In a thread here critiquing the RC Church's teaching on contraception, in which we find mystery being opposed to morality - what we might call the "I feel your pain" wing of moral theology - the host says:

...the modern Christian Church needs desperately to recover its mystical focus, even at the cost of setting aside its focus on specific moral conflicts.

People break the Christian Laws because they cannot understand, cannot feel, the reason for these precise Laws - and without this feeling the Laws seem merely arbitrary.

To which Jim Kalb offers a defense:

...The general role of sex in human life, and the weight and orientation of institutions essentially connected to sex (like marriage), depends I think on its general tendency to make babies. The habit of intentionally interfering with that general tendency denatures sex and makes it something to manipulate rather than something that essentially involves giving our all and therefore naturally gives rise to an absolutely fundamental personal connection.

As to the nature of Christianity, it's a religion that says God created the world and its order, found it good, and became incarnate within it. So to be Christian is among other things to accept that the world is charged with meaning and value. That leads me to believe that Christianity should not be spiritualized to the extent of not taking seriously how people live concretely, especially with regard the something as basic as sex.

And from someone whose handle is Proph:

...In fact, having tried many, many times to explain the natural law basis of the Church's ban on contraception to people (probably on 40-50 different occasions, online and in person), the resentment of the teaching is not that it is irrational. (Superficially that is the claimed objection -- once I explain the teaching, the objection becomes that it is TOO rational). People, at least the ones I've spoken to on the matter, resent it because they feel entitled to participate in the great, dripping cesspool for carnal delights that the modern world provides. They want sex available to them all the time. They want oral sex. They want to be able to masturbate. All without consequence and with the approval of their consciences.

I don't think Catholics should apologize for natural law. Reason is a good, and one liberalism more or less denies. Of course it is vulnerable, but that is no reason to forego its use.

Neither commenter made any progress with his hearers that I could see. Mr. Kalb's website is here.

My daughter sent me this. She thinks it's funny.

No sooner had the news hit that Rick Santorum had finished in a virtual tie with Mitt Romney in Iowa than the sexual liberation emergency alarm system sirens began going off throughout the land. A columnist at Salon.com screeched that "Rick Santorum is coming for your birth control." At National Review, another columnist shrieked back that No he isn't. In fact, Santorum himself screamed (okay, not literally) to Bill O'Reilly that he didn't want to illegalize contraception:

Someone asked me if the states have the right to do it? Yes. They have the right to do it, they shouldn’t do it. I wouldn’t vote for it if they did. It doesn’t mean they don’t have the right to do it. As you know, Bill, you’re a Catholic, [the] Catholic Church teaches contraceptive [sic] is something you shouldn’t do. So when I was asked the question on contraception I said I didn’t support it.

It's easy to get lost in all the "its," isn't it? The first 'it' presumably refers to a hypothetical state attempt to outlaw birth control, which I take Santorum to mean that if it happened in his state, he would oppose the effort. The second 'it' probably refers to the use of such control, which Santorum doesn't support because of his Church's prohibition of 'it.' (To which the Catholic Bill responded that this prohibition was "made by men," bringing to Santorum's face a look of incredulity but no interruption.) The third 'it' is the 1965 Griswold decision itself, which Santorum does not support, believing that the Supreme Court made up a new constitutional right to privacy not previously known to exist outside the emanations of the penumbras which point to 'it.'

Now, a president cannot outlaw anything all by his lonesome, so I presume what really exercises the liberals at Salon and the HuffandPuff Post is not that he could actually effect such a ban but that he thinks it would be a good idea. They wish to marginalize him by characterizing him as an extremist. No right-thinking American of any political persuasion can possibly believe that artificial birth control is anything but a blessing to the integrity of the American family, and especially to the hopes for happiness of all those poor people whose rates of reproduction left Margaret Sanger aghast.

But I think they're misreading Santorum. If they really want to take advantage of this political opportunity, they should label him not only 'extremist' but also 'hypocrite.' He thinks Griswold was wrong, but he wouldn't vote to outlaw contraception? We already know that he thinks Roe v Wade wrong and would vote for any restriction on abortion up to and including its eradication. Why not the same with the use of contraception, which many moral conservatives have argued bears a straight line, cause and effect relationship to the abortion liberty? Charles Cooke, the NR columnist, offers Santorum assistance with his rationale: that "to acknowledge that one’s legal opinions can be separate from one’s moral convictions" is not hypocritical but sophisticated; that "Santorum’s true position demonstrates that it is eminently possible to argue for public policy that yields outcomes of which one disapproves;" that, as "William F. Buckley Jr. famously argued, what 'is legal is not necessarily reputable;'" and finally, that, "while he may well believe that the states have the right to ban condoms and sodomy, that is not the same thing as advocating that they do so."

Voila, some might say, problem solved, while others, like me, see only a perpetuation of the hypocrisy, since separating "one's legal opinions...from one's moral convictions" sounds like what we conservatives say about liberal Catholics all the time, and inclines us to ask, "Why can't we ban condoms and sodomy? I mean, we did ban them once upon a time. What's so obviously legally and morally superior about the current, and very recent, state of affairs?

As suddenly as Mr. Santorum rose to prominence, he may quickly fall back into obscurity. But just for fun, let's pretend that his ascencion continues, and that his nomination for the presidency pans out. He will then find himself in debate with Mr. Obama, assisted by his sycophants among the media moderators, who will ask Santorum the following question:

"Senator Santorum, it has been noted in various press reports that you believe the Griswold and Roe v Wade cases were wrongly decided by the Supreme Court. Is it true, as some of these reports claim, that you would advocate outlawing American women's access to all forms of artificial birth control, and to their right to abortion, even in cases of rape, incest, and fetal deformity, and thus that your desire is to meddle in the very private lives of American citizens - to bring into their bedrooms, no less, the police power of the American government? Your opponent in this election, most Americans, and even some in your own party, say that these are very extreme, even draconian positions, verging on the totalitarian. How would you respond?

The question is mildly loaded, but that's only what Santorum expects. On the supposition that he would not immediately run for butt-cover as he did with O'Reilly, he might try the following response, which I offer free of charge. He will need either to memorize it or use note cards. A teleprompter is acceptable:

Totalitarian? What an absurd charge. Contraception was once illegal in this country and no one called us totalitarian, but rather a nation striving to meet our virtuous ideals. Abortion was once illegal in this country, and no one called us totalitarian or draconian, but rather a nation of exceptionally humane concern, in our love for those least among us, and who remain most dear to us, even while hidden in their mothers' wombs. There was a time when the fruit of the womb was our future. No longer. Now our future ends with ourselves, for we have granted that self, not God, power over the life and death of the most innocent. If I am draconian, how would you characterize my opponent, President Obama, who would not vote to pass a born alive infants protection act when he served as senator from Illinois? He gave what he hoped were good reasons, about which he was later found to be dissembling. President Obama did not feel it necessary to compel, by law, medical personnel to try to save the lives of babies who survive abortions at whatever stage of development. Yet I'm draconian.

As to my "extremism" regarding contraception, let me repent by singing its manifold praises, and delineating in brief what it has done for us. Between 1965, the year of the Griswold decision, and 1980, the divorce rate in this country more than doubled. How can this be, since the justices based their decision on a wish to enhance the stability of marriage? How can it be that no sooner do the judges start enhancing than marriages start falling apart? It couldn't be - could it? - that once you make cheating easier, a bunch of people might decide to give it a try. Let me also praise the increased incidence of out-of-wedlock pregnancy, which, among the black population, rose from 26.3 percent in 1965 to 69 percent in 2000, and among the white population from 4.0 percent to 27 per cent. But don't worry about all those children born into fatherless families.. Most will adjust, some by joining gangs, others by repeating the pattern in their own lives. And some will be aborted to preserve the mother's life, health, financial viability, and her figure in a swimsuit, though that seems to me a rather "draconian" way of coping with the difficulty.

At first thought, a premarital pregnancy might seem to signal a failure to use contraception, and often it does. (People are foolish, aren't they?) But back in our extremist days, premarital sex often meant exactly that - sex before marriage. It doesn't anymore. Back then, a girl would ask of her one true love, "What happens if I get pregnant?" And he'd reply, "Why, I'll marry you, of course." And often he did. How do I know? The leftyish Brookings Institution tells me so: "Until the early 1970s, shotgun marriage was the norm in premarital sexual relations." Now, we're lucky if the question even comes up, because the girl is as likely to be having sex with someone she hardly knows as with her future husband, which makes what they're doing not really sex before marriage but sex before morning.

