Flute - Georgia Browne
Recorder - Ian Wilson
Violins - Tuomo Suni, Hilary Michael
Viola - Emma Alter
Cello - Harriet Wiltshire
Double bass - Kate Aldridge
Harpsichord - David Goode
One for NTodd, one of the wildest of the baroque concertos.
Thursday, May 7, 2015
George Philippe Telemann - Concerto in e minor for Flute and Recorder
Flute - Georgia Browne
Recorder - Ian Wilson
Violins - Tuomo Suni, Hilary Michael
Viola - Emma Alter
Cello - Harriet Wiltshire
Double bass - Kate Aldridge
Harpsichord - David Goode
One for NTodd, one of the wildest of the baroque concertos.
The Unformation Age
Before I go off to do some much neglected garden work - it decided to skip spring and go from winter to summer around here - I've got to share the, so far, best try to answer my accusation that Sam Harris was lying, as detailed below.
One "happyhaze" says, at Salon:
happyhaze 54 minutes ago
@Anthony_McCarthy
Sam may have gotten the details wrong, but this account --from Bartoleme de Las Casas, Brief Account of the Devastation of the Indies. (1542)--is even worse than his 'fable'.
From that time onward the Indians began to seek ways to throw the Christians out of their lands. They took up arms, but their weapons were very weak and of little service in offense and still less in defense. (Because of this, the wars of the Indians against each other are little more than games played by children.) And the Christians, with their horses and swords and pikes began to carry out massacres and strange cruelties against them. They attacked the towns and spared neither the children nor the aged nor pregnant women nor women in childbed, not only stabbing them and dismembering them but cutting them to pieces as if dealing with sheep in the slaughter house. They laid bets as to who, with one stroke of the sword, could split a man in two or could cut off his head or spill out his entrails with a single stroke of the pike. They took infants from their mothers' breasts, snatching them by the legs and pitching them headfirst against the crags or snatched them by the arms and threw them into the rivers, roaring with laughter and saying as the babies fell into the water, "Boil there, you offspring of the devil!" Other infants they put to the sword along with their mothers and anyone else who happened to be nearby. They made some low wide gallows on which the hanged victim's feet almost touched the ground, stringing up their victims in lots of thirteen, in memory of Our Redeemer and His twelve Apostles, then set burning wood at their feet and thus burned them alive. To others they attached straw or wrapped their whole bodies in straw and set them afire. With still others, all those they wanted to capture alive, they cut off their hands and hung them round the victim's neck, saying, "Go now, carry the message," meaning, Take the news to the Indians who have fled to the mountains. They usually dealt with the chieftains and nobles in the following way: they made a grid of rods which they placed on forked sticks, then lashed the victims to the grid and lighted a smoldering fire underneath, so that little by little, as those captives screamed in despair and torment, their souls would leave them....
http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/bdorsey1/41docs/02-las.html
I'm not exactly certain of the chronology but I think after he read my response pointing out that de las Casas was a Catholic missionary, he said:
FlagLikeReply
happyhaze 44 minutes ago
@Anthony_McCarthy I say "worse" because there is no calculation of the infant victims going to heaven.
On the other hand, this was not the work of missionaries as such. Just xtians of the ghastly strata. Believable because de las Casas was a man of the cloth and major source for eyewitness accounts of events of the time; and because Spain gave us Torquemada, who set the bar for religious loopy pretty low.
If this is the story in Sam's mind, based on a much earlier reading of the account, his recall may have been inaccurate.
So, citing A CATHOLIC MISSIONARY, believed to be the earliest advocate for the human rights of the natives of the Americas, calling out the crimes against them by the conquistadors, the earliest opponent of slavery in the Americas, who DIDN'T SAY WHAT SAM HARRIS CLAIMED in support of his condemnation of CHRISTIAN MISSIONARIES on a charge that they baptized, then murdered them so they would go to heaven.
Welcome to the unformation age, where truth isn't just optional, it's meaningless, logical coherence is replaced by convenience and lies don't matter if you can get away with them among people who don't care as long as they like the lie. And all brought to you by the champions of sciency, evidency, simulated reality. Throwing in Torquemada doesn't do anything but send up a smoke screen to mask the lie.
One "happyhaze" says, at Salon:
happyhaze 54 minutes ago
@Anthony_McCarthy
Sam may have gotten the details wrong, but this account --from Bartoleme de Las Casas, Brief Account of the Devastation of the Indies. (1542)--is even worse than his 'fable'.
From that time onward the Indians began to seek ways to throw the Christians out of their lands. They took up arms, but their weapons were very weak and of little service in offense and still less in defense. (Because of this, the wars of the Indians against each other are little more than games played by children.) And the Christians, with their horses and swords and pikes began to carry out massacres and strange cruelties against them. They attacked the towns and spared neither the children nor the aged nor pregnant women nor women in childbed, not only stabbing them and dismembering them but cutting them to pieces as if dealing with sheep in the slaughter house. They laid bets as to who, with one stroke of the sword, could split a man in two or could cut off his head or spill out his entrails with a single stroke of the pike. They took infants from their mothers' breasts, snatching them by the legs and pitching them headfirst against the crags or snatched them by the arms and threw them into the rivers, roaring with laughter and saying as the babies fell into the water, "Boil there, you offspring of the devil!" Other infants they put to the sword along with their mothers and anyone else who happened to be nearby. They made some low wide gallows on which the hanged victim's feet almost touched the ground, stringing up their victims in lots of thirteen, in memory of Our Redeemer and His twelve Apostles, then set burning wood at their feet and thus burned them alive. To others they attached straw or wrapped their whole bodies in straw and set them afire. With still others, all those they wanted to capture alive, they cut off their hands and hung them round the victim's neck, saying, "Go now, carry the message," meaning, Take the news to the Indians who have fled to the mountains. They usually dealt with the chieftains and nobles in the following way: they made a grid of rods which they placed on forked sticks, then lashed the victims to the grid and lighted a smoldering fire underneath, so that little by little, as those captives screamed in despair and torment, their souls would leave them....
http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/bdorsey1/41docs/02-las.html
I'm not exactly certain of the chronology but I think after he read my response pointing out that de las Casas was a Catholic missionary, he said:
FlagLikeReply
happyhaze 44 minutes ago
@Anthony_McCarthy I say "worse" because there is no calculation of the infant victims going to heaven.
On the other hand, this was not the work of missionaries as such. Just xtians of the ghastly strata. Believable because de las Casas was a man of the cloth and major source for eyewitness accounts of events of the time; and because Spain gave us Torquemada, who set the bar for religious loopy pretty low.
If this is the story in Sam's mind, based on a much earlier reading of the account, his recall may have been inaccurate.
So, citing A CATHOLIC MISSIONARY, believed to be the earliest advocate for the human rights of the natives of the Americas, calling out the crimes against them by the conquistadors, the earliest opponent of slavery in the Americas, who DIDN'T SAY WHAT SAM HARRIS CLAIMED in support of his condemnation of CHRISTIAN MISSIONARIES on a charge that they baptized, then murdered them so they would go to heaven.
Welcome to the unformation age, where truth isn't just optional, it's meaningless, logical coherence is replaced by convenience and lies don't matter if you can get away with them among people who don't care as long as they like the lie. And all brought to you by the champions of sciency, evidency, simulated reality. Throwing in Torquemada doesn't do anything but send up a smoke screen to mask the lie.
I'm Calling Harris Out As A Liar Until A Citation is Provided
I have been looking for a documentary source for the accusation Sam Harris made, to the effect that Christian missionaries in the New World would baptize infants and then murder them to send their souls to heaven and have found nothing.
Without him providing documentation I'm left with the belief that it is a sensational lie that he invented, himself. Which, apparently, no one else would seem to have noticed. Perhaps that is because in the neo-atheist period that Harris did so much to incite, no lie would seem to be too extreme or too absurd to not tell and be believed by people who consider themselves to be intellectually sophisticated, at least when those being lied about are Christians or Muslims. Though other religious denominations are lied about with abandon by atheists, lies told about other groups are more likely to be refuted, in my experience, at least.
Which is more than a bit ironic, considering that, in the west the main advocates for the killing of live born children in the modern period and up to today have been atheists. I have documented, at the first of those links, from their own words, in their own books published as science, such heroes of many atheists as Charles Darwin and Ernst Haeckel advocating infanticide as a benefit to the general population. In the inverted morality of atheist "ethics" from such as Peter Singer and Michael Tooley, murdering infants is considered as a form of salvation, for the infant, relief of a presumed bad life due to disability. Even more than that, some of these "ethicists" propose that an infant not be considered a human being and leaving it to the discretion or just merely the choice of parents whether or not they want to be bothered with the child, allowing them to kill it up to a sometimes unspecified age.
