SecretAgentMan vs. Rerum Novarum on Communion Posture and the Authority of Bishops:
(Book II, Part I)
The previous thread of this discussion can be read HERE. SAM's words will be in red font and his sources in dark green font from this point on. My words from this point on will be in regular font with all sources on my part in darkblue font.
Your humble servant should note from the outset that he can find little that he would object to materially in Part I of SAM's response except perhaps the attempt to project kneeling into the liturgy where it was not utilized in the early Church. Also, the symbolism of kneeling itself is too complex to cover here in an adequately economical way. Therefore, this present writer will simply note from Part I the areas that he takes issue with.
As far as the subject of kneeling goes, in this writer's treatise, he dealt with a host of ancillary Integrist objections to the Revised Roman Missal. One of these objections was the removal by some churches of the kneelers. Initially there were some radical Feeneyite integrists who sought to refute the sections on the liturgy from that work - one of which contained the statement that Kneeling for the Consecration was not put into place until after the Protestant Revolt.
It will not be detailed here what a laugh their attempt to do so was; however, in responding to their screed, your servant solicited assistance from some friends for many reasons - mainly that of time constraints. By order of delegated sections of the work, the task of responding to this objection was assigned to Dr. Art Sippo who noted the following (the Integrist's words in this exchange will be in italics):
Kneeling was not part of the rubrics throughout the Latin Rite until the Counter-reformation reforms. Pews and kneelers were actually invented by our Protestant brethren. Most Catholic Churches had open bare floors in the Middle Ages. Have you ever tried to kneel for an hour on bare wood or stone? Most people stood for the whole Mass. Kneeling had been a recent innovation by the 16th Century and was not observed uniformly in the Church in the West until the Counter-reformation reforms. It was almost never done in the East during the liturgy. It was not until the Elevation of the Host and Chalice was introduced in the West that the congregation had any idea when the Consecration actually occurred because the words of institution were whispered in secret. Prior to that the congregation stood until Communion. Kneeling during Mass had not been an immemorial custom but a recent innovation.
Furthermore, it is of interest to note that kneeling was not only reserved for the Consecration, but also for prayer.
Our Integrist opponents make another totally irrelevant statement. Kneeling has always been part of Christian prayer and worship. This has no bearing on the catholicity of the [Pauline Missal] since the custom of kneeling during the entire Mass did not become universal in the West until the Counter-reformation.
Hence, it stands to reason that they would kneel during this, the greatest prayer of the Church, while both uniting their prayers with those of the Priest, praying their private devotions (both before, after, and during Mass), and praying the Mass itself.
There is only one small problem. Most people prior to and during the Middle Ages stood for the entire Mass. Kneeling was not traditional. This is another example of our Integrist friends elevating their own idea of what ought to be "fitting" into an immemorial custom while ignoring the actual historical practices.
The bottom line is that we agree with out opponents that kneelers ought to be in Catholic churches especially in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament. But, it is not necessary to pretend that they have always been present in the churches or that the Counter-reformation customs surrounding Eucharistic worship were normative from apostolic times. The Integrists allege that the [Tridentine Missal] contains apostolic traditions and that this justifies not altering any part of it. So why don't they want to return to the immemorial custom of standing during the Consecration? [Dr. Art Sippo: Detection and Overthrow of the ‘Traditionalist Catholics’ Falsely So-Called Part IV (c. 2000)]
This writer will build on the subject of kneeling during the liturgy by further noting what was emphasized by the Quintsext Synod of Trullo in 692 AD when talking about kneeling for prayer:
CANON XC.
WE have received from our divine Fathers the canon law that in honour of Christ's resurrection, we are not to kneel on Sundays. Lest therefore we should ignore the fulness of this observance we make it plain to the faithful that after the priests have gone to the Altar for Vespers on Saturdays (according to the prevailing custom) no one shall kneel in prayer until the evening of Sunday, at which time after the entrance for compline, again with banded knees we offer our prayers to the Lord. For taking the night after the Sabbath, which was the forerunner of our Lord's resurrection, we begin from it to sing in the spirit hymns to God, leading our feast out of darkness into light, and thus during an entire day and night, we celebrate the Resurrection. [Quintsext Synod of Trullo - Canon 90 (c. 692 AD)]
The "ancient epitome of canon xc" noted this as follows:
ANCIENT EPITOME OF CANON XC.
From the evening entrance of the Sabbath until the evening entrance of the Lord's day there must be no kneeling.
This traditional distinction between kneeling and non-kneeling is well explained by St. Luke the Evangelist Orthodox Church under the heading of External Expressions:
[I]t should be made clear that gestures and attitudes in the Church are the expressions of personal feelings. For this reason individual expressions remain with the individual and are not firmly regulated for each and every case. Orthodox Christians may cross themselves, kneel, venerate an icon, or stand depending upon their personal feelings during the Liturgy. With regards to kneeling, Church history and Orthodox tradition teach that at the beginning of Christianity, everyone participated in the Divine Liturgy daily, not just on Sundays. Since they knelt during the daily Liturgies, they did not kneel on Sundays.The First Ecumenical Council in 325 AD decreed that Sunday is the great day dedicated to the Resurrection of Our Lord, and Christians should pray standing and not kneeling. Over the centuries, as Orthodox Christians could not attend daily Divine Liturgies, the general practice was for participants to kneel at least during the consecration of the Holy Gifts, when the choir sings, "We praise You..." and during the Lord's Prayer. The Church especially prohibits kneeling from Easter to Pentecost, since this is a season of great joy and happiness. [St. Luke the Evangelist Orthodox Church: Guidelines for Members]
Only with the so-called "reformation" was the practice of kneeling throughout the mass instituted as was noted previously in this response. The reason for this was to draw attention to Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. Readers aware of that climate will recall that this was at a time when most of the so-called "reformers" were denying the Real Presence of Our Lord in the Eucharist. So kneeling before the Eucharist was a way of fighting this heresy. (And impressing the reality of the Real Presence devotionally on the faithful.)
Of course during the Counter-reformation, the Catholic confessional scholarship sought to defend every jot and tittle of Catholic orthopraxy in divers ways. However, if one reads carefully enough, they will often see concessions made even in confessional style literature on these matters. One such example is the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia article on kneeling and genuflection which notes the following on kneeling during liturgy:
[It is not] unlikely that since standing has always been a posture recognized, and even enjoined, in public and liturgical prayer, it may have survived well into the Middle Ages as one suitable, at least in some circumstances, for even private devotion. Yet, from the fourth century onwards, to kneel has certainly been the rule for private prayer...[Catholic Encyclopedia: Article on Kneeling and Genuflection (c. 1913)]
And again:
Even for the ante-Nicene period, the conclusion arrived at by Warren is probably substantially correct: —"The recognized attitude for prayer, liturgically speaking, was standing, but kneeling was early introduced for penitential and perhaps ordinary ferial seasons, and was frequently, though not necessarily, adopted in private prayer" (Liturgy of the ante-Nicene Church, 145). [Catholic Encyclopedia: Article on Kneeling and Genuflection (c. 1913)]
And one more excerpt - this one rather long because it contains a lot of stuff to corroborate what this writer has already said thus far in the past:
It is noteworthy that, early in the sixth century, St. Benedict (Reg., c. l) enjoins upon his monks that when absent from choir, and therefore compelled to recite the Divine Office as a private prayer, they should not stand as when in choir, but kneel throughout. That, in our time, the Church accepts kneeling as the more fitting attitude for private prayer is evinced by such rules as the Missal rubric directing that, save for a momentary rising while the Gospel is being read, all present kneel from the beginning to the end of a low Mass; and by the recent decrees requiring that the celebrant recite kneeling the prayers (though they include collects which, liturgically, postulate a standing posture) prescribed by Leo XIII to be said after Mass it is well, however, to bear in mind that there is no real obligation to kneel during private prayer. Thus, unless conditioned on that particular posture being taken, the indulgence attached to a prayer is gained, whether, while reciting it, one kneel or not (S. Cong. of the Index, 18 Sept., 1862, n. 398). The "Sacrosanct?", recited by the clergy after saying the Divine Office, is one of the exceptions. It must be said kneeling, except when illness makes the doing so physically impossible.
Turning now to the liturgical prayer of the Christian Church, it is very evident that standing, not kneeling, is the correct posture for those taking part in it. A glance at the attitude of a priest officiating at Mass or Vespers, or using the Roman Ritual, will be sufficient proof. The clergy in attendance also, and even the laity assisting, are, by the rubrics, assumed to be standing. The Canon of the Mass designates them as "circumstantes". The practice of kneeling during the Consecration was introduced during the Middle Ages, and is in relation with the Elevation which originated in the same period. The rubric directing that while the celebrant and his ministers recite the Psalm "Judica", and make the Confession, those present who are not prelates should kneel, is a mere reminiscence of the fact that these introductory devotions were originally private prayers of preparation, and therefore outside the liturgy properly so called. It must not, in this connexion escape attention that, in proportion as the faithful have ceased to follow the liturgy, replacing its formul? by private devotions, the standing attitude has fallen more and more into disuse among them. In our own time it is quite usual for the congregation at a high Mass to stand for the Gospel and Creed; and, at all other times either to remain seated (when this is permitted) or to kneel.
There are, nevertheless, certain liturgical prayers to kneel during which is obligatory, the reason being that kneeling is the posture especially appropriate to the supplications of penitents, and is a characteristic attitude of humble entreaty in general. Hence, litanies are chanted, kneeling, unless (which in ancient times was deemed even more fitting) they can be gone through by a procession of mourners. So, too, public penitents knelt during such portions of the liturgy as they were allowed to assist at. The modern practice of Solemn Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament for public adoration has naturally led to more frequent and more continuous kneeling in church than formerly. Thus, at a Benediction service it is obligatory to kneel from beginning to end of the function, except during the chant of the Te Deum and like hymns of Praise. [Catholic Encyclopedia: Article on Kneeling and Genuflection (c. 1913)]
In short, whatever problems some of us may have with some of the statements of the USCCB on the subject of kneeling, their basic premise is correct at least as far as what the traditional custom was for Sundays throughout most of Church history. Your humble servant shares many of the same personal scruples as SAM's associate - and possibly SAM himself; however, facts are facts and kneeling was reserved either for private prayer or for "when the occasion was one of special solemnity, or the petition very urgent, or the prayer made with exceptional fervour" {Catholic Encyclopedia: Article on Kneeling and Genuflection (c. 1913)}. As the Eucharistic Prayer is the part of the liturgy where there is the greatest solemnity, the posture for that prayer prescribed during the celebration of the Revised Roman Missal is kneeling - with only serious impediments dispensing from this requirement.
So as well-put-together as SAM's response is, there are some minor glitches that needed to be pointed out. By getting these out of the way, we will be able to refer back to them as needed when responding to the other parts in sequence.
The next section will deal with the second part of SAM's response and this writer promises to try to stay more on topic with that one. But when one point leads to another, and to another, and to another, etc...well...now you see why it is easy for a simple response to turn into a ponderous cogitation.
To be Continued...
Tuesday, August 26, 2003
"Coming Soon to a Theatre Near You" Dept.
I anticipate having my response to Part II of the The SecretOne's Edification and Kneeling response completed today.{1} I will hopefully address a couple of shorter tangent pieces of the thread as well - though all of this will have to be blogged in sequential format piece by piece.{2}
My request to The Secret One would be to avoid responding to them as I put them up until I have finished. I will let him know when everything is responded to by private email.
It may take a few days to do in full but I assure you the readers that I am working on it as my time constraints allow for it. For much of this series is from scratch; ergo the time factor comes into play much more so than when I am discussing subjects I have covered before. In short, we are yet again breaking new ground here at Rerum Novarum my friends but in our customary ressourcement fashion, not in an organic disconnect from what has been covered in the past. Stay tuned for details...
Notes:
{1} To refresh the reader's memories, The SecretOne was responding to this response of mine from July 5th.
{2} I hope in the coming days to get to Part III of his response as well.
I anticipate having my response to Part II of the The SecretOne's Edification and Kneeling response completed today.{1} I will hopefully address a couple of shorter tangent pieces of the thread as well - though all of this will have to be blogged in sequential format piece by piece.{2}
My request to The Secret One would be to avoid responding to them as I put them up until I have finished. I will let him know when everything is responded to by private email.
It may take a few days to do in full but I assure you the readers that I am working on it as my time constraints allow for it. For much of this series is from scratch; ergo the time factor comes into play much more so than when I am discussing subjects I have covered before. In short, we are yet again breaking new ground here at Rerum Novarum my friends but in our customary ressourcement fashion, not in an organic disconnect from what has been covered in the past. Stay tuned for details...
Notes:
{1} To refresh the reader's memories, The SecretOne was responding to this response of mine from July 5th.
{2} I hope in the coming days to get to Part III of his response as well.
Monday, August 25, 2003
Courtesy of The Secret One is this quiz. I like the results myself...
You're a maduro! Bullish, passionate, you admire strength and clarity. You have a touch of elegance, but power is your forte. You don't mind mixing into a good fight. You'd be happiest sitting around the fireside with your brother officers before the battle of Gettysburg. Try a maduro cigar with a ring guage of 50 or more!
What kind of cigar are you?
brought to you by Quizilla
I would of course never smoke anything less than a Churchill - though my "never" on very rare occasions slips down into a Grand Carona.{1} For those who do not know, a Churchill is roughly 6.75-7.25" x 47-49 ring.{2} Robustos are good too {3} except they are too close to being a "quick smoke" and my concern over economizing an endeavour that is supposed to take time comes into play here. So for that reason, I as a rule draw the line at Churchills and only rarely would consider a Grand Carona or Robusto.
If a double carona is possible,{4} that is my choice. If not, then I prefer Churchills. Those who are knowledgable about cigars would know my reasons for this - and I emphasize: outrageousness has nothing whatsoever to do with it. But I digress...
Notes:
{1} A Grand Carona is roughly 6.5" x 46.
{2} A classic Churchill is 7" x 47.
{3} Robustos are roughly 5" x 50. (But the ring can sometimes exceed the low to mid 50s on some kinds of Robustos.)
{4} Double caronas are usually 7-8" x 48-52 or larger ring. (A darn near perfect size IMHO.) Some refer to the sizes over 8" x 52+ as a "Giant Figurado" but in my mind they are no different than a double carona except slightly larger. (Usually they are around 9" x 52+.)
You're a maduro! Bullish, passionate, you admire strength and clarity. You have a touch of elegance, but power is your forte. You don't mind mixing into a good fight. You'd be happiest sitting around the fireside with your brother officers before the battle of Gettysburg. Try a maduro cigar with a ring guage of 50 or more!
What kind of cigar are you?
brought to you by Quizilla
I would of course never smoke anything less than a Churchill - though my "never" on very rare occasions slips down into a Grand Carona.{1} For those who do not know, a Churchill is roughly 6.75-7.25" x 47-49 ring.{2} Robustos are good too {3} except they are too close to being a "quick smoke" and my concern over economizing an endeavour that is supposed to take time comes into play here. So for that reason, I as a rule draw the line at Churchills and only rarely would consider a Grand Carona or Robusto.