Does this mean that there has, on the whole, been an increase in the percentage of young single people, from teenagers on up, engaging in premarital sex? Just based on my observations of human nature, I'd bet real money the answer is yes. If you make it easy for people possessed of poor impulse control not to control their impulses, my guess is they won't. And if we bother to look it up, we find out that "The percentage of white women married from 1960-65 who were virgins was 43," which is, I admit, not a good figure from an extremist's point of view, but then you'll be comforted to know that in our more normal times the figure has dropped to 14%. I forgot to mention that there was another Supreme Court decision extending the contraceptive liberty first to single people and then to very young single people, even to minors, and without their parents' permission. But don't be alarmed. This is just normal behavior. Why? Because only 35% of the people in the country think that such sex is always wrong. About 75% have sex before marriage.

I sometimes wonder what our country could have been thinking back in those days of Comstock laws and illegal contraception. It was illegal under those laws because contraception was considered one of several "obscene" materials that were not allowed as legitimate items of commerce or education. Those laws must have been the relics of Luther, Calvin and the Catholic Church, all of whom thought the frustration of fertility an abomination. (Those entities still do; it’s only individual Lutherans, Calvinists and Catholics who do not.) I wonder what those judges of the Connecticut Supreme Court were thinking when they overruled a lower court in 1939 that had tried to nullify the prosecution of two doctors and a nurse who ran a birth control clinic. Well, they were thinking that "The police power could be employed 'in aid of what is ... held by the prevailing morality to be necessary to the public welfare'." And further:

"[w]hatever may be our own opinion regarding the general subject, it is not for us to say that the Legislature might not reasonably hold that the artificial limitation of even legitimate child-bearing would be inimical to the public welfare and, as well, that use of contraceptives , and assistance therein or tending thereto, would be injurious to public morals; indeed, it is not precluded from considering that not all married people are immune from temptation or inclination to extra-marital indulgence , as to which risk of illegitimate pregnancy is a recognized deterrent deemed desirable in the interests of morality."

In fact, the extremist Connecticut court "quoted with approval" a similar case from Massachusetts in which it was made clear that the "plain purpose behind restrictions on birth control" was (prepare yourself):

"...to protect purity, to preserve chastity, to encourage continence and self-restraint, to defend the sanctity of the home, and thus to engender ... a virile and virtuous race of men and women."

My, such language issuing from a court in our land, such deference to the legislature. But don't worry. It's all gone now. The Court rules and Griswold is revered precedent. You get to keep your birth control. We - the vast majority of Americans - have separated sex from the having of children and from the confines of marriage, and yet some of us bother to complain about this newly respectable, sterile concoction called "same-sex" marriage. We have lent lust a new legitimacy, and yet we complain that with a click of a mouse our children can access its pornographic simulation in living color and high definition, all the while maintaining our intellectual self-respect by abhorring censorship. We hold in high regard our notions of a right to sexual autonomy, but are horrified to find that our sons and daughters are living in sin at best, are sluts, rogues and cads at worst. Our national womb is barren, yet we complain that our Social Security taxes might be raised, our retirement age postponed, and the whole program might go bust because there won't be enough children around to foot the bill. We have turned our bodies into amusement parks, the romping grounds for a society of playful hedonists whose understanding of what sex is really for got stuck at the stage of juvenile delinquency. We'd get hauled into court if the judges weren't in on the scam.

So, yes, if all that's normal, I'm an extremist. If I were president and the congress sent me a bill proposing to outlaw contraception, I'd sign it. But we also know that that will never happen. We love our contraception too much because we love our childless sex. We are a dying society, soon to be rotting in our graves. On our tombstone someone will inscribe an ancient wisdom, that the circumstances of sex ought to be swallowed up in the permanence of love, that it is a sacred thing because so too is the life that comes from it. But it won't matter because when you're dead it's too late to learn.

But be of good cheer and vote for me anyway in November. I may be an extremist, but whatever you get from me can't be any worse than what you've got now.

He won't get elected after giving this speech, but it will have the benefit of consistency, and he will be able to go home with his principles intact.

Do you believe?

[A reader has pointed out that he was unable to comment. I've fixed this.]

From my old friend, Zippy, on retiring from blogging: "Non-participation in the blogosphere is remarkably peaceful, in no small part because I am not forced, by the bizarre distant intimacy of the format, to form low opinions of various people I hardly know."

Yes, I feel the peace. So now that I've retired from W4 (but not from The Christendom Review) I've decided to keep at it anyway. Maybe. Here, when I do it, if I do it at all. Shorter stuff here, longer stuff someplace else which I'll link to as necessary.

Some of you (it is a huge assumption on my part, I know, to imagine that any "some" of anybody is still reading this) will be glad to know that Jeff Culbreath has brought his Stony Creek Digest back to life, while people like TSO and Dylan never quit. Good for them. Hardy souls. I think TSO's latest post implies that there might be something sacramental about drinking. I heartily agree and will drink to the sentiment as soon as I'm done here.

Meanwhile, here are some recent things I've done which almost everybody has missed and probably with good reason, from oldest to newest:

A little Sunday meditation on the purpose of suffering. Or something.

Another one about agnosticism.

From back in September, another in tribute to the victims of 9/11.

A piece about a young woman and what happened on her way to the abortuary.

This one's called Wastage, but I can't remember what it was about. Probably important though.

On the new Dept. of HHS regulations, a consequence of Obamacare, requiring religious institutions to provide contraceptive coverage in their health plans.

A guessing game. If you like Christmas music, a pleasant diversion.

Some thoughts on Christmas, my contribution to the editors' post at W4. It can be found here.

And finally some befuddlement about the necessity of giving 12 year olds the HPV vaccination. Lydia McGrew's comments are better than the post. It's not often you find a tour de force in net comments, but sometimes it happens.

Oh, I got a lot of Christmas presents. One was a book called The Complete Book of German Cooking, or The Complete German Cookbook - something like that. And it is complete. As I was leafing through it right after stuffing down Christmas dinner, I started drooling. It doesn't tell you how to make German beer, but I can buy that any day of the week. Anyway, I expect to be eating well in the coming weeks. Now I'm going to toast something or someone for no reason at all - well, for the reason that the eggnog I made for Christmas is still plentiful. It goes well with everything. Someone can let me know how the Iowa carcasses turned out in the morning.

Frederika von Stade and Kathleen Battle

The latest issue of The Christendom Review is now up.

We're experiencing an unavoidable delay in bringing the current issue of The Christendom Review online. But it shouldn't be long. Keep an eye out.

Meanwhile, Happy Thanksgiving. To everyone.

[posted also at W4]

I visit Fred Reed now and then because he usually makes me smile when he's not drawing foolish moral and intellectual equivalencies (see his essay on patriotism). I opened up his recent piece on evolution because the truth that Darwinism deadens everything cannot be repeated often enough. In fact, I was smiling even before I started reading, until I ran into another of those equivalencies:

This agglomeration of everything under one theoretical roof appeals powerfully to minds that need an overarching explanation of everything. The great intellectual divide perhaps is not between those who believe one thing and those who believe another, but between those who need to believe something — I am tempted to say believe almost anything — and those who are comfortable with uncertainty and even the unknowable. Adherents of Christianity, atheism, scientism (as distinct from science) and classical evolutionism fall into the first category; the agnostic of every sort, into the second. Unshakable belief seems to alleviate unease with the unfathomed, the anxiety that naturally comes of not knowing where we came from, or why, or whither.

After that, Christians pretty much fade from view as Fred goes after the scientistic assumptions undergirding evolution, but are left to wonder why they should be grouped with such a crowd, especially since most Christians would agree with Fred on virtually every point of attack. We are left to suppose that the Christian's belief in Jesus (and all the depending dogmas that implies) and the naturalistic scientist's belief in Darwin's fairy tale are reflections of the same need: to believe in something, even though the things they believe in are polar opposites.

This, says Fred, "is very different from seeing the world as profoundly mysterious, as in many ways being beyond our understanding, as containing questions that have no answers."

