On Robert Sungenis, the Jews, Moriel Ministries, the Catholic Church, and the Importance of Scholatic Integrity and Ethics in Apologetics:
(For Preserving the Historical Record)

This post was written in the form of an email and I have decided to blog it first in a slightly toned down version and then send the original version to those who wrote the tract I am responding to below.


To the Moriel Ministries:

I should note off the bat that I have no problem with you pointing out a number of the idiocies of Robert Sungenis. He poses as an expert on many subjects where he does not know much so that you want to expose his ignorance on knowing Hebrew is (of course) welcome as is your dealing with many of the problems with conspiracy theories of world Jewish domination.

However, I should note that you engage in a degree of propaganda yourself when playing the old and tired (and refutable) canard of the Catholic Church being buddies with Hitler and the Nazis and some other absurd statements made in the above thread. You make a number of such assertions and also play fast and loose with a lot of theological issues. I will deal now with some of them in passing -your words will be in fire coloured font:

Understandably, Jewish over achievement in science in contrast to Roman Catholicism's record of notorious shame which condemned Copernicus and Galileo as heretics for postulating and proving the earth revolved around the sun remains a perpetual source of embarrassment to The Church of Rome (unless you believe the sun revolves around the earth you were to be excommunicated proclaimed the popes).

Copernicus was never censured by Rome in any fashion whatsoever. And your assertion that he was condemned as a heretic is a bald faced lie. If you are going to condemn Robert Sungenis for his bald-faced lies, you need to be man enough to admit to your own or else you are no better than he is. Then there is the issue of Galileo.

Galileo was told not to teach his heliocentric as an inarguable conclusion. This is not a censure of heresy at all and I suggest you make the proper differentiations. Dr. Art Sippo has a pretty good review of a book written on Galileo (where he touches on many of the surrounding issues often not taken into consideration) which can be read here. The attempt to spin the Galileo situation as some "hatred of science" the way not a few disingenuous pseudo -"enlightenment" sorts have done is disgraceful. But obviously it is common to invent fictions as an excuse to avoid dealing with what actually happened so I am not surprised. Except (of course) that you are critical of Sungenis for doing what you yourselves are doing. The word "hypocrite" comes to mind and Jesus did not have nice things to say about hypocrites. (Want me to highlight the many passages where he spoke less than irenically about hypocrites???)

Yet right up until Pius IX, papal encyclicals against the development of modern science were being turned out (Pius IX also issued the infamous papal decree 'Quanta Curia' denouncing democracy).

Pius IX denounced certain forms of democracy, but not democracy in toto. This is obvious when you read the texts with proper scholarly care. In fact, unless you have an agenda against Catholicism akin to Sungenis' agenda against Jews, you have a responsibility to try to be accurate in what you say. Otherwise, you are no better than he is.

The reason a long series of papal encyclicals and bulls condemned science is indeed because they had to. Thomas Aquinas' explanation of transubstantiation is predicated on 'Aristotle's theory of accidents'. In the alchemy of The Dark Ages, magic and chemistry were virtually the same. They had a rudimentary view of stoichiometric or elemental chemistry but knew nothing of sub atomic physics, co-valency, ionic bonding, shells, or electron transfer between atoms. So if chlorine was added to sodium forming sodium chloride (table salt) they still thought it was plain chlorine because they could not understand chemical reactions. In the ancient world, Aristotle said for instance that the fact that it looked and tasted like salt was only its 'appearances' or 'accidents'. Aquinas was an Aristotelian. Hence the 'hoc est corpus meum' formula meant that although their eucharist looked and tasted like bread and wine, that was only the 'accidents', it is actually the protoplasm of Jesus Christ to be ingested cannibalistically and drunk in the vampire ritual of the Mass. This was done despite Jesus saying "the flesh profits nothing" when he said 'unless you eat of His flesh' (John 6: 53-63) , and despite the Apostles flatly outlawing the ritual consumption of blood (Acts 15: 29). Today most Catholics will say they accept transubstantiation by faith, but when Aquinas defined the belief, it was not a matter faith, but a matter of chemistry, a view of 'accidents used to explain what they did not grasp' now debunked by modern chemical science. Hence, too much of modern science undermines the plausibility of essential Roman Catholic dogma.

Boy, listening to you talk about Catholicism is like listening to Sungenis talk about Jews!!! Let us dissect the above rubbish bit by bit...

The reason a long series of papal encyclicals and bulls condemned science is indeed because they had to.

The Catholic Church has never condemned science in toto, only certain scientific theories propagated by certain persons as more than mere scientific hypotheses.

Thomas Aquinas' explanation of transubstantiation is predicated on 'Aristotle's theory of accidents'.

Thomas Aquinas did not come up with the term "transubstantiation", indeed it was an accepted doctrine prior to Aquinas' birth. Whatever his explanation is or is not based on is irrelevant. People explain stuff in less than ideal ways all the time. Heck, your entire tract is filled with (at best) less than ideal explanations and (at worst) downright errors and blasphemy. Moving on...

In the alchemy of The Dark Ages, magic and chemistry were virtually the same. They had a rudimentary view of stoichiometric or elemental chemistry but knew nothing of sub atomic physics, co-valency, ionic bonding, shells, or electron transfer between atoms. So if chlorine was added to sodium forming sodium chloride (table salt) they still thought it was plain chlorine because they could not understand chemical reactions.

So what??? You are making the mistake of predicating a dogma on the language used to explain it. In the realm of supernatural sciences, this has no shortage of problems -indeed one could do this with biblical accounts all day long. One either accepts when dealing with potential supernatural phenomenon that natural explanations will be to some extent inadequate or they presume that natural explanations are always adequate. The latter is essentially an excessive form of rationalism which denies the transcendant. No person of faith (no matter what their faith) can afford to do that and expect to avoid making shipwreck of that faith.

In the ancient world, Aristotle said for instance that the fact that it looked and tasted like salt was only its 'appearances' or 'accidents'. Aquinas was an Aristotelian.

Aquinas was no blind follower of Aristotle -indeed he differed from Aristotle in several areas. Your attempt to showhorn him in as a blind follower of Aristotle shows me you do not know what you are writing about.

Hence the 'hoc est corpus meum' formula meant that although their eucharist looked and tasted like bread and wine, that was only the 'accidents', it is actually the protoplasm of Jesus Christ to be ingested cannibalistically and drunk in the vampire ritual of the Mass.

Hoc est enim corpus meum as a formulary preceded Aquinas by at least eight hundred years. The idea that it was based on Aristotalean metaphysics again shows you are ignorant of what you speak. But I can tell by your vulgar use of language (i.e. "cannibalistically", "vampire ritual", etc) that you are no better than Sungenis is. You use the same kind of bigoted caricatures he does except with a different group of people.

This was done despite Jesus saying "the flesh profits nothing" when he said 'unless you eat of His flesh' (John 6: 53-63) , and despite the Apostles flatly outlawing the ritual consumption of blood (Acts 15: 29).

You are cobbling together verses out of context to support your presuppositions. Acts 15 dealt with differences between Jews and Gentiles. The theme underscoring the whole chapter was whether or not Gentiles needed to be circumcised and to keep the Law in order to be saved. This is obvious from the first lines of the chapter which reads as follows (from the NAB version):

Some who had come down from Judea were instructing the brothers, "Unless you are circumcised according to the Mosaic practice, you cannot be saved." Because there arose no little dissension and debate by Paul and Barnabas with them, it was decided that Paul, Barnabas, and some of the others should go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and presbyters about this question.

This is the context in which the whole of Acts 15 needs to be read if it is to be properly understood. Furthermore, the line you quote requires that as well as some passages prior to it to be properly understood, namely to stop troubling the Gentiles who turn to God, but tell them by letter to avoid pollution from idols, unlawful marriage, the meat of strangled animals, and blood. This was no reference whatsoever to the eucharist so kindly stop the prooftexting.

As far as the eucharist goes, I suggest you educate yourself on these matters before speaking further on it. I wrote an essay on the subject of the real presence about seven years ago which can be read here. Covered in one of the urls of that work is a thorough exegesis of John 6 and (in short) your interpretation is so highly improbable as to be absurd.

Today most Catholics will say they accept transubstantiation by faith, but when Aquinas defined the belief, it was not a matter faith, but a matter of chemistry, a view of 'accidents used to explain what they did not grasp' now debunked by modern chemical science. Hence, too much of modern science undermines the plausibility of essential Roman Catholic dogma.

Again, Aquinas did not define the term and the belief in the real presence can be shown to have not only an ancient pedigree but also to have biblical foundations. That does not mean that certain philosophical models were not utilized to try and explain certain mysteries of the faith. Just as there was a long-standing belief in the Trinity and as Jesus being the eternally begotten Son, problems with heretics denying this belief resulted in the Church defining the term homoousian to explain the principles involved.

Homoousian was based on Greek Platonic principles. Later on, when there were questions as to the ancient biblical understanding of the real presence and just how complete it really was, the Church accepted the term transubstantiation to explain the concept. In that sense there is an Aristotelian principle in play but if you want to be critical of that, you have to deny the divinity of Jesus on the same principle since the latter was explained in the face of Arian heresy in the fourth century using pre-Dark Ages Platonic principles. Otherwise, you are acting inconsistent, arbitrary, and hypocritical.

The gist of the dogma is that Jesus is fully present in his humanity and his divinity in the sacred species at the same time. Catholics believe this because Jesus made it clear in the sixth chapter of John the literalness of his words and his words at the Last Supper were unambiguous. I went over this in the essay noted above and also in this one on the Jewish themes which permeate the mass as the sacrificial remembrance of which the Jewish Passover was a mere foreshadowing of.

Frankly, the more I read of your stuff, the more I am convinced that these concepts are beyond your comprehension. What cannot be denied is that there is no evidence whatsoever of Christians believing differently about the eucharist until the rebellion of the sixteen century and even there you had some who for the most part approached this subject as Catholics do. (See Martin Luther and King Henry VIII.)