If a double carona is possible,{4} that is my choice. If not, then I prefer Churchills. Those who are knowledgable about cigars would know my reasons for this - and I emphasize: outrageousness has nothing whatsoever to do with it. But I digress...
Notes:
{1} A Grand Carona is roughly 6.5" x 46.
{2} A classic Churchill is 7" x 47.
{3} Robustos are roughly 5" x 50. (But the ring can sometimes exceed the low to mid 50s on some kinds of Robustos.)
{4} Double caronas are usually 7-8" x 48-52 or larger ring. (A darn near perfect size IMHO.) Some refer to the sizes over 8" x 52+ as a "Giant Figurado" but in my mind they are no different than a double carona except slightly larger. (Usually they are around 9" x 52+.)
On Spam:
(Not the lunch meat)
I am usually very capable of picking out when I am being spammed but this morning I was caught offguard. In my bulkmail box was a letter from a "Misty S. Joyce." The subjectline read "You forgot to write." I have received similar emails from people who have corresponded with me where I was delayed in responding for various and sundry reasons. So I thought this was another example of this. Though I did not recognize the name "Misty Joyce" I have noticed that sometimes people use email names that are not the same as their real names. So I was prepared to apologize to the emailer and opened the email only to find it addressed to "ismac" but instead of "lycos" it read "mailcity." That is when I knew I had been had.
They were for something called "IGF2" pills and I will leave what they were promising to "enhance" at that. Normally I do not bristle when reading this stuff but frankly this pissed me off. So I am posting the email of the sender here in case anyone wants to spam "her" or "him" or whatever "they" are. Here it is:
misty_joyce_tr@tinet.ie
Or for your convenience click HERE and it will immediately pull the screen up. Feel free to even set up other pseudo accounts specifically to spam this person into oblivion. Hotmail, lycos, yahoo, msn, and other web based email accounts are perfect for this kind of thing. I can think of far worse things to do with this person but for the sake of keeping the temper in check and avoiding a serious breach of charity, I will leave it at that.
I am not normally a vindictive person but again I actually thought this person was someone I was dealing with in email correspondence at some point. And when it comes to helping other people with difficulties of a theological, political, philosophical, or social nature, I take this aspect of what I do here very seriously. After all, I do have writings in the public domain which influence other people in these and other areas; therefore the right to publish comes with a corresponding responsibility attached.
Oh, lest people point to the email being in the bulkmail folder as "proof" I should not have been deceived, I want to note here that the fact it was in my email bulk folder is not as problematical as it may appear. I get emails from people at times which appear in there which are not spam - mainly because I set the filter so strictly. (In fact, out of over thirty pieces in the folder this morning, six were non-spam; however I was able to instantly tell with five of them.) Anyway, the rant is over and we will return you to your regularly scheduled weblog fare starting with the next installment to this humble weblog...
(Not the lunch meat)
I am usually very capable of picking out when I am being spammed but this morning I was caught offguard. In my bulkmail box was a letter from a "Misty S. Joyce." The subjectline read "You forgot to write." I have received similar emails from people who have corresponded with me where I was delayed in responding for various and sundry reasons. So I thought this was another example of this. Though I did not recognize the name "Misty Joyce" I have noticed that sometimes people use email names that are not the same as their real names. So I was prepared to apologize to the emailer and opened the email only to find it addressed to "ismac" but instead of "lycos" it read "mailcity." That is when I knew I had been had.
They were for something called "IGF2" pills and I will leave what they were promising to "enhance" at that. Normally I do not bristle when reading this stuff but frankly this pissed me off. So I am posting the email of the sender here in case anyone wants to spam "her" or "him" or whatever "they" are. Here it is:
misty_joyce_tr@tinet.ie
Or for your convenience click HERE and it will immediately pull the screen up. Feel free to even set up other pseudo accounts specifically to spam this person into oblivion. Hotmail, lycos, yahoo, msn, and other web based email accounts are perfect for this kind of thing. I can think of far worse things to do with this person but for the sake of keeping the temper in check and avoiding a serious breach of charity, I will leave it at that.
I am not normally a vindictive person but again I actually thought this person was someone I was dealing with in email correspondence at some point. And when it comes to helping other people with difficulties of a theological, political, philosophical, or social nature, I take this aspect of what I do here very seriously. After all, I do have writings in the public domain which influence other people in these and other areas; therefore the right to publish comes with a corresponding responsibility attached.
Oh, lest people point to the email being in the bulkmail folder as "proof" I should not have been deceived, I want to note here that the fact it was in my email bulk folder is not as problematical as it may appear. I get emails from people at times which appear in there which are not spam - mainly because I set the filter so strictly. (In fact, out of over thirty pieces in the folder this morning, six were non-spam; however I was able to instantly tell with five of them.) Anyway, the rant is over and we will return you to your regularly scheduled weblog fare starting with the next installment to this humble weblog...
Sunday, August 24, 2003
Points to Ponder:
A bird is active, because a bird is soft. A stone is helpless, because a stone is hard. A stone must by its own nature go downwards, because hardness is weakness. The bird can of its nature go upwards, because fragility is force. In perfect force there is a kind of frivolity, an airiness that can maintain itself in the air...Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.
This has always been the instinct of Christendom...Pride is the downward drag of all things into an easy solemnity. One "settles down" into a sort of selfish seriousness; but one has to rise to a gay self-forgetfulness. A man "falls" into a brown study; he reaches up at a blue sky.
Seriousness is not a virtue...It is really a natural trend or lapse into taking one's self gravely, because it is the easiest thing to do. It is much easier to write a good Times leading article than a good joke in Punch, For solemnity flows out of men naturally; but laughter is a leap. It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light. Satan fell by the force of gravity.
Looking down on things [from Zarathustra's mountains] may be a delightful experience, but there is nothing, from a mountain to a cabbage, that is really seen when it is seen from a balloon...at the moment when we attempt to appreciate things as they should be appreciated...We do actually go through a process of mental asceticism, a castration of the entire being, when we wish to feel the abounding good in all things. [G K Chesterton]
A bird is active, because a bird is soft. A stone is helpless, because a stone is hard. A stone must by its own nature go downwards, because hardness is weakness. The bird can of its nature go upwards, because fragility is force. In perfect force there is a kind of frivolity, an airiness that can maintain itself in the air...Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.
This has always been the instinct of Christendom...Pride is the downward drag of all things into an easy solemnity. One "settles down" into a sort of selfish seriousness; but one has to rise to a gay self-forgetfulness. A man "falls" into a brown study; he reaches up at a blue sky.
Seriousness is not a virtue...It is really a natural trend or lapse into taking one's self gravely, because it is the easiest thing to do. It is much easier to write a good Times leading article than a good joke in Punch, For solemnity flows out of men naturally; but laughter is a leap. It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light. Satan fell by the force of gravity.
Looking down on things [from Zarathustra's mountains] may be a delightful experience, but there is nothing, from a mountain to a cabbage, that is really seen when it is seen from a balloon...at the moment when we attempt to appreciate things as they should be appreciated...We do actually go through a process of mental asceticism, a castration of the entire being, when we wish to feel the abounding good in all things. [G K Chesterton]
Dappled Things vs. SecretAgentMan's Dossier:
(Plus Rerum Novarum)
As I noted earlier, it seems that Fr. Jim Tucker of Dappled Things has been focusing on something called the "Myers-Briggs" test which measured the personality profile of people. He also has a chart of some St. Blog's members who have taken this test and (I presume) sent him their results. We at Rerum Novarum decided to take the test to see where this present writer stands in these rankings. But at the moment, all is not warm and cheery at St. Blog's. Instead a cloud is forming as The Secret One wants to take issue with some of Fr. Jim's comments. Here is the full text of Fr. Jim's initial thoughts on the test. Following it will be responses by The Secret One and also myself in brick red and blue font respectively. Fr. Jim's words will be in shale font.
Initial Thoughts on St Blog's Myers-Briggs -- The compilation of personality profiles for the St Blog's Bloggers continues to grow. A few things are standing out already. First, we're hugely an introverted lot (other than John Schultz and possibly Fr Bryce). At first glance, that might seem counter-intuitive, considering how logorrheic and public an activity blogging is. But (forgetting, for the moment, the hundreds of people that read a blog each day) a blog is very much something of a soliloquy. It's all those things that the blogger says to himself inside his head and in the company of his friends, and I think most of us aren't terribly interested in changing our blogs in order to suit the general readership. If they like it, great. If not, who cares. That all seems to click with the introversion thing.
The second thing that stands out is how non-representative we are of the population as a whole. ISFJ, for instance, supposedly comprises 13.8% of the population, but Alan Phipps is (so far) the only blogger of that profile. INTP and INTJ represent only 3.3% and 2.1% of the population respectively, but look at all the bloggers who are that type. It's almost as if the concentration of bloggers increases as one moves toward less common personality types. Maybe that means we're a bunch of freaks. Boh. I hope more of my own blogrolled bloggers will send in their results, too. (Maybe I should solicit them via email?) It would be interesting to see to what degree a blog's style is reflected by the blogger's personality type. Are the bloggers with long, involved posts concentrated in a particular type? And the militant blogs? The news blogs? The warm and fuzzy ones? The more purely spiritual ones? The more liturgical ones?
Let the commentary begin...
Initial Thoughts on St Blog's Myers-Briggs -- The compilation of personality profiles for the St Blog's Bloggers continues to grow. A few things are standing out already. First, we're hugely an introverted lot (other than John Schultz and possibly Fr Bryce). At first glance, that might seem counter-intuitive, considering how logorrheic and public an activity blogging is. But (forgetting, for the moment, the hundreds of people that read a blog each day) a blog is very much something of a soliloquy.
Introverted? What! You'd think we're secretive or something. Soliloquy? Nonsense. I have comment boxes every 10,000 words, without fail.
I do not have comments boxes at Rerum Novarum though I used to have them at The Lidless Eye until problems with the company whose software ("shout out") I was using reached the point to where my patience dried up. I do plan to install Haloscan boxes at Lidless Eye at some point but Rerum Novarum will not have them for reasons I explain HERE. But to summarize it briefly with words from that post:
Unlike major media outlets the contents of this blog are not a result of intense focus group testing nor Zogby-like polling data mind you; Rerum Novarum does not function that way. (So those who wrote about adding comments boxes, nada as I do not have the time to police them and besides: most of those who inquired about the comments boxes are not the sorts I would long tolerate posting in comments boxes at my blog.) The reason I have the occasional "guest editorial" policy is to bridge the gap if you will in that regard.
While it is true that I got away from the Guest Editorial feature for some time, it was not of my own accord. That is completely a reader-driven feature though at times I have actually asked people if they minded something they said being blogged in the form of a Guest Editorial. (And if not I have posted their stuff in that format - usually with minimal if any editing involved.) However, Rerum Novarum is not limited solely to the Guest Editorial feature for interaction with others.
For I also blog and interact with emailers if (i) it is a subject I have not blogged on before (ii) it is a subject that interests me (iii) the emailer is polite and (iv) the emailer asks challenging questions. If the emailer is not polite, then their piece becomes fodder for potential fisking in accordance with my mood at the time.
I also interact with stuff on discussion lists, blogs, and the message boxes at other blogs and all of that is potentially bloggable as well. (And usually I email the link to the person so they can read and respond to it if they want to.) In short, I more than compensate for the lack of message boxes at Rerum Novarum. (And as I apply the same principles to Lidless Eye the same applies there though as I noted I will be reinstalling comments boxes over there.)
It's all those things that the blogger says to himself inside his head and in the company of his friends, and I think most of us aren't terribly interested in changing our blogs in order to suit the general readership. If they like it, great. If not, who cares. That all seems to click with the introversion thing.
Company of who? I had some friends once. It wasn't all it's cracked up to be. You can't even get a word in edgewise before they start telling you how bored they are and trying to change the subject.
My blog is basically what I want to muse on. I do not like playing to a particular constituency because I am a rather complex person and cannot confine myself to discussing just theology or just politics or just social issues or just sports. (Or just anything else you can think of.) I get a fair amount of emails from people who enjoy what I do with the weblog or my insights. I also get some criticisms at times but for some reason my critics are never very polite.{1}
Indeed I am considering fisking an email received about a week ago from a woman who - in responding to the essay Matt1618 and I wrote two and a half years ago on communion in the hand - has basically called us Satan's spawn, modernists, conciliarists, liberals, and every other epithet from the extreme radtrad handbook you can think of. I get very little hate mail but those who respond are always very rude and virtually always finding creative ways to consign me to hell.
I would never tolerate people filling comments boxes at Rerum Novarum with that kind of drivel; indeed my tolerance for weblog trolls is never very high. (And it is lower in proportion to their relative rudeness and obtuseness.) But at the same time, I will gladly fisk them publicly.
So far from a soliloquy my weblog is actually very interactive with some of those who read it - even if my means of expressing this are unconventional. Like my Myers-Briggs profile says, I am not one for following conventions.
The second thing that stands out is how non-representative we are of the population as a whole. ISFJ, for instance, supposedly comprises 13.8% of the population, but Alan Phipps is (so far) the only blogger of that profile. INTP and INTJ represent only 3.3% and 2.1% of the population respectively, but look at all the bloggers who are that type.
That is St. Blog's. I am sure if you looked outside of St. Blog's you would find a different hue. Catholicism is more internal than external anyway; ergo I do not find the predominantly introverted nature of St. Blog's too problematical. Besides, that is only "dominant trait" introverted.
According to my test, I am 57% introvert, 43% extrovert. That is probably accurate but consider that I am over 40% extrovert. However, since I am majority introvert, all you see is the "I" on the personality rating. I am sure others who took the test also had varying degrees of extrovert - some more than me and some less. The illusion of St. Blog's as a bunch of introverted wallflowers is just that: an illusion.
It's almost as if the concentration of bloggers increases as one moves toward less common personality types. Maybe that means we're a bunch of freaks. Boh.
Dweeek? Shlebab hoff mamnaio, if you ask me.
Well, we are Catholics which means we believe someone has to lose their life to gain it, that it is better to give than to receive, that God became man in order for man to potentially partake of the divine nature. That there is value in such things as suffering. I could go on but "conventional wisdom" would consider us wierdos yes. Heck Fr. Jim, you have in your vocation as a priest become a sign of contradiction to the world. Need I say more???
I hope more of my own blogrolled bloggers will send in their results, too. (Maybe I should solicit them via email?) It would be interesting to see to what degree a blog's style is reflected by the blogger's personality type.
Are the bloggers with long, involved posts concentrated in a particular type? And the militant blogs? The news blogs? The warm and fuzzy ones? The more purely spiritual ones? The more liturgical ones?
I wouldn't know. I don't write long involved posts, remember? I have comment boxes every 15,000 words or so. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to get back to my latest little note, which deals with the indirect influence of Zoroastrianism on the politics of the Know-Nothings . .
