North Western Winds

"Users are seeing the work of traditional news media as system damage and routing around it." Back in high school I thought being a journalist would be really neat. After a couple of semesters in University "Communications" courses I began to think corporate communications was a dirty business I wanted not too much to do with. After a year or so in the field I knew I had been right. Today, I think I'd rather pick up road kill than be road kill. Examples: Relapsed Catholic on Kwanzaa The Curt Jester exposes sensationalism in Quebec My wife points me to a bit of drivel on blogs at the National Post today. I just cancelled my subscription over the holidays because the thing was so darn warmed over, tepid and blah . More of the same here folks, nothing to see. Vanderleun at the American Digest gets it , but over simplifies. What new tech has done is drive the price of producing copy way down, which is why there is so much of it, and why so much of it is re...

The WSJ is carrying Jeffery Hart's attempt to place Burke in our present context and while I don't agree with everything he suggests, it makes for a worthy read. Here are three of Hart's updated "Burkean" takes that I like: Beauty . Beauty has been clamorously present in the American Conservative Mind through its almost total absence. The tradition of regard for woodland and wildlife was present from the beginnings of the nation and continued through conservative exemplars such as the Republican Theodore Roosevelt, who established the National Parks. Embarrassingly for conservatives (at least one hopes it is embarrassing), stewardship of the environment is now left mostly to liberal Democrats. Not all ideas and initiatives by liberals are bad ones. Burke's unbought beauties are part of civilized life, and therefore ought to occupy much of the Conservative Mind. The absence of this consideration remains a mark of yahooism and is prominent in Republicanism t...

As a way of describing the old church in Europe, Oxford historian Diarmaid MacCulloch relates an old German Easter tradition: At the Holy Spirit's festival of Whitsuntide in the Bavarian diocese of Eichstadtt, a carved wooden dove of the Spirit was lowered down on the congregation through a hole in the church roof vaulting... the dove was closely followed by bucketfuls of of water, and the member of the congregation most thoroughly soaked became the town's Pfingstvogel for the coming year. Clergy might grumble about some of this excess and try to stop it, but in fact it was proof of a huge stability in the old religion: the apparent irreverence was itself a symptom of how strongly the majority of the people felt faith in the system, and how much they could relax in it. A problem would only arise if the faithful began listening to a question: was the Mass, the linchpin of it all, in fact what it claimed to be? The question arose because the western Church tried to offer an expl...

Real Clear Politics is carrying commentary on James Q. Wilson's WSJ article on ID (got that?). Wilson, the respected social scientist, gets it mostly right when he says that ID is not science because it can't be tested: So ID is not science. Does this mean that science, in any way, implies the non-existence of God? No. Does this mean that belief in God is irrational and that we should all be "free thinkers"? No. Does this mean that it is impossible to arbitrate between various theories of the existence/non-existence of God and come to some reasonable conclusions? No. Does this mean that we cannot say that humanity is meant to exist? No. In other words, rationality outside of science is quite possible, and has been around for a long time. How do you think humanity invented science in the first place? We surely did not do it scientifically. Science as we know it is the product of millennia of philosophical debate -- from Aristotle to Lakatos. Science depends upon phi...

John Cavadini, chairman of theology at the University of Notre Dame, speaking about JPII Catholics : What they see in him is perhaps something that youth of any age and period admire: idealism and commitment, tempered with warmth. John Paul has the ability to state ideals forthrightly without closing off openness toward the 'other,' regardless of the other's religion or lack thereof. Like our millennial youth, John Paul seems to respect, as something sacred, religious faith and moral commitment wherever he finds it. He sees it as a basis for the building of what he calls the 'civilization of love.' Without wanting to minimize the problems or real inconsistencies in the position of our younger brothers and sisters in Christ, are they not, in some sense, especially the children of this pope in this regard? In their abiding affection for Catholicism, coupled with an openness toward other faiths, could we not see an intuition, not of relativism, but of a religious alter...

Suggestions fror the coming Christmas season: Loreena McKennit , Songs for the Season . Even though McKennit has not released an album in something like a decade, I've only just discovered her and she's amazing. This little EP has only five songs on it and Canadians can pick it up on iTunes for about $4 and change. Amazon wants ten US bucks... Richard Proulx and the Cathedral Singers, Catholic Latin Classics . It's not a Christmas album per se, but it'll sound terrific. Magnificat . This is a really nice daily missal. Fourteen issues a year include two special editions for Holy week and Christmas. Each issue has all of the masses for each day of the month, and a couple of features about historical artworks, poems, and faith issues. These are really nice and I'm glad my wife has deemed me worthy of one.

