This homily is read in every Orthodox parish throughout the world this night:
If anyone is devout and a lover of God, let him enjoy this beautiful and radiant festival.
If anyone is a wise servant, let him, rejoicing, enter into the joy of his Lord.
If anyone has wearied himself in fasting, let him now receive his recompense.
If anyone has labored from the first hour, let him today receive his just reward. If anyone has come at the third hour, with thanksgiving let him keep the feast. If anyone has arrived at the sixth hour, let him have no misgivings; for he shall suffer no loss. If anyone has delayed until the ninth hour, let him draw near without hesitation. If anyone has arrived even at the eleventh hour, let him not fear on account of his delay. For the Master is gracious and receives the last, even as the first; he gives rest to him that comes at the eleventh hour, just as to him who has labored from the first. He has mercy upon the last and cares for the first; to the one he gives, and to the other he is gracious. He both honors the work and praises the intention.
Enter all of you, therefore, into the joy of our Lord, and, whether first or last, receive your reward. O rich and poor, one with another, dance for joy! O you ascetics and you negligent, celebrate the day! You that have fasted and you that have disregarded the fast, rejoice today! The table is rich-laden; feast royally, all of you! The calf is fatted; let no one go forth hungry!
Let all partake of the feast of faith. Let all receive the riches of goodness.
Let no one lament his poverty, for the universal kingdom has been revealed.
Let no one mourn his transgressions, for pardon has dawned from the grave.
Let no one fear death, for the Saviour's death has set us free.
He that was taken by death has annihilated it! He descended into hades and took hades captive! He embittered it when it tasted his flesh! And anticipating this Isaiah exclaimed, "Hades was embittered when it encountered thee in the lower regions." It was embittered, for it was abolished! It was embittered, for it was mocked! It was embittered, for it was purged! It was embittered, for it was despoiled! It was embittered, for it was bound in chains!
It took a body and, face to face, met God! It took earth and encountered heaven! It took what it saw but crumbled before what it had not seen!
"O death, where is thy sting? O hades, where is thy victory?"
Christ is risen, and you are overthrown!
Christ is risen, and the demons are fallen!
Christ is risen, and the angels rejoice!
Christ is risen, and life reigns!
Christ is risen, and not one dead remains in a tomb!
For Christ, being raised from the dead, has become the First-fruits of them that slept.
To him be glory and might unto ages of ages. Amen.
+++
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Ma Chere Douce Kate: Difficile, Laisse-moi Tranquille.
Lyrics:
They say a girl like me should wed,
And take a man to lay in my bed.
But I would like to stay young and free,
And oh, I wish they would let me be.
Oh, I wish they would let me be..
Let me be.
Robin the miller he's fond of brass,
He sees a fool's face when he looks in glass,
Thinks he'll bargain like grain for me.
But oh, I wish he would let me be,
Oh, I wish he would let me be.
Robin, let me be.
There came a man named Bonnie Jim,
He looks so fine in his holiday trim.
Thinks he'll take me off to the sea,
But oh, I wish he would let me be.
Oh, I wish he would let me be.
Jim, let me be,
Jim, let me be.
La la la la la la la la la.
La la la la la la la la la..
Cousin Dick he has gold and land,
He thinks all this will win my hand.
My hand or lips he will never see,
But oh, I wish he would let me be.
Oh, I wish he would let me be.
Dick, let me be.
This young soldier boy is Ned,
His gun's like his own, he can shoot me dead.
His eyes are blue, but they don't see me.
Oh, why does he let me be?
Oh, why does he let me be?
Let me be,
Why do you let me be?
La la la la la la la la la.
La la la la la la la la la..
(Thanks to Sophie for these lyrics)
---
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Freedom, Vermont & Unity: Bernie Rulz!!
Another economics/political post, it's a Lenten Tuesday:
I love my new home and senator. Stick it to them nasty Anti-Federalist corporatist libertarian trogs, Bernie!! I love you, man.
[That graphic came from here, where you can read it in a larger version.]
---
I love my new home and senator. Stick it to them nasty Anti-Federalist corporatist libertarian trogs, Bernie!! I love you, man.
[That graphic came from here, where you can read it in a larger version.]
---
Matt Taibbi & Eliot Spitzer: Put the Bastards in Jail, Now.
This is straight up:
I say this in all seriousness: if and when things get worse, the archons in charge of our kleptocracy will pay for having broken the social contract so viciously and shamelessly. Six months in a maximum security prison (Taibbi's prescription here) will be in that context a light sentence.
---
I say this in all seriousness: if and when things get worse, the archons in charge of our kleptocracy will pay for having broken the social contract so viciously and shamelessly. Six months in a maximum security prison (Taibbi's prescription here) will be in that context a light sentence.
---
Sunday, April 17, 2011
A comment of my so called creative process..
My last project (and only other adventure in blogging) I conceived as a series of postcards of my life abroad in Switzerland, but that got complicated by the fact that I was sharing it with friends and family each of whom constitutes individually a different audience in my mind.
Because I was living in a monastic community, I was automatically talking about religion with people whom I normally don't share that with in our friendships. I also kept spurting about all sorts of things I normally keep locked up in most contexts..
Like everyone, each of my friends shares different parts of my life, I have a different voice, am a different person to each of them, really. Writing for everyone - and then random strangers, too, who began reading it - hundreds of them - was a bit wrenching.
I also ran naively into privacy issues, when the Swiss and French schooled me on cultural differences regarding privacy.. Many of them when they found out I was putting stuff online told me to keep them out of it.
So I felt inhibited, and sometimes a bit paranoid. I posted off the cuff, and then wondered if I exposed too much or annoyed anyone by inflicting my crap on them, or else exposed my friends in ways they would resent.
Whenever I posted stuff of an "existential" nature, especially when I did it in a raw and rambling fashion, I felt some angst.
It felt self indulgent.. But I wanted to do it.. I liked it.. But wanted to do it without annoying my friends. So I canned the old blog, and started this one, meant to be much more focused and disciplined. I wanted to get things into writing that I'd been thinking about and struggling over, whether anyone read it or not.
The potential audience would be a foil for me getting the work done. And I would do it in a more concise manner.
This blog is the result.
The thing is, I'm still rent with a bit of angst. I don't know where to begin, there's so much, and when I do write I've been doing it in a haphazard and jerky fashion.
Posts here have generally been written in less than an hour, most often in under 20 or 30 minutes. I write something, post it.. And then re-read it and immediately see a dozen errors or things I should of added, and so do a 5 minute re-write and re-post. An hour later, I come back, notice more errors, fix them and re-post it again.
Very disciplined process, and perfectly suited to annoy anyone rss'ing this.
I've started writing a dozen different essays, though, and have notes (both dictated and written, as well as an accumulated archive of source materials & media to post) for many more. I need to start writing with discipline, here.