Since Rerum Novarum is a mixture of theological, political, social, news items, and basically whatever I want to muse on in those or other areas, there is no one area to focus on. I have countless other subjects that I do not blog on much - or never have blogged on - that I could just as easily blog on today or tomorrow and not in any way alter my weblog philosophy in the slightest. So essentially I am not sure that I can be put into a box there. (Much as I cannot with the manner by which I interact with readers and others who browse St. Blog's blog list without a message box format.) But then again, I am used to defying most forms of categorization so it does not bother me.
Note:
{1} Except in the rarest of cases - I think out of all the critical email received in the past year, I could count the number of politely critical pieces on maybe three fingers at the most. (And that is a miniscule percentage of those who have emailed with criticism.) This excludes people who have blogged polite disagreements with me who have emailed me the link to respond to.
(Plus Rerum Novarum)
As I noted earlier, it seems that Fr. Jim Tucker of Dappled Things has been focusing on something called the "Myers-Briggs" test which measured the personality profile of people. He also has a chart of some St. Blog's members who have taken this test and (I presume) sent him their results. We at Rerum Novarum decided to take the test to see where this present writer stands in these rankings. But at the moment, all is not warm and cheery at St. Blog's. Instead a cloud is forming as The Secret One wants to take issue with some of Fr. Jim's comments. Here is the full text of Fr. Jim's initial thoughts on the test. Following it will be responses by The Secret One and also myself in brick red and blue font respectively. Fr. Jim's words will be in shale font.
Initial Thoughts on St Blog's Myers-Briggs -- The compilation of personality profiles for the St Blog's Bloggers continues to grow. A few things are standing out already. First, we're hugely an introverted lot (other than John Schultz and possibly Fr Bryce). At first glance, that might seem counter-intuitive, considering how logorrheic and public an activity blogging is. But (forgetting, for the moment, the hundreds of people that read a blog each day) a blog is very much something of a soliloquy. It's all those things that the blogger says to himself inside his head and in the company of his friends, and I think most of us aren't terribly interested in changing our blogs in order to suit the general readership. If they like it, great. If not, who cares. That all seems to click with the introversion thing.
The second thing that stands out is how non-representative we are of the population as a whole. ISFJ, for instance, supposedly comprises 13.8% of the population, but Alan Phipps is (so far) the only blogger of that profile. INTP and INTJ represent only 3.3% and 2.1% of the population respectively, but look at all the bloggers who are that type. It's almost as if the concentration of bloggers increases as one moves toward less common personality types. Maybe that means we're a bunch of freaks. Boh. I hope more of my own blogrolled bloggers will send in their results, too. (Maybe I should solicit them via email?) It would be interesting to see to what degree a blog's style is reflected by the blogger's personality type. Are the bloggers with long, involved posts concentrated in a particular type? And the militant blogs? The news blogs? The warm and fuzzy ones? The more purely spiritual ones? The more liturgical ones?
Let the commentary begin...
Initial Thoughts on St Blog's Myers-Briggs -- The compilation of personality profiles for the St Blog's Bloggers continues to grow. A few things are standing out already. First, we're hugely an introverted lot (other than John Schultz and possibly Fr Bryce). At first glance, that might seem counter-intuitive, considering how logorrheic and public an activity blogging is. But (forgetting, for the moment, the hundreds of people that read a blog each day) a blog is very much something of a soliloquy.
Introverted? What! You'd think we're secretive or something. Soliloquy? Nonsense. I have comment boxes every 10,000 words, without fail.
I do not have comments boxes at Rerum Novarum though I used to have them at The Lidless Eye until problems with the company whose software ("shout out") I was using reached the point to where my patience dried up. I do plan to install Haloscan boxes at Lidless Eye at some point but Rerum Novarum will not have them for reasons I explain HERE. But to summarize it briefly with words from that post:
Unlike major media outlets the contents of this blog are not a result of intense focus group testing nor Zogby-like polling data mind you; Rerum Novarum does not function that way. (So those who wrote about adding comments boxes, nada as I do not have the time to police them and besides: most of those who inquired about the comments boxes are not the sorts I would long tolerate posting in comments boxes at my blog.) The reason I have the occasional "guest editorial" policy is to bridge the gap if you will in that regard.
While it is true that I got away from the Guest Editorial feature for some time, it was not of my own accord. That is completely a reader-driven feature though at times I have actually asked people if they minded something they said being blogged in the form of a Guest Editorial. (And if not I have posted their stuff in that format - usually with minimal if any editing involved.) However, Rerum Novarum is not limited solely to the Guest Editorial feature for interaction with others.
For I also blog and interact with emailers if (i) it is a subject I have not blogged on before (ii) it is a subject that interests me (iii) the emailer is polite and (iv) the emailer asks challenging questions. If the emailer is not polite, then their piece becomes fodder for potential fisking in accordance with my mood at the time.
I also interact with stuff on discussion lists, blogs, and the message boxes at other blogs and all of that is potentially bloggable as well. (And usually I email the link to the person so they can read and respond to it if they want to.) In short, I more than compensate for the lack of message boxes at Rerum Novarum. (And as I apply the same principles to Lidless Eye the same applies there though as I noted I will be reinstalling comments boxes over there.)
It's all those things that the blogger says to himself inside his head and in the company of his friends, and I think most of us aren't terribly interested in changing our blogs in order to suit the general readership. If they like it, great. If not, who cares. That all seems to click with the introversion thing.
Company of who? I had some friends once. It wasn't all it's cracked up to be. You can't even get a word in edgewise before they start telling you how bored they are and trying to change the subject.
My blog is basically what I want to muse on. I do not like playing to a particular constituency because I am a rather complex person and cannot confine myself to discussing just theology or just politics or just social issues or just sports. (Or just anything else you can think of.) I get a fair amount of emails from people who enjoy what I do with the weblog or my insights. I also get some criticisms at times but for some reason my critics are never very polite.{1}
Indeed I am considering fisking an email received about a week ago from a woman who - in responding to the essay Matt1618 and I wrote two and a half years ago on communion in the hand - has basically called us Satan's spawn, modernists, conciliarists, liberals, and every other epithet from the extreme radtrad handbook you can think of. I get very little hate mail but those who respond are always very rude and virtually always finding creative ways to consign me to hell.
I would never tolerate people filling comments boxes at Rerum Novarum with that kind of drivel; indeed my tolerance for weblog trolls is never very high. (And it is lower in proportion to their relative rudeness and obtuseness.) But at the same time, I will gladly fisk them publicly.
So far from a soliloquy my weblog is actually very interactive with some of those who read it - even if my means of expressing this are unconventional. Like my Myers-Briggs profile says, I am not one for following conventions.
The second thing that stands out is how non-representative we are of the population as a whole. ISFJ, for instance, supposedly comprises 13.8% of the population, but Alan Phipps is (so far) the only blogger of that profile. INTP and INTJ represent only 3.3% and 2.1% of the population respectively, but look at all the bloggers who are that type.
That is St. Blog's. I am sure if you looked outside of St. Blog's you would find a different hue. Catholicism is more internal than external anyway; ergo I do not find the predominantly introverted nature of St. Blog's too problematical. Besides, that is only "dominant trait" introverted.
According to my test, I am 57% introvert, 43% extrovert. That is probably accurate but consider that I am over 40% extrovert. However, since I am majority introvert, all you see is the "I" on the personality rating. I am sure others who took the test also had varying degrees of extrovert - some more than me and some less. The illusion of St. Blog's as a bunch of introverted wallflowers is just that: an illusion.
It's almost as if the concentration of bloggers increases as one moves toward less common personality types. Maybe that means we're a bunch of freaks. Boh.
Dweeek? Shlebab hoff mamnaio, if you ask me.
Well, we are Catholics which means we believe someone has to lose their life to gain it, that it is better to give than to receive, that God became man in order for man to potentially partake of the divine nature. That there is value in such things as suffering. I could go on but "conventional wisdom" would consider us wierdos yes. Heck Fr. Jim, you have in your vocation as a priest become a sign of contradiction to the world. Need I say more???
I hope more of my own blogrolled bloggers will send in their results, too. (Maybe I should solicit them via email?) It would be interesting to see to what degree a blog's style is reflected by the blogger's personality type.
Are the bloggers with long, involved posts concentrated in a particular type? And the militant blogs? The news blogs? The warm and fuzzy ones? The more purely spiritual ones? The more liturgical ones?
I wouldn't know. I don't write long involved posts, remember? I have comment boxes every 15,000 words or so. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to get back to my latest little note, which deals with the indirect influence of Zoroastrianism on the politics of the Know-Nothings . .
Since Rerum Novarum is a mixture of theological, political, social, news items, and basically whatever I want to muse on in those or other areas, there is no one area to focus on. I have countless other subjects that I do not blog on much - or never have blogged on - that I could just as easily blog on today or tomorrow and not in any way alter my weblog philosophy in the slightest. So essentially I am not sure that I can be put into a box there. (Much as I cannot with the manner by which I interact with readers and others who browse St. Blog's blog list without a message box format.) But then again, I am used to defying most forms of categorization so it does not bother me.
Note:
{1} Except in the rarest of cases - I think out of all the critical email received in the past year, I could count the number of politely critical pieces on maybe three fingers at the most. (And that is a miniscule percentage of those who have emailed with criticism.) This excludes people who have blogged polite disagreements with me who have emailed me the link to respond to.
Personality Profile of Rerum Novarum
It seems that Fr. Jim Tucker of Dappled Things has been focusing on something called the "Myers-Briggs" test which measured the personality profile of people. He also has a chart of some St. Blog's members who have taken this test and (I presume) sent him their results. Therefore, We at Rerum Novarum decided to take the test and see where this present writer stands in these rankings. Here are the results followed by a description of the personality type:
Your personality type is ISTP.
Introverted (I) 57% Extraverted (E) 43%
Sensing (S) 50% Intuitive (N) 50%
Thinking (T) 70% Feeling (F) 30%
Perceiving (P) 55% Judging (J) 45%
Note that if some of your results are near 50%, then you may not fall 100% into one personality type.
So basically it is saying that I am ISTP but also to some extent an INTP. Let us look at the result it gave me and then look at the alternate. The words of the links will be in darkblue and my responses to each part in regular font. First the ISTP:
Portrait of an ISTP - Introverted Sensing Thinking Perceiving (Introverted Thinking with Extraverted Sensing)
The Mechanic
My late father was a lot better mechanic than I am. Enough said there...
As an ISTP, your primary mode of living is focused internally, where you deal with things rationally and logically. Your secondary mode is external, where you take things in via your five senses in a literal, concrete fashion.
This is pretty accurate.
ISTPs have a compelling drive to understand the way things work.
Depends on the thing in question. When I was younger I was quite restless in this regard but as I have gotten older, there are some things where I simply refuse to enter into the question of how they work - accepting simply the fact that they do if they actually do.
They're good at logical analysis, and like to use it on practical concerns.
Yes.
They typically have strong powers of reasoning, although they're not interested in theories or concepts unless they can see a practical application.
That is quite accurate actually. I have little patience for ivory tower abstraction if there is no practical application involved.
They like to take things apart and see the way they work.
Depends again on what the "thing" is. Sometimes I like to take people apart too - though this is almost always in the form of a fisking, a misting, or even a take down. {1} But generally my interest in those approaches is not to see how the people work. (As anatomically and physiologically we are all essentially the same - though we of course as a species have a broad continuum of varying genetic traits.)
ISTPs have an adventuresome spirit. They are attracted to motorcycles, airplanes, sky diving, surfing, etc.
I like motorcycles but do not own one. I like airplanes but do not own one or even have a pilot's license. (Though I have thought about getting one.) I have wanted to skydive since I was in my teens but have never had the time to look into the activity. The closest thing I have come to surfing is waterskiing - and I was at best competent at that. (I have never snowskiied.)
They thrive on action, and are usually fearless.
Depends on the activity. With many activities I am quite fearless, with others I am more restrained.
ISTPs are fiercely independent, needing to have the space to make their own decisions about their next step. They do not believe in or follow rules and regulations, as this would prohibit their ability to "do their own thing". Their sense of adventure and desire for constant action makes ISTPs prone to becoming bored rather quickly.
I am not sure I am "fiercely independent" but I do have a general independence to my thought and planning. However, I do often seek the consultation of others to help in the decision phase - though I make my own decisions in the end as a rule.
When it says "do not believe in or follow rules or regulations", this is not accurate unless it refers to thinking "outside the box" which I do tend to do and do often. (I despise "conventional wisdom" which is seldom conventional or wise.) But when it comes to following rules in other areas, I generally do. I do not believe people can develop themselves adequately without having boundaries so I will not delude myself into thinking that I am somehow not like other men in that regard.
ISTPs are loyal to their causes and beliefs, and are firm believers that people should be treated with equity and fairness. Although they do not respect the rules of the "System", they follow their own rules and guidelines for behavior faithfully. They will not take part in something which violates their personal laws. ISTPs are extremely loyal and faithful to their "brothers".
For the most part this is accurate. I am a political independent who sympathizes with many areas of libertarian thought. I am a big supporter of business and industry. However, at the same time I am a conservationist. Some would see this as a paradox but I do not.
ISTPs like and need to spend time alone, because this is when they can sort things out in their minds most clearly. They absorb large quantities of impersonal facts from the external world, and sort through those facts, making judgments, when they are alone.
I would not say I "like" to spend time alone. Instead, I am indifferent to my surroundings in the sense of letting them control me. If I am alone, that is fine. If I am out with friends, again that is fine. And I think virtually as well on my feet as I do when I am alone - unless the subject is one with a lot of nuanced complexity to it. In those cases, I muse better in private than in public.
ISTPs are action-oriented people. They like to be up and about, doing things. They are not people to sit behind a desk all day and do long-range planning. Adaptable and spontaneous, they respond to what is immediately before them.
I do both, plan long range and also work spontaneously. And yes, I am rather adaptable on most things.
They usually have strong technical skills, and can be effective technical leaders. They focus on details and practical things.
Yes.
They have an excellent sense of expediency and grasp of the details which enables them to make quick, effective decisions.
I can make quick decisions but I tend to take my time - following Ted Williams' dictum for hitting a baseball. ("Slow, slow, slow, then quick, quick, quick" in essence.)
ISTPs avoid making judgments based on personal values - they feel that judgments and decisions should be made impartially, based on the fact. They are not naturally tuned in to how they are affecting others. They do not pay attention to their own feelings, and even distrust them and try to ignore them, because they have difficulty distinguishing between emotional reactions and value judgments. This may be a problem area for many ISTPs.
This is for the most part accurate. I do not tend to have difficulties "distinguishing between emotional reactions and value judgments" as a rule though.
An ISTP who is over-stressed may exhibit rash emotional outbursts of anger, or on the other extreme may be overwhelmed by emotions and feelings which they feel compelled to share with people (often inappropriately).
Yeah, that is me (particularly the first part).
An ISTP who is down on themself will foray into the world of value judgments - a place which is not natural for the ISTP - and judge themself by their inability to perform some task. They will then approach the task in a grim emotional state, expecting the worst.
Fortunately I am not down on myself very often. But however "unnatural" the world of value judgments is supposed to be for my personality, I am not incapable of making them. It is more an awareness of my own inability to be put into a box that prevents me from as a rule doing that with other people. Essentially that makes me a victim of consistency and principle more than anything.
