Word from another White Supremacist Joining the Ottawa Protest

 

Listen carefully; she has a strong accent.

More from the House of Commons

 

House of Commons Today

 

Jordan Peterson Weighs In

 

RIP Michael Lee Aday

 

A fond farewell to Meat Loaf. This live performance from Dutch TV gives some idea of his greatness. It was his ability to project the emotion; he put everything into it. He was a talented actor, and they say he had to keep a tank of oxygen backstage because he used up so much energy in a set.

Another casualty of COVID.

More from Ottawa and across Canada

 

The mainstream media keep insisting Ottawa is now full of swastikas and Confederate flags, but never show any pictures of them. Meantime, folks supporting the convoy never show any. And the chant "freedom" you keep hearing would seem to be the opposite of a Nazi or a pro-slavery sentiment.

It seems you just cannot trust most people in authority any longer. This still comes as a shock. Something has gone seriously wrong.

Wait--I think I've finally found the Nazi. CTV is featuring a clip of a guy carrying a sign saying "Herr Trudeau--needle Nazi." 

That may explain it.

A Voice for the Truckers

 

You can kind of see her point of view, surely...

India Gets Its Own Back

 

... against Justin Trudeau.

Just one reflection of how disastrously Trudeau's government has managed Canada's foreign affairs, and diminished Canada's respect throughout the world.

In other news, a recent poll in China found Canada was the one country most hated by the Chinese.

Canada.

The Canadian Convoy Song

 

Joni Mitchell and Neil Young Fight against Freedom of Speech

 

Sadly, Joni Mitchell has now joined Neil Young in pulling her music off Spotify in protest against their hosting of Joe Rogan’s podcast.  Specifically, this is because Rogan has expressed doubts about the safety of vaccines, and has had on his show a prominent doctor, Robert Malone, who questioned government vaccine policy.

Both Mitchell and Young accuse Spotify of spreading “misinformation” about COVID, and thereby causing deaths.

A left-leaning friend has also since announced on Facebook that he is terminating his subscription to Spotify, and is urging everyone else he knows to do the same.

They all seem bizarrely certain that Malone and Rogan are spreading falsehoods.

An obvious question: how do they know? Obviously, they are not medical doctors. Malone is an expert. How do they know that one expert is right, and the other one wrong?

Especially, how do they know without hearing both sides? For the logic of their demand to censor is that they and everyone else should not even listen to Rogan or Malone. How does only know without listening that someone will say or has said something false? How do you know before you listen that what someone is going to say will be the truth?

They might argue that most doctors disagree with Malone. But science does not work by popular vote. When Einstein published his Theory of Relativity, most physicists would have said he was wrong—and did at the time. By Young’s or Mitchell’s metric, Einstein’s paper—any groundbreaking scientific paper—would not have been published in the first place. Or the publication boycotted. Their position is profoundly anti-science.

And even if science did work by popular vote, neither Young nor Mitchell nor we know what that vote would be. There is no mechanism in place to take a poll of relevant scientists, or even to determine who counts as a relevant scientist. A petition was floated signed by 270 people claiming the relevant expertise; but such a petition has no evidentiary value, as any scientist could explain, since the survey sample was self-selected.

Science, and human progress, works by a free and open exchange of ideas, allowing for free and open debate, after which, everyone has the right to decide for themselves, barring some pressing social need to infringe that freedom. Mitchell, Young, and my friend are short-circuiting that necessary process. They are claiming the right to decide what is right and wrong not only for themselves, but for others. That is a profoundly egotistic and totalitarian impulse.

I am inclined to give creative artists wide leeway on politics. For some reason, the sort of mind that is good at the arts is rarely competent in political matters. Artists are naifs, and easily swayed emotionally by the last person they have talked to. This is what Keats called "negative capability." Similarly, Plato or Lao-Tzu are greatly insightful on individual spiritual matters, but their political thinking is horrifying. I am sad that Mitchell and Young are so badly tarnishing their legacy and reputation, and quite likely wrecking their income in retirement.

And, of course, some people may be influenced by them.

More generally, we are desperately ill-served that all high school students are not taught John Stuart Mill’s explanation of the need for freedom of speech.

“To refuse a hearing to an opinion, because they are sure that it is false, is to assume that their certainty is the same thing as absolute certainty. All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility. Its condemnation may be allowed to rest on this common argument, not the worse for being common.”

“To call any proposition certain, while there is any one who would deny its certainty if permitted, but who is not permitted, is to assume that we ourselves, and those who agree with us, are the judges of certainty, and judges without hearing the other side.”

A free society cannot exist with censorship.

Terry Fox Disrespected!

 

The banner on this interview is a fine example of fake news. “Terry Fox statue disrespected.” This is supposedly evidence that the anti-mandate protest in Ottawa is dangerous and out of control.

The “disrespect” as the videos show, is having draped the Fox statue with a Canadian flag. 

If CTV or the Ottawa mayor consider the Canadian flag a mark of disrespect, what does this say of their attitude towards the Canadian flag?

Are we belittling our war dead by draping their coffins with the flag? Are we disrespecting our public buildings by flying it?

Is it that they are disrespecting a statue by clothing it? This is a traditional sign of respect for the subject of a statue world-wide. Many statues of Mary in Latin countries are given a new dress on important feast days. Statues of Csitigarbha (Jizo) in Japan are given mittens and wool hats that devotees weave themselves.

What right, then, does the mayor of Ottawa have to declare the practice disrespectful?

And how much did CTV or Ottawa’s mayor have to say about the recent pulling down or spray-painting of statues of Sir John A. Macdonald or Queen Victoria? Or the renaming of the Langevin Block? Isn’t their concern now the height of hypocrisy?

Hizzoner is also critical of the protesters as “disruptive” for entering local businesses without masks, and beyond their mandated covid capacity.

But this is demanding they observe the very restrictions they are protesting against. The whole point of civil disobedience is that you disobey. It is like allowing that Rosa Parks had a right to protest segregation, but she was being disruptive by refusing to yield her seat on the bus. Or that Gandhi had the right to his salt march, but only if he paid the salt tax. Yes, they may be breaking the law and be subject to arrest; but the mayor is missing or ignoring the point of the exercise.

Sadly, the mayor of Ottawa is not running for reelection. This deprives Ottawa’s citizens of the opportunity to vote him out of office.

But at least they can stop watching CTV.

Now Its Not Enough to have a Hispanic Snow White...

 

Dwarf actor Peter Dinklage is publicly criticizing Disney for planning a live-action remake of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, because to do so would somehow be discriminatory towards dwarfs.

Has he ever read the story? Disney might muck it up in any number of ways, but if they stick to Grimm, the dwarfs are the heroes of the piece.

Is any mention of dwarfs, complimentary or critical, discriminatory? Great job, Peter—throwing all dwarf actors on the dole and segregating dwarfs like lepers.

The Sky Father

 

Friend Xerxes persists in imagining the Christian God as a “bearded old man in the sky.” 

This is not the Christian conception of God. It seems to be more common among atheists.

