Trad Insanity

A fellow blogger sent me this little anecdote:

just because I happened to find an interesting quote by Yves Congar, I suddenly get a comment saying that it is "ironic and dangerous for a supposedly traditional blog to be citing such an author, even if the quote is salutary." Did I miss something?

So the quote itself apparently wasn't bad (in fact, was "salutary") but just because the source is "tainted" in radical traditionalist eyes, we shouldn't even use the quote??? That's as ridiculous as needing to vet the religious opinions of the actors in a funny clip.

The 18th-Century Swedish Lutheran Hymnal Controversy

A good friend of mine, whom I've known since first grade (he's a Lutheran, unfortunately; pray for his conversion!), sent me a fascinating article about a controversy in the Swedish Lutheran state church over a new hymnal that became popular in the 1700's. I was struck how similar some of things were to the situation with the Novus Ordo liturgy. I'll just quote some. I trust my readers will notice the similarities.

First, just to summarize the situation, which in itself perhaps has some similarities to the crisis in the Church in the late 20th-century:

In 1743 a collection of 90 hymns, entitled Songs of Zion, was published in Sweden. This publication soon became the storm center of a religious controversy which is of particular interest to the social scientist because in the course of it there were foreshadowed many of the methods of content analysis which have found systematic expression only during the past decades. In fact, if not in name, participants in this debate were concerned with many of the problems which concern today's content analyst: the identification of key symbols, the division of content into favorable, unfavorable and neutral categories, the coding of values, and other related problems. Indeed, the controversy revolved around the formula which has become so familiar to students of communication-who said what to whom, how and with what effect?

The Songs of Zion appeared at a time when the powerful State Church (Lutheran) was struggling against German pietistic influences. Pietism, stressing faith rather than ritual, was making substantial inroads among the orthodox in Sweden, when the influences of still another German religious movement began to be felt. This movement was that of the Moravian Brethren, led by the Count von Zinzendorf. At first the orthodox Lutheran clergy welcomed the Moravian ideas, believing that they might provide a spiritual means of bringing the pietistic dissenters back into the fold. It was not long, however, before the State Church recognized the Moravians as enemies rather than allies.

Publication of the first edition of the Songs of Zion seems to have occurred without appreciable controversy. The Swedish State Censor found the hymns to be somewhat odd, and neither beautiful nor superior to those in the Hymnal of the Established Church, but since they were already being used in manuscript form he allowed them to be printed. Nobody seemed disturbed that the authors of these hymns were unknown.

In 1774 application was made to the Swedish authorities for permission to publish a second edition. By this time, however, the State Church had become alarmed by the effects which they believed the Songs were having on the public. Three important developments indicated that something was wrong. First, the public filled the churches where the clergy were influenced by the Moravian Brethren, leaving the orthodox pastors with fewer listeners, in spite of the fact that according to the law every citizen had to attend church in the district where he resided. Second, frequent reports had been received that the Songs were being used at private religious meetings, although meetings of this character were illegal. Finally, themes reminiscent of the Count von Zinzendorf, German leader of the Moravian Brethren, could be heard from many pulpits, and by this time the orthodox clergy had become convinced that this movement was unlikely to bring pietistic dissenters back to the established church.

Despite the hostility of the ecclesiastical authorities, a new edition of the Songs was permitted to appear in 1745, and both the old and the new editions were reprinted in 1747 and 1748. The last two printings were wholly unlicensed, and the authorities discovered many changes of wording in them.

During this later period public debate of the religious issues involved became acrimonious. The orthodox clergy called the Moravian movement "the contagion" and identified the Songs as "the nest of the contagion." The Archbishop of Sweden demanded that the contagion be rooted out, while the Minister of Justice commented darkly that "recent developments may have disastrous consequences for the whole Swedish state". Before the controversy was concluded some of the Moravian supporters were forced to deny their convictions. Others, refusing to recant, were exiled from their native land.

As I've said before, I think the "linguistic shift" in style on the part of the hierarchy after Vatican II is one of the most disturbing differences before versus after the Council. I'm very wary of how thought can be changed or manipulated (ala the Newspeak of "1984") through attempting to legislate change in the use of language (just look at the current fight over legally defining the word "marriage").

The following in the Lutheran Hymnal controversy I think may provide a very interesting analogy in terms of the Novus Ordo not saying anything "explicitly" heretical, but being perceived as potentially changing the meaning or connotations associated with old phraseology through the very implications of, and motivations behind, the baffling alterations from tradition. When it comes to lex orandi, lex credendi...emphasis can be everything:

Some of the advocates of the Songs pointed out that the subject matter contained in them was substantially the same as in the official hymnal. This argument was considered by the orthodox clergy, but they observed that the response of the public to the two collections of hymns was different. Perhaps, some of them concluded, it was a question of to whom the Songs of Zion were directed. Were these publications used only in those circles which were already infected with the ideas of the Moravians? Other investigators observed that this was not the case. Many people had been influenced who previously had known nothing about the "dangerous ideas" being disseminated. The behavioral and attitudinal effects attributed to the songs-the enthusiasm for preachers with Moravian ideas and the incidence of private religious meetings-have already been referred to.

