Dom Bettinelli's got a good idea here, but I'd extend it: St. Columba should be the patron of the open source software movement. "Information wants to be free" and all that.
May 2008 Archives
My dear Luciwa,
While I hope you will continue to consider me your uncle, I note you have broken up with my incompetent nephew Wormwood. Our family never understood what you saw with the lazy oaf; we always knew you were capable of much worse. And worse you have!
Your cunning has sharpened since leaving the isle for its scion between the seas. The breakup and the change in scenery have obviously renewed your vigor as a temptress. Particularly noteworthy are the new commissions and tribunals you have concocted as head of The Republican Underworld Defense’s Experimental Action Unit. These experimental commissions and tribunals function with more subtlety than those on the old continent during Screwtape’s era, or the Slavic revolutionary commissions inspired by my own generation.
Of course, you have chosen the best patients to oversee the experiment. Weak of soul and devoid of the talents needed to succeed on their own, they cling to officious titles and nebulous causes in order to bolster their sense of self-importance among their peers. Yes, these shaved apes zealously embrace tolerance, however, it is a tolerance devoid of charity. Charity is the Enemy’s chief weapon against us. How many souls have escaped into the Enemy’s clutches because of this horrid virtue?
There is no greater way to undermine charity than through the facade of tolerance. Few patients succumb to evil for evil’s sake. More often than not, the temptation comes as a lesser good. Tolerance is among the most effective and versatile of lesser goods. Yes, it requires some patience on the tempter’s part. Tolerance must be introduced to the patient in small doses - enough to cause the patient some discomfort, but not enough to inflame the level of moral outrage that rouses a patient into action. Thus tolerance is best prescribed as a moral painkiller, to suppress the pangs of conscience used by the Enemy to tether the patient to Himself.
The shaved apes occasionally catch on to our practices. The most perceptive among them coin expressions that force us to react quickly. ‘The road to hell is paved with good intentions’ is one such example, while ‘All that is necessary for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing’ is another. We have now dulled these aphorisms into cliche, but at one time their prick awakened many a patient from moral slumber. And just because these cliches have lost their bite does not make them any less true.
In fact, good intentions and moral sloth have become the most effective tools of your temptress toolbox in carrying out your experiment. It was not long ago that shaved apes from your part of the planet were easily tempted into war, rape, racial and ethnic suspicions, and the repudiation of order within society. However, we grew too bold with the 20th Century wars we inspired in the old continent. Our patients have grown jaded and become suspicious of armed conflict between nations. So they choose tolerance to avoid civil unrest.
Don’t get me wrong: they still love their violence. They just prefer violence in smaller doses such as street gangs, abortion, soccer riots and anti-American protests. Anyway, that’s enough rambling from this old tempter.
Tolerance is why your commissions and tribunals have devastated the Enemy’s forces. In the name of tolerance, you have lulled your patients - that is, acclimate them through a series of self-compromises - into intolerance toward the Enemy and His doctrine. What thirty years ago the shaved apes denounced as unthinkable and a perverse inversion of nature is today the law of the land. This is no small victory you have wrestled from the Enemy - especially in the realm of marriage, which as the foundation of the family determines how the next generation is raised. (Or whether there will be a next generation.) Moreover, those who still defend the Enemy’s ways are ostracized from polite society and declared criminals.
Yes, a minority still cling to the Enemy’s doctrines. This is where your commissions and tribunals have proven versatile for the lowerarchy - in the name of tolerance no less! The majority who still believe in the Enemy’s will not speak up, less they themselves appear intolerant and unfashionable among their neighbors. (Or should that be neighbours?) You have correctly deduced that the greatest fear to most shaved apes is not the loss of their freedom, but of their temporal comforts. Thus your experiment has silenced their dissent, not through physical violence and torture, but through the fear of inconvenience. This is why you must continue to involve yourself directly in your experiments’ processes. Let them become even greater bastions of inconvenience.
Tolerance is also an efficient tool with which to browbeat the few who speak up for the Enemy’s ways. Let those who cling too tenaciously to the Enemy be ostracized and browbeaten into silence. Tolerance is not intended for them, however, physical violence would turn them into martyrs. This in turn would cause others to sympathize with the Enemy. Which brings us to the real genius of your commissions and tribunals: the violence they inflict upon the Enemy’s followers is not physical - but social, political and moral.
