BE KEPT ALIVE, despite the fact that she is NOT BRAIN DEAD, despite the fact that she WANTS TO CONTINUE TO RECEIVE MEDICAL CARE...she can still communicate--not even two weeks ago, she made the sentence, “I miss you,” when I was visiting her. She definitely can make her desires known and we intend to fight for her right to live and we need all the help we can get.”

A few weeks ago, I was giving two days of talks at a parish in the eastern part of the country, showing parishioners how to explain the Catholic Faith to people who don’t understand it. During the course of one of the question-and-answer sessions, I was asked what the religious future of America looks like. I am afraid the answer I gave did not please everyone in the audience.

I began by pointing out that Christian European flavors of religion would disappear. None of the men and women in the mainline Protestant churches are having enough children to sustain their faiths. They are contracepting and aborting themselves out of existence. The few children they have are apostasizing at a rapid rate.

This year, 2006, is projected to be a momentous year in America’s religious history. It is the year America stops being a majority-Protestant country. During the course of this year, all the Protestant faiths, taken together, will make up less than 50% of the American population.

The Catholic audience looked at each other with raised eyebrows and nodded.

American Catholic Christianity will fair only marginally better. Catholic Americans of European descent contracept and abort at the same rate as their Protestant brethren. They, too, are on their way out. Catholicism in America will remain stable at roughly one-quarter of the population, but it will be almost entirely Hispanic. Only immigrants are having children in sufficient numbers to maintain their presence over the long haul, and the Hispanic population is far and away the largest immigrant population.

The largely Anglo-Saxon Catholic audience shifted uncomfortably in their seats.

But contraception and abortion are only the beginning, I pointed out. “I fully expect to be euthanized,” I said, “and I expect most of the people in the room will be euthanized as well.”

The audience gasped.

I shrugged as I looked out over the audience. What I was saying wasn’t even a prediction, really, just a description of a reality no one wants to discuss.

Look at the facts. The baby boom generation is even now beginning to create an enormous burden on the economic system. The business of America is business. That burden will not be sustained.

It won’t matter if you have full coverage. You are cheaper dead - much cheaper dead - than you are alive. The stockholders of the major insurance companies, that is, your fellow citizens, want their profit margins.

After having squeezed you like a grape for most of your life, insurance companies will fully support the removal of your life support, your medical treatment, whatever it is that costs them money, regardless of your level of insurance. Once they are spending more than they made on you, you are a liability. Insurance companies must stay in business. They must get rid of their liabilities.

The rationale for killing inconvenient people has been accorded the full status of the law for nigh onto forty years. Inconvenient babies are redefined as non-human and killed. What makes you and me so special? It won’t matter that you are conscious, that you have fully paid premiums or that you don’t want to die. You aren’t going to be asked. This isn’t really even any of your business.

I have siblings who work in the medicine. They have been fighting the silent spread of euthanasia for years. Terri Schiavo was unusual only in the noise generated, not in the result obtained.

The “news” paragraph that begins this column is not news to anyone who has been following the medical profession for a few years.

St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital in Houston has an ethics committee. That ethics committee is headed by an abortionist.

America, you aborted your children.
Now your children will abort you.

Immigration as Religion

The USSR, requiem in pace, required internal passports. If you wished to travel from one city to another, one state to another, one region to another, your papers had to be in order. Capitalists long derided this backwards approach to the government-controlled economy.

The US has never had internal passports for cities, for states or for regions. It is unusual precisely in its freedom of movement. Indeed, the interstate commerce clause in the Constitution forbids any tax to be assessed on goods that move between states. This is rightly seen as a major factor in American economic success.

Similarly, while America has certainly had no small history of protectionism, American protectionism is not seen in a positive light. Most economists agree: anything that impedes trade is a problem.

America has long believed the world should be made safe for democracy. It has likewise long believed capitalism is the beating heart of the economic system. Thus, making the world safe for democracy means making the world safe for capitalism.

