O Wisdom, you came forth from the mouth of the Most High and, reaching from beginning to end, you ordered all things mightily and sweetly.  Come, and teach us the way of prudence.

During the last week before Christmas, our family has adopted the practice of singing a verse from “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” that corresponds to the antiphon for Vespers that is sung before the Magnificat that evening.  These antiphons, known as the “O antiphons,” give us different ways of encountering the mystery of Christ: Wisdom, Adonai, Key of David, etc.

The antiphons are ordered according to the movement of salvation history.  To encounter Christ as “wisdom” is to encounter Him at the moment of creation.  As the Son, he receives the loving, creative energy of the Father and, filled with the Spirit, pours out that energy into creation, a universe that is intelligible, subject to laws, dynamic, ordered to transcendence, ordered back to its Creator.

All creation thus bears the imprint of Christ.  It is through Christ that “nature” can be understood properly as “creation,” as gift, as the medium through which we find our way back to the primordial love that created us.

From John Henry Newman’s sermon, “Waiting for Christ:”

Scripture sanctions us in interpreting all that we see in the world in a religious sense, and as if all things were tokens and revelations of Christ, His Providence, and will. I mean that if this lower world, which seems to go on in its own way, independently of Him, governed by fixed laws or swayed by lawless hearts, will, nevertheless, one day in an awful way, herald His coming to judge it, surely it is not impossible that the same world, both in its physical order and its temporal course, speaks of Him also in other manners. At first, indeed, one might argue that this world did but speak a language contrary to Him; that in Scripture it is described as opposed to God, to truth, to faith, to heaven; that it is said to be a deceitful veil, misrepresenting things, and keeping the soul from God. How then, it may be asked, can this world have upon it tokens of His presence, or bring us near to Him? Yet certainly so it is, that in spite of the world’s evil, after all, He is in it and speaks through it, though not loudly. When He came in the flesh “He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not.” Nor did He strive nor cry, nor lift up His voice in the streets. So it is now. He still is here; He still whispers to us, He still makes signs to us. But His voice is so low, and the world’s din is so loud, and His signs are so covert, and the world is so restless, that it is difficult to determine when He addresses us, and what He says. Religious men cannot but feel, in various ways, that His providence is guiding them and blessing them personally, on the whole; yet when they attempt to put their finger upon the times and places, the traces of His presence disappear. Who is there, for instance, but has been favoured with answers to prayer, such that, at the time, he has felt he never could again be unbelieving? Who has not had strange coincidences in his course of life which brought before him, in an overpowering way, the hand of God? Who has not had thoughts come upon him with a sort of mysterious force, for his warning or his direction? And some persons, perhaps, experience stranger things still. Wonderful providences have before now been brought about by means of dreams; or in other still more unusual ways Almighty God has at times interposed. And then, again, things which come before our eyes, in such wise take the form of types and omens of things moral or future, that the spirit within us cannot but reach forward and presage what it is not told from what it sees. And sometimes these presages are remarkably fulfilled in the event. And then, again, the fortunes of men are so singularly various, as if a law of success and prosperity embraced a certain number, and a contrary law others. All this being so, and the vastness and mystery of the world being borne in upon us, we may well begin to think that there is nothing here below, but, for what we know has a connexion with every thing else; the most distant events may yet be united, the meanest and highest may be parts of one; and God may be teaching us and offering us knowledge of His ways, if we will but open our eyes, in all the ordinary matters of the day. This is what thoughtful persons come to believe, and they begin to have a sort of faith in the Divine meaning of the accidents (as they are called) of life, and a readiness to take impressions from them, which may easily become excessive, and which, whether excessive or not, is sure to be ridiculed by the world at large as superstition. Yet, considering Scripture tells us that the very hairs of our head are all numbered by God, that all things are ours, and that all things work together for our good, it does certainly encourage us in thus looking out for His presence in every thing that happens, however trivial, and in holding that to religious ears even the bad world prophesies of Him.

Salon’s Alex Pareene doesn’t know me, but for the second year running he has given me a terrific Christmas present: the Hack List, his roundup of the worst political analysts and commentators in the business. Last year it was called the Hack Thirty, and I posted about it here. This year there are just twenty hacks named, with a focus on their doings in 2011. Some names (like David Brooks) appear again; others from last year who didn’t make the cut are included in an appendix: “Hack List Alums: Where Are They Now?”