I wonder what sort of Christians Fred's been talking to. The ones I talk to, even the semi-literate ones, utter the word "mystery" with a compulsive regularity exceeded only by that of a Tourette's sufferer. All you have to do is ask this semi-literate Christian a few questions about what he believes:

"I hear you Christians believe in God. Is that right?"

"That's right. We believe in the Holy Trinity."

"What's that mean?"

"Three persons in one God." (semi-literate Christian smiles; he knows what's coming next).

"How can that be? Sounds like a contradiction in terms."

"Well, it's a divine mystery." (Christian's face is glowing.)

"How can you believe in something so illogical?"

"Jesus told me to."

And should you go on to ask about Jesus, your Christian will try to explain the "mystery" of the Incarnation, which means that he can't explain it but still thinks it was real. Get into more detail and you'll hear about that God-human's virginal conception in his mother's womb, about a Transfiguration, a Resurrection from the dead, an Ascension into heaven and, from you adherents of the True Faith, about an Immaculate Conception, an Assumption, and a thing called Transubtantiation, all prefixed and suffixed by the word "mystery." Of the great mystery which is the source of all the others, the Trinity, you'll be told that it can be known but is ultimately unknowable. Christians even write books with titles like The Cloud of Unknowing, in which you're likely also to hear stories about miracles through the ages which are in themselves plenty mysterious, but only to a mind disposed to entertain their possibility. Even the mere fact of biological life on earth strikes many people as miraculous. The naturalist is not so struck. But I've heard many a Christian claim that the existence of life is so unlikely, the mechanism of even the simplest cell so complex, that God must have reached down and kickstarted the whole thing. That is, He performed a miracle. Now, even if one is convinced that this is probably not true, how does the assertion that "God did it" make the origin of life any less mysterious? To the naturalist it is a mystery only in the sense that it's a problem he has not yet solved. He has theories about it, has a story to tell, but he can't tell all of it. It's hard to see how he can blame the Christian for pointing out that the mystery remains.

But what is Fred's objection? (I am assuming he would make one.) Is it that the Christian should not assign a cause to an effect without certain evidence that it (the miracle) is in fact the cause? Okay. But there is a level on which he should welcome the Christian's answer, even if it might be wrong, since it respects the mystery he is so adamant to retain. In fact, what such a Christian is saying is that the origin of life is so mysterious, that only another mystery can explain it. And, as I said before, the areas in which Fred finds Darwinism lacking explanatory power - concerning the problems of consciousness, volition, morality, and reproductive necessity - are the very same areas in which he will find the average Christian cheering him on.

Maybe the problem with Christians is that, like physicalists, they have a creed. The latter avow that there is nothing beyond the physical, while the former claim that beyond the physical hides the Source of all the nothing. Fred will have no truck with those materialists, but I don't know exactly where to pin him on the religio-philosophical specimen board. With his love of mystery, I thought he might be a mysterian, a central tenet of which is that some problems are unsolveable, which is what Fred seems to prefer. It's a - I don't know what to call it - 'category of thinking' that I believe John Derbyshire embraced when he kicked Chrisianity to the curb. But I don't think it fits Fred because it's mostly drawn into service by the very materialists Fred despises, and usually in reaction to the mind-body (consciousness) problem. Ed Feser made mention of it at his blog:

...the conception of the Trinity as a “mystery” finds a parallel in the view of some contemporary philosophers of mind (e.g. Colin McGinn) that while an adequate naturalistic explanation of consciousness exists, our minds are too limited to understand it. This view even goes by the name “mysterianism,” and it is motivated not only by a desire to sidestep the various philosophical objections to materialism, but also by the idea that natural selection is unlikely to have shaped our minds in a way that would allow us to discover everything there is to know about the world. It is far more likely, mysterians contend, that the contingent forces of evolution so molded our cognitive faculties that they are useful only for understanding a fairly narrow range of truths, and that there are barriers beyond which they cannot push. This is certainly a very reasonable view to take if there are good reasons to think naturalism is true in the first place. (There aren’t, but let that pass...)

In other words it's a physicalist's trojan horse. We can't know everything there is to know about the relationship between mind and matter, but that doesn't prevent us from asserting that matter is all there is. (But since we can know only a narrow range of truths, how do we know that this very broad truth is one of them? Sorry, I got distracted.) No, that description won't fit Fred. As he says of its parishioners, "They are not immoral. They just can't explain why they are not."

But Fred is. Moral, I mean. He must be some sort of agnostic. Yes, there are different sorts. I just don't know much about them, except that they're always telling me how open-minded they are. I believe they are allowed to have morals, but can they explain why they have them, any better than a materialist can, by appealing to a vague sense of mystery? I had an agnostic in class this semester (I'm sure there were others), of Iranian extraction but with all the scales of Islam having fallen from his eyes, who wrote a paper full of resentment about having Christian (or any religious) values imposed upon society. I told him I didn't know what society he thought he was living in, but that over a million babies were slaughtered in their mothers' wombs in America last year against the wishes of most Christians, and wondered if he resented having atheist values imposed upon society. Because that's the fallback position, the default. I told him that the agnostic wish to be free of imposition was a fantasy freedom that existed only in his mind, and that most agnostics of my acquaintance were, in public policy terms, functional atheists. Remove Christian values and the atheist's "neutrality" will be substituted for them. Neutrality on certain issues is another way of issuing a death sentence. Was he okay with all that? I told him that Christians want to "impose" their values only because they cared about him, about his infinite worth as an individual in the eyes of God. That's the bottom line, the foundation stone on which all their other "culture war" positions are built. That's why those awful Christians don't like a law that would have allowed his mother to abort him, because that law doesn't care about his worth, does not consider that with his conception he occupied a purpose in God's plan, nor did it in any way allow for the possibility that his destiny is one belonging to eternity rather than the world. I asked him which vision he preferred, because it will be one or the other and the choice is rather stark.

Well, uh, he saw my point but, uh, he didn't want anyone's values imposed on him, and he hadn't really thought it all out yet, but uh...

But, uh, I'll tell you whatuh. Next Fall he'll walk into the booth and pull the lever for the Christian-atheist Obama, that's what. I can't tell you how hard these nuts are to crack.

Appearances aside, I don't mean to pick on Fred per se, but as a representative of a certain 'type.' Fred, as he avers, has morals. He doesn't like gay marriage, I don't think he likes abortion, he lauds homeschooling, and he despises feminism and all its rotten fruit. But why? I can't help but wonder. The 'type' I'm talking about won't be a materialist and won't be a Christian, but stands always in the middle. He will tell you that he cannot, "in good conscience," claim to believe what he cannot believe, and thus is bound to keep the proverbial 'open mind,' a stance that seems not quite akin to the purpose Chesterton thought it should serve: to close on something. Fine. I'm not here to attack anyone's conscience but to question his courage. How does a very vague appreciation for the "mystery of creation" (Charles Darwin claimed to have as much) lead to the conviction that gay marriage (or abortion, or any number of things,) is wrong?

I admit that a man who is willing to look at the world straight on (that is, with intellectual honesty) can come to the right conclusion. But what will bind his soul to this principle that he thinks he discerns? For what reason will he surrender his job, give up his friends, or lay down his life should circumstances ask it of him? That he perceives there is some great inexplicable mystery behind it all? I suppose it's possible. Aside from his great courage, Socrates may have had more than this, but by how much I'm not sure. But I do believe that had he an acquaintance with Christian revelation, he'd have known better than to lump their mode thinking in with the materialist sort. Even if he'd rejected the revelation, I think he would have seen us as brothers.

Since Fred can be neither a materialist nor a mysterian (since too many of the former are also the latter), maybe we should call his sort "mysterialist." It's the worship of the mystery of mystery, weekly club attendance and participation in rituals of obscure origin not required. There is no dogma attached except the core tenet: It's all a great mystery. That is all ye know and all ye ever need know.

