In the life of every writer and journalist comes that moment where someone else says just perfectly the thing you wanted to say. Fortunately, in the Information Age, you can just link to him, and ask your readers to read his post. In this case, it is Dr Marshall at Canterbury Tales:
http://cantuar.blogspot.com/2012/10/pontius-pilate-and-pro-abortion.html
In last night’s US Vice-Presidential debate, our Vice-President said that he was a faithful Catholic and that he personally believed that life begins at conception. However, he is pro-choice because he doesn’t want to impose his belief on other people.What if Pontius Pilate said: “Me, personally, I believe you are the Messicanic Son of God. But I don’t want to impose that belief on the angry mobs outside. Sorry. You’re going to die.”Or what if he said, “Me, personally, I believe Americans enslaving Africans is morally evil. But I don’t want to impose that belief on America. It’s a very emotional topic. Let’s allow each plantation owner decide for himself.”
Well said, sir. Well said.
My question is this: who is Mr Biden’s father confessor? Who is his bishop?
The reason why I joined the Catholic Church is that I thought we would be this vast, world-girdling conspiracy, hierarchic, disciplined, a real Church Militant with real Church discipline. I was not expecting the Opus Dei albino assassins from Dan Brown, although that would have been nice, but I was expecting a little bit of leadership and discipline.
I was expecting the Church to reign in our members who are a scandal to the Church. Why has Mr Biden not been excommunicated, or, at least, been chastised for publicly repudiating the formal teachings of the Most Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church?
Dr Marshall concludes with this comment:
Catholic bishops, we are praying for you. These Catholic politicians are your sheep. They, like us, deserve to be taught and governed. When they run astray and make these statements on prime-time TV, we feel defeated. They deceive the Catholic faithful and lead Evangelical Protestants believe that we are all hypocrites. Please be our heroes. Set the record straight.Saint Ambrose of Milan, pray for us.
Amen.
For those of you unfamiliar with the tale, Saint Ambrose is he who closed the doors of the church in the face of the emperor Valentinian after that great world leader had massacred the city of Thessalonica. By St Ambrose it was shown to the world that even the emperor must walk, barefoot and penitent, like any other sinner to receive the grace of the sacraments.
Vice President Biden is a hypocrite, and idiot, and an embarrassment.
Coincidentally, I was in beautiful Milan on business two weeks ago.
In happier news: My copy of Orphans of Chaos arrived from Amazon today.
I hope the book is not as great a disappointment as Mr Biden. One word of warning: the book was written by an atheist, so there are the usual sneers against religion which atheists delight in peppering their conversation. I should have warned you before the sale. Forgive me.
It is, in spite of those and other, similar flaws, nevertheless a very fine book, and one which stirred the hairs on my head in several supremely wondrous and creepy moments.
Mom? Is that you?
THIS IS A JOKE. What I meant to say was thank you for your kind words. I suspect the reader’s contribution to the vivid images in your imagination may outweigh the writer’s contribution, but I am happy to have done my small part.
I was wondering exactly where the B.C./A.D. line came in your works. A blurb on the back cover of OoC compares it to the Chronicles of Narnia, so it must have been prophetic. Don’t worry. Judging by the quality of what your new man writes here on the blog, I’m sure your old man will at least have something interesting to say. And there’s not way to disappoint more than VP Biden. He’s the absolute zero of disappointment.
There are a few, but much fewer than one might expect, and in all fairness, when they appear they come from the mouths of characters who are not human — who are, in fact, older than both humanity and Christianity; it would be hard to reasonably expect them to think or speak well of what must seem to them like a Johnny-come-lately philosophy that is largely inapplicable to them anyway.
(Granted, at least one utterance comes from a being who does not know he is such when he says this — but at the time he thinks he is an English teenager, and expecting a male teenager not to be irreverent is also a bit of a long bet.)
Orphans of Chaos is a real delight. Harry Potter must be jealous that his application to St. Dymphna’s was rejected.
I detected very little that might offend any religious sensibilities, and even a few glimpses of the proto-gospel working in the author.
