Archive for July, 2012

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Theology as Science or as Law

Posted July 14, 2012 By John C Wright

I said I would stop talking on this topic, as I wish not to give scandal to the heathen overhearing our friendly (or unfriendly) debate between denominations, but a response to a follow up question to the Parable of the Arbiters I hope will be allowed by way of epilog.

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The Parable of the Arbiters

Posted July 13, 2012 By John C Wright

A reader with the sagacious yet doughty name of Scholar at Arms, in reference to a prior post called the Parable of the Peddlers, writes this:

An interesting parable, Mr. Wright. I would observe that statements such as “to me, and I assume to the average faithful Catholic, there is not a group of equal and competing claims in the marketplace of ideas” seem to be unlikely to persuade those whom C.S. Lewis referred to as “Mere Christians.” It is a statement which suggests (though does not say outright) that those who are sifting through the doctrinal claims of competing denominations will not find the communion they are looking for among you and your fellow average faithful Catholics. For this and other related reasons, I hope that your posting of today will be the last we read of this schism here for a good long while.

Well, I think it merits at least one last post, the explain or explain away at least one misconception about what my parable was about. If I may indulge on your kind patience.

Let me take the comments seriatim.

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We have been vilified so long

Posted July 12, 2012 By John C Wright

I was reading FAITH OF OUR FATHERS by Archbishop Gibbons.

It is not uncommon for a dialogue like the following to take place between a Protestant Minister and a convert to the Catholic Church:

Minister: You cannot deny that the Roman Catholic Church teaches gross errors–the worship of images, for instance.

Convert: I admit no such charge, for I have been taught no such doctrines.

Minister: But the Priest who instructed you did not teach you all. He held back some points which he knew would be objectionable to you.

Convert: He withheld nothing; for I am in possession of books treating fully of all Catholic doctrines.

Minister: Deluded soul! Don’t you know that in Europe they are taught differently?

Convert: That cannot be, for, the Church teaches the same creed all over the world, and most of the doctrinal books which I read, were originally published in Europe.

Yet ministers who make these slanderous statements are surprised if we feel indignant, and accuse us of being too sensitive. We have been vilified so long, that they think we have no right to complain.

My comment: I was struck forcefully with the parallel between the uproariously false accusations leveled in this imaginary dialog to the convert, and the same accusations I as a convert have heard earlier this week: the worship of images, and falsifications of documents.
The same wounded indignation of the accuser surfaced in this space, the slanderer was peeved, nay, offended with a righteous indignation that any Catholic would dare object to a slander being called a slander, or a lie a lie.
It was astonishing to me (and I mean the jaw-dropping, eye-popping astonishment from a Tex Avery cartoon) that any man would convince himself that the target of his falsehoods should welcome them. We have been vilified so long, that they think we have no right to complain.
Particularly foolish is the Dan Brown idea of a Church so powerful as to control the content of all the documents and books and memories of all her clergy and laity, and yet strangely weak enough to be unable to prevent you (allegedly the sole brave seeker of truth who knows better than scholars what actually happened to ancient parchments or remote printing presses) from discovering that truth, or, having discovered it, to suppress you.
I cannot imagine why anyone would believe such an unlikely scenario, unless it be for the psychological reason that the image of oneself as the sole seeker of truth confronting the shadowy giant of a two-millennia-old worldwide Imperial conspiracy looming over the horizon, richly appeals to one’s need for self flattery.
Let us deflate that self flattery with a word. There was indeed an Imperial conspiracy, backed by all the powers of Rome and, later, of Constantinople, enforced by the panoply of worldly power, from secret informants to public torments. This conspiracy was directed against the Orthodox and Catholic Church, first by the pagan Caesars of Rome, and then by the Arian Caesars of Constantinople. Those who defied that power bled and died as martyrs with bravery you cannot imagine, O conspiracy theorist, much less match. For you to defy emperors many centuries dead is no testament to your bravery.
The words of Archbishop Gibbons were first published in 1876, a century and a third ago.
The devil need never invent new lies, for the Sons of Adam are so ready to believe the old ones.
What should a Christian do, hearing such things? He should hear his master’s voice: “Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.”

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Question and Answers from Across the World!

Posted July 11, 2012 By John C Wright

This starts as a reference to an ongoing discussion, but then veers into other areas, so I place it here as its own topic.