But at least one disciplinary rubric ought to be required of members of this communion: drop the resentment against Christian certainty. All those Christians are saying is that the mystery has content; that, within limits, it can be delineated; that it is a definite thing, though not of this world; that it is worth revering because it is the source of all other things, which includes you. It is neither an indifferent nor impersonal "creative force", because such a phantasmagoric creature could never give birth to anything, never create. We know this (hold on now) because it has spoken to us, and it is trying to speak to you. And what the mystery has told us is that you instinctively revere it because it brought the world into being with a purpose, and that you are a part of that purpose. Thus it has a grip on your mind, your soul, that cannot be severed no matter how much you kick and scream. That, in essence, the Mystery loves you, and that this gratitude you feel for the creation in which you find yourself, and this reverence you feel for its unseen existence, is the impulse to love it back.

So, for God's sake, take a stand, and tell me once more how I think like a Darwinist.

This blog is now in retirement. The page will stay up so that I can announce, twice a year, new issues of The Christendom Review.

Thanks to all who stopped by now and then.

Classes begin again tomorrow, so I've been watching more TV than I ought to. Because I hadn't seen it before, I DVR'd The Day the Earth Stood Still (the recent remake) starring Keanu Reeves, whose acting ability is probably still up for debate. He's an alien who comes to earth in a giant sphere - no doubt metaphorically significant - in order to save it. Not us, it. "It" is dying, says he. But, protests Jennifer Connally, "we can change." Instead of telling him to get his slimy alien ass back to his own planet, that he had no right to interfere with ours, especially since he was planning on wiping out the human race, she pleads like a prisoner up for parole: "If you let me out, I'll be good from now on. I'm all better now." Our alien really loves the earth. The other spheres that accompanied his sphere across the light years turn out to be "arks" for the plant and animal species. As for us? Well, the spheres release what appear to be little metallic cockroaches that multiply by splitting in half, an instantaneous mitosis (or is it parthogenesis?), and before you know it there are billions of them streaking around the planet eating every manmade object in sight - football stadiums, skyscrapers, roadsigns, railroads - and all the people who made them and those who didn't. The earth's going to start all over again without people. But our alien, who really loves the earth (maybe 'loves' is the wrong word - maybe he only finds the earth necessary to a sort of universal ecology that bridges the space-time continuum, or something), finally finds the human inside himself and changes his mind. I forgot to mention that he can heal the sick, raise the dead (as long as you haven't been dead too long), and walk on water. He somehow stops the metal and people-eating cockroaches so that we can have another chance. I suspect that a lot of people were devoured before he got that done, but I also suspect we're not supposed to view him as a mass murderer but as a superior (if not quite Supreme) being entitled to dole out justice and mercy in its measure by virtue of that superiority. And, after all, he showed by the end that he had a heart. Since the Hollywood scenarios generally avoid the question, I've always wanted to ask one of these aliens if he believes in God. Somehow I don't think I'll get the chance. Except for the special effects, the whole thing is preposterous unless you accept the apocalyptic "our planet is dying" scenario, which I don't. The citrus crop was bountiful this year, the trees are still green, the squirrels are happy, I still have to mow the growing green grass once a week, and I ain't having any trouble breathing when I step outdoors.

My wife has become inexplicably addicted to watching a show we ignored for the first, oh, six years of its existence: Criminal Minds. It's about a team of FBI agents who are experts in hunting down serial killers. Being forced to watch them, though, is not as bad an experience as you might first surmise. The shows are so formulaic as to be fun on the surface but forgettable in the end. You can watch them over and over without remembering what happened the first time.

I watched some of the South Carolina Republican presidential debate before I got bored and switched over to Criminal Minds. Or maybe it was Babylon A.D., another sci-fier about the earth's last best hope, which resides in the person of an innocent, virginal young blonde thing with an interesting European accent who was raised by nuns of some stripe in a convent quarried into a mountainside somewhere in the Far East, whose innocence does not prevent her from showing sexual interest in Vin Diesel's torso (her interest goes unfulfilled), and who in the end finds herself miraculously pregnant with twins. That she has done the Blessed Mother one better is probably supposed to be important, but I couldn't figure out why. Oh, and when she finally does give birth (which kills her for some reason), one of the kids is white and one is black. GET IT? I don't.

Anyway and as I was saying, present on the dais for the debate were the unelectable Ron Paul, the unelectable Herman Cain, the unelectable Tim Pawlenty, the unelectable Rick Santorum, and the unelectable Gary Johnson, of whom I'd never heard. Turns out he's a former guv of New Mexico. Not present were the unelectable Newt Gingrich, the probably unelectable Sarah Palin, and the debabatably unelectable Mitt Romney. Am I forgetting anyone? I use the word 'unelectable' in proportion to the frequency with which the American people cast their votes based on a deep familiarity with the issues, an ineradicable moral traditionalism, a hatred for attractive but superficial soundbites, and an equal hatred for attractive but superficial candidates, which, in my opinion, is almost never. Stand these guys (except possibly for Palin) up next to Obama and his charisma will devour theirs like, oh, metallic cockroaches devouring Manhattan. I wish Gingrich, Palin and Romney had been there because I'd like to have heard their take on the current Republican devotion to the doctrine of torture. They like to call it 'enhanced interrogation.' Among radio commentators like Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity and Mark Levin (two of whom are Catholic), endorsement of the doctrine is rapidly becoming a litmus test of your political loyalty, your true conservatism. This is the result of the revelation that the use of torture by the Bush administration apparently aided in the discovery of Bin Laden's whereabouts. It worked, they say, therefore you must embrace it. Among the panel of present debaters, only the unelectable Ron Paul and the unelectable Gary Johnson were against it. They say it doesn't work, or is at best unreliable. They also make noises about how use of "it" isn't "who we are," that use of "it" doesn't "reflect our values." But mostly we hear of whether it works or it doesn't. I've never understood how the efficacy of an act translates into moral goodness. I remember stealing a tootsie roll from a Woolworth's when I was 8 years old. I knew it was wrong, I felt bad about it later, but I did not get caught and never told my parents. I skated. My thievery "worked." Let's legalize it. Tim Pawlenty took the position (identical to Bill O'Reilly's, if that tells you anything) that permission to use such techniques should be allowed only to the President and only under special circumstances. I guess that means that under ordinary circumstances using them would be wrong. Your run-of-the-mill murder suspect should not have water poured over his face to deprive him of the air he breathes and thus be terrorized into believing he's going to drown. This should be done only to terrorists, because the terrorist wants to kill innocent people. Of course, run-of-the-mill murderers want to kill innocent people too, but maybe not as many. Numbers count. (I'm speculating here; I don't know what motivates muddled morality). The life of the one is of less value than that of the many. Or maybe it's what I heard Sean Hannity screaming about yesterday. He said that you could not justify shooting Bin Laden in the head while protesting the use of waterboarding. It's just plain inconsistent, it just is, it is, it is, he kept shouting. Of course, it's pretty pedestrian traditional morality (Hannity labels himself a "traditonal Reagan conservative") that it is not under all circumstances wrong to kill a human being, as is true of an enemy combatant in war, but that it is always wrong to torture a human being, whether he's an enemy combatant or not. If that latter status describes Bin Laden, then his killing was legitimate. All killing is not murder, but all torture is just that. To even begin to attempt to justify it would require extending the use of 'enemy combatant' to include people who are in fact completely within our power and at our mercy, which is pretty much the antithesis of 'enemy combatant.' It would require a redefinition not familiar to the traditional Western rules of war, let alone to the lowly Army Field Manual.

Ah well. It will be interesting to see how it plays out. That's all the time I have for TV horror shows. Tomorrow I return to the fresh faces of the young, who watch their own fair share of TV. I make them write at least once about a show they either love or hate, and they come up with things I've never heard of. Some of them are cartoons (the only ones I remember having heard of are The Simpsons and South Park), some are talk shows (I have heard of Jerry Springer), but the most remarkable are the reality shows, which are remarkable for their sheer numbers and their apparently depraved situational dramas. The students almost universally claim to hate these shows, but then I have to wonder how they know so much about them. I don't know what proportion of them believe in virginal conceptions and saviors of the earth, but if any do, I know from experience that it will not prevent them from endorsing gay marriage, gays in the military, gays everywhere else, universal healthcare, sex-for-fun out of wedlock, abortion, unhindered access to pornography, legalized prostitution, amnesty for illegal immigrants, embryonic stem cell research, use of frozen embryos for embryonic stem cell research, UFO's as evidence of extraterrestrial visitation, and enhanced-to-the-point-of-torture interrogation techniques. Which, in several essentials, makes them like a whole lot of other people, including a fair number of Republicans. They are the future. I like most of them anyway because their souls are not set in stone.

