Tuesday, December 17, 2024

The Working Actor

(Takes deep breath)

On Friday, July 22, my actress Maria Romine and I drove the 9 1/2 hours from St. Louis to Athens, Georgia, where on Saturday I gave a presentation on the show business of writing, and where I walked in a nearby cemetery in 110 degree heat index learning my lines for some of the ten different scripts we're producing in the next month and where a security guard stopped and drove me to campus when the cemetery closed, the old guy pointing out where all his family was buried in a Southern accent so thick I could hardly understand what he was saying, and where in the evening Maria and I performed Murder on the Disoriented Express, a show we hadn't done in two years, and then we got up early for Mass on Sunday and went to a nearby church where the Mass was all about some blonde, who stood at the lectern and told us what the homily was going to be about, and then after communion told us what the homily had been about except she dumbed it down to a point where I felt like I was watching Mr. Rodgers and then we got in our car and drove fourteen hours to Galena, Illinois, near Wisconsin, got up early the next morning and performed Mayberry R.I.P., a show we hadn't done in three years, finished, and drove six hours back to St. Louis, where on Wednesday morning I got up at 3:30 am to catch a 6:00 am flight to New England where I performed three shows on a train in Vermont with new actress Jenna Sullivan, both of us exhausted by projecting and running around sweating, with a quick return to St. Louis for a fund raiser performance Saturday night of a double-show of Mayberry R.I.P. (Act One in room A, followed by Act One in room B, followed by Act Two in room A, followed by Act Two in room B, followed by the Solution in room A, followed by the Solution in room B) in Carlinville, Illinois, doing a script I spent all morning adapting with jokes about local Carlinville politics, and during which I ran into the corner of a podium in room B while making my exit, knocking the wind out of me and leaving a nasty bruise and probably breaking a rib, and where we got a standing ovation (in room B), drove home and got up on Monday to begin a week where we try to fit in our only three rehearsals for G. K. Chesterton's play Magic, which we will be performing at this year's Chesterton Conference, before we leave for Wichita, Kansas (a six hour drive) where my cast will be performing The Great Adventure, in addition to the premiere performance of The Body of Christ (which we spent three days rehearsing in mid-July) and where on Sunday I'll join them to perform The Call (which we've done only once, back in April), but before which I will head to Paducah, Kentucky to perform Who Wants to Murder a Millionaire with Andrea Purnell (with whom I've never done the show before)- three hours down and three hours back - heading to Duluth, Minnesota (a ten hour drive) the following weekend to do a fund raiser for the Women's Care Center and a week of shows on the North Shore Scenic Railroad, after which we drive to New York for a performance at the Parish Visitors of Mary Immaculate - a show in which I play Dave's part, Dave plays Kaiser's part, and Erik plays my part - but today I woke up at 7:08 (because my alarm didn't go off) for a 7:10 interview on the Son Rise Morning Show on Sacred Heart Radio with Brian Patrick, who talked to me about distributism for twenty minutes, even though I thought we'd talk mostly about Theater of the Word.

Monday, December 16, 2024

Art since the Garden of Eden


If you want to return to the Garden of Eden, head to Kansas. It's right there in the town of Lucas on the High Plains.


It's a quirky place, built by S. P. Dinsmoor, a Civil War veteran, who can only be described as a crank. The yard of his hand-built house, front and back, is filled with his own bizarre sculpture, expressing his own peculiar philosophy.




The climax of the tour is viewing the Body of the Artist as a Dead Man. You may peer into his crypt, in which S. P. Dinsmoor is laid out exposed to gawkers. For this privilege you must pay one U.S. dollar, per the terms of Dinsmoor's will.



The fun part about seeing the Garden of Eden in Lucas, Kansas is that it's such an off-the-beaten path adventure. The sad part is the locals pretend this kind of thing is "folk art".


Well, it may be "folk", but it ain't art.




Chesterton's famous quip, "if a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly" only applies to amateurs - and you might say, always applies to amateurs.


There is a thing out there called "community theater". Now if you read Chesterton and only Chesterton, you might get the impression that community theater, being a thing worth doing and a thing done by amateurs, would be a thing done badly. And you'd be right.


But in Chesterton's praise of the homespun generalist, in his praise of motherhood and education (from which his "thing worth doing" quip is taken), he overlooks sacrifice, the painful side of love, the love to which the word "amateur" refers (from the Latin amator, lover). An amateur, I would say in a more cynical quip, is someone who does something out of love, but a love for which he has yet to sacrifice. A professional has "paid the price".


For example, the reason we don't go to amateur brain surgeons is because if a man really loves brain surgery, he becomes a professional, he "professes" it - he spends a dozen years in school and countless sleepless nights studying it and perfecting it. If, by contrast, it's his "hobby" - well, a hobby is like a mistress, you might "love" her, but you ain't gonna marry her.


And an amateur actor loves acting the way a married man loves his mistress - indeed finding a mistress is one of the motivations of married men who do a lot of community theater.


By contrast, for those of us who are wed to a vocation of drama - well, here's what happens.


A winery in Southern Missouri expresses interest in our murder mystery dinner theater productions. I go down and meet with the owner, a woman who informs me that the community theater troupe out of Cape Girardeau is "a lot cheaper" than we are and she's thinking of using them instead.


Now, there's almost no answer to this. To point out that the reason we have been performing monthly shows at some wineries for twelve years straight with a loyal following, some of whom have seen over forty of our productions, is to point out the obvious. She'll get at most two performances out of the amateur troupe before word gets out that the mysteries aren't worth the $35 per ticket she'll be charging for dinner and show.


But in acting more than in any other profession, people on the outside say, "I can do that! How hard can that be?" And they pick up the scalpel and perform the do-it-yourself lobotomy and the patient never wakes up.


My point is, yes we should do things out of love, even the things we can only do badly and can only dabble at for fun. But let's not pretend "folk art" is "art" or the girl behind the counter at Wendy's who flirts with us is the woman we'd die for. The woman we'd die for is the woman we married.


And a vocation is not a hobby.

The Sensitive Actor Responds to his Director


This is part three to this and this. And I swear I am not making this up ...


Here's part of what I deal with in my business. I placed an ad last week for an actor to play a part in an upcoming television series. I got an email from one guy and offered him a slot last Friday, audition by appointment, any time during the day or evening he could make it. "I've got to work," he tersely replied, and suggested no alternate dates.


Then I placed another ad this week. He applied again. I offered him 9:30 am this Friday (Sept. 23). He made the appointment, then emailed me late tonight (Thursday, Sept. 22) saying, "I've got to cancel. I've got to work."


When I told him I would not reschedule him, that two attempts were all I was going to make to audition him, he wrote back (and I swear I am not making this up, it's a copy and paste, punctuation and all) ...


"you should respect the artists personal life before your own selfish need. Dont reply back to me unless you are mature enough to understand my side."


