Words of Wisdom

You are a land that is not cleansed, not rained upon in the day of indignation. Its princes within it are like a roaring lion tearing the prey; they have devoured human lives; they have taken treasure and precious things; they have made many widows within it. ... Its officials within it are like wolves tearing the prey, shedding blood, destroying lives to get dishonest gain. Its prophets have smeared whitewash on their behalf, seeing false visions and divining lies for them, saying, "Thus says the Lord God," when the Lord has not spoken.
- Ezekiel 22:23-28

Michael's article causing a bit of a stir:

[[Be sure to sheck out the new collaborative blog he mentions -- Vox Nova ]]

[Image from www.psalters.com ]

Response to the responses

m | General, Theology, Political, Church, War/Militarism | Wednesday, May 30th, 2007

I figured that my Memorial Day piece would cause a mild stir, but I didn’t expect quite the response that it did get. Part of the interest was certainly due to the fact that I cross-posted the piece on the Vox Nova blog, a brand new political Catholic blog that has gained a fairly wide readership although it has only been around for a couple weeks now. Most of the responses in the comboxes (here and at Vox Nova) have been positive.

There have been a handful of negative responses on various Catholic blogs. I won’t make too much of the responses, as most of them are quite predictable, and simply reflect the kind of thinking that I argued against in the first place. Some even used creative terms like “fruitcake” and “jerkwad.” Nice.

Perhaps the most interesting response was from the blog of Jay Anderson who compares my stance with that of a group of vandals who drew swastikas on the gravestones of veterans in Washington state. So instead of actually critiquing my ideas, even in a predictable way, Anderson makes the ultimate low blow by comparing my critique of American idolatrous nationalism to antisemitic hate crime. Um, ok. These sorts of mindless reactions are really sad to me because they reveal where the hearts of many American Catholics truly are, where their true allegiances lie.

Morning’s Minion responded with a positive, two-part piece here and here.

Comments (6)

One of the responses to Cindy Sheehan's article at Commondreams.org

Cindy,

Thank you for all you have tried to do. Your efforts have once again proven to all of us that the insidious virus affecting American culture is deeper than one political administration’s renegade assault on the Constitution, or our predatory economic conspiracy to control the world’s resources aided by our reprehensible military-industrial appetite for pre-emptive mastery, or our violent and hedonistic-escapist popular culture, or our religious complicity in support of Empire, or the impoverished collective imagination that can’t conceive ourselves to be mutually-interdependent inhabitants of the earth but only as winners. The old word for our personal and cultural dis-ease is “sin,” now manifest as an implicit master-race anthropology that is systematically engineered through vast and pervasively competitive socialization processes that shape and support our way of being (in)human together from cradle to grave. The remedy is another old fashioned concept–repentence–personal and corporate. Against the temptation to despair that I share with you, Cindy, I continue to hope against hope that our faith communities will one day (soon) awaken to their prophetic heritage and call us all to repentennce–that is, to reconsider our human vocation to be responsible creatures, caregivers, and stewards of life. “The meek shall inherit the earth.”

Another great post from Michael: "Memorial Day and the religious syncretism of the state"

I've pasted below another great post from Michael. Would that more of our priests had such vision. His insights only confirm that celibacy should be recongnized as a charism and not mandated...

[[image from the website http://www.psalters.com/.]]

Memorial Day and the religious syncretism of the state

m General, Theology, Political, Church, War/Militarism Saturday, May 26th, 2007

During my high school and college years and beyond, I thought about becoming a Catholic priest and made an effort to discern and pray about it over the course of those years.[1] Eventually I discovered that part of my vocation was to marry — Emily and I will celebrate our two-year anniversary this July — and so the presbyteral ordination option was closed. As I have reflected on how my religio-political views have evolved over the last ten years or so, however, I sometimes wonder what sort of trouble I would get into if I had been led to the Catholic priesthood.

