Arts & Ammo

Eradicating Poverty

Anglican bishops, currently meeting at the decennial Lambeth Conference, have taken to the streets to march against poverty. Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown joined them and had this to say:

This has been one of the greatest public demonstrations of faith that this great city has ever seen. You have sent a symbol, a very clear message with rising force that poverty can be eradicated, poverty must be eradicated and if we all work together for change poverty will be eradicated.

One might think that with so many bishops present, somebody would have reminded the PM that Jesus said otherwise. But then the Anglican bishops have not been particularly troubled by such details lately. So many of them are willing to swim against the tide of procreative nature, it may appear a comparatively simple matter to remake the laws of economics.

The Archbishop of Canterbury said, “[O]ur faith challenges us to eradicate poverty, and not merely to reduce it.” St. Francis, call your office.

The liberals’ view that we have nothing to learn from history and that no wisdom resides in our culture and traditions leaves them in a state of perpetual experimentation – and frequently in a state of surprise or denial when their experiments lead to the same results obtained in the past. First and foremost, they must do something, even if the something is demonstrably wrong. Their faith is in their own power to change; they put their hope in audacity.

I have nothing against the Church taking positions on issues of public importance. The Church has much to contribute, especially when it brings to the discussion its vast scholarship and experience dealing with persistent aspects of the human condition. But surely that corpus of knowledge, had the bishops consulted it, would have argued against joining with Labour leaders in a march against poverty with the attendant message that some new legislation can accomplish the deed. (But then surely that same corpus of knowledge would have argued also against joining with gay rights activists to modify the sacraments.)

Of course, the bishops will be criticized either way – for ignoring a problem or for meddling in it. Cranmer commends them for taking a break from gender issues.

Of course most of these bishops are Socialists, with a commitment to wealth distribution because it is the rich getting richer who make the poor poorer. But there will be no placards ‘calling for free markets, free trade and better protection of private property’ until there is a dialogue between the Church and the Conservative Party which can bring enlightenment to Their Graces. It is not that no bishops harbour secret leanings to the right; it is that no-one from the right bothers to talk to them or convincingly reassure them that there is no shame in supporting a Conservative worldview.

I question the bishops’ march because I think the Church has a better understanding of poverty than the government does, and the Church squanders its position in advocating a political solution. And it squanders its authority when it argues on subjects like political economics on which it has no particular expertise. The Archbishop’s remarks predictably focus on the “gulf” between rich and poor. But that is not the definition of poverty. It is merely a justification for the easy task of making the rich less rich, even though that has never resulted in making the poor less poor. Liberalism offers the convenient solution of allowing the middle class to give someone else’s money to the poor – to give without sacrifice and feel good about it.

The Church on the other hand works through benevolence, not coercion. It calls on us to share our material wealth, but it understands poverty also as a dearth of intellectual and spiritual capital. The Church accomplishes far more by building hospitals and schools (and, yes, cathedrals) than by marching to buck up what the Archbishop calls the “global political will.”

July 29th, 2008 Posted by Fitzroy | Politics, Religion | no comments

Small Arms Fire

To the Spoilers Goes the Victory. The sack race and three-legged race have been banned from a school sports day because the children might fall over and hurt themselves. Simon Woolley, head of education at Beamish in Co Durham, said: “We looked at a three-legged race and a sack race but what we want to do is minimise the risk to the children. We thought we would be better to do hopping and running instead because there was less chance of them falling over.”

Trash Culture. “Not long before she died, Pauline Kael remarked to a friend, ‘When we championed trash culture we had no idea it would become the only culture.’” Robert Fulford elaborates:

Kael assumed she was safe to defend the choices of mass audiences because the old standards of taste would always be there. They were, after all, built into the culture. But those standards were swiftly eroding. [Paul] Schrader argued that she and her admirers won the battle but lost the war. Acceptable taste became mass-audience taste, box-office receipts the ultimate measure of a film’s worth, sometimes the only measure. Traditional, well-written movies without violence or special effects were pushed to the margins. “It was fun watching the applecart being upset,” Schrader said, “but now where do we go for apples?”