I mean, you can't make this stuff up! This is why I LOVE this business!


DISCLAIMER: The photo above is not of the Sensitive Actor, but of yours truly portraying a Sensitive Actor.

Saturday, December 14, 2024

Can't Care, Don't Care, Won't Care


"Don't take this so personally," my wife Karen always tells me. And of course she's right.


In the past, when employees would become Vampires or Aliens it used to really bug me. How could they do this to me when I trusted them and gave them opportunities to help us and do good work? I would say to myself. Then I realized it had absolutely nothing to do with me.


But when clients do me wrong, it's a bit harder to shake off. Especially when said clients are supposed to be cooperating with the mission of Theater of the Word, working in some way to spread God's message.


But we get shafted by our Church-affiliated clients even more frequently than we get shafted by secular clients.


And I've noticed a pattern. I think it applies to all of the business world, secular or Christian.


1. CAN'T CARE


First, there are the clients who are simply incompetent. They drop the ball on projects because they simply can't run their businesses in any systematic or effective manor. They mean nothing personal by this, they simply can't care, "care" meaning to exercise care, and "care" also meaning the gift of good will that is caritas: care, love. When you can't find your desk under the clutter, you can't find the piece of paper that is the key to the whole project and that was due three weeks ago. And I would guess General Incompetence ("can't care") accounts for 90% of all failed cooperative endeavors.


2. DON'T CARE


A less common, but more disturbing situation, is when you enter into a relationship with a client who simply doesn't care. They have the competence to cooperate with you and make your project a success, but they care so little about what you're doing, about quality, and frankly about you, that they'll give-a-crap only when it suits them. This is troublesome, until you realize that the Don't Cares don't care for anybody who works hard for them, not just you. The best way to keep the Don't Cares out of your business: charge enough to make them either not hire you or else take an interest in their investment. Charging too little will always encourage the Don't Cares.


3. WON'T CARE


These first two examples are passively aggressive. This final type, actively so. These are the people who take an active disliking to you and who deliberately try to hurt you or sabotage you. Their lack of positive care is willful - "non serviam", and "non co-operatio" - I won't serve, and I won't cooperate - not because I can't or I don't but because I won't. This happened to us early on with Theater of the Word, when someone at a diocese booked us to do shows, and then the liberals who run the diocese found out and made a point not to promote the shows, to provide no technical support, and to turn the heat off in the seminary where we were staying (a seminary that was otherwise empty, the diocese having generated no vocations for ages), thus trying to freeze us out. I am not making this up. Most recently, the Kennedy Catholics managed to cancel our pro-life tour in Massachusetts, even after contracts had been signed and deposits paid on the shows.


The thing is, these three types of bad business relationships are both not personal and personal at the same time. By the time the resistance gets to be third stage "won't care" variety, you see the nasty little narrow faced gremlin behind it, and you realize that yes, Virginia, there is a grinch, and he takes a very strong disliking to you and to the little bit of good in the world you're tyring to do.

It Ain't All Right vs. Left


From Rod Dreher's report on the indictment of Bishop Finn in Kansas City ...


***


When news broke, local Catholics were outraged. The diocese organized “listening sessions” to manage the public reaction, and had participants engage in an asinine Stuart Smalley-ish exercise in which they were instructed to write down a “hurt” and then write down a “hope.” Among the “hurts” written down by angry parents:


“The images of my daughter’s private areas that the FBI showed me, they are
forever burned into my brain. … Shawn Ratigan was in my house, around my
children in February, and I thought my children were completely SAFE!!”


***


One of the earliest and most difficult lessons I learned in covering the abuse scandal is that you can never, ever tell the bad guys from the good guys based on whether or not they are faithful to the Magisterium — that is, whether or not they are orthodox Catholics. Would that you could! A very conservative priest told me early on not to make that mistake; there are scoundrels who hide behind their Catholic orthodoxy, he said, and use it to disarm the suspicions of the faithful. The late Father Richard John Neuhaus was one of the most intellectually sophisticated Catholics in the world, and a defender of Catholic orthodoxy. But he too was hoodwinked by this belief, most embarrassingly in his staunch defense of Father Marcial Maciel, of whom, Neuhaus wrote in First Things, he believed was “morally certain” was not guilty of the lurid sexual abuse accusations made against him. After Pope Benedict moved against Maciel, Neuhaus backed down. We later learned that things with Maciel were actually worse than most people knew.

The Full Story on Bishop Finn


"Let's step outside and settle this thing like men," she said, and she was a lady. "You're spewing anti-Catholic rhetoric!" he insisted. "How can you criticize a bishop when you're an actor and everyone knows actors are perverts and nitwits," she screamed. (That last gal had a point).


These are all reactions to my post last week about Rod Dreher's article on Bishop Finn's Indictment.


And above all, people are charging me with believing the biased media coverage of the scandal.


This, at least, is not true. In fact, everything I say in this post will be taken not from a media account of the scandal, but from the independent report on it as commissioned by the diocese, the Graves Report, which you can read on your own here.


So let's shove the media aside and see for ourselves what's contained in this internal diocesan report conducted by an independent firm.


***


Fr. Shawn Ratigan was a priest of the diocese of Kansas City - St. Joseph, Missouri. While pastor of St. Patrick's Parish (a parish with a grade school), his behavior around children raised many red flags. There were several incidents of "boundary violation", in which Fr. Ratigan held girls on his lap or tried to spend time with them alone while waiting for rides. At one function, he began rubbing a girl's back until her father angrily pulled her away. A pair of girl's panties was found in Fr. Ratigan's back yard planter.


In December, 2010, a computer technician servicing Fr. Ratigan's laptop discovered hundreds of photographs of young girls, apparently taken by Fr. Ratigan. Many were of children playing, the photographer focusing on their crotches and not including their faces. There were photos of girls climbing ladders in swim suits, focusing on their crotches. There were photos of girls wearing shorts sitting with their legs apart, focusing on their crotches. The girls appeared to be between eight and ten years old. One stash of photos was of a child in diapers. The series of photos ended with the diaper moved to the side, to reveal the girl's genitals and her bare buttocks. The photos were labeled with this toddler's name. Another series of photos was of a girl of about age seven, sleeping, but posed in sexually provocative ways while asleep. Her face was fully visible. The computer also contained links to internet sites advertising spy photo pens and two way mirrors.


The computer technician who made this discovery, his hands shaking, brought this laptop to the deacon at St. Patrick's and showed him the photos. The deacon immediately took the laptop to Msgr. Murphy, the Vicar General of the diocese, and Bishop Finn's right hand man. Before he viewed the images, Msgr. Murphy called and asked a friend of his who was a police officer if a single photo of a nude girl on a laptop "in a non-sexual pose" constituted child pornography. The officer answered that it might, but, particularly if it were of a family member, it would probably not be prosecuted.


