Repeating my modest proposal about what we used to call marriage

The Illinois Legislature is in its Fall Veto Session this week and -- our overwhelming budget and pension problems be damned -- gay marriage is the only issue that commands the attention of TV news editors.

Yesterday all the pro-gay marriage folks trooped down to Springfield, demanding marriage equality. Gov. Pat Quinn, Lt. Gov. Sheila Simon, Attorney General Lisa Madigan (daughter of House Speaker Michael Madigan), and Sen. Richard Durbin all spoke at the rally, in the rain. There was even a Republican present, State Comptroller Judy Baar Topinka, and she was all in favor, too.

Today, a lot of anti-gay marriage folks will make the same trip but demand that gay marriage be blocked. Today's rally will attract more Republicans than yesterday's, but the numbers will come from church groups.

The Illinois State Senate has already passed a gay marriage bill. The overwhelmingly Democratic General Assembly, however, didn't have quite the number of votes in the Spring, and may not have them this time either.

For those of you looking in from out of state, I have not made a typographical error. Illinois is a blue, blue, blue, true blue state. The Democrats drew the maps and, on paper anyway, have a veto-proof House majority. And, of course, all the party leaders claim to be for gay marriage. Yet, somehow, they just don't have the votes.

No, it's not die-hards from Downstate who are holding up the passage of the bill; the biggest single reason the measure can't pass is that a lot of African-American state representatives from Chicago and nearby suburbs are afraid of crossing the anti-gay marriage ministers in their areas.

The Democrats are for gay marriage, and they welcome the donations of gay rights supporters, but they don't actually pass a gay marriage law.

Isn't hypocrisy wonderful?

Meanwhile, at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Springfield, Bishop Thomas J. Paprocki warned about any demonstrations in favor of gay marriage, saying anyone outwardly plumping for passage of the marriage bill would be removed from evening Mass. He went so far as to say that praying for gay marriage was "blasphemous."

Um.

Maybe he meant to level such an extreme charge as a sort of counterweight to the pleas of prominent Catholic laypeople, such as the aforementioned Gov. Quinn, Attorney General Madigan, or Sen. Durbin, for gay marriage.

As near as I recall, Jesus had a lot to say about marriage -- but nothing to say about homosexuality. Biblical condemnations of homosexuality can be identified -- but these are in the Old Testament or the letters of St. Paul.

And even if gay marriage is as wrong as Bishop Paprocki thinks it is, people pray all the time -- in church and out -- for things we don't need or shouldn't have. But it's not necessarily blasphemy to pray for the wrong things.

I'd like to move to close the debate. I think it readily apparent that the concepts of civil marriage and religious marriage are undergoing an acrimonious divorce. Let's separate the two and move on.

From now on, I would suggest, the states issue licenses for civil unions only. All benefits that heretofore attached to marriage would apply to civil unions. There will not be two classes of marriage, such as recently concerned Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg; there will be only one, for men and women, men and men, women and women and any other pairing or grouping that the legislature sees fit to accept. But it's not marriage. Marriage is reserved to churches. Some will embrace gay marriage (many old line, mainstream Protestant denominations already have); some never will. Doctrinal disputes, like the poor, will always be with us.

With my proposal, however, I can decide what is or is not a marriage -- and I can't interfere with my neighbors from tying the knot at City Hall. Bishop Paprocki may condemn me. But, then, so will gay rights activists. It is the scorn that would be heaped upon this proposal from both sides of the cultural divide that proves mine is the only workable solution. Bishop Paprocki and the African-American ministers save "marriage." Yet gay couples are truly equal before the law with straight couples. It may not make anyone truly happy, but it's a win-win for both sides.

It won't happen, of course. If it did, we might actually have to talk about the pension shortfall in this state.

What not to expect from the new Pope

The College of Cardinals, at least those 80 and under, are locked in the Sistine Chapel at this hour, praying and politicking over who will be the next leader of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics.

It's kind of exciting.

But it's not really important.

Let me explain.

I am, as many of you know, a church-going Catholic (whether I am a good Catholic is not for me to say). The religious order that served my home parish for over a century recently decided it could no longer staff our church, so we are about to get a new pastor assigned by the Archdiocese of Chicago.

From my perspective, that's far, far more important than who will become the next Prisoner of the Curia in Rome. I'll have to deal with the new pastor; at least, I'll have to sit through his sermons. Or, if things go really badly, I'll have to start looking around for a new parish.

The fella in the white cassock in Rome is not going to change things that much. The Catholic Church doesn't work that way. Glaciers zoom by comparison with Mother Church. The church will have rules requiring priestly celibacy for the foreseeable future; maybe they will be observed and enforced with greater rigor. The church will not suddenly ordain women as priests. The church will not change its teachings on abortion or birth control. Even if the new Pope is determined to make great changes, he will find he must move slowly... incrementally.

But the new man in our rectory is a long way from Rome. I hope he will be celibate -- but some priests are not. Some have girlfriends (or boyfriends) and some flaunt them. I hope our new pastor will be a good role model for children -- but some priests are predators. I hope he will be an honest, capable administrator -- but some priests steal with both fists. Others are such naifs that people around them can steal with both fists. I hope he will be open to the parishioners' ideas about how things should be run -- but some priests are pig-headed dolts who hear no one but themselves and do whatever they damn well please. It is already rumored that our six weekend Masses will be reduced to three or four at most. Our three weekday Masses will be cut to one or two. We will have only one priest, not two (only a few years ago we had three) and he won't be able to keep up the Mass schedule and do all the other things that must be done. How he does whatever he can do will have much more influence and impact on my life than anything that comes out of Rome.

We had a meeting in the parish a few months back where we could give some feedback to the archdiocesan authorities about what we'd like to see in a new pastor (unlike many Protestant churches, we do not choose our priests; they are assigned to us and we make the best of it). The good fathers who came to the very well-attended meeting were not surprised to hear the concerns we raised. "Basically," one of the priests told me after, "your parish wants Jesus Christ with an MBA. Well, guess what? We all want that."

I heard that same job description used in connection with what Catholics want in a new Pope, too.

So I'll tell you what: We'll let Jesus Christ with an MBA be the next Pope. For our new pastor, we'll settle for Bing Crosby in Going My Way.

That's not too much to ask, is it?

It is?

Well, pray for us.

Taliban upset that their botched attempt to kill an unarmed 14-year old girl has received 'biased' coverage

A Pakistani schoolgirl holds a 'get well' poster for Malala Yousufzai
saying that she prays for the girl's recovery. Me, too.
(Reuters photo by Moshin Raza, obtained from Yahoo! News)

I saw this story, by John Hudson, on Yahoo! News last evening and did a double-take. Was I reading a parody from The Onion? Hey, I know The Onion has fooled the Iranian government -- how much easier must it be to fool me?

But it appears that this linked story is serious: Hudson writes that the Taliban is miffed because their botched attempt to kill Malala Yousufzai, a 14-year old girl, has received bad press.

Really?

Hudson's article quotes a spokesman for a Taliban faction called Tahreek-i-Taliban Pakistanan (the leader of which has apparently called for attacks against the press because in the wake of the overwhelming negative reaction to Yousufzai's shooting) as saying his group would respect reporters and press organizations except for "highly biased" organizations.

"Bias" as determined solely by the Taliban.

Hudson also quotes a "spokesman for another Taliban insurgent group, Sirajuddin Ahmad of Maulana Fazlullah" as saying, "Right from UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to Hillary Clinton and President Obama, all of them used whatever bad language and words they could use on the media but when we tried to reply to them, no media organisation was willing to give us importance."

What's to reply? I wondered at first. These idiots tried to kill an unarmed 14-year old girl simply because she had the temerity to want an education -- and to say so, publicly.

But as I thought about it more, yes, the media coverage of the shooting has been biased: It's been far too secular. We in the West use the language of crime or terrorism and the Taliban insists that they are talking about "religion."

So let's look at it from a religious perspective, shall we?

The Taliban are superstitious pagans -- yes, pagans -- hiding behind selected tenets of a great Abrahamic religion. They are tribal thugs who worship only their weapons. And they know -- at least their leaders know -- they are perverting the religion they pretend to profess. How can I say this? Because, in order to mouth the few cherry-picked verses of the Koran they use to justify their crimes, they must have learned -- and chosen to ignore -- the rest of their tradition, which condemns them.

