Lying about Chesterton

Deacon Jim Russell is trolling the internet claiming that G. K. Chesterton supported lying for a good cause.

He bases this on a Chesterton quotation taken entirely out of context which I addressed three years ago, and the points I made then Deacon Russell continues to ignore now.

In brief ...

The entire point of Chesterton’s quote and of the English tradition since the execution of the Jesuit martyrs is that equivocation is wrong because it is lying about lying; it is a double lie. Equivocation is not wrong because lying is right; equivocation is wrong because lying is wrong, and to play games with words is to lie twice.

Read what Chesterton actually said about lying here.

And please pray for people who get sucked in to the irrationality that rules most of the internet.

Personally, I need a break.

***

And, by the way, something else that Deacon Russell and the "We Like Lying" crowd have ignored for years is the mass of evidence that the Ordinary Magisterium has settled this issue - the vast case against Lying and for Honesty that you can read here. 

The Vacuum at the Heart of the Vortex

"Professional Catholic" Mark Shea rightly condemns Professional Demagogue Michael Voris for promoting the work of antisemites and geocentrists.

Let me explain what this is all about.  I'll use shorter words.

Michael Voris.  The bad hair doesn't bother me;
what bothers me is what's underneath.

Michael Voris is not content (as Shea points out) with

denouncing the errors and gutless cowardice of such menaces as Fr. Father Robert Barron and such dangerous men as Karl Keating, Jimmy Akin, Al Kresta and similar wolves in sheep’s clothing

... he now gives exposure to folks who believe that modern science is all wrong and who believe that the Jews are a menace to society.

***

Let us learn a few things here.

As I point out in Mark's comment box ...

The fact is that Voris has been fueling the fires of schism, fanning the flames of the irrational, and feeding the furnace of wrath for years now. His engine keeps chugging along, but the track leads nowhere.

But that can be hard to see, even now when Voris goes all in to play to the small but intense demographic of extremists who support him.  Even something as insane and unbalanced as geocentrism and antisemitism can be made to "go down smooth."

You see, in the internet age, it's very easy for crackpots to sound normal.

For instance, the first comment on Voris' video of the interview in question is from some yokel who ignores the evidence and flatly asserts that the Big Bang is an anti-Christian Pagan myth grafted onto science.  This appears in black and white right along side everything else.  It's on the internet so it must be true.  It's an example of an uninformed mind waving the banner of his ignorance.  (But then, so is Michael Voris.)

A generation ago, such a comment would have been filtered out from the Letters to the Editor section of your local paper, to spare the writer embarrassment if nothing else.  But now such things gain a kind of currency.  When the same machine (your laptop) tells you with the same electronic glow that Christ died for our sins and that the universe physically revolves around the Earth; that science is right about the winter storm approaching but wrong about the evidence that indicates the Big Bang (a theory first suggested by a Jesuit priest, incidentally); that your friends are all on Facebook and that male enhancement pills really work - it's difficult to stay sane.  Even television feeds us mostly lies.  The internet is worse because the internet has no filter.  Truth and falsehood come at us from all directions - the simple and the mundane get mixed in with the bizarre, the insane and the horribly angry and dangerous.

***

Voris' whole technique is indeed a dead end, a one way track.  The Vortex creates a low pressure system that sucks everything into its vacant and vapid path.  An irrational anger that responds even to legitimate grievances, if indulged and cultivated, is toxic.  It leads to geocentrism, Jew hating and paranoia.  It leads to hell on earth.

(NB: Voris and his followers will issue the denial, "This is just an exposure of ideas, not an endorsement!"  Don't buy that for a second.  This vortex is simply a death spiral.)

Having No Faith in Our Faith

Now while he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Festival, many people saw the signs he was performing and believed (ἐπίστευσαν) in his name.

But Jesus did not trust (ἐπίστευεν) himself unto them because he knew all men  (John 2:23-24)

The same root word in Greek is used to signify both the faith professed by the people in Jerusalem who are impressed by the signs performed by Jesus, and the thing Jesus will not offer in return.

They offer some sort of faith in His name, but He has no faith in this faith, as it were.

John explains why in the next verse ...

and [Jesus] didn't need anyone to tell him about human nature. He knew what people were really like. (John 2:25)

Knowing their hearts  - even without being told - Jesus knows that their faith is not such that He could entrust Himself to them.  Indeed, neither could Jesus count on the faith of His closest disciples, who all abandoned Him in His hour of need.

So He keeps a wise reserve.

Jesus, you see, is not a publicity hound.

He is not like us actors who think that applause = love.

He knows man better than that.

Fifty Shades of Selfish

Let's call him "Chad Withers", the Sensitive Actor

I once hired an actor.  Let's call him Chad Withers.  That's not his real name.

He did a fairly decent job for Upstage Productions, but one Christmas season, he got very angry at us for not giving him the number of shows to perform that he thought he was entitled to.  So he quit.  He quit after he had already agreed to perform some gigs - leaving me to clean up his mess, re-cast the shows he had agreed to do, and cover for him.

About a year later, he called and apologized.

This was a first for me.  I mean, who calls and apologizes for something they once did?  When is the last time that's happened to you?  People just aren't sorry for the bad things they've done, and if they are, they're embarrassed about them, so they keep their mouths shut.

Of course, Chad wanted something from me.  The apology had a point to it.  He wanted me to hire him back.

***

Now here's where it gets tricky.  We, as Christians, are required to forgive.  And at the very least that means that we are obligated to give up thoughts of revenge or of getting even.  We are called to let it go.  But does it mean we must restore a person who's harmed us to a place of trust where he or she will have the opportunity to harm us again?  Well, that becomes a question of prudence - which means it's a judgment call.