This was the only contact the diocese made with the police until the following May. For, even after Msgr. Murphy viewed the images, and after it became clear that these images were not of family members, and that they were of a sexual nature, and that they were almost certainly photos Fr. Ratigan had taken of children in the diocese, neither Msgr. Murphy nor any one else involved in this case, contacted the police for nearly six months.


As soon as the pictures were discovered, Fr. Ratigan tried to kill himself, leaving a note saying he was sorry for what he had done. He survived his suicide attempt and was sent to a psychologist in Philadelphia who specializes in treating priests with problems. And yet, after interviewing Fr. Ratigan, and even after viewing the pictures which were pulled from Fr. Ratigan's laptop, the psychologist concluded he was not a pedophile. He was just lonely. And depressed. Why? Because the principal of the school was "out to get him," having complained about his inappropriate behavior around children. It was her fault, not his.


The diagnosis being evidently wrong, there were at least a few people in the Chancery Office who advised Bishop Finn to seek a second opinion. He did not.


At one point the legal counsel for the diocese told Msgr. Murphy that an attempt should be made to identify the children in the photographs, particularly if they were children in the diocese, as it appeared they were - victims of a child pornographer, and perhaps of other more violent sexual abuse at his hands. Legal Counsel also advised Msgr. Murphy to report this case to the Missouri Division of Family Services.


But contrary to the advise of counsel (and contrary to common sense, not to mention Christian charity), no one made any attempt to identify these victims or to reach out to their families.


No one made any report to the Division of Family Services.


In fact, no one even bothered to report the incident to the Independent Review Board, as required by diocesan "Protecting God's Children" policies!


Bishop Finn then assigns Fr. Ratigan to a Vincentian Retreat Center ... where school groups often go on retreats. He tells Fr. Ratigan to stay away from computers, cameras and children, but he allows him to say Mass for the school groups.


The Vincentian leaders at the retreat house adamantly claim that they were never informed of these restrictions on Fr. Ratigan, nor were they told he was a pedophile with a flair for child pornography; they thought he was simply recovering from his suicide attempt. Bishop Finn says he informed them of the full story; they say he did not. In fact, they told the firm conducting the independent review that if they had known the full scope of the situation, they would not have let Fr. Ratigan live with them. In any event, no one was placed in a supervisory role over Fr. Ratigan. He was living entirely unsupervised.


Immediately, Fr. Ratigan began using Facebook. He started attending public events and St. Patrick's parish-family events where children were present, including a birthday party for a sixth grade girl. He started glad handing parishioners, telling them the reason he had not been re-assigned to St. Patrick's was that the principal was "out to get him". Against the Bishop's directives, he made contact with children on retreat at the center, and on Easter Sunday - Easter Sunday - he tried to take pornographic pictures of a girl at the center.


Bishop Finn was informed of all of these violations of the "honor code" he had placed on Fr. Ratigan and yet Bishop Finn admitted that, as late as May of 2011, he had (in his own words) "not formulated a plan to further address Fr. Ratigan's behavior if he continued to violate restrictions".


By the middle of May, Msgr. Murphy eventually let his policeman friend know of the full scope of the situation - that the laptop contained not one photo of a nude girl in a non-provocative pose (as he had told him earlier), but hundreds of photos of girls, all of a lascivious nature. The police officer said, "You never told me that," and informed Msgr. Murphy that the diocese should immediately turn the laptop over to the police.


But instead the laptop was given to Bishop Finn, who gave it to Fr. Ratigan's brother, who (naturally) destroyed it.


And while copies remained of the photos, the original evidence (the laptop and its hard drive), including any other cached information the police could have obtained, is now gone for good.


***


Now, Bishop Naumann makes a passioned defense of his brother bishop, and points out that many in the Kansas City media are viciously pro-abortion and will stop at nothing to destroy the Catholic Church. Bishop Naumann, I'm sure this is true.


And many lay folk have pointed out to me that Bishop Finn is orthodox in his teaching and has boldly attacked pornography, for example. I'm sure that this is true as well.


But have we come to a stage where we are so desperate for orthodox bishops that we turn a blind eye to their other shortcomings? Are we so defensive against our own sins that we refuse to acknowledge where we fall shy of virtue, simply because other sinners are pointing our failures out to us?


And how do we expect to turn the hearts of the pro-abortion zealots in the Kansas City media if we don't even have the gumption to protect a two-year-old girl who's being victimized while asleep by one of our priests? Why on earth would they listen to us about the evils of killing unborn babies when we won't even do anything to protect a sleeping two-year-old from a predator?


Because, my friends, it comes down to this.


Bishop Finn and his Vicar General knew that children under their care had been exploited and abused. Bishop Finn and his Vicar General did nothing to identify or protect those children. Instead, and incredibly, when the story finally broke, Bishop Finn and his Vicar General instructed that the parish of St. Patrick's hold listening sessions at which parents were asked to write down one "hurt" and one "hope".


As the Graves Report states, two "hurts" collected at listening sessions included the following ...


***


The images of my daughter's private areas that the FBI showed me, they are forever burned into my brain. Shawn Ratigan was in my house, around my children in February, and I thought my children were completely SAFE!!


***


You let one of your priests hurt my children and you saw the pictures and decided to cover it up. That monster was in my house in February 2011 to prey on my children and I let him in since you felt you were above the law and made that decision not to turn in photos of my kids.


***


So those of you out there who are offering to take me out back and fight me, those of you who think I'm an anti-Catholic filled with hatred and Chick-tract rhetoric, those of you who think that if a human being happens to be an actor, he should not be allowed to write about this, answer one question for me ...


What would you say to these parents? Or better yet, if Fr. Ratigan had taken pictures of your sleeping two-year-old girl and removed her diapers to take a spy-pen snapshot of her vagina and her bare butt for use on his computer, and perhaps molested her and the diocese never bothered to tell you this, and never bothered to warn you not to let this man back in your house, or reach out to make sure you and your daughter got the help you needed (all the while the beg letters for the annual diocesan appeal kept coming in the mail) ... what would you put down on the "hurt" card? What would you "share" as your "hope" during the listening session while somewhere a man we call father masturbates to a picture of your sleeping two-year-old?


Perhaps Bishop Finn should not be tried for this misdemeanor (failure to report the crime in a timely manner) in the criminal courts of my state. I think a case could be made either way. But one thing I'm sure he should do.


He should repent in sack cloth and ashes and beg the forgiveness of every girl dancing naked in Fr. Ratigan's dreams. For he had the ability to reach out and offer help and the love of Christ to these girls and their parents, and he did not do it.

The Spin Shall Set You Free




How did the question move from "Why are we going to war?" to "Who is that man's wife". I asked the first question. Someone else asked the second. It worked. It's still working. - Sean Penn as Joe Wilson in Fair Game.