If we are to believe you, no one understood the Bible on this matter for fifteen plus centuries. To a thinking person, that should give them ample reason to question those such as you who come along later preaching another Gospel other than that which was received and passed on from the apostles (cf. Galatians i,8-9).

Unless a Roman Catholic clung to the debunked Ptolomean astronomy with earth as the astro physical center of the universe, they were branded heretical and condemned to hell by papal anathema.

I an unaware of any Catholics branded as heretics for merely refusing to hold to Ptolomy's scientific model. And while I do not know everything about Catholicism, compared to you I am probably an expert on it.

Unless you in effect cling to the debunked physics of the Aristotelian "theory of 'accidents' " you will be branded as heretical until this very day; in other words, the ludicrous myth of transubstantiation still requires a belief in a scientifically disproved misunderstanding of physical science.

The problem with your argument is the presumption that there are not certain dogmas that all Christians hold to which are similarly explained by ancient Greek models of expression. The whole notion of Jesus as being both the Son of God and also God Incarnate is Platonic in conception. So if you are going to claim that Catholics should ditch the ancient apostolic belief in the real presence (of which transubstantiation is a technical term intended to denote greater precision) than be consistent and ditch the ancient apostolic belief in Jesus as the Son of God and God Incarnate (of which homoousian was a term accepted by the Church at Nicaea and put into that synod's profession of faith) because otherwise you are acting in a purely arbitrary and hypocritical manner.

Ironically the two things The Jews could not survive without – the scriptures and science, are the very two things Roman Catholicism could not survive with.

The Catholic Church survived for fifteen hundred plus years with the Scriptures prior to the arrival Luther and company. She reproduced the Bible through the centuries by hand, printed numerous editions from the first printing presses before Luther was even born, and has evinced a far greater respect for the Bible than any Protestant group I have come across.

As far as science goes, there have been Catholics in the forefront of scientific discoveries or appropriation of science from the very beginning of the Church's existence. It is not difficult to demonstrate this -indeed only someone ignorant of history does not realize this.

This is why the bible was placed on the papal index of banned books and why papal injunctions condemning modern science as heretical were issued by their popes.

Again, your speak of what you do not know. History amply shows that it was the Catholic church which preserved the Bible throughout the centuries and who sought above all to insure reliable translations. The texts from general councils down through the centuries are suffused with scriptural passage -often using the text of scripture verbatim on key points of doctrine.{1}

What was placed on the index were certain translations of the Bible which were either erroneous in their translations or which contained questionable explanatory notes. To claim that this constitutes "placing the Bible on the index" is pathetic and gives me about as much reason to question your fidelity to scholastic and historical integrity as I do Robert Sungenis'.

Anyone really familiar with the true world of geo-politics and global economics knows the secret Jewish conspiracy theories are anti Semitic nonsense, but Sungenis doesn't. Historians know that 'The Protocols of The Elders of Zion' is a ridiculous forgery, and it would be hard to imagine that Sungenis doesn't, but the text of his article seems to follow the same essential underlying thrust.

You do no better than Sungenis by accepting as uncritically antiCatholic smears and historical revisionism every bit as noxious as the Protocols of Zion.

As far as the pictures of Hitler leaving a church and claiming that he was "never excommunicated", you show an ignorance of the various forms of excommunications. There are acts which by their very nature incur an immediate excommunication and there are acts which have a recognized penalty to them but the penalty is inflicted by judicial sentence. Adolph Hitler as an apostate was already excommunicated by that very fact under the 1917 Code so a formal judicial pronouncement was strictly speaking not necessary. Those who presume that it was{2} show that they do not know what an excommunication is or the various ways it can be incurred.

Other pictures are similarly problematical not because of their existence but because you do not give any details as to where or when they were taken. You mention for example:

Cardinal Secretary of State, Eugenio Pacelli (later to become Pope Pius XII) signs the Concordat between Nazi Germany and the Vatican at a formal ceremony in Rome on 20 July 1933. Nazi Vice-Chancellor Franz von Papen sits at the left, Pacelli in the middle, and the Rudolf Buttmann sits at the right.

The Concordat effectively legitimized Hitler and the Nazi government to the eyes of Catholicism, Christianity, and the world.

You fail to make it clear that Pacelli as Secretary of State functioned in the same capacity for the Vatican as Condoleeza Rice does for the United States. In attempts at diplomacy, there have to be personal points of contact between entities at the highest levels and (like it or not) Hitler was Chancellor of Germany and Franz von Papen was Vice Chancellor. Cardinal Pacelli in other words as Pope Pius XI's second at the Vatican was negotiating with Adolph Hitler's second in Nazi Germany.

The purpose of the Concordat was to secure for the Catholics in Germany the rights to religious freedom. The very same Cardinal Pacelli had this to say to Ivone Kirkpatrick (the British minister to the Vatican) about the reasons for the concordat with Nazi Germany:

"The spiritual welfare of 20 million Catholic souls in Germany was at stake, and that was the first and, indeed, only consideration."

Cardinal Pacelli referred to the precarious position that the Holy See found itself in when he further told Kilpatrick that the Holy See "had to choose between an agreement on [Nazi] lines and the virtual elimination of the Catholic Church in the Reich." Whatever problems one wants to note about the prudence or lack thereof in the timing of the concordat,{3} it was nonetheless a lessor of two evils approach, not the coddling up to the Nazis picture that you disingenuously seek to portray.

Among Sungenis' heroes are the late popes John XXIII, and John Paul II, who went to war torn former Yugoslavia at the behest of Catholic Croats desiring the beatification of the Ustashi Nazi Arch Bishop Stepinac. The 750,000 Serbs and Jews murdered in the Hitler aligned Ustashi Nazi holocaust were offered their lives by Stepinac if they agreed to convert to Roman Catholicism.

My word you are really ignorant! Archbishop Stepinac saved many Jewish lives. He is even on track to one day be honoured for this in a Croatian memorial of remembrance located in Jerusalem which was erected by an Israeli in 1953.

Archbishop (later Cardinal) Stepinac did what he could to help and recognized that the time of the war would be different than the time afterwards for those who converted under duress:

"The role and task of Christians is on the first place to save people. When this time of madness and wildness is over, only those will remain in our Church who converted out of their own conviction, while others, when the danger is over, will return to their faith."

I am shocked that you would find fault with a cleric doing what he could to save people from being slaughtered. What pray tell did Moriel Ministries do during the war to help people? Oh yes, you were probably not around back then. You have no historical pedigree in apostolic Christian but people should listen to you???

I have no doubts that if ever there is another situation like what happened in World War II that you will not exhibit the same concern for people not of your religion that Archbishop Stepinac did. Instead, you would play the "better join our community or you will definitely go to hell" schtick which (based on some of the stuff on your site) is an accurate description of your little cult.

Indeed, so much of Roman Catholic doctrine contradicts the plain teaching of Jesus

I have reviewed and debunked countless attempts over the years by persons such as you to prove this. Your stuff misrepresenting the "call no man your father" line as well as the typical canards on priestly celibacy and St. Paul's actual views on the matter (which are not what you think) is standard antiCatholic boilerplate drivel which any reasonably informed apologist can easily dispatch with.

Even Catholic authors like John Cornwell agree that Hitler was brought to power in coalition with the Zentrum Catholic Party of Bavaria under Hans Von Papen, the privy chamberlain to Pius XII, who perpetrated the biggest act of terrorism ever carried out on American soil prior to 9/11 during World War I at the Black Tom in New York harbor.

John Cornwall is to the history of Pope Pius XII what the Protocols of Zion are to the history of Jews. You do not do your views a service by grabbing onto every false and libelous assertion about Catholics while whining about Sungenis doing the same thing to Jews. Consistency requires that if you decry it for your allies that you likewise decry it when your friends do it.

Roman Catholics are shocked when we show them our photo collection of Arch Bishop Stepinac (who was also honored by John XXIII) giving the 'heil Hitler' salute to Hitler youth, and photos of Roman Catholic nuns marching with the Gestapo at Nazi rallies, and of Catholic priests blessing swastikas, and photos of the Franciscan Filipovitch dressed both in his cassock and in his Nazi uniform as chief of the Jasenovac concentration camp, as well as documented quotes from the Roman Catholic Bavarian Concordat with The Nazi Party (the bishops swore allegiance to Hitler).

Pictures are easily used for propagandistic purposes. Joseph Goebbels did this during the Nazi regime and apparently you have learned well from him. And then as priceless as Mastercard are your final words:

It is not our aim or delight to malign, slander, or defame Robert Sungenis. If there is any malice, it is not ours, But we cannot be accountable when someone's own published words and actions discredit them. We offer no character judgments , we only present facts for our readers to decide for themselves, and these facts are plainly irrefutable.

Your "facts" are no more "plainly irrefutable" than Joseph Goebbels' propaganda was. Even the many pictures of cardinals with Hitler are not as problematical as you presume for this reason: Hitler was the head of state in Germany and Vatican City is a sovereign state. Sovereign nations exchange dignitaries all the time; it is part and parcel to diplomacy. Ergo, if the Vatican sent someone to try and negotiate with Hitler, it would have been a curialist and with all likelihood a cardinal at that.

Your pictures of clerics at Nazi rallies are also disingenuous because you do not tell us where you get them from. The one titled Cardinal Michael Faulhaber marches between rows of SA men at a Nazi rally in Munich is a real hoot because Cardinal Faulhaber's record as a friend of the Jews was beyond reproach. He also was the primary drafter of Pope Pius XI's Encyclical Letter Mit Brennader Sorge (1937) which unequivocally condemned the racial doctrine which was at the heart of the Nazi philosophy. (Cardinal Pacelli also had a hand in drafting the text.)

Obviously you have bought into the lies of people such as John Cornwall as you list his book as a source on the Sungenis thread. That puts you squarely in the same camp as the very Robert Sungenis whose shoddy scholarship and lack of basic ethics you seek to point out as they pertain to Jewish issues. But this could be done without sacrificing your own credibility in the process. History should be respected, not treated as a propagandizing tool. It was said once that "he who tells the people revolutionary legends, he who amuses them with sensational stories, is as criminal as the geographer who would draw up false charts for navigators." And you are a criminal sir because you have shown no respect for the proper handling of facts.