But here’s a puzzler: if the whole world were converted to democracy and capitalism, would anyone need a passport? If so, why? How is travel between London and New York different from travel between Los Angeles and New York or Honolulu and New York? Sure, there are different cultures in each city, but there were different cultures between Moscow and St. Petersburg, between St. Petersburg and Kiev. So what is the point of a passport?

A passport is a tariff. It restricts the free exchange of persons in much the same way that a tariff restricts the free exchange of goods. Just as immigration controls could be considered tariffs on human persons, tariffs might be considered a kind of immigration quota for inanimate objects.

When we view passports and immigration in this light, a lot of things become rather puzzling. For instance, while I am neither an ardent capitalist nor an advocate of world government, it’s hard to see why ardent capitalists would be opposed to world government.

If capitalists are interested in the free movement of resources for the purposes of strengthening economic ties, then what greater resource is there besides the human persons who create those resources to begin with? Goods create culture precisely because people create goods. Goods express human ideas and are as stabilizing or destabilizing as the people who created them. If one should be freely exchanged, why not the other?

As we have noted above, a tariff is merely a way to restrict the movement of that which is under tariff. Why would a capitalist ask for tariffs on goods to be abolished but insist that tariffs on workers be strengthened?

The short answer is most capitalists don’t. The lax enforcement of immigration laws is the business world’s answer to the protectionist insanity which is immigration law. But logical consistency on this point is in short supply. For instance, it is easy to find such sterling economists as Thomas Sowell write against illegal immigration and against legal tariffs.

Tariffs and Religion

It is well known that individual Christian religions have different communion policies, and these policies change according to clear rules. For instance, some Christians understand that the act of receiving communion causes communion. At the same time, it is a sign that the communicant accepts all that the body of believers accept. For such Christians, communion policies are strict. Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox, for instance, do not allow any but professed, baptized, catechized believers who are in a state of grace to receive.

But in many other Christian faiths, communion is simply seen as an ordinance – something God commanded for no particularly obvious reason. For them, Christians commune not as a statement of belief or a sign, much less a cause, of communion. Rather, it is done because God told us we should, period. Such Christians admit nearly anyone who comes forward to receive. You need not be of that particular faith or of the Christian faith or even of any faith at all – you can receive communion simply by showing up.

It is ironic that the faith with one of the strictest policies on divine communion has one of the most lenient understandings of the interpersonal communion we call immigration.

As Rachel Zoll, the AP’s religion writer, points out, “St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke, who publicly said in 2004 he would refuse to give Holy Communion to Kerry, was among many church leaders who organized recent rallies in favor of giving undocumented workers a chance at citizenship. Burke noted that American Catholics were immigrants themselves, and that by welcoming migrants, ‘we obey the command of Our Lord, who tells us that when we welcome the stranger, we welcome Christ Himself.’ ”

Catholics tend to view immigration and emigration as a natural right that exists independent of the laws of any particular country. Catholics point to the numerous emigrations and immigrations made by the Holy Family, and the itinerant wanderings of every apostle and most of the saints as a demonstration that the movement of peoples should not be restricted without very good reason.

Protestantism, on the other hand, the group of religions with the most lenient communion policies, tends to be the strictest towards population movement. Indeed, as we saw at the beginning of the article, the people who believed least in God – socialist atheists – were the ones with the most strongly enforced immigration policy.

Communion policies, whether this concerns policies about inanimate objects (the communion of goods), immigration (the communion of saints) or the Lord’s Supper (communion with God Himself), are based in what is deemed crucial, ‘cross-driven.’ Unlike other faiths, Catholics worry about creating and maintaining a culture of life that images God’s own life. For us, the only passport that matters is the One we receive on the tongue each Sunday, the One who is the passport to heaven.

Neo-Catholics

Some of you may be aware of my continuing disagreement with Carl Olson and Ignatius Press.

I believe I can sum up the entire argument in just a couple of sentences:

Baptists are neo-Catholics.

Baptists take some elements of Catholicism (worship of Jesus, necessity of prayer - at least the sinner's prayer, etc.) and combine it with ideas of their own to create neo-Catholicism. Frances Kissling is likewise a neo-Catholic. So is Jack Chick.