Take for example the last post: there are multiple typos in it, and at least one major factual error (Mosul is in northern Iraq - I was also thinking of Basra when I wrote that line on Iraqi cities, and the word "southern" just slipped in there..)
I leave them as they are, a testament to my editorial competence and my talent comme un ecrivan.
I'll try to keep this project coherent and not too absurd or sententious. I'll try to develop certain themes and lines of logic between my posts, to quilt them in a way that makes sense.
Even though my aim isn't to attract a lot of intention, I do want to be readable and interesting to anyone who does compliment me by following this.
Comments and criticism, always gratefully & sincerely accepted.
I'm posting this without a proofread as a Lenten mortification for you my dear audience. I have your spiritual well being in mind.
After Lent, I will proof read in earnest, I promise. I have to get back to my self flagellation now, though.
(I fibbed, I can't help myself. One slapdash revision. There.)
Cheers.
---
Because I was living in a monastic community, I was automatically talking about religion with people whom I normally don't share that with in our friendships. I also kept spurting about all sorts of things I normally keep locked up in most contexts..
Like everyone, each of my friends shares different parts of my life, I have a different voice, am a different person to each of them, really. Writing for everyone - and then random strangers, too, who began reading it - hundreds of them - was a bit wrenching.
I also ran naively into privacy issues, when the Swiss and French schooled me on cultural differences regarding privacy.. Many of them when they found out I was putting stuff online told me to keep them out of it.
So I felt inhibited, and sometimes a bit paranoid. I posted off the cuff, and then wondered if I exposed too much or annoyed anyone by inflicting my crap on them, or else exposed my friends in ways they would resent.
Whenever I posted stuff of an "existential" nature, especially when I did it in a raw and rambling fashion, I felt some angst.
It felt self indulgent.. But I wanted to do it.. I liked it.. But wanted to do it without annoying my friends. So I canned the old blog, and started this one, meant to be much more focused and disciplined. I wanted to get things into writing that I'd been thinking about and struggling over, whether anyone read it or not.
The potential audience would be a foil for me getting the work done. And I would do it in a more concise manner.
This blog is the result.
The thing is, I'm still rent with a bit of angst. I don't know where to begin, there's so much, and when I do write I've been doing it in a haphazard and jerky fashion.
Posts here have generally been written in less than an hour, most often in under 20 or 30 minutes. I write something, post it.. And then re-read it and immediately see a dozen errors or things I should of added, and so do a 5 minute re-write and re-post. An hour later, I come back, notice more errors, fix them and re-post it again.
Very disciplined process, and perfectly suited to annoy anyone rss'ing this.
I've started writing a dozen different essays, though, and have notes (both dictated and written, as well as an accumulated archive of source materials & media to post) for many more. I need to start writing with discipline, here.
Take for example the last post: there are multiple typos in it, and at least one major factual error (Mosul is in northern Iraq - I was also thinking of Basra when I wrote that line on Iraqi cities, and the word "southern" just slipped in there..)
I leave them as they are, a testament to my editorial competence and my talent comme un ecrivan.
I'll try to keep this project coherent and not too absurd or sententious. I'll try to develop certain themes and lines of logic between my posts, to quilt them in a way that makes sense.
Even though my aim isn't to attract a lot of intention, I do want to be readable and interesting to anyone who does compliment me by following this.
Comments and criticism, always gratefully & sincerely accepted.
I'm posting this without a proofread as a Lenten mortification for you my dear audience. I have your spiritual well being in mind.
After Lent, I will proof read in earnest, I promise. I have to get back to my self flagellation now, though.
(I fibbed, I can't help myself. One slapdash revision. There.)
Cheers.
---
The Divine Comedy: the Gospel as Parody
Today is Palm Sunday. This is one of those blessed and relatively rare years in which the Eastern (Orthodox) and Western (Catholic) calendars are in harmony. We celebrate Holy Week and Pascha together this year. As the Universal Church always should.
During Lent I've been going almost daily to mass, and reading the psalter.
One of the things that keeps on striking me lately, is how funny the Bible is.
He rides in on an ass. He's making fun of us, of our pretensions.
When the French took Damascus from the Turks in 1920, the commanding General Henri Gouraud rode his charger into the tomb of Saladin in the great Ummayad Mosque, dismounted and planted his boot on the "Sword of Religion's" (that's what Salah al-Din literally means in Arabic) grave and declared, "Réveilles-toi Saladin, nous sommes revenus. Ma présence ici consacre la victoire de la croix sur le croissant!"
Get up Saladin, we've returned. My presence here consecrates the victory of the cross over the crescent!
That's how we like to do it. Charge in on a warhorse, all glory, then crush the enemy's head and spit on his grave. Then consecrate it all in pride and vanity.
We like to put boots up asses, see. That's definitely the American way.
(I love how this video of Toby Keith's immortal poetical expression of that sentiment begins with the image of a puppy wrapped in a flag.. Irony is dead.)
But God rides in barefoot, on an ass. And then goes to the religious and political authorities and allows them to slaughter him. He takes the boot upon himself.
The Gospel - in fact the entire bible - is rife with such inversions as God coming in glory on a donkey.
He's always making the most unexpected entrances, and turning our expectations upside down.
He shows up as a baby, is worshiped by donkeys and gets put in a box for feeding grain to asses (called in English a manger, from the French "to eat.." Taste and see..)
(there's great iconography of the animals in the stable worshiping him..)
Then he goes up on a hillside by the sea of Galilee, and preaches the "Sermon on the Mount," which is where he parodies Moses, and reveals himself to be God. See the sidebar, I've posted the Beatitudes he taught there. These are the Christian answer to the Ten Commandments.
I think they're really funny. Blessed are the poor? Says who?
Jesus, that's who.
And he sat down to teach them. He did not stand in the presence of the Lord as a rabbi does proclaiming scripture in the synagogue, or Moses did coming off the mountain with the written word. He went up and sat.
I've been to the "Mount," it's actually a great grassy hillside right next to Lake Tiberius (also called the Sea of Galilee, but it's not much of a sea at all, actually).. When I stood on it, I laughed. Not at all like majestic solemn old Mount Sinai.
Not exactly what I'd expected. Very gentle. A good joke.
He calmed that sea one night when his disciples were stuck out fishing in the middle of a storm. They were terrified by the storm, then terrified that he'd calmed it. He walks out onto the lake, and calls to them to come to him. Peter (our dearly loved pope) hops out, takes a few steps and sinks.
That my friends, about sums it all up. Very funny.
Stick your finger in me, Thomas. It is finished.
In the Name of the Rose, one of my favorite books, Emberto Eco tells this beautiful story about a Franciscan monk and a novice (played in the uneven late 80's movie version by Sean Connery and Christian Slater) who come to monastery where there's been foul play. The plot revolves around an newly discovered manuscript of Aristotle's ("The Philosopher," as Thomas Aquinas dubs him in the Summa) on laughter. The bad guys are bent on keeping this text from ever seeing the light, because the concept of laughter is so subversive to authority. They eventually kill almost everyone and burn the monastery down along with the book, because they can't handle a joke.