Some of the most interesting contributions to the debate were made not by the clergy, but by intellectuals. In 1746 a perceptive article in the Swedish Learned News-a journal discussing the current progress of science-had, in a tolerant manner, examined the doctrine of the Moravian Brethren. This article concluded that the Moravian movement embodied the essential principles of Lutheranism but that the movement might become dangerous because it seemed to preach only A PART of the orthodox doctrine. It stressed the words and ideas which referred to the redemption of man by Christ at the expense of those words and ideas which referred to the efforts of men to live as Christians. It gave a new meaning to familiar expressions, thus influencing public opinion in a new direction. The article gave specific examples of the way in which a new meaning was produced by emphasizing one value at the expense of another, and concluded that it was not enough only to possess the truth. The truth must also be presented in a manner which will elicit the desired effect.

Many dissenters agreed with this analysis to the extent that they argued that the whole dispute was essentially not about doctrine, but simply about the manner of presentation. Clergymen influenced by the Moravian Brethren held that since people were not educated enough to understand the whole doctrine, preachers should present the correct doctrine in a manner which the public could understand. To this, the orthodox clergy replied that there were dangers in simplification. The content of what was said would not really be distinguished from the manner of presentation. Clear and simple presentation would not necessarily lead the public to proper understanding; instead it might give rise to over-simplified ideas. This, the orthodox clergy suspected, was true in the case of the Songs of Zion.

Another contribution, which combined both an interest in semantics with a rough content analysis procedure, was made by the learned and well-read orthodox clergyman Kumblaeus. From the German literature which had been written in opposition to the Moravian movement Kumblaeus learned that Count Zinzendorf and his adherents used a special language in the dissemination of their unorthodox ideas. Their ideas were dressed in the ordinary vocabulary of each country's language, but new meanings were given to well-known words, themes and symbols. Furthermore, the public was not aware that they were being exposed to a new way of thinking because of the familiarity of the words and phrases which the Moravians used. Kumblaeus felt that this use of language made it possible for the Moravians to conceal dangerous, false doctrines, and create "a state within a state."

(Or a church within a church?)

The state authorities, too, were bewildered by the fact that the same words which were condemned when they appeared in the Songs of Zion were praised when they appeared in other hymnals. They had, moreover, just received an anonymous study showing that the frequency of expressions which Kumblaeus had condemned in the Songs was identical with the frequency of the same expressions in other nonofficial hymnals. Many orthodox clergymen were confused by these developments and asked the advice of their superiors. They said that nobody now dared to sing about the blood and wounds of Jesus for fear of being accused of Moravian tendencies. These superiors had nothing to say except that an expression standing in the Official Hymnal was right, but that the same expression in the Songs of Zion was dangerous.

[...]

Adherents of the orthodox point of view listened intently to sermons in the churches and noted all "ways of expression" that seemed revolutionary. These expressions were compared with the symbols and themes from the Songs and from German writings by the Moravian Brethren, and often a connection was clear. The authorities investigated everyone suspected of Moravian propaganda, using tests well-known to every expert of modern propaganda analysis.

Love and Charity

I'm not sure what I'm saying here is completely theologically precise, but it is an insight that came to me when thinking about some things in the light of Cardinal George's recent statement about God loving some more than others, which I discussed before. Specifically what I found beautiful was the notion he was hinting at when he said, "A saint lives in loving intimacy with God, who creates that love in the saint by first loving him or her." I then quoted Aquinas who explained further:

Election and love, however, are differently ordered in God, and in ourselves: because in us the will in loving does not cause good, but we are incited to love by the good which already exists; and therefore we choose someone to love, and so election in us precedes love. In God, however, it is the reverse. For His will, by which in loving He wishes good to someone, is the cause of that good possessed by some in preference to others.

I thought this was a humbling and beautiful concept. The idea is simple enough. The way love in creatures normally works is that we perceive good in something or someone, and the will is attracted to that goodness. The will, by nature, is attracted to the good. The good, in fact, can in some ways only be defined with reference to desirability (albeit, that's a relative and rather circular self-contained definition; "what's good is desirable and what's desirable is good.") We can only desire goods, at least apparent goods. That's just how the will works.

In God, however, as Aquinas says...He does not see some sort of pre-existent goodness in something (certainly not in any creature external to Himself; how could goodness precede Him in any creature?) and love it on account of that goodness. Rather, God loving something makes it good by the force of His will, or at least (in free creatures) desires to incline it in that direction (ie, grace).