Xerxes complains that image “will get in the way of any other understandings of God that may come your way.”

If so, this bearded sky-father gets in the way of the Christian or Jewish conception of God, it is actually Satanic, an anti-Christ.

And I think Xerxes is right here. The image is sinister.

Christians conceive of God is as a man of thirty or so with Semitic features, not in the sky but in the Middle East. This is how he chose to reveal himself to us.

For Jews, any physical depiction of God is blasphemous—including as an old man in the sky. For this reason, any depiction of God the Father is prohibited in Orthodox iconography. In the West, until about the 13th century, he was only depicted as a giant hand or eye, as seen on the US dollar bill.

God the Father as depicted on the US dollar.

It is true that we do now see the image in some churches, although far less often than images of Jesus. This bearded sky father is famously featured in Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel.

Michelangelo's God the Creator

So where does he come from?

No doubt in part from Jesus’s reference to God as “father.” The father of a thirty-year old man would presumably look at least fifty. 

But this is theologically nonsensical, since God the Father cannot age, and so cannot be any age in particular. Age implies change over time.

There is also one reference in the Book of Daniel, to a figure called the “Ancient of Days.”

“I watched until thrones were placed,

    and one who was ancient of days sat.

His clothing was white as snow,

    and the hair of his head like pure wool.

His throne was fiery flames.”

Is this a vision of God the Father? Apocalyptic literature is difficult to interpret. Different authorities have different interpretations. Orthodoxy says this figure is Jesus. Some say it is Jesus as cosmocrator, world ruler, at the end of time. Indeed, the description of Jesus in the Book of Revelations is similar:

“… someone like a son of man, dressed in a robe reaching down to his feet and with a golden sash around his chest. The hair on his head was white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like blazing fire”

William Blake saw it as Satan, given hegemony over the earth. 

“Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And the devil said to him, ‘To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please.’”

Blake's satanic "Ancient of Days," Urizen

 

But if it is God the Father, or whoever it is, there is no definite warrant here for a beard, which is consistent in the iconography, and his throne in Daniel’s dream is on the shore of the sea, not in the sky.

The grey-bearded god sitting on a cloud hurling thunderbolts is, more plausibly, Zeus, the Greek “sky-god” and “father of the gods.”

Zeus

As a pagan god, he is, in Christian or Jewish terms, a demon.

This is not encouraging.

He also seems to have something in common with Santa Claus: both elderly men with long white beards. There is no reason, after all, to portray the real Santa Claus, Saint Nicholas, as an old man with a white beard. He might as well be shown at any age. In early representations, he has no white beard.

St. Nicholas of Myrna

There just does seem to be an urge to insert this figure of a bearded rich and authoritative old man as some kind of substitute for Jesus: as an image of the divine, and as a symbol for Christmas. 

"Father Christmas"

And I think, in practical terms, it is a barrier to many to knowing Christ. Especially for those who have had abusive parents, or bad experiences with authority, this image of God as a crowned ancestor has to be sinister.

I suspect bad parents, evildoers, and civil authorities of having snuck it in over time as an actual attempt to subvert and co-opt the Christian message.

Did they do it consciously and systematically? No need to assume so. The Devil works though a thousand, a million, little impulses, through our unreflective instincts.

Woke Ballet

 

Officials deny that Critical Race Theory is taught in the Ontario schools. On the other hand, one of my students had to cancel a writing class because her school required attendance at a special seminar on “racialization in ballet.” On a Friday evening. 

Her brother informed me that only “non-white” students had to attend.

The Ottawa Convoy

 

A "Canadian Gadsden flag"

As I write, there is a large convoy of trucks converged on Ottawa to protest vaccine mandates. One hopes everything remains peaceful. The visible organizers seem form on this point. In principle, however, I think even peaceful public protests are anti-democratic, and socially irresponsible. Violence could always break out, innocent people are inconvenienced, and by their nature they tend to subvert the democratic process. They are mob rule.

However, this time, I am more disturbed by the Prime Minister’s response. He said the truckers were a “fringe minority” who “did not speak for Canadians,” and their views were “unacceptable.”

If violence breaks out, I’d say he is more responsible for it now than anyone.

It is not proper for the Prime Minister to declare the views of any Canadians seeking to petition their government “unacceptable.” It is beyond the pale, in a free society, to say that you will not listen to or discuss their concerns. It sounds more than a little like “let them eat cake.”

First Amendment of the US Constitution:

Congress shall make no law … abridging … the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The essential demand of the truckers, as revealed on every sign and banner I see online, is to end vaccine mandates. They object to anyone being fired from their job for not being vaccinated.

It is true that some people associated with the convoy have made wilder demands. I saw a petition online directing their petition only to the Senate and Governor-General, implicitly declaring the House of Commons illegitimate. This nonsense is constitutionally impossible, undemocratic, and serves no purpose. But I feel sure that almost none of the actual participants in the convoy and protest feel committed to this idea. To cite it in relation to the larger protest looks to me like a red herring.

In fact, it is so obviously silly I suspect it is a false flag planted by government agents to discredit the protest.

Ending the vaccine mandates is a perfectly reasonable position. It has been clear for at least the past six months that there is no medical justification for them. We have known since then that the vaccinated could also spread the virus, and that herd immunity through vaccination was not an achievable goal. We also know, incidentally, that cloth masks do nothing against omicron. Accordingly, the government cannot appeal to the emergency to make what would otherwise be an infringement on human rights acceptable.

Moreover, it looks as though the emergency itself is over. Britain, Ireland, and Denmark have now ended restrictions. There is a strong medical argument that the best thing to do is for everyone to go out and catch Omicron as soon as possible after their booster shot. Their case should be quite mild, with omicron, they cannot avoid it for long anyway, and this is the only way to achieve long-term immunity. Best to catch it before the effects of the booster wear off. A doctor in Africa recently called omicron “the vaccine we could not make.”

In other words, it would look as though the government is working against the public interest at this point.

Worse, our supply chain is in tatters. My local grocery shelves are alarmingly bare. I overheard the manager explaining to another worried customer that all orders are behind by at least 72 hours, and getting worse. The government aying down mandates forcing truckers off the roads at just this point looks wildly irresponsible.

One wonders why they are doing it. One fears a totalitarian impulse in our “elites.”

The Moral Superiority of the Poor

 

Ibn Khaldun

The great Ibn Khaldun theorized that, over time, all cultures become decadent. The ruling classes become complacent and selfish, and keep shaving more and more off the top of the economy, until the culture is no longer efficient. It then, sooner or later, cannot compete with a poorer culture nearby, the government of which is closer to the common people.

I think he is right—I think history reveals this pattern. It is why cultures rise and fall. And the modern West is at such a point of decadence. Who is the less bureaucratic, more egalitarian, more ascetic culture ready to take over? 

Ibn Khaldun’s theory implies that the same thing will happen with individuals and families. Not that being rich is immoral, but because they become too accustomed to having their way, rich people are likely to grow less moral and more selfish than poor people. Narcissism, or as the Greeks more properly called it, hubris, is a disease of the rich and powerful.