Which brings us right back to the beginnings of the Christian era when it was only with Christianity becoming politically potent in the Mediterranean region that it became illegal to murder infants, infanticide by various means having been endemic to many local and even imperial cultures. The murder of disabled children was routine, that of girls about as routine. It was in, first, the Jewish Law and later in Christianity that the practice was banned in many places. It is still widespread and a major form of violation of rights committed against one of the most easily discriminated against groups in the world because they are not articulate and are powerless. I would like to know of any organized atheist effort to oppose infanticide. But, then, I'd like citations to support a lot of what the Sam Harrises of the world say.
Despite the tale told by Harris, in recent years it has been Christian missionaries such as those in Brazil who have met resistance when they tried to call attention to the practice of infanticide in some indigenous groups in the Amazon, though I don't think their decision to issue a video dramatization of the practice was the wisest way to do it. I don't know enough about that particular group's history and motives to judge their missionary activity but I do know that opposing a traditional form of murder is a worth while thing to do. I don't see that it is an old custom is a valid reason to not oppose it. Just about every single thing that the concept of rights were considered over and struggled for addressed long standing customs and cultural habits of thought and life. The idea that even the "untouched by modern thought" isolated cultures don't change all on their own and are some kind of living museum peopled by the people who live in them is ridiculous and condescending.
I mentioned a while back that I was reading about the history of the blood libel, which, I have to conclude, isn't unrelated to this issue. I hope to be able to write about it later this week.
Without him providing documentation I'm left with the belief that it is a sensational lie that he invented, himself. Which, apparently, no one else would seem to have noticed. Perhaps that is because in the neo-atheist period that Harris did so much to incite, no lie would seem to be too extreme or too absurd to not tell and be believed by people who consider themselves to be intellectually sophisticated, at least when those being lied about are Christians or Muslims. Though other religious denominations are lied about with abandon by atheists, lies told about other groups are more likely to be refuted, in my experience, at least.
Which is more than a bit ironic, considering that, in the west the main advocates for the killing of live born children in the modern period and up to today have been atheists. I have documented, at the first of those links, from their own words, in their own books published as science, such heroes of many atheists as Charles Darwin and Ernst Haeckel advocating infanticide as a benefit to the general population. In the inverted morality of atheist "ethics" from such as Peter Singer and Michael Tooley, murdering infants is considered as a form of salvation, for the infant, relief of a presumed bad life due to disability. Even more than that, some of these "ethicists" propose that an infant not be considered a human being and leaving it to the discretion or just merely the choice of parents whether or not they want to be bothered with the child, allowing them to kill it up to a sometimes unspecified age.
Which brings us right back to the beginnings of the Christian era when it was only with Christianity becoming politically potent in the Mediterranean region that it became illegal to murder infants, infanticide by various means having been endemic to many local and even imperial cultures. The murder of disabled children was routine, that of girls about as routine. It was in, first, the Jewish Law and later in Christianity that the practice was banned in many places. It is still widespread and a major form of violation of rights committed against one of the most easily discriminated against groups in the world because they are not articulate and are powerless. I would like to know of any organized atheist effort to oppose infanticide. But, then, I'd like citations to support a lot of what the Sam Harrises of the world say.
Despite the tale told by Harris, in recent years it has been Christian missionaries such as those in Brazil who have met resistance when they tried to call attention to the practice of infanticide in some indigenous groups in the Amazon, though I don't think their decision to issue a video dramatization of the practice was the wisest way to do it. I don't know enough about that particular group's history and motives to judge their missionary activity but I do know that opposing a traditional form of murder is a worth while thing to do. I don't see that it is an old custom is a valid reason to not oppose it. Just about every single thing that the concept of rights were considered over and struggled for addressed long standing customs and cultural habits of thought and life. The idea that even the "untouched by modern thought" isolated cultures don't change all on their own and are some kind of living museum peopled by the people who live in them is ridiculous and condescending.
I mentioned a while back that I was reading about the history of the blood libel, which, I have to conclude, isn't unrelated to this issue. I hope to be able to write about it later this week.
Wednesday, May 6, 2015
Debussy - Masques - Lazare Levy
I found this recording online years ago and have regarded it is the greatest performance of Debussy's music I've ever heard. I only wish the quality of the recording matched the playing.
Sam Harris Takes On The Tall Trees And Gets Tangled In The "Weeds" A Report From The New Dark Age of "Science"
The exchange of e-mails initiated by Sam Harris and, rather obviously, reluctantly entered into by Noam Chomsky was rather revealing of a number of things, none of them to the benefit of Sam Harris. That Harris was looking to use Chomsky in his self-generated publicity, what his public career largely consists of, is, I think, rather obvious. That Chomsky clearly realized this was Harris's goal is, I think as obvious. Here is how the published (Harris was the one who published it) exchange began:
April 26, 2015
From: Sam Harris
To: Noam Chomsky
Noam —
I reached out to you indirectly through Lawrence Krauss and Johann Hari and was planning to leave it at that, but a reader has now sent me a copy of an email exchange in which you were quite dismissive of the prospect of having a “debate” with me. So I just wanted to clarify that, although I think we might disagree substantially about a few things, I am far more interested in exploring these disagreements, and clarifying any misunderstandings, than in having a conventional debate.
If you’d rather not have a public conversation with me, that’s fine. I can only say that we have many, many readers in common who would like to see us attempt to find some common ground. The fact that you have called me “a religious fanatic” who “worships the religion of the state” makes me think that there are a few misconceptions I could clear up. And many readers insist that I am similarly off-the-mark where your views are concerned.
In any case, my offer stands, if you change your mind.
Best,
Sam
April 26, 2015
From: Noam Chomsky
To: Sam Harris
Perhaps I have some misconceptions about you. Most of what I’ve read of yours is material that has been sent to me about my alleged views, which is completely false. I don’t see any point in a public debate about misreadings. If there are things you’d like to explore privately, fine. But with sources.
And what ensues is a repeated statement of misreadings by Sam Harris of things Noam Chomsky said, of Harris inventing things for Chomsky to have said, Chomsky's corrections and Harris's continual insistence on not understanding what he's saying. It goes on and on, clearly Chomsky knows what I have learned about interacting with the Sam Harrises of the world, that their goal is to get the last word in, figuring that means they win. I think the entire thing was initiated by Harris in the misguided belief that he could raise his stature by getting Chomsky to talk to him*.
The exchange, which really has to be read to be believed, reveals what any long term reader of Harris should have already known. He's an intellectual lite-weight, dishonest and, unsurprisingly, given those, base in his motives and goals.
Chomsky, wise and clearly familiar with the Harris style of discourse, included the condition that any exchange they had would be "with sources". And Harris included a chapter from his "End of Faith" (it is too long to include here but you can read it at the link) which, as Chomsky was able to show, misrepresented him through dishonest characterization, distortion and, what I have found most typical of this kind of discourse, misrepresenting more complex ideas through dishonest simplification and classification. Chomsky is able to refute what Harris said, which should have been the end of the exchange:
April 26, 2015
From: Noam Chomsky
To: Sam Harris
The example that you cite illustrates very well why I do not see any point in a public discussion.
Here’s the passage to which you refer:
Or take the destruction of the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Sudan, one little footnote in the record of state terror, quickly forgotten. What would the reaction have been if the bin Laden network had blown up half the pharmaceutical supplies in the U.S. and the facilities for replenishing them? We can imagine, though the comparison is unfair, the consequences are vastly more severe in Sudan. That aside, if the U.S. or Israel or England were to be the target of such an atrocity, what would the reaction be? In this case we say, “Oh, well, too bad, minor mistake, let’s go on to the next topic, let the victims rot.” Other people in the world don’t react like that. When bin Laden brings up that bombing, he strikes a resonant chord, even among those who despise and fear him; and the same, unfortunately, is true of much of the rest of his rhetoric.
Though it is merely a footnote, the Sudan case is nonetheless highly instructive. One interesting aspect is the reaction when someone dares to mention it. I have in the past, and did so again in response to queries from journalists shortly after 9-11 atrocities. I mentioned that the toll of the “horrendous crime” of 9-11, committed with “wickedness and awesome cruelty” (quoting Robert Fisk), may be comparable to the consequences of Clinton’s bombing of the Al-Shifa plant in August 1998. That plausible conclusion elicited an extraordinary reaction, filling many web sites and journals with feverish and fanciful condemnations, which I’ll ignore. The only important aspect is that single sentence—which, on a closer look, appears to be an understatement—was regarded by some commentators as utterly scandalous. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that at some deep level, however they may deny it to themselves, they regard our crimes against the weak to be as normal as the air we breathe. Our crimes, for which we are responsible: as taxpayers, for failing to provide massive reparations, for granting refuge and immunity to the perpetrators, and for allowing the terrible facts to be sunk deep in the memory hole. All of this is of great significance, as it has been in the past.
It goes on to review the only evidence available—we do not investigate our crimes, indeed bar investigation of them—which is from quite credible sources, estimating that casualties might well have been in the tens of thousands.