Pareene builds a strong case against each honoree. He’s merciless, and hilarious. My favorite of this year’s takedowns was number 5, Katie Roiphe, who, he noted, has gained attention once again “for being a reliable source of controversial-sounding contrarian anti-feminist bullshit” who “also writes very badly about the Internet and people on the Internet who are mean to Katie Roiphe.” Also very deserving is number 3, who inspires this cheering observation: “One upside to America’s frothing populist hatred of intellectuals is that we don’t produce many Bernard-Henri Lévys.”

(I love the present,but not the wrapping – Salon always manages to make it difficult for me to find the things I want to read, and impossible to find them again. Right now I can’t find an easy way to link to more than the first five “hacks.” I imagine they’ll fix that eventually, but for now I recommend going to the list of Pareene’s posts, finding the “earlier articles” link at the bottom, and moving backward that way.)

As a bonus, Pareene offers a reminder that the late Christopher Hitchens “was disastrously wrong” about the Iraq War, and his death shouldn’t prevent us from acknowledging that. His take on Hitchens is not a eulogy, but seems entirely on-target to me.

Matthew Boudway points me to a clip from the documentary film Collision, where Christopher Hitchens debates the Presbyterian pastor Douglas Wilson. In it, Hitchens acknowledges the difficulty of the so-called “fine-tuning argument” from the atheist perspective, and then notes an important point of disagreement between himself and Richard Dawkins: if Hitchens were able to rid the world of belief in God entirely, he says, he wouldn’t want to do it. He can’t really say why, though. Skip ahead to 5:36 in the frame below, or just click here:

The damning DOJ report on Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s discriminatory policing practices illustrates the tight connection between rhetoric targeting illegal immigration and discriminatory attitudes and practices aimed at Latinos in general.  On the level of impact, this connection is so obvious that it barely needs stating.  For starters, a great many Latino citizens have family ties to people who currently are (or in the not-too-distant past, were) undocumented.  When I recently spoke to a group of Ivy League Latino undergraduates, I asked students to raise their hands if they had family members who were or had at one time been undocumented.  Almost every hand went up.

In addition, even apart from family ties, there is no clear way to distinguish between undocumented immigrants and the broader Latino community.  And so policies that purport to be aimed at combatting undocumented immigration by using police and other local service providers as the first line of attack inevitably end up relying on the kinds of racial and linguistic profiling that the DOJ has found to be pervasive in the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office.  This is one of the many reasons that Latinos of all political stripes — even those who have been vocal in their support of efforts to combat illegal immigration — are so unified in opposition to laws like those at work in Arizona and Alabama.

But there’s more going on here than disparate impact, and the DOJ report lays that bare as well.   Read the rest of this entry »

The public square has a gaping hole this morning, as the brilliant Christopher Hitchens has died. Here is a brief obituary in Vanity Fair that links to some of his most recent columns and essays, several of which reflect on the cancer that took his life. David Gibson excerpted one of them in this space about seven months ago:

To my writing classes I used later to open by saying that anybody who could talk could also write. Having cheered them up with this easy-to-grasp ladder, I then replaced it with a huge and loathsome snake: “How many people in this class, would you say, can talk? I mean really talk?” That had its duly woeful effect. I told them to read every composition aloud, preferably to a trusted friend. The rules are much the same: Avoid stock expressions (like the plague, as William Safire used to say) and repetitions. Don’t say that as a boy your grandmother used to read to you, unless at that stage of her life she really was a boy, in which case you have probably thrown away a better intro. If something is worth hearing or listening to, it’s very probably worth reading. So, this above all: Find your own voice.

Hitchens’s voice was, it should go without saying, one of the best of his generation, and we are all poorer for its absence. (David Castronovo reviewed his memoir in the magazine last year.) But it would be unfair to Hitchens, because out of the spirit of his own combative nature, not to mention how wrong that voice often was when it came to matters of religion. From Eugene McCarraher’s lengthy review of his bestseller, God is Not Great, again in the pages of Commonweal:

All Hitchens claims to ask of his deluded religious friends is that they “leave me alone.” But for a public intellectual, what this innocent-seeming wish really implies is the privatization of religion, its eradication as a form of public discourse. Like the New York intellectuals of yesteryear, Hitchens turns to high culture as the new symposium of moral tutelage—and specifically to literature. Well “within the compass of the average person,” the study of literature and poetry, he proposes, should now “depose the scrutiny of sacred texts” as the basis of ethical reflection. Of course, the arts and letters have long been modernity’s citadel for paradise, a safehouse for idiosyncrasy, brotherly love, transcendence, and other utopian ideals battered by the power of the state and the market. Reminiscent of the democratic humanism espoused by his late friend Edward W. Said, Hitchens’s expansive vision of cultural democracy should appeal to anyone serious about the moral imagination. But his insistence that we uncouple high culture from the sacred has its own insuperable problems. Aside from assigning a covert clerical status to writers and literary critics—“the divine literatus,” as Whitman put it—supplanting sacred texts with literature would require the bowdlerization of at least nine-tenths of our literary canon. Our high culture simply owes too much to religion, Christian or otherwise, for anyone to suggest intelligibly that the two should be separated.

