splitting hairs

Reading books like Robert Nisbet's History of the Idea of Progress I am often, as in a nightmare, briefly visited by a great fear of Western Civilization, of the believers and unbelievers alike--Ideas bespeaking accordant progressions from Augustine or Hesiod--who seek to preserve it, and of the over-articulation of finding in an infant's golden tooth the advent of a golden age and proof of Revelation. I feel for a moment like Yeats' old peasant "[whose] life was ebbing out with no achievement remaining and no hope left him . . . 'The fret is over me,' he repeated, and then went on to talk once more of God and heaven. More than once also he said, waving his arms toward the mountain, 'Only myself knows what happened under that thorn-tree forty years ago'; and as he said it the tears upon his face glistened in the moonlight."

Nolite turbare magica fila mea.

Foreign Policy Passport blog: "This Wall Street Journal article is trying really hard to find something sinister in the story of a recently constructed mosque in Nicaragua."

It can't be that hard. Look at the last 5 words of the sentence.

was it something I did?

Among the characters in the TV show "Defying Gravity" there is one I'm pretty sure is Catholic. At one point all the main characters are asked whether their hallucinations are guilt-related--and they are: two hallucinate about crew members they were forced to leave behind on Mars, another about an abortion, another about a child that died because of the artillery coordinates he gave, etc. But the Catholic girl says, "All my sins are forgiven, I have no guilt." I wish. Good Catholic that I am, I opened a new tab, fired up the New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia, and searched for "guilt." Lo and behold: "In the Sacrament of Penance the guilt of sin is removed, and with it the eternal punishment due to mortal sin." And "guilt" in the dictionary:

1. the fact or state of having committed an offense, crime, violation, or wrong, esp. against moral or penal law; culpability: He admitted his guilt.

2. a feeling of responsibility or remorse for some offense, crime, wrong, etc., whether real or imagined.

Etymology dictionary:

O.E. gylt "crime, sin, fault, fine," of unknown origin, though some suspect a connection to O.E. gieldan "to pay for, debt," but O.E.D. editors find this "inadmissible phonologically." The mistaken use for "sense of guilt" is first recorded 1690. Guilt by association first recorded 1941. Guilty is from O.E. gyltig, from gylt.

Phew. I remember watching "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," the part where Joel and Clementine are running around in Joel's memory, trying to find a place for Clementine to hide so that he will be able to keep her in mind. Toward the end of Lacuna's process, Clementine suggests "shame" and the scene changes to when Joel was a kid at the moment his mother opens the door to his room while he's in bed with comic-strip pornography. Though it might be considered a little grotesque, that has always been one of my favorite scenes--for Clementine's immediate knowledge of where one could hide in one's own memory and for the lack of hesitation with which Joel takes her there. It would be a shame if being Catholic removed either of those ways of knowing.

On an only slightly related note, I have discovered in the magnificent world of soccer blogging a way for Catholic parishes to curb Orthodox envy and inspire an aggressive, pagan mood: layman's kits! I will move to whichever parish sports Chester 1901 or Tottenham Hotspur 1896 on Sundays:

Jasper wasn't kidding

Chris Dierkes, writing at the League of Ordinary Gentlemen: "And, if personal experience and lifelong immersion in a sub-culture is any form of persuasive evidence, I can tell you that conservative Anglo-Catholicism–at the clerical level–is totally dominated by gay men. Mostly repressed. What used to be called when I was in seminary, the pink mafia."

But, man, it's really annoying that people--in the midst of absolute faux-familiar nonsense about Benedict and postmodernism (i.e., "watch me get away with not talking about Islam")--still feel justified in blaming the Pope, however "multivalently" (!), for the Regensburg aftermath. "That rookie needs a PR guy." Papists aren't immune either. Thomas Peters got some good traffic selling out the Pope (esp. on the SSPX stuff), culminating in what he has really meant all along, the narcissist: "Hire me already."

weevil

Quote of a quote: "During the campaign, disgruntled Republicans often said it would be better to have Obama in office, showing everyone just how horrible Democrat policies are, than tolerate a RINO like McCain pushing the same policies in low gear, with bipartisan fingerprints. Glenn Beck’s slap at McCain is a retroactive expression of the idea that conservatism is just one crushing defeat away from total victory."

This is quoted in reference to Glenn Beck going "all in" for Doug Hoffman and third parties in general. Allahpundit makes the usual Frum/Graham/Gingrich point that a conservative third party means more Democrats in power (power!), using the above quotation to illustrate the continuity of Beck's disgruntled ambivalence. The idea is that Beck's is just another quest for power, the kind that has the luxury of a commercially attractive third choice - and so the critique extends only so far as the "realities of congressional compromise," as if we have now, at last, become serious. But isn't there something else? Isn't there something else besides what Allahpundit is gesturing at when he talks about "the perfect world" (where the more conservative candidate is always also the power candidate) and the "hypothetical" imperfect world? Isn't there the world in which Republicans lose and then don't respond by electing Michael Steele as the party chairman? The world where Republicans lose and then don't continually screw up on the local level? Where the party structure itself is put into question? Where the party realizes that it is the problem?

