NOT TOO WILD ABOUT HARRY (OR FRODO):
Some Critics Miss the Points About J. K. Rawlings and J. R. R. Tolkien
It’s that time once again. The next installment in the Disneyesque filmed versions of the popular Harry Potter children's fantasy novels by J. K. Rawlings –and the key word here is “fantasy”—is due to be released in theatres around the country tomorrow. The next installment of the classy and classical Lord of the Rings comparatively adult-level fantasy series will follow soon thereafter.
And once again, both –but especially the former-- will be met with a barrage of protests by many (especially amongst Protestant and Catholics) who seem ill-acquainted with Western literature save, perhaps, the local newspaper and the Bible, and likewise oddly unable to discern the difference between fact and fiction; not to mention those who seem to see a Global Satanic New Age Conspiracy behind the most innocuous presentations of myth-and-magic, no matter how hodge-podge and implausible (Harry Potter) even for one who believes in the supernatural and the demonic, or no matter how thought-provoking and invocative of Western Christianity (Rings). Granted, most Christians familiar with Tolkien’s work recognize the latter fact and place it in the same category as C. S. Lewis’ Narnia fantasies. Too many, however, especially in the upper far-right choirs of Christendom, do not and, in fact, look askance even at Lewis, whose fantasy works are more overtly Christian than Tolkien's.
In any case, whether one reads the novels of Rowlings or Tolkien (or even Lewis) --or views films based on those works-- one does so for their primary purpose: To be entertained. This rather salient fact seems to have been lost on both Tolkien's and Rowlings' critics. Moreover, the fact remains that the fairy tale versions of "magic" and Disney-style forms of "sorcery" (as in the famous Mickey Mouse cartoon, The Sorceror's Apprentice) depicted in Harry Potter bear no resemblance whatever to real-life Satanism or witchcraft (especially a la the modern, contrived "religion" of Wicca, created mostly out of whole cloth by occultist Gerald Gardner), or occult practice in general:
For example, nowhere in Harry Potter do the protagonists invoke Astaroth or Beelzebub; or summon demons; or conduct seances; or worship nature or "the Goddess"; or sacrifice animals to Satan; or dance in "magic circles" skyclad (i.e., naked). Instead, what one sees in Harry Potter is a smorgasboard of purely fictional elements and fantasy characters borrowed from all forms of Western folklore and legend. Even the scene in the movie of Harry and his friends learning to fly on broomsticks is based not on real occult practices, but on popular folklore, and Harry's magic wand is an echo of Disney "sorceror" Mickey Mouse, not Rosemary's Baby or even Merlin. Harry Potter no more teaches kids how to be practitioners of Wicca, or Satanism, or Necromancy, or Voo-Doo than Leggos teaches them how to construct office buildings, or Star Trek teaches them how to pilot a spaceship to the Moon.
Rather than some kind of imagined covert attempt by Hollywood in cahoots with the New Age movement to indoctrinate children into the nearest witches’ coven (which proves little more than that too many Harry Potter critics have entered the Twilight Zone) the only real problem with the Harry Potter series –unlike J. R. R. Tokein’s masterful work of political metaphor and symbolic Christian [i]didactica[/i] in the form of myth-and-magic story-telling-- lies elsewhere: As does the majority of contemporary Western secular fiction (and, for that matter, much of contemporary modern Western Christian fiction), the Harry Potter series seems shallow in how it deals with moral issues and with character development, especially in terms of teaching children to distinguish the differences between virtue and vice and to pursue the former.
In all fairness to Rowlings, however, her books are intended to entertain children, not teach them ethics. The very popular and enormously entertaining Veggie Tales videos are much better suited to that task.
In Tolkien’s story, Frodo, the lead character in the first installment of The Lord of the Rings must undertake dangerous tasks as well as overcome ongoing and great temptations as he seeks to destroy a demonic ring whose bearer would be given absolute power were he or she to choose to employ the ring. Added to that is the ring’s increasingly corrupting influence over the one who merely carries it without using it at all. Thus Frodo’s struggle is both temporal (overcome an evil force seeking to possess the ring in order to destroy the world) and spiritual (overcome both his imperfect nature and the ring’s morally debilitating effects upon his moral fortitude). The Lord of the Rings --written by Tolkein with the warring nations of the WW2 conflict and the then-new atom bomb in mind-- is nothing less than a wonderfully entertaining homily and epic-level parable against the dangers of absolute power and its tendency to corrupt absolutely as well as to destroy.