I am now in the middle of reading three trilogies: Lewis’s Space Trilogy, Vance’s Lyonesse, and the Chronicles of Chaos. Decisions, decisions.
John, this side discussion raises two questions:
1. What is the first book you wrote after your conversion?
2. Besides a change in attitude toward religion, in what ways has your conversion affected your writing?
1. I refuse to answer, because it amuses me when critics point at my atheist books and call them Christian apologetics. I invite anyone to buy all my books in hardback and read them carefully and see if they can spot the moment of the change.
2. I write Space Opera. It is stories about space heroes rescuing space princesses from space pirates. I do not see much if any change in my writing style. A change in religion might not have much influence on that. I like to think that I treated religious characters fairly even back when I was an atheist, and will treat irreligious characters fairly even now.
I will say that I am more and more tempted to write thinly disguised Christian apologetic in my science fiction as time goes on, only because, first, I get accused of it anyway by the orcs, and I am not likely to lose many readers, and, second, the world seems to need such a thing.
I have noticed a sharp drop in the number of Lesbian French Maid Spanking scenes in my recent book, SOUBRETTES OF GOR, however. This may have something to do with the beneficial influence of religion on my writing. I am instead writing about a young mindreading magical lion oppressed by a sadistic world dictatorship of the Keir Gray the Antichrist, called ASLAN IS A SLAN. Aside from this, I think the influence of faith on my muses has been minimal. I am not a genius like Gene Wolfe or JRR Tolkien, whose Catholic faith subtly informs their work. I am just a normal human, and only part time at that.
Here is the cheeriest thought I can come up with. Not saying it’s true, more that I hope it is true:
Imagine a long war. Over the years, the Enemy has managed to infiltrate the ranks, up to and including many senior officers, using lies and deceit to subvert all attempts at discipline, let alone effective offense. In the chaos and confusion fomented by the traitors and enemy agents, defectors are many, but many more are the useful idiots who aid the traitors while imagining they are loyal.
A new Commander arrives, and has to identify and purge the traitors, but must do so subtly and slowly in order keep the army together – many of the traitors are charismatic and charming, and will do everything in their power to destroy as much of the army as possible and to harm as many people as possible if they are forced out. In many divisions and squadrons, the traitors hold all or almost all leadership positions. Their strategy is to rot the army from within – they will always claim to be loyal, no matter how outlandish their other words and actions may be.
So, the Commander pursues the following strategy:
- personally proclaim the truths that the army is fighting for;
- take control of the military academies. Now the pipeline of future officers has been seriously contaminated, especially as many of the academies are lead by traitors or, more commonly, useful idiots. But over time the Commander can put loyal lieutenants in place.
- upon any pretext and at every opportunity, force out the idiots and traitors. Say they are too old and must retire, for example.
- promote loyal officers. Mover them into key positions. Undercut the traitors, restrain the idiots.
Finally, when enough loyalty has been restored to the army, when enough officers can be counted on the obey orders, then orders can be given. Even then (now), the Commander strives to reduce the number of casualties among his own troops, and especially the desertion of whole legions. The lies and confusion sown over the years will lead many to follow a traitor in the belief that, in doing so, they are in fact fighting the true war.
Of course, the loyal troops are the ones who suffer in all this – patience beyond endurance has been demanded from the foot soldiers who love the truth and hate the Enemy.
A little as 5 or 10 years ago, it would have been unimaginable that the US bishops would unanimously stand up to the demands of a liberal president, or that the LCWR would get investigated – just see the lies and subterfuge with which Nuns on the Bus counterattack, and imagine that strategy at the level of bishops – not too many years ago, that’s what would have happened. And the media would have backed them up, and millions of Catholics would have followed them, and church lands and resources would have been seized by the courts and handed to the defectors – in short, all the sad consequences of of open revolt to which history attests would have been replayed yet again.
So, do I wish Biden, Pelosi and that crowd were very publicly excommunicated yesterday, and their views denounced from every Catholic pulpit in the land? YES! Yet the church is much more focused and better lead than at any point in my lifetime. I think the leadership is very, very concerned with the smoldering wicks and the bruised reeds among us.