The Hell that the Taliban are creating on Earth, however, for those unhappy enough to live in their evil shadow, is nothing compared to the Hell the Taliban are creating for themselves in the World to Come. Maybe they should worry about that.

Thinking about evangelization generally, conversion in particular

Regular readers already know that Younger Daughter and her husband Olaf are residing under our roof.

Olaf follows neither of the two major faith traditions of our household. Oh, he will accompany us and his very pregnant wife to 7:00am Sunday Mass, but he is very definitely not Catholic. His roots are Lutheran -- one of his grandfathers was a Lutheran missionary in South America -- but Olaf himself is, at most, an agnostic -- a skeptic -- at times inclined to outright atheism. His parents got swept up in an evangelical movement -- they are proud believers in Biblical Inerrancy (you'll not watch any dinosaur shows in their house) -- and Olaf, mathematically inclined as he is, rebelled in an equal and opposite fashion. How Newtonian.

Now I am not inclined to criticize sincere people who believe as they do in order to live a better life and secure their place in the World to Come. (I don't want persons holding these beliefs organizing the science curriculum in the schools any more than I'd want to put the Amish in charge of NASA, but that's another story....) On the other hand, Olaf was also raised as a Cub fan -- and having that sort of infidel under my roof stretches my tolerance to the breaking point.

But, seriously, I know my wife and daughter have hopes of someday bringing Olaf into the church. I think Catholicism provides the flexibility and intellectual rigor that could attract Olaf, eventually. At this point, though, when he sees us watch shows on dinosaurs, I think it indicates to him that our religious principles are shallow, or merely cultural. It has not yet dawned on him that sincere religious belief and science can be compatible -- and even complimentary.

The one thing I know for certain is that Olaf would resist any direct approach to conversion. Pleading won't do. Pamphlets certainly won't.

That got me thinking about evangelization.

When we think about it at all, we think that Christianity spread by mission. During His lifetime, Jesus sent his earliest followers out to proclaim the Good News to "the lost sheep of the house of Israel" without a "sack for the journey, or a second tunic, or sandals, or walking stick." Jesus instructed them to move on from places where they were not well received, shaking the dust of the place from their feet. (Mt. 10:5-15.)

After the Crucifixion and the Resurrection, after receiving the Holy Spirit on tongues of fire, the Apostles spread out across the world with the Gospel message. The most famous missionary of all joined them along the way: St. Paul, once a persecutor of Christians, brought Christianity with him all around the Roman world. His letters to communities of believers in various cities and towns are still read in churches today.

And these missionaries seeded the Christian faith, planting it here and there.

By the time Constantine became Emperor, not quite 300 years after the Crucifixion, Christianity was sufficiently widespread, and Christians sufficiently numerous, that it made good political sense for Constantine to embrace Christianity as the official religion of the Empire.

Missionaries did not accomplish this.

In the second and third centuries, Christians were not out proselytizing and sending missionaries door to door. Many hid in the Catacombs when persecutions came. Those identified as Christians might be martyred for their faith. Nero used Christians as human torches in the first great prosecution of Christians after the Great Fire in Rome in 64 A.D. In that and many subsequent persecutions, Christians were torn apart in arenas by wild beasts or executed by gladiators.

And yet Christianity grew during these trying times. The ranks of Christians swelled. From a tiny sect, Christianity grew to the point where it became politically astute to make Christianity the official faith of Rome. Granted, the persecutions were not constant in the years between Nero and Constantine; there were many years, even decades, of peace in this area or that one. But there were no great missionary movements in these years -- nothing to compare with the journeys of St. Paul or the later epic voyages of the Jesuit missionaries -- nothing, even, to compare with the mission work of Olaf's own grandfather.

So how did it happen?

I think it must have happened person-to-person, family member to family member, slave to master (as in the case of Sts. Serapia and Sabina), or neighbor to neighbor. It must have been the examples set by Christians, their serenity, their certitude, that attracted others to them. It is how the Christians lived -- and not just how they died so willingly, even cheerily, though they did not court death or volunteer to be slaughtered -- that attracted new believers. Persons observing them must have passed through a 'they-must-be-crazy' phase to a 'maybe-they-are-on-to-something' phase before converting themselves.

Our daily lives are our best witness of our real faith, or lack thereof. That is how we really evangelize. That is evangelization. Moving back from the general to the specific again, it will not be dragging Olaf to church that eventually brings him around (if he is to be brought around); rather, it will be what he sees there -- and in our home -- that may, someday, excite his interest.

Of course, St. Monica also prayed a lot for the conversion of her son, St. Augustine. But that's another story too....

In a kinder, gentler America, we might perhaps have a rational discussion about abortion

We might even be able, in such a Nirvana, to calmly and rationally explain why some would want to deny abortion even to victims of rape.

(And, no, Rep. Todd Akin, it has nothing to do with whether or not the rape was "legitimate." Keep your dunce hat on and stay in the corner.)

The woman raped is a crime victim, plain and simple. What is not so simple is when rape involves another victim, one brought into being by the crime.

This does not always happen -- (No, Todd, not because the woman's body 'shuts that whole thing down.' I'm not going to tell you again. Sit in the corner and be quiet!) -- this does not always happen because, as anyone who's ever intentionally tried to conceive a child will tell you, not every instance of intercourse produces a child. But, potentially, possibly -- and rarely -- the violent crime of rape will result in the victim becoming pregnant.

It sure as hell is not her fault. (Todd! Last time! Sit!) It sure as hell is not her choice.

But neither is it the fault of the unborn child.

Now many -- I dare say most -- people would not consider the few cells that could result within a few days of a rape to be an "unborn child." The ardent anti-abortionists do.

The zygote becomes a blastocyst about five days after conception. It is a little ball of cells, with no discernably human characteristics whatsoever. But this tiny ball of cells, unlike every other tiny ball of cells in a woman's body, can divide and grow and grow and divide into a baby. In this sense, the anti-abortionists have a point. And Older Daughter, in the throes of irrational exuberance before her first IVF failure, proudly emailed pictures of her blastocysts, taken at the time of their implantation, so that we could "see our grandchildren."

It hurt me deeply just to write that sentence.

In a kinder, gentler America we could see that, in the very rare case where pregnancy results from a rape, the needs of both victims should be considered. However, in any world I know from experience, the thought of saddling the rape victim with the obligation to carry, each and every day, for nine months, a swelling reminder of a violent assault seems cruel in the extreme. Perhaps in a kinder and gentler America the rape victim would receive adequate support from friends and family and society in general so that she could heal from her crime even while carrying the product of that crime to term. But not today. A contemporary woman who could make the choice to carry a baby conceived in the course of a rape to term, would be uncommonly brave. Her choice should be celebrated -- but the obligation to carry that child should not be imposed. And certainly not imposed in the unkind, angry America of the present day.

Since his nomination to the Republican ticket, Paul Ryan, who has been identified with the ardent anti-abortion crowd, has already moderated his stance to acknowledge that abortion should be available to victims of rape or incest or when medically necessary to save the mother's life (and that may be, from the standpoint of apolitical medicine, almost never -- see, this 2009 post in which a doctor explains why).

Americans support or oppose a right to abortion depending on the questions asked. When the question is posed whether abortion should be available to rape or incest victims or when medically necessary to save the life of the mother, strong majorities say yes, absolutely. On the other hand, when persons are asked whether abortion should be available "on demand" or used as a means of (or substitute for) birth control, strong majorities say no, no way.

I am a practicing Catholic. But I'm also a practicing cynic. And, as a good, practicing cynic I believe that most Americans, if pressed, would oppose abortion except in cases of (1) rape, (2) incest, (3) to save the mother's life, and (4) when a 'nice girl' gets 'in trouble.'

It is that last category that gets the ardent anti-abortionists up and out to the abortion mills, fingering their Rosaries and loudly praying and holding up horrifying pictures of aborted fetuses.

But I have news for them: They can not end abortion by making it illegal, or nearly so, any more than the temperance movement could end the scourge of drunkenness by enacting Prohibition and the Volstead Act. We haven't stopped idiots from texting while driving simply by passing laws banning the practice. We can't make gay marriage advocates go away by legislatively defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman, nor can we make gay marriage universally accepted by judicial decisions striking down those statutes. We didn't stop drug abuse by declaring a War on Drugs either.

