Spengler on Confession

No religious institution has brought more happiness to men than the sacrament of confession.

His Kingdom is not of this world!

Got this query in my e-mail:

Cardinal George is interested in your input! In light of the Year of Spirituality, the Cardinal's third question this year for the parishioners of the Chicago Archdiocese is:

How does working for Social Justice strengthen faith in God?

Quite simply, it doesn't. I spent the first twenty-five years of my life as a Godless Communist working for social justice and it never did anything to foster in me any kind of belief in God. I became a Catholic for entirely personal, philosophical reasons that in no way sprung from my longstanding and continuing efforts for Social Justice.

Once again, Oswald Spengler has it right:

To ascribe social purpose to Jesus is a blasphemy. In Jesus we have the direct opposite. “Give unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s” means: “Fit yourselves to the powers of the fact-world, be patient, suffer, and ask not whether they are ’just’.” What alone matters is the salvation of the soul. “Consider the lilies” means: “Give no heed to riches and poverty, for both fetter the soul to the cares of this world.” “Man cannot serve both God and Mammon” — by Mammon is meant the whole of actuality. It is shallow, and it is cowardly, to argue away the grand significance of this demand. Between working for the increase of one’s own riches, and working for the social ease of everyone, he would have felt no difference whatsoever. When wealth affrighted him, when the primitive community in Jerusalem — which was a strict Order and not a socialist club — rejected ownership, it was the most direct opposite of “social” sentiment that moved them. Their conviction was, not that the visible state of things was all, but that it was nothing: that it rested not upon appreciation of comfort in this world, but on unreserved contempt of it. Something, it is true, must always exist to be set against and to nullify world fortune, and so we come back to the contrast between Tolstoi and Dostoyevski. Tolstoi, the townsman and Westerner, saw in Jesus only a social reformer, and in his metaphysical impotence — like the whole civilized West, which can only think about distributing, never renouncing — elevated primitive Christianity to the rank of a social revolution. Dostoyevski, who was poor, but in certain hours almost a saint, never thought about social ameliorations — of what profit would it have been to a man’s soul to abolish poverty?

A Stunning Admission

“When I came of age in the seventies, it was still pretty cool to be able to offer a young man the actual presence of a naked, willing young woman. Today, real naked women are just bad porn.”

— Feminist Naomi Wolf

Jim Wallis: Bourgeois Liberal

So, I went to see Jim Wallis today.

People are always telling me that I would really like him, so I've been pretty diligent in checking him out. I've looked over his web site, I've read his book ("God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It" HarperSanFrancisco, San Francisco, 2005), and today I went to hear him speak.

His basic message is that "politics is broken" and that we need to be governed from a "new moral center." He said that for some time the religious vote had been co-opted by the Religious Right and that what we needed was a genuinely Christian politics that was neither right nor left. He said that it was immoral to argue about trivialities like homosexual marriage when we need to address real issues like global warming, the moral scandal of poverty, and genocide in Darfur. He had a few other things to say:

• "A Gospel that isn't good news for the poor isn't good news at all."
• "Budgets are moral documents."
• "We need to find common ground by going to higher ground."

The chestnuts were falling thick and fast, weren't they? And that's pretty much the problem I've had with him. He's all bromides about what's wrong with politics and no actual program of how to fix it. So, when it came time for questions, I put it to him. "I've read your book, I've heard you speak, and I still feel that I don't know what your program is. What measures, exactly, do you favor?"

Now, he's a nice guy, well meaning, sincere, and he really believes in what he's doing. And so he threw out three issues that he wanted to see addressed:

1] Abortion is a divisive issue with people of faith on both sides of the issue, but we can all agree that it would be a good thing to decrease the number of abortions. So he favors better access to birth control, easier adoptions, more support for single mothers.

2] The British government has vowed to reduce poverty by 50% over the next ten years. We should do that.

3] We need immigration reform since the present system is broken.

There he is, ladies and gentlemen, Jim Wallis on the record trying to bridge the gap between right and left and lead us up to higher ground. Is this really a new path, or just more Bourgeois Liberalism? Let's see ...

Abortion: Okay, reducing abortion is a laudable goal, one that just about everyone would sign on to. But these measures: aren't they all liberal measures? Where are the conservative measures like parental consent laws, bans on late-term abortion, or rigorous enforcement of statutory rape laws (as a high percentage of teenage pregnancies are caused by older men)? And, aren't all of these measures like pushing on a string? Aren't they all let’s do this and then hope that people don't have abortions?

Poverty: Yeah, poverty's bad and, hey, I'm against it. But so is welfare. Wallis isn't very clear here and that makes me suspect that what he's calling for is more government hand-outs (like that aforementioned "support for single mothers"). Being working class myself, I favor full employment as a cure for poverty. That's right: government public works and make-work programs. I think this is much more in line with the Biblical injunction "if any man will not work, neither let him eat" (2 Thessalonians 3:10) than doling our way out of poverty.

Immigration: Oh, sure, we need "reform," but what kind of reform? I found this on the Sojourners web-site:

The current U.S. immigration system is still broken. Families are still in jeopardy, workers are still being exploited, and the border is far from secure. As Christian churches, organizations and leaders, we are more committed than ever to holding our politicians accountable to the values they profess: values of family integrity and economic progress.

Now, again that's pretty opaque, but does it feel like they want to close the borders and enforce the law, or does it sound like they want to give my job away to an economic refugee from the Third World?

