Showing posts with label false gods. Show all posts
Showing posts with label false gods. Show all posts

Monday, January 23, 2012

The tragedy of Joe Paterno


Joe Paterno is dead, and his tragedy is complete.


Now all that is left to do is attempt not to speak too ill of the dead, and for some to urge us to remember the good of the fired Penn State football legend's life -- not just the inaction that doomed God knows how many young people to a fate scarcely better than death. Or perhaps worse than death, I cannot say for certain.

As it turned out, negligence, shame and humiliation turned out to be the final chapter in the story of JoePa's life. In the movies, even Darth Vader got the opportunity to redeem himself in the end. The old coach did not.

In the unblinking eye of history, his legacy will forever rest somewhere on the Dark Side. For every million dollars he gave to Penn State, for every heartfelt tribute by a former player, for any number of lives he impacted for the good -- for all these things there will be the damning counterweight of young lives wrecked and childhood innocence stolen because the most powerful man in State College, Pa., behaved as a befuddled coward when it really mattered.


THE MYTH of virtue and greatness crumbled into ignominy, and then a disgraced old man died.

In
Star Wars, the dark lord got one last chance to make a crooked path straight and forsake the shadows for the light. Darth Vader got one last chance to argue for posterity -- for himself and through his actions -- that the sum of his sins did not exceed the good that remained. That, ultimately, Anakin Skywalker could not be subsumed.

That's Hollywood for you.

Real life often isn't so kind, even to a football legend. Joe Paterno never got to make a crooked reputation straight once more. It is left to his surrogates to beg history for mercy on his behalf.

Let us be careful with every chapter of our lives. We never know which will be the last.

Tuesday, December 06, 2011

Zuzu explains it all


Sometimes, it's not such a wonderful life.


Sometimes, when you hit December, this time of good cheer and good will toward men, you're running low on both. You are tired. You have been beaten down by a world of bad will and bad tidings, and if success ever came calling on you, there'd probably be no room at the inn.

For trouble, there's plenty of room. Because that's how the world rolls.

You feel alone in the world, and if your mother told you she loved you, you'd feel compelled to confirm it with at least two independent sources. Preferably, there would be something on paper somewhere -- not that you would be able to find it.

Meantime, being that the world has you convinced you're a great big failure, you seek inspiration among folks our world holds up as successful. You take a hard look at who they are and how they got where you'd like to be . . . and you conclude that if these societal role models were in Texas, somebody surely would say they "just need killin'." (See "Investment bankers, Wall Street.")

Then you conclude that's just false hope talking.


SO THERE you are. Feeling alone. Stressed out. A giant, screaming failure -- one way or another. You don't love you, and you're fairly certain God is ambivalent on the subject.

Merry expletive-deleted Christmas. The only reason you didn't get pepper sprayed at Wal-Mart on Black Friday was because the last shred of dignity you have left hinges on not being the sort of person who puts himself in a position to get pepper sprayed at Wal-Mart on Black Friday. So you have that going for you, at least.

Zuzu feels your pain.

Well, at least Karolyn Grimes -- she who was so sure about what happened to angels whenever a bell rang in
It's a Wonderful Life -- feels your pain. Being a movie icon offers little protection when the world decides to crash down upon you.

But sometimes, underneath the rubble and amid the ruin, there is a wisdom that surpasses what we understood to be true. We live, we suffer and -- as "Zuzu" tells
The Washington Post from the perspective of now being 71 and having suffered . . . a lot -- the truth is where it is.

And God is where He is. Which isn't necessarily where we presume Him to be.
“My life has never been wonderful,” she offered quietly. “Maybe when I was a child, but not after age 15.”

“And maybe that’s what makes the film so important for me and a lot of other people,” she continued. “The Jimmy Stewart George is suffering terribly in the movie — you can just see it. He’s in Martini’s cafĂ© and saying to himself, ‘God, I’m not a praying man, but please show me the way.’ ”

“Gosh, it makes me cry,” she said.

“It’s not a Christmas movie, not a movie about Jesus or Bethlehem or anything religious like that,” she insisted. “It’s about how we have to face life with a lot of uncertainty, and even though nobody hears it, most of us ask God to show us the way when things get really hard.

“That was part of Capra’s genius,” she said. “Everybody has some sorrow, worry, and everybody asks God for help. One way or the other, we all do, and it can be in Martini’s, not a church on Christmas.”

Francis Caraccilo, a preservationist in Seneca Falls and an organizer of the annual “It’s a Wonderful Life” celebration, believes Capra’s film addresses other important issues. “For a lot of historians and people who just watch the film closely, the movie’s relevance includes the fact that it addresses anti-immigrant sentiments and religious bigotry,” pointing to the scene where the evil banker Potter complains that George Bailey is helping “garlic eaters” buy homes.

“Italian Americans appear throughout the film,” said Caraccilo, himself an Italian American. “When Capra came through this town, it was clear that anti-immigrant and not-too-subtle hostility toward Catholics was part of the American social landscape in 1946.”