Canada's Supreme farce is carrying on it's merry way, ruling today that swinger's clubs must be allowed to operate legally : In its 7-2 decision, the court redefined indecency to use harm, rather than community standards, as the key yardstick. The ruling, written by Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin , said acts must be shown to be harmful to the point where they "interfere with the proper functioning of society" before they can be labelled indecent. "Grounding criminal indecency in harm represents an important advance in this difficult area of law." McLachlin is attempting to argue that public standards for behavior are and can only be arbitrary, whereas "harm" is supposedly scientifically objective, supposedly a higher threshold to meet, and thereby a guarantor of greater liberty. McLachlin is a Liberal party appointee, btw - remember this during the election if this ruling bothers you (and she looks rather like a dom in that Wikki picture, ...

I love the internet. Link-ity link and look what I found : One of the problems is with our elites. We are wrong to think that the difficulty lies in the uneducated and unsophisticated masses--as if inadequate education, in and of itself, is the problem. As a matter of fact, no one is more prone to illusions than the intellectual. It has been said that philosophy is simply personal error on a grandiose scale. Complicating matters is the fact that intellectuals are hardly immune to a deep emotional investment in their ideas, no less than the religious individual. The word "belief" is etymologically linked to the word "beloved," and it is easy to see how certain ideas, no matter how dysfunctional--for example, some of the undeniably appealing ideas underpinning contemporary liberalism--are beloved by those who believe them. Thus, many liberal ideas are believed not because they are true, but because they are beautiful. Then, the intellectual simply marshals their inte...

" ... after his brothers had gone up to the feast, then [Jesus] also went up, not publicly but in private" The New Yorker takes a look at another Oxford based writer and decides to treat this one with kid gloves. They treated C.S. Lewis a little more roughly not too long ago. [Phillip] Pullman’s initial encounters with religion were largely benign, owing to his beloved grandfather. Although he became a skeptic early on—“for all the usual reasons”—he kept his thoughts to himself. “I didn’t want to upset him,” he said of his grandfather. “I knew I wouldn’t have changed his mind.” And, for Pullman, his grandfather’s most important quality was his “big soul.” He added, “ Although I call myself an atheist, I am a Church of England atheist , and a 1662 Book of Common Prayer atheist, because that’s the tradition I was brought up in and I cannot escape those early influences.” In “H...

Don't be fooled, this quiz is a lot more thoughful than it sounds. You scored as Sacrament model . Your model of the church is Sacrament. The church is the effective sign of the revelation that is the person of Jesus Christ. Christians are transformed by Christ and then become a beacon of Christ wherever they go. This model has a remarkable capacity for integrating other models of the church. Sacrament model 89% Mystical Communion Model 78% Institutional Model 61% Herald Model 56% Servant Model 50% What is your model of the church? [Dulles] created with QuizFarm.com Sorry about the lack of posts. I am - there is no other way to say it - feeling mighty lethargic at the moment.

See here .

Scott Adams, creator of the popular Dilbert comic strip, has been thinking aloud about God - with very interesting results, not the kind of stuff you might stereotypically associate with an Engineer. I have to applaud Adam's ability to resist needlessly anthropomorphizing God in all of the ways that the typical atheist / agnostic does. Hey, I was one, so I know, OK? Andrew can consider this post my response to his e-mailing me this article from NPR if he wants to. Welcome back to blogging, btw! Adams writes: What about consciousness? You'd expect God to be conscious as we understand it, right? But that wouldn't make sense for an omnipotent being. Our own consciousness is mostly about imagining what can happen next and comparing it to what does so we can adjust accordingly. That's useful for survival, but only for slow procreating creatures that are made of meat and surrounded by carnivores. God wouldn't need that sort of imagination because omnipotence means y...

From 30 Days , an interview with Cardinal Godfried Danneels on the subject of the liturgy: Cardinal Godfried Danneels:Many African and Asian bishops have spoken to me about “threshold proselytes…” Who are they? DANNEELS: They’re the polygamists, the non-baptized, even Moslems who look in through the door of the Church attracted by the beauty of the liturgy. They feel there’s something going on… What else struck you during the Synod? DANNEELS: The underlining of the sacrificial character of the Eucharist, which to tell the truth had never been denied. But that at a certain moment, after the Council, had been confined to the shade, and the stress was put on the Eucharist as banquet. But the Last Supper was not a simple group meal. It was a ceremonial and at the same time sacrificial banquet. The apostles and Jesus did not meet in the cenacle only to eat together like all the other times. But to remember the paschal meal of...