For that matter, so is Dan Brown. He holds to the importance of Jesus, holds up Mary Magdelene for veneration, etc. He's not just a neo-Gnostic, but a neo-Catholic.

Neo-Catholicism, neo-Gnosticism - in each case the new version is really identical to the original version when you look at it right, so we are justified in using the name as long as we append a "neo" to the front.

I used to run RCIA. During the initial interviews with candidates, I would frequently have Lutherans begin the process by telling me "Well there really isn't much difference between Catholics and Lutherans, and my wife/husband is Catholic, so I decided to join the Catholic Church."

I guess they were right.
Ignatius Press would certainly not be able to argue against the idea.

Verbal Shell Games

“Everyone misses it,” Teabing said. “Our preconceived notions… are so powerful that our mind blocks out the incongruity and overrides our eyes.” “It’s known as scotoma,” Langdon added. “The brain does it sometimes with powerful symbols.”
Ignatius Press is upset at my recent observation that Christian apologists in general, and Ignatius Press in particular, have been tilting at windmills in Dan Brown’s famous novel. Specifically, most Christian apologists have been promoting the false idea that Brown’s novel is Gnostic. Carl Olson has attempted to defend Ignatius Press from these charges. Sadly, he inadvertently demonstrated how Ignatius Press, like so many others, have scotoma. As Dan Brown doesn’t point out in the quote above, scotoma is just the Latin word for “blind spot.”
These blind spots typically arise when people aren’t thinking about the words they use in conversation. For instance, a Catholic-Lutheran conversation on “justification” will quickly bog down if the two sides don’t realize how wildly different each side’s definition is. When a Lutheran uses the word “justification” he is most assuredly not espousing Catholic theology or philosophy.
Similarly, though Catholics and Lutherans both use the word “baptism” in a similar way, Mormons do not. Indeed, while Catholics accept Lutheran baptism as valid, the Mormon “baptism” is so entirely different from Catholic usage that Mormon baptisms are entirely rejected by Catholics.
A Mormon may speak of “baptism,” he may practice “baptism, but he does not thereby demonstrate that he is a Catholic or a proto-Catholic or even a quasi-Catholic. The words are the same, but the meanings, the underlying realities, are not. People who don’t realize this get caught up in a verbal shell game; they can’t see which meaning is under which word.
Many Christian denominations fall into this trap when they claim their theology can be found in early Christian practice. Baptists, for instance, sometimes make the claim that the 12th century Albigensians are their spiritual forebears. As even the most trivial study of the Albigensian theology demonstrates, the claim is as nonsensical as it is common.
Hysterical Historians
As one might expect, historians are more liable to verbal shell games than most. Like Smeagol in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, historians are always grubbing around in the dark, trying to find the “roots of things.” They make their house payments by making connections between events, even when there are no connections to be made, and this is the source of all kinds of trouble.
A wonderful historian once confided to me that in thirty years of reading history, he had only once met a book in which the author stated his theory and then discovered that the facts of history proved him wrong. In every other book he had ever read, the historian-author always managed to demonstrate that his own pet theory was right. Amazing.
But that, dear friends, is the history of Gnosticism in a nutshell. There are historians who speak of the Gnosticism of the Rosicrucians and the Freemasons, or the “modern gnosticism” of newly-minted 20th century “goddess worship,” radical feminism and the like. As Sir Thomas Crapper, renowned re-inventor of the flush toilet, might remark, it’s all crap.
Gnostics believed in a Godhead made up of a pleroma, a multitude of spiritual aeons with a few archons thrown in for measure. Gnostics taught that the created world is evil, brought into existence by a stupid female demi-urge who traps immortal souls in the slime of the material world and holds them imprisoned. According to Gnostics, Jesus was an aeon, part of the divine pleroma. He was pure spirit, a being without a body who could therefore not be crucified. He pretended to take flesh and walk among us in order to give us the secret knowledge, i.e., the “gnosis,” necessary to be freed of the prison that is our bodies.
Since created matter is an evil prison, the act of procreative sex is evil: it traps immortal souls in this torture chamber we call the universe. Marriage is evil because it leads to procreative sex. Women are spiritually lower forms of life because they actually incubate the prisoners; they cooperate with the demi-urge by the very nature of who they are. This is why the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas says women cannot be saved unless they become like men. These teachings form the white-hot core, the beating heart, of Gnosticism.
How the Trick Was Played
So, how many of these ideas appear in Dan Brown’s novel? Well, none of them, actually. Brown not only says absolutely nothing about pleromas, aeons, archons or demi-urges, he insists sex and marriage are sacred – his teachings are directly opposed to Gnosticism.
The Albigensians of the 12th century were the last Gnostics. Almost none of the things that are called “gnosticism” today are actually gnostic because none of them teach what the original Gnostics taught.