“There’s a generous heart in this movie,” he said. “Think about that for a moment in 2011.”
THINK ABOUT THAT for several moments.

Maybe life is wonderful, after all. Maybe what's not so wonderful is how much room we allow Henry F. Potter in our hearts and in our culture . . . and how little is left for George Bailey. We say we long for Bedford Falls, yet we double down on
the Pottersville that we've been sold.

You could pray about this at your church of the almighty annual appeal and happy-clappy, dinner-theater hymns to the triumphant self. On the other hand, you could get serious, pop into Martini's, order a double bourbon and go for broke.
"Dear Father in heaven, I'm not a praying man, but if you're up there and can hear me, show me the way. I'm at the end of my rope. Show me the way, God."

Thursday, November 10, 2011

He seemed like a real nice guy

Coach Paterno will go down in history as one of the greatest men. Most of you know him as a great football coach. I've had the privilege and honor to work for him, spend time with him. He's had such a dynamic impact on so many, so many — I'll say it again — so many people and players' lives.

-- Tom Bradley,
Penn State interim coach


President Clinton was so darling to me, and as loyal and faithful a man as you can find. I remember he was so sweet about a blue dress I used to have. Before it was evidence. He said I was so pretty in it. He was always considerate of others that way.

-- Monica Lewinsky,
former White House intern


Richard Nixon was always concerned about the law. Also, he was such a faithful and religious man. He was always talking about God and Jesus. I remember how it'd just pop out of the depths of his soul -- like, he was always telling me "Jesus Christ, Henry!" Or, "Goddamn it to hell!" He was always eager to see more divine justice in the world.

Once, in the Oval Office close to that unfortunate day, he even begged me to pray with him. Such a spiritual and holy man, he was.


-- Henry Kissinger,
former secretary of state


Dolphie is a great, great man. He makes the trains run on time . . . and the autobahn! It's to die for.

Der FĂĽhrer is such und sweethearten, auch! He always tells me, "Eva, Sie werden
nie haff to worry at alles about beink senten to den Konzentrationslagern. We will be together for as long as we live."

Und he likes puppies, auch.


-- Eva Braun,
Reichsmistress
(March 1945)

'We are . . . Penn State!'


Oh, goody.

I think I've just located the one generation s****ier than my own.

That would be my generation's children. As a Baby Boomer, I'm so proud . . . not.

If we had any honesty and shame about us, we'd clothe ourselves in sackcloth and
cover ourselves in ashes at the sight of the Neanderthal darlings we've so carefully taught on the prowl at Penn State, rioting against the reappearance of rectitude in its besoiled halls.

Of course, The New York Times has all the news that's fit to weep over, as America dies a little more every day:
“I think the point people are trying to make is the media is responsible for Joe Pa going down,” said freshman Mike Clark, 18, adding that he believed Mr. Paterno met both his legal and moral responsibility by telling university authorities about Mr. Sandusky’s alleged 2002 assault on a boy in a school shower.

Demonstrators tore down two lampposts, one falling into a crowd of students. They also threw rocks and fireworks at police, who responded with pepper spray. The crowd undulated like an accordion, with the students crowding the police and the officers pushing them back.

“We got rowdy and we got maced,” Jeff Heim, 19, said rubbing his red, teary eyes. “But make no mistake, the board started this riot by firing our coach. They tarnished a legend.”

An orderly crowd first filled the lawn in front of Old Main when news of Mr. Paterno’s firing came via students’ cell phones. When the crowd took to the downtown streets, it’s anger and intensity swelled. Students shouted “We are Penn State.”

Some blew vuvuzelas, others air horns. One young man sounded reveille on a trumpet. Four girls in heels danced on the roof of a parked SUV and dented it when they fell after a group of men shook the vehicle. A few, like Justin Muir, 20, a junior studying hotel and restaurant management, threw rolls of toilet paper into the trees.

“It’s not fair,” Mr. Muir said hurling a white ribbon. “The board is an embarrassment to our school and a disservice to the student population.”

(snip)

Greg Becker, 19, a freshman studying computer science, said he felt he had to vent his feelings anyway.

“This definitely looks bad for our school,” he said sprinting away from a cloud of spray. “I’m sure Joe Pa wouldn’t want this, but this is just an uproar now, we’re finding a way to express our anger.”

As the crowd got more aggressive, so did police officers. Some rioters fought back. One man in gas mask rushed a half dozen police officers in protective gear, blasted one officer with spray underneath his safety mask and then sprinted away. The officer lay on the ground, rubbing his eyes.

Paul Howard, 24, an aerospace engineering student, jeered the police.

“Of course we’re going to riot,” he said. “What do they expect when they tell us at 10 o’clock that they fired our football coach?”


OF COURSE they're going to riot, for they're a bunch of overindulged, self-centered moral black holes. Just like my generation raised them to be.

Because the board trying to clean up a child-molestation scandal "
is an embarrassment to our school and a disservice to the student population." And because it's important that collegians find "a way to express our anger.”