At some point it should become obvious to even the densest among us that constantly hurling imprecations across a cultural divide, or banning practices that a bare majority opposes, or litigating to strike down practices that a strong and determined minority opposes -- that all of this is futile. And I say this as a politically aware citizen and, more, as a lawyer: The law has its limits.

Instead, we must build consensus. Persuasion, not compulsion. Slowly, surely... rationally. We gotta at least try. Maybe someday we can have our kinder, gentler American, can't we?

Can't we?

Todd Akin: Bringing America together

Todd Akin, who somehow has been repeatedly elected to Congress from Missouri and is now the Republican nominee for a Missouri Senate seat, triggered a national firestorm when offered this incredible contribution to the collection of most stupid things ever said by a public figure: "If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down."

Forget for a moment that there is no scientific or pseudo-scientific basis for this remark, not even a superstition or old wives' tale that he might have heard as an innocent, ignorant child and then failed to un-learn. Forget all of that. Legitimate? What in Sam Hill could he mean by that?

But, yes, for all his stupidity, Mr. Akin has accomplished what seemed impossible so far this political season: He has brought Americans together. Democrats denounced him -- but Republicans did too. He has been deemed persona non grata for the upcoming Republican convention. Pro-abortionists denounced him -- but anti-abortionists have too. Akin has confirmed that presumptive VP nominee Paul Ryan asked him to withdraw from the Missouri Senate race. Akin is an embarrassment and a laughingstock, but today all Americans are in his debt: He has brought us together.

Against him.

Dear Anti-NATO protestors: What are you for?

Dear Anti-NATO Protestors:

I get it. Honest, I do. You're against the war in Afghanistan.

Well, so am I.

Now what?

Chanting is great; thinking, though, is better.

We went into Afghanistan, in the aftermath of 9/11, because the Taliban regime was harboring -- serving as a base of operations for -- Al Qaeda, the very sick and twisted people who brought down the Twin Towers and crashed another airplane full of civilians into the Pentagon.

They'd all been our friends once. You probably don't know any of this because your memory doesn't go past the first screen on your Facebook page, but most of the Taliban and Al Qaeda -- even Bin Laden himself -- were mujahideen that we supported when they were resisting the attempted Soviet takeover of Afghanistan. "Friends" may be too strong a word for many of them -- although some of them were apparently friendly to us, then -- but at least they were the enemy of our enemy.

I know, I know, you probably didn't learn about the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in school -- but that's the reason why the U.S. boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympics. You could look it up on that neat phone your parents gave you for graduation.

Anyway, by 2001, the bloom was definitely off the rose: If the Taliban weren't going to give us Al Qaeda, we were going to take them. And (although Bin Laden and a few other big fish got away) we did what we set out to do, tearing up Al Qaeda's infrastructure and kicking the Taliban out in the process. Kicking out the Taliban meant, by default, we'd gotten involved in an Afghan civil war.

Apparently, there's almost always a civil war on in Afghanistan, at least since 1978 or so, when a Soviet-backed regime seized power in a bloody coup. The Soviets tried to prop up their proxies, eventually committing thousands upon thousands of their own kids, and history will recall this as one of the nails in the coffin of Soviet Communism.

The Russians had had designs on Afghanistan since the days of the Tsars. In the 19th Century, the British tried to occupy Afghanistan (if only to frustrate the Tsars), and suffered dearly for it. The Russians learned nothing from Britain's example -- just as the English had learned nothing from the example of Alexander the Great, who also tried, and failed, to conquer Afghanistan.

Kids, you can criticize our Military-Industrial Complex all you want. I do. Heck, even President Eisenhower did. But American policy in Afghanistan never included hopes of conquest. If we've nevertheless been guilty of propping up the corrupt regime of Hamid Karzai, what would you suggest as an alternative?

The only alternative I know of is a return of the Taliban -- and they do kooky, nutty things like blowing up 1,700 year old statues because the statues are un-Islamic. (Not that they could be otherwise, given that they were carved centuries before the Prophet was born, but logic is not the strong suit of these fine men.) Educating your daughter is a death penalty offense with these charming and delightful folks, for parents and daughters alike. They gleefully blow up girls' schools (there really aren't any mixed schools) -- and they think gang rape is a perfectly acceptable means of punishing a girl for daring to appear in public without a male relative as her escort. No, as a general policy, maybe we should be like Starfleet and follow a non-interference directive... but isn't it kind of hard not to take sides in this case? I mean, seeing as how we were already there?

But, relax, kids, you've already won. The United States is bailing out of Afghanistan as soon as possible. We're trying to make our retreat look dignified, unlike some of our so-called NATO allies (the French for example?) who are racing pell-mell for the exits. The hope is that, somehow, with our additional expenditures to train and equip his troops, Karzai will be able to hold on for a decent interval after we've gone.

We tried to train and equip the South Vietnamese, too.

As I remember, it seemed like an awfully short time between our pullout and the fall of Saigon. Maybe it will be different this time. Maybe.

But, hey, kids, don't give those Afghan people a second thought. Not that you've given them a first thought.

Yours sincerely,

Curmudgeon

P.S. -- A bunch of y'all were still out marching yesterday afternoon when I left the office to go out on errands. All the big shots have gone home and you're still messing up traffic? Go home.

President Obama endorses gay marriage

That was yesterday.

In other news, there's a big Obama fundraiser tonight at George Clooney's house.

I guess ticket sales had been slow.

Mr. Obama is nothing if not calculating and deliberate. Therefore it seems evident, in retrospect, that Mr. Obama and his campaign advisers first let Joe Biden endorse gay marriage... but when that didn't sufficiently ignite the fundraising base they next let the Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, make a similar announcement.

Ordinarily, and certainly on paper, the Secretary of Education ranks far below the Vice President in the power pecking order. But Mr. Duncan is a fellow Chicagoan, a frequent basketball-playing partner of Mr. Obama's. Having Duncan signal support for gay marriage was meant to say, nudge, nudge, wink, wink, that Obama was really in favor of gay marriage too.

Still, fundraising did not take off.

Thus yesterday's 'bold' announcement.

I'll bet there's a good turnout tonight at Mr. Clooney's -- and a far more enthusiastic crowd than might have otherwise assembled.

But Mr. Obama knew he was taking a risk -- would this gain or lose him votes in Ohio or the other swing states that will decide his reelection bid? It wasn't as if gays were going to abandon him for a Republican -- good heavens! -- but elections aren't just about votes. They're also about dollars. Mr. Obama's support among business leaders is far more limited than it was in 2008; he needs to replace those dollars somewhere. There's a lot of money floating around in Hollywood.

Besides, when it comes to what's right and what's wrong, the pro-gay marriage people are closer to the mark than their adamant foes. This brilliant bit (obtained from George Takei's often entertaining Facebook page) points out the hypocrisy found among too many in the one-man-one-woman crowd:

A Biblical scholar may know differently, but I can't think of one place in the Gospels where Jesus takes a position on homosexuality. But I know He was no fan of divorce. For serial monogamists to claim that gays would make a mockery of marriage would be laughable, if it weren't so stupid. This tongue-in-cheek definition of "marriage" recently posted on Urban Dictionary seems about right: Marriage is "[w]hat straight couples have legally and commonly don't want, and what gay couples don't have legally and commonly want."

Homosexuality has existed at all times in all places in all cultures. Some people will be gay whether homosexuality is tolerated, persecuted, celebrated or made a capital offense.

Because there will always be gay people, it stands to reason that some of them will, in due course, fall in love and live together.

One of the compelling arguments in favor of gay marriage are the indignities visited on gay people who are hospitalized. Because a longtime companion may have no legal status (and because of well-intended privacy laws foisted on us by Ted Kennedy), overly fussy hospitals sometimes refuse a dying person the comfort of the person closest to him or her.

You do not have to think homosexuality "right" or "good" to know that this is wrong, wrong, wrong.

On the other hand, gay marriage is just not marriage.

You can make an argument that marriage is not just one-man-and-one-woman -- there is ample precedent for marriage to be defined as one-man-and-several-women. The Bible tells us that Abraham had two wives ("and look at all the trouble that's gotten us into," says Long Suffering Spouse). But nowhere, never, not at anyplace or time in the world did marriage ever mean one-man-and-another-man or one-woman-and-another-woman. Even in ancient Sparta, where male homosexuality in the army was encouraged as a means of building unit cohesion, discharged veterans were expected to settle down with a female and marry and breed new soldiers for the city-state.