Thank you to Rick and Kristina and others who commented on my post about our parish's liturgical meeting this past weekend, and to Tony , who sent a very supportive e-mail. Rick and Kristina pointed me towards a document called Redemptionis Sacramentum , which will be quite helpful, I think. Looking back at the Easter mime incident, for example, I can see issues with Chapter 3, sections 58 to 63. A summary of the document can be found here .

Another quiz? yes, because I'm busy with Christmas preparations today... You scored as New Catholic . The years following the Second Vatican Council was a time of collapse of the Catholic faith and its traditions. But you are a young person who has rediscovered this lost faith, probably due to the evangelization of Pope John Paul II. You are enthusiastic, refreshing, and somewhat traditional, and you may be considering a vocation to the priesthood or religious life. You reject relativism and the decline in society that you see among your peers. You are seen as being good for the Church. A possible problem is that you may have a too narrow a view of orthodoxy, and anyway, you are still a youth and not yet mature in your faith. New Catholic 71% Traditional Catholic 64% Neo-Conservative Catholic 52% Radical Catholic 33% Evangelical Catholic 17% Lukewarm Catholic 17% Liberal Catholic 10% What is your style of American Catholicism? created with QuizFarm.com

Republican - You believe that the free market will take care of most things, but that the government should be there with moderate taxation to provide for national defense and enforcing morality. Your historical role model is Ronald Reagan. Which political sterotype are you? brought to you by Quizilla

"Our Father, who art in Heaven... " This article from Crisis is speaking my mind today: Among Lumen Gentium's strongest emphases is the laity's call to "make Christ known to others... by the testimony of a life resplendent in faith, hope and charity." The laity's means of drawing on these virtues are rooted in the closeness of man's relationship to God through the person of Christ . The council Fathers understood that the laity were to find courage enough in this bond to accomplish the work set out for them by it: "Let them not, then, hide this hope in the depths of their hearts, but even in the program of their secular life let them express it by a continual conversion and by wrestling 'against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness' (Eph 6:12)." This is Vatican II at its boldest and truest: The call for aggiornamento does not mean an accommodation to the world but rather a Christ-cen...

Richard Dawkins is interviewed on Belief.net and is asked: You criticize intelligent design, saying that "the theistic answer" - pointing to God as designer" is deeply unsatisfying"--presumably you mean on a logical, scientific level. His answer is: Yes, because it doesn't explain where the designer comes from. If they're going to emphasize the statistical improbability of biological organs - "these are so complicated, how could they have evolved?" - well, if they're so complicated, how could they possibly have been designed? Because the designer would have to be even more complicated. As intelligent as he is - and I don't dispute it - Dawkins is a crummy theologian. His response is an anthropomorphic projection. I can only see, hear, and think just so , and everything must fit into those neat little slots. But those mental slots, by Dawkin's own account, did not evolve with the the pursuit of scientific truth in mind. Is it so hard t...

How are your Advent preparations going? If you're feeling under the gun, the Bishop of Denver's recent column might be just the thing. In it, he shares from a C.S. Lewis essay on the the festivals of Exmas and Chrissmas. Lewis himself is merely sharing a lost chapter from Herodotus on the customs of a strange land called Niatirb. Of Niatirb, "Herodotus" writes that: In the middle of winter when fogs and rains most abound, (the Niatirbians) have a great festival called Exmas, and for 50 days they prepare for it (in the manner which is called,) in their barbarian speech, the Exmas Rush. When the day of the festival comes, most of the citizens, being exhausted from the (frenzies of the) Rush, lie in bed till noon. But in the evening they eat five times as much as on other days, and crowning themselves with crowns of paper, they become intoxicated. And on the day after Exmas, they are very grave, being internally disordered by the supper and the drinking and the rec...

Ladies and gentlemen, Notre Dame professor John Haldane , interviewed in Mercator.net : Haldane :There are two kinds of pluralism that we find today in Western countries. One is a lifestyle pluralism, a variety of ways of living. That can be quite superficial, simply like cakes, clothing or furniture or whatever. And there is a deeper diversity or plurality, a pluralism of philosophies or ideologies... So if you take, marriage, for example, Jews, Christians and Muslims tend actually to share, broadly speaking, the same views about this. The diversity comes among people who don’t have an ideology... But these are really not expressions of deep philosophies. These are expressions of consumerism, of the desire to have more choices. Serrano : What would you like to see? Haldane : I think that two things need to be done. One is the need to make a negative critique of superficial pluralism. We should be ready to show that although there is a great deal of diversity there, it doesn...