U.K. Moves Toward State-Sponsored Islam. “The BBC has announced that now the Government is to fund a ‘board of Islamic theologians,’ with Oxford and Cambridge Universities hosting debates on ‘key issues such as women and loyalty to the UK.’ Communities Secretary Hazel Blears said it was government’s job ‘to support Muslim leaders on controversial issues.’” Via Cranmer.

New Music Is Torture. Joe Queenan says the unsayable.

Having spent most of the last century writing music few people were expected to understand, much less enjoy, the high priests of music were now portrayed as innocent victims of the public’s lack of imagination. . . . [C]oncert-goers have learned to stay awake and applaud politely at compositions by Christopher Rouse and Tan Dun. But they do this only because these works tend to be short and not terribly atonal; because they know this is the last time in their lives they’ll have to listen to them; and because the orchestra has signed a contract in blood guaranteeing that if everyone holds their nose and eats their vegetables, they’ll be rewarded with a great dollop of Tchaikovsky and Mendelssohn.

Beer Is a Health Food. George Will says it, so it must be true. And he backs it up with scientific and historical evidence. “Suffice it to say that the good news is really good: Beer is a health food. And you do not need to buy it from those wan, unhealthy-looking people who, peering disapprovingly at you through rimless Trotsky-style spectacles, seem to run all the health food stores.”

July 20th, 2008 Posted by Fitzroy | Film, Music, Politics, Religion | no comments

Morality Without the Tommyrot

Joseph Bottum recounts the central role of mainline Protestantism in the history and cultural attitudes of America. It was the unifying principle:

Which makes it all the stranger that, somewhere around 1975, the main stream of Protestantism ran dry. In truth, there are still plenty of Methodists around. Baptists and Presbyterians, too—Lutherans, Episcopalians, and all the rest; millions of believing Christians who remain serious and devout. For that matter, you can still find, ­soldiering on, some of the institutions they established in their Mainline glory days: the National Council of Churches, for instance, in its God Box up on New York City’s Riverside Drive, with the cornerstone laid, in a grand ceremony, by President Eisenhower in 1958. But those institutions are corpses, even if they don’t quite realize that they’re dead. The great confluence of Protestantism has dwindled to a trickle over the past thirty years, and the Great Church of America has come to an end.

The once outlandish actions of Bishop Pike, for example, (“discarding doctrine in the name of ethics, and he was always ­ feckless: dangerously irresponsible, ­refusing to think his way through causes and ­consequences”) became the norm.

And that leaves us in an odd situation, unlike any before. The death of the Mainline is the central historical fact of our time: the event that distinguishes the past several decades from every other ­period in American history. Almost every one of our current political and cultural oddities, our contradictions and obscurities, derives from this fact: The Mainline has lost the capacity to set, or even significantly influence, the national vocabulary or the national self-understanding.

Among the causes, Bottum discusses Canadian law professor John Humphrey who completed a draft of the 1948 U.N.’s Universal Declaration on Human Rights and said what had been achieved was “Christian morality without the tommyrot.” Tommyrot to Humphrey stood for dogma, sacraments, prayer, and other trappings of religion. And morality without the tommyrot seems to be precisely what many Americans seek. Morality has been replaced by ethics, and religion by spirituality, and the core principles are no longer apparent.

Protestantism’s quest for greater relevance in the economic and political realm has led to its demise. The real tommyrot in hindsight seems more likely to be the lefty causes that distracted mainline Protestantism into irrelevance.

July 19th, 2008 Posted by Fitzroy | Religion | no comments

Small Arms Fire

Knife Crime. PowerLine notes the consequences of Great Britain’s 1997 ban on private ownership of handguns. If has apparently succeeded in its stated goal of taking guns off the street.