One final example of note is your references to John Cornwall who tries to play with the historical record and make Pope Pius XII a Nazi sympathizer following in the footsteps of the 1963 propaganda play The Deputy. That may well be the so-called "conventional wisdom" today but those who know their history know better. For example, shortly after the death of Pope Pius XII in 1958, the world mourned his death as a man of peace. In Israel, where there would be no kind words for a Nazi sympathizer, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir had these words to say about the late pontiff at the United Nations:

We share in the grief of humanity at the passing away of His Holiness, Pope Pius XII. In a generation afflicted by wars and discords he upheld the highest ideals of peace and compassion. When fearful martyrdom came to our people in the decade of Nazi terror, the voice of the Pope was raised for its victims. The life of our times was enriched by a voice speaking out about great moral truths above the tumult of daily conflict. We mourn a great servant of peace.

Scholarly treatments by Prof. Ronald Rychlak, Pinchas Lapide, and (most recently) Rabbi David Dalin only scratch the surface as I could point out numerous other scholarly sources which deal with these matters in an ethical and scholarly way -both Catholic and non-Catholic. (Of the three I did note, at least two of them are Jewish.) But I doubt it would matter. The reason??? You are evidently as untrustworthy when it comes to ethical and scholarly integrity as Robert Sungenis is.{4} As far as whether or not you are as unethical, it remains to be seen how you choose to respond to the contents of this note I am sending to you.

Do not think this note deals with all of the factual errors in your tract because it does not. There are many others which I have not gotten to but at some point, better things to do with one's time must factor into it.

But what really angers me is not that you made these kinds of errors but that apparently I should have looked closer at your site where I would have seen this before I took time out of my busy schedule to bother with any kind of a response to you:

Former Catholics For Christ

Moriel now has a web page on Catholicism and we are very interested in having your testimonies. Please pray and consider sending us your testimony to us for inclusion on our page.

Obviously your disgraceful conduct here cannot be chalked up to being well-meaning but mistaken but instead is due to a personal vendetta of sorts. Your obvious hatred of Catholicism has resulted in you sacrificing scholastic and ethical integrity in order to advance your noxious agenda of false witness. I would ask for your apostolic credentials to teach (cf. Rom x,14ff) but I know you have none. Instead, you are as illegitimate as Korah and (I trust) will suffer the same fate as he did for it if you do not see the error of your ways and repent. One does not have to accept someone's views in order to represent them fairly. But someone who is truly Christian where it counts would strive to present the views of others accurately even if they did not happen to agree with them. That is part and parcel of what the gospel teaching of in what measure you shall mete, it shall be measured to you again, and more shall be given to you (Mark iv,20-25) means. If you have ears to listen, it would be wise if you did.

Notes:

{1} To note a couple of examples, consider Trent's Decree on Justification and the Second Vatican Council's Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation. I challenge you to show any doctrinal statements from your own paltry "Christian church" with a similar suffusion of Scripture in them and this is just two of numerous texts I could have chosen.

{2} Apart from the argument that it would have helped in the fight against the Nazis: a proposition which is controvertible at the very least.

{3} And I can think of a couple areas where it could possibly have been handled better.

{4} Your reliance on John Cornwall as one of your sources makes this call a slam dunk because no one who respects sound scholarship takes his work on this subject seriously. One reviewer of the book summarized the worth of this volume quite aptly so I will quote a bit from his words at this time:

Vatican library records show that Cornwall spent very few hours there and that he was not privy to any materials unavailable to other scholars. In short, there is little really new in Cornwall's account. And his interpretation of materials is often deeply flawed. His claim, for example, that Plus harbored a deep anti-Semitism is based simplistically on a condemnatory remark Pius made about Jewish bolsheviks. The comment may have been inappropriate, but many Jews of the time said far worse things about Jewish bolsheviks.

Cornwall presents only the evidence that suggests his predetermined view. Nowhere does he seriously engage the major scholarship on Plus that has come from such important Jewish and Christian researchers on the period as Michael Marrus, John Morley, John Conway and Owen Chadwick. Some of their works are listed in Cornwall's bibliography, but he does not seem to have used them. He does not even acknowledge Marrus's major work on the subject. Nor does he deal in any comprehensive way with the published Vatican archival material.

It is disturbing to see the attention this book has received from the secular press, including reputable journals. That publisher hype can elevate a work of deeply flawed scholarship to the bestseller list is a serious threat to responsible scholarship. No well-recognized scholar who has studied the relationship between the Vatican and the Holocaust was asked to review this volume in the nonreligious press.

Sounds like you, Sungenis, and Cornwall are birds of a feather flocking together to me!!!

A Mailbag Clarification:
(By Request of an Emailer)

Here is the text of the request I received this morning with regards to a blog post yesterday of an email from December. The writer's words will be in shale coloured font.

Shawn, having re-read the excerpt from my December email that's now on your site, I have a thought: It would be better, from my point of view, if you added my name to it.

I don't recall what my train of thought was back then, but it occurs to me that if I'm going to help make such harsh criticism of somebody else by name, I shouldn't hide behind anonymity. Besides which, much of what's said there--and I don't regret any of it, it's how I feel and I think well-founded--much of what I said there I've said in a variety of venues, just scattered about, with my name attached. (Partly, I think, back then some of my comments were still somewhat tentatively formed in my mind, but on review and with the passage of time I am confident of being able to substantiate all of its contents. And partly, I just answered you quickly without giving much more thought to it).

So if in your mind this doesn't somehow mar your presentation, I do request that you add my name to it. If you're able to do this, perhaps just adding my name in your intro with an asterisk ("I decided instead to post a note from reader Christopher Fotos*...) and another footnote saying that after initial publication I asked you to identify me.

(I don't think any other ID is necessary; many people following this dispute will be familiar with my name, and if you get any other inquries just send them to my blog where they can noodle around and find my bio).

Let me know what you think--and I very much appreciate your sensitivity regarding emails and everything else.

No problemo Chris. I take private correspondence seriously and that is why I rarely use people's names when posting to the blog of emails or other correspondence. But as per your request, I will note your blog here and attach this thread to the previous posting so your identification is known to the readers.

"Nothing Under the Sun Is New" Dept.

Courtesy of Stand Up And Speak Out via The Western Alliance...

"Our President has lied to us." "He has falsely led us into this war." "He has abused our civil rights." "He has exceeded his Presidential powers." "Americans are dying because of this war that should have never been fought."

You might have thought that I was talking about our current president, but actually, I was referring to criticism about the 16th president, Abraham Lincoln. Now considered one of our greatest presidents, Lincoln was bombarded with criticism from the press, from the Democrats, and even from within his own Republican party. Because the presidential criticism is very similar today, it is valuable to examine how the public opinion of President Lincoln has changed. [Excerpt from Criticism Of Our President(s)?]

The similarites between Lincoln and Bush viz. the respective wars they were involved in is well documented in the above thread and points out why whatever one thinks of President Bush overall, so many of the criticisms of him in the area of the war in Iraq are stupid, short-sighted, and also manifest the sort of ignorance of history which shows why the latter often repeats itself from generation to generation.

Give the whole thing a read folks as the analysis is good.

"From the Mailbag" Dept.

A few readers wondered if I planned to write a concurring commentary to the guest editorial of one Rod Serling as posted on Tuesday of this week. I decided instead to post a note from a reader who saw an early draft of the email eventually blogged on December 7th on the public and private double standards of the apologetics oligarchy. In lieu of later developments, it seemed appropriate to add a fourth footnote so I did that in this text posting. The words of the emailer words will be in shale coloured font.

That draft you appended is strong stuff.

It has been building up for a long time. Some of it has made it into the weblog -particularly in recent months{1} but it is hardly coming out of nowhere I assure you.

Let me tell you that I know very little about the Catholic apologetics establishment and have no idea how all the pieces fit together, who writes for whom, who has rank or station by reputation or otherwise, etc. I guess I want to say that I don't want to see myself in the position of yelling safely from the sidelines at somebody like you in a way that encourages harsh action, the consequences of which I will most likely never feel. We have only a slight acquaintence with each other and I'm sure I wouldn't have any undue influence on you, but I wanted to say that anyway.

No problem. Believe me, if that email is ever blogged, it will be toned down only slightly in the venom the arguments will remain the same. I am not one to generally shirk from saying what is on my mind -particularly when I see problems that perpetuate due to the negligence of those who can do something about them.

That being the case, I will briefly tell you how all of this looks to a generic and not very wonderful Catholic, that is to say, me.

You just described me XXXXX. That is what bothers me so much about this: I see people who in many cases are probably better Catholics than I am who act like such unethical and illogical idiots. I touched on it in an indirect way here and the irony of that post is that the person I was speaking to has had a beef with Mark Shea going back six years to the time we were all on Steve Ray's old message board (prior to 2003). Mark showed traces of this attitude back then but I chalked it up to his frustrations in dealing with Albert -who is someone who seeks to show a proper respect for reason and logic in his discussions. But what appeared at the time to be a rare aberration on Mark's part is now manifesting itself with greater frequency as something a lot more serious.

I first started reading Mark Shea at least around April 2002, along with some other Catholic blogs, to educate myself about the faith (I'm a cradle Catholic). I was fascinated and educated by his many posts (at the time) about the differences between Catholic and Protestant theology, some aspects of Church history, the Communion of Saints, Mary, etc. I thought this was a valuable service.

Mark has some impressive talents that is for sure. On some issues, he can explain the factors involved better than most people -I even gave five stars to his book on Tradition some time back{2} and I do not retract that review at all even if I have since come to question the depth of Mark's understanding of a subject he has often explained so well.

I won't prove, though I believe, that his blog emphasized Catholic matters per se more than any kind of running commentary of current events. I could be wrong about that.