The modern “Gnostics” claim inspiration from the Gospels of Judas or Thomas or Mary Magdelene for the same reason some Baptists lay claim to the Albigensians: it provides the aura of ancient belief without the burden of any demonstration. For them, the words “Gnostic” or “Albigensian” are really just synonyms for “Dude, what we believe is like really, really old and stuff. Trust me.” The emphasis is on the “trust me.”
If Dan Brown had written a novel that invoked the names of Albigensian documents, quoted a sentence or two, and then went on to discuss the superlative merits of modern Baptist theology, Carl Olson would have shot the whole thing down in a New York minute. He certainly would never have entitled the first chapter of his debunk book, “Albigensianism: The Religion of The Baptist Code.”
In fact, he would not only have debunked Baptist theology; he would have take pains to point out that Albigensianism has nothing to do with Baptist belief. But Brown wrote a book that invoked a couple of Gnostic documents, and then went on to describe how sex is holy, marriage is holy, and women should be treated like goddesses and Carl fell for it.
It’s understandable why Carl would make this mistake. Look at the list of expert historians he brings forward in his article. Now, as any college survey will show, nearly all of today’s historians are at least agnostics, if not atheists, and most are mildly to violently opposed to religious belief. In short, most historians who study religion are not terribly reliable guides. They earn their pay by demonstrating that all religious beliefs are essentially the same: they are all bunk.
So, as one might expect, it is unusual to find historians who are willing to attack an anti-Christian book. But, we must remember that historians are people too. They have relatively few chances for dances of glory in the media limelight: Brown’s book was so bad it afforded a wonderful opportunity to dance this dance of joy.
In that sense, it’s hard to fault Carl for being led along by the nose by the “experts.” We all like to be liked, and the historians seemed to be On Our Side for once. So, when the historians fed Christians their standard nonsensical patter, Carl fell for an absurdity he never would have entertained in other circumstances: he bought into the idea that Dan Brown’s novel is Gnostic.
The central idea in a theology is its concept of God. The central idea in a religion is its ethics and rituals. Brown’s theology says nothing of the Gnostic idea of God, actively opposes Gnosticism’s ethical teachings, and rips off rituals from Wicca. Wicca, by the way, was invented in 1939 by an adulterous English civil servant who liked to prance around in the nude. Any guesses on why Wiccan spirituality emphasizes nudity and ritual sex?
The Historian is Quicker than the Ear
So, Philip Jenkins and company may natter on about the “syzygy” of male-female spirituality which forces “modern gnosticism” to make Jesus and Mary Magdelene both deity, but that hardly matters. After all, aren’t we all angry with Danny because he keeps insisting Jesus was just an ordinary man, not deity at all?
Similarly, good Catholics cannot use the fact that Robert Langdon knelt at Mary Magdelene’s tomb in order to charge Brown with goddess worship. After all, any good Catholic might also kneel at Mary Magdelene’s tomb in a fit of reverence. And, while Dan Brown makes soft mewling noises about the “sacred feminine,” he simply never calls Mary Magdelene a goddess, despite Carl’s mistaken belief that he does.
So, whether we judge Brown according to the actual Gnostic standards of the second century or under the invented shell of twenty-first century “gnosticism,” it doesn’t matter. Dan Brown simply isn’t gnostic.
Let’s hammer down the coffin nails. Feminists may refer to Gnostic texts, but that doesn’t make those feminists Gnostic any more than Carl’s use of those texts makes Ignatius Press Gnostic. The feminist idea of a triple-aspect goddess - maiden, mother, crone - is a purely modern invention that has no correspondence to any ancient belief system. The feminists who claim Gnostic influence and manufactured Horned Gods were and are just silly women repeating the mantra, “Dude, what we believe is like totally old and stuff. Trust me.”
Equally useful are the endorsements the Ignatius Press book has gotten from the media. It surely must be comforting to know that all those MSM reporters who seldom or never attend religious services have given their imprimatur to the Ignatius Press take on gnosticism.
And speaking of imprimaturs! While Cardinal George is an outstanding man whom I deeply admire – anyone who takes on Chicago for as long as he has without retiring to a monastery should be deeply honored – he isn’t an historian nor is he immune to their ways. Because bishops are men like the rest of us, bishops can be and frequently are fooled like the rest of us. For excellent evidence of this, one has only to look at the 1917 Catholic Encyclopedia. It not only has the praise of a good bishop, it even has his imprimatur, yet it’s article on schools is essentially heretical, as I demonstrate in painful detail in on schools Designed To Fail: Catholic Education in America.
In short, Carl’s lengthy defense of Ignatius Press merely demonstrated what I have been pointing out all along: an otherwise orthodox Catholic press inadvertently bought into a portion of Brown’s implicit claim to Gnosticism.
In fact, what Brown teaches – what all the “modern gnostics” teach – has essentially nothing to do with real Gnosticism. The whole charade is just a verbal shell game played by historians looking for collegial respect and feminist theologians searching for authenticity.