With Christians suffering under a persecution called by the Roman emperor Decius, St. Cyprian wrote from his place of exile a letter entitled "On the Unity of the Catholic Church" to the Christians in Carthage, ending with an exhortation to his sheep thereof, for he was their bishop. Now that Carthage has risen again, as much in need of his words as ever, is there anyone to listen?

This common mind prevailed once, in the time of the Apostles; this was the spirit in which the new community of the believers obeyed Our Lord's command and maintained charity with one another. The Scriptures are witness to it: But the crowd of those who had come to believe acted with one mind and soul. And again: They were all persevering with one mind in prayer with the women and Mary who had been the mother of Jesus, and with his brethren. And that was the reason why their prayers were efficacious, that was why they could be confident of obtaining whatever they asked of God's mercy.

But amongst us, that unity of mind has weakened in proportion as the generosity of our charity has crumbled away. In those days, they would sell their houses and estates and lay up to themselves treasure in heaven by giving the money to the Apostles for distribution to those in need. But now, we do not even give tithes on our patrimony, and whereas Our Lord tells us to sell, we buy instead and accumulate. To such an extent have our people lost their old steadfastness in belief. That is why Our Lord says in His Gospel, with an eye on our times: The Son of Man, when he cometh, shall He find, think you, faith on earth? We see what He foretold happening before our eyes. As to fear of God, or sense of justice, or charity, or good works - faith inspires us to none of them. No one thinks of the fears that the future holds in store: the day of the Lord and the wrath of God, the punishments that await unbelievers, the eternal torments appointed for the betrayers of their faith - no one gives them a thought. Whatever a believing conscience should fear, our conscience, because it no longer believes, fears not at all. If only it believed, it would take heed; if it took heed, it would escape.

Let us do our utmost, dearest brethren, to rouse ourselves, and breaking off the sleep of our past inertia, give our minds to the observance and fulfillment of Our Lord's commands. Let us be such as He told us to be: Let your loins be girt and your lamps burning, and you yourselves like to men who wait for their lord when he shall come from the wedding; that when he cometh and knocketh they may open to him. Blessed are those servants whom the Lord when He cometh shall find watching. Our loins must be girt, lest when the day comes for the campaign, it find us encumbered with trappings. Let our light shine brightly in good works, so that it may lead us from the darkness of this world into the splendor of eternal light. Let us await the sudden coming of Our Lord, ever attentive and on the alert, so that when He shall knock, our faith may be watching, ready to receive from Our Lord the reward of its vigil. Were but these commands obeyed, were but these warnings and precepts observed - it is impossible that we should be tricked and overcome by the devil in our sleep; from being watchful servants we shall, under Christ's lordship, come to reign ourselves.

Cyprian surrendered in 258 A.D. to Valerian's persecutors, becoming by his martyrdom blessed among those watchful servants who so remain.

From volume 1 of Good News From the Badlands, by Bob Ayanian

Labels: Christian Music

Reports are that Usama binlongtimegone Laden has been taken out by Navy Seals. As in he's dead. And buried at sea. So they say. Now that he's fish food, how will we know? I want to see his death certificate. The long form.

It turned out to be worth missing. Advice to Western women: stay out of Islamic countries, and don't ever, ever marry a man hailing from one.

On that euphoric day when Egypt's Hosni Mubarak relinquished the power of his presidency, and many Americans seemed to join their hearts with those of Egyptians in the street yearning for the fresh air of freedom, CBS reporter Lara Logan was made a prisoner by a mob of freedom-loving Egyptian males who brutally assaulted her physically and sexually. The perpetrators have not been found, and it is unlikely that anyone is looking for them. Logan is convinced that had she not somehow been saved, she would have died. She is married and the mother of two very young children. At last she tells her story:



The transcript is here. Follow-up video on this page.

They say that any man's lunacy grows from a single, deeply buried seed of sanity. And if you think that one must be crazy to be a birther, then you'll be dismayed to learn that one might be running for president. Our friend TSO reminds us that some of such type wonder if Obama was born at all, or at least on this planet. As I said to him:

To renew my driver's license the other day, I had to show my social security card, two proofs of residency, and my birth certificate (in addition to those, my wife had to show her marriage license). Like Obama, I couldn't find my birth certificate, so I had to send off to Lassen County, Cal. to get a certified copy. Not a photo copy of the short form, but a certified copy with that official stamp on it. All told, the b.c. and license renewal cost me about a hundred bucks, just to prove I'm a citizen, which they already knew anyway. And unlike Obama, I have an all-American pedigree, descending from a father and grandfather who fought in a bunch of our nation's wars. All this just to be allowed to drive a car. But to be president of the entire country, I wouldn't have to show any of that. It's the arrogance that annoys, and the free pass issued by the legal authorities. Since Obie's on a spending binge, I'll stop complaining if he'll just reimburse me for the hundred bucks.

I don't know how many birthers are really out there, people who believe, or did believe, that Obama was not a citizen. I never could because it would have amounted to an act of imposture unheard of since The Manchurian Candidate. I haven't even taken the trouble to research what the constitution means by a 'natural born citizen.' But I do know that when people who have lived in the same place most of their lives are being asked to prove that they are who the Keepers of Records already know they are, resentment tends to build toward those who are exempted from the trouble.

From all appearances, it seems that Donald Trump got Obama to take the trouble. He got done what no establishment Republican could, mostly because they wouldn't touch the issue with a ten foot soundbite. This same establishment is now telling us that Trump is not a serious candidate. I think they ought to be more cautious in their claims, coming as they do from a rambunctious phalanx of new congressmen and women who charged into Washington all gung-ho to cut spending, balance the budget, and repeal ObieCare, and who then proceeded to cave to Obama's budget offer in terror of being blamed for shutting down the government and wanting to kill old people by restructuring Medicare. I bet they'll cave on the debt ceiling issue as well.

I think we're living in a time when people are sick and tired of bravado backed by cowardice. Maybe they're not sure what to make of Trump, but one thing they don't see (yet) is cowardice. And I think they're sick and tired of being told whom they must take seriously. Why shouldn't they be, when the people they elect don't take them seriously?

Found a couple of articles, one at the Orlando Sentinel, the other at WDBO, both so brief that the issue could hardly be of any importance. Their substance was to inform us that "Orange County leaders voted 6-0 this morning to extend health and other workplace benefits to the partners and children of gay county employees."

As a result, we get to pretend one more time that homosexual partners actually have children.

Orange County Mayor Teresa Jacobs (who got my vote in November but won't get another) said that "All people deserve to be treated compassionately. Those values of compassion, sensitivity and fairness are things we need to value."

Mayor Jacobs also said that she had to "wrestle through her own beliefs as a Roman Catholic on the sanctity of marriage." And, as invariably happens when politicians go to the mat with their faith, the Faith lost again. Just to be a pain in the ass, I'd like to ask a question: how is it compassionate to treat two homosexuals as though they were married when they're not and never can be? Isn't it cruel to encourage people to live in an unreality, and to puposely delude them? How is it "sensitive?" Or is that the same thing as compassionate? How is it "fair" to extend benefits to the partner of a homosexual employee when the two are not married, never can be, and such benefits have always been reserved to married people, that is, a man and a woman; and, furthermore, which partner had nothing to do with bringing the aforementioned children into the world, which could only have been accomplished via our employee sleeping at some point with a human female, or via some technological tinkering that made use of that female's egg? The partner had nothing to do with it. The child is not "theirs."

Am I being too picky? The questions seem to me to proceed from common sense, but common sense doesn't always pay benefits.

I know that said benefits have heretofore been reserved to married couples (that is, to repeat, a couple comprised of a man and a woman) because the WDBO article points out that "the county decided not to allow opposite-sex unwed couples to receive health insurance coverage because they have the option of getting married."

