Europe and Italy

Those of you who are at all familiar with Italian culture should really enjoy this.

Who is being precipitous?

Episcopalian Chris Johnson posts on ECUSA's response to the sundering of ecumenical ties with ECUSA by "just about every Orthodox church in the world."

Liberals (religious and political) occasionally complain about the fact that Americans have an almost subconscious superiority complex when it comes to the place of the USA in the world. While I understand the point and to some degree agree, I wouldn't term it a superiority complex, let alone an arrogance.

Either way, liberals are just as guilty, as the aftermath of Bp. Robinson's election & consecration demonstrates: pretty much the rest of the Christian world gives ECUSA a big thumbs down, but that's their problem... we are, after all, enlightened American Christians who know best when it comes to these things. Didn't you know that?

The Feminist Case Against Abortion

Great article on Serrin Foster, president of Feminists for Life.

Islam

The Catholic Educator's Resource Center recently posted Fr. John Hardon's introduction to Islam at its website.

It's well worth a read, especially for Catholics.

Still exclusive

Peter Sean Bradley on today's Massachusetts Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage:

Persons afflicted with "multiple sex partner attraction," "intergenerational sex attraction" and "dead sex attraction" complain that they have thus far been left out of equal protection promise of Massachusetts Constitution.

Peter's right. The Court said, "We construe civil marriage to mean the voluntary union of two persons as spouses, to the exclusion of all others.” Fine. But why two? What's the big deal about marriage being limited to two people? Isn't that intolerantly exclusive of others?

John Derbyshire points this out: "I see nothing in your "construal" to prevent me from marrying my sister, for example. Is this actually OK in the state of Massachusetts?"

The problem is this: despite whatever Andrew Sullivan (and those of like mind) thinks, once the procreative aspect of sex (and implicitly, marriage) has been discarded, there is no logical reason to oppose the sorts of things which Peter alludes to in his comment. The "ick factor" is irrelevant, in that it not only is non- (or might even be anti-)intellectual, gay & lesbian sex used to (and for many, still does) fall under this category, and Sullivan et al dismiss it for what it is: shoddy.

Unfortunately, when these things are said, one is accused of all sorts of hateful things, as the comments in my SVU post below illustrate.

Farther and farther

Robert Sungenis believes "that many in the upper hierarchy of the Church have gone deep into apostasy," and based on his reference to a 2001 statement issued by the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity on an Eastern eucharistic prayer (the Anaphora of Addai and Mari)--with the approval of Ratzinger and the Holy Father--and other "blasphemies" it appears that he's not just talking about Bishop Gumbleton, but rather of JPII, Ratzinger, and other members of the Vatican and its curia.

His justification for this appears to me to question the indefectibility of the Church: responding to the common Catholic argument that Matthew 16:18 guarantees that the Church cannot err in matters of faith and morals, Sungenis argues that the verse only indicates that the gates of hell with not prevail against the Church, i.e. that hell "will not win the final war." He argues, in fact, that apostasy at the highest levels is to be expected.

Now, it is certainly possible for members of the hierarchy to fall into apostasy. But Sungenis seems to be arguing more than that: if the PCPCU, the CDF, and the Holy Father can all get a doctrinal decision wrong, who's to say what else they may have gotten wrong, not only today, but twenty years ago? Or thirty? Or forty? Or fifty? Or fifteen-hundred?

I think Sungenis' line of thinking is extremely dangerous.

Everyone who sees same-sex attraction as disordered is a homophobe

That was pretty much the conclusion I took away from tonight's episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, in which a psychologist whose studies allege that SSA is a disorder turns out to be a murderer, and of his gay son's boyfriend, no less. The captain in the show even referred to the doc as "Dr. Homophobe," before there was any hint that he was the murderer.

Because, of course, anyone who sees any form of consensual sex as disordered must themselves be disordered, passionately hating those "deviants."

Whatever, Dick Wolf.

Can you see Clinton writing something like this?

This summer Francesco Cossiga, former president of Italy (a largely-figurehead position) wrote the following letter:

In his letter of June 22, 2003, to the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation, Luigi Giussani continues his intelligent, not abstract, but pastoral work of theological teaching, which speaks to both the heart and the mind of the transcendence and "fleshliness" of the Revelation and Redemption, beyond any "enlightenment"-type scheme or form of pious devotion. Thus, the focus is on the Motherhood of God, which took concrete form in space and time in the Motherhood of Jesus Christ in Mary, and what in it the proclamation of this dogma by the Council of Nicaea intended to mean: the divinity of Jesus Christ not only in Jesus the Logos, but also in Jesus the Man, and the unity of the two natures, divine and human, in one sole human-divine person who binds for all Eternity, the Eternal to time and thus the Eternal to history, the Infinite to the finite, and in this way guarantees the resurrection of man in his entirety. Only the virginity of Mary could be the unique method of incarnation of the Logos. If He were the son of one human seed and of a woman whose fertility was tied to a partial, individual "fleshliness," Jesus would not have been able to unite in one sole person the divine nature of the Logos, spiritual and eternal, spiritualizing and eternalizing in Christ a flesh that, no the fruit of just one seed, is the "universal," so to speak, "flesh" of mankind, which all in Christ will resurrect men on their earth, will recognize new heavens in itself; it will resurrect men in their time and in their history, which together will expand into the Eternal. This is the sense and the meaning of Mary's virginity: an "event" that is not a "truth of the philosophers," but an historical event to be accepted with Faith.

Now, there are some theological imprecisions present, but nonetheless, this is a letter than I cannot even imagine Bill Clinton or--to be honest--any other former US President writing.

well

I caught the second half of ABC's "documentary" "Jesus, Mary [Magdalene], and da Vinci."

How was it? Let me put it this way: from what I saw, Fr. Richard McBrien of Notre Dame was the most conservative "expert" they had. Which tells you what the piece thought about equal time.

This "Da Vinci Code" bull is getting out of hand.

China a threat?

Daniel Schmelzer argues that Chrina is not the next real competitor of the US. If anyone is likely, he thinks its India.

Interesting argument... check it out.

reactivated blogs

A couple of blogs are active again:

Sunny Days in Heaven

and

The Secularist Critique.

Welcome back, guys!