ISTPs are excellent in a crisis situations. They're usually good athletes, and have very good hand-eye coordination. They are good at following through with a project, and tying up loose ends. They usually don't have much trouble with school, because they are introverts who can think logically. They are usually patient individuals, although they may be prone to occasional emotional outbursts due to their inattention to their own feelings.
All of this is pretty accurate.
ISTPs have a lot of natural ability which makes them good at many different kinds of things. However, they are happiest when they are centered in action-oriented tasks which require detailed logical analysis and technical skill. They take pride in their ability to take the next correct step.
This is reasonably accurate.
ISTPs are optimistic, full of good cheer, loyal to their equals, uncomplicated in their desires, generous, trusting and receptive people who want no part in confining commitments.
Depends on what the "committments" are. I am not unable to make a committment - though I do hesitate a bit before deciding to do so of course. Perhaps it is best to say that I do not as a rule like committments; however, every rule has its exceptions.
Jungian functional preference ordering:
Dominant: Introverted Thinking
Auxiliary: Extraverted Sensing
Tertiary: Introverted Intuition
Inferior: Extraverted Feeling
Yeah whatever. I actually verbalize my thinking process on a reasonably frequent basis which is not "introverted" by any means. As for the rest, I suppose it is accurate but then again, I have not sought to "take it all apart" to see how it "works" so I cannot be certain.
As far as the INTP alternate goes, even though my profile says I can go either way on this one, the profile initially assigned is a lot more like me than the INTP alternate is. Yes I can crunch theoretical stuff reasonably well; however apart from real world concrete application of principles, ivory tower abstraction is of little interest to me. Therefore, this view causes me to not dwell in the world of the hypothetical very often.
As far as Fr. Jim's initial thoughts on the Myers-Briggs test (I almost said "Myers-Bristol" for some reason), so far there is at least one blogger who has weighed in on it and that is The Secret One who has done so at his Dossier. I will post those comments as well as some musings of my own in the next installment of this weblog. Stay tuned for details...
Note:
{1} For those not familiar with these blogosphere terms, they are defined as follows (Courtesy of Samizdata):
Fisk (verb). To deconstruct an article on a point by point basis in a highly critical manner. Derived from the name of journalist Robert Fisk, a frequent target of such critical articles in the blogosphere.
Usage: "Orrin Judd did a severe fisking of an idiotic article in the New York Times today..."
Misting (verb). Similar to fisking in that it is a refutation of another's views, but misting is less aggressive and is usually humorous. 'Mistings' usually take the form of an imaginary exchange of views.
'Misting' is really MiSTing - from the show MST3K, Mystery Science Theater 3000, which was a show on The Comedy Channel about characters who were captured by malicious aliens and forced to watch terrible old sci-fi movies. They responded by commenting (rather hilariously) about the movies.
Usage: Fr. Rob Johansen recently misted the radtrads on his weblog. (Click HERE for details.)
Take down (verb). Similar to 'Fisk'. A point by point refutation.
Self explanatory methinks though this is not as common a term. (Indeed I have never used it prior to now.)
It seems that Fr. Jim Tucker of Dappled Things has been focusing on something called the "Myers-Briggs" test which measured the personality profile of people. He also has a chart of some St. Blog's members who have taken this test and (I presume) sent him their results. Therefore, We at Rerum Novarum decided to take the test and see where this present writer stands in these rankings. Here are the results followed by a description of the personality type:
Your personality type is ISTP.
Introverted (I) 57% Extraverted (E) 43%
Sensing (S) 50% Intuitive (N) 50%
Thinking (T) 70% Feeling (F) 30%
Perceiving (P) 55% Judging (J) 45%
Note that if some of your results are near 50%, then you may not fall 100% into one personality type.
So basically it is saying that I am ISTP but also to some extent an INTP. Let us look at the result it gave me and then look at the alternate. The words of the links will be in darkblue and my responses to each part in regular font. First the ISTP:
Portrait of an ISTP - Introverted Sensing Thinking Perceiving (Introverted Thinking with Extraverted Sensing)
The Mechanic
My late father was a lot better mechanic than I am. Enough said there...
As an ISTP, your primary mode of living is focused internally, where you deal with things rationally and logically. Your secondary mode is external, where you take things in via your five senses in a literal, concrete fashion.
This is pretty accurate.
ISTPs have a compelling drive to understand the way things work.
Depends on the thing in question. When I was younger I was quite restless in this regard but as I have gotten older, there are some things where I simply refuse to enter into the question of how they work - accepting simply the fact that they do if they actually do.
They're good at logical analysis, and like to use it on practical concerns.
Yes.
They typically have strong powers of reasoning, although they're not interested in theories or concepts unless they can see a practical application.
That is quite accurate actually. I have little patience for ivory tower abstraction if there is no practical application involved.
They like to take things apart and see the way they work.
Depends again on what the "thing" is. Sometimes I like to take people apart too - though this is almost always in the form of a fisking, a misting, or even a take down. {1} But generally my interest in those approaches is not to see how the people work. (As anatomically and physiologically we are all essentially the same - though we of course as a species have a broad continuum of varying genetic traits.)
ISTPs have an adventuresome spirit. They are attracted to motorcycles, airplanes, sky diving, surfing, etc.
I like motorcycles but do not own one. I like airplanes but do not own one or even have a pilot's license. (Though I have thought about getting one.) I have wanted to skydive since I was in my teens but have never had the time to look into the activity. The closest thing I have come to surfing is waterskiing - and I was at best competent at that. (I have never snowskiied.)
They thrive on action, and are usually fearless.
Depends on the activity. With many activities I am quite fearless, with others I am more restrained.
ISTPs are fiercely independent, needing to have the space to make their own decisions about their next step. They do not believe in or follow rules and regulations, as this would prohibit their ability to "do their own thing". Their sense of adventure and desire for constant action makes ISTPs prone to becoming bored rather quickly.
I am not sure I am "fiercely independent" but I do have a general independence to my thought and planning. However, I do often seek the consultation of others to help in the decision phase - though I make my own decisions in the end as a rule.
When it says "do not believe in or follow rules or regulations", this is not accurate unless it refers to thinking "outside the box" which I do tend to do and do often. (I despise "conventional wisdom" which is seldom conventional or wise.) But when it comes to following rules in other areas, I generally do. I do not believe people can develop themselves adequately without having boundaries so I will not delude myself into thinking that I am somehow not like other men in that regard.
ISTPs are loyal to their causes and beliefs, and are firm believers that people should be treated with equity and fairness. Although they do not respect the rules of the "System", they follow their own rules and guidelines for behavior faithfully. They will not take part in something which violates their personal laws. ISTPs are extremely loyal and faithful to their "brothers".
For the most part this is accurate. I am a political independent who sympathizes with many areas of libertarian thought. I am a big supporter of business and industry. However, at the same time I am a conservationist. Some would see this as a paradox but I do not.
ISTPs like and need to spend time alone, because this is when they can sort things out in their minds most clearly. They absorb large quantities of impersonal facts from the external world, and sort through those facts, making judgments, when they are alone.
I would not say I "like" to spend time alone. Instead, I am indifferent to my surroundings in the sense of letting them control me. If I am alone, that is fine. If I am out with friends, again that is fine. And I think virtually as well on my feet as I do when I am alone - unless the subject is one with a lot of nuanced complexity to it. In those cases, I muse better in private than in public.
ISTPs are action-oriented people. They like to be up and about, doing things. They are not people to sit behind a desk all day and do long-range planning. Adaptable and spontaneous, they respond to what is immediately before them.
I do both, plan long range and also work spontaneously. And yes, I am rather adaptable on most things.
They usually have strong technical skills, and can be effective technical leaders. They focus on details and practical things.
Yes.
They have an excellent sense of expediency and grasp of the details which enables them to make quick, effective decisions.
I can make quick decisions but I tend to take my time - following Ted Williams' dictum for hitting a baseball. ("Slow, slow, slow, then quick, quick, quick" in essence.)
ISTPs avoid making judgments based on personal values - they feel that judgments and decisions should be made impartially, based on the fact. They are not naturally tuned in to how they are affecting others. They do not pay attention to their own feelings, and even distrust them and try to ignore them, because they have difficulty distinguishing between emotional reactions and value judgments. This may be a problem area for many ISTPs.
This is for the most part accurate. I do not tend to have difficulties "distinguishing between emotional reactions and value judgments" as a rule though.
An ISTP who is over-stressed may exhibit rash emotional outbursts of anger, or on the other extreme may be overwhelmed by emotions and feelings which they feel compelled to share with people (often inappropriately).
Yeah, that is me (particularly the first part).
An ISTP who is down on themself will foray into the world of value judgments - a place which is not natural for the ISTP - and judge themself by their inability to perform some task. They will then approach the task in a grim emotional state, expecting the worst.
Fortunately I am not down on myself very often. But however "unnatural" the world of value judgments is supposed to be for my personality, I am not incapable of making them. It is more an awareness of my own inability to be put into a box that prevents me from as a rule doing that with other people. Essentially that makes me a victim of consistency and principle more than anything.
ISTPs are excellent in a crisis situations. They're usually good athletes, and have very good hand-eye coordination. They are good at following through with a project, and tying up loose ends. They usually don't have much trouble with school, because they are introverts who can think logically. They are usually patient individuals, although they may be prone to occasional emotional outbursts due to their inattention to their own feelings.
All of this is pretty accurate.
ISTPs have a lot of natural ability which makes them good at many different kinds of things. However, they are happiest when they are centered in action-oriented tasks which require detailed logical analysis and technical skill. They take pride in their ability to take the next correct step.
This is reasonably accurate.
ISTPs are optimistic, full of good cheer, loyal to their equals, uncomplicated in their desires, generous, trusting and receptive people who want no part in confining commitments.
Depends on what the "committments" are. I am not unable to make a committment - though I do hesitate a bit before deciding to do so of course. Perhaps it is best to say that I do not as a rule like committments; however, every rule has its exceptions.
Jungian functional preference ordering:
Dominant: Introverted Thinking
Auxiliary: Extraverted Sensing
Tertiary: Introverted Intuition
Inferior: Extraverted Feeling
Yeah whatever. I actually verbalize my thinking process on a reasonably frequent basis which is not "introverted" by any means. As for the rest, I suppose it is accurate but then again, I have not sought to "take it all apart" to see how it "works" so I cannot be certain.
As far as the INTP alternate goes, even though my profile says I can go either way on this one, the profile initially assigned is a lot more like me than the INTP alternate is. Yes I can crunch theoretical stuff reasonably well; however apart from real world concrete application of principles, ivory tower abstraction is of little interest to me. Therefore, this view causes me to not dwell in the world of the hypothetical very often.
As far as Fr. Jim's initial thoughts on the Myers-Briggs test (I almost said "Myers-Bristol" for some reason), so far there is at least one blogger who has weighed in on it and that is The Secret One who has done so at his Dossier. I will post those comments as well as some musings of my own in the next installment of this weblog. Stay tuned for details...
Note:
{1} For those not familiar with these blogosphere terms, they are defined as follows (Courtesy of Samizdata):
Fisk (verb). To deconstruct an article on a point by point basis in a highly critical manner. Derived from the name of journalist Robert Fisk, a frequent target of such critical articles in the blogosphere.
Usage: "Orrin Judd did a severe fisking of an idiotic article in the New York Times today..."
Misting (verb). Similar to fisking in that it is a refutation of another's views, but misting is less aggressive and is usually humorous. 'Mistings' usually take the form of an imaginary exchange of views.
'Misting' is really MiSTing - from the show MST3K, Mystery Science Theater 3000, which was a show on The Comedy Channel about characters who were captured by malicious aliens and forced to watch terrible old sci-fi movies. They responded by commenting (rather hilariously) about the movies.
Usage: Fr. Rob Johansen recently misted the radtrads on his weblog. (Click HERE for details.)
Take down (verb). Similar to 'Fisk'. A point by point refutation.
Self explanatory methinks though this is not as common a term. (Indeed I have never used it prior to now.)
Saturday, August 23, 2003
"One From the Vault" Dept. on the SSPX:
(Musings of your humble servant at Rerum Novarum)
The subject of my involvement with the SSPX is not one I like to talk in too much detail about for many reasons. However, as there have been a number of inquiries about it over the years, I have as a result given it no small amount of thought about posting some material on the subject. And a couple more emails in the past week asking about specifics with regards to my involvement convinced me that this is probably a subject I should touch on at least a little bit - not for its own sake but instead for the pastoral instruction that such a situation contains. So that is how I will approach the subject in this response - in true ressourcement fashion - being that I will do so with a slightly modified text to a reply written last August. (I ran across it when cleaning out my lycos account of some older emails.)
The material in the email touched on some of the pastoral aspects of dealing with problems such as the SSPX schism amongst friends. With only the most minor of adjustments, I post it here for reader consideration.
The response material will be in regular font and any footnotes added at this time or extracted from the previous text for the sake of continuity will be noted in regular coloured font and appended to the response. To help with avoiding confusion here, the previous notes will be in bracketed Roman numerals and posted at the end of the thread. The current notes or previous text insertion which have been appended to the end of the text for continuity will be in darkblue font. Of these distinctions, footnotes 1-3 and 5 are new and footnotes 4 and 6-7 are previous intext comments which have been moved to the notes section. Anyway, without further ado, here we go...
[The SSPX subject] is a delicate issue indeed. A bit of personal disclosure may be of assistance since there seems to be a misperception in some minds of what I think of the average garden variety adherent to "trad" groups - as opposed to the corporate structures of such groups.
I have many friends still involved with SSPX. Because of my fathers death and seven other family members the past two and a half years,{1} the climate for discussing these issues with them has never been proper. My work is not unknown to them but very few of them have a computer and the one copy of my treatise I printed last year for my former pastor he has not gotten around to reading yet because it was misplaced in the move and he is constantly on mission and unable to sit down very often and clear his head. (Which is fine because I want to give him the revised version when I finish it. Much easier reading as the material will be divided into more sections, a few subjects I passed over or dealt with very briefly in passing will be developed a bit and the work itself properly parcelled for print publication.){2}
At get togethers where I am amongst my former church mates (such as the last 4th of July) conversations at times drift towards the Church situation. (Oftentimes, these are held at my friend J's house: J is of a similar mould as my father personality-wise, they were good friends.) I do more listening there than I do talking and when it gets into areas where I should step forward, because of the aforementioned climate situation I have thus far tended to politely find ways of avoiding this. Usually when at J's place I will go into the living room, pick up his acoustic guitar and either thumb-strum the chords to some songs quietly or quietly pick out some blues or jazz riffs or experiment with scale runs. {3} (Though on the fourth I actually went out and played 4 on 1 badminton with some of the children.) Basically, if asked specific questions I will give a response but only then. And I instinctively cut the subjects off before they reach any point of getting polemical.{4} The climate has been changing for me to more directly address these issues now with them - and apparently a development came up which may make doing this necessary: the knowledge of the new church pastor over there that I have been critical of the catechial formation in general and SSPX (and the hierarchy) in particular.{i}
Apparently word got out to the new pastor of the Church (who conducted my grandmothers funeral mass last September) about my treatise - I think the mention of it being prepared for a censor was what spurred the subject. He now apparently wants to stridently debate on the subject so I have to temper respect for him as a man and priest of God with the desire to confront him and crush to powder every last bone of the SSPX's credibility. It will not make for a very pleasant fall period in that regard - particularly since I have family and friends at that church and the Society's trackrecord of denouncements of critics from the pulpit over the years - not to mention harassment - will make things very difficult with my family and friends there who are also on good terms with the pastor.{5}
I have stated without hesitation that some of the best people I know are SSPX people - people who go for the mass and not the politics. (And deal with the at-times stridently schismatic and borderline heretical sermons that the new pastor gives.){6} But that kind of at-times vitriol is not shared by the rank and file of the parish.