The New Testament, especially Luke, agrees, and makes the same point repeatedly. It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven.

This seems to tally as well with my own experience. Most often, poor people are nicer than rich people.

The matter is obscured by the influence of Calvinism on our culture, so that we often imagine, contrary to the gospel, that material wealth is a sign of heaven’s favour. And that a prominent and rich family is a “good” family.

Why Ukraine? Why Now?

 

Why is Russia just now amassing troops on its border with Ukraine? There seems to have been no precipitating event, no trigger. And why at this time of year? Normally nobody launches military operations in winter, in a land where winters are severe. Winter favours the defense.

Which raises the suspicion that something is going on behind the scenes. 

Why now? To begin with, because Biden looks weak, indecisive, muddled and unpopular. Not to mention, possibly bought. Pulling out of Afghanistan did not send a message of resolve. 

Both Russia and China may be calculating that at this moment, America’s response, divided, leaderless, and exhausted by COVID, will be weakened. This window of opportunity might not last. Moreover, Xi’s or Putin’s power might not last. China looks economically shaky. In internal factional fighting, Xi might need some dramatic act to save his presidency, due to be extended or ended at the fall party congress. Putin may feel he needs dramatic action to quell possible unrest after Kazakhistan.

So this may be planned as a one-two punch. First Russia goes in. This leaves the US with a Hobson’s choice. If they commit heavily to the Ukraine, they may strip themselves of resources needed later to help Taiwan. Fighting Russia and China simultaneously looks beyond America’s ability or resolve, in its present weakened state. 

Why right now, in winter? That looks like the most disturbing sign. If China is going to invade Taiwan, they have a narrow window, based on the monsoon seasons, to do it in May to July, or else in October. Monsoons famously defeated two planned Chinese invasions of Japan under the Qin Dynasty. 

May to July is obviously the better window. 

The Russian actions seem coordinated to fit this timetable.

And it all looks like the kind of deep strategy for which both Russia and China are traditionally known.

On Choosing a Religion

Jesus as the Good Shapherd

Here’s another objection to becoming a practicing Christian from my 1982 notebook:

Objection: How is one to choose among the various religions? If God exists and is merciful, or even just, how can he permit the existence of a thousand false religions and only one true one? And then leave us with no clear basis on which to distinguish one from the other? And then say that anyone who makes the wrong choice is damned to hell?

To which I respond:

Religions differ far less than this supposes. They agree on most things. It is therefore reasonable to assume that a firm commitment to any religious path is sufficient, eliminating the problem. I hold that this is necessarily so, given these premises. God would not allow the persistence of a faith that did not lead to heaven if practiced in good faith. The New Testament itself testifies to the continuing validity, for example, of Judaism.

Monotheism is not tolerant of polytheism, it is true, and vice versa. The problem with polytheism is the “in good faith” part. Monotheism is ethical; polytheism is not. It does not believe in objective morality.

So why did God allow polytheism to persist? He does not, as a historical fact, as soon as a clear monotheistic alternative appears in any society. 

Most religions do not believe that anyone who does not follow them will end in hellfire. Only some Protestant groups do, and some Muslims. Buddhists or Hindus do not. Neither do Catholics. While they hold Christianity to be, of course, the completed truth, anyone who is not aware of this is not punished. So long as their ignorance of it is not their own fault—that is, so long as they have been sincerely seeking truth.

The phrase “no salvation outside the church” is often quoted. But its sense is ambiguous. For after all, what is “the church”?

John 10: 16: “I have other sheep that don’t belong to this fold. I must lead these also, and they’ll listen to my voice. So there will be one flock and one shepherd.”

He might well here be referring to non-Jews, gentiles, as not being members of the flock to which he is speaking. Or he might be speaking more generally, of any visible or formally constituted flock. The true church is the “communion of saints.” This is obviously not coterminous with the people in attendance at a mass, or with the college of bishops. It is the confraternity of those who seek the good, the true, and the beautiful.

And when Jesus says he is the gate through which such souls must enter, surely he means the Logos, the Way, the Truth, and the Light, not that souls pass though his physical body somehow crafted into a gate. That is, one enters heaven by seeking the true and the good and the beautiful, wherever this leads, and despite personal sacrifice.

That said, it is an important step to tie oneself to a particular spiritual discipline and a particular objective set of moral standards. Without this, it is too easy to rationalize everything to your own advantage, and make yourself God. This, perhaps, is the “communion” part of the “communion of saints.” 

Preach It, Brother!

 

The audience for friend Xerxes’s column seems to be composed mostly of Protestant ministers. At least, those are the readers who comment. I was interested if not surprised to see that they seem universally to have approved of his last column, about putting a warning label on Christianity.

“Preach on, brother, preach on!”

“Your column should be nailed onto every religious building’s front door ―a new 95 Theses.”

“There is a good case that organized religion has done more harm than good.”

“After a lifetime in various forms of various ways to share spiritual health care, I have concluded that religions, and in particular Christianity, are toxins; we spend most of our lives trying at least to turn it from poison to a healing substance. Sometimes one wonders if rescuing the bible, defending God, examining the sins of scripture, finding original blessing and reclaiming Jesus has had any real effect. Maybe the smile message we should be about is ‘Don't swallow it!’”

It might come as a shock to many that the average Christian minister does not much believe in Christianity. Having spent a lot of time with Christian ministers in grad school, I am not surprised.

In a sense, too, they are right. “Organized religion” is toxic. The Bible itself, the New Testament, warns us so. But not in the sense they mean. Religious authorities are inclined to be hypocrites, Pharisees, playing a role they do not themselves believe in. That is the original meaning of “hypocrite”—an actor wearing a mask.

This is perhaps not a clear example. These ministers are not exactly concealing their true feelings: they say they want them nailed to the church door, and one imagines they express it in their counseling. But if they feel this way, why are they ministers? And isn’t calling themselves a Christian minister without endorsing Christianity itself a grievous deceit? Shouldn’t they, in conscience, refer the seeker on to someone else who does believe in it?

I remember explaining to Xerxes once why I had not become a Catholic priest: because I felt my faith was not strong enough. I was not sure I could commit to always believing all of Catholicism, into the indefinite future.

And his answer, at that time, was immediate: “so what?”

I see the same phenomenon in teachers. Our teachers do not actually believe in teaching anything. Instead, the class is supposed to “construct their own knowledge.” And the teacher is free to do the same.

To be honest, I just don’t understand this attitude. Maybe the explanation will come to me. In the meantime, I think it is important to notice it. I guess the moral is not to blindly trust the “experts” in any field.

Pulling No Punches.

 

Pretty amazing to listen to Fr. Altman busting loose. There is turmoil in the North American church these days.

The Truth about Residential Schools

 

Great interview with Prof. Tom Flanagan on the Indian residential schools. 

A couple of key points:\

1. Contrary to popular belief, Indian children were not forced to attend residential schools.

2. Contrary to popular belief, there is no evidence of any mass graves.

The Madness of King Joe

 

Recently on an internet forum I follow, an English teacher asked for podcasts she could use to teach English. Someone suggested Joe Rogan—an obvious choice. By far the most popular podcast in the world, currently. She rejected the idea: she could not introduce her students to such extreme right-wing opinions.