Let me explain more fully what I mean. One of my academic interests has been to explore American Christianity’s tendency to unite itself with American civil religion, to seamlessly ally itself, knowingly or unknowingly, with the interests of the nation-state. Even the Roman Catholic Church, a church that should (in theory) have a greater consciousness of its transnational (’catholic’) character, perpetually succumbs to this sort of syncretism when we do things like place American flags in our sanctuaries, when we sing the national anthem at Mass, and when we refer to American soldiers in our prayers as “our” troops.[2]

Beyond these fairly obvious examples lies an even greater, though largely unrecognized, danger in our inability to distinguish between the state’s mythology and holidays and the mythology and holidays of Christianity. Many Catholics see no problem with celebrating any and all of the state’s holidays, and sometimes we even celebrate special Masses on these days, such as Independence Day and Thanksgiving, in effect “baptizing” them and making them an unofficial part of the liturgical calendar.

Memorial Day, which we celebrate this coming Monday, is a great example. Last year on Memorial Day, I was making the drive home from a family gathering. The occasion for the gathering was, in fact, not Memorial Day per se, but for the birthday of two relatives. On the drive home, Emily and I passed a small country Baptist church and on the marquee was the question: “What will you do for Christ this Memorial Day?” Aside from the fact that the question makes absolutely no sense, I was irritated and almost stopped the car to take a digital picture of the sign because it was such a clear example of the sort of religious syncretism that exists in the United States. American Christians will even combine the mythology and holidays of Christianity and American civil religion even if the result is completely unintelligible nonsense.

Two years ago, on the Sunday before Memorial Day, a visiting priest was celebrating Mass at my parish in West Virginia. Near the end of Mass, before he processed out of the church he wanted, in light of the upcoming holiday, to honor the soldiers who “made the ultimate sacrifice for us.” All of this he said in front of a giant crucifix which, last time I checked, represents the “ultimate sacrifice” in which Christians believe and which, indeed, we had just celebrated in the Eucharistic action. As a fitting conclusion to the patriotic Mass, the congregation sang, not to Jesus, but to the country itself in the words of “America the Beautiful.” CONTINUE...

Andrew Bacevich: "I Lost My Son to a War I Oppose..."

...To be fair, responsibility for the war's continuation now rests no less with the Democrats who control Congress than with the president and his party. After my son's death, my state's senators, Edward M. Kennedy and John F. Kerry, telephoned to express their condolences. Stephen F. Lynch, our congressman, attended my son's wake. Kerry was present for the funeral Mass. My family and I greatly appreciated such gestures. But when I suggested to each of them the necessity of ending the war, I got the brushoff. More accurately, after ever so briefly pretending to listen, each treated me to a convoluted explanation that said in essence: Don't blame me.
To whom do Kennedy, Kerry and Lynch listen? We know the answer: to the same people who have the ear of George W. Bush and Karl Rove -- namely, wealthy individuals and institutions.Money buys access and influence. Money greases the process that will yield us a new president in 2008. When it comes to Iraq, money ensures that the concerns of big business, big oil, bellicose evangelicals and Middle East allies gain a hearing. By comparison, the lives of U.S. soldiers figure as an afterthought.
Memorial Day orators will say that a G.I.'s life is priceless. Don't believe it. I know what value the U.S. government assigns to a soldier's life: I've been handed the check. It's roughly what the Yankees will pay Roger Clemens per inning once he starts pitching next month...
...FULL ARTICLE

Cindy Sheehan gives up her protest, says the U.S. "is becoming a fascist corporate wasteland"

"Make It New " [from the 'nonviolentjesus' blog]

...To attain humanity in the current age means to liberate one's mind from the frenzied rush of words. The first step is to deconstruct the propaganda that the war machine spews forth and analyze its true purpose. We have often attempted here to disambiguate that purpose and we will continue to finger the knot that ties our mind to lies and our heart to false enthusiasms, especially now that so much of the media has apparently embraced an antiwar message. Careful analysis shows that this is not the case.

Instead, the antiwar sentiments of the majority have forced a change in tactics. The media now acknowledge that sentiment so that it can be redirected into safe channels. This is not to prevent a democratic uprising - the corporate powers are still firmly in control, but the failure in Iraq threatens to divert resources from the effort to extend that control over Middle Eastern oil. Therefore, a false opposition is set up in the form of the Democratic party which attempts to channel the refocused antiwar energy long enough so that favorable oil agreements can be concluded under the banner of "ending sectarian strife". At that point, the media will reduce the visibility of our Iraq presence as much as possible and the issue will begin to fade.