But the result has not been what was intended. Crime rates in the U.K. have risen steadily, and violent crime has increased alarmingly in recent years. London is currently in the grip of a crime wave, as one brutal, sensational murder follows another. The perpetrators are nearly always young, and the crimes, often unspeakably vicious, are generally of the type conventionally labeled “senseless.” The weapon of choice these days is the knife, and British papers are full of discussion of what to do about “knife crime.”

Speaking of Crime. The U.S. government discovered an interesting fact after it began fingerprinting insurgents, detainees and ordinary people in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Horn of Africa. Hundreds have criminal arrest records in the U.S. Thanks to the recent Supreme Court decision, I guess the rest of them are about to have criminal arrest records in the U.S. We can expect a new court-inspired revolving door as terrorists are repeatedly arrested, tried, and released. Then we will have “serial terrorists,” allowing talking heads and academics to wring their hands over recidivism rates.

Pathetic. PZ Myers, an associate professor of biology at the University of Minnesota, is asking people to attend Mass for the purpose of obtaining consecrated communion wafers, which Myers promises to desecrate on YouTube. He also asks his readers to send letters to the university president supporting him because some religious nuts object to his stunt. But he asks that you please, “take the time to proofread and send him something that at least looks like a high school graduate wrote it.” So PZ views his detractors as ignorant and superstitious and his supporters as sloppy and illiterate. It must be lonely being PZ.

Safety First. Suppose you put your 3-year-old son in the back seat of the pickup, don’t restrain him in a car set, and give him access to a loaded .45 handgun. Then, while driving down the road, the kid shoots you in the back. What do you do? Naturally you sue Glock, the gun manufacturer, for being negligent. It can’t be your fault, especially if you’re a cop and you are well trained in automobile and firearm safety.

Is Buying a Gun a Suicidal Act? Steve Chapman answers: “Presumptuous paternalists argue that Americans should be deprived of guns because gun owners are their own worst enemies. A lot of Americans would reply: We can’t trust ourselves, but we can trust you?”

July 13th, 2008 Posted by Fitzroy | Ammo, Politics, Religion | no comments

Small Arms Fire

Brett Stephens writes, “A light carbon footprint has become the 21st-century equivalent of sexual abstinence.”

It’s Not Just the Episcopalians, notes GetReligion. “The [Presbyterian General Assembly] voted on a number of controversial statements about Israel and the Palestinians; approved a $2 million war chest to sue congregations seeking to leave; approved a change to one of the PCUSA’s confessions that would remove mention of homosexuality from the church’s confessional documents; voted to rescind thirty years’ worth of church policy on the incompatibility of homosexual behavior and Christian life; and voted to remove language from the church’s constitution requiring ordained ministers, elders and deacons to live in faithfulness in marriage or chastity in singleness.”

Newsflash: Democrats in Uniform. AP writer Nancy Benac bases an entire article on having found one soldier who supports McCain and another who supports Obama. This apparently portends a trend in Benac’s mind away from a military comprised entirely of Republicans. To back up this anecdotal foray, she reports the statistical bombshell that Obama has received $367,000 from people who gave at least $200 and claim to be in the military. Note to Benac: this is not a mutiny. It means Obama has at most 1,635 high-rolling contributors in the military, which comprises a whopping one-tenth of one percent of the 1,368,226 people now serving as active-duty military personnel. Last time I checked, the army doesn’t screen its recruits for party affiliation, and it’s not news that Democrats routinely engage in honorable military service.

My Bad. Ron Rosenbaum writes on “catchphrases,” those annoying sayings that are “past their sell-by date” and “need to be thrown under the bus along with ‘thrown under the bus.’” It’s a target-rich environment.

Really, if you “drill down,” to use another corporatism, there’s something kind of industrially extractive about “takeaway,” isn’t there? The impulse to reduce everything to a PowerPoint action item? All the most interesting things in life are the things you can’t extract and “take away.”