You can't change the meaning of a word by imposing upon it an artificial definition. Yes, certainly, language evolves and the meanings of words can change over time because people use them differently. "Fie" was pretty strong language in Elizabethan times. I'm old enough to remember when "gay" meant "happy." I suppose the dictionary may still support that definition -- but, if happiness is what you're attempting to convey, don't try trying telling strangers how gay you feel.

I suppose my objection here is a consequence of my training as a lawyer. For years I have had to cope with answering Interrogatories drafted by lawyers who feel the need to "define" every piddly term they use. Some are not necessarily hard to deal with. In a typical "Definitions and Instructions" section you might find this:

The term "person" means any natural person, corporation, association, partnership, joint venture, or other business entity or organization, or any governmental or administrative agency.

(And yet many lawyers were among the persons most upset when the Supreme Court decided to think that corporations are persons!)

But some "definitions" are just impossible-to-comply-with gobbledygook:

The terms "and" and "or" should be construed either conjunctively or disjunctively, whichever makes the interrogatory more inclusive.

Think about this for a minute: Under this "definition" the phrase "three or four" might equal seven!

And these "definitions" just send me over the edge, every stinking time:

The singular form shall be construed to include the plural, and vice versa, whenever such a dual construction will serve to bring within the scope of any of these Interrogatories information that would otherwise not be within their scope.

The past tense shall be construed to include the present tense, and vice versa, whenever such a dual construction will serve to bring within the scope of any of these Interrogatories information that would otherwise not be within their scope.

I always object to this verbal clutter by presenting my own counter-definitions, insisting that my Answers are intended to be read in standard English, unless the use of another language is clearly indicated. I'll insist that the singular will not include the plural, nor the plural the singular, nor will "up" mean "down" or "in" mean "out."

No one has ever challenged my position on this in front of a judge.

I object to gay marriage = marriage just as I object to and = or. Redefining "cow" to include "horse" does not make it OK to eat My Friend Flicka.

Giving legal recognition to homosexual relationships is a new thing. For now, therefore, the new term "civil union" is more than adequate for this purpose, as long as Adam and Steve in a "civil union" are given the same legal rights as Adam and Eve in their marriage. I've said here before that I'd take the government out of the marriage business entirely and instead license the consensual relationship between any two persons (not barred by consanguinity) as a civil union. I'd let churches decide what is, or is not, "marriage."

Eventually, perhaps, by common usage, marriage will come to include same-sex relationships. That's the way the language may evolve. But it ain't there yet, whatever they say tonight at George Clooney's house.

Choosing your battles wisely in this so-called 'War' on Christmas

(Duplex comic obtained from GoComics, although I read it
-- in print this morning in the Chicago Sun-Times)

There was a brief buzzlet around Black Friday, with certain conservative Christian groups demanding a boycott of retailers who refused to use the word "Christmas" in their seasonal advertising and retailing strategy. When the sales associate wishes you 'Happy Holidays,' the argument went, you should put down what you've selected and walk out. Shouting "Bah Humbug!" perhaps over your shoulder?

For me and mine this is Christmastime. And I don't understand how and when wishing someone a Merry Christmas became potentially offensive.

Not that I haven't myself caved in to the apparent cultural decree: I once found myself wishing people "Happy Holidays" -- in the vestibule of the parish church after Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve.

Isn't this supposed to be
the modern, Stone Age family?

Why should saying "Merry Christmas" be offensive? Christmas surely has a well-developed secular component. I forgot to set my DVR yesterday for the annual showing of A Flintstones Christmas -- and there's an Ice Age Christmas special I'm looking forward to catching at some point -- but how sensitive must you be to take offense at these and similar projects? Unless, I suppose, if you're a particular sort of prickly Christian who can't get over the idea of cartoon characters celebrating "Christmas" thousands of years before the birth of Christ.

Actually, looking back on the holiday classics I grew up with -- Miracle on 34th Street, for example -- the concern was that retailers were co-opting Christmas for their own selfish, commercial purposes. So... maybe... shouldn't that mean that I not get upset when a storekeeper says "Season's Greetings" or "Happy Holidays"?

I admit that it was a little jarring to watch the Patriots-Redskins game yesterday on CBS (the Bears had the late game, in which they were the latest overconfident bunch to get Tebowed): CBS kept running a 'holiday' promotion for its shows in which the words 'jingle' or 'holiday' seemed to predominate. I kept waiting for at least a throwaway Merry Christmas, but none was forthcoming.

I think there is a growing hostility to religion in some quarters, and a growing hostility to certain religions in many quarters. Take a look at this thoughtful essay on Popehat, Lowe’s, “All-American Muslim,” And Living From The Inside Out, if you have a moment. Stephen Chapman's column in yesterday's Chicago Tribune, Obama's 'war on religion' (which offers a partial defense of certain of Gov. Rick Perry's recent accusations) is also worth your time this morning. (More important, from my point of view, Chapman explains how Catholics like me are also in the cultural crosshairs to some extent.)

But just because you believe that "Jesus is the reason for the season," does not mean you can or should act like a jerk, OK?

What I wished I could have said: Science and religion can be complimentary

Regular readers will recall that I'm a church-going Catholic. That doesn't make me a good Catholic, much less a good person, but it does make me different from many who are out here in the Internet, standing on our digital soapboxes, shouting at passersby.

Regular readers will also recall that I am a big fan of the comics. I read a lot of the comics that appear (or used to appear) in the Chicago newspapers on line (they're often rendered in color, even on weekdays, and bigger than they are in print) and a lot of webcomics besides. A lot of times the webcomics are crude, vulgar, tasteless and offensive, but I enjoy some, like Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, xkcd, Tree Lobsters!, or Scenes from a Multiverse (to name just a handful), often enough to keep me coming back. No one hits a home run every time. Good grief, Charlie Brown never hit one in 60 years.

Fair warning: Each of these above-listed comics can be just as crude and tasteless as webcomics generally. Don't blame me if you follow a link and are offended. But my point today is that, a lot of times, these comics can also be downright anti-religious. These webcomics have a geek following (engineers, mathematicians, scientists). It is apparently the fashion among these folks in particular to be actually hostile to religion, organized or otherwise.

Younger Daughter's boyfriend, Olaf, comes to mind in this regard. Olaf fits the demographic profile: He's a math major. And to hear Younger Daughter tell the story, his folks are hard-core Creationists. They reject evolution. Their universe was created in six days, just as Genesis says. Like a lot of kids, Olaf has reacted to his parents' views by forming equal and opposite views of his own.

Olaf is cautious in expressing his views around Long Suffering Spouse and me, but he made a passing reference recently to the Flying Spaghetti Monster. He must have thought only Younger Daughter would catch his drift; he was surprised when I did. I'm not a Pastafarian, I assured him, but I try and pay attention.

Last Sunday afternoon, Younger Daughter and Olaf were out shopping -- but none of us had yet been to Mass. She promised to be home in time for the 6:00pm 'last chance' Mass that our parish offers.

But you know how these things go... time passed, they were having an enjoyable afternoon, and Younger Daughter called to ask if she could skip Mass just this once and go out to dinner with Olaf and his parents.

Long Suffering Spouse was still painting Sunday. This project had been ongoing for a month already but the finish was in sight. I was assisting (for a change). So neither of us answered Younger Daughter when she called her mother's cell phone. Youngest Son did. And, in the time-honored tradition of little brothers everywhere, he translated my "ask your mother what she thinks" into "no way, you better meet us at Mass or else you're toast."

After I actually did confer with Long Suffering Spouse, we agreed that Youngest Daughter could stay out -- but we instructed her brother to tell her. Who knows what he actually said? Thus it came to pass that Younger Daughter did show up at church. With Olaf.

Youngest Son spotted them first. They were standing way in the back, although there were plenty of available pews. They stayed there, too.

After Mass, Long Suffering Spouse was prepared to just wave in their general direction and walk past, but I said I must greet our guest. I heard later from Younger Daughter that Olaf was a little concerned about the big sappy grin on my face when I said hello. "I hope your father doesn't think that I'm converting," he told her.

Actually, I didn't think that. I was happy, though, that Olaf was willing to accommodate his girlfriend -- and us -- in something that we think important.