When I say "rank and file" I mean the people who have questions - even occasionally strenuous ones - but who do not seek to denigrate the Holy Father as most of the priests of that group do.{7} People who have bought into a lot of lies and psychologically want them to be true on a subconscious level because otherwise justification for their state of objective schism cannot be maintained and they know it. (It will really tear at me to go over the issue of the sacraments with them.)
I do not and never would presume to judge them subjectively. But objectively there is no other judgment that one can make then there is formal schism as declared by the Supreme Authority. Subjectively the question of formal adherence to the schism is a touchy subject - though it must be addressed also. The hermeneutic I use - and will continue to use - is their fruits, what they say, their manifested habitual way of thinking, etc. Hence many of my friends - including my former pastor who was transferred last year{ii} are (by my observation which is of course not infallible) in various degrees of material schism. But some of them - including the current pastor at that church - are (by the same criteria) formally schismatic. Or at least by any reasonable criteria of evaluation, that result is unavoidable to not conclude with.
It may seem all easy when we have the internet and papers are read apart from circumstances that prompted their composition. (Much the way most people read magisterial statements actually but I digress.) But to those who have friends in this movement - and family also - that side of the equation is often not taken into consideration. And frankly, it should be.
Original Notes:
{i} This is rather strange since my main criticism was that they should use the Pope St. Pius X Catechism instead of the Baltimore as the former is a superior product in presentation, clarity, and charity.
{ii} This is NOT the same priest who wants to take me on btw. Heck last time my former pastor and I got together we had dinner at Jazz Alley one night (with other friends and former parishoners), ordered a pizza the next night, and discussed over wine and homemade liquior everything from Vatican II to mysticism to liturgical chant to the various religious orders to St. Thomas to the liturgy to the Louis Armstrong/Miles Davis debate, etc in a very enjoyable and non-polemical atmosphere. Unfortunately my humidor was empty or we would have topped it all off with some double caronas. Oh well, there is always next time...
Current Notes and Previous Text Insertions:
{1} Since that writing there were at least two more deaths. (I say "at least two more" because there may have been others who are not coming to mind at the moment - trust me when almost a dozen family members and friends pass away in less than three and a half years, it all starts to blur at some point.) Of the two I can recall one was a family friend who died on December 11, 2002 and the other was my fathers step-mother who died on November 16, 2002. May they rest in peace.
{2} The above-mentioned revision was started four months after I wrote this, finished in January of 2003, and I hope to get in touch with my former pastor before this year is out to hand him a copy of the revised text. He still has not completely unpacked his stuff after over two years at his new residence: that is how busy they are keeping him as he pastors a church and logs enough frequent flier miles to get a free ticket to the moon. (I kid you not.)
{3} The situation with J's family has not improved as of late. I also decided for this reason to wait until the Holy Father's announcement about what he plans to do with the indult before starting any protracted discussions on this subject. Until then I will answer questions when asked but will not play the role of the inquisitor with them.
{4} There is a reason why they say "never discuss religion or politics" after all. (Whoever "they" are.) I do not shy away from either; however I do take note of the fact that there is a season for strident insisting of abstract principles and a season for diplomacy. Not the easiest tightrope to walk but walk it we all must do if we want to make a long-term difference in building bridges rather than creating islands.
{5} Somehow this actually was avoided last year. I am sure when he hears about contact with my former pastor that this will cause a resumption of the tension. And he will hear about it too because word travels fast in those circles.
{6} This is a shame too because the man is actually a decent orator. He is not of course on the level of any of the Dominicans at Blessed Sacrament; nonetheless he does have a gift in this area.
{7} My former pastor was a rare exception here: he was clearly not happy with some of what had happened but he chose to be constructive rather than destructive if you will. He has an intelligence that the current pastor lacks for many subjects - not only theological subjects but particularly the subject of history as he used to be a history teacher. He would draw on a lot of that as well as contemporary problems in his sermons. The one drawback if you will was that he is not an orator. As a result, he could stumble at times - particularly when he was just getting going. (Though he almost always finished strong.)
I believe his overall refusal to play the game of carping on "modernist Rome" and other such epithets did not endear him to the fringe who were in some positions of influence at the chapel. And I also believe his transfer was a result of behind the scenes machinations by those sorts who wanted a more "authentic Society priest". But that is all I will say on that subject.
(Musings of your humble servant at Rerum Novarum)
The subject of my involvement with the SSPX is not one I like to talk in too much detail about for many reasons. However, as there have been a number of inquiries about it over the years, I have as a result given it no small amount of thought about posting some material on the subject. And a couple more emails in the past week asking about specifics with regards to my involvement convinced me that this is probably a subject I should touch on at least a little bit - not for its own sake but instead for the pastoral instruction that such a situation contains. So that is how I will approach the subject in this response - in true ressourcement fashion - being that I will do so with a slightly modified text to a reply written last August. (I ran across it when cleaning out my lycos account of some older emails.)
The material in the email touched on some of the pastoral aspects of dealing with problems such as the SSPX schism amongst friends. With only the most minor of adjustments, I post it here for reader consideration.
The response material will be in regular font and any footnotes added at this time or extracted from the previous text for the sake of continuity will be noted in regular coloured font and appended to the response. To help with avoiding confusion here, the previous notes will be in bracketed Roman numerals and posted at the end of the thread. The current notes or previous text insertion which have been appended to the end of the text for continuity will be in darkblue font. Of these distinctions, footnotes 1-3 and 5 are new and footnotes 4 and 6-7 are previous intext comments which have been moved to the notes section. Anyway, without further ado, here we go...
[The SSPX subject] is a delicate issue indeed. A bit of personal disclosure may be of assistance since there seems to be a misperception in some minds of what I think of the average garden variety adherent to "trad" groups - as opposed to the corporate structures of such groups.
I have many friends still involved with SSPX. Because of my fathers death and seven other family members the past two and a half years,{1} the climate for discussing these issues with them has never been proper. My work is not unknown to them but very few of them have a computer and the one copy of my treatise I printed last year for my former pastor he has not gotten around to reading yet because it was misplaced in the move and he is constantly on mission and unable to sit down very often and clear his head. (Which is fine because I want to give him the revised version when I finish it. Much easier reading as the material will be divided into more sections, a few subjects I passed over or dealt with very briefly in passing will be developed a bit and the work itself properly parcelled for print publication.){2}
At get togethers where I am amongst my former church mates (such as the last 4th of July) conversations at times drift towards the Church situation. (Oftentimes, these are held at my friend J's house: J is of a similar mould as my father personality-wise, they were good friends.) I do more listening there than I do talking and when it gets into areas where I should step forward, because of the aforementioned climate situation I have thus far tended to politely find ways of avoiding this. Usually when at J's place I will go into the living room, pick up his acoustic guitar and either thumb-strum the chords to some songs quietly or quietly pick out some blues or jazz riffs or experiment with scale runs. {3} (Though on the fourth I actually went out and played 4 on 1 badminton with some of the children.) Basically, if asked specific questions I will give a response but only then. And I instinctively cut the subjects off before they reach any point of getting polemical.{4} The climate has been changing for me to more directly address these issues now with them - and apparently a development came up which may make doing this necessary: the knowledge of the new church pastor over there that I have been critical of the catechial formation in general and SSPX (and the hierarchy) in particular.{i}
Apparently word got out to the new pastor of the Church (who conducted my grandmothers funeral mass last September) about my treatise - I think the mention of it being prepared for a censor was what spurred the subject. He now apparently wants to stridently debate on the subject so I have to temper respect for him as a man and priest of God with the desire to confront him and crush to powder every last bone of the SSPX's credibility. It will not make for a very pleasant fall period in that regard - particularly since I have family and friends at that church and the Society's trackrecord of denouncements of critics from the pulpit over the years - not to mention harassment - will make things very difficult with my family and friends there who are also on good terms with the pastor.{5}
I have stated without hesitation that some of the best people I know are SSPX people - people who go for the mass and not the politics. (And deal with the at-times stridently schismatic and borderline heretical sermons that the new pastor gives.){6} But that kind of at-times vitriol is not shared by the rank and file of the parish.
When I say "rank and file" I mean the people who have questions - even occasionally strenuous ones - but who do not seek to denigrate the Holy Father as most of the priests of that group do.{7} People who have bought into a lot of lies and psychologically want them to be true on a subconscious level because otherwise justification for their state of objective schism cannot be maintained and they know it. (It will really tear at me to go over the issue of the sacraments with them.)
I do not and never would presume to judge them subjectively. But objectively there is no other judgment that one can make then there is formal schism as declared by the Supreme Authority. Subjectively the question of formal adherence to the schism is a touchy subject - though it must be addressed also. The hermeneutic I use - and will continue to use - is their fruits, what they say, their manifested habitual way of thinking, etc. Hence many of my friends - including my former pastor who was transferred last year{ii} are (by my observation which is of course not infallible) in various degrees of material schism. But some of them - including the current pastor at that church - are (by the same criteria) formally schismatic. Or at least by any reasonable criteria of evaluation, that result is unavoidable to not conclude with.
It may seem all easy when we have the internet and papers are read apart from circumstances that prompted their composition. (Much the way most people read magisterial statements actually but I digress.) But to those who have friends in this movement - and family also - that side of the equation is often not taken into consideration. And frankly, it should be.
Original Notes:
{i} This is rather strange since my main criticism was that they should use the Pope St. Pius X Catechism instead of the Baltimore as the former is a superior product in presentation, clarity, and charity.
{ii} This is NOT the same priest who wants to take me on btw. Heck last time my former pastor and I got together we had dinner at Jazz Alley one night (with other friends and former parishoners), ordered a pizza the next night, and discussed over wine and homemade liquior everything from Vatican II to mysticism to liturgical chant to the various religious orders to St. Thomas to the liturgy to the Louis Armstrong/Miles Davis debate, etc in a very enjoyable and non-polemical atmosphere. Unfortunately my humidor was empty or we would have topped it all off with some double caronas. Oh well, there is always next time...
Current Notes and Previous Text Insertions:
{1} Since that writing there were at least two more deaths. (I say "at least two more" because there may have been others who are not coming to mind at the moment - trust me when almost a dozen family members and friends pass away in less than three and a half years, it all starts to blur at some point.) Of the two I can recall one was a family friend who died on December 11, 2002 and the other was my fathers step-mother who died on November 16, 2002. May they rest in peace.
{2} The above-mentioned revision was started four months after I wrote this, finished in January of 2003, and I hope to get in touch with my former pastor before this year is out to hand him a copy of the revised text. He still has not completely unpacked his stuff after over two years at his new residence: that is how busy they are keeping him as he pastors a church and logs enough frequent flier miles to get a free ticket to the moon. (I kid you not.)
{3} The situation with J's family has not improved as of late. I also decided for this reason to wait until the Holy Father's announcement about what he plans to do with the indult before starting any protracted discussions on this subject. Until then I will answer questions when asked but will not play the role of the inquisitor with them.
{4} There is a reason why they say "never discuss religion or politics" after all. (Whoever "they" are.) I do not shy away from either; however I do take note of the fact that there is a season for strident insisting of abstract principles and a season for diplomacy. Not the easiest tightrope to walk but walk it we all must do if we want to make a long-term difference in building bridges rather than creating islands.
{5} Somehow this actually was avoided last year. I am sure when he hears about contact with my former pastor that this will cause a resumption of the tension. And he will hear about it too because word travels fast in those circles.
{6} This is a shame too because the man is actually a decent orator. He is not of course on the level of any of the Dominicans at Blessed Sacrament; nonetheless he does have a gift in this area.
{7} My former pastor was a rare exception here: he was clearly not happy with some of what had happened but he chose to be constructive rather than destructive if you will. He has an intelligence that the current pastor lacks for many subjects - not only theological subjects but particularly the subject of history as he used to be a history teacher. He would draw on a lot of that as well as contemporary problems in his sermons. The one drawback if you will was that he is not an orator. As a result, he could stumble at times - particularly when he was just getting going. (Though he almost always finished strong.)
I believe his overall refusal to play the game of carping on "modernist Rome" and other such epithets did not endear him to the fringe who were in some positions of influence at the chapel. And I also believe his transfer was a result of behind the scenes machinations by those sorts who wanted a more "authentic Society priest". But that is all I will say on that subject.
Points to Ponder:
(A continuation of the previous thread)
[A]lthough all citizens, without exception, can and ought to contribute to that common good in which individuals share so advantageously to themselves, yet it should not be supposed that all can contribute in the like way and to the same extent. No matter what changes may occur in forms of government, there will ever be differences and inequalities of condition in the State. Society cannot exist or be conceived of without them. Some there must be who devote themselves to the work of the commonwealth, who make the laws or administer justice, or whose advice and authority govern the nation in times of peace, and defend it in war. Such men clearly occupy the foremost place in the State, and should be held in highest estimation, for their work concerns most nearly and effectively the general interests of the community. Those who labor at a trade or calling do not promote the general welfare in such measure as this, but they benefit the nation, if less directly, in a most important manner. We have insisted, it is true, that, since the end of society is to make men better, the chief good that society can possess is virtue. Nevertheless, it is the business of a well constituted body politic to see to the provision of those material and external helps "the use of which is necessary to virtuous action." {Thomas Aquinas, On the Governance of Rulers, 1, 15 (Opera omnia, ed. Vives, Vol. 27, p. 356)} Now, for the provision of such commodities, the labor of the working class—the exercise of their skill, and the employment of their strength, in the cultivation of the land, and in the workshops of trade—is especially responsible and quite indispensable. Indeed, their co-operation is in this respect so important that it may be truly said that it is only by the labor of working men that States grow rich. Justice, therefore, demands that the interests of the working classes should be carefully watched over by the administration, so that they who contribute so largely to the advantage of the community may themselves share in the benefits which they create—that being housed, clothed, and bodily fit, they may find their life less hard and more endurable. It follows that whatever shall appear to prove conducive to the well-being of those who work should obtain favorable consideration. There is no fear that solicitude of this kind will be harmful to any interest; on the contrary, it will be to the advantage of all, for it cannot but be good for the commonwealth to shield from misery those on whom it so largely depends for the things that it needs. [Pope Leo XIII: Encyclical Letter Rerum Novarum §34 (c. 1891)]
(A continuation of the previous thread)
[A]lthough all citizens, without exception, can and ought to contribute to that common good in which individuals share so advantageously to themselves, yet it should not be supposed that all can contribute in the like way and to the same extent. No matter what changes may occur in forms of government, there will ever be differences and inequalities of condition in the State. Society cannot exist or be conceived of without them. Some there must be who devote themselves to the work of the commonwealth, who make the laws or administer justice, or whose advice and authority govern the nation in times of peace, and defend it in war. Such men clearly occupy the foremost place in the State, and should be held in highest estimation, for their work concerns most nearly and effectively the general interests of the community. Those who labor at a trade or calling do not promote the general welfare in such measure as this, but they benefit the nation, if less directly, in a most important manner. We have insisted, it is true, that, since the end of society is to make men better, the chief good that society can possess is virtue. Nevertheless, it is the business of a well constituted body politic to see to the provision of those material and external helps "the use of which is necessary to virtuous action." {Thomas Aquinas, On the Governance of Rulers, 1, 15 (Opera omnia, ed. Vives, Vol. 27, p. 356)} Now, for the provision of such commodities, the labor of the working class—the exercise of their skill, and the employment of their strength, in the cultivation of the land, and in the workshops of trade—is especially responsible and quite indispensable. Indeed, their co-operation is in this respect so important that it may be truly said that it is only by the labor of working men that States grow rich. Justice, therefore, demands that the interests of the working classes should be carefully watched over by the administration, so that they who contribute so largely to the advantage of the community may themselves share in the benefits which they create—that being housed, clothed, and bodily fit, they may find their life less hard and more endurable. It follows that whatever shall appear to prove conducive to the well-being of those who work should obtain favorable consideration. There is no fear that solicitude of this kind will be harmful to any interest; on the contrary, it will be to the advantage of all, for it cannot but be good for the commonwealth to shield from misery those on whom it so largely depends for the things that it needs. [Pope Leo XIII: Encyclical Letter Rerum Novarum §34 (c. 1891)]
Friday, August 22, 2003
"None Dare Call it a Volokh Conspiracy" Dept.