Not only do we find that in a world without God, "everything is permitted," but that it most certainly will happen if you take away people's false gods as well.
Like Joe Paterno and Nittany Lion football.

The narcissistic little goons of Penn State are the spawn of my narcissistic generation, which majored in idolatry back in the day and called it "the New Morality." We were looking for hope, but settled for peacesexdope, then raised a Millennial tribe poised to settle for even less.

How very devo -- D-E-V-O -- is the over-educated mob that's not only become living proof of de-evolution, but also has made prophets out of a kitschy New Wave aggregation from the late '70s and early '80s. Naturally.

Jocko homo, y'all.

Here's more proof of our present de-evolutionary state. The parents of Penn State's precious little Visigoths used to do this kind of stuff to protest a bloody and unnecessary war in Vietnam. Their children, however, do this kind of stuff to protest trustees firing a football coach who cared more about keeping up appearances than about stopping an alleged child-rapist when he had the chance. A man who loved to talk about "character" but lacked the guts to exhibit even a little of it when it counted.

"We are . . . Penn Rape!"

That would be truth in advertising for the barbarian hordes of Happy Valley.

HOW FITTING that the carefully constructed illusion of Penn State as some sort of honorable, model institution would come crashing down along with the carefully constructed illusion that was the man who built it -- Joe Paterno.

Cry me a river, you little bastards. More tear gas, please!

Wednesday, November 09, 2011

JoePa knew. They don't care.


JoePa knew.

In 2002, according to a Pennsylvania grand jury, a graduate-assistant coach, then 28 years old, told Penn State's living-legend football coach, Joe Paterno, that he saw former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky anally raping a little boy in the locker-room shower. That sounds bad -- anally raping. A little boy, maybe 10 or so.

It's not nearly as ugly as the reality of such a thing. If I were more explicit, this post would be pornographic and you would be right to run screaming into the street and never to this cyberspace return.

JoePa knew.

JoePa's reaction? He kicked the matter upstairs. He didn't call the cops or any other civil authority to report what he'd heard.
He then, apparently, washed his hands of the matter.

Paterno spent the next nine years doing nothing as the alleged raper of little boys kept an office in the football complex. Participated in youth football clinics. Ran a foundation devoted to at-risk youth (little did parents know how at-risk their youth might have been). Kept showing up at Nittany Lion practices with little at-risk boys he was "mentoring."



SO THAT'S what they call it now. "Mentoring."

JoePa knew. JoePa washed his hands of the matter. You know, like Pontius Pilate washed his hands of that little Jesus Christ matter and sent Him off to Golgotha. Beaten. Scourged. Mocked. Crucified.

But at least no one ever anally raped the Savior of the world and left Him to live with the aftermath.

At the Pennsylvania State University, Pontius Pilate could be a reformer --
a change agent.

This is what Joe Paterno obviously did. This is the man Penn State students in the above videos are rallying to save. It's like a pep rally for evil.

"We have no king but Caesar! We have no god but football! No savior but JoePa!"

The idiotic mob outside the Paterno home -- the ones wilding across campus and through State College, Pa. -- are nothing more than idolaters, violators in extremis of the First Commandment:
I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them or serve them.3

It is written: "You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve."
TO THE chanting rabble of much education and no perspective, Penn State football is a modern-day golden calf. The idol pushing not only God out of their hearts, but also justice and rightly ordered compassion.

JoePa knew. They don't care.

Back in the day, the Lord had a game plan for dealing with those who forged the golden idol and fell down before it while Moses was otherwise occupied receiving the Ten Commandments. God was going to kill them all and start over, bringing forth a new chosen people out of Moses himself.

Moses argued and pleaded on behalf of his unfaithful charges, and the Lord ultimately withheld His wrath.

I don't know about you, but I don't see a Moses amid that whole wicked bunch in State College. I don't see one anywhere else across the fruited plain, this vast land of countless false idols.

And as JoePa's little pagans dance around the golden calf of Penn State football, that inconvenient truth is something the legendary coach won't be able to wash his hands of.

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Of pipelines, poseurs and posturing putzes


On a continent 100-percent wrested from native Americans by the white man, and in a state where the United States Army rounded up the Ponca and forcibly delivered them into starvation in the Indian Territory, you have to have a lot of damned nerve to start whining about "not from here" and "carpetbaggers."

Of course, that doesn't stop some Nebraskans if there are political points to be scored.

Enter Jane Fleming Kleeb, who had the unmitigated nerve to have been born in Florida. But it gets worse. She also had the gall to have married a "Nebraskan" raised overseas . . . who has a Ph.D. from Yale. Yale!

But it gets worse than that. The Kleebs are Democrats, and they run for office -- he for the U.S. House and Senate, she for the Hastings school board.

But it gets worse than even that. Jane started something called BOLD Nebraska. We hear that it's full of lib'ruls and "radical enviro cronies" and stuff.