In any case, what we get from Hitchens in the end isn’t “culture” but a gooey compound of boosterish bromides and liberal nationalism. Like so many disappointed radicals, Hitchens has elsewhere declared capitalism the only remaining revolutionary force, and for all his bad-boy press, he is a stalwart guardian of the bourgeois virtues, harrumphing like a sullen Rotarian at Christ’s injunction to “take no thought for the morrow.” Such gospel nonsense, Hitchens tells us, implies that “things like thrift, innovation, family life, and so forth are a sheer waste of time.” This former Trotskyite turns out to be a metropolitan burgher at heart, as well as a technological visionary, rhapsodizing over “undreamed-of vistas,” “unfettered scientific inquiry,” and the accessibility of scientific knowledge to “masses of people by easy electronic means”—all of which will “revolutionize our concepts of research and development.” It’s a Brave New World, brought to you by Merck. Cue the studio orchestra.

In the end, Hitchens’s brilliance as a journalist and rhetorician is inseparable from his shallowness as a critic of religion, not to mention the gross error of his support for the Iraq War. As Ross Douthat noted a while back, however, Hitchens took no offense at the thought of being prayed for by those who possessed the faith he lacked, and surely it’s a good time to do that.

Update: Somehow I failed to link to Terry Eagleton’s essay on “Culture and Barbarism” from March 2009, where he takes on Hitchens and Richard Dawkins. The essay was excerpted from Eagleton’s Terry Lectures, published as Reason, Faith, and Revolution by Yale University Press. Matt Boudway noted Stanley Fish’s sympathetic discussion of Eagleton’s argument later on that year.

Planning to return to the Big Apple, once grading is finished, I consulted the current New Yorker for musical events during the Christmas season. I found this intriguing notice:

Harold Rosenberg’s Canticum Novum Singers team up with Parthenia, New York’s invaluable consort of viols, to offer “A Renaissance Advent,” a program of works by such composers as Josquin, Palestrina, and Handel, in the High Anglican ambience of St. Ignatius Loyola Church.

When pressed to comment, Vatican spokesman, Rev. Federico Lombardi, S.J., only muttered that he’s checking it out with his Superiors on the Borgo Santo Spirito.

More from Iran on how it dronapped one of our top secret weapons.

The Iranians seem quite appreciative of all the high tech gadgets they found on the drone. “According to the Iranian military official, the drone was “equipped with highly advanced surveillance, data gathering, electronic communication and radar systems,” saying that “this kind of plane has been designed to evade radar systems and from the view point of technology it is amongst the most recent types of advanced aircraft used by the U.S.”

An Iranian military official described their technique in bringing intact to Iranian territory: “By putting noise [jamming] on the communications, you force the bird into autopilot. This is where the bird loses its brain.”

Why couldn’t some boy whiz do the same?

Latest news: A boy whiz could do it:  From a report of the USAF Scientific Advisory Board:

“There is a wide range of methods that a determined adversary can use for attacking RPA guidance and navigation systems. The report mentions here only three categories of threats without going into the details:

– Small, simple GPS noise jammers can be easily constructed and employed by an unsophisticated adversary and would be effective over a limited RPA operating area.

– GPS repeaters are also available for corrupting navigation capabilities of RPAs.

– Cyber threats represent a major challenge for future RPA operations. Cyber attacks can affect both on-board and ground systems, and exploits may range from asymmetric CNO attacks to highly sophisticated electronic systems and software attacks.”

During Commonweal‘s gift exchange yesterday, the following recipe was humbly received by our publisher, Tom Baker:

Seeing this chart today almost brought me to tears. The war in Iraq is over. That’s “Mission Accomplished” on the very left side, and the last troops now coming home within days.  We “cased” our flag in Baghdad. President Obama has honored the status of forces agreement created under President Bush, while also honoring his biggest promise to the American people.

This war raised so many new moral questions, from the epochal atrocities at Abu Ghraib to more quotidian challenges, such as whether it’s emotionally too confusing, even traumatic, for young children to Skype with Mommy in Baghdad (a poignant event I have witnessed firsthand).

