Kickoff

Here's a wonderful URL to kick off the fact that my latest book is shipping:

http://www.sacbee.com/content/news/religion/story/13752388p-14594085c.html

The book is, of course, Designed to Fail: Catholic Education in America.

Here's the raves it's gotten so far:

"At this pivotal moment in the history of Catholic education in America, Designed to Fail is an important addition to this critical conversation. By examining the past and the present condition of Catholic education in America, Kellmeyer boldly proposes provocative and challenging solutions for its future. Whether you agree with it or not, this book should be read and considered soberly by anyone involved in Catholic education or pastoral work."

--- Benedict T. Nguyen, M.T.S., J.C.L., Chancellor, Diocese of La Crosse, WI

"Rarely have seen such indisputable truths packed in so few pages...Steve Kellmeyer has written an intriguing book that will shift American Catholics ways of thinking about parental responsibility for their children's religious education. Kellmeyer insists, and backs it up with both magisterial statements and historical fact that the sorry state of doctrinal knowledge on the part of the Catholic faithful is due not only to to the abdication of parental responsibility but also to the wrongful hierarchal takeover of Catholic teaching to children via Catholic grammar school run largely by religious.

After the Second Vatican Council, these same orders began to lose both personnel and vocations, leaving in their place, teachers who either were not faithful Catholics or ignorant of Catholic teaching . Both the hierarchy and parents seem not to realize that hundreds of years of the handing on of Catholic faith and tradition have been virtually obliterated in the course of decades. The results are all around us. Kellmeyer provides hope that the "new Evangelization" called for by the late Pope John Paul II can be realized by parents reasuming their primordial and inherent responsibility as teachers of the Faith in the family."

--- Rev. C.J. McCloskey III, a Fellow at the Faith and Reason Institute based in Washington DC.

Writing with strong conviction, in a clear and direct manner, Kellmeyer captured and held my attention from the very first chapter in which he presents a dramatic, but realistic portrayal of the current crisis in Catholic education. I did not expect to agree with him, but his arguments are indisputable.

Steve Kellmeyer has written a powerfully enlightening and intriguing book which analyzes the historical factors behind the current crisis in the Catholic parochial system. This book will most certainly impact the way that American Catholics view parental responsibility for their children’s religious education and, hopefully, will result in positive changes to bring about a solution to the crisis. Designed to Fail is a must read for all adult Catholic laity and Religious who are interested in the education and catechetical formation of both Catholic youth and adults in America.

--- Jean Heimann, retired school psychologist and educator

In the past, fifty percent of all Catholic Children attended Catholic school. Today only twenty percent attend. In Designed to Fail: Catholic Education in America, Steve Kellmeyer takes us back in history to the time when the first cracks began to appear in Catholic education and shows how misunderstanding, ignorance, a lack of obedience and at times, authorities misleading us, has brought the Catholic schools to near total collapse. He then explains what each of us, Religious and laity, need to do to pick up the pieces.

From the very first paragraph, this book held my attention as it presented in an easy to read style, why we find our schools and our families in the situation we are currently in. I didn’t expect to agree with the Author, when I first sat down to read this book, but from the first page to the last he presented the crises while adhering to factual truths, that spoke for themselves, in an interesting and understanding way.

I feel that Steve Kellmeyer’s book Designed to Fail: Catholic Education in America, should be a must read for every Catholic, from Priest and Bishops to the laity. There is a passage that stood out for me that began with Scripture: “Suffer not the little children and forbid them not to come to me…Many assume it forms part of a divine mandate which authorizes the Church to teach children. It doesn’t…It demonstrates Jesus didn’t teach children…” I strongly recommend that you read this book for yourself and find out why the Author feels this way and what steps need to be taken to correct this crisis.

--- Debra Vandelicht

Modern Medici

“Self-published? Ah, I see. Well, we don’t work with that class of material, if you get my meaning.” So said the book review critic, and therein lies a tale.

A few centuries ago, no artist in any field could get anywhere without a patron. Someone had to pay for the time and material. Getting large amounts of metal or marble for sculpture, acquiring the exotic pigments and physical placements necessary for painting, even paying the artist for the large amounts of free time necessary to work raw materials into form was expensive, especially in a subsistence-level economy. Only the wealthy could afford to commission art work.

But, as Julian Simon documented over and over again, the cost of materials always drops over time. As the cost of materials dropped, the need for patrons in most areas of art also dropped. When an artist can afford to buy his own materials, he generally dumps his patrons.

After all, patrons are messy to deal with. They have a vision for the artwork, the artist has a vision and the two visions often clash. As soon as it was practicable to drop the patron, the patron was dropped.

So, today no one turns their noses up at a "self-published" sculptor or painter. But they still turn their noses up at self-published writing. Why? Because, until just this century, it still required a ton of money to print a book.

Ever since writing was developed, creating a book has been a high-cost business that only the wealthy could afford precisely because so many techniques had to be mastered in order to produce a printed book. And this is the difference.

Until recently, writing was unlike the other areas of artwork. In other areas, the patron supplied the raw material and the location where the art would be displayed, but the artist supplied all the technique. The printed book, however, is its own piece of artwork in which the writing is but one part of the total composition.

Consider: to print a book used to require not just a writer, but several experts in various technical disciplines all working together. Even if a writer had the money to buy a printing press, it was unlikely he would have the arcane knowledge necessary to run it himself. He would need to supply skills like typography and typesetting, layout, graphic design, and book-binding, not to mention the cost of both the printing press and its operators. These are all aspects of technique just as surely as the writing is. Like a soloist in an opera, the writer was just the best-known person in the process.

But, computers have changed all that. The printing business was the last artistic discipline to have a high cost of entry. It is only within the last five years that the entry-level cost has dropped to the base level that has been current in other areas for centuries.

In this respect, the great publishing houses that remain on the scene today might be likened to the Medicis and the Church curia. They are guilds whose historically significant presence and power is slowly being undermined. Apart from the marketing aspect, upstart artists no longer need a publishing house patron to insinuate itself into the artistic process. They can do it all on a cheap laptop.

Some say that this loss of patronage, of publishers, will inevitably erode the quality of printed material. Perhaps this is true. Certainly there is no shortage of execrable canvas and sculpture artists today. On the other hand, it is clearly the case that “professional” publishers aren’t exactly producing stellar work either.

Can anyone really defend most of the latest best-sellers as examples of the writer’s art? Harry Potter? Mitch Albom? Or the piece de resistance: Dan Brown? Please.

Brown's blockbuster was as badly-written and badly-researched a screed as any third-rate scrivener might ever hope to produce. It hit the bestseller’s list primarily because it hit the right cultural buttons with the 10,000 critics who received advance copies of the book. For the uninitiated, a 10,000 book run is what a publishing house normally sells of a single book. LIke the Medicis of old, Doubleday had so much money to burn they could gave away a full print run just for publicity. In short, Brown's work just proved that, like a Chicago election, a best-selling book can be bought.

So, while many argue self-published works are not of high quality, this is simply the Medici art patron attempting to hold sway over a process that is increasingly becoming independent. As with the canvas or the sculpture, attacks on the quality of self-published works is a fig leaf for the real animus against the self-published.

Established publishers have a vested interest in retaining the vestiges of their guild. That is, they have a vested interest in making sure their customers regard all competitors as non-functional or marginal. As computer technology mushrooms the number of competitors, this will become increasingly difficult to do. With the computer, technique has been rendered into a material cost, and material costs have been pushed into the dirt.

Unfortunately for writers, the same thing that happened to the other art disciplines is also happening to writing. Just as few people spend much time in art galleries anymore, so fewer and fewer people in each generation are reading. That is, as the cost of entry into a discipline drops, the general interest in the product also drops. With writing, as with every other artistic discipline, people are interested in the unusual, and if everyone is special, if everyone can publish a book, then there's nothing special about getting a book published.