You are not wrong about that at all. Mark used to stick to apologetics stuff and that is how he built his reputation which was well-deserved. Unfortunately, he has branched off into stuff he is not well equipped to discuss and that will be his downfall if he does not reverse course.

What I am certain of is that it was less angry. It didn't have these interminable tirades. It didn't have what another correspondent aptly has described as a "fixation" on figures like Michael Ledeen. I don't recall him posting serial misrepresentations of public figures and obstinately refusing to change his characterizations when confronted with the facts. If he was doing that a few years ago, I missed it or it was much less frequent.

Well, I remember in years past he acted this way on occasion. But very rarely. And as everyone can be an ass sometimes, it was easy to overlook both for that reason and because of the tendency towards putting the best possible interpretation on stuff that appears to do someone an injustice. That is unfortunately no longer possible to do with him anymore and has not been for a while now.

As I have said to another correspondent, perhaps copied to you, if I'd never heard of Mark Shea until this week and stumbled on his blog, I wouldn't have spent more than five minutes on it before writing Shea off as a second-rate demagogue.

Agreed. Dave Armstrong is the same way sometimes but to Dave's credit, it is less frequent than Mark. But then again, Dave is usually smart enough to stick to boilerplate apologetics stuff. I say usually because he got offtrack with me on a subject which was not boilerplate apologetics but instead had many complex factors. His attitude in dealing with them was eerily similar{3} to the way Mark has acted on the torture issue.

The personal and rhetorical errors he's fallen into are well-known so I won't repeat most of them. But I was truly amazed, at a time when I thought I no longer could be, when Mark added Fr. Brian Harrison to his enemies list, speaking of him in such a dismissive and spiteful way.

Fr. Harrison's work on this subject is his best in years.

Fr Harrison is not the Pope nor Archbishop and is in no need of being put on a pedestal. But the seriousness of his two articles and the charity with which they were offered should have been obvious to anyone who can read. That kind of step-by-step march through Church history was the kind of service I once found at Shea's site, though probably not at the same erudite level.

Most definitely not. Fr. Harrison is thorough and I appreciate that -even when I do not agree with him.

Even if you disagree with it--and I don't have the confidence to make any kind of magisterial pronouncement--it was a substantial contribution to the record available to most Catholics.

Yes.


Yet if you follow the somewhat deranged train of Mark's thought, Harrison was part of the Apologist for Satan club.

Yep.

In what scheme are Catholic apologists supposed to use such language when referring to a theologian, presumably in good standing, installed at a Pontifical University? It's shabby in any case, but surely some line has been crossed here.

Mark is over the line and needs to be reined in by someone. The question is, will Keating and Akin pull a no show as thus far they have done (and not to my surprise I might add).{4}

Mark's blog is a scandal, though I don't know exactly what can be done about it or what buttons to push. Perhaps a couple years from now we'll learn of attempts at private fraternal correction from the direction of Jimmy Akin, the kind of actions that eventually came to light regarding Robert Sungenis.

Not likely because of the double standard involved here. If Mark was an sspx supporter, all barrels would be turned on him. But as he is not, "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" is the order of the day by the apologetics oligarchy.

What I do believe with complete conviction is that Mark will not stop until he is forced to. That means being confronted by someone with power over him, or someone for whom he has deep affection. Probably the former. Usually that's the only thing that bullies notice.

Yep but in this case it gets back to what my father used to tell me when I was a kid: when in doubt, always follow the $$$. That is why Mark's lips are so firmly attached to Jimmy's butt right now whereas if you, I, or anyone else saying what Jimmy is saying would be targets for Mark's rhetorical bs.

Notes:

{1} While more could be noted in my archives of posts pointing towards a significant shift of emphasis prior to that point (indeed stuff going back over a year or more prior to that point such as this one and this one), the following is perhaps the most explicit turning point of sorts that I can recall offhand:

Some Recent and Future Weblog Additions, A Reappraisal of Site Principles, Reapplying Said Principles, and Other Applicable Tidbits (circa June 23, 2006)

From there, things get more and more explicit and that is not by accident.

{2} Via Amazon.com:

By What Authority?: An Evangelical Discovers Catholic Tradition by Mark P. Shea
Edition: Paperback
Price: $8.95

Availability: In Stock

36 used & new from $5.50


22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

*****Possibly the Best Defense of Catholic Tradition in Print... , February 23, 2000

Especially page for page. The book is not too long and it deals from a number of angles with a topic that is often difficult for even those knowledgeable about the faith to put into words: what is Tradition and how does it function? Anyone who has done apologetics with Protestants knows the common statement "when will Rome produce a laundry list of all of their traditions?" This is a statement that misses the boat because it does not look at Tradition as a living entity that simultaneously develops while maintaining its inner essence.

As other reviewers have noted already, it is in essence Mark's spiritual journey from Evangelicalism to Catholicism (or should I say spiritual completion?) as he looks at the different aspects of Tradition and realizes that the Scriptures and the Church require the Tradition to properly function. With the exception of one minor but common error (confusing the Council of Trent's solemn definition of the canon as the first "infallible" decree: most Catholics do not even understand the nuances of the Magisterium unfortunately), I was very impressed and would recommend this book to any Protestant (especially Evangelicals) to become acquainted with Tradition and learn why it is necessary for any guarantee of the truth of Our Lord's revelation. For Catholics it will help in learning to explain this topic to Protestants from someone (Mark Shea) whom I believe discusses this topic better than anyone else currently writing today.

{3} I am not going to go into how badly he fared in that exchange as it is off the point of this subject to some extent.

{4} Unfortunately, that prediction thus far has come to fruition. I noted it a bit in this posting and probably will say more on it in the coming months if things do not change on that front and soon.

Its been a while since I noted any parodies from Jib Jab. Here is one lampooning the mentality of many who frequent mega-chains like Wal-Mart, another one involving Weird Al, and a third one giving a review of 2006. After a long day, a bit of levity seems appropriate; ergo there you go.

Points to Ponder: 

He who tells the people revolutionary legends, he who amuses them with sensational stories, is as criminal as the geographer who would draw up false charts for navigators. [Ralph E. Luker]

Guest Editorial on Catholic Apologetics and Cult-Style Deadagenting Tactics Commonly Utilized By Not A Few of Its Practitioners:
(Written by Rod Serling)

The following was sent to your humble servant shortly before Christmas of last year during the self-imposed Christmas truce. The writer apparently had familiarized themselves with the protocols for presenting Guest Editorials which have been utilized on this weblog virtually from day one{1} and what you are about to read is being posted with them in mind. I decided to colour-code the text to make it easier to discern between who said what so the words of Joseph D'Hippolito have been put in blue font, the words of Mark Shea are in fire coloured font, and the words of Victor Morton are in darkblue font while the words of the editorialist are in regular blog font colour. But without further ado...

#######


Catholic Apologetics in the Twilight Zone

By Rod Serling

One of the regular posters in the Coalition comboxes has repeatedly called for mass murder publicly, yet nobody in the Coalition does an investigation of him, despite the fact that his ravings are far more liable to sway public opinion given that they are featured on Front Page Mag and in the Jerusalem Post...though I do think Front Page mag disgraces itself by printing maniacs like D'Hippolito and the Coalition disgraces itself by treating him as a serious "partner in dialogue"

A middle-aged man has a loving wife, four sons who make him proud and a profession that, though not very lucrative, enables him to use his talents for a cause he believes in. But something is missing. This man obsesses about somebody he's never met.

Presented for your consideration: Mark Shea, a resident of Montlake Terrace, Washington who makes his living as an apologist for the Catholic Church. His job allows him to write books and articles. It takes him around the world to lecture and has won him the admiration of many. Yet, like the Flying Dutchman, all those travels cannot relieve Mr. Shea of his albatross.

That albatross is Joseph D'Hippolito, a free-lance writer who has the audacity to think for himself and to comment publicly on the church's role in international politics. Mr. D'Hippolito and Mr. Shea have crossed swords on numerous occasions, most recently about the death penalty.

On a blog run by another apologist, Jimmy Akin, Mr. D'Hippolito challenged the church's view of capital punishment. Although Mr. D'Hippolito is outnumbered by five to one, all parties handle the intense conversation with relatively little name-calling. However, more than halfway down the conversation thread, Mr. Shea joined the fray in midstream to exhibit what can only be called a tendency to pile on. Mr. Shea begins the exchange:

One gets the distinct impression that Hippo's Bible consists of about three verses, all of them calling for death.

"I am come that they might have death and that abundantly." - The Gospel According to Joseph.

It really is an obsession for him: as though the main point of the gospel was to make sure that as many people as possible are killed and that any variation from that Presiding Goal is a disgusting perversion of the Faith.

You go, SDG!

(SDG was one of the people in the discussion. Guess who "Hippo" is?)

More from Mr. Shea:

You will find that Joe has a small treadmill of ideas (not all of them compatible) that he rehearses again and again and again. Theologically, he's an Evangelical (Arminian, Calvin is in Hell, according to Joe) who retains a Catholic attachment to the Eucharist, but who holds large portions of Catholic ecclesiology in complete and utter contempt. His main treadmill issues are political: the death penalty, which he appears to regard as one of the principle sources of revelation, lots of hatred for Islam (and corresponding contempt for Church teaching which says that Muslims worship the same God we do, albeit with grave defects), various kneejerkisms about the superiority of the American Way to the Church, various pronouncements on just who is in Hell (most notably, Pope John Paul II).[1] If you talk to him for long, you'll soon get a sense of what I mean. The main theme that comes through his writing is a deep love for death and vengeance on as large a scale as possible. Christ's mercy seems to be largely restricted to Joe and those Joe approves of. For the rest of the human race, bloodshed on a vast scale followed by eternal torment is too good for them.

(Notice that Mr. Shea, as a professional apologist, never cites any ideas, texts or even any work that he might have done on the issue to refute Mr. D'Hippolito's points, which were based on citations from the Bible, Augustine and Aquinas and the logic that proceeded from them.)

