What Kind of Year Did You Have?

Liberal columnist Marianne Means is ready to bid farewell to a very bad year. What planet is this woman on? There were terrible events in 2005--Hurricane Katrina and the bombings in London, to name just two--but all in all it was a very good year. The economy boomed, creating new jobs at a steady clip, and the brave Iraqi people, the heroes of 2005, showed that, even though electoral kinks must be ironed out, they are willing to take enormous risks to vote in a democratic process.

Were you happy in 2005? Or were you a glumkins like Means? A poll suggests that your assessment of the year ending may hinge on party affiliation. Participants were asked, "Do you think 2005 was better or worse than 2004 for you personally?"

Here's the breakdown:

65% of Republicans said 2005 was a better year for them personally.
22% of Republicans said it was worse.
41% of Democrats said 2005 was a better year for them personally.
45% of them said it was worse.

Well, I'm glad to belong to the party with that scores higher on happiness! Blogs for Bush pointed out a very interesting observation on this poll from Powerline:

"Note that the question was not about the direction of the country, or about any aspect of current affairs; respondents were asked how 2005 was for 'you personally.' It's a generally accepted fact, I think, that Republicans tend to be happier and more optimistic people than Democrats. Still, I find these results astonishing. The only apparent explanation is that Democrats--not just the activists and political junkies, but millions and millions of Democrats--were so depressed over President Bush's re-election that they perceived 2005 as a bad year for them 'personally.'"

Of course, if you believe what you read in the mainstream media--and many Democrats both believe it and produce it--you are likely to regard the year just ending as one of famine, pillaging, bubonic plague, etc. Brian McCartan, director of Global Trends Project, a nonprofit that specializes in global trends in economics and security issues, observes the same phenomenon:

"Judging from the headlines, 2005 was a gloomy year, indeed. Gulf Coast hurricanes, the devastating earthquake in Kashmir, ongoing war in Iraq, civil war in Sudan, renewed famine in central Africa, and the threat of a worldwide pandemic flu darkened the news. These headlines, however, obscure a far brighter underlying trend: On average, people across the planet are living longer, healthier lives, with greater opportunities for education and political freedom than ever before."

Of course, the year cannot be remembered only in terms of material success. The Concerned Women of America, has a list of "events and victories" for the year--it includes bright spots, such as attempts in several states to protect marriage, but also some dark moments, such as the murder of the profoundly disabled Terri Schiavo.

The death of John Paul the Great brought us mourning in 2005, but the election of Benedict brought (to many of us) great happiness. In a world where relativism reigns, we had two popes in 2005 to remind us that the light still shines in darkness. Thomas Smith writes in a review of Peggy Noonan's new book on JP II:

"When it came to church doctrine and the teachings of Christ, [John Paul II] was a staunch traditionalist, believing that 2,000 years of 'church thinking' could not be discarded by modern man with his own ideas of revamping that thinking to justify his own behaviors.

"Truth is truth, whether man likes that truth or not. And the Bible is the word of God: Not some marginally inspired work to be re-interpreted and amended to suit man's whims. Even so, the Pope was a 'progressive thinker who embraced science and the arts,' says Noonan."

Catholic scholar George Weigel (in a piece that charmingly suggests that perhaps the Ratzinger brothers played Mozart duets on the pope's new piano this Christmas) suggests that Benedict will have much work to do this coming year. My prayers are with him.

The achievements of 2005 cost dearly. Young men and women gave their lives in Iraq to make the world a better place. The press has used their deaths as anti-war propaganda. Meanwhile, "The stories of extraordinary heroism in Iraq, some of which have been published, are being overshadowed by the mostly partisan name-calling and finger-pointing in Washington," write former defense secretary Caspar Weinberger and author Wynton Hall. Along with the Iraqi people, the American military were the heroes of last year. I hope that we will win the war and bring them home--but only after a genuine victory. May there be no white flags in 2005--or no American white flags.

The Dark Side of Christmas

Merry Fifth Day of Christmas! If you'd like to know more about how light and darkness mixes in Christianity, the liturgical calendar will show you more clearly than almost any sermon in words. The feasts around Christmas notably commingle birth and death. Christmas is intensely happy--but not in a jolly hockey sticks sort of happy way. Christmas is serious happiness.

In addition to still being Christmas, today is the Feast of St. Thomas a Becket (here), a martyr. But so much has been written about this martyr--it is to his shrine that the Canterbury pilgrims are heading, and, of course, there is the T.S. Eliot play, "Murder in the Cathedral," in the last century--that I am going to indulge myself by writing a bit about another martyred saint. Actually, he's the first martyred saint--St. Stephen, whose feast is celebrated Dec. 26, a day I did not blog.