Joe Rogan supported Bernie Sanders in 2020.

A New York Times article I used in my own class referred to Oath Keepers as an extreme right-wing militia. I go to their web site. The oath they say they keep is to “defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” This is the oath all members of the military, and most police forces, take. Are they all extreme right-wing organizations? And is everyone but the “extreme right” now not prepared to defend the Constitution?

And how can everyone but a small minority be “extreme right”? Isn’t any very large proportion of the population, by definition, not “extreme”?

In a recent speech, Joe Biden began by saying that on January 6, 2021, “a dagger was literally held at the throat of American democracy.” Assuming Biden knows the English language, and is lucid enough to understand what he is saying, this is a –literally-- delusional claim.

And in the same speech in which he accuses Trump of insurrection for claiming an election could be stolen, he asserts that the Republicans are trying to steal elections by not consenting to his Voting Rights Act. If not blatantly dishonest, this is a level of lack of self-awareness that is delusional. And the latter seems the more likely explanation. Because otherwise it seems a dumb trick to try to pull.

I come to believe that the right is making a naïve mistake in taking the left seriously, and trying to argue such claims; as if they were even marginally reasonable. It might be time to simply, loudly, and at every opportunity point out that they are barking mad.

Giving to Charity Is Not Charity

 

He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars: general Good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite, and flatterer, for Art and Science cannot exist but in minutely organized Particulars.

 

-- William Blake

Jesus the Wino

 

A jotting of Cana from Giotto

1 There was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there.

2 Jesus and his disciples were also invited to the wedding.

3 When the wine ran short, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.”

4 And Jesus said to her, “Woman, how does your concern affect me? My hour has not yet come.”

5 His mother said to the servers, “Do whatever he tells you.”

6 Now there were six stone water jars there for Jewish ceremonial washings, each holding twenty to thirty gallons.

7 Jesus told the them, “Fill the jars with water.” So they filled them to the brim.

8 Then he told them, “Draw some out now and take it to the headwaiter.” So they took it.

9 And when the headwaiter tasted the water that had become wine, without knowing where it came from although the servers who had drawn the water knew, the headwaiter called the bridegroom

10 and said to him, “Everyone serves good wine first, and then when people have drunk freely, an inferior one; but you have kept the good wine until now.”

11 Jesus did this as the beginning of his signs at Cana in Galilee and so revealed his glory, and his disciples began to believe in him.

-- John 2: 1-11

Last Sunday’s gospel reading is a familiar story, but some of the details are often ignored.

First of all, it puts definite limits on the commandment to “honour your father and your mother.” Asked by his own mother to do something, Jesus refuses, and says she has no authority over him.

So much for supposing this commandment implies some duty of adult obedience.

It has to do rather with social welfare: one has a duty to provide for one’s parents, respectfully and not grudgingly, in their old age, when they cannot look after themselves. Assuming, of course, they had looked after you in youth. Before modern social security, this was a moral imperative.

But the story also kicks the slats out from under those Christians who suppose that drinking alcohol is a sin. Not only does Jesus make wine as his first miracle: according to the story, he expressly makes enough for those at the wedding to get blind drunk. At the point at which the attendees had drunk all the wine available, and, according to the headwaiter, enough that they would not be able to tell the difference between good and bad wine, Jesus makes 120-180 gallons more. He as much as assures that everyone present gets drunk, with the approval as well of his sinless mother.

A point is being made ad sharpened here: that at a time for legitimate celebration, at a festival time, drunken abandon is proper. 

This does not endorse alcoholism or habitual drunkenness—that is condemned elsewhere. It matters a great deal when and why you get drunk. For everything, there is a season.

But Christians may celebrate. 

On the Housing Crisis

 

Ibbitson of the Globe and Mail this the problem is solved by allowing cities to sprawl instead of having green belts. I think at best that's half of it. I think it is at least as important to tear down zoning restrictions in the city proper. For example, requiring high rises downtown to include huge amounts of parking space.

Many or most city residents don't have a car, and don't need one. Build what the market wants.

G & M article may be behind a paywall...For some reason, I was able to read it.

Philosophical Video Worth Watching

 

Gifts of the Spirit

 

2nd Reading at today’s mass: 1 Corinthians 12:4-11

Brothers and sisters:

There are different kinds of spiritual gifts but the same Spirit;

there are different forms of service but the same Lord;

there are different workings but the same God who produces all of them in everyone.

To each individual the manifestation of the Spirit is given for some benefit.

To one is given through the Spirit the expression of wisdom; to another, the expression of knowledge according to the same Spirit;

to another, faith by the same Spirit; to another, gifts of healing by the one Spirit;

to another, mighty deeds; to another, prophecy; to another, discernment of spirits; to another, varieties of tongues; to another, interpretation of tongues.

But one and the same Spirit produces all of these, distributing them individually to each person as he wishes.

This list of the gifts of the spirit is a list of talents or vocations given by God.

The expression of wisdom: in other words, a teacher in the religious sense. A spiritual director, in Catholic terms. A guru.

The expression of knowledge: in other words, a teacher in the general sense.

Faith. This is listed as a special gift. Not everyone will have faith in this sense, even though also filled with the spirit. This I take to be the “heroic virtue” of sainthood: the ability to follow that path.

Healing. Being able to heal is a special talent and vocation. Nurses are more likely than doctors to have this gift. One knows it when one experiences it.

Mighty deeds refers most obviously to athleticism; although it may also mean generalship, leadership. Some translations have “miraculous powers,” presumably the ability to perform miracles. But I don’t think performing miracles, is a specific grace. It seems integrated with all the others. A gift of healing will produce miracles of healing. Accurate prophecy is miraculous as such. The saints all perform miracles. Miracles are everywhere.

Prophecy. Who is a prophet in this modern age? My answer is that of William Blake: the artist. True artists are inspired, just as the Old Testament prophets were inspired.

Discernment of spirits follows next because it refers to the talent of the art critic or person of good taste: he or she is able to discern good art from bad, that inspired by God from that inspired by dubious ambient spirits.

Varieties of tongues I take to mean the obvious, a facility for learning languages, not the “speaking in tongues” of Pentecostal services. Some people have a special talent for this, which can sometimes be genuinely miraculous.

“The interpretation of tongues” listed separately suggests to me that the talent for the receptive knowledge of language is separate from the talent for expressive knowledge of language. That is, it takes a different skill to speak or write in a new language than to read or understand it. This is in conformity with current linguistic theory. People are invariably better at one than the other.

So what? So understanding these as God-given talents implies that they cannot simply be taught. We currently ignore or fail to understand this, and do worse as a culture as a result. We do tend to accept that anyone cannot learn to be a great athlete, even with much practice. We mostly understand that going for a Master of Fine Arts cannot produce an artist. But we fail to see that two years of Teacher’s College cannot make a teacher, and five years of medical school cannot make a healer.