Mr. D'Hippolito responds:

Now to you, Mark P. Shea:

Don't you find it just a little bit pathetic that, as a professional apologist, the only way you can even attempt to rebut any of my points is through personalized insinuations and attacks, even to the point of stooping to the level of the crackers on this thread to make fun of my last name? Then again, what else should I expect?

Mr. Shea responds:

My apologies for making fun of your name. As to the rest of your complaint, it is completely meaningless. I attacked not your person but your (endlessly restated) views.

(Notice again, gentle reader, that Mark never really addressed Mr. D'Hippolito's views but caricatured them so that he wouldn't need to address them).

Mr. D'Hippolito responds:

Mark, your apologies have less value than Confederate money because you make no effort to change your obnoxious behavior toward me or anybody else.

Besides, vain apologies still do not get you off the hook from failing to respond to my points like an intelligent human being instead of as a terminal adolescent.

Mr. Shea's final response unintentionally reinforces what Mr. D'Hippolito said about him earlier:

Your points make no sense. Essentially, you have not given one bit of thought to anything anybody has said. You are still basically arguing that (somehow) we are obliged to execute as many people as possible. This is nonsense. You are also arguing that John Paul contradicted the teaching of the Church. This is double plus nonsense. And you are talking as though some Doctor of the Church makes it impossible for the Holy Father to say, "Try to execute as few people as possible." Triple nonsense. In all the years you have obsessed over this, that is all you have ever been saying. You position comes down to saying, "I want as many people as humanly possible executed! John Paul disagrees with me and I hate him so much I hope he is in Hell. Now I will dedicate my life to repeating this meme again and again and again throughout St. Blogs." About 1/4 of your total posts over the past few years could be replaced with that summary and nothing would be lost of the substance of your "argument".

This has not been isolated behavior for Mr. Shea. For years, he would followe Mr. D'Hippolito throughout the Catholic Internet Universe. He would intrude upon conversations that did not concern or mention him. He would argue from non sequiturs and use personal attacks. He would do everything he could to draw Mr. D'Hippolito into "flame wars" that would get him banned from these various blogs. Often, it worked.

One man who came to Mr. D'Hippolito's defense was Victor Morton, a national editor for the Washington Times. Mr. Morton, whom Mr. Shea had lied to previously and in private, posted the following on Dale Price's blog in 2004 after a typical Shea-D'Hippolito exchange:

I swore I would never again acknowledge Mr. Shea's existence, but this thread is a perfect example of why Joseph is right that he is pursuing a persecutionist vendetta.

The reader will note above that the thread, prior to Joseph's first post, had not involved Mr. Shea. Further, it had nothing to do with the war on terrorism, nuclear weapons or just war, the state of Islam or anything else remotely related to Joseph's comments. Further, that Joseph's comments did not introduce those topics.

Let us stipulate that Joseph's comments about nuking Mecca et al are something less than orthodox (they are not insane or Satanic, because, as I once repeatedly and without answer pointed out to Mr. Shea, the Church does not condemn any possession of nuclear weapons as a sin, which means SOME uses of them have to be moral despite the unquestionable fact they kill civilians en masse). Joseph did not attempt to engage Mr. Shea, did not attempt to hijack his blog, did not refer to him. So it's rather unconvincing to hear "I've spent a great deal of time avoiding you. You're like a bad penny. ... I keep running into your obnoxious and abusive crap on blogs I regularly read." Everybody has some people they don't like, or can't imagine engaging even for the sake of collegial disagreement, someone at St. Blogs whose orthodoxy they question. Tough titty....

Mr. Shea's disagreement (he is not a bishop and has no real authority in these matters, so nothing he says can ever rise above that) is not an excuse to try to destroy somebody's reputation by repetitively injecting himself wherever Joseph may go, talking about whatever subject Joseph may, and calling him Osama bin Laden or a mass murder advocate. This was NOT disagreement with somebody, but an attempt to demonize a human being, to make him anathema as such, to pursue him like a stalking siren. And Joseph is right to protest it.

Mr. Shea had even gone so far as to encourage his blog readers to pressure Front Page Magazine, a Web site operated by conservative activist David Horowitz, not to publish any more of Mr. D'Hippolito's articles after one appeared criticizing the Vatican's approach to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Mr. Shea began his campaign by reproducing a letter sent to Front Page Magazine:

[Front Page Magazine] is, of course, hardly to blame for giving a forum to this most remarkable thinker. They didn't know him from Adam and he managed to maintain a facade of sanity throughout his article (though members of St. Blogs will recognize the Same Old Monomania is not very far below the surface). However, having been alerted to some of the author's other and less sane positions on world affairs, such as the advocacy of the pre-emptive nuclear annihilation of millions of innocent non-combatants "for a higher cause" (much like his soulmate Osama bin Laden's advocacy of same), it is to be hoped that FPM does not lower itself to affording him a chance to gain respectability for his vile and monstrous ideas.

Kudos to my reader for calling FPM's attention to their blunder. If this man becomes a regular go-to guy for pro-war journals seeking pundits to make the case for some Grand End to Evil Project and to rally the troops against the Church when Just War doctrine becomes inconvenient, it will do more than any thing they could possibly do to demonstrate the bankruptcy of the Agitprop Campaign. He should not be touched with a barge pole. Only utter ignorance of his fanatical views or total desperation would explain it if he goes into editorial rolodexes as some sort of serious Catholic Pundit. And FPM is no longer ignorant.

Mr. Morton responds:

As for the "I merely posted it" defense of the Front Page letter, give thou me a break. Yes, you did just print the letter, and followed it with (the above) comment, after which I will sign off. Read them and see if this defense would be any more convincing coming from the king's musings about Thomas a Becket:

Keep Mr. Shea's attitude in mind when reading these caustic comments he recently made in defense of somebody who supports him:

Ah well. If it's *only* Mr. Comerford, then I guess a Combox Star Chamber is just fine. Pay no attention to Mr. Connelly, who was rightly repulsed by this little conclave of character assassins digging for whatever dirt they could find. Keep defending it. Nothing disturbing about that at all. Comerford is clearly an Enemy of the State and must be destroyed. The Coalition is a force for righteousness.

I'm unclear as to what necessity there is in self-appointed Inquisitors like the Coalition to be searching for dirt on him. I'm sure the Coalition would all love to have their histories equally well-researched, gossiped and speculated about, but for some reason, they've neglected to do this service for themselves.

But do keep pettifogging and making excuses for this repellent behavior. It just makes my point about the Coalition all the more clear.

The reader should know that Mr. Shea is defending somebody who supports his position against what he considers to be the torture of prisoners who might be potential terrorists. Throughout that debate, Mr. Shea has insulted and lied about people who disagree with him. In effect, he is showing more sympathy toward accused terrorists than he is toward those who disagree -- all in the name of charity.

Mr. Shea continues:

Now, to be clear: I am not advocating adopting the slimey tactics of the Coalition.

Perhaps Mr. Shea would like to explain that last statement, given the inquisitorial tactics he used in his absurd, obsessive harrassment of Mr. D'Hippolito.

Perhaps Mr. Shea would like to explain how Jesus Christ would view his behavior.

Perhaps Mr. Shea's fellow apologists would like to explain how they let him get away with behavior that not only tarnishes them all but also the faith they claim to represent.

Such is the state of Catholic apologetics and Catholic apologists in the Twilight Zone.

(du-du-du-du, du-du-du-du....)

Author's Notes:

[1] Though they are side issues and not at all germane to the substance of the arguments made by Mr. D'Hippolito, I did ask him about some of the more notorious accusations which Mr. Shea made about him. Here was what I received in response from him:

As far as hoping that JPII is in Hell, I don't recall specifically saying that (though given my white-hot anger at the pope in the final years of his tenure, I wouldn't put it past myself if I did).

I also asked Mr. D'Hippolito about a reference to the late Pope John Paul II as "Poop John Baal" which my sources informed me about. Rather than trusting Mr. Shea for a straight answer on the matter (and viewing the latter as being too biased against Mr. D'Hippolito to give a contextual reference for such comments if they actually did occur), it seemed appropriate to ask Mr. D'Hippolito straight out and this was the answer he gave me:

I made my comments about "Poop John Baal" out of frustration with the pope's policies concerning Islam, the clerical sex-abuse crisis and capital punishment. I framed the phrase like that to get the attention of the more fanatical members of his personality cult (to show them where their devotion was leading). I have since expressed public regret over that statement; even Mark knows that (though I don't recall if I expressed my regret on the same blog in which I made the statement).

As I was left wondering what the context for such statements could possibly be, I raised this question to Mr. D'Hippolito and was given this answer from him:

I did say that Karol Wojtyla will have to account to God for his flaccid response to the clerical sex-abuse crisis -- and that God's reaction might well be some time in Purgatory -- at least, it wouldn't be what his most avid supporters might think (I used the late pope's given name to make the point that titles ultimately hold no weight with God, since God is no respecter of persons). I might also have said something about the late pope having to confront the victims of sexual abuse in the Afterlife, to listen to their cries and to explain himself as part of his purgation.

Though the meat of the documentation of my article does not depend on such answers to remain sustained, I nonetheless decided to deal with these issues in a footnote. The purpose of this was to remove them from the table lest Mr. Shea (or those who support him) bring such matters up in the hopes of diverting people's attention from the substance of what I have outlined in the above editorial.

-RS

#######

Note:

{1} With regards to the "Guest Editorial" feature at Rerum Novarum, those interested in doing a guest editorial can email me HERE about it with their ideas and we shall see. I need not agree with the position taken on an issue to run the editorial. But I do reserve the right to edit any offerings for space and other considerations though of course I would run it by the person before it is posted to Rerum Novarum. The reason is because their name will be posted with it and thus they need to give concurrence that it reasonably represents their view on an issue.

All of this is to anticipate in advance the kind of litigation crap that results from people who would claim to be "misrepresented". Remember, it does not get posted in whatever form it is posted without their approval. Also, I *do* save those confirmation of content emails just in case. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum (circa September 30, 2002)]

Miscellaneous Threads Worth Noting:

Some of these threads are a month old or so but nonetheless...