Furthermore, BOLD Nebraska is against the Keystone XL pipeline, through which TransCanada wants to pump Canadian "tar sands" oil trans-Nebraska on the way to Gulf Coast refineries. Kleeb had the gall to suggest it might really screw up the Nebraska Sandhills -- and the massive aquifer below them -- if this new project started belching the corrosive gunk across one of America's most environmentally sensitive regions.

Tuesday in Lincoln, Kleeb and her "radical enviro cronies" were brazen enough to pack a U.S. State Department hearing on the pipeline.


But --
Dare I say it? Can you stand it? -- it gets even worse than that. Take a nitroglycerine pill. Please.

OK, I'm just going to come out with it. In the course of her carpetbagging opposition to controversial Canadian toxic-sludge pipelines traversing much of Nebraska's water supply, Jane Kleeb. . . .

Jane Kleeb . . . .

The outsider, the carpetbagger Jane Kleeb. . . .


I CAN'T even say it, it's so horrible. The Leavenworth St. blog, as loyal and authentic a Nebraska institution as there is -- it's Republican! -- is made of sturdier stuff than I, so I'll just let it break the awful news:
Jane Kleeb likes to stick out like whenever she is out protesting or marching or generally putting on the pouty face with hands on hips.

Well she was making herself “be seen” at Pershing Auditorium in Lincoln yesterday during the State Department hearings on the Keystone XL Pipeline.

But what was she wearing? Take a look.

Yes folks, that is a “Future Farmers of America” jacket.

(snip)

We are sure Jane will say she was “urged” to wear it, or she didn’t know the rules, or she was trying to represent or some other breathless retort.


But we get it Jane. We get it with the jeans tucked into your boots and the giant belt buckle and now the FFA jacket:

You’re a poser. You are pretending to be something you are not.

You know, like pretending to care about the Sandhills or aquifer, when you’re really just trying to stop the the Canadian oil at the behest of your radical enviro cronies and sugar daddies.

NO, THOSE engaging in the fine art of American politics never pretend to be something they're not. Absolutely unheard of.

Can you imagine Mitt Romney in blue jeans? George H.W. Bush in a supermarket checkout line? Michael Dukakis in a tank? Hillary Clinton speaking with a Southern drawl in a black Baptist church?

Michele Bachmann pretending like she's not six kinds of crazy?

Deal we must, though, with Jane Kleeb in cowboy boots . . . and a Future Farmers of America jacket.

Apparently, you're not supposed to wear cowboy boots unless your day job involves trudging through cow patties. And you're not supposed to wear an FFA jacket if you're not actually a member. It's kind of like present-day tea partiers -- who live in suburban comfort and only make vague threats about revolting against "tyrants" -- dressing up like it's 1775 and waving Gadsden flags.

Only worser.

In a comment, the state Republican Party Chairman Mark Fahleson explains how much worse:
Wow–that’s not really Jane Kleeb wearing an FFA jacket, is it? As the former president of the Waverly FFA Chapter who remains proud of and thankful for his FFA experience, I can assure you that the hallowed blue corduroy is sacrosanct. A non-member (even a former member like me) wearing the jacket is like a non-Catholic taking communion at Mass. Whether it’s non-physicians wearing white coats at pressers or faux cowboys posing as Nebraska ranchers, apparently what matters to Nebraska’s leftists is the visual, not the truth.
MIGHTY BIG TALK for someone from Kansas City, Mo., doing his level best to tar an "outsider" who stands against Canadian carpetbaggers (ones with a long history of leaky pipelines) cutting through the Nebraska Sandhills with a toxic-sludge superhighway.

Of course, I am not surprised that the head of the Nebraska GOP hails from Missouri. I'm from Louisiana, myself, and we Southerners know a thing or two about Republican carpetbaggers.

What really concerns me, though, is that someone can be so warped by politics and partisanship that he can compare an FFA jacket to the Holy Eucharist.

Catholics believe that the consecrated bread and wine has become the actual body, blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ. If you don't believe that, you have no business partaking of it, and you have real problems in calling yourself Catholic.

We call it "communion" for a reason -- it is both sign and cause of our unity as Catholics and of God within us. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says this about Holy Communion:

1324
The Eucharist is "the source and summit of the Christian life."136 "The other sacraments, and indeed all ecclesiastical ministries and works of the apostolate, are bound up with the Eucharist and are oriented toward it. For in the blessed Eucharist is contained the whole spiritual good of the Church, namely Christ himself, our Pasch."137

1325
"The Eucharist is the efficacious sign and sublime cause of that communion in the divine life and that unity of the People of God by which the Church is kept in being. It is the culmination both of God's action sanctifying the world in Christ and of the worship men offer to Christ and through him to the Father in the Holy Spirit."138

1326
Finally, by the Eucharistic celebration we already unite ourselves with the heavenly liturgy and anticipate eternal life, when God will be all in all.139

1327
In brief, the Eucharist is the sum and summary of our faith: "Our way of thinking is attuned to the Eucharist, and the Eucharist in turn confirms our way of thinking."140
AND THE Nebraska Republicans' secular sacrament of the day, the Holy FFA Jacket? It's just a jacket.