A CANZUK Comment

 

The Anglophone West Indies

There is continuing turmoil in Northern Ireland over the border, now that the UK has left the EU. 

My solution is to unify Ireland on condition that it join CANZUK as a fifth member—free trade zone, integrated military, freedom of movement. The Northern Irish could have their cake and eat it too.

It also seems to me that an integrated West Indies also belongs in the pact. Individually the islands are too small to be equal partners, and indeed too small to be economically viable, but unified they would be about 4.5 million people and another arm of the Anglosphere. The opportunities offered by the larger union might be incentive for them to come together.

Should Christianity Come with a Warning Label?

 

Friend Xerxes continues to indulge his columnist habit. This time, he is light-heartedly suggesting a warning label for Christianity.

The idea of a warning label for Christianity does make sense: be prepared to die to self. Be prepared to take up your cross.  Be prepared to lose friends and family members. Be prepared to look like a fool to the world.

But Xerxes’s concerns are different.

What immediately leaped out, was “Christianity is not a cure for depression or suicidal impulses.”

I can’t imagine why he says that; it is almost the first thing he says. And it seems to me Christianity is exactly that. Depression and suicidal impulses are a result of perceived loss of meaning. The one thing Christianity does for definite sure is bring meaning into your life.

Whe he was perambulating Palestine, Jesus’s prime preoccupation was casting out devils. What do you think those devils were? The symptoms were often plainly what we would call “mental illness” of various kids.

A Catholic priest of my acquaintance used to say that there were only two choices for any of us: faith, or suicide.

Another of his warnings is almost equally odd:

“Keep Christianity and its doctrinal texts out of the reach of children, as their frontal lobes are not yet sufficiently developed to handle the complexities of Christian teachings.”

The common belief is that we have an obligation to raise children in the faith. And how is it good for children to grow up without a coherent world view?

“But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.”

I suspect Xerxes of buying the new atheist argument that teaching children Christianity is abuse.

He the gives a list of authors that, if you are Christian, you should not read, because they would be upsetting. He does not include Marx, or Freud, or Nietzsche, but de Chardin, Tolle, Rohr, Spong,  Merton, and Rahner.

It seems an odd list. Merton is surely revered among Catholics. Rahner was an important advisor to Vatican II. De Chardin is more controversial, but was praised by Benedict XVI, who is not generally considered unorthodox.

It is hard to figure out what point Xerxes is trying to make. That true Christianity requires you not to think? That Catholicism is an abomination on Christianity as a result?

But let’s polish our brass tacks. As what seems the climax, Xerxes wars that Christianity will cause “blindness to other faiths, intolerance of other viewpoints, and addiction to biblical proof-texting.”

Any particular viewpoint is intolerant of other viewpoints that contradict that viewpoint. Even viewpoints that claim to be “tolerant” are intolerant of viewpoints they declare “intolerant.” And we cannot escape having a viewpoint. The issue is whether we claim any right to impose or enforce our viewpoint over others. Christianity stands out for not doing this. In Christianity everything is voluntary. This is a contrast to most competing viewpoints. Including such creeds as secular humanism, liberal democracy, Marxism, Islamism, or science.

Meaning the net effect of Christianity is the opposite of what Xerxes claims.

On the issue of being “blind” to other faiths, Christianity and Christians would automatically have more understanding of and sympathy with a Hindu, Muslim, or Buddhist viewpoint than would a materialist, a Marxist, or a secular humanist.

Accusing Christianity of causing a problem of Biblical proof-texting is like accusing the Constitution of causing a problem of misinterpreting the US Constitution. The solution would not be to abolish the Supreme Court. In this case, it would be to become Catholic, and rely on such expert advice. Unless, of course, your problem is not with proof-texting, but with the authority of the Bible itself.

“Mainstream Christianity is not recommended if you have religious pre-conditions, such as participation in Hare Krishna, charismatic Pentecostalism, or any Presbyterian court.”

You can be a Catholic, the ultimate mainstream of Christianity, and a Pentecostal. I am. It is called the Charismatic movement. There is no theological conflict here.

More broadly, any kind of religious background (“pre-condition”) is a better segue to Christianity than none.

“Do not be misled by Scientology, Eckankar, or Theosophy,” Xerxes adds.

If these cults are misleading, they are no more likely to mislead Christians than non-Christians, since they do not claim to be Christian. A better fit here could be “Do not be misled by Gnosticism, the prosperity gospel, liberation theology, original blessedness, or feel-good pop psychology masquerading as Christianity.”

“Take Christianity exactly as prescribed – weekly.”

The prescription is moment by moment. “Pray without ceasing.” A “Sundays-only“ Christian is not the model. And there is no such thing as an “overdose” of Christianity. The whole concept of “religious extremism” is profoundly wrongheaded. The average is not the ideal.

Is Xerxes really, as he claims, a Christian? 

The Platinum Jubilee

 

I am startled to discover that 2022 is Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee, marking 70 years on the throne. I had not been aware.

This is a big deal. No other monarch of Canada or of Britain or perhaps anywhere else has ever achieved a Platinum Jubilee. Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee was notable enough that they held a Festival of Empire in her honour.

And what has Canada planned to mark this epochal event? Apparently, an ice sculpture on Sparks Street Mall for Ottawa’s Winterlude. 

That almost sounds like an insult. As though her reign was written on water.

We can do better. Moreover, if the spring and summer of 2022 marks the end of a dread pandemic, we could all use a big party.

The federal government may have no time for the Queen, but it she is popular in much of Canada―in large part because the monarchy is the one thing that, historically, distinguishes us from the USA.

Surely Ontario or Toronto can do something significant. Time may be short, but here’s a thought. The City of Toronto, in its wisdom or lack thereof, has decided that Dundas Street must be renamed. Why not rename it in honour of the Jubilee?

It’s a significant street, right downtown, so the gesture is more than trivial. But essentially costs nothing, since we were going to rename it anyway.

We can’t call it Elizabeth Street. We already have one. We can’t name it Queen Street; ditto. But we could call it Jubilee Street.

It’s a cheerful name. It should be especially popular in Chinatown, which centres on the street. The Chinese place value on names with happy connotations. But surely any business would be happy to say they are on “Jubilee Street.”

The official renaming could be done in a grand public ceremony in Dundas Square on the 24 of May holiday. We could have a weekend of live free performances by big-name artists; televised. We could have a parade down the length of the street, then close the street for a street party the rest of the long weekend.

Some will inevitably grumble that honouring the Queen is not properly multicultural. They are exactly wrong. The point of having a monarchy is that it provides a unifying symbol other than ethnicity. Nor is the Queen of any particular ethnicity. Royal families marry exogamously as a matter of course. Her husband is Greek, and she is German. At the outset of the First World War, the king of England, the Kaiser of Germany, and the Czar of Russia were first cousins. Except that she is purely European, Elizabeth Windsor is the perfect image of multiculturalism.

We could of course have attendees at the ceremony to represent all the nations of the Commonwealth. She is, after all, head of the Commonwealth. Canada’s First Nations also claim a special tie to the Crown, and would no doubt be happy to send representatives. 