One of the characters (I think it's the arch-badguy, the abbot) makes the observation that in the Gospel Christ never laughs. He cries at the tomb of Lazarus..
(another funny story: "Lord, you're late! He's dead. You were supposed to come when we called you!" Open the tomb. "But he'll be stinky!" You still don't get it. Roll the stone away. They do it. Lazarus comes out dressed like a mummy.
That one had me silently belly laughing to in my pew when it was read at mass a couple weeks ago..)
He gets angry and whips the money changers like curs.
Lots of divine emotion gets expressed.
But no laughter.
Why? Because he's a straight comedian.
"I give them the sign of Jonas," he said.
And this is the thing: the Book of Jonah (like the Book of Job) is a comedy.
Go tell the people to repent, Jonah. "No. Stop bugging me." Jonah runs away, gets on a boat to Finisterra (the name of the end of land where Spain tapers out into the void just beyond Santiago de Compostelle), thinking he can hide from God. There's a storm, like that one on the Sea of Galilee. The sailors are terrified, so when Jonah confesses that God's out to get him, they throw him overboard and so calm the waves. Christ parodies this when he walks out onto the sea himself. Jonah is swallowed by Leviathan. He rests in the gut of a fish (the tomb of the sea) for three days..
(This is an inversion of when the fish leaps out of the Euphrates and Tobias grabs and eats it, then burns its liver to scare away Asmodeus from his beloved.. Or when Christ eats his last meal of grilled fish before he rises into heaven.. See how the symbols and the things signified, how all the referents proliferate? That's what a good comedy is all about..)
He gets spit up onto the beach, resurrected. He then grudgingly decides to obey God, and goes to preach repentance to the people of the great city (Ninevah, or Mosul- the capital of of what is now Southern or Kurdish Iraq, the northern twin of Baghdad, which is on the rivers of Babylon) whom he thinks are disgusting people not worthy of being pardoned. "I don't want to go preach forgiveness to those bastards. I want them to burn like Sodom and Gommorah did.." But he does it now anyway, because he didn't much enjoy being stuck in that fish. He preaches, and they all convert and put on sackcloth and ashes. A great revival. Billy Grahm's wet dream. The End.
It's out of control. And when the meaning dawns on you, you should laugh.
That's why fools who can't take a joke either think that the whole thing is contrived and "just a myth" or else run around saying that it's all "literally" true.
I hate the word literal. It's a nearly useless word that is its own deconstruction.
Our problem is that we need to control everything. We need to pretend we understand. We need to be right. Most of us are running around imposing our narratives on things, telling other people that they're wrong. Faith is parodied as a means of social control, of controlling our own insecurities.
Our tendency is to attempt to turn it all into a recipe for anathematizing and controlling other people..
("The Bible vs. Science," "Creation Science," nursing unhealthy obsessions with Darwin.. The Nazis, the eugenicists, militant atheists and the folks down at the Four Square Bible Church have got it all figured out, see.)
A means of categorizing and reducing or even annihilating the heretical other in all his scandal.
Grinding boots up Muslim asses, for example. Planting boots on their graves.
The irony of militant atheists like Christopher Hitchens or Sam Harris writing book length screeds condemning the many horrific things people have done while proclaiming religious motives and justification, but then themselves advocating massive violence and terror against Muslims is a classical example of this..
An example so idiotic and shameless that it traumatizes my mind.
"The Inquisition means the Catholic Church is evil!"
This, immediately followed by "Muslims are evil, and I support the U.S. government's enhanced interrogation and rendition of terrorists, and Israeli and U.S. coalition violence against them!"
Like I say, no sense of irony. Very stupid.
They cannot see that they are doing much what the Nazis did to the Jews, or what the inquisitors in the violent aftermath of the wars that expelled the Muslims and Jews from Spain, did.
It's not that different. It's coming from the same place: rectitude, ideology as tribalism, annihilation of dissent.
Assassination, terror, and violence as censorship.
The other and his ideas are so threatening we must crush him politically or else kill him. Islam (or Judaism, or Catholicism, or jahaliyah - that's a favorite term among Salafist Muslims, it means pagan ignorance and decadence, all that is not Islam, or whatever) is so dangerous, we must eradicate it.
Shut up. You're wrong. If you don't shut up and do what I tell you, and believe what I tell you to believe, we will kill you.
My earlier posts about the "Left Behind" novels and the Grand Inquisitor are all meant to be driving at this same thesis.
When I put all these things up, I mean it to be read in full context. A context that is to me one of irony, parody and amusement.
Because death and evil are either a joke, or nothing's funny.
For what God does is almost always unexpected, you can't prepare your mind or body for the revelation. You can store up a year's worth of food in your basement, buy guns and ammo, vote Republican and try to keep America pure from whatever you think is evil and threatening, but in the end none of that will matter.
You can prepare your heart and soul, though.
One last joke:
Did you hear the one about that guy that stood up in a Podunk hick town synagogue a couple thousand years ago, pointed at the book of Isaiah and said “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing..”
Cymbal clash. Bada-bump.
Jews. They're pretty damn funny bunch. Always going for the best punchlines.
Blessed Holy Week, everyone. Let's keep one another in our prayers.
---
During Lent I've been going almost daily to mass, and reading the psalter.
One of the things that keeps on striking me lately, is how funny the Bible is.
He rides in on an ass. He's making fun of us, of our pretensions.
When the French took Damascus from the Turks in 1920, the commanding General Henri Gouraud rode his charger into the tomb of Saladin in the great Ummayad Mosque, dismounted and planted his boot on the "Sword of Religion's" (that's what Salah al-Din literally means in Arabic) grave and declared, "Réveilles-toi Saladin, nous sommes revenus. Ma présence ici consacre la victoire de la croix sur le croissant!"
Get up Saladin, we've returned. My presence here consecrates the victory of the cross over the crescent!
That's how we like to do it. Charge in on a warhorse, all glory, then crush the enemy's head and spit on his grave. Then consecrate it all in pride and vanity.
We like to put boots up asses, see. That's definitely the American way.
(I love how this video of Toby Keith's immortal poetical expression of that sentiment begins with the image of a puppy wrapped in a flag.. Irony is dead.)
But God rides in barefoot, on an ass. And then goes to the religious and political authorities and allows them to slaughter him. He takes the boot upon himself.
The Gospel - in fact the entire bible - is rife with such inversions as God coming in glory on a donkey.
He's always making the most unexpected entrances, and turning our expectations upside down.
He shows up as a baby, is worshiped by donkeys and gets put in a box for feeding grain to asses (called in English a manger, from the French "to eat.." Taste and see..)