Granted, it means a lot to a lot of FFA members who earned one, but when you unstick yourself from stupid and gain a little perspective, you realize that blue corduroy jacket is a lot like the faux outrage of political hacks -- you can get along just fine without it. And them.

One of these things is not like the other


I write to you from a time near the end of our world.

I write to you from a time close to the tortured end of our ability to play both the Id and the superego against the middle --
and by "we," I mean Western civilization, for whatever that label is worth anymore. The hour is late, our world is crumbling, and the time has come for us to choose.

I suppose I could go on world without end about this, but I doubt I could shed much more light on the subject than I'm fixing to do very simply. You see, I am not a sophisticated man. Then again, our choice is not a sophisticated one.


Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

BASICALLY, we can choose to submit -- to God, to grace, to love and to each other. We can choose to live in truth and the light. We can choose to die to ourselves and to live for something -- Someone -- much greater.

This story (above) from the
NBC Nightly News is kind of what that looks like.


ALTERNATIVELY, we can choose the way of non servium -- I will not serve . . . you. Or God. Or truth. Or the light.

We can choose to serve only ourselves. And when my serving myself conflicts with you serving yourself, the law of the jungle must prevail. In a "top of the food chain" kind of world, he who belches last, belches best.

This interview from the BBC is kind of what that looks like.

When morality is fluid, God is Self and love has conditions, our fate is left to lawyers, guns and money.
For the s*** has hit the fan.

Choose wisely.

Tuesday, July 05, 2011

It takes a thief?


They don't make charismatic religious luminaries like they used to.

And even back in the day, especially in the Catholic universe, the record was spotty. For every Bishop Fulton Sheen, you also had a Father Charles Coughlin.

It's only gotten worse from there. Today, we have an entire order established by a dead, now-discredited pervert. We have bishops complicit in covering up child sexual abuse by priests.

We have a church in which the historical practice of Catholicism has become foreign to actual Catholics. And we have many "orthodox" Catholics so desperate for authenticity, authority and moral teaching that they latch on to the craziest things -- and people.

The list of such recent -- and, frankly, cultish -- figures is a long one, starting with the Rev. Marcial Maciel, serial abuser, personality-cult figure and founder of the Legion of Christ and its lay organization, Regnum Christi. Among them are "rock-star priests" like Father Ken Roberts, Father Thomas Euteneuer . . . and now Father John Corapi.

All have "fallen" amid sex scandals. All have diehard followers who, in some cases even years later, are sure "they" framed their man because he "told it like it is."

The desperation and confusion of the faithful amid the collapse of catechesis, practice and authority within Catholicism reminds me of the wayward penguin recently discovered in New Zealand. It had lost its bearings, swam far from its Antarctic home and was found eating wet sand, thinking it snow.

Catholics now are "liberal" or "conservative," warring factions rallying behind "orthodox" or "progressive" gurus and sure that God is on their side. Never do they wonder whether they are on God's.


And they follow their guru, like lemmings, to the edge of the abyss. Some jump. Others beg their guru not to leave them, because such dynamism is so hard to come by that the Kingdom of Heaven may not survive its loss. That may be an overstatement -- but not much of one.


IRONICALLY ENOUGH, it was Corapi who gave us the best explanation of our current sad state of affairs, both literal and figurative. The priest -- whose now-former religious order today adjudged him guilty of various transgressions, sexual and otherwise -- hypocritically, it now seems, "told it like it is" in an interview with Legatus magazine.

Maybe
"it takes a thief," so to speak.

When enough Catholics become true to their calling, a great power will be unleashed. The reason we have this mess, in my estimation, is because the vast majority of Catholics have not lived their faith. We have a billion Catholics on the face of the earth. If they knew their faith, lived their faith, loved their faith, I assure you that the world would be a very different place.

The United States, the situation would be profoundly different if we had 60-70 million Catholics truly living their faith. But, of course, as many as 80% don’t even go to Mass on Sunday — and that’s a precept! So we have a long way to go. But it has to be kind of grassroots, one person at a time. That is why the Church has always encouraged personal holiness, because that is where the reform is going to come from.

(snip)

I’ve been a harsh critic of ourselves, meaning the Church leadership — priests, bishops and theologians. I don’t think we’ve done a particularly good job in my lifetime. We’ve had great popes; the top of the hierarchy has always been fantastic. But we’ve had a serious problem with “middle management.” There has been a significant problem with bishops and priests. Although, it’s better now than it was 20 years ago. However, the vast majority of Catholics aren’t even going to Church, so we shouldn’t wonder that the Church has been losing its influence on an increasingly secularized society.

You have to ask yourself why people have drifted away. I’m sure there are a lot of societal reasons. We don’t have control over those reasons, but we have control over the reasons inside the Church. You can start with the top. There is an old saying: “The fish stinks from the head down.” Lousy leadership is a disaster.