Today, the fascination is with Hollywood and, to a lesser extent, the Internet. Movies still costs far more in material and skills than most individuals can cover on their own, while computer programming is still an arcane discipline that is not yet amenable to being rendered into a commodity. But video costs are coming down, as is theater attendance, and web sites have mushroomed, making it difficult to stand out in the very large crowd.

Here's the great irony. The self-published book will eventually destroy the modern Medici.

But when it does, no one will care, because no one will be reading.

A Homeschooling Moment

Many people seem to have an odd idea that homeschoolers cage their children in the house. The following is a vignette passed on to me by my wife from her homeschooling group. It is rather informative.

Well, we have been on vacation for the past two weeks. and I learned
a little something about how homeschooling is percieved by folks. We
stayed at white pines state park for 4 days, where you can rent a
charmingly small (!) cabin. There were lots of elderly couples there
who found our children to be quite entertaining. It was neat to see
my kids engage in real discussions with adults, who were genuinely
interested in speaking with them. I was very pleased with how my kids
handled things.

My daughter would practice her violin each night, as she
requested, "by the light of the moon" and people would walk by our
cabin and smile or ask questions. she and her little brother built a
pinecone pathway in front of our cabin, and again, the other cabin
guests were very interested in stopping and talking. Not to brag, but
I was so please to see my kids talk to these people and have REAL
conversations.

So it was of great interest when a group of older couples met up with
us wanting to know why the kids were not in school all week! These
people were charmed all week long by my kids, but when I answered
that we homeschool, they all stopped and were shocked into silence
for a few moments.

Finally I had to offer, "look around you! (at the beautiful nature of
the state park) look at what my children are learning about this
week! you cannot get this in a classroom!"

I have to laugh remembering the reactions of the elderly couples at
this point. Because suddenly they snapped to, and bent over
conversing with the kids again. They began telling the kids of all
the wonderful things they had seen at the park. Clearly, they had
realised that homeschooling was NOT what they had thought, and were
ready to encourage the kids to learn from nature.

I thought it was so neat.
most people meet my kids and see what we do and think it is
wonderful. But as soon as they associate it with 'homeschooling' they
balk! it must be hard to shake the infamy of the homeschool moniker.
I for one, would like to keep updating the image of homeschoolers.

Designed to Fail

Within the next two weeks, my newest book, Designed to Fail: Catholic Education in America should begin to ship to bookstores across the country.

Unfortunately, this latest news story from CNN arrives on my desktop too late to include in the book. Let's just say this kind of thing is not exactly news in the Catholic community...

Update:
Oh my heavens, here's an even better link.
It seems ten other Catholic schools in the area have the same problem.

Kill Zone

As at least thirty-four former New Orleans inhabitants would tell you if they could, hospitals are deadly places.

According to both the New York Times and CNN, in the week following the hurricane ten people out of the 24,000 person population in the Superdome died. The New Orleans Convention Center was twice as dangerous: of the 25,000 people there, twenty-four died.

But the real violence appears to have been at the hospitals. There were 312 patients at Memorial Medical Center when the hurricane hit. A week later, thirty-four of them were dead.

Now, the populations at both the Superdome and the Convention Center were made up predominantly of the poor, old and the very young – the populations most likely to die no matter what the circumstances. And, despite reports, it turns out that most of these deaths were not due to violence, but to natural causes.

What happened at the Superdome and the Convention Center did not even rise to the level of a complex emergency, according to Harvard studies. But what happened at Memorial Hospital was worse than decimation. When a population is decimated, only one in ten is killed. Memorial managed a better percentage than that.

This is especially true since most of the deaths appeared to have happened on a single night. Weeks ago, there were anonymous reports in European newspapers in which an American doctor claimed to have murdered several patients in a flooded New Orleans hospital. Given European attitudes and journalistic practice, and lacking further detail, this seemed a report best ignored until more could be discovered.

Well, it appears more has been discovered.

While the MSM were hovering like vultures around three corpses at the Superdome, real murders were happening elsewhere.

It has been noted before that America needs to kill the baby boomers. There are too many of them to be supported by today’s population. This is especially true given that today’s population has seen between one-half and one-third of its members killed in the womb either by surgery or through hormonal “contraception.”

The irony is enormous. The boomers spent their lives killing their own children, now the children will spend their lives killing the boomers. After all, murder – whether it is called euthanasia or involuntary suicide - is much cheaper than actually paying for all the health care the aging population will need. Besides, the organs will come in handy.

As we wait for further reports from New Orleans, we live in a strange mix of 1984 and Brave New World. The language is even now being “adjusted” a la Orwell, but Huxley's big screen televisions distract from the reality. As Memorial Hospital and other hospitals like it slowly become morgues for the living, the attention of the crowd is diverted by the antics at CNN, MTV, and the rest.

Sleight-of-hand becomes the order of the day. Syringe, syringe, who’s got the syringe? If you find it, you win the kewpie doll! Please step to the right as you die to make room. The next corpse approaches, stage left.

Ah, and there’s the question. We call a child after conception a “pre-embryo.” Will we call the hospitalized person a “pre-corpse”? We changed the definition of pregnancy from fertilization to implantation. Will we change the definition of death to “socially useless”? If not, why not? If persons are defined according to whether or not they are wanted, and no one wants the old and injured, then is it murder to kill a pre-corpse?

These are the questions we are beginning to ask as we sunbathe in the Kill Zone.

A Two-Fisted Party System

Adolescence is a virtue, at least when it comes to the economy. This point is not a new one, but it leads to an interesting way of looking at the American two-party system.

Commentators seem divided over how best to think about the Republican and Democrat parties. Some argue that the two parties are irrevocably opposed to each other, locked in mortal combat in much the same way that Eurasia and Oceania were in George Orwell’s famous novel, 1984.

Others disagree. They assert that the two parties have policies that are very similar and are in that sense allied, much as were Eastasia and Oceania in that self-same novel.

Both positions are, of course, correct.

Why Capitalism Succeeds

It has been noted here before that the capitalist system is better than any of the competing systems that have been seriously attempted to date at seeing to the creature comfort of men. However, it suffers from a remarkable flaw: successful capitalism requires the destruction of adults.

The reason is simple. Capitalism is built on the practice of separating men from their money. In order to do this, the persons in question must (a) have money and (b) be easily separated from it.

It is nearly impossible to separate a mature, stable adult from his money. A serious father and husband will store up most of the resources he earns in order to assure his child’s future, a serious mother and wife does the same.

Mature, stable, intelligent adults are not interested in having the newest toy on the block, nor are they typically very selfish about anything. They are generally trained out of whatever selfishness they do possess by their children.

But the frugality of a mature adult is anathema to a capitalist system. As General George Patton once said, “I don’t want you to die for your country. I want you to make that other poor bastard die for his.” If capitalism is a kind of war, then money is the casualty. Business stays in business by making some other poor bastard pay business costs. Products and services are priced with this in mind.

To accomplish the goal, corporations need immature, greedy, whiny people who see every new product as “something to die for.” Since small children don’t have or spend money, since small children interfere with the formation of this attitude, small children should be eliminated, insofar as possible. Indeed, the whole structure of frugal, stable family life should be eliminated, insofar as possible.

This explains a whole host of activities which could not otherwise be explained. For instance, why would a baby food company or a diaper company donate money to Planned Parenthood? Because they are owned by larger conglomerates who understand the big picture. Babies conceive the wrong attitudes in adults.