(there's great iconography of the animals in the stable worshiping him..)
Then he goes up on a hillside by the sea of Galilee, and preaches the "Sermon on the Mount," which is where he parodies Moses, and reveals himself to be God. See the sidebar, I've posted the Beatitudes he taught there. These are the Christian answer to the Ten Commandments.
I think they're really funny. Blessed are the poor? Says who?
Jesus, that's who.
And he sat down to teach them. He did not stand in the presence of the Lord as a rabbi does proclaiming scripture in the synagogue, or Moses did coming off the mountain with the written word. He went up and sat.
I've been to the "Mount," it's actually a great grassy hillside right next to Lake Tiberius (also called the Sea of Galilee, but it's not much of a sea at all, actually).. When I stood on it, I laughed. Not at all like majestic solemn old Mount Sinai.
Not exactly what I'd expected. Very gentle. A good joke.
He calmed that sea one night when his disciples were stuck out fishing in the middle of a storm. They were terrified by the storm, then terrified that he'd calmed it. He walks out onto the lake, and calls to them to come to him. Peter (our dearly loved pope) hops out, takes a few steps and sinks.
That my friends, about sums it all up. Very funny.
Stick your finger in me, Thomas. It is finished.
In the Name of the Rose, one of my favorite books, Emberto Eco tells this beautiful story about a Franciscan monk and a novice (played in the uneven late 80's movie version by Sean Connery and Christian Slater) who come to monastery where there's been foul play. The plot revolves around an newly discovered manuscript of Aristotle's ("The Philosopher," as Thomas Aquinas dubs him in the Summa) on laughter. The bad guys are bent on keeping this text from ever seeing the light, because the concept of laughter is so subversive to authority. They eventually kill almost everyone and burn the monastery down along with the book, because they can't handle a joke.
One of the characters (I think it's the arch-badguy, the abbot) makes the observation that in the Gospel Christ never laughs. He cries at the tomb of Lazarus..
(another funny story: "Lord, you're late! He's dead. You were supposed to come when we called you!" Open the tomb. "But he'll be stinky!" You still don't get it. Roll the stone away. They do it. Lazarus comes out dressed like a mummy.
That one had me silently belly laughing to in my pew when it was read at mass a couple weeks ago..)
He gets angry and whips the money changers like curs.
Lots of divine emotion gets expressed.
But no laughter.
Why? Because he's a straight comedian.
"I give them the sign of Jonas," he said.
And this is the thing: the Book of Jonah (like the Book of Job) is a comedy.
Go tell the people to repent, Jonah. "No. Stop bugging me." Jonah runs away, gets on a boat to Finisterra (the name of the end of land where Spain tapers out into the void just beyond Santiago de Compostelle), thinking he can hide from God. There's a storm, like that one on the Sea of Galilee. The sailors are terrified, so when Jonah confesses that God's out to get him, they throw him overboard and so calm the waves. Christ parodies this when he walks out onto the sea himself. Jonah is swallowed by Leviathan. He rests in the gut of a fish (the tomb of the sea) for three days..
(This is an inversion of when the fish leaps out of the Euphrates and Tobias grabs and eats it, then burns its liver to scare away Asmodeus from his beloved.. Or when Christ eats his last meal of grilled fish before he rises into heaven.. See how the symbols and the things signified, how all the referents proliferate? That's what a good comedy is all about..)
He gets spit up onto the beach, resurrected. He then grudgingly decides to obey God, and goes to preach repentance to the people of the great city (Ninevah, or Mosul- the capital of of what is now Southern or Kurdish Iraq, the northern twin of Baghdad, which is on the rivers of Babylon) whom he thinks are disgusting people not worthy of being pardoned. "I don't want to go preach forgiveness to those bastards. I want them to burn like Sodom and Gommorah did.." But he does it now anyway, because he didn't much enjoy being stuck in that fish. He preaches, and they all convert and put on sackcloth and ashes. A great revival. Billy Grahm's wet dream. The End.
It's out of control. And when the meaning dawns on you, you should laugh.
That's why fools who can't take a joke either think that the whole thing is contrived and "just a myth" or else run around saying that it's all "literally" true.
I hate the word literal. It's a nearly useless word that is its own deconstruction.
Our problem is that we need to control everything. We need to pretend we understand. We need to be right. Most of us are running around imposing our narratives on things, telling other people that they're wrong. Faith is parodied as a means of social control, of controlling our own insecurities.
Our tendency is to attempt to turn it all into a recipe for anathematizing and controlling other people..
("The Bible vs. Science," "Creation Science," nursing unhealthy obsessions with Darwin.. The Nazis, the eugenicists, militant atheists and the folks down at the Four Square Bible Church have got it all figured out, see.)
A means of categorizing and reducing or even annihilating the heretical other in all his scandal.
Grinding boots up Muslim asses, for example. Planting boots on their graves.
The irony of militant atheists like Christopher Hitchens or Sam Harris writing book length screeds condemning the many horrific things people have done while proclaiming religious motives and justification, but then themselves advocating massive violence and terror against Muslims is a classical example of this..
An example so idiotic and shameless that it traumatizes my mind.
"The Inquisition means the Catholic Church is evil!"
This, immediately followed by "Muslims are evil, and I support the U.S. government's enhanced interrogation and rendition of terrorists, and Israeli and U.S. coalition violence against them!"
Like I say, no sense of irony. Very stupid.
They cannot see that they are doing much what the Nazis did to the Jews, or what the inquisitors in the violent aftermath of the wars that expelled the Muslims and Jews from Spain, did.
It's not that different. It's coming from the same place: rectitude, ideology as tribalism, annihilation of dissent.
Assassination, terror, and violence as censorship.
The other and his ideas are so threatening we must crush him politically or else kill him. Islam (or Judaism, or Catholicism, or jahaliyah - that's a favorite term among Salafist Muslims, it means pagan ignorance and decadence, all that is not Islam, or whatever) is so dangerous, we must eradicate it.
Shut up. You're wrong. If you don't shut up and do what I tell you, and believe what I tell you to believe, we will kill you.
My earlier posts about the "Left Behind" novels and the Grand Inquisitor are all meant to be driving at this same thesis.
When I put all these things up, I mean it to be read in full context. A context that is to me one of irony, parody and amusement.
Because death and evil are either a joke, or nothing's funny.
For what God does is almost always unexpected, you can't prepare your mind or body for the revelation. You can store up a year's worth of food in your basement, buy guns and ammo, vote Republican and try to keep America pure from whatever you think is evil and threatening, but in the end none of that will matter.
You can prepare your heart and soul, though.
One last joke:
Did you hear the one about that guy that stood up in a Podunk hick town synagogue a couple thousand years ago, pointed at the book of Isaiah and said “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing..”
Cymbal clash. Bada-bump.