Baker case documents saved from shred order (World Net Daily)

If this story is true, it sure sheds an interesting light on the whole "Iraq Study Group" and gives as much ample cause for questioning the veracity of the latter's conclusions as did Jamie Gorelick's presence on the 9/11 Commission. Similarly, one could point out that the three UN Security Council votes against implementing Resolution 1441{1} -France, Germany, and Russia- were on the take from Saddam Hussein. There is far more than the mere appearance of impropriety in all of these situations and what do they all have in common folks??? Well, the loon fringe of the antiwar crowd thinks that the Iraq Study Group report, the 9/11 Commission recommendations, and the votes against implementing Resolution 1441 were all of some principled nature or otherwise not driven by agendas unlike the so-called "Bush regime" who these sorts think has an agenda behind everything they do. Nor are these the only examples I could mention of double standards taken by this crowd{2} but for the present time, they will suffice.

Hunting Oswald (Charles Krauthammer)

Just a little taste to whet the appetite:

There is a distinction between show and substance. It is the ostentation that rankles, not the achievement. I'm talking about dancing in the end zone. Find a cure for cancer, and you deserve whatever honors and riches come your way. But the check-writer who wears blinding bling to the cancer ball is quite another manner.

Americans abroad have long been accused of such blinging arrogance and display. I find the charge generally unfair.

On the whole, I concur with Krauthammer's analysis in the thread above.

A Well-Rounded Conservative (Fetching Jen)

The basic hypothesis is that conservatives are more open minded and well-rounded than liberals. Or as Jen notes in part of her posting:

Most conservatives are more well-rounded and open-minded than liberals; we read and take in plenty of opposing views everyday. Liberals tend to only read and listen to liberal media and talk to other liberals. In fact, Conservatives report having friends on both sides of the aisle while liberals hang out together.

I have in my experience noticed this oftentimes not only with friends and colleagues but also some members of my family. And ironically, those same sorts tend towards irrationality and uncritical acceptance of whatever their chosen "gurus" say while displaying an amazing dogmatism towards their views and claiming to be "open minded." More could be noted but that suffices for now.

Boer Farm Murders (The Right Perspective)

Stop the Murders (The Right Perspective)

Some tidbits on what the media is not too keen on revealing viz. some of the happenings in Nelson Mandela's South Africa.

Howard Zinn's History Lessons (Michael Kazin)

A liberal reviewer writes as forceful a denunciation of Zinn's shallow historical revisionism as anything out there. I definitely concur with the reviewer at least from a macro level.

Orthodoxy and Me (Rod Dreher)

I had intended to comment on this thread some time back but circumstances and time constraints made me postpone it until now. I noticed that some of Rod's feedback was of the predictable nasty sort and others tried to play the "let us throw apologetics arguments at Rod" approach which at this point is not going to work. I will simply note that Rod's approach to the historical record is selective and arbitrary on the whole papal issue and if he was consistent in his rationale, it would undermine his current position in very significant ways. That is all I will say about it since no argument has a chance of persuading Rod while he is in the "honeymoon phase" of his religious transition. I therefore wish him the best and only ask that he remain open to reassessing his foundational presuppositions from time to time. (Or as Benjamin Franklin liked to say "question his own infallibility.)


Notes:

{1} Though the parties in question voted for the resolution previously of course.

{2} For those who are interested, I outlined another obvious hypocritical double standards in this thread. And while many more could be noted than just those, it suffices to note that if all we did was deal with media and pseudo-"progressivist" double standards, there would be no time in the day for anything else.

NFL Playoff Predictions:

Those who want to make a lot of $$$ on sports picks are advised to review what I predict in this area and do the exact opposite. I say this because my history of sports predictions in the past ten odd years has gone along those lines and you could be a winner 80% of the time if you do that statistically.{1} For that reason, I was wise to reverse my earlier season prediction of a Superbowl win for the Seattle Seahawks in late 2006. I changed it to them not making it out of the first round{2} and as is typical, the opposite happened. So seeing as I have already achieved my one right prediction in five in recent weeks{3}, I am going to again predict that the Seahawks will lose -this time in the second round of the playoffs.

Oh and on the national title game, I am picking Ohio State to win.

Notes:

{1} To note a few threads where I have discussed this situation on previous occasions.

{2} I posted this thread to show that despite being quite accurate with my prognostication overall, with sports subjects it is not there. I want to take this time to reverse my previous prediction and say that the Seahawks are going to lose in the first round of the playoffs...hopefully my streak of wrongness on sports picks can continue with that one ;-) [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum (circa December 30, 2006)]

{3} I picked USC to beat Michigan in the Rose Bowl and they did. So I am good for about four blown sports picks now and I might as well use them on the Hawks I suppose.

Points to Ponder:
(On the Use of Force)

[O]ur main problems are not too much force, but too little. A peaceful world is not a world with no ready forces but one with adequate, responsible, and superior force that is used when necessary. The failure to have or use such forces causes terror and war to grow exponentially. Unused force, when needed at a particular time and place, ceases to be force. But force is meaningless if one does not know that he has an enemy or how this enemy works and thinks. That latter is a spiritual and philosophical problem, not a technical one. Many an adequately armed country has been destroyed because it did not recognize its real enemy. Nor is this an argument for force "for force's sake." It is an argument for force for justice's sake. I am not for "eternal peace," which is a this-worldly myth, but for real peace of actual men in an actual and fallen world. Peace is not a goal, but a consequence of doing what is right and preventing what is wrong and, yes, knowing the difference between the two. [Fr. James V. Schall, SJ]

On Genuine Peace and the Role of Force:
(Dialogue With Nate Wildermuth)

The post I am responding to with this thread is viewable here. Nate's words will be in purple colored font and where he quotes my words they will be italicized. Any sources I cite will be in darkblue font and any sources Nate cites will be italicized.

From Rerum [Novarum], what is probably an unintentionally idol-ridden prayer devoted to the anniversary of Pearl Harbor. Let's dig in:

I should note starting off that about half of the prayer was taken from the site I linked to at the start of the thread Nate makes reference to in his posting.

Father, hold our soldiers in your loving hands. Keep them from spiritual and bodily harm. Place them under the protective mantle of our Blessed Mother Mary and send St. Michael and the holy angels before them in every danger. Give them and their families courage, strength and hope. Remember in your mercy all who have made the ultimate sacrifice for the freedom and security of others both recently and in years past. We have in mind with this petition those who are lost their lives on 9/11 and in the current fight against religious zealotry much as in years past who fought the monsters of totalitarian communism and its twin leftist scourge fascism. With special mention we implore your mercy and the intercession of the entire heavenly cohort for those who died at Pearl Harbour sixty-five years ago today and those who gave their lives in that heroic conflict. In your mercy, grant peace to all your children in every nation on earth. We praise you and thank you in Jesus’ name. Amen.

That is the full text of what I posted prayer-wise yes. Probably at this time, it should be best to note that Nate appears to me to be what is called a "conscientious objector" with regards to the subject of war in general. I have not written much on the subject of conscientious objectors on this weblog so my view on them may not be known. For that reason, recourse to the archives to explain my view will be done at this time:

I have respect for conscientious objectors...while having *no* respect for the Moveon.org crowd. The difference between the two is the difference between legitimate difference of opinion and sedition. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum (circa February 5, 2004)]

And though I have erred at times in presuming certain persons were conscientious objectors who ended up later showing their hands as marxist-promoting seditonists, I nonetheless prefer to err on the side of generosity in this area for reasons which hopefully are obvious. For that reason, I want to make it eminently clear at the outset that I see nothing in what I have read of Nate's writings to give me reason to presume that he is anything but what he says he is. Having noted that at the outset, let us interact with his critique of my Pearl Harbour prayer.

Before reading anything I write, you'll probably want to check out Mark Twain’s The War Prayer.

Rather, it is better to stay focused on the issue here and avoid distractions instead. I have a lot of respect for Mark Twain but he was also quite a good rhetoritician and I prefer whenever possible to not default to rhetoric in the absence of actual arguments. Once the latter have been set forth, rhetoric can work as a nice spice but not before.

Let's take a look at the first part of this prayer, "remember in your mercy all who have made the ultimate sacrifice for the freedom and security of others." I come across this idea a lot - that soldiers 'sacrifice' their lives in imitation of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross.

Soldiers lay down their lives for others -that is part of what it means to be a soldier. Jesus was the one who said that laying down one's life for another was the sign of the greatest love. And many who become soldiers do so because of a love of their homeland and a desire to serve in protection of it. Surely you are not going to claim that it is wrong to love one's homeland right Nate??? Who can claim to love what they would not want to see protected from harm??? And who could claim genuine love for their homeland or for another person if they are not willing to (if necessary) sacrifice their own life for them???

We were often told that to "lay down your life for your friends" was exactly what we were doing as Christian soldiers. It's strange how people speak of this sacrifice as if it were the soldier's mission - to die.

It is the soldier's mission to be willing to die in order to try and protect others from sworn enemies. In other words, death is a casualty of the job itself -potentially more so than any other job there is. Those who are willing to take up that position and have the requisite tools to do it have my respect Nate because the price they are willing to pay is so significant.

But General Patton, one of America's finest fighters in WWII, said it better than I ever could:

Now I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. You won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country… You know, My God, I actually pity those poor bastards we're going up against. My God, I do. We're not just going to shoot the bastards, we're going to cut out their living guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks. We're going to murder those lousy Hun bastards by the bushel. Now some of you boys, I know, are wondering whether or not you'll chicken out under fire. Don't worry about it. I can assure you that you'll all do your duty. The Nazis are the enemy. Wade into them. Spill their blood, shoot them in the belly. When you put your hand into a bunch of goo, that a moment before was your best friends face, you'll know what to do.