The Two Capitalist Parties

In this sense, the Republican and Democrat parties complement each other perfectly. The Republicans fight for the rights of business. The Democrats fight for the right to be immature. The Democrats, through their support of contraception, abortion, gay sex, and every other depravity, make selfish personal pleasure into a virtue on the one end while the Republicans make greed a virtue from the other.

Meanwhile, each pretends to fight the other on the opposite planks. The Democrats pretend to fight the inroads of the corporation, but actually milk corporations for every dollar they can squeeze out. The Republicans pretend to be pro-life, but toss only occasional and relatively meaningless slops towards parents with children.

Both parties benefit from having immature citizens and neither is interested in changing the status quo.

Over the last two centuries, America transformed itself from a representative democracy in which corporations were anathema into an oligarchy in which the judicial branch barely bothers to cover its exercise of total authority with the fig leaf of Congressional or Presidential acquiescence. The man in the street votes for Democrats or Republicans, as he chooses, but he always gets the same judges.

No matter who is in the White House, we always get judges who push the boundaries of corporate power ever further into the private sphere. We also get legal opinions which encourage the destruction of the family. But I repeat myself.

The Role of Women

Make no mistake about it: we are not a powerful economic force in spite of the fact that we have so many unwed mothers, we are a powerful economic force because of it.

The system I’ve just described is meant to discourage the production of children because the presence of children might inadvertently create stable, frugal adults. But children still serve an important function. Ater all, the twelve to thirty demographic is the easiest to clip.

Unwed mothers provide the solution. Through them, we get the older children the economy needs while forcing stability upon the fewest adults.

Bastards are children who have no inheritance. Bastards tend to be insecure. Bastards provide capitalist society with the best of both worlds – a society in which there is very little threat of stable families coming into existence or staying in existence, but which still has a demographic whose bank accounts can be easily relocated.

In this way, the inheritance that would otherwise have gone to the child is spent by the parents who have abandoned her. That is, the child’s money is inherited by the corporation. It takes a village to bilk a child.

So, as the Democrats hand out condoms, encouraging adults to immediately pursue pleasure and eternally postpone responsibility, the Republicans beef up the power of the corporation to grab the bank accounts left behind. Like the two fists of a boxer, like the allies in Orwell’s novel, each pushes its own half of a single agenda upon the larger world.

Capitalism always seeks new markets. Those markets have to be laboriously created. It takes time and effort to break into a country and unhinge a stable culture, to convince adults to act like children their whole lives. But, with careful attention to detail and lots of money, it can be done.

Wherever capitalist democracy is planted, this system will take root. And it’s a wonderful system. After all, look what it’s done for us.

Bennett, Eugenics and Eucharist

Bill Bennett has committed the horrendous crime of agreeing with professors from Stanford university and the University of Chicago. After all, it was only six years ago that Dr. John J. Donohue 3rd of Stanford Law School and Dr. Steven D. Levitt of the University of Chicago publicly argued that the high percentage of abortions in the 1970’s was responsible for the drop in crime in the 1990’s. Dr. Levitt, it may be recalled, was the winner of John Bates Clark award for the best economist under the age of 40.

The Wall Street Journal even ran a book review by economist Steven E. Landsburg which praised Levitt for "daring to address the question...of whether the effect on crime rates is a sufficient reason to legalize abortion."

So, Bennett's thesis is neither remarkably new nor remarkably different from that advocated by abortion supporters and population control advocates for decades: get rid of poor people and the world would be better off. The strong liberal support for population control programs, contraceptive distribution and institutionalizing abortion in the developing world is built on essentially Levitt’s idea. Indeed, Levitt’s statistical work was clearly intended to drum up support for a pre-existing agenda.

So why are luminaries like Nancy Pelosi shedding tears over the fact that Bill Bennett remarked on an idea she already promotes? She has long been an advocate of international population control, which generally translates into making sure that fewer black people are conceived and/or born. Why advocate for this?

Well, we have limited resources, you see. We don’t want other people being born and begging us for food or clothes. Worse, they may simply take our food and clothes. The only way to stop this from happening is to make sure they never get born to begin with.

The entire international family planning system is built on the idea that being born black or poor is in itself a crime. If poverty is itself criminal – and all the best socialists assure us that it is – then contraception and abortion are solutions that address the root cause of crime.

So while Bennett is under assault for saying that aborting blacks reduces crime, one is forced to wonder if the real basis for the latest ululation is the liberal fear that the Republicans intend to take over one of the Democrat's own party planks.

The liberals assaulting Bennett are clearly inconsistent. They embrace the elimination of black people through international family planning initiatives. Then they decry anything they choose to define as "racism" in order to win votes from black constituents. But they certainly don't have a monopoly on inconsistency.

The author of The Book of Virtues clearly buys into the liberal idea that poverty causes crime. He may simultaneously insist that we can't kill people pre-emptively, but it is the dissonance in his worldview which is attracting so much attention.

Like his opponents, Bennett is clearly inconsistent. After all, he clearly believes both that the individual is responsible for creating his own future and aborting certain kinds of individuals pre-emptively will reduce crime.

That is, he embraces the spiritual supremacy of a person's own will in order to appeal to the religious segment of the population. Then he embraces a version of science which insists that human beings are just automata that do not possess meaningful spiritual qualities. By endorsing this version of science, he seeks to appear "cutting edge" to the empiricists among us.

The Nancy Pelosi's of the world cry over lack of medical care for black infants in America but support the abortion of black infants in both the US and abroad. The Bill Bennett's of the world try to hold onto a version of science whose flawed understanding of the human person is in direct conflict with the reality of what it means to be made in the image and likeness of God.

Many people attack the idea of God because of Judeo-Christian Scriptures. They see the evil perpetrated by our spiritual forebears, the rapes, the murders, the mass slaughter and think Scripture is in some way advocating rape, murder or mass slaughter as a way of life. They do not realize that Scripture does not condone these acts - it merely records that these things happened. "Every man did as he judged best."

Science is the same. It cannot bless what happens or prescribe what should happen, it can only record what has happened. When we treat science as Scripture, we end up with eugenics instead of eucharist.

News Catches Up with Commentary

As I've noted over the last few weeks, the MSM histrionics over the Superdome and Convention Center situations seemed unwarranted by the facts. They kept telling us that the situation was essentially pure ultra-violent chaos. Now, reports are surfacing that most of what the MSM told us concerning the situation was a lie.

The report of a rape-murder was a lie.
The report of stabbing deaths was a lie.
Only 6 bodies were found at the Superdome, only 4 at the Convention Center.
As I pointed out earlier, this indicates a death toll so low that it doesn't even count as an emergency according to Harvard University experts.

Now, does this mean New Orleans wasn't a disaster?
Of course not - it's a ghost town now.
But it would appear that the media played all the politicians on both sides of the fence.

Were the governor and the mayor incompetent?
They sure looked it from the way they handled the situation.
Was George W. Bush incompetent?
He declared the Gulf a disaster area 24 hours BEFORE Katrina even hit and had response teams on the ground faster than any previous natural disaster has ever seen.

Did people die because of the incompetence of all the politicians involved?
Possibly - but you can't prove it by the number of corpses at the Superdome or the Convention Center.

The media sold a lot of papers and a lot of commercials by lying about the situation on the ground. The media elites deliberately manufactured false impressions so that they got their filthy lucre and everyone else - Republican, Democrat, independent, whoever - twirled on their stick.

There's always someone calling for heads to roll when a defense contractor overcharges for a bolt, a nut or a screw. MSM, however, creates false news so they can overcharge for their ads and we aren't supposed to notice.

