I meant to write a long, reflective post about my fellow libertarians and paleo-conservatives and their (often disappointing) reaction to the Ron Paul newsletters. But that horrow show hasn't played itself out long enough to form valuable thoughts on it. Instead, I thought I’d mention a phone call I got a few hours ago - one that will haunt me for a week. But first, a little theological background

Evangelicals have an incredible confidence in their ability to understand Scripture. One of the central (and most radical) doctrines of the Protestant Reformation was that man could understand Holy Writ without any mediators (i.e. The Church, Tradition -etc…). Less then a decade ago, this confidence led me to take charge of my public high school’s Bible Club. We sought no official recognition from the school, and in turn the school was delighted not to recognize us. The people that came would have been horrified to know that I was on my way back into the Catholic Church but no one else would take care of it. I often prepared the week’s lessons while in my AP English class - taking occasional five-minute breaks to stare at my friend Andrea’s mini-skirts and the long pink legs that ran out of them.* That may not be what Luther imagined the consequence of Sola Scriptura.

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A few years ago my mother found an amazing recipe for Thanksgiving Turkey. It requires all sorts of Rosemary and onions and the rinds of lemons. This magic list of instructions that was published once in Southern Living, has transformed our Thanksgiving. From the time I ate the broccoli and threw up at the kids table (thr table looked like a a giant crayola crayon) until about four years ago, I hated the dry, flavorless main course. Now it is my favorite meal of the year.

Meanwhile, Foreign Policy provides five of the most vaporous reasons to be thankful ever committed to the internet. I was sure to include "improved air safety" in my pre-meal prayers.

The following headline (found on Drudge this morning) is reason to be thankful: Pope to purge the Vatican of modern music. Cue "Hallelujah Chorus" Seriously, if I want to listen to third-rate K.T. Tunstall music, I'll buy a K.T. Tunstall album and listen to the tracks she doesn't release as singles. Pope Benedict understands something: if the people want to worship with pop music in English, they'll can go to a U2 concert or become Lutherans.

I wanted to take some delight in the reaction to my piece on the Crystal Clear Atheism conference; it proves my point that this new crowd of atheists is humorless. This isn't too surprising - these people have invested so much of themselves in this identity. Imagine a coterie of dogmatic hockey-haters living in Toronto when the Leafs are in the Stanley Cup Finals - that is what atheists are like.

Replies have generally made this complaint: You didn't refute our arguments, you just compiled series of ad hominem attacks.  

My response: Yes. That's about right.

Did you really think a 25 year old would attempt a point by point refutation of Bertrand Russell (or the far-more interesting Michael Martin) in the space of three pages?  Should I expect a learned refutation of Aquinas' natural theology in your idiotic Spaghetti Monster pamphlets?

So the apologists for un-belief call me a misogynist for calling Margaret Downey "dippy." Uhm- she was tossing koosh balls (the ones that look like globes) around a hotel ballroom. Case closed.

One atheist even compared their conference to a Star Trek convention in trying to defend against my charge that atheism is becoming a movement. For some reason I don't think Trekkies look to their leaders for advice on how to confront the world around them. But the whole sun-depleted-losers-getting-together thing - that's just the same.

Do I have some special hate-on for atheists? No, at least it isn't on evidence in the recent panel on the "new atheism" I spoke at recently. I didn't begin foaming at the mouth at the very sound of Will Wilkinson's voice.  (Hint atheists: listen to that panel and you'll find out that I think some forms of atheism are compelling, even respectable.)

Looking over my journalistic record it seems I have a hate-on for people who meet in hotel ballrooms, sell each other lame bumper stickers and pretend that they face the worst sort of persecution.  Whether they are atheists, Christian Zionists, "values-voters", or Maroon-5 fans. (someone needs to commission me for that last one).

I do enjoy being called an "insult to human dignity" by people who buy bumper stickers that say "Abstinence Makes the Church Grow Fondlers." Oh, and if you are comparing me unfavorably to Goebbels, it would help to spell the man's name right.