You've got Conor Friedersdorf championing "civil discourse" and "exhaustively-researched, well-written reporting" on behalf of the Movement. You've got Lindsey Graham reaching across the aisle and border to "grow" the party. You've got Frum demanding that social conservatives turn down the volume. There's Douthat's noble blush when Catholicism and policy meet. No wonder I can't think anymore. There is something soft and pleasant about Mark Hackard's Sniper's Tower post on Dostoevsky and "modern conservatism," something reassuring about the clarity with which von Lembke announces the insignificance of his "we."

Update: In a nutshell. This is Gingrich, from a couple days ago, "on whether his endorsement of Scozzafava in NY-23 means he's positioning himself for '12":

It means that as somebody who worked with Reagan to create a majority in 1980 and somebody who worked to create a majority in 1994, I believe in a Republican Party big enough to have representation in every part of the country, and I believe you don't strengthen yourself by having a purge. You strengthen yourself by attracting more people, not by driving people away.

See Dan Riehl (via RSM). The "realism" of the grow-the-party/new-majority/create-a-majority coalition means that the power-hungry can never ask how one of their brethren became part of the family.

change and the Church

If you have the time, marvel at David Gibson's confusion over the pontificate of Benedict XVI (via Insight Scoop):

What this move confirms, however, is that change is the paradoxical mantra of Benedict's papacy . . . Thus far, Benedict's papacy has been one of constant movement and change, the sort of dynamic that liberal Catholics -- or Protestants -- are usually criticized for pursuing. In Benedict's case, this liberalism serves a conservative agenda.

It cannot be a surprise that, in the "post-identitarian" age of a "genuine theologico-political phenomenon," religion journalists must be baffled by the kinship between "change" and "identity." This is the other side of the liberal embrace of "Burkeanism" as good conservative strategy:

When Big Government liberals tell conservatives they need to be more like Burke, they mean conservatives should be gracious losers--this is hardly an accurate description of Burke himself, but I digress. In their mind, a "Burkean" Right is one that provides only minor speed bumps on America's road to a centrally-planned utopia; to them, the ideal conservative is an erudite gentleman who pontificates for a few minutes, and then gets out of the way.

"The Secret Commonwealth"

David B. Hart, writing at First Things:

One aspect of [Rev. Robert] Kirk’s investigations I find especially interesting is the purely autochthonous quality he ascribes to the second sight. Once removed from his native heath, says Kirk, a prophet loses the virtue that allows him to see the other world, and he becomes as blind to preternatural presences as any other mortal. He is like Antaeus raised up off the earth. Not only is every fairy a genius loci, every seer is a vates loci with a strictly limited charter. And the reason it pleases me to learn this is that it allows me to offer a riposte to an English friend of mine—a famous theologian whose name (which is John Milbank) I should probably withhold—who has quite a keen interest in fairies, and who regards it as a signal mark of the spiritual inferiority of America that its woods and dells, mountains, and streams, are devoid of such creatures.

Dover Publications should give Hart a commission. I just spent $125 on Christmas presents after reading this. At least, that's what the email receipt tells me, but I suspect a gnome had a hand in it.

hipster parents

National Post: "If I'm a punk rocker or I'm really into Hungarian folk dancing . . . and that's who I am, why should I have to leave that behind and raise my kid in some generic middle class American reality that doesn't feel authentic to me?"

simplification-affirming

Christopher Lyon just finished reading Tom Robbins.

a Catholic manifesto

Natural Law: From Neo-Thomism to Nuptual Mysticism
Communio, Tracey Rowland, Fall 2008

"This is not a statement against the idea of natural law per se, but a recognition that the Maritain project no longer appears viable or, in other words, that natural law is no longer, if it ever was, a lingua franca between Catholics and Liberals . . ."

"managing men"

At Inside Catholic, Marjorie Campbell describes how New Feminists, with respect to "managing" their husbands, are conflicted between confrontation and manipulation. For her own part, Mrs. Campbell prefers the direct, confrontational approach while her mother in-law's eyes twinkle at the memory of victories won through "trickery." As for her husband:

"Which do you prefer," I asked my spouse . . . "Being tricked and beguiled as your mother does your father, or my direct, to-the-point style?"

I watched him ponder my question, apparently confused and uncertain . . .

"I suppose," he finally concluded, "that I don't mind your manipulating me, as long as your objective is good and I don't know about it." He absentmindedly rubbed his neck, as if to verify that his head remained in place.

Catholics should spend more time watching The Office.