A reader named Gonzalo writes:

well, there is another option. Let’s say there was 1 stall , by lady A.
Lady A had B,C,D,E,…,etc followers.
Then one day A dies. Her books are split between the students and they all fight over who is the true disciple.
Everyone goes and put a stall under their teacher A. Since they are not the same, people call them stall B,C,D,E.
After some time, E convince people to call her A by using A stall. Then she even changes her name to A.
b,c,d,….,etc. claim the new A is not lady A but E who changed her name and stole the books and stall of her teacher.
Problem is, almost all of them claim to be the true successor of the first A.
You say that since E did not change the content of the books too much, has the right to say she is the new A.
I don’t think the problem has an answer since we don’t know the will of former A.
there are at least 3 cases:
1) one or more of them are true disciples.
2) None of them has the right to call himself A, or even disciple of A.
They are deceiving themselves. The church died with the former A.
3) Lady A was lying all along. Even her books are a lie.
Well, even if the church is fake, some of the books might still be true.
There’s plenty of people who lie with the truth. (the words are true, but their intention is not what they show).

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The Parable of the Peddlers

Posted July 11, 2012 By John C Wright

In recent days a miniature controversy has raged in this space questioning the basic justification for the Catholic faith. Unfortunately, while the inquisitor started with an interesting and engaging line of questioning, he descended into a noisome parroting of “Jack Chick” style slanders against the Church, and gave flip answers, which I did not believe he honestly meant or honestly believed, when asked to justify his approach.

In all honestly, the fault is more mine than his for losing my temper, and the double fault mine for being so proud of being able to keep my temper. Let my sad example serve the gentle reader as a warning to eschew pride.

His position deserves a better advocate than he, and deserves better than my brush off. The question is good even if he is not the man to ask it.

What he is asking is the single most important question in Western history since roughly the Tenth Century. How man and nations decide this question has defined the character of every man and nation and the character of the generation and age in which they live. A reasonable and, indeed, a passionate argument can be given on both sides.

The argument is the justification for belief in, participation in, and loyalty to the Roman Catholic Church.

The question is central to history, because it involves the fundamental question of the role individualism to organized authority, the role of the Church and the State, Pontiff and Emperor, the role of the conscience. It involves questions of liberty and tyranny, of free will and predestination, of the limits of the limitless grace of God and the nature of Man and the Fall of Man, and has ramifications for all the major philosophical and political questions which have agitated Christendom for five centuries and more.

More tellingly, it has personal implications for the salvation or damnation of the soul of every readers who reads these words.

In the course of this discussion, I was asked to justify my personal decision to join in the communion with the Roman Catholic Church rather than join with one of the many and ever-growing number of other denominations, African or Orthodox or Protestant.

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Obamasickness

Posted July 10, 2012 By John C Wright

A reader asks which group will be disadvantaged by Obamacare. It is horrifying to me that there is any literate person in America who can ask this question.

The voiceless group in America who will be squeezed out of health services will be the poor.

It is obvious that issuing insurance cards without increasing the number of doctors does not increase the amount or quality of care. Do this even need to be said? Seriously?

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On the Authority of the Church

Posted July 9, 2012 By John C Wright

A reader asks:

What authority do you have to rely on to know that you should rely on the authority of the Catholic Church?

The short answer is that the authority of the Church rests in the Holy Spirit which animates the body of the Church in the same way a human spirit animates a man. The authority comes from Christ, the Second Person of the Trinity which is God; and the Church is at once His bride and His mystical body.

The long answer is a little more complex, so please indulge me:

The Church is either what she claims to be, or not. If she is what she claims, then her authority comes from the Holy Spirit, that is, from God, who is the source of all authority and truth. If she is not what she claims, she is either a human institution making a claim that is somewhere between self delusion and insanity, or she is a satanic institution run by the spirit of Antichrist to deceive were it possible the very Elect.

I do not see any other option: it is either heavenly truth, earthly self-deception, or infernal deception.

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Ad Hominem is the strongest form of argument! Only an idiot would say otherwise!

Posted July 8, 2012 By John C Wright

I am told that most Liberals and Progressives are unaware that the Conservatives claim that the kind of bureaucracy-mandated death referred to in the previous article would and must occur under Obamacare.