Your response is interesting both for what it does not say and what it does say. What it does not do is answer the question raised: “What would the reaction have been if the bin Laden network had blown up half the pharmaceutical supplies in the U.S. and the facilities for replenishing them? We can imagine, though the comparison is unfair, the consequences are vastly more severe in Sudan. That aside, if the U.S. or Israel or England were to be the target of such an atrocity, what would the reaction be?”
Anyone who cites this passage has the minimal responsibility to give their reactions. Failure to do so speaks volumes.
Let’s turn to what you did say—a disquisition on “moral equivalence.” You fail to mention, though, that I did not suggest that they were “morally equivalent” and in fact indicated quite the opposite. I did not describe the Al-Shifa bombing as a “horrendous crime” committed with “wickedness and awesome cruelty.” Rather, I pointed out that the toll might be comparable, which turns out on inquiry (which is not undertaken here, and which apologists for our crimes ignore), turns out to be, quite likely, a serious understatement.
You also ignored the fact that I had already responded to your claim about lack of intention—which, frankly, I find quite shocking on elementary moral grounds, as I suspect you would too if you were to respond to the question raised at the beginning of my quoted comment. Hence it is simply false to assert that your “basic question” is one that “Chomsky seems to have neglected to ask himself.” Quite the contrary, I asked myself right away, and responded, appropriately I believe, to your subsequent charges. The following is from Radical Priorities, 2003.
Most commentary on the Sudan bombing keeps to the question of whether the plant was believed to produce chemical weapons; true or false, that has no bearing on “the magnitude with which the aggression interfered with key values in the society attacked,” such as survival. Others point out that the killings were unintended, as are many of the atrocities we rightly denounce. In this case, we can hardly doubt that the likely human consequences were understood by US planners. The acts can be excused, then, only on the Hegelian assumption that Africans are “mere things,” whose lives have “no value,” an attitude that accords with practice in ways that are not overlooked among the victims, who may draw their own conclusions about the “moral orthodoxy of the West.”
Perhaps you can reciprocate by referring me to what I have written citing your published views. If there is anything I’ve written that is remotely as erroneous as this—putting aside moral judgments—I’ll be happy to correct it.
In his response to that Harris proves my point about his mode of thinking by starting by complaining, in effect, that what Chomsky said is too detailed for him to make into a facile squib useful for his purpose. No doubt Harris is aware of the level of thinking among his readers, of the kind who seem to spend most of their time spreading his style of hate-talk discourse on comment threads.
April 27, 2015
From: Sam Harris
To: Noam Chomsky
Noam —
We appear to be running into the weeds here. Let me just make two observations, before I recommend a fresh start:....
I think an accurate translation of "running into the weeds" would be the all too familiar first semester Freshman whine, "But that's haaarrrrrd!" though older folks on internet comment threads often say "word salad" instead. The insistence on brevity due to a widespread lack of attention span would seem to be taken as a valid intellectual practice among lots of people with college and graduate degrees these days, even when the issues under consideration can't be honestly reduced to suit their phony debate rule.
I do recommend you go through the entire exchange and you might want to look at some of the comment threads in the many places where this exchange has been copied from Harris's website. Harris wrung a clearly reluctant permission to publish it from Chomsky, clearly believing that by publishing it he was demonstrating that he was on the same intellectual level as Chomsky when the substance of what was said by both proves that intellectually, he's still in training pants.
Which adds weight to my conclusion that what we see in this kind of thing, especially the pretensions of the neo-atheism that Harris did so much to incite, a new dark age which, despite whatever you might believe, is actually conducted at a far, far lower level of intellectual practice than medieval discourse, being sciency and media savvy taking the place of logical rigor and familiarity with the contents of what is under discussion. There are lots and lots of people who maintain that Harris won the argument, a lot of them citing Chomsky's detailed seriousness, articulate mastery of detail and completeness in their declaration, he loses.
--------
In a footnote to that chapter of his major opus, Harris says:
47, Are intentions really the bottom line? What are we to say, for instance, about those Christian missionaries in the New World who baptized Indian infants only to promptly kill them, thereby sending them to heaven? Their intentions were (apparently) good. Were their actions ethical? Yes, within the confines of a deplorably limited worldview. The medieval apothecary who gave his patients quicksilver really was trying to help. He was just mistaken about the role this element played in the human body. Intentions matter, but they are not all that matters.
I would like a citation of where that bit of atheist lore comes from because I looked for more than an hour this morning and I can't find it. I doubt it ever happened, it would have 1. been entirely a violation of the teachings of Jesus, of his apostles, of the entire prophetic traditions and the teachings of the Catholic church and every other Christian church I've ever heard of, 2. if true, far more certainly and commonly documented than I'm finding it is. No opportunity to reveal the sins of Christianity would go so unsourced as this one would seem to be. What did Harris base his claim on?
* A similar tactic to the one H. Allen Orr noted Daniel Dennett was rather frustrated to not have been able to take when Stephen J. Gould and others ignored his provocative statements.
Tuesday, May 5, 2015
The Use Of A Ten-Year-Old Girl's Life By Church, State and Unrelated Ideologues In Other Places
It should be a given that no ten-year-old girl should be pregnant and that carrying a pregnancy to full term for any girl of that age is a life endangering situation and so any girl in that situation should have access to an abortion performed by a doctor under hygienic conditions. I have no doubts that the law should allow that and that medical care is a human right that such a girl should have access to. No law, anywhere should mandate that any ten-year-old girl remain pregnant. Any man who impregnates a girl too young to give adult consent to sex is guilty of rape and authorities who don't intervene when they're informed of a man raping a child are as guilty as the rapist. That also needs to be said in regard to this case. Every adult person has an absolute right to determine what happens in their own body that no other person or group of people has a right to intervene in. And that in cases of children or those unable to make a rational, adult decision on their own behalf will have to have those decisions made by responsible adults who have their welfare as their first consideration. That is where I start on this.
The news story about the ten-year-old girl who is being denied an abortion in Paraguay is certainly full of awful features, a lot of those in the laws governing abortion in Paraguay, and is certainly ripe for ideological use. That is what it is here, something used in an ideological campaign when it should be about the life and health of the girl, not about the use to which she can be made in the United States and other countries where such a child could have a legal abortion under safe conditions. Its use here centers on slamming the Catholic church, who have gotten far worse treatment than the civil authorities in Paraguay have, those with the legal ability to allow an abortion in this case. Which tells us a lot more about us here than it does about Paraguay or this situation. That it is a matter of the girl's life would seem to matter less than why her life is in danger to most of the people talking about it than that the denial of an abortion. You have to wonder how many ten-year-old girls' lives are in danger in the United States, today, due to denial of entirely legal medical treatment for conditions other than being pregnant when it is a question of ability to pay, all with no similar outcry. Not to mention such girls in Paraguay. The interest in a lot of people is in being able to use this to slam religion, specifically the Catholic church, the actual welfare of the girl is secondary.
Again, it should be a given that no ten-year-old girl should be pregnant and that carrying a pregnancy to full term for any girl that you is a life endangering situation and so any girl in that situation should have access to an abortion performed by a doctor under hygienic conditions. The situation in Paraguay is appalling, that a girl who is pregnant should have access to a safe abortion is obvious and its banning in a case like this is a violation of rights. There can be no reasonable case made that the law should prevent it.
In the case in the news from Paraguay the use of it in the United States and Britain (which I mention only because I'm relying on an article from The Guardian), apparently, is to present another reason to vent against the Catholic Church, the church of well over 85% of the population of Paraguay. Even in the most restrictive interpretation of Catholic teaching on abortion, one is allowed if the life of the woman is in danger. From the little I've been able to find on the law in Paraguay, it would seem to me that an abortion is also allowed under those circumstances. In this case that decision is being made by doctors and, ultimately, civil authorities.
“Right now, there is no reason to interrupt the pregnancy,” Lida Sosa, director of healthcare programs at the ministry of public health and wellness, said. “In fact, given the stage of the pregnancy, it’s even more dangerous for the girl to undergo a procedure [to abort] without a well-considered medical, obstetrical evaluation.”
Since this issue is being used here mostly to slam the Catholic church, I'll point out that it was the civil authorities who didn't intervene to prevent the rape of the girl by her step-father who was certainly doing things that the Catholic church teaches are seriously wrong. I have looked and can't find any report that the mother, the step-father or the girl were Catholics or even religious. I have looked at the constitution of Paraguay**, there is legal separation of church and state and no religion is given legal power, though, as always, there is no way to prevent religion having political influence through the beliefs of the people.