But nothing so high-minded can be discerned in the Harry Potter series, at least not in the first installment of the film version: The only reason the lead character, Harry, undertakes a dangerous mission to retrieve a magically powerful artifact from his friends’ arch-enemy is, well, the latter is his friends’ arch-enemy, and because the SOB murdered his parents when he was a baby. Beyond a vague appeal to “justice,” there is simply no moral element to Harry’s struggle to overcome both his foes and his weaknesses, the latter of which (unlike Frodo's) are less of a moral nature than a physical or mental one. Like much of what passes for "thinking" in modern Western liberal secularism (especially in politics and religion as well as in culture), the first Harry Potter story is about power versus powerlessness, not virtue versus vice, or even good versus evil --two concepts which seem hopelessly vague and empty of any real content in Harry Potter.
Other than a comic-book-level treatment of good and evil, this lack of moral clarity and depth is the only potential problem with the Potter series, at least last year's film version. Yet its most vehement critics ignore this very central aspect of Harry Potter, and aim instead at the wrong target --a target largely of their own collective imagining.
"Any questioning of the moral ideas that prevail ...is received with the utmost hostility.
To attempt such an enterprise is to disturb the peace"
--H. L. Mencken
Thursday, November 14, 2002
Tuesday, November 12, 2002
CATHOLICS vs. THE WEASEL ZONE:
Outraged Christians in an Age of Buck-Passers
Once again the Vatican and the US Catholic Bishops are in the news as the latter meet this week to discuss and implement Rome’s directive to bring the June 2002 draft of the Bishops’ new “zero tolerance” policy on clerical sexual abuse of minors into conformity with the Church’s Canon Law.
According to an editorial in The Washington Post last week, one of the objections Rome raised was two-fold: (1) the Bishops’ new policy overlooked or ignored the due process rights of accused clerics under the Canon Law; and (2) the Bishops’ new policy ignored the Canon Law’s 10-year statute of limitations on charges of clerical sexual abuse. That is, a victim of sexual abuse by a priest must report the incident(s) within 10 years of his or her 18th birthday –a proviso which seems to have been difficult at best for victims in the past because much pressure was placed on him or her and/or his or her family by their diocese to protect Mother Church against needless embarrassment in the public eye, a priority the Vatican seems to consider still rather paramount.
The Post also notes that the Vatican likewise objected to the Bishops’ June decision requiring all Bishops and clerics in all dioceses to immediately report all accusations of clerical sexual abuse of minors to the civil authorities whether or not state or local laws mandate such reporting, and even whether or not state or local governments which mandate such reports specifically exempt religious organizations. Instead, the Vatican said, Bishops should be required to do no more or less than comply with whatever the civil laws in their dioceses happen to be.
Ironically enough, mostly non-Catholic and highly secularized average American citizens and civil leaders seem to take this problem much more seriously than do some leaders within the Catholic Church, even at the Vatican level: Many, if not most, American state and local legal codes include no statute of limitations on either statutory rape (consentual sexual relations between an adult and a minor) or sexual abuse of minors, the latter of which is considered a deeply serious crime to which are attached severe penalties up to and including long prison sentences. Moreover, in almost any school district in the country the mere accusation of any form of sexual involvement by any teacher with any student of any age, with or without that student’s consent, results in that teacher’s immediate dismissal. In most cases, the offender is turned over to the civil authorities for prosecution. But, with perhaps a few rare exceptions, offending teachers are never transferred to other school districts and victims and/or victims’ families are never urged to keep quiet to avoid embarrassing the school system.
On the surface, the Holy See’s desire to protect the rights of priests as well as the reputation of the Church seems all well and good, as well as fair and proper. That is, until one remembers a couple of (in our opinion) important caveats:
(1) One of the roles of the Church and her clergy is to protect the family, without which the Church cannot exist. It’s NOT the role of the family to protect the Church and her clergy. After all, the family as a God-ordained institution precedes the Church as a God-ordained institution, both in terms of history and theology:
God –Himself a family in the form of three Persons!-- created the family first for a reason, and founded the ancient nation of Israel –the Church’s prototype-- upon families for a reason, primarily to image Him. Thus the integrity and security of the family --especially its most vulnerable members, its children-- has primacy over the integrity and security of the Church –especially its most powerful members, its clergy. God has even built into human nature the tendency of all human beings to protect and defend their immediate families –especially their children-- from any person or institution which threatens them either unwittingly or self-consciously, up to and including the Church or her clergy. In its understandable (and even proper) desire and haste to protect the rights and reputations of her priests and the Church, the Vatican seems to have forgotten these first things.
(2) Too many of the world’s institutions –civil government, the multi-national corporation, the investment firm, marriage, and even charity and volunteerism are being both overrun and run by weasels, those folks who, in the words of “Dilbert” creator Scott Adams, operate in “a gigantic gray area between good moral behavior and outright felonious activities” which Adams has dubbed “the Weasel Zone” (see Dilbert and the Way of the Weasel HarperBusiness; 2002).