It has been a puzzle to me for decades how the Liberals could fail to understand basic rules of cause and effect, such as that when politicians force the market to lower prices on any good or services, the politicians must assign bureaucrats to ration those goods and services, and they are rationed according to political considerations, i.e., the weakest voting bloc suffers first and most.

Or such as that you cannot keep your cake and eat it too.

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Doctor Shopping Forbidden under ObamaCare

Posted July 8, 2012 By John C Wright

An acquaintance allowed me to convey her story to my readers, asking her name not be used:

My youngest child was born 5 days late, 8 lbs 14 oz with 20 minute’s labor.

Although I was really sick during most of my pregnancy he was considered very healthy at birth and passed all of the tests with flying colors. I had some problems after he was born and they had to give me some additional medicine to stop my bleeding and cramping (and some other things) so we stayed in the hospital a few extra days.

When we brought him home he was sick. He spent some time in the nursery and caught a bug in addition to being jaundiced and needing a belly ring.

At two weeks he was diagnosed with pneumonia. He had pneumonia twice more that year. Our doctor (a personal friend) said that the scar tissue in the lungs can stay for six months or so and make it easier (more susceptible) to get repeat bouts of pneumonia (it is an opportunistic secondary infection). Because of my son’s size at birth and term (he was not a preemie) no red flags popped up.

We moved the week he turned one (he had pneumonia again for the drive). He had pneumonia 10 times by his second birthday. My friend the doctor told me once “trust your mommy sense, if you think something is wrong trust it and find out”.

I kept asking the new doctor why he was so ill… he was having trouble breathing… and when he did not have pneumonia he had croup (over and over again). Just before his second birthday he had his first belly breathing episode. No words can describe the sound of a tiny child frantically squeezing every muscle in their body just to try and get air in, to breath. It is terrifying! In the ER you are rushed past admittance, triage, and every doctor and nurse in ear shot come running to save your child.

Ironically the medicine that they administer to open the lungs has a common side effect of disintegrating bones (usually in the hip) so for 6 – 8 weeks you have to monitor the bones.

I knew something was really wrong. I was told my son had asthma (although he had no other symptoms). I started doctor shopping. When my insurance would not pay for another opinion we paid for it ourselves (by scraping and doing without).

The year my son turned three he had 58 doctors visits, 4 ER trips with belly breathing, and 4 specialist visits. Just before his fourth birthday we had a diagnosis with a theory. The theory was that when he was born he was exposed to and came home with the RSV virus (he was not tested for it because of his size and term) the diagnosis was underdeveloped lungs… they were not growing. They had tons of scar tissue that could not heal and an ever increasing demand on an ever more limiting size.

His biggest growing problem was not that he had trouble breathing in, it was that he was growing less effective (every day) breathing out. Co2 is not your friend. I found one doctor who figured out the best mix of medications, one! Now my son is breathing free and clear. He has not needed a breathing treatment in a year!

What I know (having read the new Health Care Law) is that doctor shopping is strictly forbidden. You can not pay for it yourself. I also know, that Special Needs kids (such as my son), have “managed care” where the decision making power is removed from the parents. The medications are reviewed and if it is not approved you can not get them (even if you want to pay for them yourself) – two of the medications my son took would have fit that scenario.

So for my two cents, my son’s life is worth it! I will do all in my power to help repeal this law that would have cost him his life.

 

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For any Independent or Undecided Voters Out there

Posted July 6, 2012 By John C Wright

From the Wall Street Journal http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304141204577506881495497626.html

Partisan zeal tempts me to reprint the whole thing. As an attorney, the one croquemitaine forever feared by our legal system, the overarching point and purpose of having a written constitution, separation of powers, separation of constituencies, and federalism, is to prevent the lapse of rule of law into a rule of popular leaders.

Here we have a reminder of the last four year’s continual engorgement of this selfsame lapse of rule of law. In case you’ve forgotten or paid no attention heretofore:

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Better Late Than Never

Posted July 6, 2012 By John C Wright

Now that July 4th is past, and the ‘Fortnight for Freedom’ is gone by, only now did my wee and inattentive mind come across the list of the saints and martyrs, whom we were asked to remember in our prayers, asking help from that arm of the Church which is in worlds after this world.

Here is the list.