Yesterday I arrived at my hotel located next to a freeway interchange somewhere outside Austin, TX. There are no stores, restaurants (besides a weird one in the hotel across the street) or even gas stations within walking distance. There are only the aforementioned hotels, soul killing office parks and a bunch of trees in which thousands of birds nest and subsequently poop like crazy (I don't even want to try and walk anywhere because I am worried that I will get pooped on). I don't have a rental car. Last night I had a bad headache so I asked the front desk for some Tylenol or Aspirin, nothing. Interestingly the adult videos are conveniently located second on the TV menu in my room, after “Movies” before “Music” - “Kids Only” is number six.

excruciating neatness

Brian Phillips, writing at Run of Play:

The other concern I had going in was that based on their past projects (The Queen, John Adams), the filmmakers seemed likely to aim for a particular kind of streamlined presentation that always makes me feel like the director is stroking my hand and purring, "let me tell you what my movie means"—metaphors that line up too crisply (the stag in The Queen), scenes that underline a single point, and so on. My inaccurate shorthand way of thinking about this approach is that it belongs to movies that want to be plays, that want to line up their meanings with an excruciating neatness, while life and good novels never lose an element of the unaligned and the ambiguous. [emphasis mine]

Brandon Flowers' American Dream

On the heels of the previous post which cites Caleb Stegall's recent reiteration of the call to "repaganize" the Church, to give "magic" back to the "authority of the Church," I find an at first trivial link to the way Brandon Flowers, through the lyrics of The Killers' last two real albums, "Sam's Town" and "Day & Age," not unconsciously attempts to forge a "thinking which sees" the magic in what is American. The corruption of Gabriel Marcel's description of the thought of Max Picard is intended, as is the mockery of likeness the juxtaposition of Picard and Flowers would tend to make (wait till the claim of likeness extends to include Dave Matthews). However, in "This River is Wild," Flowers does sing:

Run for the hills before they burn
Listen to the sound of the world
Don't [/but] watch it turn
But shake a little
Sometimes I'm nervous when I talk
I shake a little

The link, as any fervent listener of The Killers will already have recognized, is forged by nothing more than Flowers' thematic use of "magic" [or phenomenal relatives of magic like "energy," the circus, dreams, memory, and--in keeping with Stegall's awareness of "danger" (and with what others might call a grave recognition of "the force of imagination")--the devil] throughout his songwriting. The emphatic repetition of "shake" in the quoted stanza above is the dramatic articulation of what could be called Flowers' phenomenology of magic, and I believe it is not altogether different from either Picard's awareness of the positivity of silence or Stegall's plea for authority to resonate in the "saying" of the Church. For Flowers, magic is what a Thomist in this day and age recognizes as man's "participation in the creative intelligence of God" in the context of "metaphysical realism." It is a knowing that appears. It appears in the dance and in the tremble, in the shining of the eyes and in the daydream, in the gain and loss of character and destiny, in the gift and loss of innocence, in love unrequited and in love returned. For Flowers, that which makes the dream recognizable together with reality is magic--and he is himself some kind of magician.

I will begin a series of posts on The Killers, focusing on a few selections from Flowers' lyrics:

Sam's Town: "I've got this energy beneath my feet like something underground's gonna come up and carry me."

Read My Mind: "I pull up to the front of your driveway with magic soaking my spine"

This River is Wild: "The circus and the crew, well they're just passing through, making sure that merry still goes round."

Spaceman: "My global position systems are vocally addressed: they say the Nile used to run from East to West." Also, "and the public don't dwell on my transmission, cause it wasn't televised." In particular, its relation to the already quoted exhortation, "listen to the world, don't watch it turn." Of Day & Age, Flowers said, "It's kind of looking at Sam's Town from Mars."

A Dustland Fairytale: "Is there still magic in the midnight sun, or did you leave it back in '61? In the cadence of a young man's eyes?" [my favorite song]

I Can't Stay: "The emotion--it was . . . electric. And the stars were all aligned."

Etc.

the magic of authority

Caleb Stegall, quoting himself in the comment section of his own post, "Go to the Ant," at the Front Porch Republic - linked by Robert Cheeks at Postmodern Conservative:

We are at a dangerous crossroads. Messing with the dead is dangerous stuff. But it must be done. But like Tolkein understood, it can only be done by the “true King,” by the church, and even this is not without debilitating and compromises. This is connected to what I have been arguing about being able, at least occasionally, to admit that the narratives of tradition and church history are to an extent myths that legitimize what I would call the "mojo" . . . or the magic . . . the authority of the church. The simple yet profound truth that at the very bottom, we have very little to go on other than "because the church says so." So this is in part what I mean by repaganizing … that our churchmen need a hint of witchdoctor in them, or if you prefer, a touch of Gandalf or Merlin. They have "powers" as my kids would say. This is completely flattened out in a rationalistic modernizing deracinated disenchanted liberalizing protestant culture. And the inchoate need for magic and appeasement of the gods gets shifted in very unhealthy materialist directions which can be exploited by those who understand the psychology. [emphasis mine]

Holy smokes.

More in the same vein in the response to Stegall's old post at De Regno Christi, a blog which includes Gerald J. Russello among its authors.