Conservatives

Social conservatives should address “…not just one or two political questions, but a whole range of social problems, with an overriding concern for the importance of the family and the lives of the most vulnerable human beings. Even if today’s hot-button issues fade, this kind of social conservatism will still remain.” — Social Conservatism Is Here to Stay

Coincidence?

Christians protest ‘Dante’s Inferno’ while giant luminous squids over-fly Paris! President Obama to save or create 600,000 jobs!

George Tiller

There’s good discussion about George Tiller’s killing, both in the post and in the comments, at To The Gloating Abortionists And Abortion Supporters and The Murder of an Abortion Doctor. I’m convinced killing Tiller was immoral. I want to be able to say why, honestly and persuasively. Still working on it.

UPDATE: This is worth some thought. John Zmirak says “The reason it’s wrong to kill abortionists is that it is an act of war, and one that does not meet the conditions for a Just War.”

Not Obama’s fault

“We cannot blame the president for this one. During his campaign for president, Mr. Obama spoke honestly about the aggressive pro-choice agenda he intended to pursue — as he assured Planned Parenthood, he was “about playing offense,” not defense — and his actions have been consistent with that pledge. If only our nation’s premier Catholic university were as forthright in advancing its principles as Mr. Obama has been for his.” — Obama Scored Big at Notre Dame

Q and A

An unfair juxtaposition

But I’m making it anyway.

• “So why do I have more confidence in McDonald’s than I do in our denomination’s marketing efforts?” — Shane Raynor, $13,699 A Day: What the UMC Could Learn From McDonald’s
• “A young person will not give his or her life for a question mark. A young person will give his or her life for an exclamation point.” — Archbishop Timothy Dolan, Proudly Pro-Choice on Education

Mother’s Day and Christmas

“If the world wanted what is called a non-controversial aspect of Christianity, it would probably select Christmas. Yet it is obviously bound up with what is supposed to be a controversial aspect (I could never at any stage of my opinions imagine why); the respect paid to the Blessed Virgin. When I was a boy a more Puritan generation objected to a statue upon my parish church representing the Virgin and Child. After much controversy, they compromised by taking away the Child. One would think that this was even more corrupted with Mariolatry, unless the mother was counted less dangerous when deprived of a sort of weapon. But the practical difficulty is also a parable. You cannot chip away the statue of a mother from all round that of a new-born child. You can not suspend the new-born child in mid-air; indeed you cannot really have a statue of a new-born child at all. Similarly, you cannot suspend the idea of a new-born child in the void or think of him without thinking of his mother. You cannot visit the child without visiting the mother; you cannot in common human life approach the child except through the mother. If we are to think of Christ in this aspect at all, the other idea follows as it is followed in history. We must either leave Christ out of Christmas, or Christmas out of Christ, or we must admit, if only as we admit it in an old picture, that those holy heads are too near together for the haloes not to mingle and cross.” — The Everlasting Man, by G.K. Chesterton

Heaven and Hell

Last things, but not ends

“…the truth seems to me to be that happiness or misery beyond death, simply in themselves, are not even religious subjects at all. A man who believes in them will of course be prudent to seek the one and avoid the other. But that seems to have no more to do with religion than looking after one’s health or saving money for one’s old age. The only difference here is that the stakes are so very much higher. And this means that, granted a real and steady conviction, the hopes and anxieties aroused are overwhelming. But they are not on that account the more religious. They are hopes for oneself, anxieties for oneself. God is not in the centre. He is still important only for the sake of something else.” — Reflections on the Psalms, by C.S. Lewis

Carthago delenda est

Chesterton’s writing is dense, and tightly linked to the rest of Chesterton’s writing. Unless it’s one of his aphorisms, taking an excerpt is difficult. Have I preserved the sense? Read The Everlasting Man and see.

“…the consuls of Rome and the prophets of Israel … were at one in what they hated. It is very easy in both cases to represent that hatred as something merely hateful. It is easy enough to make a merely harsh and inhuman figure either of Elijah raving above the slaughter of Carmel or Cato thundering against the amnesty of Africa. These men had their limitations and their local passions; but this criticism of them is unimaginative and therefore unreal. It leaves out something, something immense and intermediate, facing east and west and calling up this passion in its eastern and western enemies…

“The civilisation that centered in Tyre and Sidon was above all things practical. … [They] believed, in the appropriate modern phrase, in people who delivered the goods. In their dealings with their god Moloch, they themselves were always careful to deliver the goods. It was an interesting transaction, upon which we shall have to touch more than once in the rest of the narrative; it is enough to say here that it involved … a certain attitude towards children. This was what called up against it in simultaneous fury the servant of one God in Palestine and the guardians of all the household gods in Rome.”

Atheist preacher

At first it seems ironic that Klaas Hendrikse, an atheist, continues to preach in his church building in the Netherlands. But really, as an atheist, why would he not keep the job? It’s not like he fears any consequences, or hopes for anything better. The people in the pews on Sunday are okay with it. His superiors in the organization that employs him, the “Protestant Church in the Netherlands,” are okay with it. He’s already got the black turtleneck. And of course it’s all very nuanced. He says he believes in God, just not in God’s existence. In a stunningly original twist, he’s even written a book.

I’m generally okay with atheists (no doubt they’re relieved to know it). People who say they are atheists have at least thought seriously about it. That puts them one step ahead of the nominal Christians: those who go to church every Sunday morning because it’s what they do after they read the paper. Having read a few books and given it some thought, the atheist may continue to read and think; and inevitably, life happens. So saying one is an atheist seems to me to be the second step, and often a step in the right direction. Being an atheist happens first, and an honest atheist is a couple of steps ahead of Lewis’ apostate bishop, the “fat ghost with the cultured voice.”

At least Hendrikse felt some need to redefine the words in “I believe in one God…” (if that church recites the Credo). That beats standing up to tell a big honkin’ lie once a week. That lingering impulse to honesty is a hopeful sign. The next step for Herr Hendrikse might be a beach vacation with some good books. And a nice Aloha shirt would probably put him, and everyone else, in a better frame of mind.

Hear the lamentation of the women

“From Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem to Andrea Dworkin and Germaine Greer on up through Susan Faludi and Naomi Wolf, feminist literature has been a remarkably consistent and uninterrupted cacophony of grievance, recrimination, and sexual discontent…

“Consider just what we have been told by the endless books on the topic over the years. If feminists married and had children, they lamented it. If they failed to marry or have children, they lamented that, too. If they worked outside the home and also tended their children, they complained about how hard that was. If they worked outside the home and didn’t tend their children, they excoriated anyone who thought they should. And running through all this literature is a more or less constant invective about the unreliability and disrespect of men.

“The signature metaphors of feminism say everything we need to know about how happy liberation has been making these women…” — The Vindication of Humanae Vitae