I can't imagine any circumstance under which a pregnancy in a ten year old girl isn't a life threatening situation but, then, like most of the rest of the people who are commenting on this, I'm not a doctor, I've never so much as seen the girl and I haven't heard what she thinks about the situation*. In this case the girl's mother was the one who is presented as asking for an abortion and I think that given the girl's age that she is probably the one who should make the ultimate decision on her daughter's behalf. The situation is complicated because she is being targeted by the authorities for not having prevented the rape of her daughter by the girl's step-father, an outrage in itself as the woman tried to report the man to police last year and they did nothing. He's reported to be "on the run". I have no way of knowing what level of responsibility for the situation falls on the girl's mother, if she was entirely blameless or did act irresponsibly. I doubt any of those commenting on this situation know more about that than I do. However, focusing on her as opposed to finding the clearly guilty step-father is appalling optics, and that's the least bad thing you can say about it.
What do the people here imagine they're going to accomplish by using this story to slam a religion which is not going to change its policy that a fetus, an embryo is a human being and that having an abortion is killing a human being. They aren't going to convert the Catholic population of Paraguay to some other belief, in a lot of places in Latin America, when Catholics have left the Catholic church it is to some kind of fundamentalist protestant church which is far less friendly to women and their rights. Though that varies from place to place. You should be careful for what you wish for because what you get as a result might not be what you want.
While I am certain some of the people writing about this and similar awful situations are sincerely interested in the lives and welfare of the girls and women involved, , especially many feminists, I am just as certain that most of those I'm reading about it couldn't care less about them. For such people it's not about the rights of girls and women, it's about the use to which they can be put for their own, unrelated agendas. As I said, this situation is full of awful features. I'd just like the awful features concentrated on all have the rights and conditions of the girls and women as their real focus.
* What would be the right thing to do if the girl wanted to continue with the pregnancy? My inclination would be that, at that age, she should certainly not be the one making such a vitally important medical decision, though the idea of forcing an abortion on such a girl is certainly not untroubling. What if the mother didn't want her to have an abortion? Who should make the decision then? I ask that because of an argument I got into over the sterilization of a young woman who was profoundly intellectually disabled and barely able to function at the level of a four year old but who was, none the less, attractive to men who would take advantage of her. These aren't easy issues in many cases but there is no way to think you can come to any kind of easy, clear comprehensive conclusions about them.
** Artículo 24 - DE LA LIBERTAD RELIGIOSA Y LA IDEOLÓGICA
Quedan reconocidas la libertad religiosa, la de culto y la ideológica, sin más limitaciones que las establecidas en esta Constitución y en la ley. Ninguna confesión tendrá carácter oficial.
Las relaciones del Estado con la iglesia católica se basan en la independencia, cooperación y autonomía.
Se garantizan la independencia y la autonomía de las iglesias y confesiones religiosas, sin más limitaciones que las impuestas en esta Constitución y las leyes.
Nadie puede ser molestado, indagado u obligado a declarar por causa de sus creencias o de su ideología.
That means that, far from the ultimate authority for making the legal decision preventing the girl from obtaining an abortion resting with the Catholic church, as is being said all over the English language blogosphere, legally, the authority is in the hands of secular authorities.
The news story about the ten-year-old girl who is being denied an abortion in Paraguay is certainly full of awful features, a lot of those in the laws governing abortion in Paraguay, and is certainly ripe for ideological use. That is what it is here, something used in an ideological campaign when it should be about the life and health of the girl, not about the use to which she can be made in the United States and other countries where such a child could have a legal abortion under safe conditions. Its use here centers on slamming the Catholic church, who have gotten far worse treatment than the civil authorities in Paraguay have, those with the legal ability to allow an abortion in this case. Which tells us a lot more about us here than it does about Paraguay or this situation. That it is a matter of the girl's life would seem to matter less than why her life is in danger to most of the people talking about it than that the denial of an abortion. You have to wonder how many ten-year-old girls' lives are in danger in the United States, today, due to denial of entirely legal medical treatment for conditions other than being pregnant when it is a question of ability to pay, all with no similar outcry. Not to mention such girls in Paraguay. The interest in a lot of people is in being able to use this to slam religion, specifically the Catholic church, the actual welfare of the girl is secondary.
Again, it should be a given that no ten-year-old girl should be pregnant and that carrying a pregnancy to full term for any girl that you is a life endangering situation and so any girl in that situation should have access to an abortion performed by a doctor under hygienic conditions. The situation in Paraguay is appalling, that a girl who is pregnant should have access to a safe abortion is obvious and its banning in a case like this is a violation of rights. There can be no reasonable case made that the law should prevent it.
In the case in the news from Paraguay the use of it in the United States and Britain (which I mention only because I'm relying on an article from The Guardian), apparently, is to present another reason to vent against the Catholic Church, the church of well over 85% of the population of Paraguay. Even in the most restrictive interpretation of Catholic teaching on abortion, one is allowed if the life of the woman is in danger. From the little I've been able to find on the law in Paraguay, it would seem to me that an abortion is also allowed under those circumstances. In this case that decision is being made by doctors and, ultimately, civil authorities.
“Right now, there is no reason to interrupt the pregnancy,” Lida Sosa, director of healthcare programs at the ministry of public health and wellness, said. “In fact, given the stage of the pregnancy, it’s even more dangerous for the girl to undergo a procedure [to abort] without a well-considered medical, obstetrical evaluation.”
Since this issue is being used here mostly to slam the Catholic church, I'll point out that it was the civil authorities who didn't intervene to prevent the rape of the girl by her step-father who was certainly doing things that the Catholic church teaches are seriously wrong. I have looked and can't find any report that the mother, the step-father or the girl were Catholics or even religious. I have looked at the constitution of Paraguay**, there is legal separation of church and state and no religion is given legal power, though, as always, there is no way to prevent religion having political influence through the beliefs of the people.
I can't imagine any circumstance under which a pregnancy in a ten year old girl isn't a life threatening situation but, then, like most of the rest of the people who are commenting on this, I'm not a doctor, I've never so much as seen the girl and I haven't heard what she thinks about the situation*. In this case the girl's mother was the one who is presented as asking for an abortion and I think that given the girl's age that she is probably the one who should make the ultimate decision on her daughter's behalf. The situation is complicated because she is being targeted by the authorities for not having prevented the rape of her daughter by the girl's step-father, an outrage in itself as the woman tried to report the man to police last year and they did nothing. He's reported to be "on the run". I have no way of knowing what level of responsibility for the situation falls on the girl's mother, if she was entirely blameless or did act irresponsibly. I doubt any of those commenting on this situation know more about that than I do. However, focusing on her as opposed to finding the clearly guilty step-father is appalling optics, and that's the least bad thing you can say about it.
What do the people here imagine they're going to accomplish by using this story to slam a religion which is not going to change its policy that a fetus, an embryo is a human being and that having an abortion is killing a human being. They aren't going to convert the Catholic population of Paraguay to some other belief, in a lot of places in Latin America, when Catholics have left the Catholic church it is to some kind of fundamentalist protestant church which is far less friendly to women and their rights. Though that varies from place to place. You should be careful for what you wish for because what you get as a result might not be what you want.
While I am certain some of the people writing about this and similar awful situations are sincerely interested in the lives and welfare of the girls and women involved, , especially many feminists, I am just as certain that most of those I'm reading about it couldn't care less about them. For such people it's not about the rights of girls and women, it's about the use to which they can be put for their own, unrelated agendas. As I said, this situation is full of awful features. I'd just like the awful features concentrated on all have the rights and conditions of the girls and women as their real focus.
* What would be the right thing to do if the girl wanted to continue with the pregnancy? My inclination would be that, at that age, she should certainly not be the one making such a vitally important medical decision, though the idea of forcing an abortion on such a girl is certainly not untroubling. What if the mother didn't want her to have an abortion? Who should make the decision then? I ask that because of an argument I got into over the sterilization of a young woman who was profoundly intellectually disabled and barely able to function at the level of a four year old but who was, none the less, attractive to men who would take advantage of her. These aren't easy issues in many cases but there is no way to think you can come to any kind of easy, clear comprehensive conclusions about them.
** Artículo 24 - DE LA LIBERTAD RELIGIOSA Y LA IDEOLÓGICA
Quedan reconocidas la libertad religiosa, la de culto y la ideológica, sin más limitaciones que las establecidas en esta Constitución y en la ley. Ninguna confesión tendrá carácter oficial.
Las relaciones del Estado con la iglesia católica se basan en la independencia, cooperación y autonomía.
Se garantizan la independencia y la autonomía de las iglesias y confesiones religiosas, sin más limitaciones que las impuestas en esta Constitución y las leyes.
Nadie puede ser molestado, indagado u obligado a declarar por causa de sus creencias o de su ideología.
That means that, far from the ultimate authority for making the legal decision preventing the girl from obtaining an abortion resting with the Catholic church, as is being said all over the English language blogosphere, legally, the authority is in the hands of secular authorities.