This got me thinking about the virtue of Charity and what it really means. I have often explained that Charity is understood to be "loving someone not even for their own sake, but for God's own sake," which is to say, loving for Love's own sake. In the Catholic system, of course, only this sort of love is worth anything in the end, which is why we do not give into the sentimentalism which would apotheosize "love" of people, even for their own sake (but with no reference to God), as a virtue in itself. And loving them for God's own sake, of course, means that without faith (at least of the natural variety), or any of the other virtues, Charity becomes impossible.

It's like a quote I've thought about a lot lately from another blog that a friend posted on his: "In the absence of any viable, living religious faith, love, then becomes impossible, the love, that is, that ruptures time and reveals to us a hidden, transcendent dimension. Love-sickness is still possible, as are desire, affection, infatuation, lust, sentimental attachment, adoration, married bliss, enduring fondness, passionate but passing infatuations. But not the love that breaks through the barrier of time and reveals to us Eternity." I assume that love to mean, specifically, the love the Catholic tradition calls Charity.

This disturbs me at times when it comes to loved ones of mine, such as my father, who do not seem to believe in God. Charity need not reference the God of Revelation specifically (though supernatural Charity must), there is indeed a "natural charity" too with reference to "natural faith" in the God knowable by natural Reason. But it makes me very sad sometimes to think that people I consider, on a sentimental level, to "love" me very much, even for my own sake...do not have the Charity for me that I have for them. That my father, for all his love born of natural instinct and affection...ultimately does not Love me in the sense of wishing me to get to Heaven. Which is the only love that really matters in the end.

He expects both him and I to die and go extinct, to cease to exist, someday. He still finds his love relatively "meaningful" in an existentialist sort of way I guess, but it is of such a different nature than the absolute meaningfulness of true Charity, than truly wishing my ultimate fulfillment in virtue and holiness and (someday) union with God Himself in the beatific vision (all of which I wish for him)...that it saddens me. I appreciate his love on a deeply human level, but at the same time I know his love is thus so utterly finite. He would die for me, and yet it amounts ultimately to little more in the end than accretions of strong positive emotion built up upon the foundation of the self-replicatory instinct in some primate's brain; he would die to save my life, but not my soul. In other words, there is nothing transcendent in it, as there can be only in Charity, only in love for God's own sake.

However, this wasn't meant to be a sad post like that. Rather, this notion of God's love causing the goodness of things (rather than being on account of the good that already is in them) got me thinking about Charity defined as "willing the good of another." Might it be correct to say that natural love in human beings (in the scholastic sense where, basically, love = desire) is the attraction of the will to the goodness or apparent goodness in someone, but that Charity is loving as God loves, in other words, loving not on account of a pre-existent goodness that attracts the will, but rather a love that wishes someone to become good (or more good)?

In a sense, loving Christ in them, in spite of what may be their own unworthiness or evil or undesirability, and willing (for God's sake) that they might become good (as persons; which is to say moral, virtuous, and holy). That God might triumph in them. That they too might come to love us, in Charity, as we love them, just as God loves us in order that we may love Him as He loves us.

Then Charity is truly loving with the very same sort of love with which God loves. The love which desires to make people good rather than seeking after the already-good. This really brings out the importance of the Christian mandate to love sinners for me, and is the source of all my hope.

Clerical Cosplay

Not to harp too much on my "silly hats" theme, but this Institute of Christ the King is really becoming too much. I love the way they do liturgy at the church of theirs I attend occasionally, but some friends and I were discussing such pictures as these, which are clearly non-liturgical events:

Not hats admittedly, but still. What is this? Maybe some reader knows and it is all some lost liturgical jewel. But what it seems like is a bunch of seminarians greeting prelates with torches as if this is the 1500's and they're all going to go out and burn some witches afterward.

A friend of mine (I hope he doesn't mind me quoting him) had a good point, I think:

I have no problem doing strange traditional/medieval/ancient customs for any groups as long as there is a healthy bit of jest in it. For example cookies for Santa, oats for St. Martin's horse, burning a Yule log etc. It's just that I'm sure the seminarians didn't just say, "Hey, wouldn't it be fun if we tried to greet Card. Burk like it was the 17th century or something crazy like that!!" I'm certain this was a top down, live out some Renaissance fantasy of the superiors. Next thing you know all laity attending liturgy must be covered with dirt and barefoot while mass is celebrated.

True. Exactly. That's the thing: if you're going to bring back culturally contingent traditions outside the liturgy itself...it has to be a little tongue-in-cheek. It gets creepy when people take it so seriously and it becomes living out their own Dungeons and Dragons fantasy. I mean, they're smiling in this picture so maybe they're being a bit ironic (I hope!), but many people seem to take these sorts of rituals and accoutrement very seriously, defensively even.