The phrase "the press" is supposed to denote the free exchange of information. It is in that context that "freedom of the press" is a right enshrined in the Constitution, but we don't have any presses in the MSM - we have only lying charlatans left. If we are required to have the vitamin and mineral content of our food listed on the side label, perhaps we should require the press to list the percentage of truth available in each issue of their papers, with full prosecution permitted for any deviation from the asserted content. After all, insofar as it doesn't transmit the truth, it isn't a press, is it?

House of Martyrs

When Halloween rolls around, everyone puts up a “House of Terror” with scenes from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, one of the Friday the 13th movies or some equally violent and bloody events drawn from history and fiction. There might be a way to keep the format but change the message.

Part of the terror lies in the fact that these scenes of death and destruction are built around senseless violence, violence that seems unredeemable. But there are, throughout history, myriad examples of violence that served as a means of redemption.

Instead of creating a House of Terror, why not create a House of Martyrs, commemorating people who died for love of Christ? Each scene in the house could depict the violent death of one or more of the saints, with the last scene of the Crucifixion.

Here are links to descriptions of some martyrs to start you off. I will add more as readers suggest them.

Martyrs in Scripture
John the Baptist, beheaded (Gospels)
St Stephen, stoned to death (Acts 7)
James - beheaded (Acts 12

Apostolic martyrdom
Examples:
Mark died in Alexandria, Egypt, after being dragged by horses through the streets until he was dead.
John faced martyrdom when he was boiled in a huge basin of boiling oil during a wave of persecution in Rome. However, he was miraculously delivered from death. John was then sentenced to the mines on the prison island of Patmos. He wrote his prophetic Book of Revelation on Patmos. The apostle John was later freed and returned to serve as Bishop of Edessa in modern Turkey. He died as an old man, the only apostle to die peacefully.
Peter was crucified upside down on an x-shaped cross, according to church tradition because he told his tormentors that he felt unworthy to die in the same way that Jesus Christ had died.
Bartholomew, also know as Nathanael, was a missionary to Asia. He witnessed to our Lord in present day Turkey. Bartholomew was martyred for his preaching in Armenia when he was flayed to death by a whip.
Andrew was crucified on an x-shaped cross in Patras, Greece. After being whipped severely by seven soldiers they tied his body to the cross with cords to prolong his agony. His followers reported that, when he was led toward the cross, Andrew saluted it in these words: "I have long desired and expected this happy hour. The cross has been consecrated by the body of Christ hanging on it." He continued to preach to his tormentors for two days until he expired.

The Holocaust
Example: Maximilian Kolbe – starved along with nine other men, he finally had to be killed with an injection of carbolic acid.
http://www.holycross.edu/departments/history/vlapomar/hiatt/martyrs.htm

Martyrs of Pagan Rome
Examples: St. Ignatius of Antioch – eaten by lions
Martyrdom of Polycarp – attempted burning to death, eventually speared to death, his blood put out the flames of the pyre.
St. Lawrence - grilled on a griddle. Reported to have told his torturers, "Turn me over. I'm done on this side."
St. Sebastian - shot with arrows and beaten to death.
http://www.cptryon.org/compassion/sum00/martyrs.html

The English Reformation
Example: Thomas More and Cardinal John Fisher – heads cut off for refusing to acknowledge Henry VIII’s claim that his marriage was not valid.
Margaret Clitherow – pregnant, she was pressed to death for having allowed Masses in her house.
http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~hadland/tvp/tvp4.htm
http://www.catholic-forum.com/saints/ncd05033.htm

Japanese martyrs
Adults and children crucified
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09744a.htm

Filipino martyrs
Hung upside in a pit
http://www.americancatholic.org/Features/SaintofDay/default.asp

Jesuit Martyrs in North America
Examples: Isaac Jogues - knifed and tomahawked to death
John de Brebeuf - burned with glowing embers in every part of his body, even his eyes.
http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bio/272.html

French Revolution
Example: 16 nuns beheaded for the Faith
http://www.catholic-forum.com/saints/martyr05.htm


Uganda Martyrs
Example: Charles Lwanga and companions were burned alive for refusing the homosexual advances of the king.
http://www.buganda.com/martyrs.htm

Other Martyrs
Example: Lucy – eyes torn out and attempted burning alive, finally stabbed with a dagger.
Maria Goretti – rapist murdered her for fighting him and telling him it was a sin.
http://www.catholic-forum.com/saints/pst00808.htm

Was Karl Marx Right?

A recent series of e-mails from a self-described “pro-life feminist” demonstrated how badly even well-intentioned people understand the basics of human life and interaction. Though a graduate of an orthodox Catholic school, Franciscan University, she was apparently uncontaminated by its teaching.

For instance, the woman took issue on several levels with homeschooling. She asserted a homeschooled child could never be as well-taught as someone instructed by a professional teacher. This was especially true in Florida, she said, a state with “real standards.” She felt homeschooling was “demeaning” by being forced to stay home with her children. She insisted she would never obey her husband or submit to his authority.

Instead, she intended to get her doctorate in education and work at a job somewhere, competing with men for the most important thing: money.

The immensity of her errors were breathtaking. They are worth examining in detail simply for the instruction they provide.

Completely oblivious to the fact that homeschooled children do as well or better than their public school counterparts in every area, she did not realize that Catholic parents are required to teach their own children about the Catholic Faith. Spiritual instruction cannot be left up to a school or external agent.

A parent is not simply one who gives biological life – s/he is one who gives spiritual life by introducing the child to the God who is the source of life. To the extent a biological parent does not perform the spiritual task, that parent is not fully a parent.

Similarly, she seemed unaware that authority derives from service. To the extent that anyone does not serve, that person has no authority. Thus, when Scripture commands submission to authority, it assumes that the authority in question is serving the needs of the one submitting. If that is not happening, no submission is required. God has authority over us in part because He answers our every need.

We all instinctively know this relationship between authority and service exists. President Bush’s authority was called into question in the New Orleans crisis precisely because he was accused of not having served the people of that city well. The local government of New Orleans stands accused of precisely the same offence. To the extent that a man does not serve his wife, he has no authority over her, and to the extent that she does not serve him, she has no authority over him.

But the most interesting error was the last one: career and money. Although she called herself a feminist, she clearly saw the male career path as the superior choice. Money, power in business circles, careerism: these were her highest goals. In short, this “feminist” put the pursuit of wealth above her relationship with her own future children.

Karl Marx held that capitalism, the pursuit of wealth, led inexorably to atheism. Now, he also thought it would inexorably lead to communism, but that was primarily because he misunderstood one aspect of human nature. He agreed with Rousseau that mankind does not suffer from original sin, thus, he thought everyone would eventually learn to share everything in common.

As it happens, this is not the case. Because we are all greedy bastards, that is, because we suffer from original sin, we kill each other in order to acquire things. But the acquisition of things at the expense of building relationships with one another does most assuredly lead to atheism.

This was the misunderstanding our “pro-life feminist” held. Because she was a capitalist, she held the mistaken belief that life was about acquiring things. Thus, her “feminism” necessarily meant repudiating children, even repudiating her own womb. She necessarily undervalued women’s work because it does not revolve around acquiring things, it revolves instead around helping small people develop into adults.

As I pointed out to her, she held onto a false feminism. She wanted to compete with men in the business world because she was instinctively afraid that she was not good enough to compete with women in the creation of a good home.

As has been noted previously, while capitalism is certainly superior to most alternatives, it does have its own inherent excesses to contend with. In short, while there are certain mistakes that only a communist could make, there are other mistakes that only a capitalist could make. This young woman demonstrated that truth in spades.

Katrina Incentive

I want to thank those who have donated cases of books to the Katrina effort so far.

As a way of saying showing our appreciation for your generosity, Bridegroom Press will provide a special gift to everyone who has donated or will donate a case of books to Katrina victims: premium access to discounts.bridegroompress.com

This site is normally available only to retail stores and wholesalers, but a free membership through the end of the year will be made available to all donors.