Monday, May 4, 2015
Skizzierung Macht Frei
Here we go again, idiots draw pictures of Muhammad to offend Muslims, apparently Muslims are offended and some of the most militant of Muslims - apparently - take violent action and people get killed hurt and killed. Actually, considering the blatancy of the provocation it's surprising more people haven't been killed, yet. Oh, yeah, and the American haters led by the American queen of anti-Muslim hate, Pam Geller, imported the Dutch hate-talker-politician Geert Wilders to draw attention to their provocative event.
Having gone into that phenomenon rather exhaustively during the Charlie Hebdo incident, I'm going to just raise the question of the motives of these people. Clearly for Geller, she wants to attract support and I am certain, money to her hate group and, I suspect, to herself, there being no chance that she will ever be a political force on her own in the United States. That she's willing to risk lives to do it is obvious in 2015, what with the numerous incidents that those kinds of stunts have already been. That is obvious. Her stunt was most likely to get people killed or maimed in Islamic majority countries, where Christians, Jews, liberal and moderate Muslims must tremble with fear for their lives as her like exercise their "freedom" here, but also in other places. "Drawing makes Free" should be the slogan of her effort.
That a creepy racist politician like Geert Wilders hopes to turn hate into political power is as obvious, I believe his hate party holds a quarter of the seats in the Dutch government. Though from my reading this morning it would seem his attempt with the French fascist, Marie Le Pen, to form an alliance with quasi-fascist parties in other European countries fizzled this time. This time.
I think it will turn out that this kind of thing can't be allowed without a huge cost in the lives of people, harm to people and a resultant oppression, damaging all other rights on behalf of some of the stupidest, most vilely intended "free speech". It's certainly the intention of the likes of Geller and Wilders to deprive Muslims here and in Holland of rights, that's the entire intention of the effort to provoke a response from Muslims in this way. That's their goal, or at least their road to their real goal of political power or, failing that, getting attention and raising money for their hate group.
Update: Yeah, I meant the Nazi implication. Sue me.
Update 2: Hate Mail: "...... fucking Christians"
Uh, Pam Geller happens to be Jewish of the type who call other Jews anti-semites. I believe Wilders is an atheist but I'm not sure of that. Using bigotry to promote bigotry is promoting bigotry.
Having gone into that phenomenon rather exhaustively during the Charlie Hebdo incident, I'm going to just raise the question of the motives of these people. Clearly for Geller, she wants to attract support and I am certain, money to her hate group and, I suspect, to herself, there being no chance that she will ever be a political force on her own in the United States. That she's willing to risk lives to do it is obvious in 2015, what with the numerous incidents that those kinds of stunts have already been. That is obvious. Her stunt was most likely to get people killed or maimed in Islamic majority countries, where Christians, Jews, liberal and moderate Muslims must tremble with fear for their lives as her like exercise their "freedom" here, but also in other places. "Drawing makes Free" should be the slogan of her effort.
That a creepy racist politician like Geert Wilders hopes to turn hate into political power is as obvious, I believe his hate party holds a quarter of the seats in the Dutch government. Though from my reading this morning it would seem his attempt with the French fascist, Marie Le Pen, to form an alliance with quasi-fascist parties in other European countries fizzled this time. This time.
I think it will turn out that this kind of thing can't be allowed without a huge cost in the lives of people, harm to people and a resultant oppression, damaging all other rights on behalf of some of the stupidest, most vilely intended "free speech". It's certainly the intention of the likes of Geller and Wilders to deprive Muslims here and in Holland of rights, that's the entire intention of the effort to provoke a response from Muslims in this way. That's their goal, or at least their road to their real goal of political power or, failing that, getting attention and raising money for their hate group.
Update: Yeah, I meant the Nazi implication. Sue me.
Update 2: Hate Mail: "...... fucking Christians"
Uh, Pam Geller happens to be Jewish of the type who call other Jews anti-semites. I believe Wilders is an atheist but I'm not sure of that. Using bigotry to promote bigotry is promoting bigotry.
There Is Nothing So Polically Stupid As A Conceited Person With A Degree
Some people didn't like my post Saturday. I know, airplane lands safely level news. But you would think that the fact that liberalism has been on the down-slide since FDR died and in free fall since 1968 would at least make a few liberals wonder why that should be. The country elected and kept re-electing a man who would turn out to be the most liberal president in our history eighty years ago but we can't even get a real liberal who reliably supports his accomplishments nominated these days. It's not that liberal programs of that era haven't worked, even while subjected to massive media attack and a massive number of lies by babbling academics, Social Security is still one of the most popular programs ever adopted. What did people, with far more modest educational achievements, eighty years ago, know that people in the massively vaunted "information age" don't know now?
The common habit of scribblers, those who comprise that "information age" who wonder what went wrong for liberalism has been to blame The People, the "masses" who are alleged to be asses, ignorant, superstitious, fat, lazy and cootie ridden, a strategy which, if it were going to work, would have decades ago into that rather interestingly clueless means of obtaining their support. While I'm sure it was popular with those with a college education, those who would buy their books, review them in the media, and have them on their chat shows, it has been what could have been a total and entirely predictable failure as a political strategy in a democracy or even in a non-democracy.
I will run the experiment again, noting how stupid the scribblers who love to diss the majority of people and their nodding, babbling readers are and ask them how much they like being told they're stupid, conceited and entirely clueless and ask them how much me pointing out their true idiocy despite their educations and degrees doesn't make them want to vote for me.
The People are less stupid than the intelligentsia who have bought into the program of telling them how stupid they are. I have pointed out that among other things, The People rejected the stupidest of all of the political follies of the educated class of the past century, its infatuation with Marxism and it will turn out that they are wise enough to reject the successor of that elite Marxism, materialist atheism. But most of all they will refuse to go along with the idea that they are base and stupid from people who propose that they lead them on their behalf.
The real political lesson for liberals of the past fifty years is that as desperate as The People are for political leadership which will honestly work in their interest, they won't buy one that begins with disrespect for them and an ideological message founded on the belief they are nothing more than badly working computers made of meat. I think they may know what it took me so long to figure out, that you could rely on that mindset to produce just a different form of dictatorship. They obviously think they have more of a chance with despots that at least know enough to try to flatter them than one that thinks they'll go for those stupid enough to insult them.
As has been pointed out here before, FDR, the last successful liberal president, one of very, very few of those in our history, gave his ideological foundation very simply, he was a Christian and a Democrat. Though I think that would probably be better written with a small "d".
The People aren't the big problem for liberalism, it's the liberals who aren't liberal who falsely define liberalism. The problem, buddy, is us. Only some of us refuse to remain the problem.
Update: Obviously, there are those who insist that remaining the problem is going to work just given a little more time. That test of time failed with the re-election of Richard Nixon more than forty years ago.
The common habit of scribblers, those who comprise that "information age" who wonder what went wrong for liberalism has been to blame The People, the "masses" who are alleged to be asses, ignorant, superstitious, fat, lazy and cootie ridden, a strategy which, if it were going to work, would have decades ago into that rather interestingly clueless means of obtaining their support. While I'm sure it was popular with those with a college education, those who would buy their books, review them in the media, and have them on their chat shows, it has been what could have been a total and entirely predictable failure as a political strategy in a democracy or even in a non-democracy.
I will run the experiment again, noting how stupid the scribblers who love to diss the majority of people and their nodding, babbling readers are and ask them how much they like being told they're stupid, conceited and entirely clueless and ask them how much me pointing out their true idiocy despite their educations and degrees doesn't make them want to vote for me.
The People are less stupid than the intelligentsia who have bought into the program of telling them how stupid they are. I have pointed out that among other things, The People rejected the stupidest of all of the political follies of the educated class of the past century, its infatuation with Marxism and it will turn out that they are wise enough to reject the successor of that elite Marxism, materialist atheism. But most of all they will refuse to go along with the idea that they are base and stupid from people who propose that they lead them on their behalf.
The real political lesson for liberals of the past fifty years is that as desperate as The People are for political leadership which will honestly work in their interest, they won't buy one that begins with disrespect for them and an ideological message founded on the belief they are nothing more than badly working computers made of meat. I think they may know what it took me so long to figure out, that you could rely on that mindset to produce just a different form of dictatorship. They obviously think they have more of a chance with despots that at least know enough to try to flatter them than one that thinks they'll go for those stupid enough to insult them.
As has been pointed out here before, FDR, the last successful liberal president, one of very, very few of those in our history, gave his ideological foundation very simply, he was a Christian and a Democrat. Though I think that would probably be better written with a small "d".
The People aren't the big problem for liberalism, it's the liberals who aren't liberal who falsely define liberalism. The problem, buddy, is us. Only some of us refuse to remain the problem.
Update: Obviously, there are those who insist that remaining the problem is going to work just given a little more time. That test of time failed with the re-election of Richard Nixon more than forty years ago.
