Susan Jacoby is no respecter of creeds. Having reduced Judaism to a matter of personal taste (so long as that taste does not extend to neoconservatism), she employs her heavy artillery against all things Christian and the Pope she belittles as a “bureaucrat” and “apparatchik.”
In fairness, let’s begin with Jacoby’s protestation:
I am not “anti-Catholic” but I strongly oppose the kind of Catholicism (and Christianity) embodied by this pope.
And what kind of Catholicism (and Christianity) would Jacoby prefer?
I am an atheist and have been one since my teens. Since I do not believe in God, I do not believe in religious Judaism any more than I believe in Christianity or Islam. I judge the harmfulness or beneficence of particular religions by their openness to secular knowledge and their willingness to admit that they are not in possession of absolute truth.
Jacoby’s problem with Christianity is that it takes itself seriously. Since all religious belief is bunk to Jacoby, her only yardstick is secularism. As luck would have it, Jacoby can point to numerous examples of unserious religions (and unserious Christians and Jews) to buttress her argument that there are benign manifestations of religion that the hardliners should emulate. A good religion is one that professes its irrelevance.
The occasion for this particular rant by Jacoby was the Pope’s encouragement of the Tridentine Mass and busying himself with church doctrine and practices:
A real spiritual leader–as opposed to a dispenser of vainglorious dogma–would have been issuing heartfelt apologies to the victims whose lives were ruined by misplaced faith in the priests supposedly ordained by apostolic successors of Peter. Pope Benedict should have been on his knees to those victims, begging personally for their forgiveness on behalf of the church he heads, at a time when he was occupying himself with petty decrees about church ritual and church primacy.
Apparently unknown to Jacoby, both John Paul II and Benedict XVI have apologized (see e.g., here, here, and here). For Jacoby, the Pope’s preoccupation with ecclesial matters is merely evidence that he is oblivious to moral issues. Of course, when he dares to comment to moral issues. . . .
I am reminded of G. K. Chesterton’s discussion in Orthodoxy of the paradoxes of Christianity’s critics:
One accusation against Christianity was that it prevented men, by morbid tears and terrors, from seeking joy and liberty in the bosom of Nature. But another accusation was that it comforted men with a fictitious providence, and put them in a pink-and-white nursery. One great agnostic asked why Nature was not beautiful enough, and why it was hard to be free. Another great agnostic objected that Christian optimism, “the garment of make-believe woven by pious hands,” hid from us the fact that Nature was ugly, and that it was impossible to be free. One rationalist had hardly done calling Christianity a nightmare before another began to call it a fool’s paradise. This puzzled me; the charges seemed inconsistent. Christianity could not at once be the black mask on a white world, and also the white mask on a black world. The state of the Christian could not be at once so comfortable that he was a coward to cling to it, and so uncomfortable that he was a fool to stand it. . . .
It looked not so much as if Christianity was bad enough to include any vices, but rather as if any stick was good enough to beat Christianity with. What again could this astonishing thing be like which people were so anxious to contradict, that in doing so they did not mind contradicting themselves?
March 20th, 2008
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Fitzroy |
Religion |
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Two days ago the Supreme Court held oral argument in District of Columbia v. Heller concerning the Second Amendment right to bear arms — specifically, whether the District of Columbia can prohibit the registration of handguns, carrying a pistol without a license, and requiring all firearms to be kept unloaded and either disassembled or trigger locked.
The Oyez Project provides many resources concerning the Court, including the oral argument in Heller.
The Oyez Project is a multimedia archive devoted to the Supreme Court of the United States and its work. It aims to be a complete and authoritative source for all audio recorded in the Court since the installation of a recording system in October 1955. The Project also provides authoritative information on all justices and offers a virtual reality ‘tour’ of portions of the Supreme Court building, including the chambers of some of the justices.
The oral argument is here.
March 20th, 2008
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Fitzroy |
Law |
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Cranmer is taking heat for his thoughtful post on euthanasia. As public opinion seems to shift in favor of a “right to die,” it is heartening to see people articulating the contrary case. I noted here that our discussion of this issue has become clouded with euphemisms, as evidenced by a judge deciding that “physician assisted suicide” is a term too “loaded” for the Washington State ballot while allowing the supposedly neutral label “death with dignity.” Something is skewed in our understanding of dignity when we consider it more noble to shoot poison into our veins than to bear an infirmity. Where is Dylan Thomas when you need him?