So, I'll be leaving Washington today on a week-long trip to Cairo, where I will cover the convention of the ruling "party," the NDP. Should be fun. Travel, especially the type that involves 10-hour flights and long waits at the airport, allows me to catch up on some reading. A friend has insisted that I'll love David Foster Wallace, and so I'll be reading "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never do Again" while I wait in Dulles. If I like it, I'll try to pick up a copy of Infinite Jest in Arabic.

But when I'm traveling or on vacation I  prefer to reread novels that are sentimental favorites or non-fiction works that are important to me. As I pack up my carry-on (no toothpaste!), I thought I'd force my airplane reading selections on you. First up will be the seventh volume of Frederick Copleston's eminent History of Philosophy, the one covering the Post-Kantian Idealists, to Marx, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. 

Next up, the only novel on my list. Lunar Park by Bret Easton Ellis. I know, you are freaking out. But I actually found the book extremely moving. Maybe I'm a sucker, but I felt that Ellis' last novel, whose main character is Bret Easton Ellis  himself actually redeemed Ellis, the writer, from his own ego and his own excesses.

On the way back I'll be reading some Biblical theology: Mary in the Mystery of the Covenant by Ignace de La Potterie, SJ (my second Jesuit). Potteries's exegesis of the Marian passages of Scripture are just astonishing in their level of detail. Especially helpful is his discussion of John 6:41-47, in which the theologian explains and diagrams both the Concentric and Parallel Structures that Biblical authors employed in composing scripture.  

Finally, to politics, I'll be toting along my beat up edition of James Burnham's The Machiavellians, probably the most important book in shaping the way I think about politics. I have to thank Kevin Michael Grace for generously sending it to me a little over a year ago.  It's a second edition copy from 1943 and is full of pencil marks from its previous owner(s).

Other than that, I'll take a stack of the last month's men's magazines: Men's Vogue, Esquire, Details and GQ. Unfortunately, the TSA will make me check the bag containing my most valuable travel accessory.

Peter Hitchens has a review of his brother's book, "God is Not Great" in the Daily Mail. It's well worth a read. He makes two points which are essential. The first speaks for itself:

On the few occasions where Christopher is prepared to admit that religious people have done any good, he concludes that they did so in spite of their faith, not because of it.

He even suggests that the atheist Soviet tyranny was itself a form of religion.

You can’t win against this sort of circular absolutism.

Yet he has this absurdly backwards. Religious and unbelieving people have both done dreadful things, and the worst of them have committed their murders and their tortures in the belief that they were doing good.

Nothing is proved by either side in this argument, by pointing to the mountains of skulls piled up by evil atheists, and evil theists. - Peter Hitchens

The second point is that his brother, along with Richard Dawkins are laying the groundwork for an incredible tyranny of conscience.

There is one chapter in this book whose implications are sinister. It is Chapter 16, which attempts to suggest that religion is child abuse.

On the basis of such arguments, matched by similar urgings from Professor Richard Dawkins, I can see a movement growing to outlaw the teaching of faith to children. - Peter Hitchens

Christopher has admirably debated his views on religion with all comers. The exchange I found most revealing was the one he had with Douglas Wilson at Christianity Today.

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Benedict XVI is a reactionary. Or so Le Monde declared in an editorial from a few weeks ago. He "delights the militants of tradition." As we used to say in kindergarten when teacher scolded someone: oooOOOooohhha! One can practically see the scowl across the writer's face.  The occasion for this remark is a rumored document, a moto proprio that will grant greater liberty to priests to say the traditional Mass according to the rubrics of 1962. For the non-Catholics, a bit of history: After the Second Vatican Council, a revised liturgy was introduced into the Church, called the Novus Ordo Missae or the Mass of Pope Paul VI. The big changes most parishes saw: priests facing the people during the mass, Latin dropped in favor of the vernacular, alter rails pulled out, chant also disappeared. Also, and perhaps most importantly, a number of prayers were omitted, changed, or translated into the vernacular in decidedly odd or new ways. Here is a concise summary of the criticisms. Here is Dietrich von Hildebrand's more lyrical plaint. And (now reaching overkill) the precise critique put forward by Cardinal Ottiavanni.