Saturday, May 2, 2015
On "The Thought Criminal"
Deleting through my old e-mails, I found one that informed me that I have no right to call myself "The Thought Criminal". Of all the things I do that I expect will be annoying to my opponents, that wasn't what I thought would be one of them because, you see, they were the ones who, continually, over the course of my public writing have told me that I'm not allowed to think the things I think. When I wrote for Echidne's blog that was a constant feature of my challenges to the orthodoxy of the alleged left which, whatever else you might say about it, was so demonstrably not a political success. Despite everything else, there has been one constant in my blogging and that is I am a political blogger. My first and foremost goal is the transformation of lives for the better through political action. No, come to think of it, that's not true, not mere "action" but political SUCCESS! Winning elections, changing laws, sustaining them through the opposition of the Supreme Court and other inbuilt obstacles and their implementation to make the lives of the poor, the destitute, the haggard and harrassed lower and middle classes better and, since all of them depend on that, the preservation of the environment.
When I began almost nine years ago (May 13, 2006) I didn't know how deep the problem went, how entirely my own assumptions and beliefs would have to change in light of the evidence I would discover and through learning how basically wrong the common received wisdom of the alleged left was. I didn't expect to ever confront the issues of atheism, materialism, scientism, etc. I did think I knew that confronting the conceit and snobbery of so many of the left would be necessary - for some reason those folks who never tire of declaiming their brilliance didn't realize you had to win the most votes to win an election - but I didn't realize how addicted to self-congratulation the alleged leftists would prove to be.
All through that, continuing today, I have constantly been told that what I say is not allowed to be said, what I think is not allowed to be thought. Which I have to admit, hasn't made it any less fun to think and say those things. In doing the necessary reading and consideration of these issues, I have come to a far, far deeper appreciation of a genuine leftist tradition that actually was able to accomplish things, largely through a far greater appeal to the very people on whose behalf the left is alleged to exist. In that I have to say I have come to respect the thinking and the sincerity of many unstylish and unfashionable people and to reject the condescending model of top down leftism, the defeated and conceited "left" that it was inevitable that I would leave even if I were not actually kicked out of it. I don't regret that in any way.
Update: Ah, well, yes, I'm always told that "winning elections isn't the point" that "changing the 'discussion,' the 'debate', etc is the goal" or some such other tripe. I strongly suspect those ridiculous political formulations are a necessary ruse to rope in the dupes when the ones sloganizing thus have no hope of ever winning an election, gaining office and actually changing reality. Any "left" which includes counting on not winning elections is a "left" that is left behind, left out and better left for dead.
Update: I could care less about what is said there but it would be more work than it is worth.
See also:
Update: Ah, well, yes, I'm always told that "winning elections isn't the point" that "changing the 'discussion,' the 'debate', etc is the goal" or some such other tripe. I strongly suspect those ridiculous political formulations are a necessary ruse to rope in the dupes when the ones sloganizing thus have no hope of ever winning an election, gaining office and actually changing reality. Any "left" which includes counting on not winning elections is a "left" that is left behind, left out and better left for dead.
Update: I could care less about what is said there but it would be more work than it is worth.
See also:
Friday, May 1, 2015
Chavez Merits Canonization For Lifetime Ministry - Fridays With Richard McBrien
Cesar Chavez, founder of the United Farm Workers of America, died last month at age 66 while on union business in Arizona.
If we were living at any time during the first ten centuries of the Christian era, Cesar Chavez would already have been proclaimed a saint by the people who knew him best or who personally gained from his lifelong, non-violent struggle for social justice. That number is in the thousands, more likely the millions.
It was not until the end of the 10th century that the first historically attested canonization took place. In the early Church martyrs were publicly venerated by the faithful. From the fourth century on, veneration was extended to those who suffered for the faith, but short of martyrdom. They were called confessors.
As various cults developed, they came under the control of local bishops and councils, but frequently they spread beyond the limits of a diocese and even of a country.
Eventually the papacy intervened. After the publication of the Decretals of Pope Gregory IX in 1234, only the pope had the authority to canonize a saint.
But most of the early Church's greatest saints, including the Twelve Apostles and Paul, were never formally canonized. They were simply recognized as such after their deaths.
Cesar Chavez would have been a natural choice for sainthood under those earlier norms.
He devoted himself wholeheartedly and without any personal reward to the welfare of some of the most economically oppressed people who have ever worked in the United States, those of whom John Steinbeck had written so movingly in his novel, The Grapes of Wrath.
Chavez captured the world's attention in the 1960's when he led a lonely battle to unionize the migrant farm workers in the fields and orchards of California. He used the strike (La Huelga), fastings, boycotts, and long marches to advance La Causa.
He fasted for 25 days in the spring of 1968, losing a fifth of his body weight. The end of the fast was marked by the celebration of an open-air mass at which he took Communion. But he was too weak to speak.
His famous call, also in 1968, for a boycott of grapes was honored by 17 million Americans and his campaign for justice won the support of key political and religious leaders.
The late Robert F. Kennedy described Chavez as "one of the heroic figures of our time." He was also supported by several Catholic bishops, including two auxiliaries in my own Archdiocese of Hartford: the late Bishop Joseph Donnelly, one of the pioneer labor priests of the 1950's and 60', and Bishop Peter Rosazza.
Because of Cesar Chavez's efforts, the California legislature in 1975 passed the nation's first collective bargaining act outside Hawaii for farm workers laborers who are largely excluded from the protection of Federal law.
But Chavez never realized his dream of creating a nationwide union, for a variety of reasons: competition from the Teamsters, internal conflicts, opposition from conservative politicians, and continued resistance from the growers.
In most of the country, therefore, farm workers continue to work at the low end of the wage-scale, in poor housing, without medical insurance or job security, and vulnerable to exploitation.
In spite of his national and international reputation as a major labor leader, Cesar Chavez was a small, shy, frail man who did not excel at public speaking.
A devoted family man with eight children, he was also deeply religious, a living example of authentic Catholic spirituality.
Unlike the counterfeit piety of those who fail to see God in the faces of the poor, the oppressed, and the marginalized, Chavez's spirituality was one of total dedication to the needs of others without regard for himself. He had a virtual vow of poverty, taking a weekly salary of $5. (You read it right: five dollars!)
Like Jesus, who "came not to be served but to serve" (Mark 10:45).
Chavez saw his monastic existence as a "powerful weapon" for justice. "When you sacrifice," he once said, "you force others to do the same.
"When you work and sacrifice more than anyone around you, others feel the need to do at least a little bit more than they were doing before."
In an age of racial polarization, Chavez built alliances with Latinos, Asian Americans, African Americans, and whites. "Our belief is to help everybody, not just one race," he said. "Humanity is our belief."
As I pointed out above, during the first ten centuries of the Church's history, before the formal process of canonization began, Cesar Chavez would even now have been proclaimed, "St. Cesar," patron of farm workers. As a profoundly religious family man with a virtual vow of poverty, a person whose whole life was devoted to securing justice for the poor and the powerless, Cesar Chavez would merit canonization even under the present rules.
The pope would do well to make it official sometime soon.
If we were living at any time during the first ten centuries of the Christian era, Cesar Chavez would already have been proclaimed a saint by the people who knew him best or who personally gained from his lifelong, non-violent struggle for social justice. That number is in the thousands, more likely the millions.
It was not until the end of the 10th century that the first historically attested canonization took place. In the early Church martyrs were publicly venerated by the faithful. From the fourth century on, veneration was extended to those who suffered for the faith, but short of martyrdom. They were called confessors.
As various cults developed, they came under the control of local bishops and councils, but frequently they spread beyond the limits of a diocese and even of a country.
Eventually the papacy intervened. After the publication of the Decretals of Pope Gregory IX in 1234, only the pope had the authority to canonize a saint.
But most of the early Church's greatest saints, including the Twelve Apostles and Paul, were never formally canonized. They were simply recognized as such after their deaths.
Cesar Chavez would have been a natural choice for sainthood under those earlier norms.
He devoted himself wholeheartedly and without any personal reward to the welfare of some of the most economically oppressed people who have ever worked in the United States, those of whom John Steinbeck had written so movingly in his novel, The Grapes of Wrath.
Chavez captured the world's attention in the 1960's when he led a lonely battle to unionize the migrant farm workers in the fields and orchards of California. He used the strike (La Huelga), fastings, boycotts, and long marches to advance La Causa.
He fasted for 25 days in the spring of 1968, losing a fifth of his body weight. The end of the fast was marked by the celebration of an open-air mass at which he took Communion. But he was too weak to speak.
His famous call, also in 1968, for a boycott of grapes was honored by 17 million Americans and his campaign for justice won the support of key political and religious leaders.
The late Robert F. Kennedy described Chavez as "one of the heroic figures of our time." He was also supported by several Catholic bishops, including two auxiliaries in my own Archdiocese of Hartford: the late Bishop Joseph Donnelly, one of the pioneer labor priests of the 1950's and 60', and Bishop Peter Rosazza.