Aspects of the war will be debated and lamented for a long time, and rightly so. But when we look at this chart, and acknowledge that the numbers on the left are hundreds of thousands of people, I think we can agree that families reunited for the holidays is cause for joy–and peace.

From William Pfaff’s latest column:

The great economic crisis has given birth to a smaller and tighter monetary union in Europe, under the influence of a Germany that is undergoing a certain estrangement from its European partners. This amounts to a possibly dangerous wager on what the European Union will ultimately become, which not everyone may like.

In Vienna last weekend, the World Policy Conference, founded by the French Institute of Foreign Relations (IFRI) as a vehicle of European communication and cooperation with the so-called BRIC nations and other states in the developing world, found its attention riveted on Brussels and the euro-zone states of the EU. A French official who was part of the nearly all-night discussion in Brussels flew to Vienna to brief the gathering there, where decidedly mixed feelings were expressed about this successful German imposition of its own economic norms on an EU in distress.

Read the rest right here.

We just had-slash-are-having our Christmas party. Here’s what that looks like.

On December 12th, Luis Antonio (“Chito”) Tagle was installed as archbishop of Manila. Here you can find the homily he delivered.  Two powerful paragraphs among several:

Finally, let us turn to the beloved disciple, the disciple whom Jesus loved. He was the one who recognized the Lord who had loved them by laying down his life on the cross and now as the Risen One who could turn nights of despair into dawns of hope by the power of His Word. We realize that the beloved disciple does not occupy any known rank among the disciples. Peter was clearly the leader and spokesperson of the group. My dear brothers and sisters, this episode teaches me that merely assuming the position of Archbishop of Manila does not guarantee that I will recognize the Lord. If I am not careful this position might even blind me to the Lord and to my people. It is rather by being a humble disciple content with the love of Jesus that I would see the advent of him whose love propels us to mission. Notice that at this moment the beloved disciple taught Peter. Later Jesus would ask Peter three times if he loved him more than the others. Love makes one a true shepherd, not position. I pray that my Episcopal ministry and all ministries in the Church may be rooted in humble and loving discipleship. I tell myself as though it were the Lord telling me, “Chito, do not think you have become great because of your new position. Be great rather in being a beloved and loving disciple of the Lord.”

The narrative we have been reflecting on serves as a good description of the mission of the Church: Discerning the Lord’s presence, following his word, celebrating his love and proclaiming “It is the Lord.” The Church cannot stop proclaiming the Word of God as the second reading says. In season and out of season, we direct people to the person of the Lord. Even if it is an inconvenient truth that we are proclaiming, it is always the Lord. “Love your enemies” is inconvenient. “Share what you have with the poor” is inconvenient. “Bless your persecutors” is inconvenient. But through these inconvenient words, the Lord comes. He speaks. He brings true light.

Tom Friedman’s op ed in Wednesday’s Times sets out some things to think about:

“That’s right. America’s role is to just applaud whatever Israel does, serve as its A.T.M. and shut up. We have no interests of our own. And this guy’s running for president?” He’s referring to something Romney said, but he’s after Gingrich too.

And this! “I sure hope that Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, understands that the standing ovation he got in Congress this year was not for his politics. That ovation was bought and paid for by the Israel lobby.”   Shades of Mersheimer and Walt!

I often find myself smiling when I hear spiritual bromides floated, like “seeing God in all things,” or “grace is everywhere.” I wonder: do these people realize that the first is derived from the Fourth Week of Ignatius’ Exercises (after passing through the purification of the first three weeks); and the second comes from the very end of Bernanos’ Diary of a Country Priest, not the beginning?

On this feast of John of the Cross, the great spiritual master of suspicion, who shatters all manner of religious pretense, one must indeed yearn for the destiny of a transfigured creation, but recognize that the only way is the Crucified Christ.

Rowan Williams’ remarkable youthful study, The Wound of Knowledge, ends appropriately with John of the Cross. Williams writes:

“Christ the Way” is the norm for our “inner life,” and Christ is most totally active for the world’s salvation, most completely doing God’s work, on the cross, in the depths of his forsakenness, utterly without consolation. It is the climax of the poverty and defenselessness of his whole life: he is brought to nothing, ad nihilum redactus…It is Christ whose example exposes the dishonesty and selfishness of the “comforts of religion.”

I thought it was even before I reported this story, and I thought so afterward, even if I have no great love for the architecture of the Rev. Schuller’s former pulpit:

For one thing, the Crystal Cathedral’s price tag was a lot less than it would have cost to build a new cathedral from the ground up. The Diocese of Orange—now the 10th largest in the nation, with 1.2 million Catholic souls—was facing construction costs approaching $200 million on a lot half the size of the Crystal Cathedral’s 31-acre campus.