Our Christian task is liberation from the internalized values and presuppositions of the Domination system. One major tactic of that system is to drain the will to act politically by projecting an illusion of total control, or "full spectrum dominance", as the military like to put it. An example of this was the "shock and awe" campaign at the beginning of the Iraq Occupation. The purpose was to install a magical sense of awe at American control not merely of the streets, but of the very sky above. A related tactic is the profusion of video cameras and email monitoring. The Israeli checkpoints in occupied Palestine fill a similar function. The system is not actually all-pervasive, but if the illusion of such control can be engendered, their purpose is accomplished.

However, these physical control mechanisms simply reinforce internal mechanisms that are the real locus of control. That purpose is well-defined as "decomposition" of the will to act without the sanction of the domination system. "Decomposition meant blocking people from acting. It meant paralyzing them as citizens by convincing them that everything was controlled. It meant relentless application of quiet coercion leading to compliance." - Walter Wink, "The Human Being".

The counterforce is the inner "well of life", fons vitae, which the Holy Spirit plants in our hearts that lets us act without the sanction of greed or pride. It heals the wounds inflicted by the crushing of the self. From this new center, we can see war for what it is, a disgrace not merely to Christians, but the decomposition of our very humanity. God has so created us that to fail to rise above the current state of our humanity is to devolve from it, and to bury our snout in the fascinating garbarge of consumer society is to do exactly that.

Success means that our hearts have remained faithful. In the words of Gordon Crosby, "Therefore, somehow, we have to learn to get our satisfaction and our joy in faithfulness and in our intimate relationship with Christ. Then the question of effectiveness and success, in the usual sense of those terms is not the issue. We can transcend that and get energized and nourished by faithfulness knowing we are doing what we must do to live - not what we must do to change the neighborhood." posted by Boyd at 2:22 PM | 0 comments links to this post

The impeachment train is starting to roll...

Dave Lindorff: Co-Sponsors for Cheney Impeachment Bill: They Think They Can, They Think They Can
Submitted by BuzzFlash on Thu, 05/03/2007 - 2:19pm. Guest Contribution
A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION
by Dave Lindorff


Last week, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), started things off by filing a three-article bill of impeachment against Vice President Dick Cheney. Initially largely ignored by the mainstream media, and even ridiculed by some leading Democrats in Congress, that bill, HR 333, Wednesday garnered two co-sponsors, Rep. William Lacy Clay (D-MO) and Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), the latter a chief deputy whip and senior member of the House congressional leadership.

The two co-sponsors signing on to the bill give it a much stronger chance of being taken seriously in the House Judiciary Committee headed by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), and follows a week of intense impeachment activities across the country.

A week ago, dozens of impeachment activists gathered on the steps of the main entrance to the Cannon House Office Building in a group press conference calling on Congress to back Kucinich's impeachment bill, and to initiate impeachment proceedings against President Bush.

That same week, delegates to the annual convention of the California Democratic Party, the largest state chapter of the Democratic Party, overwhelmingly passed a detailed resolution calling for the impeachment of the president and vice president. The resolution received the highest vote total of all the resolutions offered at that convention, and was a powerful message to California's top Democrat, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who represents a district in San Francisco, that her own party wants action on impeachment, not a political dodge.

A few days later, on Saturday, April 28, impeachment groups across the nation held demonstrations, many of which featured protesters assembling to form giant letters spelling out the word "Impeach." While the mainstream media largely ignored those protests, the message was not lost on House Democrats. The following day, Rep. John Murtha, a leader of the Democrats campaign to end the Iraq War, speaking on the CBS News program "Face the Nation," declared that impeachment was one of the tools Congress has to influence the president. Lest his statement be misconstrued as a slip of the tongue, Murtha, who is known to be a close political ally of Pelosi, repeated the statement on NPR the following day, this time saying pointedly that impeachment was "on the table" in Congress.

His choice of words was particularly significant, since Pelosi has been insisting for almost a year that under a Democratic Congress, impeachment of the president would be "off the table."