And there is something else I wish I could explain to him, and to all the anti-religious webcomic artists, too: Religion and science are not mortal enemies; rather, they should compliment each other. Both are concerned with searching for the truth. Science is concerned with what can be known; religion is concerned with what is not known (what can't be known). As time goes on, the domain of science increases as we know more and more of the universe around us -- and yet the domain of religion remains infinite.

Remember back in high school math, when you had to plot an asymptotic curve? The line of the curve comes ever closer to, but never intersects, the axis of the graph. Science is like this: It pushes religion ever closer to the border of irrelevance, but it will, presumably, never quite push religion over the edge.

There will always be Questions that science can not answer satisfactorily. Why are we here? What is our purpose? Does our consciousness expire with our bodies, or does it go on? Where? How? The answers to these questions are not likely to be found in a lab. And it is just as willfully ignorant for devotees of science to assert that these Questions are unimportant because they can not be answered as it is for Creationists to deny the evidence of the fossil record because it is incomplete.

I like this explanation by a Chicago Catholic priest, Fr. Robert Barron:

The basic principle is this: All truth comes from God. God is One. And, therefore, there can't be a contradiction, finally, between the truth discoverable through Reason and the truth discoverable through Faith, properly articulated. And so the unity of God -- the unity of Creation -- gives rise to this ultimate compatibility between Faith and Science.

The trick is not to get too dogmatic about either religion... or science.

Santo subito? Not so fast, please

Among the many opinions that no one in the world is clamoring to hear are mine concerning the pending beatification of the late Pope, John Paul II.

At his funeral, crowds in St. Peter's Square unfurled banners and chanted "santo subito," which means (I am told) "sainthood now." And the canonization process, streamlined under John Paul II himself, was really fast-tracked for JPII by his successor, Benedict XVI.

John Paul II is, and I think will continue to be, regarded as one of the heroes of the 20th Century.

I imagine Joseph Stalin, skewered and rotating on a spit over an open flame in one of the hotter regions of the Netherworld. Long before John Paul II's reign, Stalin once famously sneered, "How many divisions does the Pope have?" Now, roasting in eternity, Stalin has his answer -- and JPII provided it: Enough. There are others deserving of credit, too, but John Paul II, as much as any other man, is responsible for the destruction of Soviet Communism.

But is John Paul II a saint?

The horrors that some (and far too many) Catholic priests and brothers inflicted on minors were revealed, in nation after nation, during John Paul's papacy. Reforms were adopted in America during his reign -- important reforms, badly needed, and, for the most part (as far as I can tell) sincerely implemented to date -- but the Church has never seemed to completely understand, acknowledge and accept its complicity in so many crimes over so many years.

As long as there are children there will be evil, sick or twisted individuals who will seek to exploit them. The Catholic Church was never alone in this. The Boy Scouts, protestant churches, even public schools -- there have been abusers in all of these, too. And in far too many cases, abusers in all of these settings were allowed to resign quietly, and even given carefully neutral references. But in none of these other settings were abusers systematically protected and moved to other fields of opportunity. To protect the Church. To protect the Church! To descend, for a moment, into kid-speak, but only because it seems particularly appropriate: OMG. But it wasn't just evil or venal or incredibly short-sighted bishops. There were well-meaning people involved there, too. Ironically, and tragically, an institution built on faith too many of these put their faith in science, hoping and relying on doctors and psychiatrists to "cure" errant clergy. It didn't work. We know better now. We hope.

The stain of clergy abuse clings to John Paul II, and not just because it was revealed on his watch. He appears to have defended or supported Marcial Maciel, the Mexican priest who founded the Legion of Christ and who also, according to Wikipedia, "was found guilty of raping underaged males and... also fathered at least one child."

Now the Pope -- any Pope -- sits atop a very steep pyramid. Not everything that goes on in the Church is or could be known by the Pope. In many ways the Pope -- any Pope -- is a figurehead, a prisoner of the Vatican bureaucracy, the Curia. The Curia is practically a living creature and, as such, is certainly far older than the Catholic Church. It is the bureaucracy of Rome -- Republican Rome, Imperial Rome -- still living on, adapting, growing. Like any living creature, the Curia responds to stimulation. And Maciel sent a lot of it to Rome during his heyday -- money, favors, money. When rumors swirled, they could be put down. Buried. Ignored. Dismissed as the mutterings of jealous rivals. What the Pope knew, therefore, and what the Pope should have known, on this issue or on many others, is not necessarily obvious.

But with these uncertainties I can not get too excited about John Paul II's coming beatification, unlike so many of my fellow Catholics here in Chicago. Cardinal George is heading up a large Chicago delegation to the ceremony this weekend. Part of it is ethnic pride: Chicago is the largest Polish city in the world after Warsaw (and home to more Poles than Warsaw at one time).

I take solace in this: Beatification is not sainthood. The media don't quite understand all this Catholic mumbo-jumbo and don't trouble themselves to learn, either. A man or woman who is beatified may be venerated by the faithful, but the Church does not declare, by beatification, that this man or woman is worthy of veneration as a friend and true servant of God.

I'd love to have met John Paul II. I was at his Mass in Chicago's Grant Park in 1979 -- me and a million or so of my closest friends. As I've already said, he is surely a hero for his role in bringing down the Soviet bloc. But there's no hurry, so far as I'm concerned, to declare the man a saint. Time will tell.

I can't top this post on Popehat re: Florida lunatic

It is entitled "Why I Will Not Write About This Latest Outrage By A Sick, Twisted Individual And his Followers Against A Target Group, Even Though I Am A Person Of Good Will."

And I won't mention the name of the Sick, Twisted Individual either. Too bad the networks and other media outlets do. If you don't know what we're talking about, read this.

There's no reason to give this goof coverage. There appears to be very good reason to offer him therapy.

Does belief in God confer an evolutionary edge?

I was listening yesterday to NPR's "All Things Considered" when it ran a piece entitled "Is Believing In God Evolutionarily Advantageous?" (You can read the story, or listen to it, by following that link.) Here's one interior snippet:

Dominic Johnson is a professor at the University of Edinburgh in the United Kingdom and another one of the leaders in this field. And to Johnson, before you can understand the role religion and the supernatural might have played in making us the people we are today, you really have to appreciate just how improbable our modern lives are.

Today we live in a world where perfect strangers are incredibly nice to each other on a regular basis. All day long, strangers open doors for each other, repair each other's bodies and cars and washing machines. They swap money for food and food for money. In short: they cooperate.

This cooperation makes all kinds of things possible, of course. Because we can cooperate, we can build sophisticated machines and create whole cities — communities that require huge amounts of coordination. We can do things that no individual or small group could do.

The question is: How did we get to be so cooperative? For academics like Johnson, this is a profound puzzle.

Johnson illustrated the conundrum with a personal recollection: Johnson was paying the fare to board a train in New York City, and as the gate opened to admit him, a child ran up, seemingly out of nowhere, and pushed his way through too.

The kid got something for nothing. Why isn't that the human norm?

The answer may be that neither the subway nor society in general works properly when only some pay while others freeload. Why should you pay taxes when you know (or at least suspect) that your neighbors are fudging? If enough people start to feel that way, the tax system, and, ultimately, society breaks down completely.

What keeps people on the straight and narrow? It may be belief in the Hereafter. We may not be caught and punished by the IRS for cheating on our taxes, but we may fear that we are condemning ourselves to eternal torment.

And it's not just us in the Puritan-fueled West who think that way. All human cultures, it is believed, have some instinct of a supernatural force or being -- a Deity or deities who can punish or reward. Even atheists have such impulses from time to time, as the linked story relates, though they do their best to suppress them.

Is this religious impulse part of our evolutionary 'hard wiring?'

Evolution is supposed to be about passing down your own genes. That's fundamentally selfish, or at least a concern confined to one's immediate family. How did we as a species discover that taking care of others increases the odds of one's own genetic survival?

Anyone who's read any science fiction will be familiar with the argument that religion is only an agent of oppression. Tricksters who guessed when the rain was coming or when it might flood bamboozled others into feeding them. And then the tricksters refined their observational skills and kept them secret in order to keep the yokels in line. Religion allows an elite to impose its will by creating fear of a Higher Power. And no one needs to go beyond today's newspaper to find examples of oppression and abuses ostensibly in the name of religion -- and practically any religion you care to name, any day of the week.

But -- maybe -- it's the oppression part that is the perversion, not the religious impulse itself. Maybe the religious impulse itself is good and healthy and necessary to our survival as a species.