While only the most skilled weasels are also lawbreakers who don't get caught (once you're caught and prosecuted, you cease being a weasel and become a criminal), most weasels engage in less-than-illegal yet less-than-moral activities such as "acts of omission, conflicts of interest, manipulating public opinion, deflecting blame, avoiding issues, hypocrisy, false claims of discrimination, obfuscation (weasel words), cover-ups, unwarranted optimism, turning a blind eye, ignoring scientific data, scapegoating, and anything else that strikes you as just-plain-wrong."
Weasels will never take responsibility for any negligence or incompetence on their part, especially when it results in harm to those around them and under them, or to their organization as a whole. Instead, weasels will blame someone else inside their organization, usually an underling. Or they’ll try to blame their organization’s rules or policies. Or they’ll blame outside “forces” (such as competitors, the media, or the civil authorities) who are “out to get them.” In any case, weasels pass the buck from themselves to something or someone else.
This latter phenomenon may be one of the factors many otherwise loyal and compliant Catholic lay people have been especially outraged by. As they see it, the Vatican’s –and some American Bishops’-- response to and attitude toward the Bishops’ “zero tolerance” policy is and has been an example of operating in the Weasel Zone.
Instead of using the Canon Law to preserve the status quo, or –worse yet— as an excuse for avoiding accountability and its stepchild, reform, the Vatican should acknowledge that the Canon Law needs to be changed radically (“at the root”) to place at least as much emphasis on protecting the natural rights of Catholic children who came into the Church’s life involuntarily as on protecting the man-made rights of Catholic clergy who came into the clerical life voluntarily.
This is especially crucial in light of one of the foundational principles upon which the Catholic Church’s social teaching is based; namely, consistent emphasis on the rights and dignity of the most vulnerable over the rights and dignity of the most powerful –a principle which has rightly earned the Church worldwide admiration and respect, even from many of her toughest critics. It’s time to bring the Canon Law into conformity with that principle, and to bring out of the Weasel Zone everyone in the Church’s hierarchy who may to still be in it.
Outraged Christians in an Age of Buck-Passers
Once again the Vatican and the US Catholic Bishops are in the news as the latter meet this week to discuss and implement Rome’s directive to bring the June 2002 draft of the Bishops’ new “zero tolerance” policy on clerical sexual abuse of minors into conformity with the Church’s Canon Law.
According to an editorial in The Washington Post last week, one of the objections Rome raised was two-fold: (1) the Bishops’ new policy overlooked or ignored the due process rights of accused clerics under the Canon Law; and (2) the Bishops’ new policy ignored the Canon Law’s 10-year statute of limitations on charges of clerical sexual abuse. That is, a victim of sexual abuse by a priest must report the incident(s) within 10 years of his or her 18th birthday –a proviso which seems to have been difficult at best for victims in the past because much pressure was placed on him or her and/or his or her family by their diocese to protect Mother Church against needless embarrassment in the public eye, a priority the Vatican seems to consider still rather paramount.
The Post also notes that the Vatican likewise objected to the Bishops’ June decision requiring all Bishops and clerics in all dioceses to immediately report all accusations of clerical sexual abuse of minors to the civil authorities whether or not state or local laws mandate such reporting, and even whether or not state or local governments which mandate such reports specifically exempt religious organizations. Instead, the Vatican said, Bishops should be required to do no more or less than comply with whatever the civil laws in their dioceses happen to be.
Ironically enough, mostly non-Catholic and highly secularized average American citizens and civil leaders seem to take this problem much more seriously than do some leaders within the Catholic Church, even at the Vatican level: Many, if not most, American state and local legal codes include no statute of limitations on either statutory rape (consentual sexual relations between an adult and a minor) or sexual abuse of minors, the latter of which is considered a deeply serious crime to which are attached severe penalties up to and including long prison sentences. Moreover, in almost any school district in the country the mere accusation of any form of sexual involvement by any teacher with any student of any age, with or without that student’s consent, results in that teacher’s immediate dismissal. In most cases, the offender is turned over to the civil authorities for prosecution. But, with perhaps a few rare exceptions, offending teachers are never transferred to other school districts and victims and/or victims’ families are never urged to keep quiet to avoid embarrassing the school system.
On the surface, the Holy See’s desire to protect the rights of priests as well as the reputation of the Church seems all well and good, as well as fair and proper. That is, until one remembers a couple of (in our opinion) important caveats:
(1) One of the roles of the Church and her clergy is to protect the family, without which the Church cannot exist. It’s NOT the role of the family to protect the Church and her clergy. After all, the family as a God-ordained institution precedes the Church as a God-ordained institution, both in terms of history and theology:
God –Himself a family in the form of three Persons!-- created the family first for a reason, and founded the ancient nation of Israel –the Church’s prototype-- upon families for a reason, primarily to image Him. Thus the integrity and security of the family --especially its most vulnerable members, its children-- has primacy over the integrity and security of the Church –especially its most powerful members, its clergy. God has even built into human nature the tendency of all human beings to protect and defend their immediate families –especially their children-- from any person or institution which threatens them either unwittingly or self-consciously, up to and including the Church or her clergy. In its understandable (and even proper) desire and haste to protect the rights and reputations of her priests and the Church, the Vatican seems to have forgotten these first things.