And for those who may wince at the assertive modernism of the Crystal Cathedral’s glass design, the reality is that any new cathedral would likely have followed a similar style. Just look up the coast to Oakland’s glass-and-steel Cathedral of Christ the Light, which was dedicated in 2008.

Similarly, lingering concerns over the cost and size of the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles—nicknamed the “Taj Mahony” after its visionary, retired Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony—also played into the decision to make the Crystal Cathedral deal work.

“This was a no-brainer from a business perspective,” said a churchman familiar with the purchase, who also declined to be named as negotiations continue.

The rest is here.

Update: More photos of the Crystal Campus after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a letter today, through the chairman of its Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development, telling members of Congress that they have a “moral obligation” to help unemployed workers. In urging that unemployment insurance be extended, Bishop Stephen E. Blaire framed the issue in terms of the right to life. He quoted Pope John Paul II’s 1981 encyclical Laborem Exercens:

The obligation to provide unemployment benefits, that is to say, the duty to make suitable grants indispensable for the subsistence of unemployed workers and their families, is a duty springing from the fundamental principle of … the right to life and subsistence.

The letter comes at a time when many members of the House GOP majority are reluctant to extend unemployment, arguing that the benefits encourage people not to work. The House GOP leadership introduced a measure on Friday that would eliminate billions of dollars in benefits to the long-term unemployed by reducing the maximum  eligibility from from 99 weeks to 59 weeks. It also opens the way for drug testing of the unemployed.

Once again, the bishops are prodding conservative Republicans in the House toward their “moral obligation” to the poor, telling them that economic justice is a right-to-life issue. Last May, Rep. Paul Ryan responded to another critique from Bishop Blaire by citing John Paul’s writings on welfare dependency. Now, Bishop Blaire has returned the favor with a relevant quote of his own from the late pope.

Photo: Shutterstock

“Are you a believer yet?” asked several emails and text messages I received this morning. It’s hard to resist this particular evangelical movement, especially because all of my friends and relatives have joined it. Having grown up in Colorado, not far from Colorado Springs, source and summit of my generation’s evangelicalism, I am familiar with the culture. But I’ve never been the lone skeptic amid a sea of faith. The evidence of this man’s miracles seems at first glance reason enough to follow him. And to reject the so-called “Mile High Messiah,” especially in the weeks leading up to Christmas with the family, will be an affront to my own mother and father, zealous new converts. To believe, at this point, would be easier than to remain agnostic.

But despite all this — and despite football jersey sales to the contrary  — Tim Tebow is not Jesus, and I’m not yet a believer.

It’s true that he has presided over a highly improbable string of victories in the past 8 weeks (7-1 as a starter, with 3 overtime victories). His public Christian faith has spawned a trend in prayer postures and evoked analysis from excellent commentators. Beyond that he has exorcised the demons of a sullied franchise, brought hope to millions of viewers, literally healed sick children around the world through his charitable foundation, converted souls to Christianity as a missionary, and achieved what many thought was truly impossible – causing regular-season NFL games from the West to be broadcast on the East Coast. For all these things, he deserves our thanks and praise.

But messianic claims have been overblown. The Denver Broncos already had their messiah, thank you very much: John Elway. He brought the country’s largest football fan base (when measured in terms of contiguous land area, not population) from the depths of 4 Super Bowl losses to the pinnacle of greatness. And he is still reigning—not only as the car dealership king of Denver, but also as the Executive Vice President of Football Operations for the Broncos. The anointed one is still alive and in charge of Denver’s earthly kingdom. Why look for another?

Nonetheless the record of improbable victories must be accounted for. For weeks I have been trying to explain it away. “Just believe,” my friends and family have told me. No, I need reasons.  “If you believe,” Tebow said in last night’s interview, “then unbelievable things can sometimes be possible.” Is it time for me to believe the impossible? Can there be any other reasonable explanation? Read the rest of this entry »

The discussion below on Iran’s capture of an American drone wandered, raising the spectacle of drones in American skies. Well, no sooner do we conjure a conspiracy theory than it happens…in North Dakota. Watch out Minnesota! LATimes.

UPDATE: Glenn Greenwald is on the case!  Here.