Since the postmodern mindset demands that the fact of persecutions against the Church be ignored or warped to fit the “narrative” (or, in technical terminology, the lies) of portraying the Church as persecutor, I thought it might be refreshing, if shocking, to be reminded of the terrible, clear truth of the matter.

Fortnight for Freedom Day 14 – July 4

Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati (1900s, Italy): Known as a “Man of the Beatitudes,” Blessed Pier Giorgio was the son of a prominent, non-religious family in Turin who owned a newspaper called La Stampa. He came to know Christ and eventually became an Italian Catholic activist. He worked for justice for the poor and spoke out against political injustice and against the rise of fascism in Italy in the 1920s. He died on July 4, 1925, at the age of 24 from an illness. The poor of the city petitioned for the archbishop of Turin to begin the cause for canonization. The process was opened in 1932, and he was beatified in 1990. His feast day is July 4.

Fortnight for Freedom Day 13 – July 3

Blessed Miguel Agustin Pro (1800s-1900s, Mexico): Blessed Miguel Pro was a Mexican Jesuit priest who was executed under the presidency of Plutarco Elías Calles. As a young Jesuit, he studied in Mexico until 1914, when an anti-Catholic sentiment overtook the country. His community fled to the United States, but he eventually was sent to Spain to complete his seminary studies. He was ordained in Belgium in 1925. Blessed Miguel Pro became ill and was allowed to return to Mexico, despite the religious persecution going on there. He spent much of his life ministering in secret and helping the poor. He was falsely accused in a bombing attempt on the former Mexican president and sentenced to death without a trial. He was executed in 1927 and was beatified in 1988. Blessed Miguel Pro’s feast day is Nov. 23.

Fortnight for Freedom Day 12 – July 2

St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (1800s-1900s, Germany/Netherlands): Born Edith Stein into a Jewish family, she became an atheist in her teenage years. She went away to a university, where she became a philosopher and earned a doctorate in 1916. She found herself moved by the autobiography of St. Teresa of Avila, which began a journey of faith that led to her baptism in 1922. She entered the Carmelites in 1934. Because of the dangers in Nazi Germany in the 1930s, she was moved to a convent in the Netherlands in 1938. In 1942, the Dutch bishops denouncing the Nazi activities. In retaliation, they arrested all Dutch Jews who converted to Christianity. St. Teresa Benedicta and her sister, Rosa, were arrested and died at the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1942. She was canonized in 1998. Her feast day is Aug. 9.

Fortnight for Freedom Day 11 – July 1

St. Charles Lwanga (1880s, Africa): One of 22 Ugandan martyrs, St. Charles Lwanga protected his fellow pages (aged 13 to 30) from the homosexual demands of the Bagandan ruler, Mwanga, and encouraged and instructed them in the Catholic faith during their imprisonment for refusing the ruler’s demands. For his own unwillingness to submit to the immoral acts and his efforts to safeguard the faith of his friends, Charles was burned to death at Namugongo on June 3, 1886, by Mwanga’s order. Charles first learned of Christ’s teachings from two retainers in the court of Chief Mawulugungu. While a catechumen, he entered the royal household as assistant to Joseph Mukaso, head of the court pages. On the night of Mukaso’s martyrdom for encouraging the African youths to resist Mwanga, Charles requested and received baptism. Imprisoned with his friends, Charles’s courage and belief in God inspired them to remain chaste and faithful.
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Confiteor and the Pride of Lucifer

Posted July 6, 2012 By John C Wright

From the pen of Mark Shea:

I like that the Catholic Church is so transparently inept and so plainly filled with such obviously failed and ridiculous people, not only among us laity, but throughout the ranks of its clerics as well. My abiding sense, ever since converting, has been one of relief. In sectarian Protestantism, the question is always whether you are pure enough, whether you are a “real Christian”, whether your “really meant it” when you asked Jesus into your heart, whether your latest grotesque failure means your whole life as a Christian has been one huge fraud.

The great thing about the Catholic communion is that it begins every single act of worship with the Confiteor in which we all look at each other and say, “Who am I kidding? i don’t belong here any more than you do, so let’s pray for each other and ask the the Graduates in Heaven to put in a good word for us, trusting that God will cut us slack again just so long as we keep cutting each other slack.” It’s a place where there’s room for me: a screwup who can’t tell my butt from a hole in the ground who has no business darkening the door of a Church, much less brazenly walking up there and receiving the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Almighty God, if you please. The whole project is so outrageous from beginning to end that my only excuse is that God tells all these other people they not only can but must do it, so I guess it’s okay that a dubious jerk like me does it too.