(2) Too many of the world’s institutions –civil government, the multi-national corporation, the investment firm, marriage, and even charity and volunteerism are being both overrun and run by weasels, those folks who, in the words of “Dilbert” creator Scott Adams, operate in “a gigantic gray area between good moral behavior and outright felonious activities” which Adams has dubbed “the Weasel Zone” (see Dilbert and the Way of the Weasel HarperBusiness; 2002).
While only the most skilled weasels are also lawbreakers who don't get caught (once you're caught and prosecuted, you cease being a weasel and become a criminal), most weasels engage in less-than-illegal yet less-than-moral activities such as "acts of omission, conflicts of interest, manipulating public opinion, deflecting blame, avoiding issues, hypocrisy, false claims of discrimination, obfuscation (weasel words), cover-ups, unwarranted optimism, turning a blind eye, ignoring scientific data, scapegoating, and anything else that strikes you as just-plain-wrong."
Weasels will never take responsibility for any negligence or incompetence on their part, especially when it results in harm to those around them and under them, or to their organization as a whole. Instead, weasels will blame someone else inside their organization, usually an underling. Or they’ll try to blame their organization’s rules or policies. Or they’ll blame outside “forces” (such as competitors, the media, or the civil authorities) who are “out to get them.” In any case, weasels pass the buck from themselves to something or someone else.
This latter phenomenon may be one of the factors many otherwise loyal and compliant Catholic lay people have been especially outraged by. As they see it, the Vatican’s –and some American Bishops’-- response to and attitude toward the Bishops’ “zero tolerance” policy is and has been an example of operating in the Weasel Zone.
Instead of using the Canon Law to preserve the status quo, or –worse yet— as an excuse for avoiding accountability and its stepchild, reform, the Vatican should acknowledge that the Canon Law needs to be changed radically (“at the root”) to place at least as much emphasis on protecting the natural rights of Catholic children who came into the Church’s life involuntarily as on protecting the man-made rights of Catholic clergy who came into the clerical life voluntarily.
This is especially crucial in light of one of the foundational principles upon which the Catholic Church’s social teaching is based; namely, consistent emphasis on the rights and dignity of the most vulnerable over the rights and dignity of the most powerful –a principle which has rightly earned the Church worldwide admiration and respect, even from many of her toughest critics. It’s time to bring the Canon Law into conformity with that principle, and to bring out of the Weasel Zone everyone in the Church’s hierarchy who may to still be in it.
Wednesday, November 06, 2002
NOTES ON ELECTION NIGHT 2002:
The Shipwreck of the Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything Right
American liberalism, in its majority incarnation of the Democratic Party, may very well have gotten its head handed to it yesterday in election after election for seats in Congress as well as in several governor’s mansions. The Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything Right (aka the Democratic Party) seemed to have virtually no burning issues to run on, and in several key states ran lackluster and wholly negative campaigns for the U. S. Senate based on outdated ideas. The Senate race in one state --Minnesota, a long-time Democrat stronghold— ended up taking on some rather symbolic significance:
Immediately upon Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone’s untimely death a couple weeks before Election Day, the Democrats had so few eligible and appealing candidates to run in Wellstone’s place that the Minnesota chapter of the Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything Right brought 75-year-old Senator and former Vice President Walter Mondale out of retirement to run against Republican go-getter Norm Coleman, who is twenty-some years Mondale’s junior. The middle-aged Coleman so successfully capitalized on that difference in terms of each generation’s approach to issues and problem-solving that Mondale, an icon of outmoded and largely discredited Great Society thinking, was quickly sent back into retirement.
Similar results for the Democrats took place in other long-time predominantly Democrat states, especially Maryland, where a well-known member of the Kennedy clan, liberal Democrat incumbent Lieutenant Governor Kathleen Kennedy-Townsend (RFK’s daughter) was defeated by a comparative unknown, moderate Republican Robert Erlich. It seems that Kennedy-Townsend may have shot herself in the foot on at least three counts:
First, she ran such a nasty and incompetent campaign that even fellow Democrats, including several pundits, predicted that if she won it would be by a very narrow margin despite Maryland’s heavily Democrat voter demographics.
Second, during her tenure in Annapolis, neither she nor her boss, Governor Parris Glendening, lifted a finger to solve Maryland’s rapidly worsening commuting problems, such as beginning construction of the badly needed Inter-County Connector, which had been an integral but untouched part of Maryland’s transportation plans for well nigh unto 40 years, ironically enough the same amount of time since Maryland had its last Republican governor.