So, Dude, going forward when you want to explain where’s the beef, better think outside the box to hone your elevator pitch because anything more mission critical is going to receive a thumbs down. Your street cred depends on buzzwords for a takeaway. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

A Carrier for the Times. Check out the U.S.S. William Clinton,

The ship is constructed entirely of recycled aluminum and is completely solar powered with a top speed of 5 knots. It boasts an arsenal of one (unarmed) F14 Tomcat or one (unarmed) F18 Hornet aircraft which, although they cannot be launched or captured on the 100 foot flight deck, form a very menacing presence.

PJ Country has pictures and everything.

July 6th, 2008 Posted by Fitzroy | Ammo, Language, Politics, Religion | no comments

Bill 666 to Disestablish Church

A motion in the House of Commons calling for the disestablishment of the Church of England was assigned number 666. The assignment occurred while the members were debating blasphemy.

Bob Russell, Liberal Democrat MP for Colchester and one of the signatories, said: “It is incredible that a motion like this should have, by chance, acquired this significant number.

Draw your own conclusions.

May 31st, 2008 Posted by Fitzroy | Politics, Religion | no comments

St. Martin-in-the-Fields

St. Martin-in-the-Fields, the Anglican Church on Trafalgar Square, traces its history back to 1222. From the official web site:

St Martin-in-the-Fields is a landmark church in the heart of London and is well known for its welcoming atmosphere, award-winning Café, popular classical and jazz concerts and historic James Gibbs architecture. It aims to be the “Church of the Ever Open Door” and has at its heart a practical and hospitable Christianity that seeks to “comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable”.

The current structure, completed in 1726, has just undergone a £36m restoration. Simon Jenkins writes that “Even an atheist can marvel at this exquisite refuge for the urban poor.”

The exterior of St Martin’s must be the most famous of any parish church in the world. This is despite, or perhaps because of, James Gibbs’s architectural solecism of putting the gothic form of a tapering steeple on the classical form of a portico. The steeple was called by Nikolaus Pevsner a “doubtful blessing” and by David Piper a “misplaced eyetooth”.

From the moment it opened in 1726, with George I “of this parish” as its first churchwarden, St Martin’s was the definitive symbol of Anglican worship, repeated a thousand times across America, Africa and Asia. In New England, the steeple-on-portico is synonymous with Episcopalian. Even the tiny church that overlooks Antarctica’s McMurdo Sound is of this form.

Jenkins focuses also on the benevolent work of the church, and, from his perspective as an atheist, seems rather astonished that some entity might rival government in looking after the poor. He contends that redistributing wealth through taxes could be as efficient if only the government had chosen to do it on a more local level. Instead, Britain “removed the link between giver and receiver” and “reduced welfare to an alien and bureaucratic wasteland.” Still, Jenkins can conceive of “no reason why voluntary social service need be motivated by religion” and suggests that secular relief organizations take possession of failing churches.

But St Martin’s is emphatically a church, and its revival is a salutary tale of our times. It has raised its own money to beautify the city as well as to assist the homeless. We may choose to leave the faith out of it, but we can yet marvel at the mission.

Jenkins works hard to wring faith out of the equation, although without it, St. Martin’s would not be “emphatically a church.” And state-coerced welfare seems to be Jenkin’s only alternative. So as he marvels at St. Martin’s – the history, the building, the mission – he might give just a little more credit to the faith that motivated it all.

When the bureaucratic wasteland produces a St. Martin-in-the-Fields, we should all listen respectfully as Jenkins explains how those without faith accomplished it.

May 19th, 2008 Posted by Fitzroy | Politics, Religion | no comments

Demography and Embryology

Another report details Europe’s demographic time bomb:

Marriage and birth rates are falling dramatically, pensioners now outnumber teenagers, and more and more people are living alone, says the Institute for family policy in a survey of life in the 27 EU countries.

The report, ‘The evolution of the family in Europe in 2008’, was debated in parliament on Wednesday and describes the European birth rate as “critical”.

The report describes this situation as “demographic winter.” It also notes that 1 in 5 pregnancies now ends in abortion and that “84 percent of the population growth in 2000-2007 is attributable to arrivals from beyond EU borders.”