In this case, I decided to err on the side of indulgence, so I hired him back.

And you can almost guess the rest of the story.

He not only screwed us again, he did so big time.

I told him I was going to cast him in the spring season of Theater of the Word shows.  He told me that would work for him, for he was hoping to get bookings in the fall for a one-man show he had put together on his own, and he needed work in the meantime.  I made him promise me that he would commit to the spring season of Theater of the Word shows no matter what - that once he had accepted these gigs he would stick to them, and that after the season ended we would discuss future bookings, depending on whether or not his one-man show took off.

***

So a week before our long tour began to the Great Plains, he left me a voice message.  In a kind of smug and self-righteous tone he told me that he had gotten some last minute bookings for his one-man show that would conflict with the Theater of the Word tour that was a week away, and so he was backing out.  He thanked me for my time and hung up.

I was furious.

I had to cancel some local gigs that had been scheduled for that same week which Chad had agreed to do, but Kaiser Johnson agreed to step in from Hollywood and bail me out, taking the two-dozen or so shows that made up the Great Plains Tour and the Ohio tour that immediately followed that - and learning all of his lines and blocking at the last minute - saving our skin.

From the basement where we run the businesses, I called our other cast members and told them what had happened.  "I feel like somebody walked into this basement with a bomb strapped to his body and blew himself up," I said.

***

Now this is a pretty awful thing for an actor to do.

But friends have done worse.  Even family has done worse.

Most relationships are like this.  Most people are interested in us because we're useful.  Chad apologized to me and wormed his way back into my good graces not because he was legitimately sorry, but because he wanted something from me.

He was particularly selfish, particularly heedless of the consequences of his actions.  Most people would have more compunction than he did.  It didn't bother him a bit that he was making a selfish decision that effected the lives of three other actors, dozens of clients, and hundreds of potential audience members.  He didn't care that the bomb he had strapped to himself was going off around other living human beings.

Chad was at the far end of the spectrum, but if sacrificial love is white and use and abuse of others is black, most friends and acquaintances are fifty shades of gray.

***

So it's naive of me to think that by giving an actor a break, he'll respond with gratitude and good will.  It's naive of us actors to think that by being entertaining or funny we'll not only be useful to people, but that people will like us.  It's naive of us humans to think that any relationship - business or personal - moves much beyond the stroking of mutual self-interest.

That's the way the world works.

But we are not of this world.  We are called to something greater than the mutual masturbation of using one another to address our selfish needs.

We are called to love - and that's an entirely different thing.

Ready to Change

Fellow Sinner, are you struggling with sins that you just can't give up?  Force of habit is a strong thing, but you yourself know that habit is not the whole story, that you enjoy sinning.  Of course you do.  We all do.  Why else would we sin if it weren't somehow fun or rewarding to us?  You may realize intellectually that your sin harms you in the long run, but you calculate that the immediate pay off is better than the long term pay out.  That sounds a bit harsh, but it's really true.  There is a kind of calculation going on here.

Alice Boyes writes ...

Change Happens When You're Ready? We often hear "Change will happen when you're ready". In my more than 20 years of experience [as a psychologist], I've come to understand that "ready"--or the tipping point of change--often means 'when the consequences of our behavior outweigh the value of that behavior to us'. In other words, when the pay out (consequence) becomes greater than the pay back (value) we are prompted by circumstance to change what we are doing. This perspective can apply to anything from self-care, to relationship, to addiction. Of course, we then confront the question, "Are we willing to change?"

There's a benefit, then, from being miserable.  If you are suffering some painful consequence of your own sin, realize that this is a great grace, and that this judgment is maybe the only thing that will ever lead you to repentance.

You Too can be "Shameful without Shame"!

Kevin Tierney at Catholic Exchange has written his best post yet on the Theology of the Body, correcting the sex-saturated pop-Catholic misinterpretations of it.

Kevin's article is about shame.

The Westians want us all to be "naked without shame" - as if that were a good thing.

It is a shame that Tierney has to instruct us on shame.  It is a shame that shame is presented as a thing that is entirely negative by Catholics who should know better.  It is a shame that these same Catholics are so ignorant not only of human nature but also of holy Scripture that they don't recognize how shameful we fallen men actually are.

Tierney alludes to Sirach 4:21

There is a sense of shame laden with guilt, and a shame that merits honor and respect.

or, in another translation

for there is a shame that leads to sin and a shame that is honourable and gracious. 

... which reminds me of 2 Cor. 7:10

For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation and brings no regret, but worldly grief produces death.

And in so far as the Westians are addressing the kind of shame laden with self-loathing that brings us to the sin of despair, they are right in counseling against it.  But their program is not that; they want us to be "naked without shame" - in other words to overcome the shame that "is honorable and gracious".

The Greek word for shame that appears in Sirach 4:21 is the same word for shame that Christ uses in rebuking the Laodecians in Rev. 3:18, instructing them to put on the white garments of a Christian "so that you may clothe yourself and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen".

Is Our Lord a Puritan, a repressive Manichean?  Hasn't He read Christopher West?

Apparently not.  The remedy for shame, according to Jesus Christ, is not to remain naked, but to be clothed.  Yes, this clothing is symbolic, but Our Lord does not say, "Laodecians, be naked without shame!" but "Laodecians, let me clothe you!"

Nakedness, in Scripture, from the Fall of Man on, is always shameful or at least embarrassing.  If we don't feel that shame, there's something wrong with us, for shame is not merely a subjective thing, but an objective reality.  When we feel shame for shameful things, our reason is in accord with reality.