I know that quote well. However, there is more to it context-wise than a simple perusal of the words would indicate. Such statements are not unlike what leaders say to motivate their subordinates and not only in war but even in other endeavours.{1} Presumably you are not saying Patton should have told the boys to retreat and let the Nazis pursue domination of Europe right??? I have no doubt sir that you are well-meaning in your advocated position but unfortunately, it would appear that with all due respect you are a bit naive. Fr. James V. Schall, SJ enunciated the view of a symbiotic balance required between peace and the willingness to use force quite astutely when he noted the following:

No talk of peace, justice, truth, or virtue is complete without a clear understanding that certain individuals, movements, and nations must be met with measured force, however much we might prefer to deal with them peacefully or pleasantly. Without force, many will not talk seriously at all, and some not even then. Human, moral, and economic problems are greater today for the lack of adequate military force or, more often, for the failure to use it when necessary.

In my experience, that statement is 100% accurate. There is nothing wrong with wanting to see peace and wanting to see productive dialogue lead to a cessation of hostilities. Indeed, that is a noble outlook provided that it is properly balanced. The truth is, much as many do not like it, there are enemies who seek to take away the fundamental rights that are God-given and precede all attempts at human legislation. These sorts will use false notions of "dialogue" as a means to take advantage of others whom they see as weak and compromising. For that reason, there will always be a necessity for force to be used in some cases.

I explaned in a brief fashion some time ago what I saw as the inherent danger in the approach that you seem to be advocating:

I cannot help in pondering the subject of war come to any conclusion except that if it was ever outlawed, if those who are the most manic of the so-called "peacemakers" among us were to actually achieve their intended aim, that we will have forever enthroned an unstoppable totalitarianism on the world. We need to always have the option of what Chesterton called "the sacred right of insurrection" if we are to have a modicum of restoring societies from the tyranny of legal perversion by bureaucratic termites and whores who see mankind as clay for their own sociological "moulding." [I. Shawn McElhinney: some private notebook musings (circa June 16, 2005)]

A more developed exposition of those short comments can be read here for those who are interested. To summarize them briefly, these are serious problems of a life and death situation involved in such an outlook as you are conveying Nate.

I see radical pacifistic approaches to solve these kinds of problems to make about as much sense as those Christian sects who pick up poisonous serpents because of what Jesus said in Mark's Gospel and then get bit by the serpents and die from poisoning. I see no difference whatsoever in the approach except the serpents are reacting without capacity for reasoning. The same cannot be said of various cultists who think those who refuse to wear the turban and pray on the coloured rug five times a day to "Allah" should be killed.

The latter may be fanatics but they are capable of doing a lot of damage and have. And few things make them bolder than when they see a foe showing weakness -that is what over a thousand years of history has taught us with regards to the Muslim fanatics. The only thing that has stopped them historically has been the willing use of force and that is the only thing that will stop them today.

All the priests and intellectuals who tell soldiers that it's their goal, mission, and duty to imitate Christ by dying for their friends… they have no idea what it means to be a soldier. This isn't to say that soldiers don't gobble it up, that we don't think to ourselves, "yeah, I'm noble, I'm sacrificing my life for my country!" But when confronted with Patton's words, we know the truth. Because it resounds. It isn't a soldier's job to die. It is a soldier's job to kill. If you die, you've failed, and your friends will die at the hands of the same evildoers who killed you.

First of all, it is an argumentation fallacy to claim that someone's arguments are or are not valid because they may or may not have certain experience. I dealt with this some time back when defining a couple of common argumentation fallacies which are unfortunately common among not a few who advocate particular points of view:

argumentum ad eventus

This is a variation of argumentum ad aevum and involves essentially the idea that an argument is not valid on the basis of lacking experience is what this one entails. It is akin to saying that no one can talk about a subject unless they have experience in it; ergo someone who has never abused heroin can never be credible in talking about heroin usage. Or on the ecclesial front, Pope Benedict XVI can never talk about a subject like sex because he has presumably never had any.

I am shocked that even otherwise intelligent people fall for this kind of "logic" but it happens often. At bottom, either what someone says in presenting an argument for a viewpoint has merits or demerits on the strength or lack thereof of the arguments made. That is where any and all criticisms of someone's arguments should lie. [Excerpt from the Rerum Novarum Miscellaneous BLOG (circa March 7, 2006)]

I would appreciate it if we could avoid argumentation fallacies and focus instead on the positions themselves. I see the whole attempt to dichotomize between the soldier having a "duty to die" and a "duty to kill" as inappropriate. It makes more sense to say that a soldier has a duty to protect and serve -a duty which may call on him to utilize force against another. This use of force could result in the death of the other or in the death of the soldier. And a soldier who dies in duty has not failed sir. To the extent that he has advanced the cause of freedom and protected others, he has succeeded. And for that, the memory of those who have fallen deserves proper honour and remembrance, not contempt.

Oftentimes a failure to act forcefully makes a situation worse than it would have been with proper action being taken. That is something that far too many people of your particular weltanschauung fail to take into account. Or to once again quote Fr. James Schall's astute observations on these matters:

Those who cry "peace, peace" often have unacknowledged blood on their hands because they failed to use adequate force when needed; "To the victors go the spoils" is an ancient principle of fact, not rightness. Cowardice has never been considered a virtue. Nor has "turning the other cheek" served as an acceptable excuse for allowing some evil — one we could have stopped except that our theories or fears prevented us from trying — to continue or conquer. Not a few worthy things have been eradicated forever because a war was lost. Eternal vigilance remains the price of liberty and much else that is worthy.

I am not in noting the above quotes saying that this means every war ever declared is therefore a noble enterprise. Nor am I arguing for the merit or lack thereof of a particular war in doing so. My point is to defend the necessity of what GK Chesterton called "the sacred right of insurrection" hopefully for reasons I have already made adequately clear.

So many people talk about how we've got to fight back these muslim fanatics, otherwise they'll be in our backyard burning Churches and raping women and converting our children.

If you have a proper familiarity with history, you would know this has been what the Muslim fanatics have done every time they had the means to do so. It is a matter of history and is not even debatable. I for one will not stand by and let them do it if I have any say in the matter whatsoever -whether the weapons I wield are my keyboard, my fists, my rifles, or anything else.{2}

And they ask soldiers to go out and kill to stop this Islamic invasion. And so how is this compatible with saying that a soldier's goal is to sacrifice his life?

It is not but then again, I do not make the kind of dichotomous assertions you are noting above. I will not deny that there are some who do this but positions being advanced by weak argumentation is hardly a rarity in the world unfortunately. But briefly: the soldier is offering his life as a potential sacrifice in seeking to preserve the lives and freedoms of others from those who would seek to either deprive them of life or somehow consign them to slavery. Or as I noted in a weblog posting after the death of Nick Berg more than two years ago:

Here is how I see the war on terror in a nutshell:

---We are fighting a group of intellectually and emotionally arrested fanatics who have yet to come out of the seventh century. Arab civilization contrary to the ignorant babblings of the media is hardly some fertile ground for philosophy, mathematics, science, and the like. All of their contributions in those areas -significant though they were- were a millennia ago. One commentator astutely noted that "since they gave us the zero, they have given civilization zero" and that sums it up about as well as can be done in a syllabus style statement.

---We are dealing with people who revel in death who do not hesitate to boast about this. We are dealing with people who view innocent children as "infidel subversives" and who have no scruples about killing them. Likewise non-Muslims are viewed. Essentially if they cannot convert you, then you must die. Hence in the most sadistic of "rituals" I heard chanting to "Allah" while a young man's bloodcurdling screams rang out over the airwaves as those bastards, those rats, those vile pieces of human debris cut his throat slowly in sawing motion with a dull blade.

But I suppose we are still going to hear the hollow paens of "involving the UN" in the Iraq situation - the same UN who cannot even run a simple oil for food program without massive corruption. I suppose we are going to still hear the cheap rhetoric of "give peace a chance" and after all, if we simply reason with these people and if we show them we are nice people that they will be nice too and all will be well. No my friends, you do not deal with a rabid disease infested dog that attacks you with kind words or idle threats. You deal with such an animal by shooting it. Likewise, these vile people need to be dealt with. I think stake burning would be appropriate for them. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum (circa May 12, 2004)]

I stand by every word I said then and always will. But then again, I am firmly anchored in the understanding of the fundamental rights of man -the God-given fundamental rights which precede all legislation by any human whatsoever and whosoever they are. I have written on these factors many times and will do again this year when I feel so inclined to. But briefly for the sake of this point: life, faculties, and production are God-given. While one could argue that they can be deprived after due process in rare instances, generally speaking they are inviolable. That means no pundit, no politician, no philosopher, no pope, no human whatsoever can either give those rights nor take them away. And to give assent to propositions which by implication threaten the very existence of those fundamental rights leads inexorably to not only intellectual but physical suicide: something I cannot possibly countenance and which I will not countenance at any time whatsoever.

No. A soldier's mission is to kill, not to die. He is prepared to die, yes. He is prepared to make that 'sacrifice', but not in a direct sense.

Must all virtuous acts be direct or is an indirect action of value also to be praised??? I am unaware of anyone who is purely altrusitic and no even those who are with specific acts are not this way all the time. That means that there is almost always at least some self-interest in an action that is done. Should we therefore not acknowledge the value of the act itself at all??? I think not.

This sacrifice is not a Christ-like sort of sacrifice. Christ's sacrifice saved people. A soldier dying is only one more step along a road to a lost war that will result in people being destroyed (at least, from the perspective of just-war theorists).

With all due respect, this is a bit rationally muddled Nate. A soldier dying could be one step in a war that was eventually lost or one step in the direction of a war that is won. I am unaware of any war in history involving soldiers where the winning side did not have casualties.

It's a simple idea: if all our soldiers are dying, we will lose the war, and the soldiers will have failed.

You seem to be presuming that in a war all soldiers are dying. In that case, a war can indeed be lost but does that mean it should not have been fought??? Wars are fought for many things -sometimes nobile and sometimes not. Dying in defense of a cause can be a nobile act Nate.

I can understand just-war adherents honoring those who have fallen in a war, after all - it is a sacrifice in some sense. Like the fireman who runs into a burning house, the soldier knows that he can die. But the fireman doesn't run into the house to die. Nor does the soldier go into battle to die.