***


I am not so much bothered by Catholic readers vowing to assault me physically. I am not so much bothered by Catholic readers saying that I'm a pervert. I am not so much bothered by Catholic readers (clergy even) telling me that my writing amounts to "bullying" and "uniformed public rants" (see my post on Bishop Finn and some of the more recent of the 100 comments).


But I am bothered by the Lie. I am bothered by the Spin. And I am bothered by innocent people being blamed and not protected.


I wrote last week's piece because Bishop Naumann of Kansas City, Kansas, in his defence of Bishop Finn, played right into the hands of the Tribalism that is fast seeking to become the sixth wound in the Body of Christ. The meme goes like this: If you criticize my guy, you are in league with the forces of darkness.


And now Bill Donohue has stepped into the fray, playing exactly the same game.


But this isn't about us vs. them, it's about sin and repenting of sin - through the grace of Christ.


So let's play Father Z. here and ask not "what does the prayer really say" but "what is the reality behind the spin"?


Below are Donohue's assertions with my comments in red.


***


Last December, crotch-shot pictures of young girls, fully clothed, were found on Fr. Ratigan’s computer; there was one photo of a naked girl. The very next day, the Diocese contacted a police officer and described the naked picture - No, the picture described was a theoretical picture that had not yet been seen, and this theoretical picture was described to an off-duty police officer informally by the Vicar General. The theoretical picture described bore no resemblance to any of the the actual pictures on the laptop.;

a Diocesan attorney was shown it. There was more than an "it", there were hundreds, and more than a diocesan attorney was shown these pictures.

Because the photo was not sexual in nature, it was determined that it did not constitute child pornography. Absolutely untrue. The photographs were all sexual in nature. They may or may not have met the legal standard for child pornography, but the police were not given the chance to determine that for six months. In any event, the failure of the diocese here is a moral one, even if not a legal one.

This explains why the Independent Review Board was not contacted—there was no specific allegation of child abuse. Tell the parents that these photos were not forms of child abuse, Mr. Donohue.

Think about that for a minute. Bill Donohue is saying that a U.S. diocese that had hundreds of pictures of little girl's crotches and many picutres of a naked sleeping two-year-old on a priest's laptop were right in failing to contact the Independent Review Board because "there was no specific allegation of child abuse". This is a despicable statement, Mr. Donohue. Despicable.

When Fr. Ratigan discovered that the Diocese had learned of his fetish, he attempted suicide. When he recovered, he was immediately sent for psychiatric evaluation. It is important to note that Bishop Finn, who never saw any of the photos, did this precisely because he was considering the possibility of removing Fr. Ratigan from ministry. After evaluation (the priest was diagnosed as suffering from depression, but was not judged to be a pedophile) - note that this diagnosis was so obviously wrong that many in the Chancery office advised Bishop Finn to seek a second opinion. He did not.,

Fr. Ratigan was placed in a spot away from children and subjected to various restrictions. No, he was placed at a retreat center where school children were sent on a regular basis and was allowed unsupervised access to them and to the families of his former parish, the families whose girls he was lusting after.

After he violated them, the Diocese called the cops. Actually, the off-duty police officer called the cops only after it became apparent that the Vicar General was dragging his feet - and by the time the police were brought in, Bishop Finn had allowed the laptop containing the original evidence and containing any other undiscovered caches of evidence to be destroyed.

That’s when more disturbing photos were found.


***


Donohue then goes on not to write more about this case, but to slam David Clohessy and SNAP.


But the question, you see, is not (as Bill Donohoe claims) "Is David Clohessy a liberal?" but "Why were the parents not contacted and the children not helped?" The question is not (as Bishop Naumann claims) "Is the Kansas City press pro-abortion?" but "Why was the minimum of decency and Christian charity not exercised here?" The question is not, "Who is this man's wife?" but "Why did we go to war?"


And let me be clear: I am not calling for Bishop Finn to resign, nor am I making any comment upon the prosecution of Bishop Finn.


In fact, I believe people when they tell me he's a good man, a sweet man, a kind man, and a serious follower of Christ.


And that is why I am calling on him merely to do the one thing that would do more than anything else to fix the damage to the Body of Christ - public penance.

I Can't Get Free of Free-Father-Frank


As I've mentioned before, as soon as I got tired of receiving beg emails every other day from Priests for Life and cancelled my email subscription, I began receiving spam emails from some shady outfit called freefrfrank.com. I won't link to their site, as the site tries to run scripts on me when I visit it and locks up Internet Explorer. There are no opportunities to unsubscribe from this spam, and it's coming to an address that only Priests for Life knew. In their latest spam, they carry a statement by Fr. Pavone about his priesthood. Clearly, Fr. Pavone is aware of this website (which, if you do manage to visit it you'll find contains what almost amounts to hate speech against Bishop Zurek). Clearly, Fr. Pavone's organization provided this site with my email address without my permission so that they might illegally spam me. Clearly, Fr. Pavone tacitly endorses these venomous attacks on his bishop. Clearly, when Fr. Pavone publicly supports doing bad so that good may come, we should take him at his word.


Anyone who gives a dime to Priests for Life at this point is a fool.

Wednesday, December 11, 2024

Reuters on Bishop Finn

Reuters publishes a thorough summary of the Bishop Finn / Fr. Ratigan case here. My own summary of the case is here.


The destruction of evidence, abetted by Bishop Finn, is acknowledged by the police in this article to have been "a significant blow" to the criminal investigation.

The Price We're Paying




Above: Fr. Shawn Ratigan, with children.


I have learned, both from private correspondence and from Donohue's rants at the Catholic League, that the defenders of Bishop Finn have come up with a game plan and talking points.


Their case amounts to this:


THERE WAS NO SEXUAL ABUSE. Bishop Finn can not be guilty of failure to report sexual abuse. When Fr. Ratigan took pictures of the crotches of little girls at his parish and at least one set of photos of a naked two-year old, he was NOT ABUSING CHILDREN.


So, my fellow conservative Catholics, we can indeed spare ourselves embarrassment and our hero, Bishop Finn, from a tarnished reputation, but to do so we have to pay a very hefty price.


The price is our own kids.


Just be prepared, if you make this sacrifice, for what it entails. It entails the normilization of perverse behavior, and it also means that if one of your children is victimized in this way, you can say nothing, for your naked two-year old, fodder for the fantasies of a warped soul, may be used in this way without you being able to become as indignant as every fiber of common sense, every instict, and every ounce of the Law of Love indicates you should.


And if you've got an eight-year-old whose crotch appears dozens of times in jpg's on Fr. Ratigan's computer?


Tough.


We've got a reputation to save.


For more info, see The Full Story on Bishop Finn and The Spin Shall Set You Free

Monday, December 9, 2024

We Have no King but Caesar


2012 has dawned, and "Real Catholic TV" is still calling itself "Real Catholic TV", despite their bishop admonishing them not to.