To conclude: I have always found that whereas conservatives are blind to issues of social justice, liberals are blind to issues of personal sin. Poverty, for instance, is caused both by an unfair economic system that exploits the working classes and personal irresponsibility. Conservatives never acknowledge that the system is stacked against the worker, while liberals never admit that even in a perfect world numbers of people are simply shiftless and don't deserve to be prosperous.

Which pattern does Jim Wallis fit?

I think it's clear. Far from advocating a third way "above right and left," Jim Wallis is simply a bourgeois liberal of the old school who has dressed up the same old tired nostrums in Christian garb.

Ralph Nader says: Threats to overturn Roe are “scare tactics”

On Oct. 29, 2000, Ralph Nader questioned all the concern being voiced by liberals about abortion rights:

Even if Roe v. Wade is reversed, that doesn't end it, it just reverts to the states ... The scare tactic is that [the appointment of conservative justices] would end choice in America and I just said that’s not true ... The first back alley death, and the Republican Party is in deep trouble and they know it ... the Republican Party’s opposition to abortion as just for show, just for Pat Robertson.

Simply Pathetic

This post card was sent in to PostSecret, a blog that publishes anonymous cards sent in from all over the world:



This card probably reflects a very common and widespread phenomenon. Pornography has come to be widely accepted and is used by many couples to "enhance their relationship," as the phrase goes, though a more accurate description might be "to overcome the boredom of a completely carnal and soulless relationship." While most men are able to disassociate their sexual desires from their emotions, women (thankfully) are usually unable to dis-integrate these components and (rightfully) feel cheapened and used when they come to think their partners regard them as mere sexual objects for their own gratification. This woman's husband has degraded their relationship to the point where his wife is no better than an aid to masturbation and I feel profoundly sorry for her.

We need a different kind of Pro-Life vote!

I was profoundly disappointed to learn the other day that the slogan for this year’s March for Life is "Build Unity on the Life Principles throughout America. No Exception! No Compromise!" This comes right on the heels of a series of articles by well respected pro-life activist Judie Brown in the Wanderer voicing the idea that the pro-life movement has largely failed politically and must shift it’s efforts to a “no compromise” position. Both of these messages come in a season where debate in Catholic publications seems to center around which pro-life candidate to support, despite years of foot-dragging, betrayal, and inaction by these same supposedly pro-life candidates, not whether such a pro-life vote would actually accomplish anything.

I think the time as come to state some facts that have been plain to me for some time, but that seem to be far from self-evident to most pro-lifers:

1] The American electorate is not pro-life. Since Roe v. Wade came down in 1973, support for legal first-trimester abortions has remained rock-solid steady at about 65% of the electorate. Thirty-five years of pro-life agitation has done nothing to change this. Claims that “the younger generation is pro-life” have no basis in reliable polling. The idea that such a super-majority can be forced to adopt a ban against its will is both unreasonable and anti-democratic.

2] An absolute ban on abortion exists virtually no where in the world. As of now, only Costa Rica, Chile, Malta, and the Vatican City have such a ban, and cumulatively they represent only 18,968,510 people, about the population of New York State, or less than three tenths of a percent of the world population. The idea that we are going to get it here in the near term goes against every trend of the last fifty years.

3] Not only does first-trimester abortion have wide-spread support, but there is even greater support for In-Vitro Fertilization, which is just as anti-life as abortion. The idea that IFV would ever be made illegal is even more far fetched than a simple ban on abortion.

4] Compromise is exactly what is needed and, frankly, the best we can hope for in the near term. While first-trimester abortion is well-nigh sacrosanct among voters, there is virtually no support for discretionary second- and third-trimester abortion. Provided that exceptions are made for the physical health of the mother, laws banning these procedures would enjoy overwhelming support and are exactly what the pro-life activists should be working for.

5] The allegedly pro-life Republicans have given us virtually nothing and should not be trusted to actually enact pro-life policies. The ban on “partial birth abortion” is a fraud, as many other methods of third-trimester abortion are available. Ten of the twelve Supreme Court justices appointed since 1973 have been named by Republican presidents, yet we are no nearer to seeing Roe v. Wade overturned. Republicans have had thirty-five years to actually do something about abortion and, except for the Hyde Amendment of 1976, nothing tangible has been accomplished. Why not? Well, Republicans can read poll numbers just as well as anybody, and to think that they will buck a super-majority of two-thirds of the electorate is foolish if not actually fantastic.

6] A “no compromise” ban on abortion is about as dead an issue as prohibition. Such a law would be struck down in the courts almost immediately and any party passing such a measure would be turned out en mass at the next election.

7] The time has come to vote other pro-life issues. Protest against abortion all you want, say the rosary to change people’s hearts (as I do every day), write letters to newspapers, council your friends and neighbors, indoctrinate your children against the Culture of Death, but don’t waste your vote on that issue!

The war in Irak is an abomination that has been condemned by the Vatican on numerous occasions — let’s vote against that!

We spend more on heath-care than any other nation on earth, yet a significant portion of our working classes are still denied access to proper medical treatment — let’s fix that!

Wages are down 30% since 1972, while the top one-percent of earners are making 300% of what they did then — lets correct that!

Jobs are going over-seas, immigrants are flooding into our virtually open borders, secular multi-culturalism is being indoctrinated into our school children — do we want to put up with that?

This time out — let’s vote the issues!