This is true. It is however recognized as a potential risk of the occupation. And some occupations have greater risk of this than others.

And here we get to the crucial difference between the soldier's sacrifice and Christ's: it is the difference between the fireman's and the soldier's. The fireman goes into a burning house with the direct mission of saving someone. The soldier goes into battle with the direct mission of killing someone. Now indirectly, the soldier's intention is to save someone. That is the whole point of the just-war theory.

A soldier goes into battle with the direct mission of achieving a set objective whatever that set objective in a given circumstance happens to be. That is not the same as going in with the direct mission to kill someone. However, in a military situation, you know that there is a likelihood of opposition to your actions by others with various kinds of weaponry. Depending on the reasons for your involvement in this endeavour, the war may or may not be considered just. I will not at this time go into how the traditional understanding of just war has been arbitrarily arrested in its application in spots by well-meaning but (unfortunately) naive persons as that would be to go off on a tangent. But that is nonetheless a factor in the equation we are speaking of here; ergo my mention of it in brief.

But what if the just-war theory is wrong, as the Pope and others have indicated?

The pope never said the just war theory is wrong. Furthermore, the pope is not the authority responsible for levying the theory and this authority cannot be delegated to others. It is the responsibility of the civil government who has the authority to levy a war. Or as I noted in a previous blog posting:

[There is] a seeming unawareness of what a proper appeal to just war theory actually is. On the latter, I will now briefly touch on so that readers do not think I am merely asserting something without proof...

[I]n medieval times, the term “just war” applied to the authority for levying the war, rather than to the substance of the cause or the complaint. If levied on the authority of an independent prince, the war was considered just, since there was no higher authority to judge the cause, and battle settled the issue. [Encyclopedia Brittanica Fifteenth Edition: Excerpt from War, the Theory and Conduct of Macropaedia Volume XXIX, pg. 643 (c. 1985)]

[XXXX] by trying to apply it to the substance of the cause or the complaint rather than to the authority for levying the war thus misappropriates the principle in no small detail. And lest he object to me quoting a non-Catholic source above on the matter, I will now quote from my copy of the Catholic Encyclopaedic Dictionary on the subject of war:

War. War is waged justly if it be initiated by public authority for a sufficiently grave and just reason. Soldiers enlisted before the outbreak of war can take its justness for granted unless the contrary is apparent; after the outbreak, those who join the army must first be morally certain of its justness. In a just war all means are licit which necessary and suitable for carrying the war to a successful end, provided that they are not contrary to natural or international law; e.g. the killing of any man under arms or of spies but not of non-combatants, the laying of ambushes, the destruction, but not the poisoning, of wells, are lawful acts of war. For a war to be just the motive must be the vindication of a certain right, of proportionate importance, which has been certainly violated, or a just intervention to defend the rights of others, and then only when other means of redress have failed. [Catholic Encyclopaedic Dictionary Tenth Edition: Donald Attwater - General Editor pg. 553 (c. 1941) as quoted in a Rerum Novarum posting (circa September 6, 2005)]

In a nutshell, [t]he evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good (CCC 2309) and this is the civil authority as I have noted before.{3} And for those who assert that my claim of the civil authority as the proper one for determining the parameters of and levying of a just war is erroneous, consider the following section of the Catechism of the Catholic Church on who is responsible for the common good of a society (footnotes inserted into the text in italics):

1897 "Human society can be neither well-ordered nor prosperous unless it has some people invested with legitimate authority to preserve its institutions and to devote themselves as far as is necessary to work and care for the good of all."John XXIII, PT 46.

By "authority" one means the quality by virtue of which persons or institutions make laws and give orders to men and expect obedience from them.

1898 Every human community needs an authority to govern it. Cf. Leo XIII, Immortale Dei; Diuturnum illud. The foundation of such authority lies in human nature. It is necessary for the unity of the state. Its role is to ensure as far as possible the common good of the society.

1899 The authority required by the moral order derives from God: "Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore he who resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment."Rom 13:1-2; cf. 1 Pet 2:13-17. [Catechism of the Catholic Church sections 1897-1899 (c. 1994)]

Using the CCC to clarify who is responsible for the common good makes my interpretation of the proper authority for ascertaining whether or not a war is or is not just (as noted later in the CCC) the obviously correct one. This is why whenever people raise the opinion of a pope or curialist on these matters, I roll my eyes. They obviously has as much of a right to their opinion as anyone but their opinion on the matter is no less susceptible to being weighed on the merits of the arguments advanced as anyone else's is.{5} And on the latter point, there is far greater solidity in my position than the converse one -of this I have not a shred of doubt for reasons I have amply outlined in the past.

What if our soldiers have been misled? What if they are killing and dying not for Christ's peace, but for something else?

That is always possible. Mark Twain once said "the rumours of my demise have been greatly exaggerated." Likewise, the rumours of the president and others "misleading" people have been more than a little exaggerated (to put it nicely). My stance on the war is the same as it was in February of 2003 before the invasion. But then again, I based my position on solid arguments and known facts and not transient speculations and presumed evidences. I have discussed this before and would gladly do so again if you like at some point in the future.

And so we get to the second part of Rerum's prayer:

"Remember in your mercy all who have made the ultimate sacrifice for the freedom and security of others."

That is an accurate quote, yes.

Are soldiers killing and dying for the freedom which Christ's sacrifice has given us? Or are they dying for a different kind of freedom? A different kind of peace? Just-war theories say that these horrific wars can bring 'peace' to the world. But is this the same peace that Christ speaks of? Is this the Peace of Christ or the Peace of America?

Christ's sacrifice has freed us from certain death due to sin. It did not however abolish sin completely. As far as differentiating the freedoms go, all legitimate freedoms are worth fighting for or worth defending. These fall under the umbrella I spoke of earlier about the fundamental rights of man: a subject too complex to do justice to in a short blurb towards the end of a post. As far as peace goes, peace is not the absence of war. Nor is peace the maintenance of the status quo. And peace cannot be accomplished by showing weakness in the face of those who have no interest in a proper dialogue. That means there is a requirement for force for the maintenance of any semblance of peace. Militant Islam has only been checked by the threat of force against them. And they have been given a lease of sorts in recent decades as the west has shown a suspect resolve to hold them at bay by force if necessary

I'll cut this short with Christ’s tears:

As he drew near, he saw the city (Jerusalem) and wept over it, saying, "If this day you only knew what makes for peace -but now it is hidden from your eyes.

For the days are coming upon you when your enemies will raise a palisade against you; they will encircle you and hem you in on all sides. They will smash you to the ground and your children within you, and they will not leave one stone upon another within you because you did not recognize the time of your visitation."

Of course the question is if the words you are citing pertain to what we are discussing or not Nate. Jerusalem was punished for rejecting Jesus and knowing what was coming as he did, it saddened him. I do not see how this relates to what we are discussing except (perhaps) that a similar fate awaits the west if the charade of "playing nice" with the Islamofascists does not come to an end and soon. Again, we have 1400 years of history with these kinds of fanatics and the trackrecord is clear. Let them who can see it pay attention lest Santayana's dictum{4} be vindicated yet again -and not to our benefit as a civilization.

Oh and lest I forget to mention it, thank you for your service to the cause of freedom and security Nate. I have never known a soldier who takes relish in what they had to do in wartime situations and frankly that is the way it should be. But that is a subject for another time perhaps.

Notes:

{1} I remember in my youth playing sports hearing rhetoric about "crushing the opponent" and generally speaking, it did fire me up to do just that.

{2} Sacred Scripture is clear that there are times and seasons for everything:

All things have their season, and in all their times all things pass under heaven. A time to be born and a time to die; a time to plant and a time to pluck up that which is planted. A time to kill and a time to heal; a time to destroy and a time to build...A time to rend and a time to sow; a time to keep silent and a time to speak. A time of love and a time of hatred; a time of war and a time of peace. (Ecclesiastes iii,1-3; 7-9).

In other words, the idea that there is never a time for war, a time to kill, or a time for hatred is false. We are at war with sub-animals and we cannot reason with them. They either want us to convert to their perverted notion of "religion" and worship their perverted notion of "God" or they will kill us. This has been explicitly stated by them and they have been demonstrating this intention for some time now -the latest example of which was Paul Johnson (may he rest in peace).

Wake up you self-anointed "activists" with your blind and irrational hatred of George Walker Bush. Your position is not only illogical but further: it is idiotic and plays Russian roulette with this nation's national security. You would compromise the safety of American citizens for the sake of political advantage in an election. For that, I spit on you!!!...

[I]f the savage beheading of American civilians by rabid infested subhuman debris is not enough to get self-styled "activists" to wake from their pathetic Vietnam-era pretentions and face reality, I have to wonder what it will take. And if they think people like me will wait around for them to finally "get it", I have some ocean front property in Arizona to sell them. [Excerpts from Rerum Novarum (circa June 18, 2004)]

{3} To briefly reference one such example from the archives of this weblog:

[S]ince the authority recognized by the CCC to levy war is the secular authority, it is to this authority where the judgment is levied, not that of the pope. This is easily demonstrated with Catholic sources -indeed I have done so many times already. And as the authority which weighs the assessments for the above critieria is not the pope but the sovereign, that means the executive, president, or prime minister if you will in a republic such as America.

For this reason, XX XXXX's assertions above reveal that he is willing to go against even the boundaries of Catholic just war critieria to advance his agenda...

That is not to say that there remains no role for the church in the matter of course. (A key role for the magisterium is aiding in the formation of conscience.) However, a whole phalanx of factors are involved in the latter formation and at the end of the day the magisterium is as incompetent on political matters as the sovereigns of the world are on theological and moral ones. Each has their own particular competence as the church has always recognized and does to this day. Unfortunately, some who seek to advance particular agendas are interested in blurring these distinctions for some reason or another. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum (circa October 6, 2005)]

{4} In a nutshell it is this: those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

{5} The role of the magisteroum is to outline the principles required for just war theory doctrinally and theologically. They do not hawever have the competence to apply them in concrete situations and their curial underlings likewise are incompetent in this area.