Membership is by application and approval - once you have donated, you can go to the discounts site and create a discount store login. That login will be cleared for entry into the store within 24 hours of its creation. The access will afford you a 20% discount on all products (minimum orders and shipping still apply).

Katrina Aid

We have just been informed that St. Vincent de Paul society in Houston is in need of Catholic materials for the victims of the Katrina Hurricane. As you know, over 30% of the New Orleans population was Catholic. There is a great need to help these people in their time of loss. Time hangs especially heavily on their hands since they have no job to go to and nothing to do. The St. Vincent de Paul society is specifically requesting books that deal with grief, pain and loss, along with rosaries, medals, Bibles, and similar items.

In response to this plea, Bridegroom Press is donating nearly $2600 worth of books to the Houston organization. Unfortunately, this is just a drop in the bucket compared to the number of people being cared for. Given our situation, we cannot make a greater donation at this time.

If any of you would like to purchase a case of books to send to the St. Vincent de Paul society in Houston, you can do so. Simply click here. A case of books will be sent to the Houston society in your name and Bridegroom Press will send an invoice and letter to you acknowledging the donation and where it was sent. The packing slip for the box sent to Houston will also contain your contact information so that the Houston society can send you a receipt.

You will be sending one case (128 copies) of Effective Habits of the Five People You Meet In Heaven. This book discusses death, pain, grief and loss from the Catholic perspective. It also discusses the life of virtue and how to follow it.

Thank you for your support.

Living in a Fish Bowl

As the old saying goes, “Man’s best friend is a wall.”

Everyone has commented on the violence in the Superdome, but no one has thought about why it seemed so bad. Because it isn’t clear the violence was really anything out of the ordinary for any city in the nation.

Consider the facts: the New York Times and CNN both tell us the same thing: 10 people died at the Superdome, 24 died at the convention center.

The population of the Superdome was approximately 24,000, a good-sized town in the Midwest. That death rate works out to less than one death per 10,000 per day. The population at the convention center was 25,000, which works out to two deaths per 10,000 per day.

But we know something else about this population. "Two-thirds of the 24,000 people huddled inside [the Superdome] were women, children or elderly, and many were infirm, said Lonnie C. Swain, an assistant police superintendent overseeing the 90 policemen who patrolled the facility with 300 troops from the Louisiana National Guard."

Now, ask any demographer, and discover that most deaths in a population occur in children, especially those under age one, and in the aged. This population was heavily skewed towards the kind of people most likely to die.

Further, according to the New York Times, most did not die of violence, they died on the last day as the physical exertion of walking in the heat while insufficiently hydrated killed them.

"By the time the last buses arrived on Saturday, [New Orleans assistant police chief Swain] said, some children were so dehydrated that guardsmen had to carry them out, and several adults died while walking to the buses. State officials said yesterday that a total of 10 people died in the Superdome."

According to this Harvard study the death rate at the Superdome would have had to be 50% higher just to constitute an emergency, "The term 'complex emergency' describes a situation in which a large civilian population is affected by a combination of war, civil strife, food shortages, and population displacements. Although there are a few exceptions, complex emergencies are characterized by substantially elevated mortality rates, especially in the acute phase. An arbitrary threshold, above which an emergency is said to exist, has been established at one death per 10,000 people per day, or about three per 1000 per month. This rate is approximately two to four times the baseline rate of mortality in developing countries. (This threshold is probably less relevant in developed countries, where baseline mortality levels are considerably lower.)"

For a population of 24,000, that means the Superdome would have had to generate 15 corpses in five days for the situation to be considered an emergency. And even that number doesn't take into account that this population was skewed, with an unusually high proportion of children and elderly. The convention center situation, where the death rate was twice as high, was actually much worse, but also got much less coverage. It wasn't as photogenic.

But the real question is this: why did the people in the Superdome perceive the crime rate as being unconscionably high? After all, we’re talking about a population that tolerates a murder rate ten times higher than New York City’s. This population knows and permits crime rates that would make other cities blanch.

The difference is simply this: for five days, the people of New Orleans lived in a literal fish bowl. All of the walls were gone. They couldn’t hide inside their apartment buildings or houses and pretend nothing bad was going on.

For five days, every person in this literal city of 24,000 saw the flash of every gun shot, heard the cries of every beaten man and the screams of every raped woman in an echoing amphitheater where nothing could be ignored or evaded.

They had to watch - not what they had become - but what they had always been. They had to come face to face with the loss not only of their possessions, but of their illusions about themselves. They could no longer pretend they were good people who would do the right thing. They had to actually do the right thing.

And some of them did respond to the injustices. For instance, we know a man caught raping a young girl to death was himself beaten to death by the Superdome citizens.

We could equivocate about vigilante justice, but the state has always had the right to mete out the death penalty, and in a situation where there is no place to put an unrepentant criminal, it is hard to say the citizens of this temporary city did the wrong thing.

The press would have us write off the Superdome crowd as animals, but the case is not so cut and dried. If we had put 24,000 New Yorkers into a similar fishbowl after 9/11, would it have turned out any differently? How many of us would like to be stripped of all we own and sit in a huge circle with 24,000 fellow citizens of our fair city? For five days? With no walls to hide behind?

Muslim Authority

The Quran calls Jews, Christians and Muslims “People of the Book.” It is an appropriate title, and in more ways than Muslims might like.

I mention this because several Muslims recently wrote me concerning a column that’s almost nine months old, Death Threats from Muslims.

Of the group, two Muslims wrote to apologize for the stupidity of the man who is praying for my death from virulent cancer (p.s. So far, Allah isn’t coming through for you on that one. Sorry, Khalid). They both insisted that he showed ignorance of true Islamic teachings and he did not look hard enough for reliable sources. They both went on to chastise me for having believed him. I should not trust Khalid’s interpretations, they said, I should trust theirs.

Really? How do I know that? Who should I trust? Who has the power to authoritatively interpret the Quran? After long discussions with Muslims on the subject, that answer is obvious. No one.

Near the end of his life, Martin Luther observed, "There was a time when there was one Pope on the seven hills of Rome, but now there are seven popes on every dunghill in Germany.” Muslims have the same problem Luther had: when no one is the Pope, everybody is.

It is a tenet of Islam that Mohammed is the last prophet. That creates an enormous problem.

You see, he didn’t authorize anyone to collect his sayings together during his lifetime into the book we now have, the Quran. The Quran is not a book that Mohammed put together nor did he say it had to be put together. So who did it and on what authority did they do it?

Worse, Mohammed didn’t authorize anyone to authoritatively interpret his visions and sayings. And he didn’t authorize a specific successor to his post.

In fact, all he said was that the next leader of Islam should be someone close to him. Our only witness to this is the people close to him. As one might imagine, this created problems.

Mohammed’s death was the direct cause of the first and deepest schism within Islam: the break between Sunnis and Shiites. Sunnis believe one follower, Abu Bakr, was Mohammed’s true successor, Shiites believe a different follower, Ali ibn Abi Talib, was.

Everyone saw the problem. None of the Companions were prophets, they could easily have misunderstood or mis-remembered what the Prophet said or did and no one agreed on who should lead.

Within thirty years, Islam was in a civil war that resulted in a three-way split amongst the followers of the dead Prophet. The splits have only grown in size and vigor since then.

Today, it’s simply not possible to claim that anyone knows what true Islam is. In Saudi Arabia, for instance, anyone who isn’t Wahabbi Islam can be jailed; certain Islamic sects are even put to death for daring to carry their own literature in that kingdom.