But why? Is there something disreputable about living together while not married? There must be. But then why would you extend benefits to unmarried homosexuals? If there is something morally questionable about living, and having sex, together while unmarried, isn't it still questionable whether or not one has the option to marry? If at a later time homosexuals acquire the "option to marry", will you then in hindsight admit that their previous arrangement was wrong? Or is it only wrong when the option is absent, because without that option one is, so to speak, forced to live in a state of sin, whereas with the option the sin is not sin? Sorry to sound suspicious but... is there an agenda here, some kind of subtle pressure being exerted upon the state to move it, and public sympathy, in the direction of same-sex marriage? How else to explain the urgency of extending compassion, sensitivity and fairness to homosexuals while denying it to heteros? At least the latter can "have" children, and extending benefits to them might confer a stabilizing influence on the union leading toward marriage. A real one.

Lest anyone think it's all been made too easy for the homosexual "partners" (such a vague word), it should be known that "starting January 1st, domestic partners of county employees and their dependents will be able to receive health, dental, vision, and life insurance, along with bereavement leave, if they meet certain requirements":

1. They "are in a long-term, committed relationship."

[Common sense question: how long is long-term. How committed is committed?]

2. They "live together for at least six months."

[Oh, that long.]

3. They "are jointly responsible for each other's financial welfare and basic living expenses."

[But can't heterosexual couples be also thus responsible? Sorry, I forgot. They have the option of getting married and therefore should be punished for not doing so, while the homosexuals do not have the option and therefore should be rewarded for not doing what they cannot do under Florida law and what does not even exist under God's.]

The newest issue of The Christendom Review is now up. Poetry, essays, fiction, art and music (you read that right).

...of Terri Schiavo, whose court-ordered murder began today six years ago. Mentioned also at W4.

Another recent post was called "Double Trouble, or Double Effect?"

If you like gospel music, you might like this site, where you can find literate appreciation of the genre (by a Yankee, no less, and a girl, even better) accompanied by video exemplars. It's the Southern Gospel Yankee blog.

...writer of Braveheart and other things, at the National Prayer Breakfast. In attendance (and also on the list of speakers) is President Obama, Michelle, and other eminences. The full video can be found here.



Cross-posted at W4.

Paul Cella reminds us Why We Fight, via a post at Redstate recommending a forthcoming book by former Planned Parenthood director Abby Johnson entitled Unplanned. An excerpt:

At first, the baby didn’t seem aware of the cannula. It gently probed the baby’s side, and for a quick second I felt relief. Of course, I thought. The fetus doesn’t feel pain. I had reassured countless women of this as I’d been taught by Planned Parenthood. The fetal tissue feels nothing as it is removed. Get a grip, Abby. This is a simple, quick medical procedure. My head was working hard to control my responses, but I couldn’t shake an inner disquiet that was quickly mounting to horror as I watched the screen.

The next movement was the sudden jerk of a tiny foot as the baby started kicking, as if it were trying to move away from the probing invader. As the cannula pressed its side, the baby began struggling to turn and twist away. It seemed clear to me that it could feel the cannula, and it did not like what it was feeling. And then the doctor’s voice broke through, startling me.

“Beam me up, Scotty,” he said lightheartedly to the nurse. He was telling her to turn on the suction — in an abortion the suction isn’t turned on until the doctor feels he has the cannula in exactly the right place.

I had a sudden urge to yell, “Stop!” To shake the woman and say, “Look at what is happening to your baby! Wake up! Hurry! Stop them!”

But even as I thought those words, I looked at my own hand holding the probe. I was one of “them” performing this act. My eyes shot back to the screen again. The cannula was already being rotated by the doctor, and now I could see the tiny body violently twisting with it. For the briefest moment the baby looked as if it were being wrung like a dishcloth, twirled and squeezed. And then it crumpled and began disappearing into the cannula before my eyes. The last thing I saw was the tiny, perfectly formed backbone sucked into the tube, and then it was gone. And the uterus was empty. Totally empty.

Read the whole excerpt here.

...to all who visit here. And from last year, a Christmas medley for your Christmas Eve. Frederika von Stade and Kathleen Battle soloists.

At semester's end, one of my students (whom I will call A.) inadvertently provided some Advent uplift by telling me her mother's story. The details are spare, in virtue of the circumstances under which the essay was written, but sufficient to the purpose, and I offer it here, including occasional use of A.'s own words, with her permission.

Her mother was born of teenage parents into a very poor family. She was the oldest of thirteen brothers and sisters. Her own mother, A's grandmother, was married at the age of twelve to an eighteen year old boy, an occurrence, says A., which was "supposedly a normal thing to do in Singapore at the time." A's mother spent all her time taking care of her siblings and "selling food to the neighbors" to help make ends meet. She did manage to stay in school through 10th grade while all of her brothers and sisters dropped out sooner, by middle school at the latest. At the age of seventeen, she met an older man, twenty-eight years older to be exact: he was forty-five. He was also a Christian. It was this, and not his age, that incurred her family's severe disapproval. He converted to Islam so that he could marry the girl. A's older brother was born of this union which, though the husband provided "a wonderful life," didn't last. She doesn't say for how long it did last, or how old her mother was when she met A's father.

This new husband was also a Christian, and an American. He would not convert, for which the woman's family hated him. He was not himself very serious about religion, but liked his Christian background and was determined to stick by it. Her family's wrath notwithstanding, A's mother loved the man too much to leave him, married him in the end, and ultimately moved with him to America, ending up in Hawaii. (My student spells it Hawai'i). A was their first child, later supplemented by two brothers. Her dad, she says, "wanted the best for me," so he enrolled her in a private Christian school, against his wife's vehement opposition. Now, although the mother was not particularly attached to her own religion (nor the father to his; says A, "religion was only important to their families"), she "hated Jesus Christ and Christianity," a loathing no doubt absorbed from the culture in which she was raised. (I am making a presumption here.) But there was another side to her character: "she loved helping others, especially if it had to with cooking." So she volunteered at the school's church "to cook and give out food to the homeless people in Honolulu." The course of her duties required sitting through the Bible study lessons that accompanied the meals, and gradually her mind began to open concerning "this whole Christianity thing."

One night she had a dream. In it, Jesus and Allah were in two different buildings. Allah seemed to her like a shadow, while Jesus was vividly and concretely "there," so she went into Jesus' building, whereupon he "pointed his finger at her," which she took to mean that he wanted her to be with him. So she went to him and then woke up. The next day she knew she would have to convert to Christianity, in consequence "accepting Jesus as her Lord and Savior."

That was seven years ago. A's mother's dedication to God in the person of Jesus Christ has apparently inspired her father at last to start taking his religion seriously. "This whole process," says A, "is the best thing that has happened to our family." However, her mother still hasn't told her family about her conversion, in fear that their hatred will deepen, and that she will be disowned. They think she is still Muslim. She plans on telling them eventually, but it is a daily struggle. She reads frequently, to herself and sometimes aloud, the bible verse which cautions that "if you deny me before men, I will deny you before my Father in heaven."

A. obviously loves her mother very much, convinced that "she is a very gifted woman, and that God will use her talents to glorify Himself." She concludes on a note I don't see much in evidence among the young: "I do not deserve the love she pours out on me."

Well, I think you do.
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cross-posted at W4.

What I do when I should be doing something else:

...is now online, wherein you can read a fine essay by Tim McGrew (related to Lydia, by marriage, in fact), who describes the spiritual evolution of perhaps the most prominent evolutionist of his time, George John Romanes. Another beautiful reflection comes from sometime W4 (and Apologia) commenter Beth Impson, who looks back at a not-quite-forgotten little classic by John Gardner, and in the process reminds us of the first impulse and final purpose that gives (or ought to give) birth to art that is true and lasting. Painter, novelist, poet and screenwriter William Mickelberry takes apart Peter Taylor's "Venus, Folly, Cupid, and Time," and one of Beth's former students, Millie Jones, shows great promise as a poet, proving that very good things can come out of a Christian college.

And then there are the magnificent paintings of Chicago resident Nanci Mertz-King, who seems to me a master of color and value, among other things.

There's some other good stuff, too. Andy Nowicki attempts to reconcile a scriptural difficulty with Christian morality, and an excerpt from Rick Barnett's forthcoming novel describes a world in which the government has "gone Darwin."

Enjoy.