This coincides with the debate on human fertilization and embryology in the House of Commons, on which the Archbishop of Canterbury had this to say:

In some people’s eyes, the very idea that this should be a conscience matter is still incomprehensible, even somehow offensive.

* * *

It’s worth trying to spell out just why issues of conscience do arise. Some of the questions could perhaps be answered by a better understanding of what the science does and doesn’t mean.

But it’s quite important also to say that science in itself is never going to be able to tell us what the right thing is for us to do – it can tell us only what’s possible.

Other than that, it is difficult to discern just what the Archbishop favors and what he does not. He makes some “slippery slope” arguments but concedes they do not settle the question. Thus the leader of millions of Christians worldwide makes the rousing argument (yawn):

And I, for one, am grateful that both scientists and politicians are willing to recognise there is a serious debate to be had on these matters of conscience, and more is at stake than just a set of irrational prejudices.

Cardinal Keith O’Brien of Scotland takes a more forceful stand against the provision that allows for the creation of animal-human embryos.

In his Easter sermon, Cardinal O’Brien described the legislation as a “monstrous attack on human rights, human dignity and human life”, adding that it would allow experiments of “Frankenstein proportion”.

Cardinal O’Brien’s video statement can be seen here. This has been met with the usual protestations that the church has no business discussing what Parliament does and how MPs vote. Clearly the Archbishop was overly optimistic in his assessment that there could be a serious debate.

So, as many in Europe continue to give more support for life created in the lab than through natural means, we have to wonder where it will all lead. Cranmer gives the Archbishop a pass on his muddled comments, but concludes:

And one wonders why there are concerns that the EU has passed a resolution announcing that children have a ‘right’ to abortion (or rather ’sexual and reproductive health and family planning education and services’) and that this ‘must’ be an ‘integral part of the future EU strategy on the rights of the child’.

One wonders if there is any point expending energy in opposing the EU, for it is clearly intent on its own self-destruction.

Edward Norman, reviewing Ratzinger’s Faith: The Theology of XVI in The Spectator comments:

The issues involved should have been brought into focus by public debate over the Human Fertilization and Embryology Bill, but in reality all the debate has done is to demonstrate how little understanding there is, how insensitive the modern world has become to attitudes to human life that posit the existence of external standards of judgment or of non-material values. The Catholic Church is now conventionally referred to as a kind of obscurantist block to enlightenment and progressive advance; the Anglicans in general seem silent on the major issues, either out of internal incoherence or a disinclination to become enveloped in controversy. . . .

That assessment seems about right, particularly with regard to the Anglicans.

May 12th, 2008 Posted by Fitzroy | Politics, Religion | no comments

What Makes Music Sacred?

Hank Stuever wrote last week about the state of music in the Catholic Church. The older Catholics want to hold on to contemporary music and the younger Catholics want to reinstate traditional music:

Imagine a bizarro world where all the 25-year-olds want Mozart and all the 60-year-olds want adult-contemporary. The kids think the adults are too wild. The backlash against “Kumbaya Catholicism” has anyone under 40 allegedly clamoring for the Tridentine Mass in Latin, while the old folks are most sentimental about Casual Sunday (even more rockin’, the Saturday vigil Mass), and still cling to what’s evolved from the lite-rock guitar liturgies of the 1970s. The result, for most parishes, has been decades of Masses in which no one is entirely satisfied, and very few enjoy the music enough to sing along.

This conflict is, of course, not new, although the younger audience arguing against modernism presents an interesting twist.

For the older crowd, guitar music is the tradition. It’s what they have heard Sunday after Sunday. It is as familiar as “The Old Rugged Cross” was to my parents’ generation. People find comfort in the familiar, not necessarily in a bad way, but frequently as recognition that something has served them well over the years. Particular music may have helped them over particularly difficult hurdles.