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
I think His Grace deserves credit for raising the issue with reference to a case that is certain to generate sympathy for the contrary view. The woman pictured on his site is surely suffering. Cranmer does not flinch from applying his principles to hard cases.
March 19th, 2008
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Fitzroy |
Politics, Religion |
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Which is more important in departments of education at our top colleges? Math or diversity? One study looked at the course descriptions to see which terms predominate - diversity and its variants, or math and its variants. Not surprisingly, of the 71 programs examined, all but 24 paid more homage to diversity than to math. Jay P. Greene and Catherine Shock, “Adding Up to Failure.”
The average ed school, we found, has a multiculturalism-to-math ratio of 1.82, meaning that it offers 82 percent more courses featuring social goals than featuring math. At Harvard and Stanford, the ratio is about 2: almost twice as many courses are social as mathematical. At the University of Minnesota, the ratio is higher than 12. And at UCLA, a whopping 47 course titles and descriptions contain the word “multiculturalism” or “diversity,” while only three contain the word “math,” giving it a ratio of almost 16.
I suppose one could argue that diversity is a term that can be applied to many subjects such as math, history, science, and art. Perhaps so, but then math (like science, history, and art) is also a term that can be applied to many subjects. Math could even be applied to courses in diversity - as in a course that might be called “The mathematical, historical, and scientific rationale for cultural diversity in education.” But you probably won’t find that course because the rationale for diversity is presumed.
In several states, law mandates that ed schools receive accreditation from the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE). NCATE, in turn, requires education programs to meet six standards, one entirely devoted to diversity, but none entirely devoted to ensuring proper math pedagogy. Education schools that attempt to break from the cartel’s multiculturalism focus risk denial of accreditation.
One kind of cultural diversity that results from our obsession with multi-culturalism is that students from Asian cultures do much better in subjects like math.
March 19th, 2008
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Fitzroy |
Education |
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Amanda Shaw reviews Macbeth in First Things.
The director, Rupert Goold, masterfully depicts the evil of power and, more terrifying, the power of evil-yet he doesn’t go about this in any traditional, warty-nosed-witch sort of way. His production, starring Patrick Stewart and Kate Fleetwood, debuted last year in England and, after finishing its run in Brooklyn, will be moving on to Broadway.
* * *
[T]his production is somehow both awe-full and terrifying. Bestial behavior and violence can cause us to feel pity or disgust. It is when they are shrouded in feigned ignorance and quotidian merriment-when they wear human faces-that they become truly horrible. Stars, hide your fires, says Macbeth. Let not light see my black and deep desires: / The eye wink at the hand; yet let that be, / Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see.
I am skeptical of the Stalinist setting; I find such anachronisms frequently distracting. But the review suggests that the setting may have been put to good use here and offers other good reasons to keep an eye on this production.
March 18th, 2008
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Fitzroy |
Theater |
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Susan Jacoby writes that “Jewish Identity Is What Each Jew Makes of It.” I am not Jewish, but Jacoby’s thesis is not wrong merely as applied to Judaism; it is fundamentally wrong about any group defined by faith or ethnicity. Indeed, Jacoby’s arguments do much to disprove her title and thesis.
She expresses a profound confusion about what being Jewish means to her.
What Jewish identity means if one is not an observant Jew is unclear. I am a half-Jew, American born. My mother was a Roman Catholic, my father a Jew who denied his identity and converted to Catholicism. . . . By traditional Jewish religious standards, I am not a Jew at all. I do consider myself culturally Jewish, in that Jewish history, and the Jewish experience in America, has informed my life in ways that have been affected by my father’s experience–for better and for worse.
Jacoby fails, however, to explain how her own confusion and tenuous connections to being Jewish translate into freedom for “each Jew” to define what Jewish means. In fact, Jacoby has some objective criteria that she is more than willing to apply to others. For example, being Jewish entails not being neoconservative.
One thing I will never understand is why neoconservative Jews are so unmindful of their own history that they have embraced a political alliance with the Christian Right. . . . This is an outstanding example of right-wing Jewish historical amnesia.
Since she levels this criticism specifically at an observant Jew, one must conclude that, for Jacoby, being politically liberal is a better Jewish credential than being observant. She is obviously not content to let an observant Jew define his Jewish identity as he pleases.