This picture is, apparently, from the Prayers Before Mass at the throne, so it is at least para-liturgical, but still:

Bringing in the secular powers (I believe) in the form of the carabinieri? And I've always wondered who the hell that ridiculous little page-boy (on the right) in the knee-socks is supposed to be who holds the hat. Like I said, this is a para-liturgical event, so there may be some excuse or precedent, but my own liturgical instinct tells me that none of these courtly additions from the age of temporal power are of the essence of traditional liturgy, and as such...why are they trying to re-create them?

That world is gone. Tradition is preserved like that in the liturgy itself. Trying to re-create the aesthetics of Christendom in the wider world, even in a clerical setting, is strange. Go to a Renaissance Faire if that's what you're into! I mean, even choosing Medieval aesthetics would be one thing (though I say this with the bias of a medieval studies major), at least the Middle Ages were 1000 years and greatly varied themselves. But it is especially bizarre and affected when you choose such a peculiar and limited moment in history to re-create as they seem to at the ICRSS. I mean, why that particular style? It seems so arbitrary.

Of course, even liturgy itself carries a danger of affectation and cosplay for some people, connoisseurs of liturgical aesthetic elegance without the substance of real faith (I think of certain High Church Anglican strands), or pompous Catholics who love Baroque ostentation just for its triumphalism. But at least the liturgy is...well, it's made for that to some degree. That's sort of one of its main points, to be the "storehouse" of History, carrying along with it all the little accretions from the story of the Church's 2000 year relationship with Christ, all the way back to the Last Supper. But, still, when liturgy becomes "re-creationist" (of any era) rather than based on solid liturgical principles, it too can get weird.

Nevertheless generally I'll give the benefit of the doubt for real liturgy itself. It's the extra-liturgical traditions that I tend to look at with a more wary eye. Especially traditions that are non-liturgical but still clerical (because usually that means clericalist). If a priest is wearing silver buckles on his shoes and knee-socks outside of liturgy...he'd better be tongue-in-cheek about it.

Matthew 19

I went looking for the story of the rich man who goes away sad (by no means do I have my Bible verses memorized) and found that Matthew 19 is a remarkable confluence of things that I guess I always knew were there, but it never clicked until now how much sense it makes for me personally that they are all here together one after another in a single chapter like this:

[1] And it came to pass when Jesus had ended these words, he departed from Galilee, and came into the coasts of Judea, beyond Jordan. [2] And great multitudes followed him: and he healed them there. [3] And there came to him the Pharisees tempting him, and saying: Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause? [4] Who answering, said to them: Have ye not read, that he who made man from the beginning, Made them male and female? And he said: [5] For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they two shall be in one flesh. [6] Therefore now they are not two, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let no man put asunder. [7] They say to him: Why then did Moses command to give a bill of divorce, and to put away? [8] He saith to them: Because Moses by reason of the hardness of your heart permitted you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so. [9] And I say to you, that whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and he that shall marry her that is put away, committeth adultery. [10] His disciples say unto him: If the case of a man with his wife be so, it is not expedient to marry. [11] Who said to them: All men take not this word, but they to whom it is given. [12] For there are eunuchs, who were born so from their mother's womb: and there are eunuchs, who were made so by men: and there are eunuchs, who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven. He that can take, let him take it. [13] Then were little children presented to him, that he should impose hands upon them and pray. And the disciples rebuked them. [14] But Jesus said to them: Suffer the little children, and forbid them not to come to me: for the kingdom of heaven is for such. [15] And when he had imposed hands upon them, he departed from thence. [16] And behold one came and said to him: Good master, what good shall I do that I may have life everlasting? [17] Who said to him: Why asketh thou me concerning good? One is good, God. But if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments. [18] He said to him: Which? And Jesus said: Thou shalt do no murder, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness. [19] Honour thy father and thy mother: and, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. [20] The young man saith to him: All these I have kept from my youth, what is yet wanting to me? [21] Jesus saith to him: If thou wilt be perfect, go sell what thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come follow me. [22] And when the young man had heard this word, he went away sad: for he had great possessions. [23] Then Jesus said to his disciples: Amen, I say to you, that a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven. [24] And again I say to you: It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven. [25] And when they had heard this, the disciples wondered very much, saying: Who then can be saved? [26] And Jesus beholding, said to them: With men this is impossible: but with God all things are possible. [27] Then Peter answering, said to him: Behold we have left all things, and have followed thee: what therefore shall we have? [28] And Jesus said to them: Amen, I say to you, that you, who have followed me, in the regeneration, when the Son of man shall sit on the seat of his majesty, you also shall sit on twelve seats judging the twelve tribes of Israel. [29] And every one that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands for my name's sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall possess life everlasting. [30] And many that are first, shall be last: and the last shall be first.