Irish Madness: Violating Easter Week

I don't normally publish anything from the SSPX, as their bishops are excommunicate and they are deeply unreliable in their theology. However, like a stopped clock, they got this one right:

Augustinian monks in Ireland have concelebrated Mass with Anglicans, thereby violating canon law and setting themselves up for canonical penalties.

Can. 900 §1. The minister who is able to confect the sacrament of the Eucharist in the person of Christ is a validly ordained priest alone.

Can. 908 Catholic priests are forbidden to concelebrate the Eucharist with priests or ministers of Churches or ecclesial communities which do not have full communion with the Catholic Church.

From Redemptionis Sacramentorum:

[172.] Graviora delicta against the sanctity of the Most August Sacrifice and Sacrament of the Eucharist are to be handled in accordance with the ‘Norms concerning graviora delicta reserved to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’,[280] namely:

a) taking away or retaining the consecrated species for sacrilegious ends, or the throwing them away;[281]

b) the attempted celebration of the liturgical action of the Eucharistic Sacrifice or the simulation of the same;[282]

c) the forbidden concelebration of the Eucharistic Sacrifice with ministers of Ecclesial Communities that do not have the apostolic succession nor acknowledge the sacramental dignity of priestly Ordination;[283]

d) the consecration for sacrilegious ends of one matter without the other in the celebration of the Eucharist or even of both outside the celebration of the Eucharist.[284]

"[179.] Delicts against the faith as well as graviora delicta committed in the celebration of the Eucharist and the other Sacraments are to be referred without delay to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which “examines [them] and, if necessary, proceeds to the declaration or imposition of canonical sanctions according to the norm of common or proper law”.[288]

Here is +Cardinal Arinze's address:

His Eminence Cardinal Francis Arinze
Congregation for Divine Worship
and the Discipline of the Sacraments
00120 Vatican City State
Europe

Give Us Your Children

Looks like we'll need to update the words of the Emma Lazarus poem, "Give Us Your Poor."

A federal judge has ruled that an illegal immigrant carrying the child of an American cannot be deported until after she gives birth. The child, being an American, has a right to stay in the country, and deporting the mother would necessarily deport the child.

But the feds - ever mindful of publicity - are going to make sure the woman is deported just as soon as the child is born.

So now America - who has not been having enough babies to maintain her own population - is reduced to stealing other people's babies. Very nice.