Recently in Religion Category

While I have not commented upon the controversy in New York about the Ground Zero mosque..er...community center, it isn't because I don't have any to offer. Quite the contrary. It's only that nothing really spurred me to put words onto the 'net. That has changed.

An occasional commenter here posted her viewpoints about the Ground Zero mosque and I felt compelled to answer her. Paulina and I rarely see eye to eye on anything, but I respect her opinions because, quite frankly, she tends to think things through before writing about them. There are times when she lets emotion override logic, but it occurs rarely (that I've seen). I think this is one of those times.

When I first heard about the "Ground Zero Mosque" a few weeks back, all the controversy made me think there was a plan to build a Hagia Sophia type structure right where the trade center stood. Turns out it's some sort of community center (gym, swimming pool, theater and a mosque) two blocks away from ground zero, planned by a Sufi (read: peaceful, Buddhist-like) Imam (Feisal Abdul Rauf, or whatever). Never mind that there is already a mosque four blocks away and that lower Manhattan was originally a very muslim community (back in the late 19th century it was called Little Syria) - why is it that the very people who like to get all outraged on behalf of the constitution are forgetting it's very first amendment?

I know why, of course. It's because most Americans and certainly most conservatives, like to think of America as a christian nation. They like to throw their bible into political arguments (gay marriage? no way - it's an abomination!). More importantly, they have found themselves a nice little enemy in Islam. What used to be a multifaceted religion practiced by nearly a third of the world's population, is now equated with intolerant governments and terrorism. The idea that Islam is a violent religion is now somehow taken as a fact. And this I also understand. We all need an "other" to hate or put down. I myself have an "other" in conservatives and all religious fanatics, christian and muslim alike. Still, it is the intolerance and bigotry that piss me off the most when it comes to my "others" and so I've decided that it would be an excellent idea to build and actually mosque, with minarets and all, right there next to where the trade center stood, to symbolize the hope for tolerance and peace.

So the reason for the opposition is because we're all Muslim-hating, intolerant conservativs, and worse, Christians? Yeah. Right.

Here was my comment to her post:

We're told we must be tolerant of other beliefs, primarily Islam. However the reverse isn't true, as seen every day by the likes of the media, academia, the government, and the multi-culti proselytizers. Those of us of Judeo-Christian beliefs must not be tolerated because, after all, It's-All-Our-Fault. The Muslim community in New York has shown great insensitivity to the feelings and beliefs of those who lost loved ones on That Terrible Day. It is they who are showing intolerance, not those protesting against something they see as a slap in the face.

The argument has been made in other places that there are already churches, strip joints, and an OTP parlor surrounding Ground Zero, so why should building a mosque create such a controversy? It's simple, really. They were already there on That Terrible Day. Frankly, if the mosque had also been there on That Terrible Day, I doubt there would be nearly as much opposition to it. There might even have been none. But that isn't the case here.

Whether the intentions of those wanting to build the new community center are good or otherwise, I believe they could have handled it differently which might have lessened the opposition to it. Instead, they sprang it on the people of New York with little or no notice, something they should not have done. It showed insensitivity. Did they really expect any different response under those circumstances?

From WWWTW:

Extended family is the reason Americans survived the last Great Depression; the absence of extended family is the reason we won't survive the next one.

I have a brother and a sister; my wife has two sisters. All are or have been married. Out of these four, how many children do you think have been produced? One.

I have one nephew. My wife has no nieces or nephews. How sad. But typical. (My brother was only recently married, but figures to have only one or two.)

I've written about this before. The practical materialism of esp middle class whites will spell the doom of the American way of life. Middle class people--the "lower classes" from the aristocracy's point of view, it's interesting to note--have historically voluntarily limited their family size, unlike their social betters (nobles prideful of familial blood) and peasants (children are an economic asset to the farm). But never to this extent.

The college-educated American white woman has something like 1.2 children (on average) over her lifetime. What's needed for mere population equilibrium is 2.1.

Excellent point, Scott, of Powerline blog:  It's good for Muslims to build the GZM in New York, but not for Jews to build apartments in Jerusalem. Go figure.

Orthodox Jewish webzine Aish.com, in direct response to Chelsea Clinton's marriage to a Jewish guy and in light of the fact that nearly half of Jews marry non-Jews, throws down the gauntlet:

We have reached a point where a Jew is so uneducated about his own beliefs, so confused about what it means to be a Jew that he could intermarry and still feel proud to be a Jew.

Marc Mezvinsky's intermarriage is the result of our inaction.

Elliot Abrams, Neocon's Neocon, has come out very strongly against "intermarriage."

Edward Feser, an extremely intelligent Catholic philosopher, brings up the nuking of the two Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which prompted the unconditional surrender of the Japanese Empire.

He says it was immoral, justified only by the erroneous "ends justify the means" argument, or consequentialism. He forces me to think and clarify my thinking. But I have to disagree.

I wish, though, we hadn't bombed Nagasaki, a city containing 60,000 Catholics, esp. so soon (three days) after Hiroshima. It should have happened a couple of weeks later.

The lively commentators are interesting, too.