Mohammed himself predicted this would happen. One of the Hadiths, the sayings of the Prophet, is quite blunt: “Jews divided into 71 sects, Christians divided into 72 sects, and the Muslim nation will divide into 73 sects of whom all will be in hellfire except for one.”

So the first question to ask any Muslim who tries to tell you of the wonders of Islam is this: “Are you of the true sect of Islam, or one of the 72 out of 73 sects that will be in hellfire? If you are of the true sect of Islam, how do you and I know this?” Then watch them sputter.

Like Protestants, evangelicals and fundamentalists, Muslims have only the Book. They have no definitive way of knowing exactly how the Book should be read. Which passages should get what emphasis in the varying circumstances of life? No one knows. There is no Caliph who can adjudicate any dispute that arises over interpretation. There are only hordes of competing scholars who each put forward a different understanding: seven popes on every dunghill in Germany and the Middle East.

Now, as the Prophet say "differences among scholars is a mercy." Thus, scholars who reject the authority of the Quran are a mercy from Allah.

When I pointed all of this out, the Muslims struck back. “We have no clear line of authority, but we don’t need it. After all, where is your authority to read your Scripture?” I laughed out loud when I saw the question. That was easy.

Christ is the apostle sent from the Father (Heb 3:1). He appointed twelve apostles and gave them all authority in heaven and on earth (John 20:21). He gave them the very authority of God, even unto the authority to forgive sins. They appointed successors through the laying on of hands (Acts 14), and those successors in turn appointed successors through the laying on of hands. Each generation of apostles created through the laying on of hands had “all authority.” (1 Tim 4:14, Titus 2:15). Even Paul was not called an apostle until after the Church laid hands on him (Acts 13:1-3), and none of his speeches were recorded in Acts of the Apostles until after that event. After all, he wasn’t an apostle until the Church had consecrated him as one.

Together, the apostolic successors have the authority to determine how Scripture is to be understood. Apostolic succession continues today, for neither Scripture nor the history of the Church shows it ever having ended. Christianity is unique in having a clearly established line of authoritative succession, each apostle appointing his successors. Today, some Christians would like to pretend that this line does not exist, but it does, as both Scripture and history witness. The head of the apostles resides in Rome, Benedict XVI.

When all Christians recognize this, Islam will be destroyed.

Freebies

A new free movie series called "Masterpiece Mysteries" is now available for download at www.bridegroompress.com

The series is based on a talk I gave over a year ago at a Michigan conference. The movie files are in Windows Media format and are not trivial in size (between 20 and 60 MB), but they will walk you through how to read the symbols present in several masterpieces of medieval and Renaissance artwork.

Please tell anyone who might be interested in them.

Enjoy!

Superdome Death Toll

CNN reports that 10 bodies were found in the now-empty Superdome.

This is wildly at odds with what the news organizations told us.

After all, there was, at one point, nearly 23,000 refugees at the Superdome. Put another way, the Superdome held a population the size of a small city. Worse, that population was disproportionately old, poor, sick and disabled - the people who could not leave New Orleans. That is, the Superdome population was that remnant of the greater New Orleans population most likely to be killed by adverse circumstances.

But despite the most adverse circumstances imaginable, only ten people were found dead over the course of five days. We know at least one of these dead was a suicide, and two more were the result of a rape - a young girl raped and killed, her murderer himself killed shortly afterwards by the enraged crowd.

Before CNN's report, it seemed distinctly odd that news reports kept telling us of the corpses strewn around the Dome, but their photos and descriptions were always of the same three bodies: a disabled grandmother in a wheelchair, a man on a chaise lounge and a man on a blanket in the median.

Now we know why.

Ten deaths in five days in an old, disabled population of 23,000?
All things considered, that's pretty darned good.

New Orleans' Baptism

According to nearly everyone, New Orleans got nailed because of sin. This isn’t just the opinion of the evangelicals. It is the opinion of atheistic liberals.

European papers assert Katrina was the punishment the US received for the sin of failing to sign onto the Kyoto accord. Robert Kennedy Jr. wrote a column saying Katrina happened as a result of and punishment for Gov Barber's ( R-MS) work against the Kyoto Treaty. Other American Democrats say the sinner was President Bush. He sinned by sending troops to Iraq instead of spending the money on flood control measures in New Orleans.

Islamic militants believe Katrina was Allah’s punishment for the Iraq war. Others suggest the hurricane was God's punishment on the U.S. for cooperating in the removal of Jews from the Gaza strip.

A Catholic pointed out four years ago that Galveston, on the other side of the bay, was destroyed by a category-four hurricane that arrived in 1900 after the city hosted a Mardi Gras with a costume theme of "Beelzebub and the Devils." Ryan Lee points out that Katrina – the name means “pure” – struck New Orleans on the feast of the beheading of John the Baptist, just two days before the scheduled start of the 34th annual Southern Decadence festival, a six-day public homosexual orgy that New Orleans was supposed to host from August 31 to September 5th. The Baptist, you will remember, was beheaded for having told the king to stop debauching himself with his brother’s wife.

So, no matter who you ask, everyone seems to agree that New Orleans had it coming. The primary difference between all of these commentators is why. The Christians think New Orleans got slammed because the inhabitants of the city sinned. The atheists, pagans and Muslims think New Orleans got slammed because people outside of New Orleans sinned.

In a way, they are both right. As I pointed out in the essay on the Indian Ocean tsunami nine months ago, God doesn’t cause evil. He permits us to cause it, if we insist upon it. Grace empowers the world. If we insist on removing grace, if we insist on ordering God out of our world, then our world will fall apart.

For an atheist, for someone who sees politics as their whole world, the reign of an evangelical Christian who wreaks war upon anti-Christian Muslims and refuses to sign onto Mother Earth protection is already a world falling apart. New Orleans is just a finely-tuned example of how bad it is.

For Christians who see one out of three children in the nation murdered in the womb, homosexuality constantly promoted, and debauchery on every television show, it is also a world already falling apart.

No matter who we are, New Orleans isn’t really a surprise. It is what we knew was coming, because we all know that things are terribly wrong. We may not agree on how these things are wrong, but we knew in the back of our minds that something like this had to happen.

On September 11th, two buildings fell and 3000 died. It was a shock if only because we had grown so blind to our own injustices. Since that day, Americans have gone through a long period of self-examination, trying to discover what drove that event. No matter what answer the various commentators have arrived at, the self-examination has made us aware of moral problems in our nation that are obvious now in a way that simply wasn’t true four years ago.

This week we haven’t just lost two buildings. We’ve lost an entire city. Where thousands were homeless, now millions are. What took months to clean up before will take years now.

Revelation is like that. God reveals slowly, allowing us time to reflect and adjust. Four years ago, two towers were taken. This week, a city has been taken. What else will have to be taken before we recognize what is going on?

Catholic Relief Services

For those who would like to contribute to the relief effort but don't trust or don't know enough about many of the relief organizations involved, I will personally vouch for the ability of Catholic Relief Services to get things done.

CRS provides relief services in over 80 countries.
It is one of the largest relief organizations in the world, and it has an incredibly low overhead to boot: the last time I checked, almost 95% of the money it received when right back out on the streets.