Because of Cesar Chavez's efforts, the California legislature in 1975 passed the nation's first collective bargaining act outside Hawaii for farm workers laborers who are largely excluded from the protection of Federal law.
But Chavez never realized his dream of creating a nationwide union, for a variety of reasons: competition from the Teamsters, internal conflicts, opposition from conservative politicians, and continued resistance from the growers.
In most of the country, therefore, farm workers continue to work at the low end of the wage-scale, in poor housing, without medical insurance or job security, and vulnerable to exploitation.
In spite of his national and international reputation as a major labor leader, Cesar Chavez was a small, shy, frail man who did not excel at public speaking.
A devoted family man with eight children, he was also deeply religious, a living example of authentic Catholic spirituality.
Unlike the counterfeit piety of those who fail to see God in the faces of the poor, the oppressed, and the marginalized, Chavez's spirituality was one of total dedication to the needs of others without regard for himself. He had a virtual vow of poverty, taking a weekly salary of $5. (You read it right: five dollars!)
Like Jesus, who "came not to be served but to serve" (Mark 10:45).
Chavez saw his monastic existence as a "powerful weapon" for justice. "When you sacrifice," he once said, "you force others to do the same.
"When you work and sacrifice more than anyone around you, others feel the need to do at least a little bit more than they were doing before."
In an age of racial polarization, Chavez built alliances with Latinos, Asian Americans, African Americans, and whites. "Our belief is to help everybody, not just one race," he said. "Humanity is our belief."
As I pointed out above, during the first ten centuries of the Church's history, before the formal process of canonization began, Cesar Chavez would even now have been proclaimed, "St. Cesar," patron of farm workers. As a profoundly religious family man with a virtual vow of poverty, a person whose whole life was devoted to securing justice for the poor and the powerless, Cesar Chavez would merit canonization even under the present rules.
The pope would do well to make it official sometime soon.
5 / 21 / 1993
And It Still Is News
In April, 2012, Sara Horowitz wrote an interesting short article pointing out the little noticed part of the story of Exodus as things were building up to the slaves in Egypt escaping slavery.
Millions of families around the world, including my own, will sit down together this weekend for Passover Seder to read and celebrate the story of the Jews freeing themselves from enslavement. Independence is an important and powerful part of the story. But I think we're also celebrating something else: the first great moment in labor history.
Seriously.
The parallels come easily. The workers (Israelites) asked their union rep (Moses) to stand up to the boss (Pharaoh) about their terrible working conditions. In Exodus: Chapter 5, the boss denied Moses and doubled the workers' load...
The workers' only recourse was to leave. This was a really strike, but on a biblical scale. It was one of the first times that workers stood up for their collective power.
This is a good example of how the stories of Moses are still of deepest relevance to the downtrodden, the oppressed, the overworked (you really should read what Marilynne Robinson has to say about the sabbath in her essay) and the underpaid.
Every way I see it, liberals shot themselves in the knee if not the head when they gave up this heritage and the power that it confers and left it to the far right to lie about and distort in their own ways to their own ends. And we did it at the behest of alleged scholars who had ends of their own in distorting it in other ways. I would argue, ends that aren't all that much different from those of the hirelings of the billionaires and other oligarchs.
If more union organizing were done around the story of Exodus instead of Marx and the such, I doubt we'd have the labor unions on the mat as they are today.
Millions of families around the world, including my own, will sit down together this weekend for Passover Seder to read and celebrate the story of the Jews freeing themselves from enslavement. Independence is an important and powerful part of the story. But I think we're also celebrating something else: the first great moment in labor history.
Seriously.
The parallels come easily. The workers (Israelites) asked their union rep (Moses) to stand up to the boss (Pharaoh) about their terrible working conditions. In Exodus: Chapter 5, the boss denied Moses and doubled the workers' load...
The workers' only recourse was to leave. This was a really strike, but on a biblical scale. It was one of the first times that workers stood up for their collective power.
This is a good example of how the stories of Moses are still of deepest relevance to the downtrodden, the oppressed, the overworked (you really should read what Marilynne Robinson has to say about the sabbath in her essay) and the underpaid.
Every way I see it, liberals shot themselves in the knee if not the head when they gave up this heritage and the power that it confers and left it to the far right to lie about and distort in their own ways to their own ends. And we did it at the behest of alleged scholars who had ends of their own in distorting it in other ways. I would argue, ends that aren't all that much different from those of the hirelings of the billionaires and other oligarchs.
If more union organizing were done around the story of Exodus instead of Marx and the such, I doubt we'd have the labor unions on the mat as they are today.
" every phrase that is used to condemn them, they supplied,in their incredible self-scrutiny and self-judgement "
One of the most absurd accusations made by atheists and other ignorant people is that the monotheistic religions lack self-criticism such as science is alleged to practice. And that only proves that those who make that claim have never even read the very scriptures that they misrepresent. And it's not only atheists who seem to be entirely ignorant of the scriptures that are the basis of those religions but people who can rise in the most intellectually accomplished clergies. I mentioned that Marilynne Robinson goes over Bishop John Shelby Spong at length*. It should be understood just what Robinson, a passionately strong Christian, is doing in these essays which are full of vigorous criticism of her own religious tradition as it is practiced in real life. Atheism and, I dare say, scientists seldom if ever practice this form of criticism of their own beliefs and practices.**
But this passage begins with the viciously genteel characterizations of Jews and God by one of the enlightenment's brightest blooms, David Hume.
Scholarly books on the Scriptures typically claim objectivity and may sometimes aspire to it, though their definitions of objectivity inevitably vary with the intentions of their writers. But to assume a posture of seeming objectivity relative to any controverted subject is a very old polemical maneuver. David Hume, in an endnote to his Natural History of Religion (written in 1751, published in 1779), quotes Chevalier Ramsay, who quotes an imagined Chinese or Indian philosopher's reaction to Christianity: "The God of the Jews is the most cruel, unjust partial, and fantastical being... This chosen nation was... the most stupid, ungrateful, rebellious and perfidious of all nations . . . [God's son dies to appease his vindictive wrath, but the vast majority of the world are excluded from any benefit. This makes God] . . . a cruel, vindictive tyrant, an impotent or a wrathful daemon." And so on.
Even pious critics seem never to remember that, in the Old Testament, the Jews were talking among themselves, interpreting their own experience to themselves. Every negative thing we know about them, every phrase that is used to condemn them, they supplied,in their incredible self-scrutiny and self-judgement. Who but the ancient Jews would have thought to blame themselves for, in effect, lying along the invasion route of the Babylonians? They preserved and magnified their vision of the high holiness of God by absorbing into themselves responsibility for their sufferings. and this made them passionately self-accusatory, in ways no other people would have thought of being. This incomparable literature would surely have been lost if they had imagined the use it would be put to, and had written to justify themselves and to defend their descendants in the eyes of the nations rather than to ponder their life in openness toward God. By what standard but their own could Israel have been considered ungrateful or rebellious or corrupt? Granting crimes and errors, which they recorded, and preserved and pondered the records of for centuries, and which were otherwise so historically minor that no one would ever have heard of them - how do these crimes compare with those of other peoples, their contemporaries or ours? When Hume wrote the English gibbets More describes were still as full as ever. The grandeur of the Old Testament, and the fact that such great significance is attached to it, distracts readers from a sense of its unique communal inwardness. It is an endless reconciliation achieved at great cost by a people whose relation to God is astonishingly brave and generous. To misappropriate it as a damning witness against the Jews and "the Jewish God" is vulgar beyond belief. And not at all uncommon, therefore. It is useful to consider how the New Testament would read, if it had gone on to chronicle the Crusades and the Inquisition.
* In one of those points she makes concerning Spong, she demolishes the charge that Jews considered themselves as set above all other people because they considered themselves to be a chosen people.
It is entirely appropriate for Christians to come to whatever terms they must with the difficulties of their own sacred narrative, their own mythopoesis. But the Old Testament is another matter. It is not in the same sense theirs, and if they refuse to grant it its terms, or give it their respectful attention, then it is not theirs in any sense at all. When Bishop Spong says, "The Jewish God in the Hebrew scriptures was assumed to hate anyone that the nation of Israel hated," he offers no evidence of the truth of his harshly negative remark. This assumption is made that Israel and "the Jewish God" are both given to hatred, when two great exemplary figures of righteousness and graciousness in the Old Testament, Job and Ruth, are not Jews, are in fact an Edomite and a Moabite, despised people if one were to believe what one is told about the narrow tribalism of the Hebrew scriptures. Jonah is sent to save terrifying Nineveh, a great enemy city, which "the Jewish God" cares for and is at pains to spare. However one passage or another might be read, there is much unambiguous evidence of striking universalism to discredit this hostile characterization of the Hebrew scriptures. Elsewhere the bishop says that Jesus "lived in a world where cultural barriers were drawn that defined women as subhumans and children as not worthy of God's concern." He offers no evidence of the truth of this statement, and coincidentally perhaps, the Bible contains no evidence of the truth of it.