So let me get this straight.


"Real Catholics" disobey and mock their ordinaries when it suits them - a la Fr. Pavone and "freefrpavone.com" - or simply ignore them - a la Michael Voris.


By the same token, "Real Catholics" defend their bishops from just criticism and from calls to follow more closely the teachings of Christ - a la Bishop Finn.


Point out that Bishop Finn, successor to the apostles, should follow the Christian truth that he preaches, defending the most innocent and helpless among us, and "Real Catholics" will threaten to beat you up. Point out that if bishops should follow canon law and deny communion to unrepentant pro-abortion politicians (which they should), then lay leaders of apostolates should follow canon law and not call something Catholic that is not Catholic (Voris' rants are sometimes quite far from Catholic, "real" or "surreal") - point this out, and you'll be lynched.


So how do we know what to do?


Should we defend our bishops or disobey them?


Should we follow canon law or flout it?


The answer: politics trumps religion.


We have no king but Caesar.

The Cult of Chance


I am reading as many books as I can by Fr. Stanley Jaki, in preparation for my one-man show, Science and Religion, in which I will portray Fr. Jaki at the Portsmouth Institute Conference next June.


One of the fun things about reading Fr. Jaki is that he makes intriguing off-handed comments in all of his books that you wish he'd elaborate on more, but you find you have to read more of his books to get a sense of what he's saying.


Take this aside from his Miracles and Physics (Christendom Press, 1999)


Miracles should seem to abound even today except for those who take refuge in bad philosophy of which its present most fashionable kind is steeped in the cult of chance. Only they fail to give a definition of chance which is more satisfactory than the handy use of that word to cover-up one's ignorance.


What a great phrase - The Cult of Chance. Fr. Jaki means by this the devotion to Chance as the catch-all for materialists and agnostics and Darwinists, who ascribe to "mere chance" or the "random combination of matter" everything we see around us.


What causes evolution? Chance mutations. What causes consciousness in man? Chance chemistry and random firings of neurons. What determines our fate? Chance.


But Fr. Jaki tantalizes us with the implied challenge to define Chance. Jaki himself does not do so in the paragraph from which I quote. He merely points out that the idolators of the god Chance fail to define the word, using it as a catch-all, a buzz-word to cover ignorance.


In fact, it's worse than that. The acolytes of Chance are not merely using a word to cover what's missing in their thinking, they are making what's missing into what's there, into the source of all that's there.


So before you read further, accept Fr. Jaki's implied challenge. Define Chance.


Here's my own definition, an easy one, and one helped along by St. Thomas Aquinas and his meditations on Chance. And though it's a two-word definition, I think it's an accurate one - accurate enough to reveal the sleight-of-hand behind the Randomists, if we can coin a term for those who worship that which is Random.


The definition is this. Chance is unintended events.


Now the first thing to note about this definition is that it begs the question, "unintended by whom?" St. Thomas points out that strictly speaking nothing is "unintended" by God, for example. Nothing is outside of either His positive will or His permissive will.


But leaving God outside of the question, this definition would mean "unintended by man" or "unintended by any agent capable of intentionality".



When we roll the dice, for example, the result we get is determined - determined by a jumble of causes that we can not control. The jarring back and forth of the dice, the surface of the table they land on, the atmospheric pressure - thousands of causes will determine the number the dice display when their jarring ceases. But these causes are (practically speaking) beyond our control; thus the effect is beyond the scope of our intent.


We can know something about the probability of the event, based on a mathematical analysis of the history of previous roles of the dice, extrapolated into the future. But we can not intend the result of a particular number on the dice, the way we can intend to pick up a flower or pass the mustard to the person who asks for it. (If we could, we would clean up at Vegas). Events that we have willed to do (and that turn out the way we willed them) are not chance events. Events that are beyond our will - though caused by who knows what - are (from our perspective) chance events.


Defining Chance clearly, then, reveals something interesting.


What it reveals is that nothing can happen by chance.


What I mean when I say that nothing can happen by chance is that quite literally nothing can happen by the agency of or caused by chance - for the phrase "by chance" implies that Chance is an agent, that Chance does something.


Chance does nothing. Chance, in a sense, is nothing. Chance is our word for a lack of agency. To say, "This was caused by a lack of agency" is like saying "this was caused by a lack of cause". What we mean when we say "this happened by chance" is "this event was caused by something that is beyond the scope of our intent".


Chance thus refers to the event, not the cause, except insofar as the word refers to our lack of possible participation in the cause.


Of course this opens up the shady area of the intent of creatures without free will. When a tree moves nutrients throughout its structure, this movement is not an "unintended event", though assigning "intent" to a plant is stretching what that word typically means.


The point here, without going further, is simply that "chance" refers to results that happen outside of a perceived deliberate agency, and the hallmark of all living matter is a kind of intentionality or deliberate doing - so all events intended and caused by a living agent are not chance events.


Thus, to say that evolution is caused by random or chance mutations is simply to say that evolution is caused by nothing deliberate. And this is tantamount to saying, "We don't know what causes it".


But how many evolutionists are honest enough to say, "Evolution is our word for the slow development over the eons of living things from simplicity of form and function to complexity of form and function, and we have absolutely no idea what causes it." Instead you'll hear them gloat, "We all evolved by chance."


Thereby covering their ignorance with pride and making a Something out of nothing.

The Lord of Failure


Think about this: the cross was a means of terrible, ignominious defeat. But this sign of defeat has become the means of victory. There is no defeat or worldy despair in which Christ is not present. He is the Lord of Failure. He has taken on all of our mis-shapen, twisted disappointments, and through Him not even unrequited love, not even abandonment, not even meaninglessness can triumph. What triumphs is the cross - and the cross is the persistence of love in the midst of annihilation and death.

Sunday, December 8, 2024

Clarification


Over on Facebook, I've gotten at least one correspondent who's confused by my Christopher West posts.


I responded thus:


Here's why West is dangerous. We must certainly suffer evil in our union with Christ, this evil being the bad things that happen to us and our concupiscience, which the sacraments do not remove. We can never in this life be without the evil around us and the evil within us, and in that sense we must "offer it up" or "suffer" it.


But West is using this truth to go one step further. He's saying it is Puritanical to avoid near occasions of sin, that it is instead a mark of an illuminated Christian to embrace occasions of sin and to seek the good in them.


His argument is Jungian. It is really nothing but "there's good at the heart of everything bad". True enough. And there's even a kind of "good" in pornography, so far as sex itself is good. Even Satan still retains things that are "good" - his intelligence, his will. These he uses for evil, but they are in themselves good.


West is paving the way for what the wrong kind of people could use as a kind of "grooming behavior". He is trying to dull our sensibilities by speaking theological half-truths that are used to rationalize sin.