It could all make a great parade, a great concert, and a great street party.

Onward Christian Soldiers

 

Jesus engages in fisticuffs in the temple.

Another argument against religion: “Pie in the sky when you die.” It serves to reconcile people to a lot in life that they should be striving to change. It serves to perpetuate social and personal wrongs.

Christianity certainly can be and has been used to do this. The concept “gentle Jesus meek and mild” and the demand for forgiveness can be manipulated in this way.

But this is a manipulation, a falsification of Christian doctrine. Christianity cannot be blamed for it. 

There is no gentle Jesus in the gospels. He condemns the powers that be, the scribes, Sadducees, and Pharisees, in uncompromising terms. He tells his followers to arm themselves. He overturns the tables of the moneychangers. 

“I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! But I have a baptism to undergo, and what constraint I am under until it is completed! Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division. From now on there will be five in one family divided against each other, three against two and two against three. They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.” (Luke 12: 49-54)

He merely advises against fighting lost causes. That is what “turn the other cheek” is about.

He preaches forgiveness if and only if the offender has repented and tried to make amends. Otherwise, self-evidently, one is endorsing sin. “Nowhere in the Gospels does Jesus teach that forgiveness should be offered unconditionally.” “If your brother or sister sins against you, rebuke them; and if they repent, forgive them.” (Luke 17:3)

Christianity is often blamed for “the divine right of kings.” This forms no part of Christian doctrine, and was proposed by secular rulers. Pagan religions usually see the king as a god, who rules by divine right. Christianity rejects this. In the Old Testament, kings are commonly called to account by the prophets. In the new, civil government is said to be in the gift of Satan. “It has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to.”

As a practical matter, no other religion or ideology has done a better job of righting the wrongs of the world. Christianity produced liberal democracy and the doctrine of human rights. The doctrine can be traced back through the Jesuits to Aquinas; Locke explicitly based it on the Bible. Wilberforce successfully appealed to Christianity to end slavery. MLK successfully appealed to Christianity to end discrimination against US blacks. Desmond Tutu appealed to Christianity to end apartheid in South Africa. John Paul II appealed to Christianity to end Communism in Poland.

Christianity gives guidance on when to fight, and when to hold back, “A time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.” With the assurance of ultimate justice, something that gives heart and strength to those who know they are fighting for what is right.

Playing the Fool

 

Basil the Blessed, a celebrated Russian "fool for Christ"

Another possible objection to Christianity found in my 1982 notebook:

“Because religion is unreasoning. It is bound to appeal primarily to those whose reasoning is deficient. Therefore it is by nature anti-intellectual, and, if I subscribe to it, I am announcing to the world that I am not as intelligent or intellectual as I would like them to think. Therefore the world will mock me as a fool.”

This is based on a false premise, dealt with in a previous post: that religion is unreasoning. 

But, leaving that aside, this is a good example of the first of the three great temptations to sin, “the world, the flesh, and the devil.” It is caring about what the world thinks instead of what is true.

If you become religious, it is probably always true that the world will mock you as a fool. “For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.” The world is, by definition, of average intelligence and, as the old saying goes, “no better than it should be.” The world will value the average, and resent the exceptional. Some psychologist claims to have determined that, if you meet someone whose IQ is fifteen points higher than yours, you simply cannot understand their thinking. They will to you appear mad.

This principle of mediocrity therefore extends to the social class commonly recognized as “the intellectuals.” Who decides who is or is not of this class? They choose one another, generation after generation, in the academic faculty and “peer review” model. Which tends to extend as well to such things as literary magazines. But who selected this group, to go on to select the others? It will ultimately be the mass of common people—crowds flocking to Jordan Peterson lectures today, students flocking to Socrates in his day. The mass of common people are not qualified to recognize who is much smarter than they are, and who isn’t. A little smarter, yes. A lot smarter, no.

The recognized intelligentsia will therefore not be the highly intelligent, but people of average intelligence or a bit more who play this role, and mouth the opinions currently supposed to be the intelligent ones. The only thing certain about these opinions is that they will go against common sense—for if they were common sense, they would not set you apart as one of the intellectuals.

Not that common sense is a very reliable guide—just a better one than always having to go against common sense.

One could, perhaps, select the supposed intelligentsia by raw IQ score. But this would not work either. There is the issue of application. Just because you have tha ability to reason well does not mean you habitually use it. Not everyone who is seven feet tall is a great basketball player. In fact, people with high natural intelligence can learn to be intellectually lazy. To cope with everyday life they never need to think very hard.

We all have the moral obligation, however, not to just conform to those around us, and to think as carefully as we can, for ourselves, about what is true and right and wrong.

How narrow is the gate, and restricted is the way

that leads to life! Few are those who find it.

--Matthew 7:14

In Search of a Man on a White Horse

 

Dave Rubin says, “at this point, you only have to be sane to find yourself on the right.”

That seems obviously true. To be on the left, you have to believe that men can decide to be women, and women men. You have to believe that there is nothing morally troubling about abortion. You have to believe that there was an attempted coup by a crowd of people pushing into the Capitol Building. You have to believe that human equality is a racist concept. And so on and on, with a new impossibility seemingly added every day.

A lot of people are surprised to find themselves on the right. Including Dave Rubin. Or me.

Surely this means the left must implode. It falls under the category of “extraordinary popular delusions and the madness of crowds.” Such movements generally end with a crash, as everyone suddenly sobers up. 

Indeed, those on the left seem to be deliberately pushing into more and more ridiculous contradictions, as though desperate to be called out.

I fear they are implicitly calling for a dictator, some strong parent-like voice that will take over the responsibility and discipline they are having trouble with and tell them what to believe. A daddy who will set some boundaries.  A Charlie Manson or a Hitler, possibly. Or a Mark Zuckerberg, a Tony Fauci, or a Jordan Peterson.

It bears remembering that Hitler and Mussolini arose on the left, not the right.

Faith and Reason

 

Allegory of Faith, Vermeer

Another possible objection to Christianity, noted in my 1982 diary:

“Religion is unreasoning—blind faith. Truth must be worked out by reasonable discussion among reasonable people. Blind faith is fanaticism, and can only lead to conflict.”

This is a common and deadly misunderstanding. I blame Martin Luther and his doctrine of sola fides, “salvation by faith alone.”

A Protestant once challenged me with what I would do if I decided that some key teaching of the Catholic Church was wrong. He claimed shock at my immediate answer: that I would leave the Church. Had I no faith?

 “Faith” does not mean arbitrary belief, but trust, or having the courage of one’s convictions. As you might say, “I have faith in my wife.” That does not mean you arbitrarily decide she exists, and it is not a conviction arrived at with no evidence.

True faith or belief must be evidence- and reason-based. Catholicism is relentlessly rational.

One believes in whatever religion one believes in, follows whatever faith one follows, because after sincere examination to the best of your abilities, it is the most reasonable account of the universe. 

Anything else makes you a madman, an idiot, or a scoundrel.

