Building the Obamanation
Barack Obama is being praised by his critics and criticized by some of his admirers, for the moderation of his appointments and pre-coronation decisions. To me, the selection of familiar faces like Joe Biden, Hilary Clinton, and Robert Gates reveals not statesmanship but fear. The poor fellow does not have the faintest idea of how to steer the country through war and financial chaos, and he has to find people with sufficient experience to know where the light switches are and what sort of envelopes to put the boodle in-- no matter how much they might differ from him on basic policies. And, knowing most politicians are crooks and liars, he must believe it hardly matters what Joe or Hilary may have said in the past, so long as they still maintain their lust for wealth and power.
To the extent he has ever though about anything--and the evidence would suggest the estimate of "not much"--Obama probably remains the White-hating Marxist who picked Jeremaiah Wright as his guru and who has been celebrated by Louis Fararkhan as the Messiah (or at least the voice of the Messiah.) But it hardly matters. He is much the protégé of the Cook County machine as Rahm Emmanuel and Rad Blagojevich. Does anyone seriously think that Illinois' governor is in trouble because of his principles?
My favorite selection is not any member of the Cabinet but Obama's choice for inaugural preacher: Rick Warren, the world-famous pastor of Saddleback Mountain Church, advocate of the profit-driven life, the Gantry of Gantrys. What a lot this says about the infanticidal President-elect's committments and the allegedly pro-life Preacher Warren. They make a perfect pair-what chuckles they must have when they get together to compare notes on the rubes who give them money. How Sam Francis would have loved this great moment in our history! Where is H.L. Mencken when you need him? Even he could not have done justice to Blago, Obama, and Warren.
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Mr. Toddard, Chronicles single-handedly restored my faith after almost two estranged decades. I still marvel at their manner of evangelizing (because it is so indirect); it simply WORKS! The cumulative effect of reading over and over did the trick. I echo Robert's (much more eloquent) message, and will pray for you. Allow me to encourage you to keep your heart/mind/soul open to the truth.
TJF writes :"Christians have the greatest truth about the universe, but it does not follow that the Scriptures do not include historical and scientific errors."
Yes, in fact the historical and literal aspects are the least convincing of any of the sacred truths. Once upon a time there was a distinction between physical things that could be measured and sensed and the meta-physical which could only be known and understood by men and women created in the Image of God. Today since we have lost this distinction our culture and especially our religious leaders are forced to feed minds and hearts only with "the husks that the swine did eat." Isn't it strange that cultures always lose their fairy tales, their folklore and their faith at the same or similar time ?. There remains a significance in Socrate's desire toward the very end of his life to put Aesop's fables to verse, only to be executed before he could accomplish it for impiety towards the gods. It is also wise to consider that most of these traditions are held most faithfully by the peasntry and uneducated classes (who left their nets and followed) Yet, they were the ones who recognized the Incarnate Word much quicker than the brood of vipers who "loaded men down with oppressive burdens" and would never work on the Sabbath unless it was their own ox stuck in the ditch.
TJF # 134
The most egregious example of your point about the Church stamping out heresies, and violently, is the evil Albigensian Crusade carried out by Innocent III. Compared with it, the Crusades in the holy land were festivals of peace. To study it even today is to recoil with revulsion against Christianity and the Church.
153#Johnny Reb,
"To study it even today is to recoil with revulsion against Christianity and the Church."
I have always admired St. Dominic's involvement and example in this effort but found the Albigensian a particularly vile form of heresy with its preoccupation with suicide and its nihilistic infatuation with death and gnosticism. Willing to exploit all of the seven deadly sins for gain, especially with their trecherous promises of alchemy and its looting of the poor. What particular aspect of this heresy should have been encouraged in your opinion ?
Robert #154
None. I agree with you about the heresy's vileness. The question is the method of its eradication.
Johnny Reb,
It is always the case that greed and oportunism cloud the distinctions of even the most noble efforts in war and peace. I can appreciate your point especially since the heretics were opposed to marriage and the propogation of life itself. All pleasures of the flesh were sinful, all sacraments unnecessary, all of life a cruel hoax --- it is diificult to understand why such a heresy would not die of natural causes within a generation or two as modernism is dieing today before our very eyes. An absolute defense for any alleged Albigensian heretic accused by the inquisitors was that the accused was married which sheds some light on the nature of the heresy, although not so much on the political causes of friction and intrigue between the nobles of Northern France and those of the south.