Here's a test for you. Use West's argument with your wife if you're married. Tell her, according to West, that looking at another woman naked is a good thing because you're looking at her through the eyes of a redeemed Christian and you're seeking the good that lies at the heart of lust. Tell her you're going to the strip club for just this high minded theological reason.


See if she buys it

Sure, I Masturbate to Porn, but I Mean Well



A commenter over at Facebook says that Christopher West "does not mean to 'redeem pornography' --or at least I hope not -- but he means to redeem the intentions behind the person looking at pornography."


I should add that this commenter is an intelligent and devout Catholic - and I should add he's right, this is exactly what West is trying to do.


But, I ask you, how does one redeem one's intentions when viewing pornography???


The very possiblity that one could consider this is an affront to common sense, much less the Holy Spirt who guards our conscience.


A different Facebook friend suggests that this may be due to equivocation regarding the nature of evil on West's part, but whatever the cause, this empty rationalization is precisely what West is advocating. It's the inanity of thinking we can get our rocks off and claim we're getting closer to God. It's the lie that the penetration of a hooker is moral because it's the penetration of a sacred mystery. It's the cheap unthruth that we serve God when we service our gonads. And it's all sung by West as a kind of theological pop tune.


But whatever West is pitching, it's not theological. It's simply original sin raising its ugly head. But sexual sin is typically a sin of the flesh; conjoining lust and God to rationalize sexual sin becomes a sin of the spirit, and a very serious one at that.

Questions for Christopher West






  • Is any man in this life able to overcome concupiscene completely, and be sanctified to such an extent that any thing this man does will not be sinful? In other words, can a saint on earth look at internet porn without sin?





  • Can a saint on earth experience lust and engage in fornication and adultery and masturbation and yet not be sinning because his human will has been joined with the Divine Will?





  • Can one use pornography to find God?





  • Are there a select few, a group of illuminati, for whom sex is sacred and all of their sexual activity holy, though viewed by the unenlighted prudes as sinful?





  • Is there a group of those who Know and who, when they engage in acts commonly known as "fornication", "adultery" or "masturbation" are doing something pleasing to God and expressive of God?





  • Does the Divine Will ever erase or consume the human will on this earth and in this mortal life?





These goes to the heart of West's heterodoxy, couched as his heterodoxy is in implication and enthusiasm.

Pro Life and Pro Creation



Tom Richard, a friend of mine, sent this to me re. the Christopher West debate. Tom writes ...


***


Fr. Pat Koch, SJ, may he rest in peace, covered this exact subject in sophomore theology for us, and I'll never forget it:


"Gentlemen, when you leave this place, Satan will tempt you with assumptions that have not an element of truth, but instead the foundation of a twisted lie. 'The naked body is beautiful' as justification for it's portrayal in any fashion is one such lie. The whole work of pornography is, 'It's too hard for you to obey, so don't - give in to the things that made you the human animal - come fornicate, come masturbate.' It is true that you are a human, but listen to the word of God. You are above the animals - don't give into the lie that you are just another one of them. Listen to the voice of your reason. Do you really believe that pornography conveys the image of woman that God intended? Mr. Hefner would have you believe that the most sanctifying bond between a man and a woman is mere recreation, as if the business of man is recreation. No, gentlemen, the business of man is the family of God, and the business of that family is procreation, and I mean that in all senses of the word. We are Catholic in our belief that we are pro God's creation."

Thinking Outside the Combox

We've had some very interesting comments in the comboxes at previous posts on the Christopher West issue.


So far it seems to me that West's defenders defend his orthodoxy quite admirably, but it seems as well that they defend what I think is the germ of heterodoxy which is sometimes implicit and sometimes explicit in West's writings.


This heterodoxy takes two forms:


1. It ignores the proper context for the redemption of lust and


2. It encourages saying yes to temptation in the hope that the disordered appetite will be redeemed and the good toward which the sin tends will be honored.


In other words, West begins with a basic truth - that a married man and a woman must learn to channel their sexual desire for one another into an expression of love that's open to the possibility of procreation, as opposed to what their sexual desire might become if left unsanctified - mere lust and objectification of the other. This is quite a solid Catholic teaching. But in West it gets blurry. West is never clear that Marriage is the framework in which the redemption of lust must take place.


For example, in West's interview which I quoted here, he says, "There is something good behind it [pornography]. What is good behind it? The human body in its nakedness. Behold, it is very good!"


One of my friends suggested that West is simply trying to show that the porn user is seeking a good in a disordered way. But to say of a naked body abused and trashed by porn "Behold it is very good!" is appallingly wrong. West is echoing both Genesis and the Mass in this exclamation, and such a juxtaposition and misplaced emphasis makes one wonder.


At any rate, these seem to be the two major problems in West's theology, 1. ignoring the proper context in which lust is to be redeemed, and 2. encouraging sin for the purpose of redeeming that sin.


Hidden under these two mistakes are a host of Gnostic errors, which I go into here.

By His Fruits We Know Him


Wade St. Onge has published a letter he wrote to Cardinal Rigali concerning Christopher West.


What interests me most about this are the footnotes, in which St. Onge displays, quite disturbingly, what West's most ardent followers believe and practise.


For example:


... one family “who teaches ‘God’s plan’ [West’s DVD series] shared with us their graphic description of their love making which they share each morning with their 6 year old at breakfast.” The other family “who teaches it, has recently taken it upon themselves to walk around the house naked and they have children 7 and under.”


Other Westians St. Onge profiles believe quite whole-heartedly in the things I am arguing are implicit in West's teachings, such as the moral neutrality of public nudity, the ability to look at others with arousal but not lust, and the carte blanche to indulge an appetite they feel has now been "redeemed".


Is it possible such ardent followers (some of whom have heard over one hundred of West's talks) are mis-interpreting him? Certainly. But if this is so, then it is incumbent upon West to clear up these misapplications of his teaching and to distance himself from defenders who publicly make the case for the exact errors I've been warning about in these past several posts.

Our Story So Far


OK, I'm getting off the Christopher West thing for a while. We're about to leave on the first of two major tours for Theater of the Word and I hope to post about more entertaining subjects for a bit, God willing.

But to recap.

The Liberals are the Problem

After I was received into the Church (July 30, 2000 - the 78th anniversary to the day of G. K. Chesterton's reception), I spent some horrendous years discovering the lesson of how badly the liberals have messed everything up in the Church.

The Conservatives are the Problem

Then we started Theater of the Word Incorporated and have been struggling with conservatives from the get go, who I found, much to my surprise, are just as confused as the liberals and just as resistant to grace.

Sin is the Problem

But then there's the internet. In the past two years blogging, I've dealt with the following ...