In thinking about evangelizing in this culture, it may be important to hear why non- believers– who are also non-atheists–  do not hear religious faiths as bearing “good news. ” This essay by Eric Weiner in last weekend’s New York Times, I think, captures one set of reasons why one group of people find it hard to join organized religion.  1) They are turned off by the marriage of religion to American political life; 2) they are deeply uncomfortable with a spirituality of certainty in a time when it appears we have more questions than answers about the universe; and 3) they don’t like humorless scolds.

So what would the Commonweal blog recommend Mr. Weiner to read by Catholics about Catholicism?  What do we have to offer that is 1) non-political, 2) that emphasizes the greatness of God and the contingency of human knowledge in a sense of wonder, or 3)  which is, well, funny or values humor. Let’s make a reading list.

I’ll start–and yes, I’m picking the easy one–but it’s my post.

Fr. Jim Martin, S.J.’s Between Heaven and Mirth.

Here’s a very fine link that permits you to make a virtual tour of the Sistine Chapel. It can be vertiginous, but after a bit, you’ll get used to it. Zooming buttons are in the lower left corner.

I was in Boston late last week, and tagged along with my mother while she got her cataract removed in an outpatient surgery procedure. Boston has the best medical care in the world- and we went to a Harvard teaching hospital. But what struck me most was the compassion of the nursing staff. It’s not just that the patients were well-treated. I knew we were in good hands when I saw ones of the nurses quietly bring out a heating pad for a woman who had a bad back, and was waiting at least a couple of hours for a family member or friend to go through some outpatient operation or another.

The woman hadn’t said anything. The nurse had simply noticed the woman’s pain on her own– and did something about it. She paid attention to other people– and their pain. That’s the kind of nurse–the kind of person- you want taking care of you when you’re sick.

In the early centuries of the Church most theologians were also pastors. For them, theology and spirituality, contemplation and Christian living were inseparable. One of their watchwords was: “To be, and not merely to seem to be, friends of God.”

John Henry Newman drank deeply from the wellsprings of the Church Fathers, engaging in pioneering ressourcement that anticipated the great Patristic revival in twentieth century Catholicism.

As preacher and pastor, he was keenly sensitive to the challenges of the Gospel and the need for ongoing conversion. He was also alert to the self-deceptions to which our fallen nature is prone. Hence his Advent sermon on “The Ventures of Faith:’

Let every one who hears me ask himself the question, what stake has he in the truth of Christ’s promise? How would he be a whit the worse off, supposing (which is impossible), but, supposing it to fail? We know what it is to have a stake in any venture of this world. We venture our property in plans which promise a return; in plans which we trust, which we have faith in. What have we ventured for Christ? What have we given to Him on a belief of His promise? The Apostle said, that he and his brethren would be of all men most miserable, if the dead were not raised. Can we in any degree apply this to ourselves? We think, perhaps, at present, we have some hope of heaven; well, this we should lose of course; but after all, how should we be worse off as to our present condition?

A trader, who has embarked some property in a speculation which fails, not only loses his prospect of gain, but somewhat of his own, which he ventured with the hope of the gain. This is the question, What have we ventured? I really fear, when we come to examine, it will be found that there is nothing we resolve, nothing we do, nothing we do not do, nothing we avoid, nothing we choose, nothing we give up, nothing we pursue, which we should not resolve, and do, and not do, and avoid, and choose, and give up, and pursue, if Christ had not died, and heaven were not promised us. I really fear that most men called Christians, whatever they may profess, whatever they may think they feel, whatever warmth and illumination and love they may claim as their own, yet would go on almost as they do, neither much better nor much worse, if they believed Christianity to be a fable.

When young, they indulge their lusts, or at least pursue the world’s vanities; as time goes on, they get into a fair way of business, or other mode of making money; then they marry and settle; and their interest coinciding with their duty, they seem to be, and think themselves, respectable and religious men; they grow attached to things as they are; they begin to have a zeal against vice and error; and they follow after peace with all men. Such conduct indeed, as far as it goes, is right and praiseworthy. Only I say, it has not necessarily any thing to do with religion at all; there is nothing in it which is any proof of the presence of religious principle in those who adopt it; there is nothing they would not do still, though they had nothing to gain from it, except what they gain from it now: they do gain something now, they do gratify their present wishes, they are quiet and orderly, because it is their interest and taste to be so; but they venture nothing, they risk, they sacrifice, they abandon nothing on the faith of Christ’s word.

Photo: Shutterstock

Newt Gingrich co-produced and starred, with his wife, in the documentary Nine Days that Changed the World in praise of Pope John Paul II’s 1979 pilgrimage to Poland and the pope’s role in defeating communism. I don’t think Gingrich Productions will do a similar documentary on John Paul’s pilgrimage to the Middle East and his effort to make peace in that region, though. Gingrich’s views on this are diametrically opposed to the late pope’s.