Robert #156,
Your points are well-considered and nicely stated. It is just I can't fathom the killing of a million people, men, women and children, and the laying waste of Languedoc, in the name of religious purity, even though the genocide was probably more motivated by politics than religious zealotry. I may be wrong, but I believe this was the first genocide known in the West. That the deed was authored by the Church and continued for twenty was what I originally meant by causing revulsion against Christianity. If that was Christianity, then let the world embrace paganism. Naturally, that was not the essence of the western Church. But it was and is still a huge blight.
"That the deed was authored by the Church and continued for twenty was what I originally meant by causing revulsion against Christianity. If that was Christianity, then let the world embrace paganism. Naturally, that was not the essence of the western Church. But it was and is still a huge blight."
Yes, I quite agree. This is a similar view that Arab Muslims hold about Americans today for their irradication efforts in Iraq to "promote democracy", and as a consequence a grave misunderstanding about Christians the world over. I always weary of the assertion that it was the jewish influence who initiated our efforts in Iraq when in fact it was alleged Christians like Dick Cheney and George Bush who had the final say and Catholic Popes who were completely ignored. To complicate matters more were the hysterical american catholics who wanted more of the same with MCCain because Obama was not pro-life. Of all the contemporary distinctions without a difference, the clamoring of George Weigel and his troops over at " Last Things " ( or is it First Things ?)for more Republican Christains in the public square" is probably the most absurd.
Dick Cheney is an alleged what now?
Just what are you smoking, you stupid fool.
Him and Danny Glover practiced human sacrifice to the owl god in the California woods. (Maybe it was an effigy, but we haven't figured that out for certain yet...)
I would tend toward the opinion that this odd action on Cheney's part was just a little bit on the pre-Christain, we still need absolution from the blood of someone other than the Christ, side of things.
Red Phillips @ 144
"The hostility to Intelligent Design comes from doctrinaire naturalists and materialists..."
Have you heard of the organization "Conservatives Against Intelligent Design"?
Yes, many naturalists and materialists have a knee-jerk reaction against the ideology. But a lot heftier opposition comes from many highly intelligent Christians and political conservatives.
By the way, it's "one of THOSE Baptist cow colleges," not "one of THEM Baptist cow colleges." Score one for the Elitist Ass.
Bob@159 "Him and Danny Glover practiced human sacrifice to the owl god in the California woods."
I knew Danny Boy was into Owl and bird worship but I always though that what Dick Cheney wanted most in life was just a fair advantage -- seven deferments from Vietnam, No bid contracts for Haliburton, and a little "understanding" from conservatives. I didn't know he was into Thunderbirds or praying to The Great Brown Owl for Wisdom. Although now that I think about it, he was never really a hawk, so maybe a hoot owl was his ideal bird of prey. Thanks Bob and please feel free to keep me straight on all this.
"By the way, it’s “one of THOSE Baptist cow colleges,” not “one of THEM Baptist cow colleges.” Score one for the Elitist Ass."
I know that Joseph. That is why I used it. Playing the role you have obviously assigned to me. I almost used "them there" but figured that was a little gratuitous.
Now please explain to me why proving that something could not possibly have happened randomly by chance is an illegitimate pursuit. The attempt by some "conservatives" and "Christians" to keep intelligent design at arms length strikes me as an attempt to avoid some perceived taint and maintain some perceived respectability. Well who needs or wants their respectability and their taint should be worn as a badge of honor.
Re the Albigensian Crusade, I think one has to distinguish at least three forces at work: 1) a quite legitimate desire to eliminate a heresy that, if hostile accounts are true, corrupted the morals of its adherents, 2) the ambition of French kings to extend their power over the South, and 3) the personal ambitions of people like Simon de Montfort. I don't say any of these motives was necessarily bad or that one can say the theological motive was unsullied, but that it is an historical episode that is not easy to discuss without focussing on details. When I gave a series of lectures here at the Institute on Medieval History, I did my best but I never delved into primary sources, which is the only way one gains the right to hold a strong opinion on an historical event. I fully agree that the story as conventionally told is very ugly. It is an interesting sidelight that Simon de Montfort, calculating, ambitious, and ruthless, left the Fourth Crusade when the Venetians turned it against the Christians of Zara.