The Seventh Day

 

One objection to Christianity, appearing in my 1982 notebook, is that it takes too much time.

“Religion may be an admirable thing, but I am too busy meeting the demands of this world to give time and energy to the demands of a hypothetical next.”

This obviously had to do with ritual requirements: attending mass, not studying on Sunday, praying regularly.

Hinduism seems to acknowledge the issue. It speaks of life stages. In mid-life, as a householder, you have family responsibilities. They take precedence. After the children have grown, you become a sanyassin, a seeker, and may retreat to the forest.

Also reassuring is Jesus’s dictum that “the Sabbath is for man, not man for the Sabbath.” 

The full text of the Third Commandment reads:

Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD your God. In it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates.

Sounds like the intent is to give everyone a holiday, not some new duty. Presumably, then, one is not obligated to take the time off if it becomes a burden rather than a respite.

It would seem to follow that, similarly, prayer is for man’s benefit, not God’s. Not an obligation, but an available grace. 

Saint Theresa, they say, was once upbraided for falling asleep during prayer time. Her response: “Surely God loves me as much asleep as awake.”

It seems perverse, then, to frame it as an obligation. The obligation, rather, is to seek truth, beauty, and the good. That is what life is for, and it might be accomplished best by studying on Sunday.

I am accordingly suspicious of the Catholic Church’s commandment that one has an obligation to attend mass. I honour it, personally, but I am not confident that it is the divine intent. It does not reflect the actual commandment, which speaks only of rest.

Many who attend do not seem to me to be Christians, but Pharisees, who merely want to be seen publicly praying. Public attendance and visible fellowship feels at times like endorsing this hypocrisy. If it feels wrong to take credit for attending mass, and it does, it equally feels wrong to condemn anyone for not attending.

“Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven….

“And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.” (Matthew 6:1-6)

The Church of course needs mass attendance for its financial support. That said, it is indeed important to give the church financial support, as the vessel preserving the deposit of faith.

But the point is the leisure of the Sabbath is for contemplation and study. This is true worship: to take the time to ensure that one is on the right path. If one is not, all one does the other six days of the week is wasted or worse. One takes this time each week to seek the true, the good, and, as the third reliable indication of the presence of the divine, the beautiful.

Aside from the Eucharist, this quest may or may not, at the present day, lead you to mass at the nearest parish. It is plausible that one might find something else more valuable: reading the Bible, reading Aquinas, watching Jordan Peterson YouTube videos, going to the art gallery, or a long walk in the snow. Sadly, the music of the mass is now inane. The language of the mass is not particularly inspiring; many think Latin was better, and it certainly lacks the poetry of, say, the King James Bible. The sermon is usually pedestrian and rarely offers new insights.

This may explain why mass attendance is down. In former years, there were fewer alternatives. Getting dressed up and attending was a notable form of entertainment, of diversion. As competition for our attention has gotten fiercer, instead of making it more beautiful or entertaining, the Church has made it more mundane. Fundamental blunder.

Entering a church should feel like entering another world. It should make the next appear more than merely hypothetical. When it does not, we have some justification in seeking our Sabbath elsewhere.

Invictus

 

The blind and the lame.

In my diary from 1982, I listed my reasons for doubt about Christianity. These may be of some interest.

First objection: “religion is a crutch.” Surely it is nobler to face life as it is, with no illusions that everything will turn out all right. 

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

Looms but the Horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate

I am the captain of my soul.

I answer that, if you are lame, is it smart or brave to refuse a crutch? Isn’t it smarter and braver to face your own infirmity, and to improve?

If you are not lame, do you have any right to congratulate yourself for it?

Was it thanks to your own efforts if you were not struck lame with childhood polio? Was it thanks to your own efforts if you were not born mentally retarded? That you were born, say, into a middle-class family in a prosperous part of the world?

God—or “luck”—has been good to you if you can mouth such swaggering lines. You are not in command, and you are simply being ungrateful. You have no right to take the credit, any more than to look down on those less fortunate.

So you reckoned, my bright young mastodon,

That God was a crutch for the lame.

And you’d call the lame man a loser,

As if loss were a reason for shame.

Go, walk down the darkening morning

As one not accustomed to beg

And hold your head high as a street lamp

Till you feel a sharp pain in your leg.

And, hey, look over your shoulder;

An old man is dressing to grieve.

And he’s hiding an ace in his pocket watch

And he’s hiding a laugh up his sleeve.

 

-- Stephen Kent Roney

A Vision of Fifty Years Ago

 

I discovered recently a notebook I kept back in 1982 or so. I was reflecting, in turn, on an event that took place ten years earlier, an important moment in my own spiritual journey.

It was the first winter of Elrond College, a student-owned high-rise co-op designed by and for Queen’s University students who considered themselves of the left or of the cultural avant garde.

It was towards evening, and towards Christmas. Snow was falling on the abandoned gas station across Princess Street. A Salvation Army band gathered in a circle of lamplight, and began to serenade. Not well, as I recall, but with some spirit. I opened the window to listen. It seemed to me a grace note just before exams.

What I soon heard instead were hoots and jeers from heads at other windows. 

The band persisted. The enraged spectators started to throw wads of paper. 

I felt suddenly, utterly alienated from my generational and intellectual peers. 

I can understand the annoyance of the other students. It was exam time. They had to study.

But I felt Mary had chosen the better part. What was it all for, anyway?

At around the same time, I had either a dream or a waking vision that society had descended into trench warfare. And I found myself, to my shock, fighting alongside evangelical Christians, against the left of which I thought I was a part, for basic human liberty.

The dream or vision seems to have been prophetic. Fifty years later, that is almost where we are.

I Ain't Afraid of No Ghosts

 

There is a common misconception that Christians do not believe in ghosts. See the video clip.

No religion that denied the existence of ghosts would be worthy of attention. My own misunderstanding that Christianity did not believe in ghosts held me back from full-hearted commitment to Christianity at one point. Of course there are ghosts. People all over the world report encounters. This denial made Christianity look less like a conduit to the next world than a charade in defense of philistinism. It looked like trying not to think about the next life. It looked like whistling past the graveyard.

Gerald, the resident Christian voice in the clip, explains that there is a prohibition in the Old Testament against trying to consult with the dead.

If so, Jesus is guilty of this sin.

Matthew 17: 1-3: 

After six days Jesus took with him Peter, James and John the brother of James, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. There he was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light. Just then there appeared before them Moses and Elijah, talking with Jesus.

The event is in three gospels, and referred to in the fourth.

What is prohibited is necromancy. That is, divination: calling upon the spirits to tell you the future. This implies a lack of trust in God, and in divine free will.

This has been cooked into a prohibition on contact with the dead by Protestant theologians who want to discourage prayer to the saints and a belief in purgatory, ultimately because this allows for indulgences, which Martin Luther saw as corrupt. So some protestant groups do not believe I ghosts. But most Christians are Catholic or Orthodox, and do.