Missalettes

I've mentioned this before I think, but I was struck by the absurdity of it again this week. At Mass today, a Novus Ordo in English, I looked around and like half the congregation were following along with the Scripture readings and Prayers out of the missalette. Like I said, this was an English Mass. There were microphones, and everything was clearly enunciated; there was no problem with mumbling. No, people just...were obsessively following along in books. Which always makes me wonder, wasn't the whole point of putting in the vernacular so that this wouldn't be the case? So that people could listen and "understand" and "actively participate" without needing hand missals? If they're all going to follow along in books anyway, why couldn't we have more of it in Latin then?

I do think missalettes are more user friendly than hand-missals, however. Yes, hand-missals contain everything and thus can be used practically forever...but it requires knowing your way around a hand missal, which learning curve is just enough of a barrier to entry for most people. Yearly or quarterly missalettes that put all the parts for Sundays and major feasts together in one place according as all the different cycles interlock from year to year, might be quite an investment to buy the subscription, but they'd make things much easier for people, I think. If there were Old Rite missalettes (and maybe they could have parts of the Office too!) in the pews I think newcomers would find it easier to follow along at the traditional Mass.

On Humor

New Liturgical Movement had a post today with some clip from a French movie that was purported to be humorous. I didn't actually watch the clip, so you can judge for yourself. What I thought was much more funny was the disclaimer that Shawn Tribe felt the need to write at the beginning of the post:

I asked a friend in France if the film in question had any anti-clerical or anti-Catholic elements, and I was assured it did not and that the same actor would not tolerate such in his films. From the experience of other Catholic blogs and sites, I realize that publishing clips of humour set within this context is risky at the best of times, because it can be interpreted by some as mocking the Church, or at very least irreverent.

It's so sad what the conservative Catholic world has become, that now we need to start making disclaimers about humor because someone might construe it as "anti-Catholic" or irreverent.

And since when is "anti-clerical" bad? What good Catholic culture hasn't loved anti-clerical humor? These ridiculous rad trads and neocons would probably burn Chaucer at the stake for The Canterbury Tales!!

How sad that the conservative Catholic blogosphere is such that people now feel the need to conduct such background checks about the films that clips are from and even the actors themselves just to make sure none of them are tainted with "anti-Church" history or reputations. Yet, if they were, who cares? Even if the film or actor did have anti-Catholic biases, the film might still be entertaining or have artistic merit, the clip might still be funny!



There is a humorlessness among all ideologues, Right and Left, whereby they cannot laugh at themselves or their chosen ideology. Of course, this leads to a lot of dishonesty and inauthenticity; we can't help what we find humorous, it's just a reaction in the brain related to a gap between expectation and reality. Protesting "I don't think that's funny!" just because our ideology tells us that it "shouldn't be" funny...doesn't change that it might be.

I think this is part of the same dynamic whereby people act differently around their "church friends" compared to when around their "real friends" with whom they feel comfortable "letting loose." A very sad dichotomy and compartmentalization.

Church and State

Oh, I love America:

CONCORD, N.H. -- The Republican leader of the New Hampshire House on Friday called Roman Catholic Bishop John McCormack a "pedophile pimp" who should have been led from the Statehouse in handcuffs after speaking at a rally criticizing a state budget proposal.

McCormack was among about a dozen speakers at Thursday's rally to protest deep cuts to social services included in the House's $10.2 billion budget. Rep. D.J. Bettencourt of Salem took issue Friday, writing on his Facebook page that McCormack had no business urging lawmakers to protect the vulnerable, given his role in the clergy sex abuse scandal in the last decade.

Before being named bishop of Manchester in 1998, McCormack served as a top aide to Cardinal Bernard Law in Boston, where the Catholic sex abuse scandal began and where he was in charge of investigating sexual misconduct allegations.

In 2002, McCormack averted unprecedented criminal charges against the New Hampshire diocese by agreeing that it had harmed children by moving abusive priests from parish to parish.

"Would the Bishop like to discuss his history of protecting the 'vulnerable?'" Bettencourt wrote. "This man is a pedophile pimp who should have been led away from the State House in handcuffs with a rain coat over his head in disgrace. He has absolutely no moral credibility to lecture anyone."

A spokesman for the diocese said Bettencourt's comments were false, defamatory and detracted from the real issue – the state's obligation to care for the poor.

"Bishop McCormack's message to the people of New Hampshire yesterday was the simple message of the gospels: The church and our broader society have a fundamental obligation to care for the poor," Kevin Donovan said.

Bettencourt stood by his comments later Friday.

"Yes, my language was colorful, but I stand by the sentiment in describing a man who has in my opinion brought shame and dishonor on my church here in New Hampshire," he said in a statement. "As a practicing Catholic it is truly disappointing that we would have a leader with a record of enabling such egregious and unacceptable behavior."