The problem goes deeper than difficult doctrines or antiquated structures, problematic though these may sometimes be. Our children and grandchildren are abandoning the faith because they perceive--rightly--that its demands are at fundamental variance with the lives we have prepared them to lead. We have raised them to seek lives characterized by material comfort, sexual fulfillment, and freedom from any obligations that they have not personally chosen. Should it surprise us that they fail to take seriously our claims to follow one who embraced poverty, chastity, and obedience to the will of God? ~ a quote from the WaPo used in Lawrence Auster's "Should the Church Follow Society, or Society Follow the Church?"

Still in the shadow of the deeply diabolical French Revolution, Western man is totally stultified by electronics: TV, the Internet, video games, and pornography. He views the state as a provider and saddles up to the trough.

Freedom? That's a burden. The common man thinks only in clichés, which is to say he doesn't do much thinking though is under the delusion he does.

But the mores of the modern age--"practical materialism" as diagnosed brilliantly by my Catholic mentor Erik Ritter von Kuehnelt-Leddihn in his 1999 Human Life Review article (He wrote one in 1992 that's similar in the same mag.) "Europe Without Vitality"--leads only to the cul-de-sac of demographic demise.

Having four children has ruined my life in the best way imaginable. But from a hedonistic standpoint, it's been an unqualified disaster, which may explain the sharp increase in couples opting to be, in the old diction, "barren by choice."

The Legionaries of Christ, the Roman Catholic order that employs me to teach English to seventh-graders and high school-aged boys (along with a smattering of Spanish and Greek), is in big trouble. Lauren Collins of NECN does a very credible job providing the background last February, going so far as to be filmed on the edge of the driveway of the Center Harbor, NH, school where I work.

Here's the latest.

The view of the school is just about the best in all the Lakes Region. I have never gotten sick of it. It reminds me that the best real estate in the world is owned by the Catholic Church and the U.S. Navy.

The "greatest ecclesiastical villain since Judas Iscariot"? I Think Mr. Iscariot gets a bad rap. But this guy? Fuhgettaboutit.

And it does my heart good to see some disinfectant sunlight put on the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) here. This group contributes to the Left's hysteria.

My liberal brother, now with the State Dept. as a diplomat, has given money to them.

But he may begin to feel what many Western Catholics are now facing up to with their own Vatican. Despite the good the Catholic Church does, the self-inflicted wounds and the secular leftist media's feeding frenzy (Matt Abbott explains why here.) have caused--and will continue to cause--massive damage. This is also a personal issue with me, as I teach at a Catholic school begun by a now-deceased Mexican priest who apparently has a lot to answer for in the next life. If there is a hell, he probably is there right now.

BTW, there's the NFL draft this week. I used to spend hundreds of hours prepping myself for it. Yes, I'm such a nerd. Here's my guess at what the Patriots do, if they stay at their current position of the 22 pick of the first round. Here are three players to focus on: Cal's extremely fast RB Jahvid Best, Penn State's very good DT Jason Odrick, and my personal favorite, Florida's versatile center Maurkice Pouncey.

There may be players they really like such as Brandon Graham of the Yellowbellies that they will trade up for if it's not too costly.

The family got all dressed up for church. I typically wear a suit and tie, anyway. But the daughter of mine was in a very pretty dress. As was Goodwife.

I thought this post is very appropriate. I really like Pope Benedict, but boy is he having a rough go of it. Some of it deserved. My Latin is almost nonexistent, but I think Oremus pro pontifice nostro means "Let us pray for our pope."

As I learned from Aristotle or Plato, childhood formation is key. That's when the ink written on a person's character is most indelible and remains clearest. Anything after that will never be as deep or trenchant.

It's a matter of public record that our President attended schools in Indonesia as "Barry Sotero," having been legally adopted by his second father, a practicing Muslim. While there, he was listed as a Muslim student and given approx. 10 hours of instruction in that religion per week in the public school he attended as was (and I suspect still is) the norm for that country.

This went on for ten years at a critical stage in anyone's development. I know, with four children of my own in that age bracket.

Perhaps he still thinks of himself as one. His memorable slip of the tongue (Freudian?) with George Steppie on ABC was perhaps revealing in more ways than one.

That so-called Christian church in Chicago with Jeremiah Wright? Pluuze. More Black Power than anything. Becoming a Christian, taking on that facade, may have been an act of convenience to make his political career viable.

It's all starting to come together as Gateway Pundit shows. We have our second anti-semitic president in my lifetime. Carter is the other. As a commentator to the news that Obama treated Israel, our staunchest Near East ally, as a pariah, says at Lucianne.com:

Reply 6 - Posted by: RedGoose,
Please excuse the oafish Marxist buffoon who has lied his way into our White House. I, and a great many like me, respect you [Binjamin Netanyahu] greatly and wish nothing but the best to you and your country [Israel].

Some thinkers in the future, after Obama has been booted after one term--unless he can get the illegals to vote for him--will view him as the true impostor he is increasingly showing himself to be.