  • Catholics defending torture


  • Catholics defending lying


  • Catholics defending usury


  • Catholics defending consequentialism


  • Catholics getting angry when I praise Holy Poverty


  • Catholics deconstructing the Catechism


  • Catholics defending a priest who renounced his ordination and openly disobeyed his superior and his bishop


  • Catholics defending a bishop who refused to protect children under his care and who saw to it that evidence was destroyed in a pending criminal case


  • Catholics defending the practice of leering at naked women and implying that those who don't aren't spiritually mature


... and the story continues.



The problem ain't the liberals. The problem ain't the conservatives.



The problem is us. We have met the enemy and it is sin.

Consolations


It has lately been troubling to be blogging here.


My wife is becoming more and more set against it, as my time spent doing this can become consuming, and the controversy this blog engenders is beyond belief - and from a certain perspective, utterly unnecessary.


For example, during the Lying Debate, I received more than one phone call from people doing their best to dissuade me from either criticizing James O'Keefe or from daring to say that the Catechism of the Catholic Church actually teaches Catholic Doctrine, and for daring to suggest that we ignore this doctrine at our peril. Indeed, I lost a few friends along the way over that debate (one of whom I'm grateful to have recently reconciled with).


During the Corapi Scandal, I was told in several emails by complete strangers that I was an anti-Catholic bigot doing the devil's work because I dared to suggest there was something wrong with a priest renouncing his priesthood and openly disobeying his superior and his bishop. Not to mention his proclivity for drugs and hookers.


My criticism of Bishop Finn of Kansas City elicited at least one threat of physical violence, as a reader from KC vowed physically to assault me, "even at Mass", for my criticism of a bishop who failed to protect children and who facilitated the destruction of evidence in a criminal investigation. I am often in Kansas City, but I will not go to Mass at churches I used to frequent there just in case this person is serious. St. Thomas a Becket is a role I need not play.


And most recently, my critique of Christopher West ended with someone threatening to destroy my reputation and my livelihood unless I took down this blog.


So ... why on earth would I do this??? Why not simply take down the blog? Why put up with abuse from friends and total strangers?


Well, an odd little confirmation came from friend and commenter Tom Leith today. Tom writes ...


If West is advising people to seek out near occasions of sin, or if he's telling people that near occasions of sin are not near occasions of sin, he should be stripped of his EWTN Rock Star status as Fr. Corapi was and denounced as a heretic; then every bit of media he ever produced should be consigned to the Memory Hole. If he's saying that unavoidable near occasions of sin present an opportunity to practice virtue, he's right. If he's saying this does not at least begin with keeping custody of the eyes, he wrong. Very wrong. Stupidly wrong. Deserving of a rebuke from Mrs. von Hildebrand and implicitly at least from Archbishop Chaput.


I call this a confirmation because it shows that these issues are really quite simple. I should add that West teaches that the traditional Catholic practise of keeping "custody of the eyes" applies only to the spiritually immature. Meaning, it seems, certainly not to him. So West would say he teaches what the Church teaches ... but he doesn't. It's convoluted, but really quite simple.


Indeed, very simple. We should heed the teachings of the Church outlined in the Catechism. We should be wary of priests who openly disobey superiors and who "quit" the priesthood. We should speak out against criminal negligence, especially when it involves a bishop. And we should call a spade a spade, refusing to brook heterodoxy, even if such is proclaimed by a Catholic media celebrity.

The Highlight of my Career



[Photo: Yours Truly as King Arthur and Jessica Franz as Guinevere in Kill-a-Lot]


After years of therapy and extensive soul searching, it appears as if the reason I got into show business was so that my mother would love me.


Now this makes little sense, because my mother, God rest her soul, certainly loved me.


But for whatever strange reason it seems I was unconvinced of this unless I could make her laugh.


"Your mother laughed at everything you ever said," my wife Karen has observed on numerous occasions.


She always adds: "That was her mistake."


And so Karen refuses to laugh at anything I say, and she usually manages to hold this line rather well.


So I'm married to a woman who never laughs at anything I say, while my mother laughed at everything I said, but not uncontrollably. And there's the rub! I knew on a deep subconscious level that I would never be happy as an actor or comedian - or for that matter as a man - unless and until I found a woman who would laugh uncontrollably at everything I ever said. (Sad but true).


And so, beginning at age five or so I would memorize long-play comedy records and recite them at recess to make the girls laugh. I remember quite clearly the principal of Trinity Lutheran Grade School coming over to the merry-go-round and listening to me recite all of Morey Amsterdam's Mixed Up Stories for Smart Kids. He asked if I would be willing to perform this at the school assembly, since apparently no kindergartner had ever memorized all of Morey Amsterdam's Mixed Up Stories for Smart Kids. I declined, but proceeded to enrapture my playmates every day with a different "mixed up story".


I still remember a sample from that comedy album - "Cinderella's step sisters used to make her sleep in the fireplace. She felt like a silly ash. The older step-sister went on a diet. Every day she ate nothing but coconuts and bananas, coconuts and bananas. She didn't lose any weight, but boy could she climb trees."


But back to the highlight of my career.


It happened on Thursday night last week at Summit Lake Winery in Holt's Summit, Missouri, where Maria Romine and I were performing my comedy murder mystery Kill-a-Lot ("King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table investigate Murder Medieval Style").


There was a cute young woman sitting at a table who not only laughed at everything I said, but laughed uncontrollably at everything I said. She was also sporting tattoos and wearing a very revealing top that was, in effect, almost no top at all.


This girl, then, had the three things I most desire in a woman: breasts and a sense of humor.


At any rate, I realized at that point that my career had peaked. I no longer had any deep hidden subconscious reason reason to be in show business, so from this point on, I can do it all for the glory of God. And to make a living. And because it's fun. And because it's my vocation.


But at least I've achieved the selfish and miserable and unexplainable thing that I had set out to achieve.


And now may the rest of my career begin!




[Above: Me as Lt. Columbo, who for some reason solves the mystery in Kill-a-Lot]

Saturday, December 7, 2024

The Catholic Ghetto Explained


Here's a link to an article my friend Kevin Fraser sent me. I have been on the road and have just gotten around to reading it. It's about the media and the Catholic Ghetto. It's quite good. Some highlights ...


***


The results of such efforts are, in Nicolosi’s words, “predictably amateur,” lacking either professional polish or, as in case of There Be Dragons, the basics of good storytelling. Much the same thing can be [said] of television, where there is little to no Catholic presence in prime time, and where cable television networks, such as EWTN, enjoy minimal viewership among both young Catholics and non-Catholics.


***


"They want every film to be The Passion [of the Christ] and expect people to walk out of the theater converted,” Iocco told OSV. “But we’ve already had The Passion and the whole world hasn’t converted. Nor are they going to because of a film. That’s not what films do. A film is successful if it gets people to ask a question they might not have asked before.”