The Washington-based group Catholics United said it would continue to pressure Bettencourt to retract his statements.

"With his comments, Republican Majority Leader D.J. Bettencourt has not only embarrassed himself, he's become an embarrassment to the entire state of New Hampshire," said James Salt, the group's acting director. We call on all elected officials to denounce Republican Bettencourt's comments in the strongest terms possible."

As required under church rules, McCormack sent a resignation letter to the Vatican last summer when he turned 75, but he has remained in office while awaiting formal recognition.

Under the 2002 agreement he reached with the state, prosecutors agreed to not seek criminal indictments against the diocese for failing to protect children from molesting priests. In return, the diocese agreed to enact strict child protection policies, admitted its actions had harmed children and opened itself to audits by the attorney general's office.

Over the years, McCormack has acknowledged that he made mistakes and that he did not adequately help victims. When the final audit was released in 2009, then-Attorney General Kelly Ayotte said the church had made dramatic policy changes to protect children, but she recommended further improvements to which the diocese quickly agreed.

During his speech at the rally, McCormack urged lawmakers to pass a budget that is "just and meets the needs the needs of the most vulnerable in our society."

"We urge the legislature and the governor to place the poor, the unemployed, and our most vulnerable citizens first. Our commitment to human solidarity, the dignity of human labor and justice for the weak and marginalized demands no less," McCormack told the crowd.

Republican House Speaker William O'Brien defended Bettencourt, saying that while he would have used different words, he shares Bettencourt's belief that McCormack did not properly protect children.

"I certainly agree with the concerns. I don't agree with the language or the implication of the language," said O'Brien, of Mont Vernon.

O'Brien, also a Catholic, said he would not discipline Bettencourt.

"He is an invaluable asset to the state of New Hampshire," he said.

The House passed the budget proposal but it has yet to move through the Senate.

O Ye of Little Faith...

I'm really quite disappointed at the flurry of freaked out texts and emails I received over yesterday's post. Obviously it was an April Fool's thing, and has now been branded as such permanently so that no one who stumbles across it in the future is scandalized.

But more than that, it's disturbing that a good number of you apparently actually believed my Faith was so fragile that it could fall apart overnight, or be shaken by such petty and laughable doubts as the ones I outlined below. I'm actually rather offended several of you had so little faith in my Faith. As if something supernatural can be threatened by any merely natural rational arguments or objections!

Speaking seriously, those doubts are actually all doubts I think I've had or have on the natural intellectual level at various points. I think many religious people have. And it was a cathartic exercise for me to express them in that sort of "what if" which, I think, I've often suppressed in the past whenever any of it started coming to the surface. And yet, to be able to verbalize these things, own them, but then laugh in their face was actually quite affirming. It proves to me, in some ways, that Faith is simply on an entirely different epistemological level than any "evidence" or "logic" that the Devil or the World might trump up to try to lead me astray.

So don't worry, I still think the existentialists are whiny little European emo boys, and our Lord is much more powerful than any of their flimsy attempts to set up something else in His place. God is not mocked. But His enemies certainly open themselves to it.

Still, for anyone who freaked out or got scandalized or worried or upset:

You're a Young Man, You Should Be Living...

Lest anyone in the future who stumbles across this be scandalized, this was an April Fools' post. Explanation here. I actually assent to none of the heretical propositions below. Duh.

This is a hard post for me to write, but also an extremely liberating one! The game has been disbanded, my mind has been expanded. Long story short: I'm leaving the Church and religion generally. In a manner of speaking. Sometime last night, while tossing and turning in bed during the wee hours, in a rush of total clarity, I lost my Faith.

It was bound to happen. For years, I think forever, my "religion" has been an incredible facade to stave off the fear of death which I think is really, as I discussed once in another post, the fear of meaninglessness. I am not one who can ignore the implications of things, I am one who tenaciously, perhaps self-destructively pursues things (with a brain my father accuses of being "like a computer" in that sense) to their "ultimate logical conclusions," even to the point of utter absurdity. I am not one who (to quote a friend) is able to stop when I find in the "ordinary experience of joy and delight, an awareness of a kind of barrier-- a place after which we ought not go further." No, I'm not like the masses able to ignore or shrug off such concerns; some sick inertia in me insists on going further, and has since I was a child.

So when (around seventh or eighth grade) I pursued those lines of thought too far, I found a vast and empty precipice of final meaninglessness at the edge of earthly life. Specifically tied to sexual awakening, I think, was the reality that all my life, my desires, my pleasures, my pains...were apparently just the chance concurrence of matter coalescing and decaying over a billion years, of genes (and memes) encoding themselves in chemicals with no real teleology except Darwin's tautology that those things continue which succeed in continuing. We were all just animals in the end, and animals constrained at that, prevented from the most raw and intense animal satisfaction by a million social constructs heaped on us (to coerce, I suspect, our labor for the sake of someone else's, some rich capitalist's, greater satisfaction).