Gerald then explains that communication with the dead is not possible: “there is no coming back.” Apart from the Transfiguration, already cited, the prophet Simon is successfully summoned from the afterlife in the Old Testament (1 Samuel 28). Not to mention Lazarus. Or, er, Jesus Christ.

Gerald cites the story of the rich man and (the other) Lazarus, as his evidence. There, he submits, it is not possible for Lazarus to return to earth to warn the rich man’s relatives. 

But this is not what the story says. 

He said, ‘Then, father, I beg you to send him to my father’s house—for I have five brothers—that he may warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment.’ Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.’ He said, ‘No, father Abraham; but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”

Abraham’s refusal makes it clear that Lazarus could go. But it would be futile. If there were capable of ignoring the Mosaic law, they will ignore a ghost. As many do in the modern world. God gives us what we need to know; he does not pressure or bully us. Nor should we do right merely from fear of punishment.

This passage endorses Judaism as a perfectly sufficient religion. The “someone rising from the dead” is surely a reference to Jesus.

Why doesn’t the rich man go himself to war his brothers?  Asking Lazarus to go implies that he understands Lazarus is in a different position. Souls in hell cannot appear to those on earth, it seems. But souls in heaven can.

Stephen Crowder then chimes in to deny that one’s dead relatives look down on you from heaven. “Angels are not human.”

They can be. As St. Augustine points out, “angel” is not a class of being, but an office, that of messenger between heaven and earth. There are various classes of spiritual beings: seraphim, cherubim, and so forth. But there are also the spirits of the dead, and there is no reason they cannot perform this function. 

Indeed, this is the function of the saints, and to deny it happens is to deny the saints.

And when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each holding a harp, and with golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. – Revelations.

Even if they are not emissaries between earth and heaven, why wouldn’t the sainted dead continue to be interested in those they love on earth?

If heaven is the fulfilment of our desires, how could heaven be heaven for a good, unselfish man or woman if they could no longer see or know what is happening with their loved ones still in the world below, and, indeed, could not help them in some way?

Crowder avoids the problem by suggesting that everyone enters heaven at the same moment, because this is the nature of eternity. 

This is not the teaching of the Catholic Church; otherwise there would be no distinction between the particular judgement at death and the general judgement at the end of time. Nor does it work conceptually. Time is something of value: without time, there is no music, no prayer, no deeds, no games, no stories, no poetry, no art, no thought. All require duration. Therefore, heaven would be a profoundly inadequate place, not heaven at all, if there were no time. Rather, time is to heaven as space is as seen from a mountaintop—one reason why heaven is pictured as above us. You can observe any moment, past or future. Just as you can the three dimensions of space.

So a good Catholic believes in ghosts. The beings we encounter as ghosts might in any instance be angels or demons. But they might also be what they appear to be, or claim to be: the spirits of the departed, speaking to us from heaven or from purgatory.

We Three Kings

 

The Magi

 

 Now as at all times I can see in the mind's eye,

In their stiff, painted clothes, the pale unsatisfied ones

Appear and disappear in the blue depths of the sky

With all their ancient faces like rain-beaten stones,

And all their helms of silver hovering side by side,

And all their eyes still fixed, hoping to find once more,

Being by Calvary's turbulence unsatisfied,

The uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor.

-- W.B. Yeats 

The Journey of the Magi

 

In honour of Epiphany, the Twelfth and final day of Christmas.

“A cold coming we had of it,

Just the worst time of the year

For a journey, and such a long journey:

The ways deep and the weather sharp,

The very dead of winter.”

And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,

Lying down in the melting snow.

There were times we regretted

The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,

And the silken girls bringing sherbet.

Then the camel men cursing and grumbling

And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,

And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,

And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly

And the villages dirty and charging high prices:

A hard time we had of it.

At the end we preferred to travel all night,

Sleeping in snatches,

With the voices singing in our ears, saying

All this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,

Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;

With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,

And three trees on the low sky,

And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.

Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,

Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,

And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.

But there was no information, and so we continued

And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon

Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,

And I would do it again, but set down

This set down

This: were we led all that way for

Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,

We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,

But had thought they were different; this Birth was

Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.

We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,

But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,

With an alien people clutching their gods.

I should be glad of another death."

--T.S. Eliot 

The Ship Comes In

 

Adeste Fidelis

 

A Swedish Christmas?

 

Jordan Peterson on God

 

I am not a fan of Jordan Peterson. I respect his political stands, but as a thinker I find him incoherent.

Whenever he makes a statement, he tags on the phrase “in a sense.” And then does not explain further. Without defining the sense in which he means the statement, this just makes everything both irrefutable and trivial. There is a sense, after all, in which the earth is flat, and the moon is made of green cheese. It breaks Aristotle’s Law of Non-Contradiction: either a thing is so, or it is not so. Since this is the foundation of all logical thought, no conclusions can now be drawn. All we know is what Peterson, personally, is feeling. This is not of any intrinsic interest, unless Peterson is otherwise special in some way. Maybe you feel the same, maybe you don’t.

I fear this might even be the kernel of some bizarre personality cult, like the Nazi leadership principle. It makes Peterson the centre of the universe.

As for his “Twelve Rules for Life,” to be fair, I have not been inspired to read it. But it seems obvious to me that he has no authority to lay down rules for life. No doubt he claims it is based on his experience with patients in clinical psychology. But any such clinical evidence is necessarily third hand, involves far too small a sample to be meaningful, and too may possible variables to draw any conclusions. All we are really getting, in Peterson’s case or in that of any other clinical psychologist, is his personal opinions and the conclusions he has drawn from his personal experience. This necessarily being so, on what grounds can we value his perspective on life over that of the next man we meet on a street corner?

More disturbingly, what sort of personality feels justified in setting down general rules for life based on their own experience? He might be leading anyone down a primrose path, and must know this.

He is, in other words, necessarily a narcissist. And the eagerness with which so many follow his commentary on every conceivable issue is an illustration of how co-dependency works. Too many want someone else to think for them.

Consider now his responses to the question whether he believes in God.

He asks, “Does saying I believe in God mean that I believe in God?” One might lie, but this is true of any response to any legitimate question. Why raise some special difficulty here? He is doing exactly what he insists he is not doing, and transparently: he is dodging the question. And he thinks he insulated himself from the charge simply be denying he is doing it. A typical narcissistic stance. “I’m not lying.”

The underlying problem is that Peterson thinks that if he admits God exists, this implies moral obligations. He says, incoherently, “what you believe is what you act out.” It is not. These are two separate issues. But it implies the incoherent thought that, so long as he does not consent to God’s existence, he can avoid these obligations.

This is a childlike error, like the baby playing peekaboo who thinks you cannot see him if he closes his eyes. If God exists, you cannot escape the implications by telling yourself he does not. Any more than you can fly by telling yourself that gravity does not exist.

Nevertheless, this is just how denial works. It is how narcissism works, and why you cannot ever get through to them, even with obvious facts and truths. They will not accept what they find it inconvenient to believe.

Peterson is not the man to listen to.

Tenured Professor Fired for Trying to Help Canadian Indians

 

Tenure is designed to prevent exactly this.