Anyway, devotees of the traditional liturgy have been laboring in small corners of the Church, or sometimes outside the jurisdiction of local bishops.  Benedict, hoping to reconcile the renegade traditionalists and ease the burdens on those already in the Church, will likely encourage bishops to accommodate them. He may even allow them to organize their liturgy with local priests, sans a bishop's say-so. But Le Monde has an oddly politicized version of Christianity.

After issuing the usual complaints (too conservative in Poland, it weighs in against gay civil unions in Italy), the editorial goes on to say,

A papal decree will liberalize, in May, the ancient rite of the Church (Mass in Latin, with the back turned to the people). It is a measure dreaded by a majority of French Catholics, led by the episcopate, attached to the legacy of the council of the 1960s. If, in his recent "apostolic exhortation", Benedict XVI proclaims his fidelity to Vatican II, his liturgical legalism delights the militants of ancient tradition. These struggles are largely misunderstood by those, believers or not, for whom the vocation of Christianity expresses itself more through aid to marginalized populations than through this disciplinary legalism [lit.: pointillisme], more on help to those who suffer than on this reactionary temptation. - Le Monde translation via Rorate Caeli

You hear that: dreaded? You can tell how excised the French Catholics are because they are rioting in Gare du Nord and setting fires to cars and books of Latin grammar. Oh... wait. That's not the army of French Catholics revolting against a rumored moto-propio? Uh, nevermind.

It's fascinating that Le Monde would invoked what non-believers think the vocation of Christianity ought to be. Exactly where can I find the Dominical commands relating to "marginalized peoples?" I'm still waiting for that. Whenever I open up a New Testament I find exhortations related to my behavior with neighbors and enemies. Chesterton quipped that these are likely to be the same people. So they are.

When did Christian charity (love) become reduced to the coercive extraction and redistribution of surplus income by the state? Though it may or may not be necessary "aid" administered by the state is impersonal, undemanding and doesn't resemble at all the morality preached by Jesus. Is the editorial implying that traditional liturgy is antithetical to charity? Or that charitable persons can only be committed to "the legacy of the council of the 1960s?" As is the style for unsigned editorials - nothing makes any sense. It's just a series of stated prejudices straining to become an argument.

Go Team!Worship teams. "Worship team" is one of the worst phrases ever invented. Much less Biblical than "prayer warrior," yet more aggressively insane-sounding when dropped into casual conversation. "Yeah, after we rehearse for the Hearts on Fire Crusade 2007 in the public middle school gym this Saturday, I'm taking the worship team to Applebees."

In my brief Evangelical interlude as a teenager (yes, as all these stories do, it started with some wonderful young woman), I saw plenty of worship teams: skits, matching t-shirts, and surprisingly competent musicianship.

The desperate search for "relevance" in the life of young people has lead to some bizarre (if sympathetic) movements.  I'm sure that as the television show "One Punk, Under God" premieres this week there will be alot of lifestyle sections talking about "Revolution Church" a  brainchild of Jay Bakker (of those Bakkers). I have to say that though I'm glad Evangelical services are generally so bad that they make the local silly liturgy at the catholic parish in anywhere U.S.A. look like a Palestrina high mass - I'm drawing the line at Evangelicals ministering to people in bars. They start taking away these hard-luck souls and feeding them coffee at the local "coffehouse" church service. This is unacceptable and I think the U.S. Conference of catholic bishops needs to more aggressively recruit men into the priesthood who will spend the weekday hours in bars as their glorious predecessors in the faith have done. Bars need more priests, less evangelism. I will stand guard against the influence of these worship teams.

The Word of the Lord?Never pass up a story idea if you have one. I had been wanting to write about the incredible and perplexing Bible publishing industry. Alas the WSJ beat me to it. At the end of the Wall Street Journal article (which I can't find online), "Heavens, Bibles are really Booming" a Mr. O'Brien says ( a rep from Tyndale), "The question is always how to we create Bibles that people will pick up and use but that will not be too gimmicky."