(A Rerum Novarum Triple Slam)
It has been at least a month and a half since I have looked in on the folks at The Volokh Conspiracy as far as a public weblog department installation. (To say nothing about JYB of which I hope to get to this weekend sometime.) So without further ado, let us get to it starting with the Lord High Executioner of the Conspiracy Professor Eugene Volokh:
Just sort of a legal curiousity. The Starbucks I frequent now has a sign: We can no longer accept bills larger than $20. They are following many gas stations in the area that don't accept bills larger than $20 "after dark".
Is this legal? While I am generally agreed to the view that businesses should be able to set their own practices (and customers can go elsewhere if they don't like them), currency issued by the U.S. is another matter and I thought, legally, Starbucks has to accept a $50 for "all debts public and private". There is also the issue of keeping confidence in a fiat currency, which is in the best interest of the U.S. government.
A great question, and I think I have an answer to it, though I should say that this is more an educated guess than the product of real research...Click Here to Continue...
I can see nothing to dispute about Professor Volokh's educated guess on this subject. Nor for that matter with the following one:
THE MEANING OF WORDS: A reader writes, apropos my post on the "traitor" libel lawsuit:
You write:
The site makes clear that by "traitor" it means those people who "do not support our President's decisions."
Lewis Carroll writes:
When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less."
Is this considered judicial doctrine now? As long as you make clear that even though the words you use are actionable, what you mean by them is not, anything goes? Can I shout, "FIRE! By which I mean the Holy Spirit!" in a crowded theater? May I walk up to you in a dark alley and demand, "Your money or your life!" as long as I come up with some more benign interpretation of the phrase to tack on? Can I define "k.i.l.l." to mean "konquer in 'lectoral landslide" and go around talking about k.i.l.l.ing politicians of various stripes?
The reader is of course right that words do have meaning, and the law must recognize their meaning. But it's a mistake to infer from this that words have only one meaning, that's unchanging across contexts. It is a fact of social life that the word "traitor" means different things in different situations. Sometimes it means someone who has committed the crime of treason. Sometimes it means someone who you think has violated some moral obligation (that's how "traitor" was used in the labor context, in the Austin case). Sometimes it means someone who you think is working, albeit perfectly lawfully, against the interests of his country.
Perhaps it would be better if human language, as it was actually used, was more rigid and unambiguous, with different words always being used to capture these different meanings, and with no-one ever speaking figuratively or hyperbolically. But that's not the way human beings actually talk. And the law is built for humans, not Vulcans, and it recognizes the reality of what words actually mean to listeners, not what they should mean...Click Here to Continue...
Many a dispute in matters philosophical, political, theological, or social subjects could be resolved - or at least well mitigated - by a recognition of this principle. But I digress.
I will not comment on Eugene's view on the subject of homosexual marriage except to say that I retract my previous assertion that he would be my first Supreme Court nominee if I was ever elected president. This is just too pivotal of an issue for the preservation of civilization and on such issues I do not well tolerate libertarian social waffling. So move him from Supreme Court nominee to a position of advisor to the mythical "McElhinney Administration Cabinet" and let us move on now to other articles in this department update. The following is from David Bernstein:
THE INEXPLICABLE POPULARITY OF FDR: I'm reading the very interesting The New Dealers' War by Thomas Fleming, a vigorous attack on the Roosevelt Administration's wartime policies, on which I will probably have more to say soon. For now I'll limit myself to the following. Out of curiosity, I looked up some reviews of the book, including Amazon.com reviewers, and one of the latter wrote this: "The book I am really looking forward to is the one that explains how FDR presided over 10 [sic] years of economic depression, and is celebrated for 'saving us' from same." Something I've always wondered about, too. Why is Hoover infamous for presiding over four years of Depression, not terribly uncommon in American history, while Roosevelt is much-beloved for presiding over an unprecedented two more presidential terms of Depression, while much of the rest of the world economy was recovering [edit: at a faster pace]? Of course, Roosevelt tried to blame the nation's economic travails on the obstinacy of the Supreme Court, but, even if we accept the highly questionable notion that the NIRA, etc., would have pulled the U.S. out of the Depression, shouldn't Roosevelt still take the blame for choosing as his means to combat the Depresssion balatantly unconstitutional legislation that the Court was obligated to invalidate (9-0, with liberals Stone, Brandeis, and Cardozo in the 9)?...Click Here to Continue...
I want to focus on a post script added to the above article before concluding this update:
Pejman links to another article suggesting that the New Deal prolonged the Depression. The article is based on a new book, FDR's Folly: How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression due out next month. Sounds like interesting reading.
In case any of the readers are wondering what We at Rerum Novarum happen to think about this very unconventional thesis; for the record your humble servant has not a shred of doubt that it is correct - conventional wisdom be damned. Indeed I have made the argument many times in political discussions that on the whole the New Deal prolonged and made worse the Great Depression.
This created a "need" to go to war to fix the problem via the industrial activity required to rebuild and rearm a nation whose military equipment had become run down and (in some cases) rather obsolete. Obviously this is a very simplistic outline of a rather complex subject but I submit that it is true to form and perhaps sometime I can explain my reasons for seeing things this way. However, right now I will simply leave that point out there for you to mull over.
(A Rerum Novarum Triple Slam)
It has been at least a month and a half since I have looked in on the folks at The Volokh Conspiracy as far as a public weblog department installation. (To say nothing about JYB of which I hope to get to this weekend sometime.) So without further ado, let us get to it starting with the Lord High Executioner of the Conspiracy Professor Eugene Volokh:
Just sort of a legal curiousity. The Starbucks I frequent now has a sign: We can no longer accept bills larger than $20. They are following many gas stations in the area that don't accept bills larger than $20 "after dark".
Is this legal? While I am generally agreed to the view that businesses should be able to set their own practices (and customers can go elsewhere if they don't like them), currency issued by the U.S. is another matter and I thought, legally, Starbucks has to accept a $50 for "all debts public and private". There is also the issue of keeping confidence in a fiat currency, which is in the best interest of the U.S. government.
A great question, and I think I have an answer to it, though I should say that this is more an educated guess than the product of real research...Click Here to Continue...
I can see nothing to dispute about Professor Volokh's educated guess on this subject. Nor for that matter with the following one:
THE MEANING OF WORDS: A reader writes, apropos my post on the "traitor" libel lawsuit:
You write:
The site makes clear that by "traitor" it means those people who "do not support our President's decisions."
Lewis Carroll writes:
When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less."
Is this considered judicial doctrine now? As long as you make clear that even though the words you use are actionable, what you mean by them is not, anything goes? Can I shout, "FIRE! By which I mean the Holy Spirit!" in a crowded theater? May I walk up to you in a dark alley and demand, "Your money or your life!" as long as I come up with some more benign interpretation of the phrase to tack on? Can I define "k.i.l.l." to mean "konquer in 'lectoral landslide" and go around talking about k.i.l.l.ing politicians of various stripes?
The reader is of course right that words do have meaning, and the law must recognize their meaning. But it's a mistake to infer from this that words have only one meaning, that's unchanging across contexts. It is a fact of social life that the word "traitor" means different things in different situations. Sometimes it means someone who has committed the crime of treason. Sometimes it means someone who you think has violated some moral obligation (that's how "traitor" was used in the labor context, in the Austin case). Sometimes it means someone who you think is working, albeit perfectly lawfully, against the interests of his country.
Perhaps it would be better if human language, as it was actually used, was more rigid and unambiguous, with different words always being used to capture these different meanings, and with no-one ever speaking figuratively or hyperbolically. But that's not the way human beings actually talk. And the law is built for humans, not Vulcans, and it recognizes the reality of what words actually mean to listeners, not what they should mean...Click Here to Continue...
Many a dispute in matters philosophical, political, theological, or social subjects could be resolved - or at least well mitigated - by a recognition of this principle. But I digress.
I will not comment on Eugene's view on the subject of homosexual marriage except to say that I retract my previous assertion that he would be my first Supreme Court nominee if I was ever elected president. This is just too pivotal of an issue for the preservation of civilization and on such issues I do not well tolerate libertarian social waffling. So move him from Supreme Court nominee to a position of advisor to the mythical "McElhinney Administration Cabinet" and let us move on now to other articles in this department update. The following is from David Bernstein:
THE INEXPLICABLE POPULARITY OF FDR: I'm reading the very interesting The New Dealers' War by Thomas Fleming, a vigorous attack on the Roosevelt Administration's wartime policies, on which I will probably have more to say soon. For now I'll limit myself to the following. Out of curiosity, I looked up some reviews of the book, including Amazon.com reviewers, and one of the latter wrote this: "The book I am really looking forward to is the one that explains how FDR presided over 10 [sic] years of economic depression, and is celebrated for 'saving us' from same." Something I've always wondered about, too. Why is Hoover infamous for presiding over four years of Depression, not terribly uncommon in American history, while Roosevelt is much-beloved for presiding over an unprecedented two more presidential terms of Depression, while much of the rest of the world economy was recovering [edit: at a faster pace]? Of course, Roosevelt tried to blame the nation's economic travails on the obstinacy of the Supreme Court, but, even if we accept the highly questionable notion that the NIRA, etc., would have pulled the U.S. out of the Depression, shouldn't Roosevelt still take the blame for choosing as his means to combat the Depresssion balatantly unconstitutional legislation that the Court was obligated to invalidate (9-0, with liberals Stone, Brandeis, and Cardozo in the 9)?...Click Here to Continue...
I want to focus on a post script added to the above article before concluding this update:
Pejman links to another article suggesting that the New Deal prolonged the Depression. The article is based on a new book, FDR's Folly: How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression due out next month. Sounds like interesting reading.
In case any of the readers are wondering what We at Rerum Novarum happen to think about this very unconventional thesis; for the record your humble servant has not a shred of doubt that it is correct - conventional wisdom be damned. Indeed I have made the argument many times in political discussions that on the whole the New Deal prolonged and made worse the Great Depression.
This created a "need" to go to war to fix the problem via the industrial activity required to rebuild and rearm a nation whose military equipment had become run down and (in some cases) rather obsolete. Obviously this is a very simplistic outline of a rather complex subject but I submit that it is true to form and perhaps sometime I can explain my reasons for seeing things this way. However, right now I will simply leave that point out there for you to mull over.
Today is Our Birthday!!!
Not personal birthday but the one year anniversary of Rerum Novarum. And rarity of rarities, I have virtually no idea how to commemorate this occasion. So I will leave that for the readers of this weblog and for fellow members of St. Blogs to come up with if they want to. I only ask that there be separate lines so I know who is saying what. Three will work as I see it, one for those who either love the weblog or who read it with interest regularly, one for those whose views are more ambiguous, and one for those who want to burn us in effigy - or some equivalent of that anyway.
It seems appropriate to commemorate today with a points to ponder segment from the masterful compendium of ressourcement thinking that was Pope Leo XIII's encyclical from which this weblog was named. (Not that this humble weblog belongs in the same library as that great encyclical of course.) See the next installment for details...
Not personal birthday but the one year anniversary of Rerum Novarum. And rarity of rarities, I have virtually no idea how to commemorate this occasion. So I will leave that for the readers of this weblog and for fellow members of St. Blogs to come up with if they want to. I only ask that there be separate lines so I know who is saying what. Three will work as I see it, one for those who either love the weblog or who read it with interest regularly, one for those whose views are more ambiguous, and one for those who want to burn us in effigy - or some equivalent of that anyway.
It seems appropriate to commemorate today with a points to ponder segment from the masterful compendium of ressourcement thinking that was Pope Leo XIII's encyclical from which this weblog was named. (Not that this humble weblog belongs in the same library as that great encyclical of course.) See the next installment for details...
Thursday, August 21, 2003
Guest Editorial on Public Morality Viz. Legalization of Drugs:
(By Albert Cipriani)
As one who used to spend plenty of time amongst the internet infidel types, I find no small amount of amusement in the continual attempts by such individuals to posit the most complex of solutions to the most basic of all questions: where did we come from. Recently there was a discussion thread on this subject on a list I occasionally participate in - a few of the bits can be read at the following links:
Dr. Art Sippo as quoted in Points to Ponder at Rerum Novarum (blogged August 14, 2003)
Part of a conversation I had about atheistic evolution on a discussion list contemporary to Art's comments above (blogged August 15, 2003)
I bring all of this up because the very subject of morality as it pertains to a particular issue (drug legalization) is currently being debated at the new infidels forum. This guest editorial is part of that debate. The person my friend Albert Cipriani (the "theist of this exchange) is debating admits to "leaning towards" not believing in God. Nonetheless, I post here for your review the first rebuttal of that exchange by my friend Albert in the form of a Guest Editorial with a few minor adjustments made. (Including restructuring it into "proposition" and "rebuttal" form.) The "propositions" will be in black font and the "rebuttals" to them in darkblue font. For the rest of this weblog entry, Albert has the floor...
#######
"I need no convincing that using drugs such as cocaine and heroine is bad.. All I am saying is that it is morally wrong for the government to deny the individual the right to do what he wishes so long as he harms none other."