So the argument goes that as our human ancestors spread around the world in bands, keeping together for food and protection, groups with a religious belief system survived better because they worked better together.

We are their descendants. And Johnson says their belief in the supernatural is still very much with us.

Isn't that just the sort of trick a Creator would play on us?

Crusades vs. Jihads

Western political and military leaders blanch at the prospect that any of their adventures in the Middle East or Central or South Asia may be described as 'crusades.' Conversely, the Qaeda sympathizers are quick to label all westerners, and particularly all western soldiers, as 'crusaders.'

The Crusades were wars with an ostensibly religious purpose; they were proclaimed by the Pope. Most, but not all, of the wars labeled as 'crusades' were fought in Egypt or the Holy Land. (Or at least they were supposed to have been fought there. The Fourth Crusade wound up capturing and sacking Constantinople, something the Turks would be unable to do for another 250 years.)

We can not sugarcoat the semi-barbaric state of our European forebears in the High and Late Middle Ages, nor can we deny the wretched excesses of the Crusaders (the slaughter following the Siege of Antioch in 1098, for example, or Richard the Lion Heart's slaughter of 2,700 Muslim hostages after the Siege of Acre in 1191). These were not nice people. And if your history teacher told you that one of the main ideas behind the Crusades were to thin the ranks of "noble" thugs by sending them overseas to be killed, or to die from shipwreck, starvation or disease in transit (all the while keeping these creeps from wreaking havoc at home), I don't know that I could disagree.

But...

Let's back up and take a longer view for a moment, can we?

The Arabs came storming out of Mecca and Medina in the 600s, conquering North Africa and the Holy Land -- all formerly Christian territory, much of which was controlled by Rome's eastern remnant, Constantinople. The Arab armies crossed into Europe, gobbling up most of Spain and threatening France until Charles Martel blunted their advance. This was jihad. Conquest. Aggression.

In a broad sense, the Crusades may be seen as a largely defensive reaction to Muslim aggression. There was a real intent to reclaim the Holy Land so that Christian pilgrims could travel safely there and walk where Jesus walked. (Granted, there was a strong treasure motive. While some of the Crusaders may have been genuinely animated by religious passion, however misguided it may seem to our modern eyes, there can be no doubt that a lot of the Crusaders were in it for the potential riches they could find and carry back. Who knows? Maybe some individuals had both motives.)

The point is, the Crusades did not seek to completely destroy Islam (however many forced conversions -- or re-conversions -- were inflicted on populations in their path): There was no attempt to invade Arabia. In that sense, the Crusades were not intended as wars of conquest.

There have been oceans of blood spilled by Christians in the name of religion. But Christians seem to have saved their worst atrocities to inflict on each other. Consider the Fourth Crusade, mentioned above. Of course, even that may be interpreted as a reaction to the Byzantines' "massacre of the Latins" in 1182. The Italian trading cities encouraged the sack of Constantinople in revenge.

And, then, of course, once Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the church door in Wittenberg, so-called Christians really turned on each other. More than a century of seemingly unlimited violence broke loose. One of the main reasons why England's Glorious Revolution of 1688 was so "glorious" was that it was accomplished without re-starting the religious wars in the British Isles.

Except in Ireland, of course.

Europe's self-inflicted wounds from their interminable religious wars have never entirely healed over. Modern European secularism may owe its popularity to Europeans' fears that strong religious feelings might yet revive religious bloodshed. (My blogfriend Bee's comment to my post earlier this week illustrated this point beautifully. She wrote, "i cannot tell you how many baptists i have had arguments with that catholics ARE christians. they disagree.") And I can sympathize: Northern Ireland could erupt again at any moment. The wounds of the Spanish Civil War are still fresh. (We can take up Europe's excesses against the Jews some other time.)

We come now to the lesson to be drawn from this very broad survey of European history. I suggest we in the West should stop reflexively apologizing for the Crusades. Neither should we demand apologies from the Arabs for conquering Northern Africa, Egypt, the Holy Land -- or the Turks for finally extinguishing Constantinople. We shouldn't demand apologies for the attempted Muslim conquests of Spain, France or Vienna. (Come to think of it, has anyone really ever demanded apologies from the Muslims for any of this?) Anyway, instead, we should live in the present, and demand that our Muslim cousins do the same (as descendants of our common father Abraham, we're all family, aren't we?).

Respected Muslim scholars have concluded that jihad need not be military adventures, bent on conquest. Jihad can properly refer to man's personal struggle against sin -- temptation -- evil. Let's hope (dare I say, let's pray?) that this idea takes root and becomes universally accepted in the Muslim world. If there can be no more military jihads, there can be no more Crusades.

Mr. Language Curmudgeon defines "martyr"

Readers of this blog will note that I frequently inveigh against the creeping Orwelliazation of the English language, that is, the taking of wholly useful, commonly understood words and infusing them with a new and different meaning and, then, all too often, denying that the prior definition ever existed.

I am old enough to remember, for example, when "gay" meant "happy." Once upon a time, children, "queer" meant "odd" or "different." "Marriage" was the union of a man and a woman. "Police action" meant Officer O'Flaherty swinging a billy club at some miscreants, not hundreds of thousands of American troops fighting wars in Asia. For that matter, "war" meant a violent confrontation between nations, or among groups of nations, fought with armies and navies and air forces, not a public relations campaign against (pick any or all of the following) poverty, drunk driving, obesity, drugs....

Another word which has been hijacked and perverted (without apparent protest!) is "martyr."

Suicide bombers are lionized in certain parts of the world as "martyrs."

Victims of terror bombings are sometimes also referred to as "martyrs."

Murderous brutes launch rockets from the courtyards of mosques or school playgrounds, hoping to draw retaliation at the launch point. The inevitable casualties will be hailed as "martyrs," while the monsters ultimately responsible for their deaths will have slunk away, dragging their portable rocket launchers with them.

None of these, though, are "martyrs."

A martyr does not commit suicide. A martyr is murdered. A martyr does not kill others; he or she is killed.

How then does the martyr differ from any murder victim? A murder victim does not know that he will be murdered. He may know -- as an inner city gang member, for example -- that his life expectancy is short, but he does not know the day or the hour.

As a young boy in a fairly progressive Catholic school there were often times during the school day when I had finished my assignment and was free to pull a book off the shelves to read.

The options were fairly limited, of course, but there was all the excitement and adventure (and blood and guts and gore) a boy could wish for in The Lives of the Saints. Oh, sure, some stories were boring -- impossibly good priests or nuns, devoted to prayers and scrubbing floors, reluctantly performing miracles for the faithful who gathered 'round in expectation -- but, then, there were the stories of the martyrs.

Early Christians endured hundreds of years of persecution before Constantine had his vision of the Cross. The persecutions produced legions of martyrs -- men and women and children singing hymns of praise and thanksgiving as they bravely marched into the Coliseum to be devoured by lions or hacked limb from limb by gladiators.

Later, of course, I would learn that the Romans had been remarkably tolerant of other faiths in their day, co-opting the local deities whenever they conquered a region, building temples to the local favorites (and doing their best to identify the hometown heroes with someone in their own pantheon). The trouble was that the early emperors also co-opted the eastern idea that rulers were gods on earth, thus entitling them to sacrifices. It became something of a loyalty oath -- give the emperor his stick of incense and worship whoever else you wanted.

This the Christians could not do. (Well, some did, of course, but none of them ever made it into The Lives of the Saints.) Jesus had taught the early Christians to render unto Caesar the things that were Caesar's and to God the things that are God's. And they took Him quite literally. Worship was over on the God side of the line and hundreds -- thousands -- of Christians refused to cross that line.

The Christian martyrs did not court death. They hid out. They tried to fly below the radar (the Catacombs, surely, qualify). Like Thomas More in a later age, they tried to say nothing rather than say anything that would damage their lives here or in the Hereafter.

But, sometimes, the Christians were forced out into the open. Perhaps they were betrayed. Or the local officials were required to make a proper demonstration. Each tale of martyrdom had its unique elements. But there was a unifying theme: The Christian martyrs did not volunteer to die; they were condemned because of their faith. They did not choose death except as a less evil alternative to dishonor and damnation. They had to choose between sacrificing to the emperor or sacrificing themselves.