It remains to be seen whether more members of the House will sign on to Kucinich's bill, or whether other representatives will add new bills of impeachment of their own against the vice president. Kucinich's bill is narrow in scope, only citing three impeachable offenses: lying about Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, lying about an alleged link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, and illegally threatening war against Iran, a country that poses no imminent threat to the U.S. Certainly there are plenty of other grounds for impeaching Cheney, ranging from conspiracy to commit kidnapping and illegal torture of prisoner of war detainees and war profiteering to lying to Congress and orchestrating the theft of national elections.

Thirty-nine members of the House in the last Congress were co-sponsors of a bill submitted in late 2005 by Rep. Conyers that called for an investigation into impeachable crimes by the president and vice president, and impeachment activists are now lobbying those members -- nearly all of whom were returned to office last November -- to join as co-sponsors of HR 333. Both Reps. Clay and Shakowsky had been co-sponsors of the earlier Conyers bill, signing on in January 2006.

With frustration with President Bush's insistence on endless war in Iraq, and with grassroots pressure for impeachment building, it is going to be harder and harder for the mainstream media to keep ignoring the impeachment story. It is also going to be harder and harder for Democratic Party leaders to deter their more progressive members in the House from filing impeachment bills.

To contact members of Congress and make your views on impeachment known, dial 202/225-3121 and ask for the member you want to reach. Speaker Pelosi's number is 202/225-0100.

DAVE LINDORFF is co-author, with Barbara Olshansky, of The Case for
Impeachment: The Legal Argument for Removing President George W. Bush from Office (St. Martin's Press, 2006). A paperback edition of the book is due out in late May. His work is available at thiscantbehappening.net.

Catholic Answers “pilgrimage”/cruise

From Michael at catholicanarchy

m | General, Church, Anti-Capitalism | Saturday, May 5th, 2007

The image of the boat is frequently used as a symbol for the Church. But I have never heard of anything like this.

I clicked over to Catholic Answers guru and super-apologist Jimmy Akin’s blog to check out his outlandish series of posts justifying the use of torture. (Morning’s Minion sufficiently dealt with Akin’s errors here.) In another, more recent post Akin apologizes to readers for his recent lack of blogging which he says is due to being in the midst of preparations for the “Catholic Answers Pilgrimage/Cruise” happening in May. Curious, I Googled “Catholic Answers cruise” and found this site: www.catholicanswerscruise.com.

The Catholic Answers crowd continues to amaze me. When they aren’t slipping partisan voters guides under your windshield wipers while you’re at Mass — guides that list “non-negotiable” issues for Catholic voters — or busy themselves justifying war and torture (the latter of which is designated an “intrinsically evil act” in the encyclical Veritatis Splendour!), they are hanging out on a cruise ship together in the Mediterranean feeling good about themselves, drinking champagne with Fr. Frank Pavone and calling it a “pilgrimage.” You have got to be kidding me.

Let me share a few of the highlights from the online cruise brochure.

The site assures potential cruisers that “these events are private and exclusively for Catholic Answers cruise participants” and that they will be “traveling with like-minded individuals.”

A amazing image of bourgeois Christianity if there ever was one. If only we could always “do church” with “like-minded individuals.”

Guests will enjoy a “Catholic Answers private mass, located in the Some Enchanted Evening Lounge.”

I’m picking up on a theme here: private. The name of this liturgical space amazes me. These are the people who constantly harp on contemporary liturgy for being “irreverent?”

Finally, we have the “Catholic Answers General Session, featuring such speakers as Akin and Fr. Frank Pavone, located in the Masquerade Theater.”

“Masquerade” is right.

I’m not really sure which adjectives to apply to the Catholic Answers crowd anymore. Certainly they perceive themselves to be an elite of some kind, a “church-within-a-church.” And you know what orthodox Christians have called these types: gnostics. I have a feeling that these upper-crust Catholics won’t be offering scholarships to less fortunate Catholics who cannot afford the ticket price but who would really like to learn more about the Catholic faith — the Catholic Answers version, anyway. That’s okay, though, if they can’t afford it, they are probably just too lazy.

This Mediterranean cruise with daily Mass and a few “Catholic” sprinklings smacks of the Ave Maria, Florida Super-Catholic-Land-Oasis that Dominos Pizza Catholic capitalist Thomas Monaghan plans to build. Plans? Planned? Is it finished? When can I go? I want to make a pilgrimage too. Florida sounds nice.