Once you are convinced of what is immoral, I would not think I should have to convince you that it should be proscribed by the government. If you conceive of democratic governance as nothing more or less than the extension or extrapolation of our collective sense of morality, then you have no conceptual basis from which to leverage your complaints against democratically passed laws reflecting that morality.
The most successful political lie of all time that is still making its rounds is "You can't legislate morality," when, in fact, all legislation is nothing but an expression of the morality of democracy's majority. Whether a law is good or bad is irrelevant to the fact that its passage depends upon the majority's perception that it is good.
Ergo, my task here should only be to convince you that drugs are immoral. That you would vote according to that morality and support laws predicated upon that morality should - like the dawn that follows the night - follow axiomatically.
But even if my dawn did not follow your night, your un-argued assertion that the government ought not to pass a law that "harms none other" than the law-breaker does not follow linearly. That is, it is circular, the fallacy of circulus in demonstrando, an assertion that assumes its conclusion like a snake that's swallowing its own tail.
You assume that the harm an immoral act wrecks upon the immoral actor harms no others. Do you not know "for whom the bell tolls"? Did you not hear that "No man is an island"? There is no such thing as victimless crimes because a crime against oneself diminishes us all.
For example, I was riding a motorcycle during the time that the helmet laws in California were passed, and I rode over the objections of my fellow cyclists. They argued as you argue. Each said he had a "right to do what he wishes," even if that meant spilling his brains out on the pavement.
This so-called "right" is an appeal to the fiction that we are autonomous -- rather than integral -- members of society. It ignores the fact that when a helmet-less head fries its brains on the pavement, our collective investment in its education goes up in smoke. Such a brainless person wastes their family's and friend's emotional investment in them, too. And this assumes the happy prospect that this sorry example of Homo Sapiens is successful. Should said individual fail to compound his empty-headed condition by spilling what brains he has out, he obliges society to hold his feeding straw for the remainder of his vegetative existence. Ergo, no man has a "right" to oblige society to pick up after the mess he's gotten himself into by doing "what he wishes."
"Free will is the greatest good man has.. So let us not trample excessively on the most precious thing we have of all."
A gift denotes a gift-giver. I congratulate you if you mean to say that God's gift of freedom is the most exalted gift with which He has endowed some segments of His creation. But our debate is not about God. Ergo, in the context of Godless morality, our free will must not be apprehended as a gift but as a mere attribute on a par with the attribute of our opposable thumbs. So let's not get all sacrosanct about our gift of freedom. This isn't the place for it.
Our job as parents, educators, and clerics is to mess with other people's freedom. Your characterization of our obligation to guide the uninformed down the paths of righteousness as us trampling upon other people's gift of freedom is sheer demagoguery.
"Good laws are those that contribute to the greatest good."
Surely, intelligence is a great good that contributes to the common good of all. You'd be eating your breakfast eggs raw, without toast, on your hands and knees, naked and without a napkin were it not for the intelligence of others.
But according to your premise, a good law would be any law that would "contribute to the greatest good." So if intelligence contributes to the greater good of mankind, laws that raise our collective intelligence must, by your lights, be good laws. So [do] you approve of Hitler's IQ enhancing eugenic laws whereby he liquidated the mentally infirm to preempt them from breeding? If not, why not?
"As we have our free will impeded by law, we lose overall good."
Law has everything to do with our actions and nothing to do with our free will. I've wanted to rob a bank all my adult life, ever since I was a teller at Bank of America. It's no crime. Ergo, your statement that law impedes free will illustrates that you have no clear conception of either.
"Your entire argument is flawed. [it] has any meaning to me or anyone else whatsoever."
I see. Thank you for sharing that. Try to write an exposition of my argument's many flaws.
"I see no reason (read: you have provided no reason) why the government should, or even has the right to, force people to be rational about everything they do."
Grossly exaggerating your opponent's position does not win you any points. We all should, and all have the obligation (not "right") to convince (not "force") people to be rational. Why do you object to so imminently and self-evidently compassionate an objective? The laws of our democratic government, as but an extension of our collectivized good will, are likewise an expression of compassion, not oppression.
Self-evidently bad laws emanate from the uncompassionate will of the majority trumping the will of the minority with laws from which the majority is immune. It was against such self-seeking proclivities that our supreme court was established (and has been failing to fulfill that mandate ever since).
For example, our progressive tax code takes money from the rich minority and gives it to the poor majority. As such, our tax laws violate the basic tenet of equal treatment. They exist as a testament to selective treatment and are thus prima-facie cases of bad law. But those who advocate drug laws are willing themselves to abide by those same drug laws. Thus, drug laws must be seen as a legitimately moral expression of their compassionate will to garner a collective good.
"You are implying that if a tornado was to kill 146 people, that would be good. Conversely, the 'unnatural' chemotherapy would be bad, because it is not caused in nature."
I never once used the analogous term "nature" to mean the birds-and-the-bees "nature" you are referring to. I used the term "natural law" as a synonym for empiricism. Hence, there is simply no excuse for your mis-categorization of my argument as nature = good. So cartoon-ish a characterization of my position is unworthy of a response, yet I will provide one just the same, just in case you were being serious.
Given the state of medical knowledge today, chemotherapy is a rational -- and therefore good -- response to cancer. Chemotherapy is as rational today as bloodletting was for two millennia. And 50 years hence, no doubt, new knowledge will consign chemotherapy (alongside bloodletting) to the same barbarously irrational dustbin of history.
For our reasoning is only as good as our knowledge. Since our knowledge is always incomplete, our reasoning predicated upon that incomplete knowledge must also be lacking. Hence, rational acts will not necessarily be objectively correct. BUT THEY WILL NECESSARILY ALWAYS BE SUBJECTIVELY CORRECT.
That is, when acting rationally, our incorrect behavior makes us objectively wrong, but subjectively right. Fallible conclusions rationally arrived at only prove we were ignorant, not immoral. Conversely, irrational conclusions embraced by a rational creature -- even if their consequences are not perceived to be incorrect or at all harmful, immoral, or ignorant - prove that that creature has violated the natural law, acted immorally, and sinned against his own nature.
As for tornadoes, as with all inanimate things, they are -- to borrow a phrase from Nietzsche -- "beyond good and evil." They simply are. What they do is beyond the purview of morality for no volition is involved and volition is morality's prerequisite.
But all tornadoes are good in the amoral metaphysical sense of them linking up to the chain of cause and effect that stretches uninterrupted back to the Big Bang. In this sense tornadoes are very good no matter how many people they kill and, to quote the movie "Twister," they are representative of the awesome "finger of God."
Recapitulation of Rebuttal
I've defined reality and the good as one and the same thing, the unfolding through time of cause and effect, otherwise known as the natural law. Conversely, by default, I've defined the bad as any usurpation of a cause's effect or of an effect's cause, otherwise known as a violation of the natural law. The only known power in our universe capable of a usurpation of cause and effect is the immoral power of free will that makes us violators of and fugitives from the natural law. From this metaphysical explication of the good and the bad, I've shown that recreational drug taking violates the natural law and so, by extension, ought to also be a violation of secular law.
You have [by contrast] argued absolutely nothing. Your 1,200-word opening statement distills down to complaints, queries, exaggerations, and the following four un-argued flatfooted assertions:
1) Good laws are those that contribute to the greatest good.
2) As we have our free will impeded by law, we lose overall good.
3) We should only make illegal actions that harm others.
4) Drugs do not directly harm anyone but the user.
Thus far, this has not been a debate. It has been you complaining about my argument while not supporting one of your own.
Thesis Extension:
The one string of intellectual justification clothing all the shameful arguments for legalized drug abuse is that drugs are pleasureful. Of course, pleasure, by definition, is hardly an intellectual justification.
Sins of the flesh are like that. They appeal to our likes. Like our tastes in foods, when it comes to our likes, we either have them or don't have them. And having them, we cannot be convinced not to have them. but only be convinced not to actualize them.
Ergo, arguments against sins of the flesh always appeal to the objective consequences our likes involve, not to the subjective pleasures our likes evoke. Consequently, the counter-arguments for sins of the flesh appeal to the mitigation of these objective consequences, e.g., condoms, penicillin, divorce. Thus, the argument is one-sided, all on the side of us moralists; whereas, the libertarians' counter-argument is the legal equivalent of "extenuating circumstances," the colloquial equivalent of "an excuse."
In short, arguments for making drugs illegal are based upon objectively verifiable consequences. All the counter arguments reduce to a "Yeah, but..." statement, a morally indefensible stance in a quasi-pragmatic quagmire.
#######
(By Albert Cipriani)
As one who used to spend plenty of time amongst the internet infidel types, I find no small amount of amusement in the continual attempts by such individuals to posit the most complex of solutions to the most basic of all questions: where did we come from. Recently there was a discussion thread on this subject on a list I occasionally participate in - a few of the bits can be read at the following links:
Dr. Art Sippo as quoted in Points to Ponder at Rerum Novarum (blogged August 14, 2003)
Part of a conversation I had about atheistic evolution on a discussion list contemporary to Art's comments above (blogged August 15, 2003)
I bring all of this up because the very subject of morality as it pertains to a particular issue (drug legalization) is currently being debated at the new infidels forum. This guest editorial is part of that debate. The person my friend Albert Cipriani (the "theist of this exchange) is debating admits to "leaning towards" not believing in God. Nonetheless, I post here for your review the first rebuttal of that exchange by my friend Albert in the form of a Guest Editorial with a few minor adjustments made. (Including restructuring it into "proposition" and "rebuttal" form.) The "propositions" will be in black font and the "rebuttals" to them in darkblue font. For the rest of this weblog entry, Albert has the floor...
#######
"I need no convincing that using drugs such as cocaine and heroine is bad.. All I am saying is that it is morally wrong for the government to deny the individual the right to do what he wishes so long as he harms none other."
Once you are convinced of what is immoral, I would not think I should have to convince you that it should be proscribed by the government. If you conceive of democratic governance as nothing more or less than the extension or extrapolation of our collective sense of morality, then you have no conceptual basis from which to leverage your complaints against democratically passed laws reflecting that morality.
The most successful political lie of all time that is still making its rounds is "You can't legislate morality," when, in fact, all legislation is nothing but an expression of the morality of democracy's majority. Whether a law is good or bad is irrelevant to the fact that its passage depends upon the majority's perception that it is good.
Ergo, my task here should only be to convince you that drugs are immoral. That you would vote according to that morality and support laws predicated upon that morality should - like the dawn that follows the night - follow axiomatically.
But even if my dawn did not follow your night, your un-argued assertion that the government ought not to pass a law that "harms none other" than the law-breaker does not follow linearly. That is, it is circular, the fallacy of circulus in demonstrando, an assertion that assumes its conclusion like a snake that's swallowing its own tail.
You assume that the harm an immoral act wrecks upon the immoral actor harms no others. Do you not know "for whom the bell tolls"? Did you not hear that "No man is an island"? There is no such thing as victimless crimes because a crime against oneself diminishes us all.
For example, I was riding a motorcycle during the time that the helmet laws in California were passed, and I rode over the objections of my fellow cyclists. They argued as you argue. Each said he had a "right to do what he wishes," even if that meant spilling his brains out on the pavement.
This so-called "right" is an appeal to the fiction that we are autonomous -- rather than integral -- members of society. It ignores the fact that when a helmet-less head fries its brains on the pavement, our collective investment in its education goes up in smoke. Such a brainless person wastes their family's and friend's emotional investment in them, too. And this assumes the happy prospect that this sorry example of Homo Sapiens is successful. Should said individual fail to compound his empty-headed condition by spilling what brains he has out, he obliges society to hold his feeding straw for the remainder of his vegetative existence. Ergo, no man has a "right" to oblige society to pick up after the mess he's gotten himself into by doing "what he wishes."
"Free will is the greatest good man has.. So let us not trample excessively on the most precious thing we have of all."
A gift denotes a gift-giver. I congratulate you if you mean to say that God's gift of freedom is the most exalted gift with which He has endowed some segments of His creation. But our debate is not about God. Ergo, in the context of Godless morality, our free will must not be apprehended as a gift but as a mere attribute on a par with the attribute of our opposable thumbs. So let's not get all sacrosanct about our gift of freedom. This isn't the place for it.
Our job as parents, educators, and clerics is to mess with other people's freedom. Your characterization of our obligation to guide the uninformed down the paths of righteousness as us trampling upon other people's gift of freedom is sheer demagoguery.
"Good laws are those that contribute to the greatest good."
Surely, intelligence is a great good that contributes to the common good of all. You'd be eating your breakfast eggs raw, without toast, on your hands and knees, naked and without a napkin were it not for the intelligence of others.
But according to your premise, a good law would be any law that would "contribute to the greatest good." So if intelligence contributes to the greater good of mankind, laws that raise our collective intelligence must, by your lights, be good laws. So [do] you approve of Hitler's IQ enhancing eugenic laws whereby he liquidated the mentally infirm to preempt them from breeding? If not, why not?
"As we have our free will impeded by law, we lose overall good."
Law has everything to do with our actions and nothing to do with our free will. I've wanted to rob a bank all my adult life, ever since I was a teller at Bank of America. It's no crime. Ergo, your statement that law impedes free will illustrates that you have no clear conception of either.
"Your entire argument is flawed. [it] has any meaning to me or anyone else whatsoever."
I see. Thank you for sharing that. Try to write an exposition of my argument's many flaws.
"I see no reason (read: you have provided no reason) why the government should, or even has the right to, force people to be rational about everything they do."
Grossly exaggerating your opponent's position does not win you any points. We all should, and all have the obligation (not "right") to convince (not "force") people to be rational. Why do you object to so imminently and self-evidently compassionate an objective? The laws of our democratic government, as but an extension of our collectivized good will, are likewise an expression of compassion, not oppression.
Self-evidently bad laws emanate from the uncompassionate will of the majority trumping the will of the minority with laws from which the majority is immune. It was against such self-seeking proclivities that our supreme court was established (and has been failing to fulfill that mandate ever since).
For example, our progressive tax code takes money from the rich minority and gives it to the poor majority. As such, our tax laws violate the basic tenet of equal treatment. They exist as a testament to selective treatment and are thus prima-facie cases of bad law. But those who advocate drug laws are willing themselves to abide by those same drug laws. Thus, drug laws must be seen as a legitimately moral expression of their compassionate will to garner a collective good.
"You are implying that if a tornado was to kill 146 people, that would be good. Conversely, the 'unnatural' chemotherapy would be bad, because it is not caused in nature."
I never once used the analogous term "nature" to mean the birds-and-the-bees "nature" you are referring to. I used the term "natural law" as a synonym for empiricism. Hence, there is simply no excuse for your mis-categorization of my argument as nature = good. So cartoon-ish a characterization of my position is unworthy of a response, yet I will provide one just the same, just in case you were being serious.
Given the state of medical knowledge today, chemotherapy is a rational -- and therefore good -- response to cancer. Chemotherapy is as rational today as bloodletting was for two millennia. And 50 years hence, no doubt, new knowledge will consign chemotherapy (alongside bloodletting) to the same barbarously irrational dustbin of history.