I once asked an old Carmelite nun why we have a crisis of leadership inside the Church as well as in the secular order. She never batted an eye. She had been a nun for over 60 years and a prioress for decades. She said, “That’s easy. Punishment for sin.” Why do we have bad leadership? Punishment for sin. It’s very biblical. You go back to the Old Testament and you see that leadership was removed from the people of God, the chosen people, because of infidelity to the covenant. They cried out to God because they had no priest, prophet or king. Why not? Because they were unfaithful.

One can recall what happened during the tenure of Pope Paul VI, when he came out with his landmark and prophetic encyclical Humane Vitae. Significant numbers of bishops, priests, theologians and others rejected it. They absolutely rejected it. The majority of Canadian bishops signed the infamous Winnipeg Statement that just categorically rejected Humane Vitae. That kind of rebellion is catastrophic. Paul VI was prophetic with that encyclical and much of what he warned about has come to pass.
WHO KNEW that Father Corapi might be conducting field research on infidelity and the lack of personal holiness as he spoke?

Meantime, it's the rest of us who note yet another scandal by yet another proclaimer of the gospel, then get back to our field research on the ongoing "catastrophic" effects of the ongoing Catholic "crisis of leadership" and the rebellion of those who presume to fill the vacuum.

Monday, June 06, 2011

Somebody had to say it


It seems that this -- embodied in the tea party movement, the reigning conception of "conservatism," and those at the helm of the Republican Party today -- is America's "Ayn Rand moment."

And it is not a conservative meme being embraced by "God-fearing" conservatives all across the land, one that's absolutely pervasive across the country's Bible Belt. Instead, it is an absolutely radical one.

It is a movement devoted to turning traditional morality on its head, taking Darwinism out of the biology books and inserting it into the heart of civil society and relegating Father, Son and Holy Ghost to the ash heap of history . . . and the Sermon on the Mount with them.

It's deeply ironic, this embrace of a societal "fifth column" by all manner of folk most concerned about a fifth columnist in the White House. I'm sure Rand would have appreciated the irony, but I can't decide whether she would be horrified by the irrational embrace of objectivism by those she surely would deride as mediocrities and "second handers" or welcome the slack-jawed assistance.

It's rather like Homo sapiens taking a PAC donation from Neanderthals for Natural Selection.

You can't be a Christian and buy into Ayn Rand, too. Christianity and objectivism are mutually exclusive. This circle cannot be squared -- if you set out on a mission to "pick and choose" useful, non-contradictory parts of objectivism and the gospel of Jesus Christ to fashion into a blueprint for society, you wouldn't have enough of either to even rise to the level of incoherence.

And at long last, some folks
(above) are calling Republicans and tea partiers on their sins against both God and reason. You not only can't be a Christian and a Randian, but you can't even be a conservative while making like Atlas and shrugging.


DON'T TRUST ME, listen to what Ayn Rand herself had to say about faith and society. She never wanted to "conserve" anything about society as Americans understood it; she wanted to blow it up and replace it with one of her own conception.

Take particular note of what Rand says starting at 4:15 in this 1959 Mike Wallace interview.
WALLACE: You put this philosophy to work in your novel Atlas Shrugged. . .

RAND: That's right.

WALLACE: . . . you demonstrate it in human terms in your novel Atlas Shrugged. And let me start by quoting from a review of this novel, Atlas Shrugged, that appeared in Newsweek. It said that you are out to destroy almost every edifice in the contemporary American way of life, our Judeo-Christian religion, our modified, government-regulated capitalism, our rule by the majority will. Other reviews have said that you scorn churches and the concept of God. Are these accurate criticisms?

RAND: Uh, yes. I agree with the facts but not the estimate of these criticisms. Namely, if I am challenging the base of all these institutions, I am challenging the moral call of altruism -- the precept that man's moral duty is to live for others. That man must sacrifice himself to others, which is the present-day morality.

WALLACE: What do you mean by sacrifice himself for others? This is now where we're getting to the point. . . .

RAND: One moment. Since I am challenging the base, I necessarily would challenge the institutions you name, which are a result of that morality. And now what is self-sacrifice?

WALLACE: Yes, what is self-sacrifice? You say you do not like the altruism by which we live. You like a kind of Ayn Randist selfishness. . . .

RAND: I would say that don't like is too weak a word. I consider (it) evil, and self-sacrifice is the precept that man needs to serve others in order to justify his existence, that his moral duty is to serve others. That is what most people believe today.

WALLACE: Well, yes. We're taught to feel concern for our fellow man, to feel responsible for his welfare, to feel that we are, as religious people might put it, children under God and responsible one for the other. Now why do you rebel? What's wrong with this philosophy?

RAND: But that is what in fact makes man a sacrificial animal. That man must work for others, concern himself with others or be responsible for them. That is the role of a sacrificial object. I say that man is entitled to his own happiness, and that he must achieve it himself, but that he cannot demand that others give up their lives to make him happy. Nor should he wish to sacrifice himself for the happiness of others. I hold that man should have self-esteem.