And, last but not least, while Erlich had selected a highly respected moderate African-American running mate, Maryland GOP chief Michael Steele, Kennedy-Townsend, who had the cream of the crop of highly eligible African-American Democrats in Maryland politics to choose from for her running mate (including Montgomery County Council member Ike Leggett and Prince George's County Executive Wayne Curry), instead selected a white conservative life-long Republican and retired Admiral, Charles R. Larson.
But why would Kennedy-Townsend do such a thing? A few days before the election, liberal Washington Post columnist Colbert I. King, himself an African-American and a Democrat, offered a stinging explanation: Kennedy-Townsend’s campaign staff thought having an African-American running mate would reduce her chances of being elected. Besides, King said they “reasoned,” African-Americans in Maryland would never vote to put a Republican in the Governor’s mansion so Kennedy-Townsend would get the African-American vote no matter who she ran with. In other words, noted King, Kennedy-Townsend –like most liberal Democrats, who preach one thing while they practice another-- felt free to think and act like a hypocrite because she thought she “owned” the African-American vote --a vote she had to have in order to win the Governor's mansion.
Apparently, like so many of her fellow Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything Right, Kennedy-Townsend miscalculated her course and ended up shipwrecking her own campaign --if not her career and the chances of the Democratic Party in Maryland in the near future: For example, guess who will be running for Governor once Erlich's term is up? You got it: African-American Lieutenant Governor-elect Steele, a Republican. The Boss Pirates in Annapolis and Baltimore can kiss the African-American vote "good-bye" for the rest of this decade.
The Shipwreck of the Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything Right
American liberalism, in its majority incarnation of the Democratic Party, may very well have gotten its head handed to it yesterday in election after election for seats in Congress as well as in several governor’s mansions. The Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything Right (aka the Democratic Party) seemed to have virtually no burning issues to run on, and in several key states ran lackluster and wholly negative campaigns for the U. S. Senate based on outdated ideas. The Senate race in one state --Minnesota, a long-time Democrat stronghold— ended up taking on some rather symbolic significance:
Immediately upon Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone’s untimely death a couple weeks before Election Day, the Democrats had so few eligible and appealing candidates to run in Wellstone’s place that the Minnesota chapter of the Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything Right brought 75-year-old Senator and former Vice President Walter Mondale out of retirement to run against Republican go-getter Norm Coleman, who is twenty-some years Mondale’s junior. The middle-aged Coleman so successfully capitalized on that difference in terms of each generation’s approach to issues and problem-solving that Mondale, an icon of outmoded and largely discredited Great Society thinking, was quickly sent back into retirement.
Similar results for the Democrats took place in other long-time predominantly Democrat states, especially Maryland, where a well-known member of the Kennedy clan, liberal Democrat incumbent Lieutenant Governor Kathleen Kennedy-Townsend (RFK’s daughter) was defeated by a comparative unknown, moderate Republican Robert Erlich. It seems that Kennedy-Townsend may have shot herself in the foot on at least three counts:
First, she ran such a nasty and incompetent campaign that even fellow Democrats, including several pundits, predicted that if she won it would be by a very narrow margin despite Maryland’s heavily Democrat voter demographics.
Second, during her tenure in Annapolis, neither she nor her boss, Governor Parris Glendening, lifted a finger to solve Maryland’s rapidly worsening commuting problems, such as beginning construction of the badly needed Inter-County Connector, which had been an integral but untouched part of Maryland’s transportation plans for well nigh unto 40 years, ironically enough the same amount of time since Maryland had its last Republican governor.
And, last but not least, while Erlich had selected a highly respected moderate African-American running mate, Maryland GOP chief Michael Steele, Kennedy-Townsend, who had the cream of the crop of highly eligible African-American Democrats in Maryland politics to choose from for her running mate (including Montgomery County Council member Ike Leggett and Prince George's County Executive Wayne Curry), instead selected a white conservative life-long Republican and retired Admiral, Charles R. Larson.
But why would Kennedy-Townsend do such a thing? A few days before the election, liberal Washington Post columnist Colbert I. King, himself an African-American and a Democrat, offered a stinging explanation: Kennedy-Townsend’s campaign staff thought having an African-American running mate would reduce her chances of being elected. Besides, King said they “reasoned,” African-Americans in Maryland would never vote to put a Republican in the Governor’s mansion so Kennedy-Townsend would get the African-American vote no matter who she ran with. In other words, noted King, Kennedy-Townsend –like most liberal Democrats, who preach one thing while they practice another-- felt free to think and act like a hypocrite because she thought she “owned” the African-American vote --a vote she had to have in order to win the Governor's mansion.