Jews. They're pretty damn funny bunch. Always going for the best punchlines.
Blessed Holy Week, everyone. Let's keep one another in our prayers.
---
Saturday, April 16, 2011
Fun with Charts & Graphs: Contextualization of U.S. National Taxation & Debt, c. 1920 thru Present [revised]
(Note: I've revised this post and added material about 4 hours after my initial posting - I want to be sure that the post is long enough to keep your attention..)
Happy Tax Day! Remember: The IRS Loves You, Baby.
Belated wishes, anyway. I meant to post this yesterday.
Still, in the spirit of the celebration (which properly speaking ought to be marked with an octave..) I present you all some pertinent charts, mostly from this excellent site: Visualizing Economics.
As always, you may click on the images to expand them.
First item, a chart of the top marginal rates of the three major sorts of U.S. Federal income taxes - personal income, corporate income and capital gains (tax on investment gains) taxes - since 1910:
This all is still only a snapshot, there's of course much more to the overall story, such as questions concerning the percentages of the lower brackets, the adjusted dollar benchmarks for all brackets, as well as issues such as tax shelters and deductions and other complications in the code cannot that be crammed into one or any graph.. So it's all more complex than this graph can represent.
The graph "Lower Taxes for the Highest Earners" below and this explanation of the chart from the Visualizing Economics website explicate those complications a bit:
Green line is the top marginal rate for married couples filing jointly (most years dividends were tax like ordinary income until 2003), orange is the top rate for income from capital gains. The top corporate tax rate is included for comparison. Your marginal tax rate is the rate you pay on the “last dollar” you earn; but when you view the taxes you paid as a percentage of your income, your effective tax rate is less than your marginal rate, especially after you take into account the deductions and exemptions, i.e. income that is not subject to any tax.
Over the years, changing the amount of taxes people pay was accomplished not just by changing rates but by changing the income limits of the tax brackets. Just looking at the top rates does not give the whole picture about who is paying taxes. Before the 1986 tax reform, the income tax had 15 brackets. In the 1930s, there were more than 50. The Wealth Tax Act of 1935, applied the top rate to income over $5 million and had only a single taxpayer: John D. Rockefeller, Jr. As the number of tax brackets decrease, the the top rate was applied to more people over the decades. Since 1987 the income tax brackets were combined so now more than a million people “qualify” for the top marginal rate. If you are interested here is the first 1040 form for 1913.
The main thing to note is how the top marginal personal and corporate income taxes were *much* higher in the booming 40's & 50's through to the Reagan "Supply Side" Tax Break Revolution 1981.
The top marginal bracket peaked in the mid 90's and then settled at 90% from the early 50's until 1964. Those were the tax rates during the most expansive economic boom in human history, in the richest country in the world.
Here are two charts that put us into an international context:
First, an international comparison of both corporate and personal income tax rates:
Notice that the United States has relatively high corporate taxes, and low personal income taxes in international terms.
Next, I give you a narrower international comparison of the percentage of the GDP (tax-to-GDP ratio) taken by governments in tax revenue:
Today, Denmark is the most taxed country in the world with a tax-to-GDP ratio of only 48.9%. While as you see here, the U.S. tax-to-GDP ratio hovers in the low to mid 20 percentiles.
Comparatively, amongst first world nations, the United States takes a very low percentage of GDP as taxes..
Interestingly, I found this graph which says that Danes report being the happiest people on earth, somewhat happier than Americans, despite making less and being taxed more:
They also report being equally happy, rich or poor, which is atypical.
Now, take that very first chart of American income tax history above, and compare it with these next two showing the national debt explosion over the same time period:
Some observations:
We now are at a similar level of debt in comparison to our GDP as we held during WW II.
Also, there seems to be some odd correlation between cutting taxes and our exploding debt.
Note 1981, which is the year of Reagan's tax reform. The debt explosion began there, briefly improves under Clinton and the economic boom of the late 90's, and then explodes again under Bush and then Obama.
Can anyone say "voodoo economics" or supply side catastrophe? Can you say trillions of dollars blown into the sands of Iraq and Afghanistan?
I knew you could.
Here's another interesting chart, showing a graph of the percentage of capital gains as a percentage of all national income against a chart of federal budget surpluses and deficits by year:
Note here how the late 90's surge in investment income (the tech bubble) corresponded with a series of Federal Budget surpluses under Clinton, but that the housing bubble surge under Bush did not.
This next chart gives a bit of perspective on the issue of tax brackets, lacking in the very first chart:
Notice how the income tax is still hugely regressive, in that the people making tens of millions (the upper 1%) pay less than 40% (and still can shelter much of that), while the lowest earners making tens of thousands still pay over ten percent..
Wikipedia has some interesting data on poverty in the United States, saying that it's cyclical in nature with roughly 13 to 17% of Americans living below the federal poverty line at any given point in time, and roughly 40% falling below the poverty line at some point within a 10-year time span. Poverty is defined as the state of one who lacks a usual or socially acceptable amount of money or material possessions. Approximately 43.6 (14.3%) million Americans were living in poverty in 2009, up from 39.8 million (13.2%) in 2008. Also note, and to put all of this into further context, that the poverty threshold in the United Sates in 2009 for a single person under 65 was US$11,161; the threshold for a family group of four, including two children, was US$21,756.
This last graph shows how that compares to poverty internationally:
Blue is good, yellow and orange not so much, red is very bad.
National estimates are based on population-weighted subgroup estimates from household surveys. Definitions of the poverty line may vary considerably among nations. For example, rich nations generally employ more generous standards of poverty than poor nations. Thus, the numbers are not comparable among countries.
The common international poverty line has in the past been roughly US$1 a day. In 2008, the World Bank came out with a revised figure of US$1.25 at 2005 purchasing-power parity..
Try driving your SUV to the McDonald's drive trough on $1.25 a day. You could fill the tank maybe half full once a month in the few before the repo men come, and starve.. Or else walk, and then when you got there you'd be able to buy one item off the dollar menu.
Accentuate the positive, you'd burn off flab.
But that's just a fantasy. You make US$8.50 an hour at Walmart. And you can still get a plum job at the U.S. Post Office, so no worries! They start you at $19 an hour and the median pay is well above that! You'll get benefits and a Federal pension too!
So cheer up my fellow Americans! Don't be glum! Life isn't so bad! Not when you can afford to send a check for thousands of dollars to the IRS to do your part in helping bail out Wall Street and pay bankers their well deserved bonuses! And still own a car and shop at an American supermarket and eat out once in a while..
I close with a really funny set of maps. These demonstrate in yet another way how weird our politics are. I'm going to use the first graphic again later, because I have another post in mind that will discuss how warped people's voting is, in terms of how their ideological discourse and voting habits often diverge from their economic interests.