Admitting that I cannot sort one publisher's wares from another's, the article does talk about the recent innovations in packaging the Holy Scriptures. Tyndale, has plans to release a Bible that looks like a flattened Nalgene bottle. But perhaps you just want your Bible to match your outfit or outlook.

The pink and brown model has been particularly popular. Bibles are also available. in the colors of your college, with a fur cover, a flower patterned cover, and to appeal to young adherents, with a camouflage cover, a metal cover and a duct-tape cover. ...

But Bibles are becoming as much personal statements as fashion statements. "What people are saying is 'I want to find a Bible that is really me," noted Rodney Hatfield, a vice president of marketing at Thomas Nelson. "It's no different than with anything else in our culture." - Joanne Kauffman

Exactly. Now I'm willing to go a long way in allowing good salt of the earth folks to do what they can to make themselves interested in their religion. There have always been complaints from certain upstanding religious folks about "kitsch" in religion. I imagine this complaint is based less on concern for souls than concern for appearances. "I don't want to be associated with one of those bog-Catholics."

But duct-tape? This assertion that this is "no different than anything else in our culture" sounds more like an indictment, no?

Scourage of liberalism?Ross Douthat and Damon Linker are having the first fruitful exchange of ideas I've seen on the web in some time. I will now ruin it with my own observations and additions. In response to the question Ross Douthat posed, about whether any believing Catholic can eat at the table of the modern liberal order that Linker promotes, Linker responded:

  Like every other citizen, you must be willing to accept what I call "the liberal bargain." In my book, I describe this bargain as the act of believers giving up their "ambition to political rule in the name of their faith" in exchange for the freedom to worship God however they wish, without state interference. What does this mean, in practical terms? It means that your belief in what the Roman Catholic Church believes and teaches is irrelevant, politically speaking. It simply shouldn't matter whether or not you think that justice has a divine underpinning, anymore than it should matter whether you prefer Jane Austen to Dostoevsky. In a word, liberal politics presumes that it's possible and desirable for political life to be decoupled from theological questions and disputes.- Damon Linker

That last sentence sounds good - doesn't it? It would be rather difficult for me to enforce a Trinitarian view of the Godhead on everyone in America. If that is what Linker means by theological dispute - than there really can't be much of an argument. 

 But what does Damon Linker mean exactly? Obviously it is silly to suggest that the question of whether justice has a divine underpinning should be of as much political relevance as whether I prefer this or that novelist. But that doesn't seem to be the heart of Linker's point - nor of much relevance.

I'm a bit baffled by the entire controversy about "theo-conservatism" and "thecons." The project that Fr. Neahaus seems to be working at is justifying the place of religious people at this rather cold meal served by the modern liberal state. That is a rather modest goal, no?  On the one hand, Neuhaus must overcome the objections of liberals who would like to see religion banned from the public square. On the other, he fights quietist Christians and traditionalists who think that that modern liberalism is just too dirty to touch. As a matter of practical politics, I'm totally with Neuhaus.

Linker does hit something rather interesting in his first reply.

And Catholicism? Since Vatican II--and especially since the start of Pope John Paul II's pontificate--the Catholic Church has staked out a novel position on these matters. Like most anti-liberal faiths, it has demanded a unity between politics and religion. But it has also maintained that Catholic moral teaching is perfectly compatible with liberalism--indeed, that it is the only solid and sure foundation for liberalism. By contrast, liberalism without Catholicism is, in John Paul's arresting phrase, "thinly disguised totalitarianism."

Catholicism does not so much reject what liberalism affirms as it denies the validity of the distinctions liberalism typically assumes--distinctions between private and public, secular and sacred, reason and revelation. In place of these distinctions, the Church proposes a higher synthesis, all the while claiming that such a synthesis produces a purified liberal politics. This is pretty much what the theocons propose for the United States.