There's a Sunday Guessing Game at W4. Meanwhile, for the rest of you:

If newborns could remember and speak, they would emerge from the womb carrying tales as wondrous as Homer's. The would describe the fury of conception and the sinuous choreography of nerve cells, billions of them dancing pas de deux to make connections that infuse mere matter with consciousness. They would recount how the amorphous glob of an arm bud grows into the fine structure of fingers agile enough to play a polonaise. They would tell of cells swarming out of the nascent spinal cord to colonize far reaches of the embryo, helping to form face, head and glands. The explosion of such complexity and order - a heart that beats, legs that run and a brain powerful enough to contemplate its own origins - seems like a miracle. It is as if a single dab of white paint turned into the multicolored splendor of the Sistine ceiling.

from "How Life Begins," by Sharon Begley, cover story for the January 11, 1982 issue of Newsweek.

In a sort of follow-up to my previous post, I’d like to say a word about another man who strode that Victorian stage along with Newman – sometimes beside him and sometimes not. They were often at loggerheads, being men very different in temperament, interests and degree and kind of ambition. He was significant enough that in biographies of Newman, he often needs a chapter all his own. Also a Cardinal of the Catholic Church, he was likely a very good man, possibly a holy man. His most passionate ministry was that which he exercised among the downtrodden slum dwellers of London. And he acquired quite the reputation for gaining converts. But there is one fact about him that I find most arresting, though I’m not sure why.

Born in 1808, Henry Edward Manning was by seven years Newman’s junior. He attended Balliol College, Oxford, an enrollment cut short when his father, a banker, experienced business reversals. While working as a clerk in the Colonial Office, he became convinced that he was called to the ministry, returned to Oxford, and eventually took Anglican orders. He did well wherever he went, making friends easily. One was W. E. Gladstone, who would later say upon Manning’s crossing to Rome that it was as if he “had murdered his mother.” They remained in contact for many years to come, Manning several times extending the hand of peace, but Gladstone remained essentially cold. He seems to have taken Manning’s decision as a personal betrayal, and never got over it.

Until I read a biography of Manning, or something he has written on the matter, the path to his conversion will remain not nearly so clear as Newman’s. He was, so this narrative claims, “outside the Oxford Movement,” meaning that at the time of its commencement he was not a High Churchman, and he disliked the Tracts for the Times, especially Newman’s Tract Ninety, which he felt misrepresented the meaning of the Thirty-Nine Articles. (So, that he was outside the movement is not to say that he was not influenced by it.) But six years later we find him subscribing to nearly all of Newman’s Anglo-Catholic principles, and very firmly in the camp of Newman’s great friends, Pusey and Keble. He moves from Luther’s view of Baptism in 1834 to, a mere eight years later, a belief in Apostolic Succession. On a trip to Rome he met with Pope Pius IX and wrote to a friend that “it is impossible not to love” him. Not long after he converted. I’m not sure of the exact year, but it was after Newman – I’m guessing around 1850, followed by ordination to the Catholic priesthood.

His reputation begins at once, and his rise was rapid:

During his first month in the Church, he converted seven; before he returned from Rome in 1852, he had converted fifteen; and while traveling home, he converted several more. He always kept a careful record of his conversions; this record shows that up to 1865 he had personally converted no fewer than 346 persons in England alone.

It became the common wisdom among Protestants that it would be wise to avoid religious conversation with Dr. Manning, as when it was over he would have you come out on the wrong side of the Reformation. His great failure was with Florence Nightingale, whose career he had done much to encourage. She came to the Church’s door, but balked on its threshold. He did, however, capture her friend and confidante, one Miss Stanley, daughter of the Dean of Westminster.

Of his differences with Newman I’ll mention only one, which I found amusing. Newman had written an open Letter to Doctor Pusey upon publication of the latter’s Eirenicon, against that work’s representation of Catholic teaching regarding veneration of Mary and the saints. The letter was widely hailed in Catholic circles, and even got Rome’s attention. Manning personally praised him for it. But then he gave approval for publication of an article in the Dublin Review, by one William George Ward, the Review’s editor, attacking Newman’s use of “certain phrases” in his Letter. Bishop Ullathorne put a stop to it, reminding Manning that Ward would be outside his rights as a layman to censure a member of the priesthood. (Ah, the good old days.) But Newman was rightly upset with Manning, and it took a while to put this one behind him, writing to the bishop:

I will say to your Lordship that I cannot trust the Archbishop. Last spring he wrote to me flattering letters upon my letter to Pusey; and then he followed them up by privately sending to your Lordship for approval an article…in which I was severely handled for certain passages in it. I think that, as a matter of prudence, I never shall trust him till he has gone through Purgatory, and has no infirmities upon him.

In spite of their differences, in the end it came down to this, as Manning wrote to a friend in 1866: “I should be ready to let him [Newman] write down my faith and I would sign it without reading it. So would he.”

But here is that fact I find so interesting. Back in the early 1830’s, the newly ordained Anglican Manning had fallen in love with one of the beautiful, “sylph-like” daughters of a Dr. Sargent. Her name was Caroline. They were married in 1833 by Bishop Samuel Wilberforce (one of the four sons – the others were Henry, Robert and William, who all became Catholic – of William Wilberforce, leader of the anti-slavery movement). It was a brief marriage. Caroline suffered from tuberculosis and died within four years. But it seems his memory of her was a thing kept very much alive in his heart. Upon becoming a Catholic, he writes, “Fifteen years ago a crucifix stood in sight of her dying bed, which taught me the article of Communion of Saints. And I have never been without one.” On the day he entered the Roman Academia for study, after his ordination, this went into his diary: “Nativity of Caroline, most lamented.”

After Manning’s own death in 1892, Herbert (later Cardinal) Vaughn related the following to Baron von Hügel:

…this is what happened shortly before his death. I was by his bedside; he looked around to see that we were alone; he fumbled under his pillow for something; he drew out a battered little pocketbook full of a woman’s fine handwriting. He said, ‘For years you have been as a son to me, Herbert. I know not to whom to leave this – I leave it to you. Into this little book my dearest wife wrote her prayers and meditations. Not a day has passed , since her death, on which I have not prayed and meditated from this book. All the good I may have done, all the good I may have been, I owe to her. Take precious care of it.’ He ceased speaking, and soon afterwards unconsciousness came on.

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Cross-posted at W4.

This appreciation must be decidedly brief (I hope to do a lengthier one for an upcoming issue of The Christendom Review), but Paul has asked me to note that today the Pope travels to England, his trip culminating on Sunday in the beatification of John Henry Cardinal Newman. He will be declared as blessed with all the company of heaven, and worthy of public veneration.

People come to faith in various ways and in their own time. Newman came to his young (by my lights) at the age of fifteen, when, after reading some books “of the school of Calvin,” put into his hands by a Reverend Walter Mayers, he experienced a revelation: “I received it at once, and believed that the inward conversion of which I was conscious, (and of which I still am more certain than that I have hands and feet,) would last into the next life, and that I was elected to eternal glory.” To his liberation from the doctrine of predestination he thanks the writings of Dr. Thomas Scott, of whom he says, “I almost owe my soul.” Not long thereafter he felt called to the celibate life, setting his mind on it by the age of 28, and, finally, to Anglican orders.

One might think that the consequences of a conversion - with the light of Christ now illuminating the mind – ought to be swift and certain, all difficulties resolved. But it seems that quite often conversion is not the end of a journey, but its beginning. As regards the recognizable form and substance of Christ’s one Church, I remember waking up one day – within a year of finding faith – to understand where I should be. Newman would require another 29 years of careful investigation before his conscience could clear the way.

It was this care for the dictates of a conscience seeking the Lord’s will that finally endeared him, after the eloquence of the Apologia, to his own countrymen, even those not of his fold, an effect still exerted on the modern reader. But before the Apologia, and especially before the Essay on Development, it was this cautionary nature that got him accused by all camps, Anglican and Catholic, of hesitation, evasion, prevarication – in short, of not knowing his own mind while happily casting the minds of others into doubt and leading them astray. It was almost as though Newman’s character required, before it could be convinced of a point, that he write a book about it.

Ever sensitive to imputations against his honesty, he was hurt by the accusations. After he became Catholic, they continued. Among the Protestants it was that he was unhappy in his new communion and would soon return to the sanity of the Anglican hearth. Among certain militant Catholics of unsubtle mind and a penchant for incomprehension, it was the suspicion that “he is not really one of us.” What kind of Catholic, after all, writes an essay entitled “On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine?” It was the Apologia that quieted much of this and, in bringing him back to the attention and affection of his countrymen, brought joy to his heart.