Arguing the traditionalists’ case can be difficult. We don’t know which hymns Paul and Silas sang in prison or how many revolutions church music may have encountered before producing the oldest surviving manuscripts. We can go back to our favorite point in history and stop, arguing for the traditions of 19^th-century hymnody or the ars nova or the rock masses of 1970. Or we can go back as far as the evidence takes us. But either way the process is incomplete.

Tradition, however, is inescapable. When we throw one tradition overboard, we institute another. There is a long tradition of importing secular and popular forms of music into worship and calling it new. Turning the folk songs of the 60s into the liturgy of the 70s was merely a continuation of that process.

Which raises the real question: what makes music sacred?

I don’t intend to answer that question today for lots of reasons, one being that I don’t have a quick answer and another being that I don’t have time to write a long one. But it is a question that I would like to address in this blog over time.

Let’s ask an easier question instead. Why are young people today looking to music of the past rather than trying to import their own pop styles into worship? The answer seems to be, at least in part, that they don’t have their own pop styles. We could teach the history of the 20^th century through the pop music that gave voice, for better or worse, to every social whim and cultural upheaval. But young people today share music primarily in the technological sense. Music does not give them a common voice; they all have their individualized playlists. Many listen to the music of their parents and grandparents, something my generation shunned. The Beatles are still famous, and my teenage daughter listens to Frank Sinatra.

Something has gone missing.

Back to the Catholics, when I see a controversy like the present one, I find comfort in the fact that there is a place for Kumbaya Catholics, a place for praise-chorus Protestants, and a different place for me. Variety in styles of worship enables me to indulge my own musical preferences, which seem to be very much in the minority.

I am concerned, however, that the next wave of new music to be imported into the church will not be a new pop style, or a return to ancient chant or Sacred Harp song books. No, I am concerned that my own preference for allowing people to have whatever music they prefer will be taken to its logical conclusion by the techno-savvy youth whose iPods have disconnected them from the societal and cultural aspects of music. Somebody, if he hasn’t already, is about to individualize worship in a radical way by passing out personal listening devices with the bulletins. Instead of announcing Hymn 243 to the congregation, the Pastor will suggest that we all put on our headsets for three minutes of personal contemplation. The church will adopt the same fallacious answer we have for everything these days – that it’s just a matter of personal taste.

There will be some great heresy in this, and that is why we need to answer the real question: what makes music sacred?

April 21st, 2008 Posted by Fitzroy | Music, Religion | no comments

The Glory of the Olive

The news this week is all about the Pope. There are the usual news stories and commentaries suggesting what the Pope should do and how should alter his message to gain more popularity. I have no advice for the Pope, just a hope that he will continue to restore the historic liturgy and the Latin Rite.

It is also Friday, and this blog takes seriously its mandate to promote responsible leisure. While doing my weekly research on martinis, I came across this item from April 12, 2005:

Prophecy Points to Olive Pope

[T]he next Pope will be the “Olive” Pope, according to a 12th century prophecy that foresees just two remaining pontificates before the end of the world.

The often-cited – and contested – prediction is attributed to St Malachy, an Irish archbishop recognised by members of the church for his ability to read the future and who was canonised more than 800 years ago.

St Malachy was said to have had a vision during a trip to Rome around 1139 of the remaining 112 Popes before the Last Judgment, the time when the Bible says God separates the wicked from the righteous at the end of time.

The next Pope will be number 111 on that list and is described in the text as the “Glory of the Olive.”

The week after this story appeared, Pope Benedict was elected.

Malachy-watchers had long speculated the “Olive” Pope would come from the Order of Saint Benedict, a branch of which is known as the Olivetans.

One person who commented on this story suggested that the Olive Pope would naturally be followed by the Martini Pope. Wikipedia describes Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini as a Latin Rite Prelate, but it appears that Cardinal Martini is past the age at which he could become Pope. Oh, well.

It’s all potential fodder for conservation over libations. Drink up! There’s only one more Pope to go.

(Image by Ken30684 - Creative Commons)

April 18th, 2008 Posted by Fitzroy | Leisure, Religion | no comments