I tend to think that this way of thinking about political life obscures far more than it clarifies. It thus also leads certain Catholics to misunderstand the character of modern politics--in particular, the possibilities it opens up and those it forecloses. - Damon Linker

 Linker is stumbling here as I think it is very difficult to deduce exactly what John Paul II taught on this matter - but he is right that the Church and Churchmen like Neuhaus have staked out a precarious and novel position that I'd like to call "semi-traditionalism" - if that weren't such an awkward term. There has been an uneven tradition, embodied perhaps first by Orestes Brownson, of lashing together a form of enlightenment liberalism to Catholic natural law teaching. It should be explored in depth sometime, without Damon Linker's "heavy breathing" or even the rhetorical demands of a debate held by the New Republic.

My own view is that this attempt to baptize modern liberalism is misguided. Like Daniel Larison, I hold out American small r-republicanism up a productive political model. There is no reason, historical or theological to turn mixed constituionalism into anything more than a wise and practical political form. There is no reason to believe that modern liberalism is ordained in some special way by God. We don't have to believe this in order to remain sane participants in civil society. But for some reason, certain Catholic neoconservatives and certain West Coast Straussians believe we do. I would say that they are promoting an ideology, not Catholic truth or (to use an ugly phrase) gospel liberalism.

In the latest installment, Ross Douthat finally verbalizes what religious conservatives have suspected.

The Constitution discriminates against government actions--banning guns, searching homes without a warrant, restricting the freedom of worship. It doesn't discriminate against government motives.

Yet that's precisely what you seem to think the "liberal bargain" is intended to do--to discriminate against religious motivations in politics in a way that it doesn't discriminate against, say, the motivations of a secular social engineer seeking an earthly utopia - Ross Douthat. 

There seems to be a fundamental suspicion that religious convictions are, for one reason or another (usually expressed in halting, or coughed over mumbling about separation of church and state) inferior to all other sources of political motivation. This hostility is usually unreflective. Anyone who observes modern politics with even slightly open eyes can see that politics are driven by the irrational: hatreds, resentment, group identification, tribalism (whether that be ethnic, religious or class), bigotry of all kings, wish fulfillment - and on and on. Liberals like Linker should thank Neuhaus. Linker may not like the catechism out of which Neuhaus teaches the peasants, but it is certainly more high minded than the "I'd have a beer with this guy. The other dude looks vaguely queer" approach to politics that predominates.

Knowledge of fundamental Islamic sources, for example the Koran, is useful, perhaps indispensable, as is a basic knowledge of the history of Islamic expansion. A politically correct ignorance of all this history, except for a hostile verdict on the evil Crusades, provides no basis for an adequate understanding of the crisis in which we find ourselves.

Two misleading stereotypes of religion need to be abandoned. First, that all religions are basically the same: either all good or all bad.

In fact, the great religions differ mightily one from the other in doctrine and in the societies they produce. Religions can be sources of beauty and goodness and they can be, through corruption, sources of poison and destruction. - Cardinal George Pell

That was pretty much the only sane response to appear in a newspaper. More likely, I bet you have heard about the Crusades recently. After the Pope quoted Manuel II Palaiologos' assesments of Islam, every sensible person started talking about the Crusades.

There would have been no established Byzantine or Roman Christianity if the faith had not been spread and maintained and enforced by every kind of violence and cruelty and coercion. To take Islam's own favorite self-pitying example: It was the Catholic crusaders who sacked and burned Christian Byzantium on their way to Palestine—and that was only after they had methodically set about the Jews, so the Muslim world was actually only the third victim of this barbarity. (Sir Steven Runciman's A History of the Crusades is the best source here.) - Christopher Hitchens

The thought crossed all our minds. What if the Pope were murdered by Islamic terrorists? A Methodist friend of mine who was against the war in Iraq said. "If that happens, f&*k the Reformation. It's on." By "it" he meant the clash of civilizations. Of course, the second thought on my mind would be what would Christopher Hitchens say about it? Could he even manage to write more than the words: Well he deserved it, didn't he? Also, what was up with the beginning of his column where he talks about all the other "popes" - when he often meant Patriarchs? He was trying to make a point that the Pope doesn't' speak for all Christians and we make too much of his importance. However,  the Pope is still the head of a Church that includes about a billion people. Can we really overplay that? Also, I get the distinct feeling that Hitchens' contract for Slate is a kind of nuisance since he only seems to emerge to denounce the Catholic Church or Saddam Hussein. Do they not pay him as much as The Atlantic? Or do they just let him contribute whatever the hell he wants, when he wants?