And most haunting and humiliating of all, the fear of pain and death, the blind urge towards self-preservation that makes not even suicide an option, that drives us on to continue going about our lives seeking pleasure and fleeing pain like rats in a Skinner Box, sweating, spitting, shitting, burning animal carcasses and masticating them for our sustenance, extricating intense passions from the bodies of others and rubbing genitals to quiet the compulsive mating drive (and yet totally severed, in most cases today, even from real mating). If everything taken to its logical conclusion is absurd, then surely Man is the absurd conclusion of the logic of evolution.

Such a realization is too much for children, really. And so the comforting opiate of Faith (the most absurd self-preserving and self-replicating meme of them all) presents itself as a solution. Sure, by all visible and material indicators, the "meaning of life" ends in nothingness. Even with all the labyrinthine "internal meaning" constructed by Culture to keep people distracted from that fact, at the end of the day it is quite clear that outside the present moment and the sensations (however subtle or refined) one can procure in it, there is nothing beyond it to be seen. But that "must mean" that the transcendent is invisible! Like some Tooth Fairy swooping in and coining quarters from our dental detritus, "God" can fill the void and produce value where there is only decay. Conceived as infinite, "He" can be the final thought-terminating-cliché, the non-answer to the question of the final meaning of life, in whom all such chains of the question "Why?" for our actions and desires can terminate, He Himself "by nature" requiring no further explanation.

Well, I swallowed that eagerly for 10 years. Let it rose-tint my world, keep me safe from my trouble and pain. But it took its toll on me mentally. The mental institutionalism I spoke of yesterday is very much something with which I am familiar, obviously, and throughout my teenage years I engaged in an incredible feat of willpower (of which I am still proud for the demonstration of stamina it represents, if not the cause) to maintain constantly the comforting illusion of final meaning provided by religion, monitoring my every thought (self-preservation at its best!) to make sure that the hideous specter of doubt would not rear his head to lead me to despair, acting in my attempts to follow "morality" (or my response to failure in guilt and repentance) in such a way as to convince myself by my very actions that it all must be true (or else why would I be acting in such a silly way?)

That effort was exhausting. In college, after having escaped the real logical conclusion of such an effort in an aborted attempt at monastic life, I knew I had to change something or risk the whole facade collapsing. So I took on the "paradox" of the whole "Renegade Trad" persona. Perhaps, by confronting the neuroses and self-righteousness and obvious repression essential to any sort of orthodoxy, I could through this posturing stave off the inevitable collapse of the facade in myself. That by admitting from the start the inadequacy of the defensive mechanism and critiquing and poking fun at the clear insanity of all who embrace it, I could "ironically" maintain all that fatiguing rationalization in myself.

That was fun for a while, but it gets old fast, and at a certain point I think I was left asking "What next?" I could throw myself into a life self-immolation for "the cause" of "saving souls" and being "charitable" out of "love," but that was seemingly requiring a conservative "retreat" back into the hyper-vigilance of the facade-maintenance that my most recent detente had sought to escape. Or, I follow the arc that perhaps all truly honest men must follow and "graduate" from the religion defense altogether.

For a child, terrified at the prospect of final meaninglessness, it is certainly excusable. For most of history and most in civilization today too perhaps (for most adults are children indeed). In fact, I would argue, religion is hard-wired into us, albeit (like our drive to get off) it is vestigial from another age, another stage in our evolution, and no longer really "needed" anymore. Indeed, like our sexual urges, the "need" for religion now exists in the human brain as simply a desire to be nursed and fed for no other purpose than the satisfaction of its own satisfaction, a self-contained good with no reference to any "real" good. As if "real" good exists! The Forms aren't "out there" or "real"...they are only ever ideas in our head!

The one thing that had always held me back from these conclusions, I think, was the obvious fact that consciousness is not material. But, I realized, that's a silly excuse. Consciousness may not be material (though I am agnostic about the possibility, now, that it may be epiphenomenal in all matter, like panpsychism would propose, or somehow related to a quantum field) but matter and the external world could certainly just be an illusion in my consciousness.

And "what" my consciousness "is" or why I cannot seem to willfully control its content, or why that content follows certain rules or patterns, or whether there are any other consciousnesses "out there"...is simply beyond my power to explain! Perhaps all my "memories" suggesting such patterns are only something that exists for an instant and are themselves an illusion from moment to moment. Perhaps the perceived need to explain it at all is simply a construct itself, at the very least the desire to explain it could just be a "sense-content" (àla Hume) without that implying that the desire to explain has any corresponding "answer." The solipsism inherent in this once terrified me, threatened all my loves, in fact I would at one point construct "turning in on the self," on ones own subjective experience of the good like that, as the very nature of "sin" (and, of course, that meant the classic obsession with the "evils" of purposeless, contextless sex).