Private Masses with “like-minded” individuals. Having a Bud Light with Jimmy Akin and Co. Catholicism-as-vacation! I could not think of anything less authentically ecclesial.

The Narrow Path, John Dear, SJ

Description: Following in the footsteps of the great apostles of nonviolence – Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton and Oscar Romero – John Dear, SJ presents in The Narrow Path the challenging message of Jesus in a fresh way, speaking with new force and vision of God’s plea for peace. Fr. John Dear’s interpretation of the life and death of Jesus calls for the body of Christ, the Church, to follow in the way of Jesus to the very end, without compromise, no matter the cost. The Narrow Path is a bold and challenging film, a prophetic call to embody the nonviolence of Jesus and become instruments of peace. Available April 2007 from our website www.sandamianofoundation.org

Great Podcast: Fr. Robert E. Kennedy, Catholic priest and a Zen master (roshi)

Pic: Matteo Ricci, S.J.

http://ncrcafe.org/node/1057

'I wanted a faith that was deeper,' a Tom Fox interview

Jesuit Fr. Robert E. Kennedy is an American Catholic priest and a Zen master (roshi). "I have never felt that I was a Buddhist. I have always felt that I am Catholic and a Jesuit," Kennedy tells Tom Fox. "But I wanted a faith that was deeper, that was rooted in my experience, that was not a theory that could be blown away with a change in culture." He explains:

"Christianity is not a triumphal march to the Kingdom." It is an emptying of self. "This profound teaching of Christian life is very close to Buddhism. Buddhism tries to empty ourselves of a false identity and to come to the world as naked and as crucified as Christ was."



Episode 1: Come at life fresh, moment by moment (27 min.)
"I was talking with a Chinese Zen master once and he said one of the difficulties of dealing with Catholics is that they love their spiritualities ... as if it was a parallel life," Kennedy tells Tom Fox. Buddhists root us in this moment, he said. "Buddhists would say, 'If God isn't present in this moment, where is he? You meet God in doing the deed of this moment in front of you. Never withdraw from it.' "

Episode 2: Helping a person take another step (24 min.)
When Kennedy went to study with a Japanese Zen master, the Buddhist told him: " 'I do not want to make you a Buddhist. I want to empty you in imitation of your Lord Jesus Christ who emptied himself and poured himself out.' This is at the heart of what it means to be Catholic. To follow Christ is to empty ourselves." He continues: "I remember thinking then, 'This Buddhist might make a Christian of me yet.' It was so profoundly Christian and beautiful."



More about the author
Ordained a priest in Japan in 1965, Jesuit Fr. Robert E. Kennedy was installed as a Zen teacher in 1991 and was given the title Roshi in 1997. Kennedy studied Zen with Yamada Roshi in Japan, Maezumi Roshi in Los Angeles and Bernard Glassman Roshi in New York. He teaches in the theology department of Saint Peter's College in Jersey City, N.J. In addition to his work at the college, he is a practicing psychotherapist. He is the author of two books, Zen Spirit, Christian Spirit and Zen Gifts to Christians.

Video compilation of Mike Gravel clips from 1st debate

Getting Real About NATO

Monday, April 30th in News by Justin Raimondo |

Nikolas K. Gvosdek, editor of The National Interest and a senior fellow at the Nixon Center, points out in the Washington Realist that Georgia, Ukraine, Albania, Croatia and Macedonia are the recent recipients of billions in largesse from the U.S. Congress, with the funds slated for upgrading their militaries and putting them on a fast track to full NATO membership. The “NATO Freedom Consolidation Act of 2007” was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Bush with “almost no debate,” bringing “together members of the legislature who otherwise never stand shoulder to shoulder on other foreign policy issues—including Iraq.” Why this strange comity when it comes to the expansion of an alliance that has long since lost its original rationale? “Whereas the creation of the alliance itself back in the 1940s was hotly and vigorously discussed,” notes Gvosdek, ”the extension of NATO’s geographic reach as well as its commitments to new states is now apparently not a matter for serious dialogue. Why?”