So, here is John Meacham, who is as usual pretty shallow.

And by speaking of jihad without alluding to Christianity’s dark history of violence in the name of God—the Crusades, forced conversions, pogroms, the Inquisition—Benedict seemed to be denouncing Islam while failing to acknowledge that any religion, including his own, can be manipulated and perverted to evil ends. - Jon Meacham

Of course at the end of Mecham's piece he uses the memory of Pope John Paul II to bludgeon his successor. This is a very old media trick. Reagan and Goldwater, who at one time or another were the most evil, nuke-crazy people on the planet are now preferable alternatives to George Bush. Doesn't anyone recall that John Paul II was reviled as a reactionary who would reverse all progress in the Church, how we was a stubborn pale sexless, old Pole who wouldn't let the kids taste banana flavored condoms? I guess we don't. Now he was the great reconciler of all humanity. So, why should we put up with God's Rottweiler?

He who controls the past, controls the future.  The chant is hard to get out of my ears. Islam is a religion of peace. Christianity is all about the Crusades and Inquisition.

If Ben Stiller were a Positive Atheist He'd Look Like This GuyMy latest on Brainwash is a review of Sam Harris' forthcoming, Letter to a Christian Nation, a profoundly disturbing book on a number of levels. One bit I didn't have space to mention in my review is Harris' closing in which he says that this letter is the product of failure - the failure of "the many brilliant attacks upon religion that preceded it, our schools to proclaim the death of God in a way that each generation can understand..." Say, what?

One thing to note about Harris is that he does believe there in some kind of spirituality out there. He claims Eastern traditions of spirituality are better at helping people than Western ones - just as Western medicine is better at healing people than Eastern medicine. What do you make of that?  I suppose all of this flows from his conviction that religion, if we are to have any at all, cannot make any kind of universal, or absolute claim.

Jesuits: Turning the World back to 1444 and plotting against England since 1534Fr. Jape, everyone's favorite 500  year old Jesuit is back and dumping buckets full of rotten tomatoes and vinegar onto First Things. Fr. Jape recently sent a carrier pigeon my way. The "coo" was a familiar sound to me.  I looked into the sky and the bird crapped on the shoulder of my favorite Dior jacket. After failing to stamp on it I saw that it carried a message "For your mortification. Fr. G. Jape"

What can explain the cultural and intellectual insecurity on maudlin display at First Things? I think it is the manifestation of full blown snobbery brought by submission to the masters of Wall Street and 5th Avenue. A known and keenly felt inferiority brings on the curious combination of pretending to enjoy our plastic lives while fashioning ourselves as connoisseurs of fine leather, marble, and cherrywood. This brings the bizarre spectacle of people who plop their BK have-it-your-way Whopper drive-through on their “handcrafted Amish dinner-table” and then turn around and pop in the latest London Philharmonic CD into their made-in-China Wal-Mart standard-issue under-the-cupboard CD player. - Fr. Jape Gallassacas  

Not Really Evangelical EitherJust this Sunday we got an article on Greg Boyd of Woodwind Hills Church - and behold he's not 100% behind the Republicans. Ain't that a thing?! As I'm writing, this article is the 2nd most e-mailed story from the Times. Boyd's solemnly expressed concerns about Christians blurring the line between their religion and their politics are quoted extensively. His Kingdom isn't of this world afterall. The Times is giving its imprimatur to something it would like to be a trend in Evangelical circles: If Lumpen-christians can't be transformed then they should go back to those anti-worldliness sermons and stuff like that. But they neglect to tell us something rather important about Greg Boyd.