If anyone is aware of a scriptural literature that is so relentlessly self-critical as the Jewish scriptures, I'd like to know what it is. I know that the social-sciences would disappear over night if they practiced the same kind of self-criticism, including the entire work of several of the bright lights of atheist invective against the Jewish tradition.
I have to say that Spong has been most useful in my experience to those who are hostile to the Jewish and Christian religions, whether atheists, agnostics or some variety or other of "Pagan". What he says is often presented as authoritative, probably due to his position in the Episcopal church. Marilynne Robinson may not agree or may be too polite to say it but in Spong's declarations I smell the mildewed genteel, British tradition of anti-Semitism, an odor that permeates most of that kind of literature. I suspect that, just as with American slaves, the British underclass has a far different understanding of the narratives and moral codes of the Mosaic tradition than the affluent and those who aspire to affluence. It's also been my experience that people who live in more modest circumstances are somewhat more likely to have actually read the texts that so many who have been to college don't seem to have, depending on the characterization of such folk as Spong who bring them the kind of good news they want to hear.
Oh, I can't resist, Robinson said it better than I could.
If what is desired is a God who presents no difficulties and makes no demands, the Old Testament must surely be rejected. But to reject it is one thing, to denounce it is another, and to misrepresent it in the course of denouncing it is another still. The Old Testament is not for Christians to denounce because we need only put it respectfully aside, as a Methodist might the Book of Mormon, as a Jew might the New Testament. The Old Testament certainly is not ours to misrepresent, since in doing so we slander the culture we took it from, an old and still evil habit among us. Since Friedrich Nietzsche seems to be on every curriculum, unshakably canonized for all his deadness, whiteness and maleness, I need only mention his familiar theory that Judeo-Christianity was foisted on Europeans by vengeful Jews. I have never seen anyone else even speculate as to how it has come about that we consider ourselves victimized for having made inappropriate use of someone else's scriptures. Yet this sense of victimization is everywhere - it is even proposed in certain of these books that the Old testament predisposed us to genocide.
And I will add that kind of nonsense isn't restricted to Christians or even post-Christian atheists but is hinted at by almost anyone who hankers after a reputation of sophistication. The issue of fashion and conformity in a study of genteel anti-Semitism is one that needs more study and when I say fashion, I include academic fashion.
** Richard Lewontin is one of the very few atheists and scientists I'm aware of who does practice a similar level of self-questioning and criticism of his own beliefs and his field. If it is a remnant of his cultural heritage I don't know, though I do know he has endorsed the pilpul of the Orthodox study houses as an example of rigorous intellectual questioning.
But this passage begins with the viciously genteel characterizations of Jews and God by one of the enlightenment's brightest blooms, David Hume.
Scholarly books on the Scriptures typically claim objectivity and may sometimes aspire to it, though their definitions of objectivity inevitably vary with the intentions of their writers. But to assume a posture of seeming objectivity relative to any controverted subject is a very old polemical maneuver. David Hume, in an endnote to his Natural History of Religion (written in 1751, published in 1779), quotes Chevalier Ramsay, who quotes an imagined Chinese or Indian philosopher's reaction to Christianity: "The God of the Jews is the most cruel, unjust partial, and fantastical being... This chosen nation was... the most stupid, ungrateful, rebellious and perfidious of all nations . . . [God's son dies to appease his vindictive wrath, but the vast majority of the world are excluded from any benefit. This makes God] . . . a cruel, vindictive tyrant, an impotent or a wrathful daemon." And so on.
Even pious critics seem never to remember that, in the Old Testament, the Jews were talking among themselves, interpreting their own experience to themselves. Every negative thing we know about them, every phrase that is used to condemn them, they supplied,in their incredible self-scrutiny and self-judgement. Who but the ancient Jews would have thought to blame themselves for, in effect, lying along the invasion route of the Babylonians? They preserved and magnified their vision of the high holiness of God by absorbing into themselves responsibility for their sufferings. and this made them passionately self-accusatory, in ways no other people would have thought of being. This incomparable literature would surely have been lost if they had imagined the use it would be put to, and had written to justify themselves and to defend their descendants in the eyes of the nations rather than to ponder their life in openness toward God. By what standard but their own could Israel have been considered ungrateful or rebellious or corrupt? Granting crimes and errors, which they recorded, and preserved and pondered the records of for centuries, and which were otherwise so historically minor that no one would ever have heard of them - how do these crimes compare with those of other peoples, their contemporaries or ours? When Hume wrote the English gibbets More describes were still as full as ever. The grandeur of the Old Testament, and the fact that such great significance is attached to it, distracts readers from a sense of its unique communal inwardness. It is an endless reconciliation achieved at great cost by a people whose relation to God is astonishingly brave and generous. To misappropriate it as a damning witness against the Jews and "the Jewish God" is vulgar beyond belief. And not at all uncommon, therefore. It is useful to consider how the New Testament would read, if it had gone on to chronicle the Crusades and the Inquisition.
* In one of those points she makes concerning Spong, she demolishes the charge that Jews considered themselves as set above all other people because they considered themselves to be a chosen people.
It is entirely appropriate for Christians to come to whatever terms they must with the difficulties of their own sacred narrative, their own mythopoesis. But the Old Testament is another matter. It is not in the same sense theirs, and if they refuse to grant it its terms, or give it their respectful attention, then it is not theirs in any sense at all. When Bishop Spong says, "The Jewish God in the Hebrew scriptures was assumed to hate anyone that the nation of Israel hated," he offers no evidence of the truth of his harshly negative remark. This assumption is made that Israel and "the Jewish God" are both given to hatred, when two great exemplary figures of righteousness and graciousness in the Old Testament, Job and Ruth, are not Jews, are in fact an Edomite and a Moabite, despised people if one were to believe what one is told about the narrow tribalism of the Hebrew scriptures. Jonah is sent to save terrifying Nineveh, a great enemy city, which "the Jewish God" cares for and is at pains to spare. However one passage or another might be read, there is much unambiguous evidence of striking universalism to discredit this hostile characterization of the Hebrew scriptures. Elsewhere the bishop says that Jesus "lived in a world where cultural barriers were drawn that defined women as subhumans and children as not worthy of God's concern." He offers no evidence of the truth of this statement, and coincidentally perhaps, the Bible contains no evidence of the truth of it.
If anyone is aware of a scriptural literature that is so relentlessly self-critical as the Jewish scriptures, I'd like to know what it is. I know that the social-sciences would disappear over night if they practiced the same kind of self-criticism, including the entire work of several of the bright lights of atheist invective against the Jewish tradition.
I have to say that Spong has been most useful in my experience to those who are hostile to the Jewish and Christian religions, whether atheists, agnostics or some variety or other of "Pagan". What he says is often presented as authoritative, probably due to his position in the Episcopal church. Marilynne Robinson may not agree or may be too polite to say it but in Spong's declarations I smell the mildewed genteel, British tradition of anti-Semitism, an odor that permeates most of that kind of literature. I suspect that, just as with American slaves, the British underclass has a far different understanding of the narratives and moral codes of the Mosaic tradition than the affluent and those who aspire to affluence. It's also been my experience that people who live in more modest circumstances are somewhat more likely to have actually read the texts that so many who have been to college don't seem to have, depending on the characterization of such folk as Spong who bring them the kind of good news they want to hear.
Oh, I can't resist, Robinson said it better than I could.
If what is desired is a God who presents no difficulties and makes no demands, the Old Testament must surely be rejected. But to reject it is one thing, to denounce it is another, and to misrepresent it in the course of denouncing it is another still. The Old Testament is not for Christians to denounce because we need only put it respectfully aside, as a Methodist might the Book of Mormon, as a Jew might the New Testament. The Old Testament certainly is not ours to misrepresent, since in doing so we slander the culture we took it from, an old and still evil habit among us. Since Friedrich Nietzsche seems to be on every curriculum, unshakably canonized for all his deadness, whiteness and maleness, I need only mention his familiar theory that Judeo-Christianity was foisted on Europeans by vengeful Jews. I have never seen anyone else even speculate as to how it has come about that we consider ourselves victimized for having made inappropriate use of someone else's scriptures. Yet this sense of victimization is everywhere - it is even proposed in certain of these books that the Old testament predisposed us to genocide.
And I will add that kind of nonsense isn't restricted to Christians or even post-Christian atheists but is hinted at by almost anyone who hankers after a reputation of sophistication. The issue of fashion and conformity in a study of genteel anti-Semitism is one that needs more study and when I say fashion, I include academic fashion.
** Richard Lewontin is one of the very few atheists and scientists I'm aware of who does practice a similar level of self-questioning and criticism of his own beliefs and his field. If it is a remnant of his cultural heritage I don't know, though I do know he has endorsed the pilpul of the Orthodox study houses as an example of rigorous intellectual questioning.
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