Let me reassure Toddard that, while I was exasperated by his mode of argument, I harbor no feelings of ill will and I welcome his participation. I am not much of a proselytizer--that requires too much cynicism and more subtlety than I can muster. I would say that it is very important for me personally to avoid polemics within the Church, to understand that my role is to obey and find understanding in that obedience. Possessed of a naturally rebellious and unruly spirit, I do not find it easy but I do find it fruitful. Thus while I almost always attend a Tridentine Latin Mass and abhor the English version of the Novus Ordo--the Latin original and the Italian version is much better--I do not have the impudence to say it is not the Mass or to criticize those who faithfully attend it. In traveling, I do not make an effort to seek out a Tridentine Mass, unless I happen to have friends who are traditionalists. It is best to be thankful for the blessings one has--to eat what one is served and to accept the Mass one is offered. I once wrote a little essay called "The Loser in the Lounge Chair" (drawn from a character in Day of the Locust) suggesting something like the attitude of the Serenity Prayer. My good friend Murray Rothbard was horrified by what he saw as a demoralizing tendency. I reassured him that I was prepared to fight the good fight on many fronts, only that I assumed we would always lose and thus found it necessary to cultivate a spirit of indifference to trivial things like tax policies, elections, and wars. For me the horror of the Iraq War is not the injustice or the killing per se but the justification of it on patently immoral grounds. I don't know that this helps but just remember the Church that began at Pentecost was plagued with foolishness and evil from the first, as the stories of Ananias and his wife, of Simon Magus, and the cautionary epistles of Paul (what bizarre people he must have been lecturing!). And yet like a mighty river, the Church's tradition keeps rolling on, refreshed in cataracts of crisis and leaving its poisonous sediment behind on the bottom.
I'm on here a little late, but I just wanted to say something. Being someone who grew up most of his life as a lapsed Roman Catholic and subjected to several bouts of "church shopping" and "Bible churches," an Evangelical/revivalist church, a Baptist church and a moderate degree of Pentecostalism, none of which I hold dear to my heart AT ALL in my adult life, I think my opinion might count for something:
First, I understand Dr. Phillips's indignance and perhaps perception that he is being treated unfairly and uncharitably. Throughout my childhood, the Baptists were definitely the least objectionable of the Protestants I knew. With some exceptions, they have not gone nearly so far down the road as other "conservative" churches in injecting emotive esotericism into their practises. And while I find fault with many of their particular dogmas and obsessions, on the whole they have more things right than most so-called American Christians. Perhaps it is not surprising that the people at that church behaved (and, importantly, conducted their families) more recognisably like human beings than any of the others. Considering that the U.S. is an historically Protestant country, the place would definitely be worse off without them.
And while I'm sure that insisting upon a strict literalist Creationism may turn some people off, I am not sure it makes Baptists or others who hold to it look "ridiculous" in itself. It seems to me that those who reject Christianity on account of the "superstition" of its Creation account are closed off to the religion for many, many other reasons.
That said, Dr. Phillips, surely you can understand the bewilderment of Catholics at the idea that such-and-such an oddity is "not really what Protestantism or Evangelicalism" is all about. I can scarcely get the same answer from two Protestants as to what they are all about. One says "The Bible" and another, who hardly resembles the first, says the same thing! I make it a point to involve religion as little as possible in my friendships with Protestants except to talk "about" it; there is little collaboration to be had. On this web site Catholics and Protestants attempt to collaborate politically, and sometimes I wonder if even this is tenebrous.
It's best just to accept that a gap exists. Most non-Catholic Americans think me a bit odd, which is fine by me. In return, I think they're odd.
"I would say that it is very important for me personally to avoid polemics within the Church, to understand that my role is to obey and find understanding in that obedience... In traveling, I do not make an effort to seek out a Tridentine Mass, unless I happen to have friends who are traditionalists. It is best to be thankful for the blessings one has–to eat what one is served and to accept the Mass one is offered."
Being somewhat the opposite of Dr. Fleming, my instinct is to obey unless I have a reason to do otherwise. (As a rather cruel cynic, perhaps someday I will make a good proselytiser...) For my part my confessor has admonished me both personally and with other parishioners, NOT to attend a Novus Ordo Mass, and the reasons he gave for doing so were convincing enough in my mind that I have obeyed him.
That is to say nothing of my more personal reasons, namely the havoc that the loosened control since Vatican II has wrecked on my mother's family. On the other hand I might not exist otherwise. I could (and have) driven myself mad wondering about all this at night.
To an outsider this must be technical and obscure but surely this sort of situation does nothing to counter the bewilderment and paralysis plaguing so many within the Church in the face of what we see today.