WALLACE: And cannot man have self-esteem if he loves his fellow man? What's wrong with loving your fellow man? Christ -- every important moral leader in man's history -- has taught us that we should love one another. Why then is this kind of love, in your mind, immoral?

RAND: It is immoral if it is a love placed above oneself. It is more than immoral, it is impossible. Because when you are asked to love everybody indiscriminately, that is to love people without any standard, to love them regardless of the fact of whether they have and value or virture, you are asked to love nobody.
IF THIS IS WHAT conservatives are buying into nowadays, is there nothing they wish to actually conserve? Is there nothing under heaven or on earth they don't wish to commodify?

What's next?
Don't answer that.


WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, the father of modern conservatism -- when "conservatism" actually was "conservative" and not an ongoing, collective spasm of wild-eyed radicalism -- certainly knew the score.

He paints a picture of a woman who, come to think of it, may just be the personification of Tea Party America . . . Ebeneezer Scrooge with a penchant for grand pronouncements and purplish prose.

Listen, I can understand one having an Ayn Rand moment. As a young man, I had one myself.

But then you grow up. You realize that you're not half as exceptional as you once thought. You realize that you are not a self-contained, self-sustaining entity. You fall in love. You realize there may well be a God, and you are not Him.

And you realize that choices must be made. That the Randian circle cannot be squared -- not with God, not with your fellow man.

Finally, it comes to you with full clarity. You come to know this one thing:

If you're smitten with the works of Ayn Rand in your 20s, you're normal. If you're not over it by 30, you may be a monster.

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

It's a bird! It's a plane!


It's a frog!


A frog?


Not plane, nor bird, nor even frog . . .
it's just little old her . . .


The Alaska publicity hog.

I guess I could write 500 words on tea-party morons and idolatry, but I think I'll just go with
"homina homina homina homina," instead.

Good grief.

Thursday, September 09, 2010

F*** stuff


God bless the Landless Peasant Party.

And God save Angus X, wherever he might be after his unfortunate loss in the British national elections this spring.

An old friend was musing about the present doings of Land Is Power -- the party annual meeting is coming up Saturday at an Edinburgh cafe -- so I wandered over to the website of Angus X and the landless peasants . . . and found an amazing video.

No, really. That's it above --
The Story of Stuff. Please watch it.

WHEN I was watching this amazing presentation by Annie Leonard, I thought "This is pure Catholic social-justice kind of stuff here. I'll bet Glenn Beck hates it." And sure enough. . . .

Gosh, I feel so dumb now. The conservative ubercapitalists quickly reassured me by saying market efficiency and ongoing miniaturization will solve many of the problems of the sustainability and disposal of our abundant stuff.

Besides, we have a whole planet to be mined. We've barely scratched the surface. Why, if we mine deep enough -- through the earth's crust and well into the mantle, which we could do as technology advances -- we could have all the raw materials we need to make more and more stuff.

Deep extraction, that's the ticket. What could go wrong with that?

Like I said, The Story of Stuff is pretty standard Catholic social teaching. Don't believe me, look it up.

This little fact -- in addition to making Glenn Beck even crazier than usual -- also is likely to dismay one of the film's producers, the Tides Foundation, which believes we can best care for the poor and powerless of the world by helping them abort their poor and powerless offspring.

Sigh . . .
in a fallen world, nobody bats 1.000. Well, at least fetuses are biodegradable, right?

WE NOW return you to Angus X, who remains not safe for work . . . or the kids. But kind of spot on, nevertheless.

Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Schools aren't St. Helena's cup of tea


Welcome to Tea Party America.

When Mr. Beck goes to Washington to proclaim a Christian revival and preach the gospel of self-reliance and responsibility, in places like St. Helena Parish, La., that translates into "God helps those who help themselves." And in Louisiana, that may not mean what you think it does.

For example, in St. Helena Parish, God helps white parents who "help themselves" -- and their kids -- to private-school educations, oftentimes across the parish line. The Almighty also helps blacks -- who make up 95.1 percent of public-school enrollment despite comprising 53 percent the parish's population -- to facilities with crumbling walls, exposed wiring, filthy lunchrooms, sewer lines lying in open trenches . . . and snakes in the restroom.

Conditions are so bad that a federal judge has ordered parts of the parish's three schools cordoned off. And the state fire marshal wants fire alarms and electrical wiring fixed in 30 days.



THE PARISH'S civic culture (if you can call it that) is so dysfunctional that voters have shot down four school-tax measures in three years. This has led U.S. District Judge James J. Brady to consider raising the property tax by fiat.

Tea-party types are, of course, outraged. Not about children attending class in fetid, dangerous conditions, but instead about "taxation without representation," says the Lincoln Parish News Online blog:
St. Helena Parish is about to form a tea party to fight precisely what our forefathers fought over 200 years ago – taxation without representation. Alton Travis, a 12-year St. Helena school board member, has begun preliminary efforts to organize a group. “I’ve made some phone calls and I’m putting together a contact list,” Travis said.