That was shown starkly in an interview he gave to The Jewish Channel. Raising doubts about the widely supported two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute,  he said:

… remember there was no Palestine as a state. It was part of the Ottoman Empire. And I think that we’ve had an invented Palestinian people, who are in fact Arabs, and were historically part of the Arab community. And they had a chance to go many places. And for a variety of political reasons we have sustained this war against Israel now since the 1940’s, and I think it’s tragic.

Compare this remark about the Palestinians as an “invented” people to what John Paul said when he visited Bethlehem in 2000. On his arrival, he said:

No one can ignore how much the Palestinian people have had to suffer in recent decades. Your torment is before the eyes of the world. And it has gone on too long … The Holy See has always recognized that the Palestinian people have the natural right to a homeland.  (His 1984 letter Redemptionis Anno put a finer point on it, referring to Palestinians’ “natural right in justice to find once more a homeland.”)

Read the rest of this entry »

The White House today released a new national strategy – the first of its kind, it says – to combat “homegrown” terrorism. It’s a very interesting document that responds to the social science research mounting over the past decade into the causes of terrorism. For example:

Violent extremist narratives espouse a rigid division between “us” and “them” that argues for exclusion from the broader society and a hostile relationship with government and other communities. Activities that reinforce our shared sense of belonging and productive interactions between government and the people undercut this narrative and emphasize through our actions that we are all part of the social fabric of America.

While the report says the priority is preventing homegrown extremism inspired by al-Qaeda, you’ll notice that there is no reference to religion as a motivating factor for terrorism. Violent extremists win recruits by exploiting their alienation. That’s the underlying issue. Focusing on Islam as a cause of terrorism only serves to alienate the very community most needed to cooperate against those small groups of “homegrown” radicals inspired toward violence by extremists they follow on the Internet.

The “fundamental precept” of the new strategy is respect for constitutional rights. “The Administration recognizes the potential to do more harm than good if our Nation’s approach and actions are not dutifully considered and deliberated,” the plan says. I take that as a message to the FBI and immigration authorities.

The plan encompasses a “National Strategy for Empowering Local Partners.”  It calls for efforts that “promote immigrant integration and civic engagement, protect civil rights, and provide social services, which may also help prevent radicalization that leads to violence.”

In my view, the plan is an overdue response  to the calls of academic researchers, Muslim community leaders and others who have long argued that heavy-handed tactics aimed at preventing terrorism often cause more harm than good. But can this be implemented? Federal law enforcement agencies don’t cooperate very well with each other, much less local police.

Photo: Morgan Rauscher / Shutterstock.com

Wisdom from the pope this feast day, via CNS:

ROME (CNS) — The church should fear the sin of its own members more than hatred against Christians, Pope Benedict XVI said.

While the church has suffered from persecution throughout its history, it “is supported by the light and strength of God” and will always end up victorious, he said.

Overcoming trials and outside threats shows how the Christian community “is the presence, the guarantee of God’s love against all ideologies of hatred and selfishness,” he said on the feast of the Immaculate Conception.

“The only danger the church can and should fear is the sin of her members,” the pope said.

Iran put on display Thursday the U.S. spy drone that Iran claims to have shot down over its territory on Sunday. The U.S. claims that the drone’s CIA operators lost control and that it crashed. Since the drone is described in this story as intact, how could either claim be true. In any case, will the event be taken by Iran for an act of war, and by others as the occasion to raise the war hoop decibels.

No doubt, the Republican presidential scrum will be all over it, followed closely by the Democratic war hawks.  I’ll leave the other interested party aside for the moment.  Story here.  UPDATE on the Drone: Iran now says that it took over control of the drone, which is why it landed apparently undamaged. Is that feat more significant than the nuclear weapons predicted by the war party? Juan Cole has the story.

UPDATE: Here is a sober, and intricate assessment of the question about war with Iran, by Richard Sale, journalist, “What Israel’s War Against Iran Would Look Like.” HT: Pat Lang

As a teacher, I have some tricks up my sleeve—case studies and object lessons for when the right opportunity arises. One favorite that I learned somewhere along the way goes like this: “OK, everyone take out a scrap of paper. I have a question for an important class discussion. Who have been the most important men in your life?” The students write down mostly expected answers (Dad, brother, etc.). But through many repetitions of this exercise, not one person has ever written “Mom”—or any other woman’s name, for that matter. And so it is an efficient lesson to demonstrate that “men” doesn’t normally mean “human beings” or “people” or “men and women.” In current English usage, the nouns “man” and “men” refer to adult males.