And so I commend you my impish niece. You have taught this old devil many new tricks, and others as well. Your experiment with the commissions and tribunals has surpassed even our most optimistic projections, decimating the Enemy’s ranks while providing us with countless new souls to feast upon..
Your affectionate uncle
Screwtape
Some of you may have come across the following from LifeSiteNews.com:
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CHRC Spokesman Will Not Say if Christian Teaching on Sexuality is “Hate”
Calgary Bishop Henry says "we're into a new form of censorship and thought control, and the commissions are being used as thought police.”
By Hilary White
OTTAWA, May 30, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A spokesman for the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) has refused to say whether Christian moral opposition to homosexual activity constitutes a “hate crime”.
Pete Vere, a Catholic writer who has been working on the clashes between the Human Rights Commissions and Christians, asked Mark van Dusen, a media spokesman for the CHRC, “If one, because of one’s sincerely held moral beliefs, whether it be Jew, Muslim, Christian, Catholic, opposes the idea of same-sex marriage in Canada, is that considered ‘hate’?”
van Dusen replied, “We investigate complaints, Mr. Vere, we don’t set public policy or moral standards. We investigate complaints based on the circumstances and the details outlined in the complaint. And ...if...upon investigation, deem that there is sufficient evidence, then we may forward the complaint to the tribunal, but the hate is defined in the Human Rights Act under section 13-1.”
“Our job is to look at it, compare it to the act, to accumulated case law, tribunal and court decisions that have reflected on hate and decide whether to advance the complaint, dismiss it or whether there is room for a settlement between parties.”
Currently, two Christian organisations have Human Rights Commission complaints leveled at them for their outspoken defence, one in the political realm and the other in print, of the meaning of natural marriage and Christian sexual morality.
Homosexual activist Rob Wells, a member of the Gay, Lesbian and Transgendered Pride Center of Edmonton, filed a nine-point complaint last February with the Canadian Human Rights Commission in which he accuses the magazine of promoting "extreme hatred and contempt" against homosexuals. The commission is investigating a similar case initiated by Wells against the Christian Heritage Party, a political party co-founded by pro-life Catholics and Protestants. The party holds that marriage can only exist between one man and one woman.
Vere quoted Father Alphonse de Valk, the founder and editor of Catholic Insight, in an article on Zenit Catholic news agency. Fr. de Valk said that Catholic Insight "bases itself on the Church's teaching and applies it to various circumstances in our time." He noted that some of the statements that allegedly promoted hatred and contempt against homosexuals were taken from recent Vatican pronouncements.
The issue before the CHRC, therefore, is whether Christian and Catholic teaching itself is considered under Canadian law to be “hate speech”.
Bishop Fred Henry of Calgary said the issue is whether Christians can continue to maintain their freedom of religious expression. Bishop Henry has also been through an Alberta HRC complaint by homosexual activists in 2005 after publishing a pastoral letter defending the traditional definition of marriage earlier that same year.
“I really feel that we are into a crisis situation here where we are experiencing a trumping of religious freedom,” said Bishop Henry.
Despite assurance from politicians that Canadian faith communities would not be affected when the government legalized same-sex marriage, the number of complaints against Christians have significantly increased since 2005.
Bishop Henry feels that Canada's human rights tribunals are censoring the expression of traditional Christian teaching: “The social climate right now is that we're into a new form of censorship and thought control, and the commissions are being used as thought police.”
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This comes as several Catholics and evangelical protestants are being hauled before Canada's human rights tribunals for holding to the traditional definition of marriage. Here's the audio from the interview:
Big news about an isolated tribe found in Brazil. Many news stories have headlines like "Uncontacted tribe" that has been "photographed" or "spotted." Meaning - the uncontacted tribe has been contacted. Isolated but now unisolated. The Brazilian goverment says there are about 100 of these "uncontacted" tribes. Well - now there's 99.
You can see the pictures of the tribe - they seem alarmed at the flyover. I'm sure Discovery Channel camera crews are not far behind, and maybe the United Nations will start air-dropping iPods, trail mix or solar-powered radios soon.
After all - isolated tribes are no fun unless they get unisolated... right?
Cause physical harm to the pope?
Openly advocate schism?
That's an automatic excommunication.