Is it time, finally, for the Church in America, like Thomas More, to say the truth and accept the martyrdom that comes with it? I both hope and fear it is.
Well said, Joseph! Amen!
Sean M. Brooks
One further thing: as flabbergasting as it is, many, many of those incredibly poorly catechized Catholics who got educated in Catholic schools in the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s & ’90s really, truly believe they are good Catholics – they sleep around, divorce and remarry, use birth control, get abortions – and feel that they are perfectly in keeping with Church. The Church IS them, after all.
That’s how bad, how evil, really, catechisis was. I know, I was there. Are these folks culpable? after years of regular schooling during which they learned not to think, and then getting spoon fed Kumbaya-in-a-circle-sitting-cross-legged-on-the-floor level religious education?
Today, it’s getting better, but that’s not saying much. My son recently came back from a Confirmation class and told us that he was the only kid who said, when they went around the room asking why they were there, that he wanted to be a full adult member of Catholic Church and to receive the Holy Spirit to that end. The others were largely there because mom told them they had to be.
Well, actually the correct answer is, “I want to have a seal put on my Baptism and to receive the Holy Spirit, and become a fully initiated member of the Catholic Church, just like any seven-year-old in the West or baby in the East has historically been.”
It’s this ageism thing that crept in, like a teenager is more human than an elementary kid, and it’s false equivalency, like the seal of Confirmation is the same as a bar mitzvah.
The Gifts of the Holy Spirit also help you evangelize, live as a Christian, and become more Christlike, while being protected against the world, the flesh, and the devil. Which is another reason to get Confirmed earlier than today’s US kids do.
Sure, but you can work with a kid who gives answer A above, while ‘my mom made me come’ is a little harder to navigate.
My wife tells me her catechism experience was supremely poor and the teachers (or nuns I forgot to ask) could not answer coherently the simplest of Biblical questions that occur to young minds. She did say the Catholic girls knew how to party the best.
I was playing video games at the time apparently!
We both recognized Biden’s double talk instantly however. Incredible from any perspective. A flat out evasion, it simply can’t honestly be done.
Hope it didn’t slip anyone’s notice about his point-blank face to camera lie about the HHS mandate.
I’m in an RCIA class. I find it somewhat on the one hand, deep, especially coming into the faith from a very fundamentalist, evangelical Christian background. On the other hand, it’s glib. I don’t know what to think sometimes. Our class is an hour and a half once a week, and while I’m learning many things, I sometimes don’t feel like it’s serious. There’s a disconnect somewhere that I can’t put my finger on.
Do not despair! As mentioned in my comment above, the Church is going through a renewal at a very fundamental level – we’re going from a very unserious (because irrational and fueled by bizarre wishful thinking) era into a very serious era (one that faces the grim reality of the present with hope), one in which a Catholic can, in many places, say the St. Michael prayer without getting sneered at. That’s the disconnect you’re sensing – the last generation taught us that we were all OK and were going to sing a new church into being anyway, so why get all worked up? This new generation is teaching that the way is narrow, we must pick up our crosses each day, that this life is but a moment to be used well in service of the Lord, and that our true enemies are not of this world. Those two views are going to be disconnected.
Persevere! Perhaps YOU are called to bring more seriousness to us all. Look at the likes of converts like Mr. Wright and Mark Shea – they shame and goad all us cradle Catholics to greater seriousness – greater awe, reverence, love and joy.
Thanks for the compliment. Maybe some day I will deserve it, but not today, brother. Not today.
Vice-President Biden’s response was odd — that he personally believes abortion to be murder (or at least manslaughter) but who is he to impose this belief on others — but what was truly appalling and suggestive that he was lying was his following up with words to the effect that Romney and Ryan would limit or end abortions so you should vote for Obama/Biden. Why would he say this unless he actually supports abortion?
He’s willing to fry in Hell for your vote.
What else would he do for power? is the next logical question.