NGPM @165: I affirm as well as empathize with your remarks. I am in the same boat, so to speak. I did go, recently and to my regret, to a Novus Ordo Missae liturgy one Sunday, and I was totally repulsed by this bastardized hokum calling itself Catholic. I actually thought I was at a Protestant service.
Red Phillips @ 162
Phillips, I wouldn't know you from a cord of wood. How in blazes can you speak about "the role you have obviously assigned to me"? Talk about defensiveness!
In fact, the only other time I even addressed you was at post #107, where I discussed the Unitarian-Universalist sect, and the connection between class, status, and some aspects of Protestant practice.
I've written an article "Designs On Us: A Caveat For Conservatives," which treats of the fraud known as "Intelligent Design." It's much too long to post here. But if you want me to mail you a copy I shall. Just send me your address.
Once again, right-wing energy wasted in pointless Bible-Belt trivia. How the Left must be laughing.
Gentlemen, gentlemen, no fighting in the war room! I hope Prof. Salemi will send me a copy c/o the webmaster. The philosophical argument from design is ancient and respectable. Intelligent Design strikes me, who have only spent a few hours looking into it, as rather an ideology than either theology or science. I have a scientifically trained friend who disagrees with me on this, though even he dismisses much of this stuff as hokum. A lively though polite debate on this might serve a useful purpose. I know Scott Richert and others are also interested in the subject. My old Mormon colleague, Bryce Christiansen, once made an astute observation. Christians were wrong, he argued, to put their trust in any scientific theory, whether it is the 1th-18th century science embraced by Fundamentalists in the naive belief that it is Scriptural or modern Evolutionism and Relativity Theory. Scientific theory, he (a physics major) observed, but the essentials of the faith do not. I'll try, in the meantime, to rouse myself from Florence dreaming on a winter's day long enough to close this discussion and post another screed--a new peg from which to hang a conversation irrelevant to the topic.
A man can only speak about Obama for so long, so if the discussion is irrelevant, perhaps that is a good thing.
I entirely agree. I was tired of writing about Obama even before posting this little piece.
All we need to know about an Obama presidency is what we can tell from the fates of other countries with origins such as ours who elected similar men. You know which countries and which men I am talking about.
Regarding this interesting tangent on Intelligent Design:
I think ID is popular because it is a reaction to the metaphysical assertions commonly touted by many scientists. One need only to watch any nature or science program on PBS to hear nature and evolution spoken of with nearly the same reverence that religious people use when speaking of God. These scientist frequently and effortlessly glide from the specifics of science to their own naturalistic and usually materialistic philosophies, with the tacit assumption that anyone who doubted that science proved these philosophies was completely ignorant of the evidence. Not infrequently, nature and evolution are personified as benevolent, almost godlike, forces.
Scientists should not make that jump from science to metaphysics, but few scientists now have any metaphysical understanding, so they make these errors easily.
I think more benefit would be had by pointing out the metaphysical lapses of the scientists; reminding them to stick to their sphere of knowledge.
"I think more benefit would be had by pointing out the metaphysical lapses of the scientists; reminding them to stick to their sphere of knowledge."
It may be too late even for this. What do you say to people who believe that the Catholic Church is "retarding science" by raising ethical objections to certain "advances" on the grounds that they might actually kill real human beings? These people have discovered how to create and annihilate matter and life, and there is immense power there. Of course the serious nuclear physicist knows full well that they have not really "created" or "destroyed" anything, only harnessed energy, but that is beside the point: they are convinced of their own power to play God. Power itself does not corrupt, but the lust for it means one is already corrupt.
That last sentence is worth quoting, NGPM. I would add that it applies to everyone from those who lust for dictatorship all the way down to petty dirtbags who engage in whatever crusade to eliminate whatever they target, whether it be smoking, global warming, etc. It's all about power and control, and they are all corrupt.
It is not power but the illusion of power that breeds lust for the real thing, the desire to become God, the Original Sin that saw Satan banished to hell and man cast out from God's paradise. Ferdinand and Isabella wielded more or less absolute power and they were far from corrupt, probably because they understood that their power did not come from themselves. The same cannot be said of fertility therapists, abortionists and most modern politicians.
I just want to note that Newt did almost nothing from the standpoint of advancing the social conservative cause after the ‘94 victory.
He cut capital gains, he helped rein in excessive spending, he stopped the onward march of the Clinton White House's rather extreme social liberalism, and on the negative side he degraded our political process by allowing Kenneth Starr to turn the impeachment proceedings into a spectacle of prurience.
But help the cause of social conservatism?
He didn’t get around to that.