New York Magazine features two informative stories about abortion. The first is a history of the procedure in that state and the second is a look at a program for hosting out of staters who come to the city for late term procedures. In the second story, about those who provide a 'haven' for those seeking late term abortion, we read the following: Most Haven hosts are white, Jewish, well schooled, and political. Some are empty-nesters with beds to spare and memories of the sixties and seventies women's movement; many are young idealists with matchbox apartments and roommates who don't mind an extra body crashing in the living room. Meanwhile, most of the women helped by Haven are black and Latina, with GEDs or less, low literacy skills, and not much civic moxie. The two sides often baffle each other. Guests have been known to giggle at the gay-oriented titles on a host's bookshelves, complain about the the uncool quality of her CDs, and demand to take cabs rather...

Right Reason has an interview with Roger Scruton in two parts, here and here . What are you waiting for? Quote: The problem for conservatism is to reconcile the many and often conflicting demands that these various forms of life impose on us. The free-market ideologues take one instance of spontaneous order, and erect it into a prescription for all the others. They ask us to believe that the free exchange of commodities is the model for all social interaction. But many of our most important forms of life involve withdrawing what we value from the market: sexual morality is an obvious instance, city planning another. (America has failed abysmally in both those respects, of course.) Looked at from the anthropological point of view religion can be seen as an elaborate (and spontaneous) way in which communities remove what is most precious to them (i.e. all that concerns the creation and reproduction of community) from the erosion of the market. A cultural conservative, such as I am, s...

vs. The beacon on a hill This is the third in a three part series of posts stemming from a reflection on human nature in light of the Cross. Part one is here and part two is here . If you got past my wandering introduction in part two and read Pope Ratzinger's description of the Church you might have been surprised by his frank admission that the Church itself is NOT a beacon on a hill: The thrilling interplay of God's loyalty and man's disloyalty that characterizes the structure of the Church is the dramatic form of grace, so to speak... One could say that precisely in her paradoxical combination of holiness and and unholiness the Church is in fact the shape taken by grace in this world. The Pope admits that some view such an existence as "sickly" but reflection reveals its promise. Ratzinger describes a Church that is not a clear instance of the divine in the world. The Church that he describes is a representation of man's relationship to God . Tho...

Biblical Literalism is usually associated with so called "conservative" fundamentalism. There is, however, nothing inherently conservative about literalism. In fact this story about a youth group in Germany producing a sexy calendar is proof that literalism is an extreme and radical reading method that can have results that range from fundamentalism to libertinism. Anne Rohmer, 21, wearing garters and stockings, posed on a doorstep as the prostitute Rahab. "We wanted to represent the Bible in a different way and to interest young people," she told news agency Reuters. "Anyway, it doesn't say anywhere in the Bible that you are forbidden to show yourself nude." Miss Rohmer is skirting the following (and there might be more): Exodus 20:14 : "You shall not commit adultery." Mathew 5:17 : "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until h...

This follow up post is a little late. I had hoped to have it up last night, but as usual I underestimated my subject and this will now be the second of a three part series. Part One is here . Yesterday I posted about the Cross as profound light shed on the nature of humanity, and I wrote that the light it sheds serves as a warning to those who think they can effect a liberation of humanity through reform and expansion of the law. That school of thought is called "positive liberty" and it crashes against man's failure to know in the fullest sense what the good is, and into the consistent failure to adhere to even what he does know. Negative liberty, freedom from unnecessary and unenlightened law, is better but does not entirely escape the need for an Authoritative Criterion for just action either. Negative liberty has the virtue of restricting the damage that government can do by restricting the number and scope of its powers. We are, however, still left with problems ...

Ecce Homo I haven't done a quote from Pope Ratzinger's Introduction to Chistianty in a while and even though I have finished the book there are still one or two passages I want to share, including - perhaps even especially - this one. When I first began to look over what Christianity teaches, to look at the gospel story and to try penetrate why it has been so compelling to so many for so long, this was one of the things that leapt out at me. I was happy to see our Pope confirm it. Expanding on the Apostles Creed where it says "... suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried," Ratzinger writes: The fact that when the perfectly just man appeared he was crucified, delivered up by justice to death, tells us pitilessly who man is: Thou art such, man, that thou canst not bear the just man - that he who simply loves becomes a fool, a scourged criminal, an outcast. Thou art such because, unjust thyself, thou dost always need the injustice of the n...