In making this awful choice, the Christian martyrs became braver than the bravest firefighter or police officer or soldier. The firefighter or police officer is trained to cope with danger and learns to live with the possibility that any call may be his or her last. Soldiers are trained to cope with the possibility that enemies will try to kill them -- and, preferably, how to kill the other side's soldiers first. But the martyrs knew they were going to die and they would not, and could not, fight back.

And they went in singing.

For a boy reading The Lives of the Saints, this was awesome, inspirational stuff. It made quite an impression on the Romans, too. Though the martyrs were anything but terrorists, their calm acceptance of their fate terrified many Romans. The deaths of the martyrs inspired a lot of Romans to convert. Eventually the bloody path of martyrdom led to the Milvian Bridge.

The important thing, for a modern person, is that the loser who wires his body with explosives trying to kill women and children at a bus stop is not a "martyr." He is a suicide and a murderer. He is a criminal. And, in the long run, he will inspire no one.

U.S. foreign policy explained in a short blog post

Pretty extravagant promise to make in a blog title, isn't it?

Especially when I promise a short blog post.

But I believe I can do this:

American foreign policy vacillates between two poles. On the Red Meat Right, the only proper American foreign policy may be summed up this way:

Fear us. We are strong. But we are fair: We will treat our friends well -- and our enemies harshly.

For the True Blue Left, our foreign policy should be instead:

Love us. We are friendly. We want you to be our friends. If you strike us, we will strike back, but only like a caring friend should. And when we've knocked some sense into you, we will pick you back up. Look how we treated Germany and Japan!

Yes, I know that the Left's view gets more words. That's "nuance" for you.

Sadly, in the real world that has come into existence since the fall of the Berlin Wall, neither view makes a lick of sense. Our strength is useless against terrorists willing to hide behind civilians -- in mosques, hospitals and schools -- as they launch rockets. And our real enemies do not want to be our friends under any circumstances. They want us to die. Or at least convert.

Surely you've read how the Qaeda-types sneer how we in the West are afraid of death. And they, they claim, are not. This, they maintain, is their ultimate advantage. Let's talk about that "advantage" in future posts -- but, first, later this week, Mr. Language Curmudgeon will have to provide a vocabulary lesson.

Stay tuned.

If Mormons are Christians, aren't Muslims Christians also?

Christian theologians may blanch, but isn't it true that most folks think that Mormons are Christians?

That being the case, why, then, aren't Muslims considered Christians as well?

Granted, I understand that Mormons insist they are Christians and Muslims insist they are not. But consider:

Mormons accept Jesus as a great prophet -- I'll leave it to Mormons to explain whether they consider Him the greatest of all prophets. But it is indisputable for Mormons that Jesus is not the last prophet. Joseph Smith had to come along with golden plates given him by an angel in New York State to provide all the stuff that Jesus missed.

Muslims also accept Jesus as a great prophet. There is, scholars assure us, far more in the Qur'an about Mary the Mother of Jesus than there is in the New Testament. But, here again, Jesus is not the last prophet. Muhammad had to come along in order to restore true monotheism.

Mormons may insist they are Christians because their faith was born in what was then a largely Christian nation. They may have perceived a tactical advantage in not positioning themselves too far away from their Christian neighbors. (They encountered strong resistance anyway. Look up the Mormons' expulsion from Nauvoo, Illinois some time.) Muhammad, on the other hand, undertook his mission in largely pagan Arabia. His pagan neighbors had over 500 years to take up Christianity, if they'd had a mind to, but they hadn't. For Muhammad, there was a tactical advantage in presenting a new faith.

I've long wondered how news of Muslim expansion was first received in the West. I'm not talking about later -- when it became apparent that Christianity and the remnants of Roman civilization were under dire military threat. (How many school children today have even heard of Charles Martel?) Rather, I'm thinking about an earlier time, as Arab armies were just beginning their march of conquest across Africa: Was Islam at first considered just another Christian heresy among many? My church history is a little shaky, but I seem to recall that Gnosticism was strongest in Africa; that the apocryphal gospels found in Egypt contained more stories about Jesus as a child than any of the canonical texts; and, finally, that some scholars cite a number of parallels between these accounts and those in the Qur'an. Could the initial attitude in Rome or Constantinople have been 'we've heard this all before?' If so, what a horrible, tragic blunder that was for the West.

Anyway, I suppose it wouldn't help relations between Islam and the West if we were to consider Muslims as just another Christian sect... because, somehow, I can't help but think that no serious Muslim would accept the designation favorably. But we in the West must begin to think about who we are and how we differ from our Muslim cousins.

To get you started on your weekend reading, let me direct you to an op-ed piece from the August 18 Wall Street Journal entitled "How to Win the Clash of Civilizations." The article is by Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

About this New York mosque...

President Obama was right the first time when he said that the proposal to build a mosque within a couple of blocks of New York's "Ground Zero" was a purely local issue and he wouldn't get involved.

Then he failed to take his own advice and did weigh in on the subject. Without (he insists) commenting on the wisdom of the specific Manhattan mosque proposal, Mr. Obama said:

"Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country."

"That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances," he said. "This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable."

Again, Mr. Obama was correct.

However....

Building any house of worship these days, whether in Manhattan or in suburbia, is almost always controversial.

In the news, we hear mostly about protests regarding the construction of new mosques. Part of the reason for that is that Islam is growing rapidly in this country: Recent Asian immigrants brought their religions with them just as our European ancestors did. A lot of the newer arrivals from Asia are Muslim. There aren't a lot of mosques around but there are plenty of Christian churches already; thus, it should come as no surprise to anyone but the ignorant news media that a lot of new mosques will be proposed.

But whether mosque or synagogue or evangelical free church, the building of any new church on previously unconsecrated ground is going to honk off a significant portion of its would-be neighbors. Most will not belong to the new congregation -- but all will be affected by traffic and noise. The property will drop off the tax rolls -- and the rest of the community will have to make up the difference. And -- of course -- some won't like the newcomers, no matter who they are, no way and no how. It isn't just Muslims: What if wild-eyed Pastor Jorgensen (or Fr. Murphy or Rev. Billy Bob) wants to open a soup kitchen or a homeless shelter? I dare say it was ever thus in this country.

But keep this always in mind: This is America. We can have this debate. Muslims can and will overcome their neighbors' objections and build their mosques.

Try and build a church in Saudi Arabia and see what happens.

According to Wikipedia (footnotes removed):

Saudi Arabia allows Roman Catholics and Christians of other denominations to enter the country as foreign workers for temporary work, but does not allow them to practise their faith openly, and as a result Roman Catholics and Christians of other denominations generally only worship in secret within private homes. Items and articles belonging to religions other than Islam are prohibited. These include Bibles, crucifixes, statues, carvings, items with religious symbols, and others.

The Saudi Arabian Mutaween (Arabic: مطوعين), or Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (i.e., the religious police) prohibits the practice of any religion other than Islam. Conversion of a Muslim to another religion is considered apostasy, a crime punishable by death... if the accused does not recant. The Government does not permit non-Muslim clergy to enter the country for the purpose of conducting religious services.

Note that we are not talking about the crazy Taliban, but rather our brave and gallant Saudi allies.

In 2008, when the first Christian church opened in Qatar (a small chapel without bells or even visible crosses), there was talk that a Catholic church might also be permitted in Saudi Arabia. This Time magazine article (March 19, 2008) claimed, "Pope Benedict XVI is believed to have personally appealed to King Abdullah on the topic during the Saudi monarch's first ever visit to the Vatican last November."

There are 800,000 Catholics in Saudi Arabia because the Saudis import Indians and Filipinos to work for them -- but not one church.

So: How much Saudi money is in this proposal for the mosque near Ground Zero? (I have read that most mosque construction in this country winds up being subsidized by the Saudis in one way or another.) How about some reciprocity here? There are mosques and synagogues in Rome. A Christian can not set foot in Mecca.

Let's stop this bogus harping on American (and/or Western) "intolerance." The mosque will be built in Manhattan, probably right where the proposers want it. When can I expect to go to Mass in a cathedral in Riyadh?

The barbarians at (and within) the gates

"Barbarian" is such a pejorative term. It conjures images of savage thugs, destroying for the sake of destruction. For most of us, when we think of "barbarians," we think of the Germanic tribesmen that sacked Rome. All subsequent "barbarians" are compared to these.