Apparently, like so many of her fellow Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything Right, Kennedy-Townsend miscalculated her course and ended up shipwrecking her own campaign --if not her career and the chances of the Democratic Party in Maryland in the near future: For example, guess who will be running for Governor once Erlich's term is up? You got it: African-American Lieutenant Governor-elect Steele, a Republican. The Boss Pirates in Annapolis and Baltimore can kiss the African-American vote "good-bye" for the rest of this decade.
Thursday, October 24, 2002
HEAT vs LIGHT:
The Pope’s "New" Luminous Rosary
Earlier this month (Oct. 16, to be exact) Pope John Paul II decided to propose the addition of a fourth set of five “new” meditations (known to Catholics as “Mysteries”) on five significant events in Christ’s ministry --taken directly from the Gospels-- while praying the Rosary. The Pope refers to these as “Luminous Mysteries” or “Mysteries of Light.”
Some of the reactions to this announcement have been interesting, to say the least. For example, a few Type A nitpickers residing in the upper right choir of the Catholic Church seem to have been in such a state of apoplexy ever since John Paul II's announcement that one would think the Pontiff had suggested each parish set up a birth control clinic.
On a Catholic message board, one of the "traditionalist" Catholics (those who gripe the most about the changes which took place after the Second Vatican Council, most of which they deem "un-Catholic") complained that "...the tendency for the current pontificate to alter tradition at a whim has been standard the last couple of decades." Another "traditionalist" smelled a Secular Humanist Conspiracy afoot: "...Again, we contemplate Christ in order to orient towards and contemplate Man...Constantly the orientation is towards Man."
Hmmm. Upon reading the entire text of the Pope's Apostolic Letter, Rosarium Virginis Mariae, it seems to your humble servant that the optional addition of the five "new" Mysteries are anything but based on a "whim," much less influenced by atheists and agnostics: Even a cursory reading of RVM reveals that the Pope put a great deal of study, thought, meditation, and --yes-- prayer into proposing these "new" Mysteries --all of which, btw, come directly from the New Testament, not from the New Humanist Manifesto.
But then again, I could be wrong: Maybe the Pope created his Luminous Mysteries ex nihilo whilst having his morning cappuccino. Or maybe he woke up on the morning of October 16 and said to himself,
"Now what shall I do today? HA! I know! Why, I'll just think up five radically man-centered new meditations for the Rosary! That should change the Rosary so that no one will recognize it any more and I can make the atheists and secular humanists happy at the same time. THAT should show them pesky traditionalists who's boss in this Church! COOL!!!"
Anything's possible.
And if that sort of kvetching hasn't been sufficiently clueless, here is how another “traditionalist” Catholic critic put the Pope’s proposal: “…just when you thought that the rulers of the Novus Ordo Ecclesiae [aka, the “post-Vatican II Church” –TC] were done introducing novelties and innovations, just when you thought that it was safe to come out of your prayer closets and try to be Catholic again… the Holy Rosary has been put up on the auction block… another relic from a more orthodox era that apparently needs to be traded in for a newer model.”
The “cause” of the Pope’s decision, according to the writer? Why, none other than that Great Evil Boogeyman, ecumenism: “…If you're thinking you smell a bit of ‘ecumania’ here, you're exactly right. It's no coincidence that the less Scriptural [Stations of the Cross, and entirely separate Catholic devotion –TC] were replaced [by the Pope privately] with events recorded in the Gospels (The Agony in the Garden, The Betrayal, Peter's Denial, The Good Thief, and Mary and John at the Foot of the Cross), so that our Protestant brethren might feel a bit more at home participating in this Catholic devotion.”
But never mind that unlike the Stations of the Cross, the REAL barrier for Protestants to pray the Rosary were NOT the traditional 15 Mysteries at all (with the possible exception of the 4th and 5th Glorious Mysteries, which focus on the Blessed Virgin Mary), but the 53 “Hail Mary” prayers recited in the Rosary –not to mention the repetitious nature of the Rosary itself, which many Protestants regard as “unbiblical.”
So if this writer –himself an ex-Protestant, so he should know better-- really thinks that the Pope’s modest Gospel-centered proposal will move Protestants –especially Fundamentalist Protestants!—to fall all over each other in a mad rush to cause a run on Rosary beads in the Catholic goods market, your humble servant, The Curmudgeon, has some –um—land in the Okefenokee he’d happily sell him.
The Pope’s "New" Luminous Rosary
Earlier this month (Oct. 16, to be exact) Pope John Paul II decided to propose the addition of a fourth set of five “new” meditations (known to Catholics as “Mysteries”) on five significant events in Christ’s ministry --taken directly from the Gospels-- while praying the Rosary. The Pope refers to these as “Luminous Mysteries” or “Mysteries of Light.”