Jacoby defines Jewish culture almost exclusively in terms of its recent secular history, mentioning in passing the Diaspora but failing to acknowledge any of Judaism’s foundational history or beliefs. Consequently, she ends up discussing what it means to be Jewish in very small terms. But no matter how much of Judaism she ignores, she never escapes the need to define something as distinctly Jewish. Whatever that is, it is not simply a matter of personal taste, but something shared and passed from one generation to another. Her fatuous statement that each individual can decide what it means to be Jewish defies the definition of culture.
March 18th, 2008
Posted by
Fitzroy |
Religion |
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John Renehan tells the story of his transition from attorney and graduate of Boalt Hall (Berkeley) to Army officer in The Washington Post. He decided to enter the Army at age 29 and give up his law job.
Renehan’s story is made more interesting by his choice of combat arms. He could have ascended virtually immediately to the rank of Captain (skipping over the ranks of Second Lieutenant and First Lieutenant) had he sought to be an Army lawyer. Instead, he went through Office Candidate School at Fort Benning and is completing his third year of service as a First Lieutenant in the Artillery.
I . . . knew virtually no one from my own background — comfortable childhood, good education, white-collar career — who had ever been in the service.
Perhaps Renehan lived in a societal bubble to a greater extent than most of us, but his observations on how the elite have changed their attitudes toward the military ring true.
The privileged of prior generations were more likely to consider military service a natural expression of their own privileged relationship to the state — the least, you might say, that they could do in return for the opportunities the nation had granted them. Consider a young John F. Kennedy working connections to obtain a commission that his health would have denied him otherwise. How many from Harvard pull such strings today? To chalk this up to the ethos of a “simpler,” less questioning time would be easy, but it would also be facile.
The attitudes of his peers are illustrated by his experience with the Army recruiters in law school.
In law school, I did sign up for “informational interviews” — they didn’t dare hope for actual employment interviews at Berkeley — with some of the services’ JAG Corps representatives and was later informed by a fellow student that I was the only bona fide interviewee. The other students on the roster intended to read statements of protest regarding the Defense Department’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.
Not one student at Berkeley’s law school, except Renehan, went to an interview with the Judge Advocate General corps except to protest. So much for diversity.
Here’s hoping Lt. Renehan proves to be an inspiring example for other “elites.”
March 17th, 2008
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Fitzroy |
Education |
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That’s the title of the upcoming program at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, exploring “the complex and controversial subject of the relationship between homosexuality, queer theory and queer studies, and the discipline of art history.” Roger Kimball responds:
I hope someone will propound the equally challenging question, namely “How Long Will the Public Put Up With Such Rubbish Masquerading as Serious Inquiry?” That is a conversation I would dearly like to hear.
March 15th, 2008
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Fitzroy |
Visual Arts |
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The blog “Get Religion” provides some very useful and interesting commentary on how the press covers the subject of religion. From the post “Abstaining from Journalism”:
So frequently the mainstream media reduces religion to a litany of moral statements. The only time you can get coverage of religion, it seems, is when these moral views intersect with public policy or politics. But then when there is a major moral issue in the news — be it prostitution, plagiarism or embezzlement — religious understanding is noticeably excluded from the coverage.
The recent coverage of the STD epidemic among teenage girls provides a good example. The New York Times and the Associated Press both took the story as an opportunity to criticize abstinence-only sex education.
It is also interesting to note that the “abstinence” issue is the only one raised, as the Times attempts to raise a question that demands — who, what, when, where, why and how — to be raised. Why is all of this happening? Are African-American teen-agers in big cities served by public schools being bombarded with two or three times more “abstinence” education than their white counterparts? Have other forms of sexual education vanished? Are there NO other cultural forces at work in this story? None?
Rod Dreher also weighs in on this topic with commentary on the role of culture.
March 15th, 2008
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Fitzroy |
Education, Religion |
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Today’s martini post is going up unavoidably early – so early that I was prompted to find out who drinks martinis for breakfast.
As you might expect, that was not hard to find. So I am linking to a helpful video produced by Belvedere Vodka. It’s helpful because the recipe includes all those extra “breakfast” ingredients and because it’s so early that you may not have downed enough caffeine to handle the written directions.
As usual, I wonder how something that contains no gin, no vermouth, and no olive can properly be called a martini, but Belvedere at least is honest enough to put an adjective in the name. It’s worth a try.
(Image by Ken30684 - Creative Commons)
March 14th, 2008
Posted by
Fitzroy |
Leisure |
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