But these Goths and Visigoths and so forth weren't really savages. They had no great cities, but they had a sophisticated culture and extensive trading networks. Living adjacent to the Roman Empire for centuries, they provided increasing numbers of troops for Rome (barbarians had provided cavalry for Roman armies at least since Julius Caesar's time) as time went by. Many of their chiefs and kings were raised among the Romans; Alaric, the Visigoth king who sacked Rome in A.D. 410, at one time commanded "barbarian" troops in the service of Rome.

Since the Dark Ages it has been known that the "barbarians" invaded Rome's borders because of incursions into their own lands by the Huns. Remember, Attila the Hun was himself at the gates of Rome by 452, only to be turned back by Pope Leo the Great. Alaric and the other "barbarian" leaders did not want to destroy Rome. They wanted Roman protection against their own invaders.

The "barbarians" did not hate everything Roman. Alaric was probably even a Christian, although, if he was, he was most likely an adherent of the Arian heresy. Certainly many of the so-called barbarians were Christians before taking over the territory of the old Western Roman Empire.

The problem with the barbarians of old was that, though they liked and respected and sometimes even venerated Roman civilization, they did not know how to keep it going. They weren't going to give up their own ways and live in cities; they had no interest in understanding the engineering principles that kept the aqueducts flowing, the farms growing, and the roads in repair. The Roman Empire perished in fragmentation and famine, not in flames.

Today we have barbarians, too. Like the barbarians of late Roman times, these barbarians are not uncivilized. They are merely different. Many of them like, respect, even venerate parts of Western culture.

But only parts.

Thus, Palestinian native Muzzammil "Mo" Hassan could come to America and set up a successful, Muslim-themed cable-TV station in Buffalo, New York -- but when his wife, Aasiya Hassan, had the temerity to try and divorce him, Hassan decided to behead her. Her head and body were found, separated, in the studios of the TV station they'd built together. I wrote about the story in 2009, soon after it happened. Hassan is coming to trial soon. An insanity defense is apparently planned. An effort to suppress Hassan's confession failed recently, according to an article by Patrick Lakamp first published on June 29, 2010 on the Buffalo News website. From the article:

When Muzzammil S. "Mo" Hassan turned himself in to Orchard Park police about an hour after his wife was slain Feb. 12, 2009, he shook a police lieutenant's hand and appeared "calm, cool and collected" during their one-minute exchange.

"I want to tell you I just killed my wife, and I'm here to turn myself in," the 44-year-old Hassan told Lt. Joseph A. Buccilli in the police lobby.

The two sat on a bench, and Buccilli asked where she was.

Hassan replied she was in the office of the Muslim-oriented Bridges cable television station they co-founded.

When Buccilli asked whether he was sure she was dead, Hassan used a downward hand gesture and said, "She's gone; there's no doubt about it."

At the time, Hassan's children were outside the police building in a van.

An actress from the Harry Potter films, Afshan Azad, has been in the news of late because her Muslim family allegedly tried to kill her. According to the allegations, Azad's father and older brother beat the stuffing out of her because she'd been dating a Hindu boy and did not seem eager to break off the relationship.

Younger Daughter attended an all-girls Catholic high school. There aren't a lot of Muslim high schools -- yet -- in this country, so many observant Muslim parents will send their daughters to a girls' Catholic school to limit their exposure to boys. And, of course, Catholic girls' schools require uniforms which are, at least in theory, more modest than the attire favored by girls down the street at the public school. Some girls' schools will even let their Muslim students wear headscarves.

The subject came up in the Curmudgeon home recently when Younger Daughter remarked how one of her high school classmates, who is now attending the same college as Younger Daughter, presently comes to classes veiled from head to toe. "She didn't wear that in high school," she said. "I think she does it for shock value."

"Possibly," I said. "And also because there are males present at college."

Well, yes, Younger Daughter acknowledged; that might also be part of it. Then she recalled the story of another high school classmate, from a Sunni family, who dated a Shia boy. Her family never found out that she'd "dated" -- but her father beat her when he found out that she had an unsupervised conversation with this young man.

The barbarians who sacked Rome did not mean to destroy Roman civilization. They thought they could pick and choose what they liked about it and disregard the rest and all would remain as it was -- only better. That didn't work out too well, though, did it?

We have a tremendous advantage in America over the Romans: The Romans never really understood how to assimilate new peoples. In some circles, even as he climbed the highest ranks of the cursus honorum, Cicero was regarded as a country-bumpkin and little better than a barbarian himself. (He was not of pure Roman extraction.) You can generalize too much, but one interpretation that fits the death of Julius Caesar is that he was killed by the Boni for trying to expand Roman citizenship too far.

In America, we have not always welcomed foreigners -- not in practice. Before the current illegal alien crisis there was the Know Nothing Party of the 19th Century, whose sole guiding principle was intolerance of immigrants. But we have always intended to welcome foreigners. Thus Theodore Roosevelt could write, in 1919:

In the first place we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the man's becoming in very fact an American, and nothing but an American. If he tries to keep segregated with men of his own origin and separated from the rest of America, then he isn't doing his part as an American. There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag, and this excludes the red flag, which symbolizes all wars against liberty and civilization, just as much as it excludes any foreign flag of a nation to which we are hostile. We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language, for we intend to see that the crucible turns our people out as Americans, of American nationality, and not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding-house; and we have room for but one soul loyalty, and that is loyalty to the American people.

(I mention the year of Roosevelt's statement so you understand the reference to the "red flag.")

Anyway, we've gotten away from assimilation in this country. While our immigrant grandparents and great-grandparents wanted their children to be more American than the snootiest Boston Brahmin, too many among us today are willing to accept a "polyglot boarding-house" instead. We are losing national consensus on who is an American and what an American believes. We are not asking our neighbors to assimilate. There are kids wearing "burkinis" in our neighborhood pool today.

America is flexible enough to assimilate Muslims -- if Islam is flexible enough to accept accommodation with America. I believe that this is still a possible future. But if we fail to insist on this, our civilization too will be brought down, just as Rome was, by barbarians who desired only to share their civilization, but who did not understand it.

Religion vs. science? Not necessarily....

Ah, well, readership is down here at Second Effort, but not yet eliminated entirely. So herewith a piece on science, religion AND politics... something to aggravate just about everyone....

The Los Angeles Times ran a piece by Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum on August 11 about Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, and other New Atheists who "want to change [America's] science community in a lasting way. They'd have scientists and defenders of reason be far more confrontational and blunt: No more coddling the faithful, no tolerating nonscientific beliefs. Scientific institutions, in their view, ought to stop putting out politic PR about science and religion being compatible."

They're not?

Granted, Biblical literalists deny evolution and, according to the Times article, "About 46% of Americans in polls agree with this stunning statement: 'God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so.'"

But that's not to say that religion and science must be adverse. Fr. Bob Barron, a Chicago-area priest, provides, in one of his Word on Fire commentaries, a pretty effective refutation of the New Atheists' insistence that science and religion are incompatible. It comes in a YouTube review of the recent movie Angels and Demons.



Skip past the first three minutes of this eight minute video -- a plot summary -- and the next minute and a half or so, as he points out the Catholic priests and brothers who are still revered, even by ardent secularists, as scientific pioneers -- and you'll get to the nub of his argument:

The sciences emerged and flourished in the context of the great Christian universities of the West. And this is not accidental. When you have a theological system, like Catholicism, that emphasizes the non-divinity of the world and the intelligibility of the world you have the preconditions for science.

Why? Because if the world is divine, if it is being worshiped as sacred, you're not going to experiment on it, but Christians who hold to creation know the world is not God and therefore can become the object of scientific investigation and experimentation.

Second, if [the world] is created, it is endowed with intelligibility. It's been thought or spoken into being. And therefore scientists can go out confidently to meet the world. They expect to find an intelligible world.

If something is made, it can be understood. Belief in a specific Maker may not be required for understanding -- but neither is such a belief incompatible with understanding (c. 6:15):

The basic principle is this: All truth comes from God. God is One. And, therefore, there can't be a contradiction, finally, between the truth discoverable through Reason and the truth discoverable through Faith, properly articulated. And so the unity of God -- the unity of Creation -- gives rise to this ultimate compatibility between Faith and Science.

Of course, this doesn't satisfy the Creationists or other fundamentalists, Christian and otherwise. I would say to them, however, that dinosaur bones are not put in the ground to test or undermine your faith; they provide an opportunity for your faith to grow beyond what our remote ancestors in the Middle East were capable of understanding.

That does not have to lead us down the path of relativism... but that's a discussion for another day.