Some of the reactions to this announcement have been interesting, to say the least. For example, a few Type A nitpickers residing in the upper right choir of the Catholic Church seem to have been in such a state of apoplexy ever since John Paul II's announcement that one would think the Pontiff had suggested each parish set up a birth control clinic.
On a Catholic message board, one of the "traditionalist" Catholics (those who gripe the most about the changes which took place after the Second Vatican Council, most of which they deem "un-Catholic") complained that "...the tendency for the current pontificate to alter tradition at a whim has been standard the last couple of decades." Another "traditionalist" smelled a Secular Humanist Conspiracy afoot: "...Again, we contemplate Christ in order to orient towards and contemplate Man...Constantly the orientation is towards Man."
Hmmm. Upon reading the entire text of the Pope's Apostolic Letter, Rosarium Virginis Mariae, it seems to your humble servant that the optional addition of the five "new" Mysteries are anything but based on a "whim," much less influenced by atheists and agnostics: Even a cursory reading of RVM reveals that the Pope put a great deal of study, thought, meditation, and --yes-- prayer into proposing these "new" Mysteries --all of which, btw, come directly from the New Testament, not from the New Humanist Manifesto.
But then again, I could be wrong: Maybe the Pope created his Luminous Mysteries ex nihilo whilst having his morning cappuccino. Or maybe he woke up on the morning of October 16 and said to himself,
"Now what shall I do today? HA! I know! Why, I'll just think up five radically man-centered new meditations for the Rosary! That should change the Rosary so that no one will recognize it any more and I can make the atheists and secular humanists happy at the same time. THAT should show them pesky traditionalists who's boss in this Church! COOL!!!"
Anything's possible.
And if that sort of kvetching hasn't been sufficiently clueless, here is how another “traditionalist” Catholic critic put the Pope’s proposal: “…just when you thought that the rulers of the Novus Ordo Ecclesiae [aka, the “post-Vatican II Church” –TC] were done introducing novelties and innovations, just when you thought that it was safe to come out of your prayer closets and try to be Catholic again… the Holy Rosary has been put up on the auction block… another relic from a more orthodox era that apparently needs to be traded in for a newer model.”
The “cause” of the Pope’s decision, according to the writer? Why, none other than that Great Evil Boogeyman, ecumenism: “…If you're thinking you smell a bit of ‘ecumania’ here, you're exactly right. It's no coincidence that the less Scriptural [Stations of the Cross, and entirely separate Catholic devotion –TC] were replaced [by the Pope privately] with events recorded in the Gospels (The Agony in the Garden, The Betrayal, Peter's Denial, The Good Thief, and Mary and John at the Foot of the Cross), so that our Protestant brethren might feel a bit more at home participating in this Catholic devotion.”
But never mind that unlike the Stations of the Cross, the REAL barrier for Protestants to pray the Rosary were NOT the traditional 15 Mysteries at all (with the possible exception of the 4th and 5th Glorious Mysteries, which focus on the Blessed Virgin Mary), but the 53 “Hail Mary” prayers recited in the Rosary –not to mention the repetitious nature of the Rosary itself, which many Protestants regard as “unbiblical.”
So if this writer –himself an ex-Protestant, so he should know better-- really thinks that the Pope’s modest Gospel-centered proposal will move Protestants –especially Fundamentalist Protestants!—to fall all over each other in a mad rush to cause a run on Rosary beads in the Catholic goods market, your humble servant, The Curmudgeon, has some –um—land in the Okefenokee he’d happily sell him.
EQUAL OPPORTUNITY SNIPERS:
Is Race Really An Issue???
Believe it or not, in the wake of the arrests of suspected DC snipers John A. Muhammed and Lee Malvo, some are already making much ado about the race of these two losers, indulging in some rather needless and IMHO misguided speculation bordering on race-baiting.
See for example this article on another weblog site: Two Black Men Arrested in the Beltway Sniper Case
For some "reason" or other, the article writer "wonders" (emphasis via italics in the original), "Call me Mr. Cynic, but when I heard the news, the first thought that came to mind was I wonder how many paragraphs into their lead story it will take before the New York Times identifies the race of the arrested individuals."
The writer goes on to assert that members "of a Black Muslim group called Jamaat al-Fuqra ...may have been involved in the kidnapping and murder of journalist Daniel Pearl." But he offers not a shred of evidence to support his speculation that any "Black Muslims" or any "Black Muslim" groups were involved in the Pearl case.
In fact, the article on this group to which he provides a link says only this regarding that group's membership (emphasis mine):
"...a terrorist outfit operating in Pakistan and North America, was formed by a Pakistani cleric, Sheikh Mubarak Ali Gilani, in New York in 1980, on his first visit to the US. Mubarak Gilani's intention in forming the outfit was to 'purify' Islam through violence ...Muslims of the Americas, a tax-exempt group established in the US in 1980 by Gilani, operates communes of primarily black, American-born Muslims in many states in the US, including in Binghamton in New York, Badger in California, York in South California and Red House in Virginia. JF is reportedly linked through court documents to the Muslims of Americas. There is also a road in the name of Sheikh Gilani in the vicinity of Virginia. The cult houses between 100 and 200 people, many of them women and children in about 20 huge trailers. There is also a Virginia newspaper, the Islamic Post, founded by Sheikh Gilani."