Opera lovers are used to weird stories: mythical heroes, ghosts, birds in leading roles and even gold-miners.
But making an opera about Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth?"
I can already hear the crickets.
From time to time, you may have noticed on this blog some beautiful prayers written by the esteemed theologian and professor Jean Galot, S.J. of the Gregorian University. Fr. Galot passed away on April 18 at the age of eighty-nine, and one can only congratulate him now at drawing nearer, ever nearer, to the Sacred Heart of our Lord.
Take me, O Heart of Christ!
Take me, O Heart of Christ, in all that I am,
take me in all that I have and that I do,
in all that I think and all that I love!
Take me in my spirit, that it may cling to Thee;
take me in my willing, that it will but Thee;
take the depth of my heart, that it love only Thee!
Take me, O Heart of Christ, in my secret desires
so that you be my dream and only goal,
my one affection and my complete happiness!
Take me for the work of Thy great mission,
for a complete gift toward my neighbor's salvation,
and for every sacrifice in service of your people!
Take me, O Heart of Christ, without limits, without end;
take even what I've failed to offer Thee;
and never give back to me what you have taken in hand!
Take for eternity all that is in me,
that one day I may, O Heart, possess Thee,
in the embrace of Heaven take Thee and keep Thee!
--by Jean Galot, S.J.
I've set up a little web site dedicated to translations of his prayers.
No, it's not April 1. I really am cheering for the Archbishop of L.A. who has barred dissident Australian bishop Geoffrey Robinson from speaking in the Cardinal's diocese during his book tour.
Thank you, Eminence, for joining the Australian bishops in their particular effort to spread sound teaching of the Catholic faith.
O you who bear the pain of the whole earth,
I bore you.
You, who, when your hem is touched, give power,
I nourished you.
Who turns the day to night in this dark hour,
Light comes from you.
O you who hold the world in your embrace,
I carried you.
Whose arm encircled the world with your grace,
I once held you.
O you who laughed and ate and walked the shore,
I played with you.
And I, who with all others, you died for,
Now I hold you.
May I be faithful to this final test:
In this last time I hold my child, my son,
His body close enfolded to my breast,
The holder held: the bearer borne.
Mourning to joy: darkness to morn.
Open, my arms: your work is done.
- Madeleine L’Engle
A "truth and reconciliation" commission in South Korea reveals that in the 1950s, government forces killed thousands of innocent people who were swept up in searches for Communist sympathizers, while US authorities ultimately in command looked the other way.
It is painful to find out about these crimes, but their dispassionate revelation aids the "purification of memory" for which Pope John Paul II called so many times: a step in making peace between peoples.
How much do we need such reconciliation within our country?
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| Mrs. Gallagher's title for our Lady: "The Matrix" |
The followers of phony mystic Christina Gallagher occasionally drop by to post comments denying all charges of wrongdoing against her. This is helpful to me, 'cause I don't follow the case very often, and it serves as a reminder to check out the Irish papers for the latest flap involving Mrs. Gallagher and her international House of Prayer franchise, which is disapproved by the authorities of the Church and the Inland Revenue.
Here are some recent bits of news about the case:
January 2008: The Sunday World tabloid posted splashy photos (pdf) of Gallagher's posh lifestyle: residing in a mansion (not in her name, of course), tooling around in a BMW, etc., and reported on the fundraising campaign (pdf) that appears to have paid for the house.
RTE radio's Liveline show spent a couple of segments talking with callers and with Mrs. Gallagher's laughably evasive spokesman Fr. Gerard McGinnity about Gallagher's lifestyle: an mp3 podcast is online. When asked about the house's wide-screen TV and a Jacuzzi bath for paying guests, the priest explained that Mrs. Gallagher wanted the place to be made as nice as possible for our Lady.
(In a second segment (mp3), a director of the House of Prayer doesn't seem to know much about the HOP's finances.)
February 2008: Abp. Michael Neary (Tuam) issued a letter to all parishes reiterating no Church approval for Gallagher's activities.
March 2008: Irish primate Cardinal Brady was holding "ongoing discussions" with Fr. McGinnity.
For background, here's a 2006 post on the subject.
UPDATE: Thanks to jerry for reminding me to update!
June 2008: While police and tax authorities investigate the House of Prayer, the HOP offers to refund money to dissatisfied donors.