Demonstrating her cluelessness Goodstein mentions that Greg Boyd "is known among Evangelicals for a bestselling book, 'Letters From a Skeptic."  But that isn't true. Greg Boyd is best known as a major proponent of "Open Theism" - and his book "God of the Possible? A Biblical Introduction to the Open View of God (2000)"  The doctrines associated with Open Theism were rejected by the Evangelical Theological Society in 2001. 

Here is Wikipedia with a good summation of Open Theism:  

This view of God, based on a libertarian view of free will and particular philosophical views on the nature of time and other metaphysical matters, is supposed to allow its advocates to 1) Attribute both power and wisdom to Him without suggesting that He ordains everything to His own glory, including evil (Calvinism) 2) Avoid what Open Theists regard as the inconsistency of suggesting that libertarian human freedom can coexist with foreknowledge and Divine Sovereignty (Arminianism).

This is not only a rejection of predestination as it is understood by Calvinism, but also of most accepted alternative versions. The writers in favor of free-will theism differentiate their views from those of Roman Catholicism, Lutheranism, Arminianism, Eastern Orthodoxy, neo-orthodoxy, and Islam, all of which—differently from one another, but similarly over against open theism—assert that God has a certain knowledge of all aspects of the future.

Great work Times! For my fellow Catholic readers and students of the ancient world this is like doing a story on Arius' view of imperial politics without even bringing up the fact that he is in a pitched theological battle with the majority of bishops of the Church. A story on Greg Boyd could be an interesting (cough -- five years ago). But that good story would be about his theological dissent, not about how he distinguishes himself politically. One would expect the Times to gloss over it - but to miss it entirely? It's still the best newspaper around, but that says alot more about newspapers.

Hat tip to Peter Suderman.

Am I the Only One not Getting Up Again?I must be the worst Catholic that ever shows his face at Mass - even at hard-core rear-guard-blackest-reaction-Latin Masses, I am the only guy who committed a mortal sin and didn't scrub up in a confessional between the sinnin' and the Mass.

Sometime during Advent, I was in a parish known for its short pews. Well, this one family overflowed one of the kids below 7 and her 19 yr old - blonde and just back from college sister into my pew. She and I were practically the only ones that didn't make our way towards the altar rail when it was time to receive communion. He less modest sister (I guess 17) passed us, gave blondie a knowing grin and hissed "Sinner" almost silently. She swept her eyes over to meet mine, and as she pushed her tongue just out to the edge of her lips, swinging her hips in a subtly suggestive way, she raised her hands into a prayerful pose and made her way to Our Lord.

Before I could think -- Wow, that is the most transgressive thing I've ever witnessed in a Lefebvrist stronghold -- my heart went out to this conscientious blonde girl standing next to the guy who always seems to be standing back at this time -- you know the one who dresses in a way that is appropriate for Mass but,  if he added a certain strut also for the NYC night clubs.

Theocrats Will Ban Smirking Too, KevinIn the latest First Things, Ross Douthat puts the nuts and bolts of the anti-Theocon writers under the wire wheel. The unctuous re-readings of history are blown away to reveal that the genre is just plain old anti-conservatism. But instead of dismissing conservatives as having defective personalities - a la Adorno, the arguments are along these lines:

In addition to casting religious conservatives as mullahs, proto-fascists, and agents of American decline, this strict-separationist interpretation of world history frees the anti-theocrats from the messy business of actually arguing with their opponents. From sex education and government support for religious charities to stem cells and abortion, it’s enough to call something “faith-based” and dismiss it. Indeed, reading through the anti-theocrat literature, one gets the sense that the surest way to judge if a political idea is wrong, dangerous, or antidemocratic is to tally up the number of religious people who support it. - Ross Douthat

I'm always interested in paranoid fantasies. The black helicopters that are going to swing low through Idaho and mow down the registered gun owners, the computer chips that the government will put in our hands for commerce (the Mark of the Beast), the Bildebergers who grew Brian Williams in a test tube and fit him with bionically assisted tensile strength. 

What is it about our politics that drives people into almost masochistic (even fetish) fantasies about the other side?

PS- Spell check wanted to replace "bionically" with "Biblically."