Click to enlarge and read it:
The two maps are a bit confusing. Look at the chart at the bottom of the graphic that gives the proportion of taxes paid to benefits received. Then compare it with this map, the electoral results for the last (2008) presidential election, red states McCain, Blue Obama:
See the joke? States that voted for McCain and the Republican line (lie) of smaller government and forever lower taxes almost all get a much greater return on their tax input than do most states state that voted for Obama and "socialism."
New Mexico, which gets the highest return per dollar sent (2 to 1) hung in the balance and I think had a recount, so it's a near exception. My home state Maine, is a clear exception - voted Obama, and get the cash for our vote. We also have two of the most powerful - moderate female Republican - senators in the country, Collins and Snowe, whom I bet account for much of that money in pork.. Most of the other exceptions who voted for Obama and get slightly over parity on their return for the tax dollar (e.g. Iowa, Pennsylvania, Missouri) are close calls electorally and have recently been skewing Republican.
I think the overall pattern can be explained by senators from small states getting the goods for their constituents, ideological blather aside. They have much more influence per taxpayer head than senators from large, and they use it. Texas you'll notice is also an outlier, but has 24 million people for its 2 senators. Maine has 1.25 million for its 2. This disparity in the senate favors states with small (and incidentally mostly rural - look at the federal farm bill for a graphic demonstration of this effecting federal cash flow) constituencies.. That's the raw brutal math.
This disparity amuses me immensely. The banker and bubba both howl against "socialism" and then take the taxpayer to the cleaners with a crowbar up side the head.
God bless America. Land that I love.
The American dream's still alive. Yippee kay yay, eh?
---
Happy Tax Day! Remember: The IRS Loves You, Baby.
Belated wishes, anyway. I meant to post this yesterday.
Still, in the spirit of the celebration (which properly speaking ought to be marked with an octave..) I present you all some pertinent charts, mostly from this excellent site: Visualizing Economics.
As always, you may click on the images to expand them.
First item, a chart of the top marginal rates of the three major sorts of U.S. Federal income taxes - personal income, corporate income and capital gains (tax on investment gains) taxes - since 1910:
This all is still only a snapshot, there's of course much more to the overall story, such as questions concerning the percentages of the lower brackets, the adjusted dollar benchmarks for all brackets, as well as issues such as tax shelters and deductions and other complications in the code cannot that be crammed into one or any graph.. So it's all more complex than this graph can represent.
The graph "Lower Taxes for the Highest Earners" below and this explanation of the chart from the Visualizing Economics website explicate those complications a bit:
Green line is the top marginal rate for married couples filing jointly (most years dividends were tax like ordinary income until 2003), orange is the top rate for income from capital gains. The top corporate tax rate is included for comparison. Your marginal tax rate is the rate you pay on the “last dollar” you earn; but when you view the taxes you paid as a percentage of your income, your effective tax rate is less than your marginal rate, especially after you take into account the deductions and exemptions, i.e. income that is not subject to any tax.
Over the years, changing the amount of taxes people pay was accomplished not just by changing rates but by changing the income limits of the tax brackets. Just looking at the top rates does not give the whole picture about who is paying taxes. Before the 1986 tax reform, the income tax had 15 brackets. In the 1930s, there were more than 50. The Wealth Tax Act of 1935, applied the top rate to income over $5 million and had only a single taxpayer: John D. Rockefeller, Jr. As the number of tax brackets decrease, the the top rate was applied to more people over the decades. Since 1987 the income tax brackets were combined so now more than a million people “qualify” for the top marginal rate. If you are interested here is the first 1040 form for 1913.
The main thing to note is how the top marginal personal and corporate income taxes were *much* higher in the booming 40's & 50's through to the Reagan "Supply Side" Tax Break Revolution 1981.
The top marginal bracket peaked in the mid 90's and then settled at 90% from the early 50's until 1964. Those were the tax rates during the most expansive economic boom in human history, in the richest country in the world.
Here are two charts that put us into an international context:
First, an international comparison of both corporate and personal income tax rates:
Notice that the United States has relatively high corporate taxes, and low personal income taxes in international terms.
Next, I give you a narrower international comparison of the percentage of the GDP (tax-to-GDP ratio) taken by governments in tax revenue:
Today, Denmark is the most taxed country in the world with a tax-to-GDP ratio of only 48.9%. While as you see here, the U.S. tax-to-GDP ratio hovers in the low to mid 20 percentiles.
Comparatively, amongst first world nations, the United States takes a very low percentage of GDP as taxes..
Interestingly, I found this graph which says that Danes report being the happiest people on earth, somewhat happier than Americans, despite making less and being taxed more:
They also report being equally happy, rich or poor, which is atypical.
Now, take that very first chart of American income tax history above, and compare it with these next two showing the national debt explosion over the same time period:
Some observations:
We now are at a similar level of debt in comparison to our GDP as we held during WW II.
Also, there seems to be some odd correlation between cutting taxes and our exploding debt.
Note 1981, which is the year of Reagan's tax reform. The debt explosion began there, briefly improves under Clinton and the economic boom of the late 90's, and then explodes again under Bush and then Obama.
Can anyone say "voodoo economics" or supply side catastrophe? Can you say trillions of dollars blown into the sands of Iraq and Afghanistan?
I knew you could.
Here's another interesting chart, showing a graph of the percentage of capital gains as a percentage of all national income against a chart of federal budget surpluses and deficits by year:
Note here how the late 90's surge in investment income (the tech bubble) corresponded with a series of Federal Budget surpluses under Clinton, but that the housing bubble surge under Bush did not.
This next chart gives a bit of perspective on the issue of tax brackets, lacking in the very first chart:
Notice how the income tax is still hugely regressive, in that the people making tens of millions (the upper 1%) pay less than 40% (and still can shelter much of that), while the lowest earners making tens of thousands still pay over ten percent..
Wikipedia has some interesting data on poverty in the United States, saying that it's cyclical in nature with roughly 13 to 17% of Americans living below the federal poverty line at any given point in time, and roughly 40% falling below the poverty line at some point within a 10-year time span. Poverty is defined as the state of one who lacks a usual or socially acceptable amount of money or material possessions. Approximately 43.6 (14.3%) million Americans were living in poverty in 2009, up from 39.8 million (13.2%) in 2008. Also note, and to put all of this into further context, that the poverty threshold in the United Sates in 2009 for a single person under 65 was US$11,161; the threshold for a family group of four, including two children, was US$21,756.
This last graph shows how that compares to poverty internationally:
Blue is good, yellow and orange not so much, red is very bad.
National estimates are based on population-weighted subgroup estimates from household surveys. Definitions of the poverty line may vary considerably among nations. For example, rich nations generally employ more generous standards of poverty than poor nations. Thus, the numbers are not comparable among countries.
The common international poverty line has in the past been roughly US$1 a day. In 2008, the World Bank came out with a revised figure of US$1.25 at 2005 purchasing-power parity..