Their link is here: http://www.catholicrelief.org/

Their financial statement is here: http://www.catholicrelief.org/about_us/financial_statements/index.cfm

Collective Guilt, Incurable Sin

God doesn’t work the way we would like Him to. Fine examples of this can be found in the Holocaust and the atom bomb, in child abuse and the recent sentencing of the BTK killer.
When Hitler’s Germany was reduced to ashes and its scientific Darwinian eugenics was fully exposed, the world recoiled in horror. Franklin Delano Roosevelt spoke for many Americans when he opined that the Germans should be collectively sterilized. They had, after all, violated European harmony twice in thirty years. This modern, science-based Thirty Years’ War left the accusation of collective guilt on everyone’s lips. Every German, it was said, was guilty for everything that had been done under the command of the little Austrian.
Today, many lay the burden of collective guilt on America for having waged total war, targeting civilian populations and dropping bombs that wiped out entire cities during our more violent invocations of science.
Only one voice spoke in opposition to this idea: the Catholic Church.
The Church pointed out that collective guilt, whether for Nazi camps or American bombs, was a theological impossibility. There existed only one instance of collective guilt, original sin. The absence of grace that is original sin originates in the fact that Adam, the father of the human race, refused to accept the inheritance of grace that God offered him. Just as I am much more likely to be poor if my grandfather father decided to refuse a winning lotto ticket, so I am poor in grace because my great-great grandfather decided to reject God’s grace. Hitler was many things, but he was no one’s father.
It might have been the case in the Old Testament that when the fathers are sour grapes, the children’s teeth were set on edge, as the Scriptures say, but that changed with Christ. He won the grace necessary for each person to enter heaven. Now that we can be baptized into His Body, my parents’ sins can no longer be imputed to me. Collective guilt doesn’t exist. Each one of us is responsible for his own relationship with God, the Bridegroom.
Incidentally, this is why the annulment of a Catholic marriage does not imply bastardy for the children. Bastardy is solely a statement about inheritance: a bastard can never inherit his father’s property. From a spiritual point of view, my father’s property, that is, Adam's inheritance from God, was grace and he refused that inheritance. As a result, from the moment of my conception, I am already cut out of the inheritance of grace.
From a spiritual point of view, from the point of view of grace, I begin existence as a bastard, whether or not my parents were married when I was conceived. My inheritance of grace is not restored to me through my parents’ marriage. It is restored through my own adoption into God's family in baptism. It is restored by my subsequent marriage to Jesus Christ in baptism. He is the Bridegroom Who pays the dowry. My inheritance of grace from Him does not depend on whether my parents fornicated or engaged in  sacramental marriage. My inheritance of grace does not depend on whether my parents got an annulment or a divorce or both. God cares only about whether I have married and stayed true to the Bridegroom. No matter what guilt or innocence existed in my parent's marriage, I am not responsible for that, nor does my state of grace depend on that, nor does an annulment make any reference at all to the state of the children. Annulment does not imply that children born from the marriage are bastards. Annulment is only a statement about the relationship between two adults who tried, and failed, to establish a specific kind of relationship between each other. A declaration of annulment does not, it cannot, imply that children from this attempted relationship are bastards.
 The state may say this about the distribution of temporal goods, but temporal goods are the state's business. That has nothing to do with the Church. The state does not recognize the Catholic declaration of annulment, so there is no correspondence there. The Church's statement of nulllity is about the existence of grace in a relationship between two human adults. Being a parent is not a sacrament. Being a child is not a sacrament.  The declaration about the state of grace between two adults cannot ever be considered part of the completely separate statement about how an adult and his/her own child interact. The spouses are not collectively guilty or innocent. Neither are the children. It doesn't make any sense to talk that way. Collective guilt does not exist. 
Similarly, just as collective guilt does not exist, so incurable evil does not exist.
During the recent sex abuse scandals, many were amazed to discover that the bishops – advised by the science of professional psychology – believed predatory gay sex with teenagers was a curable disease. Today, we shake our heads and opine wisely, “That kind of activity is incurable, you know.”
Actually, we are wrong and the bishops were right. While it may well be true that modern science finds pedophiliacs and predatory gays incurable, it is not the case that pedophilia or homosexuality are incurable. They can be cured, they just can’t be cured with the tools of modern science. The bishops’ error lay not in thinking these conditions curable, but in thinking the cure lay in modern science. It didn’t.
According to Martin Luther, faith alone saves. In his sermons, he insisted that we can commit adultery one hundred times a day and still be saved, as long as we had faith. For Luther, someone like the BTK killer, a man who bound, tortured and killed his victims while living the rest of his life as a church-going Christian, had done nothing that might imperil his salvation, as long as his faith in Jesus was strong. But that’s just bad theology.
Faith doesn’t save, marriage saves. Faith is a product of marriage. Faith comes from trusting the Bridegroom and remaining faithful to Him. Faithful living is what you do after you take the vows.
Collective guilt does not exist. Incurable sin does not exist. We are each judged on what we have done, on our contrition for the evil we have committed, and on our resolve not to repeat that evil. What the BTK killer did to his victims, we do to ourselves every time we sin. We bind our conscience, torture it with evil, and kill the life of grace within us. We can be brought back to new life, but modern science isn’t able to do that work. Only the grace of God, and our cooperation with His grace, can resurrect us.

Galileo Redux

It’s eerie, really. Five centuries ago, lay university professors invoked Scripture and religion in order to attack and destroy an opponent whose views threatened to topple academia. Today, they are doing it again. The only difference is the targets – in the early 1600’s, the university professors were trying to destroy Galileo. Today, they’re trying to destroy the theory behind intelligent design, using very nearly the same techniques they used against Galileo.

The University versus Heliocentrism
Contrary to popular belief, neither Copernicus nor Galileo were initially attacked by the Catholic Church. Indeed, both received most of their initial support from Catholic priests, bishops and popes. No, when it came to these two mathematicians, it was the lay academic community, the university professors, who hated their guts.

Galileo, you see, had the unfortunate distinction of being a mathematician at a time when mathematicians were universally considered second-class citizens by the academic community. Mathematicians were good only for creating siege engines, building fortifications and casting horoscopes. Galileo was so well loved by his colleagues that he was run out of the University of Pisa, and as the chair of mathematics at the University of Padua, he earned less than one-tenth what the best-paid Aristotelian philosopher earned.

Aristotelian philosophers were at the top of the lay academic pecking order primarily because Aristotle’s physical theories were based not on mathematics but on philosophy. He assumed that every inanimate object had an innate purpose that determined its motion. Rocks fell down because they intended to reach the center of the earth. Hot air rose because it intended to reach the celestial sphere. Since intention determined the direction of motion, and since philosophy was the key to understanding purpose and intention, philosophy was considered the best way to understand the workings of the universe.

A mere mathematician could never hope to plumb the universe’s depths of mystery. Mathematicians played with mindless numbers. They cast horoscopes for superstitious people, and casting horoscopes was a mortal sin. Their number-play was only good for creating accurate calendars and calculating where a cannonball might land.

Heliocentrism was not a violation of Scripture so much as it was a violation of Aristotle. Any theory that seemed to contradict Aristotle also contradicted the authority of the university professors. In short, it directly attacked the prestige of most of the lay academic community.

Consequently, the most vociferous opponents to heliocentrism would be the members of the academic community. Copernicus knew this. As a Catholic priest whose mathematical expertise had been requested by the Fifth Lateran Council when it considered calendar reform, he was not concerned about the reaction of the Catholic Church to his new heliocentric theory, rather, he was concerned about the reaction of the lay academics. He dragged his feet on publishing his heliocentric theories because he was afraid the university professors would rip him to shreds.

Avoiding Peer Review
Thus, even though Pope Clement VII approved of his heliocentric work, Archbishop Schonburg of Capua offered him the money necessary to print it and Bishop Giese urged him to write the work, he demurred. In fact, when Copernicus tried to stall by claiming he needed an assistant, Bishop Giese even went so far as to secure for Copernicus the services of George Rheticus, a Protestant mathematician whose father had been beheaded by the Protestants for sorcery. Even as the Council of Trent was meeting to deal with the problem of Protestant heresy, Giese recognized that the Protestant son of a man executed for witchcraft was the best man for the job.