Making America weaker. That's Barry. Helping the permanently disadvantaged minorities. That's Barry. Telling white America: Your day is over. Pay up.

or you may cause goyim to think you've got a bomb in those small boxes. Pretty remarkable story, makes me think of the novels of Chaim Potok that had a lasting imprint on me in high school:

On Thursday, a flight from La Guardia was diverted after a bomb scare. One of the passengers, a Jewish teenager, was doing his morning prayers and it alarmed the flight attendant. Not because of the prayers, per se, but because of the tefillin he was using. Based on passages from Exodus and Deuteronomy, Orthodox Jews use two small square boxes with straps attached to them and place on on the head and tie the other to the arm. Inside the boxes are parchment with Scripture.

Like Cathy Grossman at USA Today, I think this is a good example of the need for religious literacy than this unfortunate incident.

I found the New York Times piece about this story fascinating. The article is incredibly sympathetic to the flight attendants and pilot who decided to ground the plane.

Hitchens, reviewing the brilliant book by Oriana Fallaci on Islam written when she was stricken with cancer, famously called it in his Atlantic review (look just past the large, drop case "H"), "a sort of primer in how not to write about Islam," just before he began writing a book that one could describe similarly--but about Christianity. Ggod Is Not Great? Sheez!

The arrogance and inconsistency, Mr. Hitchens! It's all right for you to spit at Christianity, but when a fellow atheist--a journalist who was even braver than you, and you are indeed brave (though my military training indicates I'd have lasted longer being waterboarded than you)--does the same to Islam in a manner you find disconcerting. Well, what of it?

I like Michael Medved's review of  Hitchens's book better than the well-known Michael Kinsley one in the NYT. Medved, a man of probity and wisdom, asks a devastating rhetorical question:

1. Some 24 years ago Hitchens abandoned his British homeland and chose to make his life in the United States. This April, he proudly took the oath as a naturalized American citizen at the Jefferson Memorial. He has written movingly and persuasively of his love for his adopted country--despite the fact that throughout its history the people of the United States have proven notably more committed to their predominantly Christian faith than their Western European counterparts. A previous visiting journalist named Alexis de Tocqueville described America as "a nation with the soul of a church" and Hitchens conceded that to this day more Americans engage in regular prayer and Bible study than do the citizens of any other advanced Western nation. If religion indeed "poisons everything" then why has it so pointedly failed to poison the United States - producing, instead, a nation that Hitchens himself openly prefers to any other? [emphasis min]

He summarizes the book, which I have read, as follows:

At least Catholicism in Ireland. Here's a remarkable Chicago Tribune article from 2006. Simply mesmerizing. I bet you never realized how fast the Roman Catholic Church tanked there in response to documented cases of the covering up of child sex abuses.

Here's the final nail in the coffin, if you were to ask me. How long can Ireland continue importing African priests to minister to empty pews? Secularism can occur with amazing swiftness. Wales, for example, went from being predominantly Christian with the majority attending weekly church to overwhelmingly secular in a remarkably short period of time. Something like twenty years. Just amazing. Without Christianity, though, the West stops being coherent, what it once was. Much of what's wrong with it results from this. Notice how ersatz religious crusades are made by the left. Global warming has been hysterically proclaimed with huge gaps in the purported scholarship, for example. The computer models can't even account for documented weather patterns of the past.

Too, if Ireland can't make it, what makes you think America will? I happen to work at an all-boys' boarding school for a Catholic religious order. It's been a wonderful experience for the past twelve years. But now it's up in the air because of the possibility of unspeakable abuse by the order's founder, now deceased, who was called "Our Father" in Spanish during his lifetime and considered a living saint. It turns out he may have preyed on young boys under his tutelage and then, at some point in his life, turned to young girls. It's all so vile that if contained in a novel I would reflexively accuse the author of an egregious bias. Simply put, one can't make this stuff up.

If one accepts the allegation that the West faces a civilizational conflict with Islam, then one needs to worry. How can secularism defeat a religion that apotheosizes death? Secularism is more of an interregnum. We suspect that it's the religious who are the ones who have a disproportionate number of the children. It may be too much d-mn work and expense without being of that frame of mind.

I think not; it's about time. Now when will John Brendan McCormick, the bishop of the Diocese of Manchester, do the same to ultra abortion rights Catholic Protestant Jeanne Shaheen?

Maybe a stronger moral stand like Bishop Tobin's will cause confused and imprudent Catholics to lean more heavily to Republicans in states where they have large numbers. Notwithstanding this, however, some have swung to the Democratic side. I'm thinking of Pennsylvania and New Hampshire. Massachusetts is a lost cause.

HT: Lucianne. Some of the comments, which will only be available for several days, are very interesting. Here's one that I particularly like:

Reply 33 - Posted by: muggy, 11/22/2009 8:26:29 AM    
I love this from the AP:

"The decision by the outspoken prelate..."

I guess it's "outspoken" these days for any institution to stick to its values and mores.

Respective founders of two communions. Ouch.

I tell you, I'm just chomping at the bit to attend a traditional Anglican service, which promises to have much more elevated language and decorum than my liberal local parish where on Respect Life Sunday my priest went off on an impassioned plea against the death penalty. Catholics can still debate that. Anyway, it hasn't been administered for decades and decades and decades in this diocese, but every year innocent unborn babies get...