Mr. Travis spoke earlier today with Lincoln Parish News Online (LPNO) from his home near Kentwood.

Last week, LPNO had reported about U. S. District Judge James Brady’s plans to impose a tax upon St. Helena residents without a vote. Brady is the former chairman of the Louisiana Democratic Party.

Travis said he has been in contact with the Baton Rouge Tea Party (BRTP) for help in organizing a group in St. Helena Parish. “I really don’t know why we’re talking about this,” said Travis in reference to taxes imposed by a judge contrary to voter’s wishes. “Things like that shouldn’t even be contemplated.”

Parish voters had previously turned down several attempts to pass new school taxes. On May 1, parish voters rejected a 55 mil property tax by a 62% margin. The tax issue has gone back over twenty years, according to Travis, and has been voted upon at least a dozen times.

Some have tried to portray a negative vote on school taxes as a racist vote, but as the parish is 52% black, it is clear that many blacks voted no on the tax. LPNO readers will recall how last fall’s defeat of a Baton Rouge tax was painted as “racist” by The (Baton Rouge) Advocate.


LEAVE IT to tea partiers to talk of "responsibility" to others while abdicating responsibility wholesale in their own back yards. The problem here is not a rogue federal judge potentially usurping beleaguered citizens' constitutional rights; the problem here is that selfish, irresponsible citizens hide behind self-government guarantees to carry out racially disproportionate child neglect, and do so with impunity.

The problem in Southern cesspools like St. Helena Parish, La., is not that the constitutional order has been usurped. The problem is that, in the wake of the Civil War, the feds ended Reconstruction about 50 years too soon.

Shame is a scarce commodity in St. Helena, and the latest story from
The Advocate is proof:
A report from the fire marshal is one of three reports from state agencies citing problems in St. Helena Parish public schools.

Air vents are causing contamination in the cafeteria of St. Helena Central Elementary School, a report by the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals states.

A state Department of Environmental Quality report cites problems of asbestos, mold-like substances and ceiling leaks in parish schools.

Earlier this month, a federal judge ordered inspections and reports on the schools.

The condition of the schools has become an issue in a 57-year-old desegregation lawsuit involving the St. Helena Parish school system.

Daisy Slan, the superintendent of parish schools, said Monday afternoon she needs help — mainly in the form of modular classrooms — as quickly as possible.

She said she is trying to get contractor quotes, but doesn’t see how she can meet the Fire Marshal’s deadline.

In addition to the age and condition of the main high-school structure, Slan said, “the problem is that we have buildings scattered all across the campus.”

Some of those buildings aren’t suitable for use as classrooms in their current condition, Fire Marshal H. “Butch” Browning said Monday.

The fire alarms and electrical issues are serious problems, he said.

The high school is being allowed to continue to operate for 30 days as long as it conducts regular fire watches and keeps logs of those fire watches, Browning said.
LISTEN NOT to what Glenn Beck and Friends proclaimed on the same Lincoln Memorial steps Martin Luther King spoke from 47 years before. Watch instead what the audience to whom they pander does when no one is looking.

Like neglect its own children -- or at least black children -- leaving them to languish in rotting buildings, amid all manner of contamination and be taught by grossly underpaid teachers.

Unsurprisingly, test scores are in the toilet. Along with the snakes.

Down there in Tea Party America.

Monday, August 30, 2010

Not 'recognizing his version of Christianity'


Mighty big talk for an alcoholic Mormon former pot- and cokehead, whose religion is a mishmash of at least two of the big early-Christian heresies filtered through -- according to Joseph Smith, at least -- a resurrected ancient Indian in New York state:
Conservative commentator Glenn Beck voiced sharper criticism of President Obama's religious beliefs on Sunday than he and other speakers offered from the podium of the rally Beck organized at the Lincoln Memorial a day earlier.

During an interview on "Fox News Sunday," which was filmed after Saturday's rally, Beck claimed that Obama "is a guy who understands the world through liberation theology, which is oppressor-and-victim."

"People aren't recognizing his version of Christianity," Beck added.
THAT'S THE first part of a piece in today's Washington Post outlining exactly how much nerve the crew-cutted one possesses. But wait . . . it gets better:
Beck, on his Fox News show last Tuesday, said that liberation theology is at the core of Obama's "belief structure."

"You see, it's all about victims and victimhood; oppressors and the oppressed; reparations, not repentance; collectivism, not individual salvation. I don't know what that is, other than it's not Muslim, it's not Christian. It's a perversion of the gospel of Jesus Christ as most Christians know it," Beck said.
YEAH . . . and if Mr. Beck keeps up his cable-TV perversion of Christianity in the name of ratings, profit and politics, he may just find out that hell is a lot more permanent than his religion would have us believe.


BY THE WAY,
if Hurricane Earl smacks into Washington, D.C., and drowns the whole place under a 25-foot storm surge right up the gut of the Potomac, can we assume it's because God is quite irate over Beck's little "revival"? You know, just like He wiped out New Orleans because of its debauchery.

Just asking.