But Copernicus continued to stall. He knew the university professors would crucify him if he promoted a theory that undercut their authority. He was right. When Rheticus’ colleagues, the professors at the University of Wittenburg, heard that Rheticus was helping Copernicus develop heliocentric theory, they forced him out of his chair of mathematics. As Rheticus left town, he handed his job as Copernicus’ assistant over to a Lutheran minister, Osiander, who continued the editing work. Osiander would take advantage of Copernicus’ age and ill health by removing Copernicus’ dedicatory preface to Pope Paul III and replacing it with his own spurious preface which stated that heliocentric theory had no basis in fact.

Copernicus would never discover his new assistant’s duplicity. He was, instead, fortunate enough to die the same day his book was released from the printer. As a result, he did not face the abject hatred poured out on his head by the university community. Galileo saw the vitriol poured out by the professors upon Copernicus and hated them for it.

He ridiculed his fellow academics from the very first moment he began lecturing at Pisa, writing poetry that made the academic gowns the laughing-stock of the town. His short tenure in the mathematics chair at Padua was not much more successful. Few people remember that Galileo did not work for a university, but for the Count of Florence. He hated the university professors as much as they hated him.

Thus, when Galileo’s telescope brought supporting evidence for the Copernican theory, it was not the Church that attacked him – it was the academic community. Even as the Jesuits and Dominicans threw luxuriant parties for Galileo in Rome to celebrate his new discoveries, the lay academics schemed to destroy this disrespectful upstart, this mathematician. Indeed, while priests and bishops delighted in the new vistas the telescope opened up, most of the academic community refused to even look through the lens. They claimed the visions thus received were optical illusions. Maginini, the famous Ptolemaic astronomer, promised to wipe Galileo’s new planets from the sky.

The Two-Edged Sword
As Protestants vied with the consecrated Catholic men over the proper interpretation of Scripture, the academics saw their opening. It was the lay academics who first brought Scripture into the heliocentrism debate, accusing Galileo of heresy, of violating the God’s own divine word.

It was the lay academics who duped a foolish Dominican priest into attacking Galileo from the pulpit, much to the dismay of the Dominican astronomers who had just feted the astronomer from Florence. The Church was eventually drawn into the controversy not by Jesuit astronomers, but by lay academic advisors to the Church, men who insisted that Rome had a duty to stop Galileo, for he were left unchecked, he would destroy the entire university system.

They were half-right. He destroyed the Aristotelian philosophy professors. For the first time in history, Galileo had begun to use mathematics to systematically describe the way the objects in the world interacted with one another. He stripped away the false Aristotelian idea that we must first understand an object’s purpose before we can understand how inanimate objects interact. He showed that mathematical formulas alone were sufficient to describe movement. In short, he proved that inanimate objects were truly inanimate – they were not quasi-persons with intentions or purposes. Galileo drove the last nail into the coffin of Aristotelian paganism.

Galileo destroyed the chairs of philosophy. They have never regained their places of honor in the pantheon of human knowledge. But, since Galileo’s time, the scientific community has made an egregious error. As it gained ascendancy and public adulation, it has continued to attack and abjure the necessity of philosophy and theology.

Unfortunately for promoters of science, philosophy is unavoidable. The mathematical method of studying the world itself embodies a philosophy, and a remarkably incomplete philosophy at that. Numbers can only tell us what, they can never tell us why. Numbers describe but they do not ultimately explain. Science is about nothing but numbers – measurement is the foundation of everything it does. Because it focuses so doggedly on numbers, it has begun to insist that there is nothing beyond numbers – there is no purpose, no intentionality, nothing beyond measurement and description. This is the theory of evolution in a nutshell.

Any theory which attempts to provide a volitional explanation is derided as mere philosophy, or worse, religion. Thus, today, the same battle lines are being drawn: the academic community versus the philosophers and theologians. This time, however, the roles are reversed. Now the scientists possess the heights of adulation, while the philosophers are paid a pittance in both salary and respect.
In Galileo’s time, the philosophers hung grimly onto their posts by denying the use of mathematics and insisting that only purpose mattered. Today’s scientists hang grimly onto their posts by denying the importance of philosophy/theology and insisting that only measurement matters.

The Crux of the Matter

Today, both sides fail to realize the essential complementarity of science and theology. Science describes the relationship between objects. Theology describes the relationship between persons. Because persons possess bodies, that is, because persons can be treated as objects, science makes the fatal mistake of assuming persons are objects. Because they are so successful at describing the interaction between inanimate objects, scientists they think they can successfully describe the interaction between persons.

But the relationships between persons are not subject to what scientists do best: measure. How much do you love your wife? 4.2? 3.14159? Numbers cannot be assigned to relationships. Quantity is most certainly a quality, but quantity does not exhaust every quality a person may reveal. The qualities of inanimate objects can be revealed through external study, but the qualities of a person are revealed only through self-revelation. We can see what a person does, but we cannot know with certainty why the person does it unless that person reveals the why. What we cannot ask of objects – the why – we cannot refrain from asking of subjects, of each other.

Since objects are not known through self-revelation. But persons are known only through self-revelation, the inquiry into the origins of persons cannot be solved through external study alone, because the very definition of person assumes a presence that is beyond the reach of even the most delicate scientific measuring instruments. These points are too often lost on everyone in the debate.
Thus, just as the university professors of Galileo’s time used Scripture as a weapon to attack the scientist, so today’s scientists use Scripture to attack the philosopher/theologian, but in an oddly perverse way. The original attack was built on the immutable authority of Scripture. Today’s attack is built on the supposition that Scripture has no real authority, and anyone who adheres to it is, in fact, a fool and an ignoramus of the first order.

In modern times, Scripture lacks authority in part because Scripture does not measure. It is not scientific. Insofar as anyone adheres to a non-scientific worldview, that person is a backward savage whose opinion is not to be respected.

Now, it is manifestly true that one can adhere to the scientific worldview when it comes to the study of objects and adhere to the theological worldview when it comes to the encounter with persons. However, because so few people properly distinguish the proper spheres of science and theology, men and women on both sides of the debate constantly denigrate the intelligence and the intelligibility of own positions. Either Scripture or nature is not given its proper due.
While scientists too easily forget that Scripture is divine revelation, theologians too easily forget that nature is also part of divine revelation. The scientist and his measuring tools are exploring a sacred expression of God’s own self-revelation, even if it happens not to be Scripture. To the extent that theologians and philosophers do not acknowledge this, scientists will ignore their pleas for recognition.

Thus, scientists correctly note that intelligent design is not science, strictly speaking, because intelligent design deals in “why,” that is, while it recognizes the complexity of the reality being measured, it does not investigate the “how” but the “why” of that complexity. Unfortunately, these same scientists fail to note that evolution, at least insofar as it attempts to explain the reasons “why” human persons exist, is also not science. It measures the complexity of the fossil record but insists there is no “why” at all.

Now, real science does not pretend to answer “why” questions, it only answers “how” questions. By insisting there is no “why” – a proposition which real science is manifestly not equipped to discuss - evolution is shown to be nothing more than nihilistic philosophy dressed up as science.
Many scientists complain that the debate over evolution remains a debate only in America. They point out that the Communist Chinese and the Europeans do not engage in such absurd discussion. They are correct. The denial of evolution is precisely the denial of the nihilism the rest of the world already embraces. In other words, the complaint tells us only what we already know.

Galileo was the first scientist, the first to apply mathematics to everything he did. He lived and died a sound Catholic who never wavered in the Faith, regardless of what individual men were coerced into doing to him. Because he was a good scientist, he was able to distinguish between the men who attacked him and both the falsehoods and the truths they espoused. But while Galileo was a good Catholic, he was never a good university professor. He hadn't the stomach to live a lie.