I was thinking of this during the first Mass with the new translations. As a scholar of the Bible, teacher of ancient languages, and devotee of liturgical life, I was prepared for some recovered biblical imagery, Latinate vocabulary and syntax, and even a freshness in my own prayer. But what jumped out at me most, as I was reading the new Creed, was what did not change. “For us men and for our salvation…and became man.”

What a missed opportunity to render the Latin text faithfully!

Translating the Latin homo as “man” and homines as “men” is wrong on all counts. First, it fails the test of formal equivalence. Latin and Greek each have nouns meaning “adult male” or “man” (vir / anēr) and other nouns meaning “human being” (homo / anthrōpos), the latter of which were in the 4^th-century creeds. It’s even likely that “human” is etymologically Latinate (related to homo, -inis), while “man” is Germanic in origin. By its own rules and tendencies, then, the translation team should have acted differently. Second, it fails the test of functional equivalence, which my classroom lesson demonstrates. But there are myriad other ways to prove this. Who goes to the “Men’s Breakfast Bible Study” at your church? Who goes to the “Men’s Room” after Mass?

Third, the new translation fails to be coherent with itself—and this is the most surprising point to me. Later in the Mass, the priest offers the “fruit of the earth/vine and work of human hands” (manuum hominum). And the new translation of the Gloria, which we will begin to use soon, prays for “peace to people (hominibus) of good will.” Was there a peculiar subcommittee for the Creed, one that followed different translation principles?

These are not just questions of interest to language geeks. The Mass translations ought to enable prayer. In Rita Ferrone’s words, they need “to sing.” I want them to sing for our daughter, who will grow up with these words as her vocabulary of prayer. Shouldn’t she think of herself as one of these “men” for whom God intervened? Why is she a “man” here and nowhere else in her life? For this and other reasons, many people already drop the word “men” from the Creed—it’s clunky in any case, and to whom else would “us” refer? (The animals present on the Feast of St. Francis?) But if every word must be translated, then homines in the Creed should have been translated “men and women,” just as the phrase is used in the third Eucharistic Prayer for Various Needs (“you gather men and women, whom you made for the glory of your name”), and just as “brothers and sisters” is used frequently to translate fratres.

As for homo factus est, the Latin noun itself carries the wisdom of the Incarnation: “and became human.” God’s becoming human is the point of the prayer anyway, in this liturgical season most of all.

How many GOP presidential candidates know how the U.S. health-care system works? Or what the Affordable Care Act does?

In October, one-time Republican candidate Herman Cain declared that if he had been diagnosed with stage-four cancer under “Obamacare” he’d be dead — because government bureaucrats would have prevented him from getting the necessary treatment. Of course, Cain completely misunderstands the Affordable Care Act. He’s not alone.

On Friday, December 2, Rick Santorum paid a visit to a group of New Hampshire high-school students, and offered the following lesson on the U.S. health-care system:

“There’s a reason that people who don’t have health insurance right now, who want to sign up for health insurance are stopped from getting insurance on a preexisting condition,” Santorum said. “So if you have cancer, and you’re not insured…then you want to get health insurance, right? Because it’s really expensive [to get cancer treatment]. Imagine if the government said you can get health insurance, and the insurance company can’t deny you because you have cancer.” Santorum asked the class if anyone disagreed with that, and one student spoke up: “Wouldn’t that drive the insurance companies out of business?”

“If you don’t have to have insurance until you’re sick,” Santorum explained, “why buy insurance?… How much would insurance be if only people who needed insurance bought it? The whole point of insurance is: healthy people buy it, sick people buy it, and those who are healthy support those who are sick…. But if insurance is only sick people buy it, well guess what’s going to be the cost of insurance. That’s why there’s a preexisting-condition clause.”

Has Santorum been paying attention to the health-care debate? Does he have the slightest idea what the health-care law he’s promised to repeal actually does? Read the rest of this entry »

I was invited to write a guest opinion column (250-750 words) for the Washington Post (“On Faith”) about the new translation of the Roman Missal. It appeared yesterday. Here’s a bit of it.

Many of the new prayers … contain a pile-up of subordinate clauses reflecting Latin syntax rather than the natural rhythms of spoken English. The people in the pews have been told they are gaining access to the riches of the Latin liturgical tradition. But will Latin syntax slavishly reproduced in English really help them to pray in a more authentic manner? Somehow, I doubt it.

You can read the rest here.