The last time I looked, Pakistan was not an African ("Black") country and Pakistani clerics were not "Black Muslims." In fact, the vast majority of Pakistanis are of the same races as their neighbors, Afghanistan and India (of which Pakistan was once a part). As for the point that Sheikh Gilani's North American branch is composed of "primarily black, American-born Muslims," so what? How does this "prove" or even indicate a likelihood they were involved in the Pearl kidnapping and murder? EVIDENCE PLEASE! Idle speculation based on little more than one's imagination simply will not do.
As for the suspected (and IMO most likely actual) DC snipers, while it's true that both are black --Muhammed is African-American and Malvo is Jamaican-- on what grounds does the aforementioned weblog writer imply that they were racially motivated or that their race was the determining factor in their actions? After all, at least half their victims were non-whites, including at least one African-American, Hispanic, and Asian. They also shot men and women alike, and one child as well.
And let's not forget that Oklahoma bomber Timothy McVeigh was neither "Black" nor "Muslim," and like the DC snipers killed people of all races, genders, and ages.
IOW, like McVeigh, the bastards who had been murdering and wounding innocent bystanders in the Washington DC area were equal opportunity assassins. But could they, like McVeigh, have been motivated by racism as well as, like McVeigh, anti-democratic and anti-pluralistic views? Of course. But thus far they gave no indication at all that they were motivated by race issues, nor --least of all-- by the fact that they were black. After all, like McVeigh, they killed people of their own race.
In what way, therefore, is the race of the DC sniper suspects at all relevant? Perhaps instead of being coy by dancing around that question, the weblog writer should be straightforward and tell the rest of us precisley why "identi[fying] the race of the arrested individuals" is so damn important to him.
Just MHO.
[EDITOR'S UPDATE: In his reply on his weblog to the commentary above, the aforementioned weblog writer explained the intent behind his comments: Apparently he was merely expressing his exasperation with those media outlets who identify the race of white perpetrators whose victims are minorities while at the same time withholding the racial identity of those perpetrators whose victims are white, even when their crimes turn out to be racially motivated. In our view, his explanation seems quite reasonable and not at all racially motivated. However, one can bet one's next paycheck that not all those who make a point of focusing on the race of the DC snipers will do so out of similarly respectable motives. Nevertheless, we humbly stand corrected.]
GREAT BREAKING NEWS!!!
THE DC SNIPER HAS BEEN CAUGHT!
Or so the police seem to believe. Actually there were two of them, a disgruntled and twice-divorced 42 year-old ex-Army drifter who had converted to militant Islam a few years ago; and his 17 year-old stepson, apparently the one who wrote those poorly written, bad-grammar-ridden, semi-literate notes they left for the police.
It seems these bozos, in a fit of indignation and ego after being blown off as "cranks" by the FBI's tip line operators, gave themselves away by boasting to the police about a killing they committed in Montgomery, Alabama while robbing a liqour store there. A fingerprint left at the crime scene led to their identification and arrest.
In addition, early news reports indicate that both of these losers had openly expressed approval and support of the 9/11 destruction against New York and Washington by the Al Queda terrorists. What a surprise!
CNN.com carries the full story to date HERE.
THANKS BE TO GOD ALMIGHTY!
THE DC SNIPER HAS BEEN CAUGHT!
Or so the police seem to believe. Actually there were two of them, a disgruntled and twice-divorced 42 year-old ex-Army drifter who had converted to militant Islam a few years ago; and his 17 year-old stepson, apparently the one who wrote those poorly written, bad-grammar-ridden, semi-literate notes they left for the police.
It seems these bozos, in a fit of indignation and ego after being blown off as "cranks" by the FBI's tip line operators, gave themselves away by boasting to the police about a killing they committed in Montgomery, Alabama while robbing a liqour store there. A fingerprint left at the crime scene led to their identification and arrest.
In addition, early news reports indicate that both of these losers had openly expressed approval and support of the 9/11 destruction against New York and Washington by the Al Queda terrorists. What a surprise!
CNN.com carries the full story to date HERE.
THANKS BE TO GOD ALMIGHTY!
Wednesday, October 23, 2002
WELCOME TO THE DPI WEBLOG!
At this site, we'll cover breaking news as well as on-going issues related to topics addressed on my web site, Disturber of the Peace Institute
Enjoy your visit!
Your obedient servant,
The Curmudgeon
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