My comment: This is why I am one of the two Founding Member of the Shea-Wright Mutual Admiration Society.
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On the Antiquity of Confession

Posted July 5, 2012 By John C Wright

A reader put forward the novel idea that there was no sacrament of confession in the Early Church, which was (so he said) much like the Protestant churches in this and in all other regards.

The argument, if I may be harsh, is without merit. I can (and have) quoted half a dozen or more early Church Fathers who refer to Confession not as something done not to God alone, but to God with the aid and ministry of a priest acting in the person and capacity of Christ.

But a stronger argument can be made. If the Sacrament of Confession was an invention of priestcraft or an absurd innovation, when was it innovated?

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Often the Simplest Explanation is Best

Posted July 3, 2012 By John C Wright

I came across this post by Mark Steyn. It is short, so I will reprint it in toto.

I wrote recently about a small victory for freedom of speech in Canada, but, as always, it’s two steps forward, one step back. Here’s the backward one: Gai Écoute in Québec has announced the launch of the world’s first “register of homophobic acts.”

I don’t mind gay groups keeping a vast database of anonymously-reported homophobic thought-crimes if they feel that’s a productive use of their time. But it is preposterous that this sprawling directory of  cobwebbed flamer cracks and swishy-gait titters will be publicly funded by taxpayers under the Québec Government’s “action plan for the fight against homophobia,” which apparently also includes redesignating Jean-Marc Fournier, the minister of justice and attorney general, as “Minister of Justice, Attorney General, and Minister for the Fight Against Homophobia.”

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Obamacare and Evidence Based Medicine

Posted July 1, 2012 By John C Wright

Concerning Obamacare, now re-legislated by the High Court to be a tax for the purpose of its legality, but not a tax for the purpose of the Anti-Injunction Statue under whose provisions the High Court would not have standing to hear the case, a Mr Gary writes this:

If Obamacare is fully instituted it will have one very terrible darkside that never gets talked about. The bill changes the way medicine is to be practiced in USA. The model for the new way of practice is the VA’s system which is called “evidence-based medicine” which sounds innocuous enough — what else would medicine be based on, tarot cards, ouiji boards, dowsing sticks?

Evidence based medicine is a kind of expert system that operates through a computer network controlled by a central computer. It very cookbook style. You tell the machine the patient’s complaints and your preliminary diagnosis, the machine suggests tests to narrow down the differential diagnosis to a final diagnosis that becomes the basis for therapy at least as your begin to treat the patient.

Medications are prescibed based on the idea of trying every conceivable or imaginable cheap generic medication first to see if any of them have any affect whatsoever on the illness. Only if none of them do any good does the computer begin to consider the possibility of using a first line drug that is still under patent.

The computer comes first. The patient becomes a guinea pig, and the experimental research subject” to see if any generic medications will work at all.

It’s like a big research project into cheapness in operations.

The VA is adamant about this, and so will all doctors be who must participate in Obamacare.

Obamacare is based on the idea that no medical school, and no doctor, outside of Washington DC has ANY information about the practice of medicine. The entire body of medical knowledge is concentrated exclusively in the Expert System Computer in Washington DC.

I struggled for 3 years to get Lipitor and Plavix from the VA. I took my case all the way to the House and Senate, all the way to General Shinseki. Never got a Lipitor, never got a Plavix, even though my own doctor had been prescribing those for me for 9 years previously and they were obviously working, and my blood tests proved it beyond all possible doubt.

Obamacare is going to be a VA style totalitarian fascism of absolute dictatorship in which there’s really only one doctor, and it’s a computer in Washington DC. They call it evidence based medicine.

If you can imagine something nastier than death panels, it’s gotta be a box of wires that sentences you to death.

In my own case, I went abroad to get medical care. That’s why I’m not dead. But, I’m not a follower. In a nation of followers, a lot of them are going to wind up dead if we go to Obamacare. Dead at twice the price. Poor then dead. Heckovadeal! Poor then dead. Heckovadeal!

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