The reason is all too apparent. Albania, say, cannot just join NATO: aside from jumping through all sorts of procedural and political hoops, the Albanians must upgrade their armed forces to meet NATO standards. And they can’t do that without first buying a lot of expensive equipment from American arms manufacturers. The billions in “foreign aid” going to these aspiring NATO nations is a direct subsidy to America’s military-industrial complex, a gift from Congress to Lockheed-Martin.

That’s why ….

"These People Frighten Me" - The Candor of Mike Gravel, By Margaret Kimberly

During the first Democratic presidential debate a little known candidate, former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel, ended up with one of the most memorable lines of the evening:

"And I got to tell you, after standing up with them, some of these people frighten me--they frighten me. When you have mainline candidates that turn around and say that there's nothing off the table with respect to Iran, that's code for using nukes, nuclear devices.

"I got to tell you, I'm president of the United States, there will be no preemptive wars with nuclear devices. To my mind, it's immoral, and it's been immoral for the last 50 years as part of American foreign policy."

Of the eight candidates on that stage in South Carolina, only Gravel and Congressman Dennis Kucinich will say that there is no reason for the American people to incinerate the Iranian people with nuclear weapons. CLICK TO READ

Amnesty embraces the dogmatic left's most holy sacrament

At 'Open Book'-- some articulate responses to Amnesty's disastrous policy shift :

"This pattern is repeated over and over again. I have some problems with Amnesty International but I respect their ideas. The problem is that I suspect the leaders of the Amnesty International have so divorced themselves from the reality of the Christian Community they don't know how big of a mistake this is.

Over the past decade we have seen a shift. Let us look at the Catholic Example. Politically Left organizations such as the Catholic Workers Movement and others have younger members that are very radically Orthodox in their faith. I know several people like this and even though I disagree with some of the means they advocate their Goal is Christian. Many Evanglicals, orthodox to the message of Christ, are also branching out into traditionally more liberal progressive organizations that are concerned about basic human rights. We see this in the emergent Church movement. This will be a slap in the face to them and Amnesty International will lose important allies. Why? BEcause I suspect they don't try to understand the Christians in their midist and have left their original misson

I guess my question is why Abortion has to be the left's most Holy Sacrament that must be defended and promoted at all Cost. Why do they feel the need to export this into other Countries.

What does this have to do with torture or war or whatever? The answer is nothing.

I find alot of this ironic. At a time when I see Orthodox Christians in Catholic and Evanglical circles start to question things like State Execution for Captial offenses, Amnesty International is putting them now in a impossible position. Why? Why is abortion again the most Holy Sacrament they must give the World? "

jh
Louisiana


Posted by: jh at May 2, 2007 1:10:57 PM


"...in the context of our work to stop grave human rights abuses against women and girls."

...except those still in the womb. I mean, if you have been raped, you have all our sympathy, but if you are the result of rape, I'm afraid you're out of luck. "

Posted by: Tim J. at May 2, 2007 1:35:06 PM


"Note how abortion has absolutely nothing to do with the original mission of AI, and this stance will obviously alienate a fair number of their current supporters. For organizations on the political left the need to support "abortion rights" apparently trumps all other considerations, even a negative impact on what the organization was set up originally to accomplish. Abortion is truly the high holy of the left.

Posted by: Donald R. McClarey at May 2, 2007 2:19:06 PM

Fascist America, in 10 Easy Steps

Published on Tuesday, April 24, 2007 by The Guardian/UK

Fascist America, in 10 Easy Steps
From Hitler to Pinochet and Beyond, History Shows There Are certain Steps That Any Would-Be Dictator Must Take To Destroy Constitutional Freedoms. And George Bush and His Administration Seem To Be Taking Them All

by Naomi Wolf

CLICK HERE

Great post my Michael over at cathlolicanarchy

A (modest) case for (non-individualistic, occasional) ecclesial dissent (and not as a ‘way of life’)

m | General, Theology, Church | Wednesday, May 2nd, 2007

Adam recently posted an insightful piece arguing for “radical assent” to the fullness of the Church’s teaching over against what he calls the “contemporary trend of dissenting from the Church” which he links to modernity’s suspicion of authority and tradition, its elevation of the individual conscience, and its promotion of capitalism and consumer choice: READ MORE