But, I am not a child anymore. And the choice between total meaninglessness and despair and suicide on the one hand, and religion on the other, does not now seem nearly so clear. I have long dismissed the existentialists as whiny European emo boys. But perhaps this was because their "solution" to the problem of the absurdity of existence secretly struck a chord with me. The despair at the lack of final transcendent meaningfulness, of an infinite ground for the web of signifiers, can perhaps be staved off by simply choosing ones own Good (albeit usually from among those things already, for whatever reason, apparent as such out in the world) and living purposefully with everything somehow anchored in that.

And I think that somehow last night...all these realizations finally crystalized for me, and I was finally able to let go of all the defenses once and for all, for a variety of both intellectual and emotional reasons. I've gotten to know a young man over the course of the past year whom I think has shown me the final viability and attractiveness of this solution. Rejecting orthodoxy and its repressive virtues need not mean total base hedonism, as human beings truly are satisfied by the "higher" things in life. Even by religion. In fact, I think, I will continue to be "religious" inasmuch as it satisfies me. And if the good itself is my chosen good, why does it matter to me if it is "objective" or merely "apparent"? If my satisfaction is good, I should take every opportunity at satisfaction!

I enjoy beauty, I enjoy the subtly altered states of consciousness attained in prayer and liturgy, I enjoy the challenge of thinking through theological questions. I enjoy loving my loved ones, I enjoy helping people "spiritually," I enjoy being "virtuous" most of the time. All of these enjoyments (as immediate objects of consciousness) are "real" to me in that sense, and there is not necessarily any reason to allow denying the reality of the presumptions on which they are based to get in the way of those satisfactions! Surely, even religious people must admit that the pleasures of religion would be real even if they are false. And why deny myself any pleasure?

And if I can, by throwing away the needless framework or structural scaffolding of orthodoxy or true Faith, enjoy other pleasures too, pleasures forbidden if I "really" believed in the religion, without sacrificing anything of the pleasure of religion itself either...well, what could be more the good-life than that? If the "true believers" sacrifice satisfactions of the fleshly variety and subject themselves to the torture of erecting all the facades needed to maintain their delusion, I think the militant atheists or hoggish hedonists are just as foolish for denying themselves the subjective pleasures of the "spiritual" variety. But a friend has shown me that you very truly can have your cake and eat it too in this regard, and a terrified fascination, mistaken for love, for spiritual concern, even for hatred at times, has at last come home as the realization that he was right and that the idea had threatened me all along, his very life and existence the evidence of possibilities I did not wish to admit.

So I think recently this idea has become more and more appealing to me, and thus I have tried more and more to run from it. You may have noticed that I deleted from my side-bar two blogs that I came to think represented masturbatory spiritual and liturgical pleasure without actual Faith, but now I think...what's wrong with such masturbatory pleasures? That's all they ever were to anyone, they're all that really exist! I also tried to argue with my friend for a long time about the inauthenticity of his own status quo, and I still think that maintaining such a stance while claiming (at least to oneself) that one really does have faith (while nevertheless living in this masturbatory fashion) is weak and pathetic for its intellectual cowardice.

But if I am mentally strong enough, brave enough, to admit my lack of faith (thus answering the cognitive dissonance once and for all)...while also living honestly and "existentially" in this masturbatory and solipsistic (no longer for me dirty words) fashion...then why not? Then the pleasures available from spirituality when I choose to pretend I assent to it (suspending, but not denying, my actual faithlessness in some other compartment of my brain) will be good, and yet the baser pleasures available when I choose to ignore religion will be available too! And yet I'll never actually delude myself. The best of both worlds.

Some perhaps may not be able to obtain the pleasures of religion without deluding themselves into thinking that they really believe them. I pity their lack of control over their own mind and emotions in that sense. But admittedly, perhaps religious things are only satisfying still to me inasmuch as I myself am still under the control of old constructions. Maybe someday their appeal will fade, or be revealed as just some sort of neutered distillate of the more basic, primal, animal enjoyments, just by-products of their long repression, or mere dilutions because (like the early Dorian Gray) I am not yet acclimated enough to indulge in the pure and undiluted pleasures in their rawest unmixed forms.

If I find this to be true, and in the course of my newfound revelry the "more refined" delights lose their appeal...well, my friends, if you are strong enough to embrace true humility, and humble enough to embrace true happiness, then debase yourself into your true fulfillment as the slime on a rock which is all you ever were. Eat, drink, [fuck!], and be merry, for tomorrow we die!!

April Fools. April Fools. April Fools. April Fools. April Fools. April Fools. April Fools. April Fools. April Fools. April Fools. April Fools.