For our reasoning is only as good as our knowledge. Since our knowledge is always incomplete, our reasoning predicated upon that incomplete knowledge must also be lacking. Hence, rational acts will not necessarily be objectively correct. BUT THEY WILL NECESSARILY ALWAYS BE SUBJECTIVELY CORRECT.
That is, when acting rationally, our incorrect behavior makes us objectively wrong, but subjectively right. Fallible conclusions rationally arrived at only prove we were ignorant, not immoral. Conversely, irrational conclusions embraced by a rational creature -- even if their consequences are not perceived to be incorrect or at all harmful, immoral, or ignorant - prove that that creature has violated the natural law, acted immorally, and sinned against his own nature.
As for tornadoes, as with all inanimate things, they are -- to borrow a phrase from Nietzsche -- "beyond good and evil." They simply are. What they do is beyond the purview of morality for no volition is involved and volition is morality's prerequisite.
But all tornadoes are good in the amoral metaphysical sense of them linking up to the chain of cause and effect that stretches uninterrupted back to the Big Bang. In this sense tornadoes are very good no matter how many people they kill and, to quote the movie "Twister," they are representative of the awesome "finger of God."
Recapitulation of Rebuttal
I've defined reality and the good as one and the same thing, the unfolding through time of cause and effect, otherwise known as the natural law. Conversely, by default, I've defined the bad as any usurpation of a cause's effect or of an effect's cause, otherwise known as a violation of the natural law. The only known power in our universe capable of a usurpation of cause and effect is the immoral power of free will that makes us violators of and fugitives from the natural law. From this metaphysical explication of the good and the bad, I've shown that recreational drug taking violates the natural law and so, by extension, ought to also be a violation of secular law.
You have [by contrast] argued absolutely nothing. Your 1,200-word opening statement distills down to complaints, queries, exaggerations, and the following four un-argued flatfooted assertions:
1) Good laws are those that contribute to the greatest good.
2) As we have our free will impeded by law, we lose overall good.
3) We should only make illegal actions that harm others.
4) Drugs do not directly harm anyone but the user.
Thus far, this has not been a debate. It has been you complaining about my argument while not supporting one of your own.
Thesis Extension:
The one string of intellectual justification clothing all the shameful arguments for legalized drug abuse is that drugs are pleasureful. Of course, pleasure, by definition, is hardly an intellectual justification.
Sins of the flesh are like that. They appeal to our likes. Like our tastes in foods, when it comes to our likes, we either have them or don't have them. And having them, we cannot be convinced not to have them. but only be convinced not to actualize them.
Ergo, arguments against sins of the flesh always appeal to the objective consequences our likes involve, not to the subjective pleasures our likes evoke. Consequently, the counter-arguments for sins of the flesh appeal to the mitigation of these objective consequences, e.g., condoms, penicillin, divorce. Thus, the argument is one-sided, all on the side of us moralists; whereas, the libertarians' counter-argument is the legal equivalent of "extenuating circumstances," the colloquial equivalent of "an excuse."
In short, arguments for making drugs illegal are based upon objectively verifiable consequences. All the counter arguments reduce to a "Yeah, but..." statement, a morally indefensible stance in a quasi-pragmatic quagmire.
#######
Tuesday, August 19, 2003
Many know of St. Thomas Aquinas and his well-earned reputation as the Church's quintessential theologian. Not as many though are familiar with the man who taught him St. Albert the Great the man not unjustly referred to as "The Universal Doctor" for the breadth and depth of his knowledge.
St. Thomas exceeded him in some respects this is true; however the Angelic Doctor was more limited in his scope of expert knowledge than his master was. And it is no exaggeration to say that there would be no Angelic Doctor without Albertus Magnus not only because Albert was his teacher but also because Albert was the first to see the brilliance of his pupil and predict that he would change the world. (An endeavour to which Albert himself sought to help cultivate in divers manners.)
Anyway, I hope you find the above link of some interest. (Thanks Mark Shea.) It coincides with an email I received yesterday from an organization trying to raise funds to translate the entire corpus of Albert's Latin works into English in the belief that this endeavour would help in correcting some areas of imbalance in modern society.
As a ressourcement minded person myself, I of course am all in favour of such "back to the sources" kind of solutions over pure novelties. Did I mention that I see in Pope John Paul II a kind of modern Albertus Magnus??? Anyway, may Albert's works be translated and widely read. And may the Magisterium of Pope John Paul II (who will also be known to history as "the Great") succeed in regenerating civilization in the tradition of St Thomas and St. Albert.
St. Thomas exceeded him in some respects this is true; however the Angelic Doctor was more limited in his scope of expert knowledge than his master was. And it is no exaggeration to say that there would be no Angelic Doctor without Albertus Magnus not only because Albert was his teacher but also because Albert was the first to see the brilliance of his pupil and predict that he would change the world. (An endeavour to which Albert himself sought to help cultivate in divers manners.)
Anyway, I hope you find the above link of some interest. (Thanks Mark Shea.) It coincides with an email I received yesterday from an organization trying to raise funds to translate the entire corpus of Albert's Latin works into English in the belief that this endeavour would help in correcting some areas of imbalance in modern society.
As a ressourcement minded person myself, I of course am all in favour of such "back to the sources" kind of solutions over pure novelties. Did I mention that I see in Pope John Paul II a kind of modern Albertus Magnus??? Anyway, may Albert's works be translated and widely read. And may the Magisterium of Pope John Paul II (who will also be known to history as "the Great") succeed in regenerating civilization in the tradition of St Thomas and St. Albert.
Monday, August 18, 2003
The Aggiornamento of Rerum Novarum:
This is not a complete update in the sense that it (i) only contains weblog entries and (ii) it only goes up to July 19th.{1} I also (iii) did not add any blogs, magisterial texts, or other links to this update either. (The latter may be tended to with a mini-update in a day or three which -if I do- will focus on blogs, website, magisterial texts, and other links.) Anyway, without further ado, here we go...
General Political/Social Subjects:
On "Rights" and Freespeech (Parts I and II) [>>>]
The Framers Know Best [>>>]
I intend to extend that thread by several sections in the coming month as well - with the first addition to it being added possibly by as early as Thursday.
Political Miscellany:
On Supreme Court "Constructionists, Whores, and Termites" [>>>]
In light of the recent court rulings, I think it is time to began differentiating between the kinds of justices we have on the court. And I think my terms -and divisions of justices- are quite accurate here.
"Lie to Me" Dept. [>>>]
On "Traditionalism" Properly-So-Called:
Excerpts from Cardinal Newman's Letter to the Duke of Norfolk On "Divided Allegiences" (Parts I-III) [>>>]
This is a prime example of properly-constituted Traditionalist attitudes as espoused by Cardinal Newman so it seemed fitting to add it here.
On "Traditionalism" Falsely-So-Called:
On the Integralist-Traditionalist Connection (Parts I-V) [>>>]
Mr. Smith's Misunderstandings (Parts I-VI) [>>>]
Fatal Flaws of False Traditionalism With Albert Cipriani (Parts I-VII) [>>>]
On Controverted Issues:
On Reflections on Covenant and Mission With Christopher Blosser [>>>]
For those who think I was attributing to His Eminence positions he does not hold - as some self-styled "traditionalists" have opined - well, they can read my last response to Kevin Tierney on true and false "traditionalism" where this subject is addressed. (See the archives for it though as I will not post it to the margin until the next major update.)
SecretAgentMan vs. Rerum Novarum On Communion Posture and the Authority of Bishops (Parts I-V) [>>>]
The above link is simply the extension of the series thus far. There will be more added to it in the coming week or so as a certain man-who-lives-a-life-of-danger has responded to the above and by the tenure of his recent blog cogitations is clearly is in need of a little ...shall we say "persuasion"... Rerum Novarum style...
A Few Notes on Dignitatis Humanae [>>>]
Some very early morning pre-chai musings on DH from about a month ago.
Each and every one of the aforementioned links are hereby posted motu proprio by virtue of my authority as Sovereign Thane and Lord High Executioner of Rerum Novarum. I declare that they are to have residency in the side margin where they have duly been placed forthwith and furthermore decree that they are to remain so established as a perpetual observance at this weblog all things to the contrary notwithstanding.
Note:
{1} For those who have not been following my pattern with these updates over the months, I usually do updates to within two weeks of the date of the posted update. On occasion I will even post an entry or so that is less than two weeks from the day of the update but as a rule I prefer not to do this.
This is not a complete update in the sense that it (i) only contains weblog entries and (ii) it only goes up to July 19th.{1} I also (iii) did not add any blogs, magisterial texts, or other links to this update either. (The latter may be tended to with a mini-update in a day or three which -if I do- will focus on blogs, website, magisterial texts, and other links.) Anyway, without further ado, here we go...
General Political/Social Subjects:
On "Rights" and Freespeech (Parts I and II) [>>>]
The Framers Know Best [>>>]
I intend to extend that thread by several sections in the coming month as well - with the first addition to it being added possibly by as early as Thursday.
Political Miscellany:
On Supreme Court "Constructionists, Whores, and Termites" [>>>]
In light of the recent court rulings, I think it is time to began differentiating between the kinds of justices we have on the court. And I think my terms -and divisions of justices- are quite accurate here.
"Lie to Me" Dept. [>>>]
On "Traditionalism" Properly-So-Called:
Excerpts from Cardinal Newman's Letter to the Duke of Norfolk On "Divided Allegiences" (Parts I-III) [>>>]
This is a prime example of properly-constituted Traditionalist attitudes as espoused by Cardinal Newman so it seemed fitting to add it here.
On "Traditionalism" Falsely-So-Called:
On the Integralist-Traditionalist Connection (Parts I-V) [>>>]
Mr. Smith's Misunderstandings (Parts I-VI) [>>>]
Fatal Flaws of False Traditionalism With Albert Cipriani (Parts I-VII) [>>>]
On Controverted Issues:
On Reflections on Covenant and Mission With Christopher Blosser [>>>]
For those who think I was attributing to His Eminence positions he does not hold - as some self-styled "traditionalists" have opined - well, they can read my last response to Kevin Tierney on true and false "traditionalism" where this subject is addressed. (See the archives for it though as I will not post it to the margin until the next major update.)
SecretAgentMan vs. Rerum Novarum On Communion Posture and the Authority of Bishops (Parts I-V) [>>>]
The above link is simply the extension of the series thus far. There will be more added to it in the coming week or so as a certain man-who-lives-a-life-of-danger has responded to the above and by the tenure of his recent blog cogitations is clearly is in need of a little ...shall we say "persuasion"... Rerum Novarum style...
A Few Notes on Dignitatis Humanae [>>>]
Some very early morning pre-chai musings on DH from about a month ago.
Each and every one of the aforementioned links are hereby posted motu proprio by virtue of my authority as Sovereign Thane and Lord High Executioner of Rerum Novarum. I declare that they are to have residency in the side margin where they have duly been placed forthwith and furthermore decree that they are to remain so established as a perpetual observance at this weblog all things to the contrary notwithstanding.
Note:
{1} For those who have not been following my pattern with these updates over the months, I usually do updates to within two weeks of the date of the posted update. On occasion I will even post an entry or so that is less than two weeks from the day of the update but as a rule I prefer not to do this.
Lane Core will be taking a break for a couple of weeks from blogging. For you newbie bloggers out there (like The Secret One), this is a subtle hint to catch up in reading what they have done as of late. Fortunately with Lane's stuff that is not a problem as his stuff is always of interest. Rest up Lane and I look forward to your return soon to the blogosphere.
We at Rerum Novarum have added Ardeth Wood to our prayer petitions for the eternal repose of her soul. Please do likewise.
The essay I referred to yesterday that needed some adjustments has now been adjusted and is available for reading now at this link.
Sunday, August 17, 2003
Points to Ponder:
In a real sense, inculturation is an extension of the Incarnation. Our God chose a specific people, a specific family, a specific woman, to be born to. He became a specific man who in all ways but sin shared in the human experience -- not just in a generic sense, but in the sense of one man living among one people.
Inculturation, in its highest and best sense, shows that -- in the ultimate paradox -- this specificity has become universal. And the best example of the universal specificity of the Catholic faith is its saints. These saints came from vastly different backgrounds and cultures to achieve extraordinary holiness in Christ. They did it not by spurning their heritage and people, but by sanctifying their culture and uplifting their people. [Michelle of And Then? (8/13/03)]
In a real sense, inculturation is an extension of the Incarnation. Our God chose a specific people, a specific family, a specific woman, to be born to. He became a specific man who in all ways but sin shared in the human experience -- not just in a generic sense, but in the sense of one man living among one people.
Inculturation, in its highest and best sense, shows that -- in the ultimate paradox -- this specificity has become universal. And the best example of the universal specificity of the Catholic faith is its saints. These saints came from vastly different backgrounds and cultures to achieve extraordinary holiness in Christ. They did it not by spurning their heritage and people, but by sanctifying their culture and uplifting their people. [Michelle of And Then? (8/13/03)]
Writings Update:
Both lists of web writings (my treatise "appendix f" and this "miscellaneous writings" link posted to the weblog were updated as of August 15 and posted to the web as of last night or this morning. (I am not sure which.)
Included on the template revisions are the essay link posted here yesterday - to refresh the memory a bit it was the one Pete Vere and I did for the December 6, 2001 issue of The Wanderer. Also included is a link to another piece that Pete and I did for The Wanderer which was published on March 6, 2003. That piece (on the suspension of Fr. Nicholas Gruner) can be read HERE.
The third piece was originally written either for a blog entry or for a periodical publication. However, it was eventually too long for the latter and not of the sort which could be cut down in length. I also decided against posting it to the blog for a few reasons so it was made into a web essay. The new essay complements Pete Vere's recent brief response to a particular critic concerning our Wanderer piece on Fr. Gruner. I would read Pete's piece first since mine was written as a complement to it.
[Update: I have decided to flesh out a little bit of the introduction and also (in the process) found a few grammatical glitches and typos to fix. So if you run across the latter in reading the piece, worry not as I am working on them as of this update. - ISM 7:20 AM]
Both lists of web writings (my treatise "appendix f" and this "miscellaneous writings" link posted to the weblog were updated as of August 15 and posted to the web as of last night or this morning. (I am not sure which.)
Included on the template revisions are the essay link posted here yesterday - to refresh the memory a bit it was the one Pete Vere and I did for the December 6, 2001 issue of The Wanderer. Also included is a link to another piece that Pete and I did for The Wanderer which was published on March 6, 2003. That piece (on the suspension of Fr. Nicholas Gruner) can be read HERE.
The third piece was originally written either for a blog entry or for a periodical publication. However, it was eventually too long for the latter and not of the sort which could be cut down in length. I also decided against posting it to the blog for a few reasons so it was made into a web essay. The new essay complements Pete Vere's recent brief response to a particular critic concerning our Wanderer piece on Fr. Gruner. I would read Pete's piece first since mine was written as a complement to it.
[Update: I have decided to flesh out a little bit of the introduction and also (in the process) found a few grammatical glitches and typos to fix. So if you run across the latter in reading the piece, worry not as I am working on them as of this update. - ISM 7:20 AM]
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