Try driving your SUV to the McDonald's drive trough on $1.25 a day. You could fill the tank maybe half full once a month in the few before the repo men come, and starve.. Or else walk, and then when you got there you'd be able to buy one item off the dollar menu.
Accentuate the positive, you'd burn off flab.
But that's just a fantasy. You make US$8.50 an hour at Walmart. And you can still get a plum job at the U.S. Post Office, so no worries! They start you at $19 an hour and the median pay is well above that! You'll get benefits and a Federal pension too!
So cheer up my fellow Americans! Don't be glum! Life isn't so bad! Not when you can afford to send a check for thousands of dollars to the IRS to do your part in helping bail out Wall Street and pay bankers their well deserved bonuses! And still own a car and shop at an American supermarket and eat out once in a while..
I close with a really funny set of maps. These demonstrate in yet another way how weird our politics are. I'm going to use the first graphic again later, because I have another post in mind that will discuss how warped people's voting is, in terms of how their ideological discourse and voting habits often diverge from their economic interests.
Click to enlarge and read it:
The two maps are a bit confusing. Look at the chart at the bottom of the graphic that gives the proportion of taxes paid to benefits received. Then compare it with this map, the electoral results for the last (2008) presidential election, red states McCain, Blue Obama:
See the joke? States that voted for McCain and the Republican line (lie) of smaller government and forever lower taxes almost all get a much greater return on their tax input than do most states state that voted for Obama and "socialism."
New Mexico, which gets the highest return per dollar sent (2 to 1) hung in the balance and I think had a recount, so it's a near exception. My home state Maine, is a clear exception - voted Obama, and get the cash for our vote. We also have two of the most powerful - moderate female Republican - senators in the country, Collins and Snowe, whom I bet account for much of that money in pork.. Most of the other exceptions who voted for Obama and get slightly over parity on their return for the tax dollar (e.g. Iowa, Pennsylvania, Missouri) are close calls electorally and have recently been skewing Republican.
I think the overall pattern can be explained by senators from small states getting the goods for their constituents, ideological blather aside. They have much more influence per taxpayer head than senators from large, and they use it. Texas you'll notice is also an outlier, but has 24 million people for its 2 senators. Maine has 1.25 million for its 2. This disparity in the senate favors states with small (and incidentally mostly rural - look at the federal farm bill for a graphic demonstration of this effecting federal cash flow) constituencies.. That's the raw brutal math.
This disparity amuses me immensely. The banker and bubba both howl against "socialism" and then take the taxpayer to the cleaners with a crowbar up side the head.
God bless America. Land that I love.
The American dream's still alive. Yippee kay yay, eh?
---
Thursday, April 14, 2011
The Masons & Me: Moloch, Mammon & American Gnostic Messianism
Arturo Vasquez, whose blog I admire, yesterday posted this video:
Commenting that he "found this guy’s approach oddly refreshing, in a masochistic sort of way. Hey, other people are thinking it, this guy just says it's allowed.."
I responded in the comments. I share the thread as is now stands, because I want to broach these themes sooner than later. I've been being chary, uncertain of how to begin. There's a lot to be said, and I want to say it as level and eloquently as I can.
No more hesitation, then. I'm just going to jump:
[The comments are ordered by time-stamp over the last 18 or so hours. The timestamps on Arturo's blog are 3 hours behind EST, so my initial post was 11 pm/2300 last night, and my last about a half hour ago, about 5pm/1700 EST. I've made a few small corrections here to mine and my interlocutors' prose. Click through to visit Arturo's site if you want to follow the discussion, assuming it continues..]
Charles Curtis (02:07:40) :
“I was head of the CIA’s Latin American Bureau and I had major role in overthrowing what’s his name.” British interviewer dude: “Salvadore Allende? That’s his name.”
Love it. God Bless America.
Just like I love it when the liberal (to clarify, nearly all of us are liberals, the libertarian capitalist is the arch-liberal) runs up against the scandalous reality that the state does in fact sacralize violence. That’s its entire raison d’etre. All the sanctimonious handwringing over abortion, war, capital punishment – all of it is effete decadent childishness. The Catholic Church has never shrunk from that reality, and that’s one of the reasons I am and will remain a Catholic. God has allowed it, it is thus. And he will finally judge babylon, not us.
Christ said give unto Ceasar, and then went willingly to Jerusalem to face judgment by the Sanhedrin, Herod and the Emperor’s duly appointed governor. Paul, Augustine, and Aquinas – not to mention our pope and all the current hierarchy, the Senhedrin’s heirs in the aftermath of the destruction of the Temple cult – have all approved his act.
Christ’s submission in this, and rejection of satan’s offer of power after his fast, only highlight the fact that the state has every right to execute whomever ceasar wills.
Tomas de Torquemada, pray for us.
Deus vult. QED.
--
James O'Malley (04:31:12) :
“the state has every right to execute whomever ceasar wills.”
IMHO, that’s a pretty creepy (as well as false) statement. Even the Roman Catechism’s statement on capital punishment doesn’t say the government can kill whomever it pleases.
--
Charles Curtis (04:44:17) :
Hyperbolic excess. I’m amusing myself. Arturo always provokes me. Whatever I say is his fault.
It’s like when Cardinal Newman said it would be better for the whole universe to be destroyed than the least venial sin committed. Or when Luther said sin boldly.
Who’s right? God is. He let all this happen, and governments do indeed kill who they will. The bishops say abortion is homicide. Then we drop bombs on little brown people, salute the flag of a masonic republic, assassinate foreign heads of state, and then go back to our coffee.
It’s funny, is all I’m saying. Rock on.
--
The Singular Observer (20:06:13) :
Context:
Luther’s famous “sin boldly” quote is rarely given within context. The context was in a letter to Melanchthon, who was “hand wringing” over the question whether he’d be doing the wrong thing if he got married. So Luther advised him to “sin boldly”, i.e. make a decision and do it, and stop obsessing if it is sinful or not. Melanchthon was worried over the vow-breaking that marriage would entail.
Just thought I’d mention it. Here’s the full quote: “If you are a preacher of Grace, then preach a true, not a fictitious grace; if grace is true, you must bear a true and not a fictitious sin. God does not save people who are only fictitious sinners. Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly. For he is victorious over sin, death, and the world. As long as we are here we have to sin. This life in not the dwelling place of righteousness but, as Peter says [2 Pet 3:13], we look for a new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. . . . Pray boldly-you too are a mighty sinner.
--
Charles Curtis (20:28:25) :
Which is to say that Luther resorted to hyperbole, to make a point.
Just as what I wrote is ad absurdum, from a rational point of view. Even if the gist of what Christ did is pretty clear. What he said was clear, too: “My Kingdom is not of this world,” He also uses a lot of Semitic hyperbole, to get people’s attention. That’s one of the reasons scripture is so challenging, and we need tradition’s context to understand it.