***


To make the budget work, [Nicolosi] went on to explain, they hire people without the experience or the training to do the job — a move that Nicolosi characterizes as “simply crazy. You would never attempt to build a $20 million building and hire an architect who had never built a building. You would never go in for brain surgery and let someone operate on you who’d never performed surgery. But people think they can do that with movies,” she said.


***


It was for that the reason that John Paul the Great Catholic University opened its doors in 2006. Focusing almost exclusively on communication arts and offering concentrations in fields such as screenwriting, producing, social media evangelization, animation, and gaming, the school is the first of its kind in the world of Catholic higher education.


***


[My comment: in my opinion, the video projects that John Paul the Great University brags about and puts up on the internet illustrate the point of this article, but not in the way they intend to. They are a good first step, but they are a further example of what this article is about, and what I call the "Catholic Ghetto Mentality".]


Anyway, it's good to see Our Sunday Visitor do an article on this and focus attention on something we need to take seriously.

The Christopher West of the Protestants



The Christopher West of Protestants appears to be Mark Driscoll, who likewise is obsessed with sex and who likewise sees the beautiful Song of Songs as the sex-drenched "centerfold" of the Bible. See a disturbing article on Driscoll here, entitled The Church of Sex. Be advised: Driscoll is not as coy as West, and uses language and examples that are more graphic and "adult" in content.


A friend emails that it appears "the errors of West have spilled all over Protestant-land". I would say rather that this is a symptom of a broader problem in contemporary culture, described by David Kupelian in the linked article:


No matter what kind of person you are, a form of Christianity has evolved just for you. There’s a politically liberal Christianity and a politically conservative Christianity. There’s an acutely activist Christianity and an utterly apolitical Christianity, a Christianity that holds up a high standard of ethical behavior and service, and a Christianity for which both personal ethics and good works are irrelevant. There’s a raucous, intensely emotional Christianity drenched in high-voltage music, and there’s a quiet, contemplative Christianity. There’s a loving Christianity and a hateful, racist Christianity, a Christianity that honors Jews as God’s chosen people and a Christianity that maligns Jews as Satan’s children.

... I would add, if you want a God of sex-soaked lust, you got Him!

Or, as Yip Harburg said, "Men must love God because they made so many of Him."  

What Science Can and Can Not Do


You'll find here at the Ink Desk Sophia Mason's interesting summary of "philosophy versus science", a debate which has been raging at the Ink Desk since Joseph Pearce had the audacity to criticize a joke, something I would never do ("speaking as a comic in all seriousness," as Bobby Bitman used to say).


What I find interesting about this debate is that the defenders of science have the notion that the defenders of philosophy are somehow knocking science.


But science can not be defended without philosophy - for the purpose of science is something only a philosophical activity of the mind can define. "Purpose" is a metaphysical concept. And whether we call "purpose" "teleology" or "final cause", it is a thing beyond the purview of science.


Why this would be is best explained by Fr. Stanley Jaki, PhD Theology and PhD Physics, who points out over and over again in his hundred or more books on the subject that modern science grew and flourished and was empowered when it shed the teleology that Aristotle had burdened it with and confined itself to examining the quantitative aspects of reality - those things that can be counted, measured, demonstrated, and thereby predicted. This great limitation was a great blessing and made science what it is today.


Fr. Jaki writes ...


"That exact science stands or falls with quantitative operations has been noted countless times. After Heinrich Hertz discovered electromagnetic waves he had to admit that he had failed in his real pursuit, namely to find out what electromagnetism really was. ...


"What is true of electromagnetism applies to any other branch of physical theory. Newton's theory of gravitation does not reveal what gravitation is. It merely states that what is called gravitation operates along strictly specifiable quantitative lines, summed up in the idea of a central field of force. One of its implications is the inverse square law of gravitation, another is the times-squared law of the free fall of bodies. They are exact mathematically and therefore provide for exact predictions. ...


"Exact science [is] the study of the quantitative aspects of things in motion. Nothing more and nothing less. This notion of exact science gives competence to scientists whenever they deal with matter, but it does not enlighten them as to what matter is, let alone what scientific study is as an exercise of the intellect. Much less does that notion of science enlighten them about their purpose for doing science, and even less about the fact that they presumably do freely what they do."


This is why Jaki was quick to point out in the Evolution Debate that, "Darwinian theory gives the sole known hope for a scientific account of the great chain of living forms. All other accounts, from vitalism to Intelligent Design, are operating with factors that cannot be measured."


That is why, "those who try to save purpose through science - Newtonian, Einsteinian, Darwinian or non-Darwinian - are barking up the wrong tree ...


"The handling of quantitative relations and features, which is the chief power of exact science, limits it to the quantitative properties of things. Those properties may be likened to a CD disk which is practically infinite in its diameter, because it extends everywhere matter is, but at the same time is enormously thin. Quantitative properties are on the surface of things and of all their constituents, be they atoms or subnuclear particles. ... Anything beneath that surface is profoundly philosophical, where one has to work with analogous concepts that belong to any of the nine categories other than the categories of quantities as listed by Aristotle in his Categories. There he also noted the all important thing that it is through their quantitative magnitudes that things are recognized to exist. Still a set of quantities does not mean existence as such, nor can it mean purpose, not even design taken for a synonym of purpose, let alone free will and moral responsibility.


"Quantitative properties have no role in man's grasping of the fact that he acts for a purpose and that he is craving a lasting purpose. Quantitative properties cannot cope with one's self-awareness, with one's having free will and moral responsibility."


What the study of the quantitative aspects of things has done for us is given us modern technology and the ability to manipulate matter in unimagined ways, and it has given us a system for understanding crucial aspects of reality. The good of science is a great good, but exact science is a tool that does a very specific thing - and because of that, it does it very well.

Friday, December 6, 2024

A Panorama of Futility


Over at the Ink Desk, Tom Kallene writes about God in the Sleepless Night, and all I can say is, I wish I could take such sleepless nights in stride as Tom apparently does.


This is my fifth in a row. It has been a harrowing week - interiorly, not exteriorly.


A panorama of futility has opened up to me - the selfishness of false friends, the hypocrisy of believers, the lack of love - so I wish I could say as Tom does that I lie awake with the warm presence of God beside me. I do not lie awake, I pace and fret, even in what passes for prayer. God may be present in this, but He's not quietly beside me. He's the hound of heaven and his baying is keeping me up.


The worst part of it all is that I'm complicit. I'm in the midst of all this sin that I see around me. My sin has been putting my faith in princes and in the sons of men, of allowing my love to be spent on fruitlessness, atomized like mist over this valley of waste.


It's one thing to be a fool for God, or even a fool for love. It's another thing to be a fool.


If there is solace, it is in repentance. For the days are sinful and the nights are sleepless and we chase our own tails like mad dogs, running in a circle.


Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly.


But, thank you, Jesus, not all.