But it was this care for conscience, and this need, which others found vexing, to deliberate at great length before making a move of any consequence that he readily extended to others. At the passing of his old friend, John Keble – whose preaching of the sermon “National Apostasy” is generally credited with beginning The Oxford Movement – unkind things were said of him, Keble, by ex-Anglicans of both the sceptic and Catholic-convert variety, to wit, that in his failure to become Roman Catholic he had been shown a hypocrite. Though a college was in time named after him, Keble was at the end living, so to speak, on the outskirts of his own communion, his High Church Anglicanism much diminished in prestige, as at Oxford that communion was rapidly yielding its influence to the Benthamite and Millsian philosophy, and to a pervasive religious indifferentism. Entering students were no longer required to subscribe to the 39 Articles. Of the unkindnesses uttered against him, Newman wrote to a friend:

“It is grievous that people are so hard. In converts it is inexcusable. It is a miserable spirit in them. How strange it is; - Keble seems to have received all doctrine except the necessity of being in communion with the Holy See…it seems to me no difficulty to suppose a person in good faith on such a point as the necessity of communion with Rome. Till he saw that (or that he was not in the Church), he was bound to remain as he was, and it was in that way that he always put it.”

The nature of the friendship between Newman and Keble is revealed in a letter written by the latter just prior to Newman’s passage to Rome:

“Besides the deep grief of losing you for a guide and helper, and scarcely knowing which way to look, you may guess what uncomfortable feelings haunt me, as if I, more than anyone, was answerable for whatever of distress or scandal may occur. I keep on thinking, ‘If I had been different, perhaps Newman would have been guided to see things differently, and we might have been spared so many broken hearts and bewildered spirits.’…And now I wish you to help me. That way of help, at any rate, is not forbidden you in respect of any of us.
“My dearest Newman, you have been a kind and helpful friend to me in a way in which scarce anyone else could have been, and you are so mixed up in my mind with old and dear and sacred thoughts, that I cannot well bear to part with you, most unworthy as I know myself to be. And yet I cannot go along with you. I must cling to the belief that we are not really parted; you have taught me so, and I scarce think you can unteach me.
“And having relieved my mind with this little word, I will only say, God bless you and reward you a thousand fold for all your help in every way to me unworthy, and to many others. May you have peace where you are gone, and help us in some way to get peace; but somehow I scarce think it will be in the way of controversy. And so, with somewhat of a feeling as if the spring had been taken out of the year, I am, as always, your affectionate and grateful,--J. Keble.”

Many converts no doubt owe much to Newman. Even if his works were not the agent of conversion, his arguments in adumbrated form are everywhere, through generations passing the lips of priests in pulpits and flowing through the pens of lesser apologists. He is now a part of the Church’s pedagogy, and impossible to escape.

In my own case, I had not even heard of Newman until after becoming Catholic. I had known slightly of Chesterton since high school, but he and Newman were excluded from my college anthologies in favor of Ruskin, Carlyle and Mill. A good Jesuit steered me in the right direction, and upon reading Newman for the first time I experienced, not a reconversion, but a continuation of the original. It is for this that I feel a debt to him. His was the kind of writing that, after reading one thing, there was created in me an insatiable demand for the next. I worked literally backwards from the Apologia to the Essay on Development to that great historical and theological mystery story, written in his Anglican days, Arians of the Fourth Century, wherein we become witnesses to the miraculous passage of the orthodox creed through a labyrinthine minefield of heresies, its purity protected by the valiant Fathers of the Ancient Church (to whom Newman had an abiding devotion, and of whom he is a modern descendant), and by the faithful themselves, its victory assured by the Spirit of Truth who made them His knights in battle.

But after years of immersion in his writings, one returns later to notice the quieter, more unsung moments. For a man is not beatified because of his erudition, his silver tongue, or his Ciceronian prose, but because he is holy. This is the part of the man, of any saint, hardest to find (save in the works they do in the world), for we cannot know what the confessor must, and no one can know what only God can see. We have been given glimpses: his unwavering devotion to truth and to the salvation of souls in his writings and priestly conduct, and his bravery on behalf of the afflicted during the cholera outbreak. But these alone are no guarantor, no proof that the Christian virtues have been lived to a heroic degree. Other glimpses are even less so, but affecting nonetheless as evidence of a sensitive heart, such as the story that an old man later identified as Newman, “poorly dressed…in an old gray coat with the collar turned up, and his hat pulled down over his face, as if he wished to hide his features,” was spotted “leaning over the lych-gate of the churchyard that surrounds the Littlemore church, which Newman had built thirty years before; and that the old man was crying.” He had returned after twenty-two years to lay eyes on the place where so many conversations of seemingly grave import to the revival of the Church of England had taken place, and to remember the old friends who had taken part, many now passed away. It was also the place he spent those last years suspended between two churches, before the Essay on Development freed him.

But then there is the testimony of those who knew him best, and whom we must trust in the end. In his last days, the Cardinal was visited by Bishop Ullathorne, who gives us another glimpse:

“I have been visiting Cardinal Newman today. He is much wasted, but very cheerful. Yesterday he went to London to see an oculist. When he tries to read black specks are before his eyes. But the oculist tells him there is nothing wrong but old age. We had a long and cheery talk, but as I was rising to leave an action of his caused a scene I shall never forget, for its sublime lesson to myself. He said in low and humble accents, ‘My dear Lord, will you do me a great favor?’ ‘What is it?’ I asked. He glided down on his knees, bent down his venerable head, and said, ‘Give me your blessing.’ What could I do with him before me in such a posture? I could not refuse without giving him great embarrassment. So I laid my hand on his head and said, ‘My dear Lord Cardinal, notwithstanding all laws to the contrary, I pray God to bless you, and that His Holy Spirit may be full in your heart.’ As I walked to the door, refusing to put on his biretta as he went with me, he said, ‘I have been indoors all my life, whilst you have battled for the Church in the world.’ I felt annihilated in his presence.”

The “law to the contrary” was the common rule that the lower Dignity should kneel before the higher.

On his deathbed, after receiving the Last Sacraments, he asked that a handkerchief that had been given to him some thirty years before by a “poor, indigent person” (whether man or woman I do not know), a complete stranger, be brought to him that he might put it on. At the time of receiving it the scarf had been accompanied by a message of sympathy and respect (its content again I do not know). It was a time of “great tribulation” for him, and in gratitude he died with it on. It was his last act in the world.

Now the Church this Sunday will take the opportunity to say publicly to this “good and faithful servant” what its Eminences sometimes failed to say during his lifetime: “Well done.” A miracle was required, and one has been reported. The rest of us, who did not know him in life but merely drank from his pen, will echo in our hearts Cardinal Manning’s proclamation at his brother priest’s funeral – “We have lost our greatest witness to the faith” – and with our prayers offer that witness our thanks. Now may he intercede for us in all our journeys.

For we believe that the same man who could thunder a warning to his parishioners that they might be too comfortable with the world - such that, “were you to die tonight you would be lost forever” – meant also for us what we read in his devotions, that

“I am created to do something or to be something for which no one else is created; I have a place in God’s counsels, in God’s world, which no one else has; whether I be rich or poor, despised or esteemed by man, God knows me and calls me by name.
“God has created me to do Him some definite service; He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission – I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next. Somehow I am necessary for His purposes, as necessary in my place as an Archangel in his…Therefore I will trust Him. Whatever, wherever I am, I can never be thrown away…He may prolong my life, He may shorten it; He knows what He is about. He may take away my friends, He may throw me among strangers, He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide the future from me – still He knows what He is about…I ask not to see – I ask not to know – I ask simply to be used.”

We believe, that is, that he lived his motto – Cor ad cor loquitur (“heart speaketh unto heart”) – addressing it not only to his God, or to his friends in life, but to all those, we, who would be his friends “out of time.” That is what he most wanted to do – to speak to your heart – and to make of you first a friend to Christ, and only secondly to himself. This is, in part, what I take from him, what I thank him for this day, and will again on many another.
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cross-posted at W4.

Betty Ong, Flight Attendant on American Flight 11.





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