I’ll put my own take unambiguously: we tend to warp our pieties together, and turn patriotism into a religion. “In God We Trust,” “One Nation Under God,” and all that nonsense. The god on the dollar bill is not Jesus. It’s mammon, and that’s anti-christ. I’m sick of this imbecilic self-satisfied tribalism, especially when it leads to these howling inconsistent standards when it comes to killing. 60 years ago people demonized Jews, even normal Catholics and Americans. Now, we’re doing it to Muslims, and that’s leading us to act in hideous ways. Why don’t we put images of all the children in Afghanistan and Iraq that we’ve blown to viscera up next to those obscene photos of abortion effluent? Why not? I’ll tell you: Because those shredded children condemn us all. Everyone one. Not just the fags and abortionists.
You howl when Obama speaks at Notre Dame, but stay silent when that masonic clown (“Jesus is my favorite philosopher”) Bush pretends to be “one of us” and “pro-life?” I’m nauseous. What a joke.
One of the reasons I love Arturo, is that all his intellectual pretensions aside, he knows how to write good satire, and for that I thank him. Thus spake Vasquez. Skewer away, Arturo. Keep slapping us in our bovine mugs.
Christ said something about reading the signs of the times. Feel the way the wind is blowing? Notice how the gnostics have overrun the culture, and even our bishops have fallen oddly silent?
Arturo isn’t half scathing enough.
---
Commenting that he "found this guy’s approach oddly refreshing, in a masochistic sort of way. Hey, other people are thinking it, this guy just says it's allowed.."
I responded in the comments. I share the thread as is now stands, because I want to broach these themes sooner than later. I've been being chary, uncertain of how to begin. There's a lot to be said, and I want to say it as level and eloquently as I can.
No more hesitation, then. I'm just going to jump:
[The comments are ordered by time-stamp over the last 18 or so hours. The timestamps on Arturo's blog are 3 hours behind EST, so my initial post was 11 pm/2300 last night, and my last about a half hour ago, about 5pm/1700 EST. I've made a few small corrections here to mine and my interlocutors' prose. Click through to visit Arturo's site if you want to follow the discussion, assuming it continues..]
Charles Curtis (02:07:40) :
“I was head of the CIA’s Latin American Bureau and I had major role in overthrowing what’s his name.” British interviewer dude: “Salvadore Allende? That’s his name.”
Love it. God Bless America.
Just like I love it when the liberal (to clarify, nearly all of us are liberals, the libertarian capitalist is the arch-liberal) runs up against the scandalous reality that the state does in fact sacralize violence. That’s its entire raison d’etre. All the sanctimonious handwringing over abortion, war, capital punishment – all of it is effete decadent childishness. The Catholic Church has never shrunk from that reality, and that’s one of the reasons I am and will remain a Catholic. God has allowed it, it is thus. And he will finally judge babylon, not us.
Christ said give unto Ceasar, and then went willingly to Jerusalem to face judgment by the Sanhedrin, Herod and the Emperor’s duly appointed governor. Paul, Augustine, and Aquinas – not to mention our pope and all the current hierarchy, the Senhedrin’s heirs in the aftermath of the destruction of the Temple cult – have all approved his act.
Christ’s submission in this, and rejection of satan’s offer of power after his fast, only highlight the fact that the state has every right to execute whomever ceasar wills.
Tomas de Torquemada, pray for us.
Deus vult. QED.
--
James O'Malley (04:31:12) :
“the state has every right to execute whomever ceasar wills.”
IMHO, that’s a pretty creepy (as well as false) statement. Even the Roman Catechism’s statement on capital punishment doesn’t say the government can kill whomever it pleases.
--
Charles Curtis (04:44:17) :
Hyperbolic excess. I’m amusing myself. Arturo always provokes me. Whatever I say is his fault.
It’s like when Cardinal Newman said it would be better for the whole universe to be destroyed than the least venial sin committed. Or when Luther said sin boldly.
Who’s right? God is. He let all this happen, and governments do indeed kill who they will. The bishops say abortion is homicide. Then we drop bombs on little brown people, salute the flag of a masonic republic, assassinate foreign heads of state, and then go back to our coffee.
It’s funny, is all I’m saying. Rock on.
--
The Singular Observer (20:06:13) :
Context:
Luther’s famous “sin boldly” quote is rarely given within context. The context was in a letter to Melanchthon, who was “hand wringing” over the question whether he’d be doing the wrong thing if he got married. So Luther advised him to “sin boldly”, i.e. make a decision and do it, and stop obsessing if it is sinful or not. Melanchthon was worried over the vow-breaking that marriage would entail.
Just thought I’d mention it. Here’s the full quote: “If you are a preacher of Grace, then preach a true, not a fictitious grace; if grace is true, you must bear a true and not a fictitious sin. God does not save people who are only fictitious sinners. Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly. For he is victorious over sin, death, and the world. As long as we are here we have to sin. This life in not the dwelling place of righteousness but, as Peter says [2 Pet 3:13], we look for a new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. . . . Pray boldly-you too are a mighty sinner.
--
Charles Curtis (20:28:25) :
Which is to say that Luther resorted to hyperbole, to make a point.
Just as what I wrote is ad absurdum, from a rational point of view. Even if the gist of what Christ did is pretty clear. What he said was clear, too: “My Kingdom is not of this world,” He also uses a lot of Semitic hyperbole, to get people’s attention. That’s one of the reasons scripture is so challenging, and we need tradition’s context to understand it.
I’ll put my own take unambiguously: we tend to warp our pieties together, and turn patriotism into a religion. “In God We Trust,” “One Nation Under God,” and all that nonsense. The god on the dollar bill is not Jesus. It’s mammon, and that’s anti-christ. I’m sick of this imbecilic self-satisfied tribalism, especially when it leads to these howling inconsistent standards when it comes to killing. 60 years ago people demonized Jews, even normal Catholics and Americans. Now, we’re doing it to Muslims, and that’s leading us to act in hideous ways. Why don’t we put images of all the children in Afghanistan and Iraq that we’ve blown to viscera up next to those obscene photos of abortion effluent? Why not? I’ll tell you: Because those shredded children condemn us all. Everyone one. Not just the fags and abortionists.
You howl when Obama speaks at Notre Dame, but stay silent when that masonic clown (“Jesus is my favorite philosopher”) Bush pretends to be “one of us” and “pro-life?” I’m nauseous. What a joke.
One of the reasons I love Arturo, is that all his intellectual pretensions aside, he knows how to write good satire, and for that I thank him. Thus spake Vasquez. Skewer away, Arturo. Keep slapping us in our bovine mugs.
Christ said something about reading the signs of the times. Feel the way the wind is blowing? Notice how the gnostics have overrun the culture, and even our bishops have fallen oddly silent?
Arturo isn’t half scathing enough.
---
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
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