It is interesting that the most important birth in history is, liturgically speaking, followed immediately by a death. Patrick Henry Reardon believes that it is quite likely that "St. Stephen's is among the oldest feast days in the Christian Church. Moreover, except for the days of Holy Week and the Paschal cycle itself, it is possible that the annual commemoration of the martyrdom of St. Stephen is the oldest feast day in the Christian liturgical calendar."

St. Stephen was a Greek Christian who, tried by the Sanhedrin, was stonned to death outside the city wall. As he died, he saw the heavens opened (from the 1928 Book of Common Prayer):

"Stephen, being full of the Holy Ghost, looked up steadfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God, and, and said, Behold I see the heavens opened, and the son of man standing on the right hand of God."

The crowd "stopped their ears" and rushed upon Stephen, stoning him to death. (Here is another good telling of Stephen's story; as always, CaNN is also on the case.) As Amy Welborn points out, Stephen's martyrdom is the dark side of Christmas:

I say that many of the Defenders of Christmas have it almost as wrong as the secularists. Their vision of Christmas--centered on words, a rather generic baby, and nostalgic visions of families and fireplaces--actually gets no closer to the real Real Meaning of Christmas than do generic wishes for peace and joy in this holiday season. ...

What they forget, neglect or conveniently ignore is what we can not-too-dramatically call the Dark Side of Christmas.

The really traditional Christian remembrance of the Nativity is not about sweetness. It is about awe, fear, and trembling, and it is shot through with hints of suffering to come. ...

We might forget, we might wrap up Christmas in good cheer, but Christian tradition doesn't. It's striking that the next day--the very next day--after Christmas, the Church remembers not glad tidings, angels, and shepherd boys, but a bloody death by stoning. St. Stephen it is, the first Christian martyr.

St. Stephen is followed by St. John on December 27th, who may not have met a violent death, but who, the tradition tells us, died in a prison of sorts, in exile for his faith, far away from the 'civilized' powers that had sent him there.

While Stephen was being stoned to death, "the witnesses laid down their clothes at a young man's feet, whose name was Saul." Saul became Paul, who became St. Paul, one of the greatest saints of Christendom. Stephen's death was just a beginning. I love the mixture of light and dark and how Christianity brings light from darkness.

What Child Is This?

Quite a lively discussion ensued in the comments section after yesterday's post on the Virgin Birth. Could I make a suggestion? Read this quotation from a letter from the novelist and Catholic convert Walker Percy to Robert Coles, the Harvard psychiatrist, about Percy's response to a Christmas Mass:

"The Mass was going on, the homily standard... A not-so-good choir of young rock musicians got going on Joy to the World, the vocals not so good but enthusiastic.
Then it hit me: what if it should be the case that the entire cosmos had a creator and what if he decided for reasons of his own to show up as a little baby, conceived and born under suspicious circumstances? Well, Bob, you can lay it to Alzheimer's or hang-over or whatever, but it hit me. I had to pretend I had an allergy attack so I could take out my handkerchief."

Percy obviously believed in the Virgin Birth, which makes Christ God's own son in a unique way, and which demonstrates God's love for us like nothing else except his dying for to pay our moral debts. Without the Virgin Birth, Christmas is an entirely different kind of event, missing the miracle of the creator of the universe born as a little baby.

Born of a Virgin?

The Feast of the Holy Innocents, which is today (here, here, and here), is as good a time as any to address a burning issue of this (and perhaps many) Christmas seasons: Was Christ truly born of a Virgin?

Writing for Slate, an Episcopal priest named Chloe Breyer (her father is Supreme Court Justice Breyer) opines in a piece headlined "The Earthly Father--What If Mary Wasn't a Virgin?" that the story of the Savior's birth is actually better if Christ was not born of a virgin:

Christians celebrate the birth of God's only son. Some believers, however, wonder if Jesus Christ is God's son only. The ancient "illegitimacy tradition" and its modern proponents propose that Jesus may have had a human father. That idea upsets one of the central mysteries of the Christian faith—the virgin conception. But it's entirely in keeping with more essential tenets: Jesus' role as the Messiah, and God's love for the poor and downtrodden. What's more, the illegitimacy tradition responds to many strange utterances about Jesus' birth in the Scriptures themselves....

Can a loyal Christian believe that Christ was not born of a biological virgin? Perhaps it's worth posing a different question: Why is church authority so intent upon Mary's virginity as a historical fact? Would Jesus be any less God's son if he had an earthly father? The central message of the Gospel is that God raised up and redeemed his servant from death by crucifixion--the Roman style of execution reserved for the lowest of the low. Why couldn't God have sent the same message of divine solidarity with the world's outcasts by making a Messiah out of a man whose conception was also taboo?

Well, let's see, this doesn't do much for the Virgin Mary's holiness, now does it? "Sophisticated Christians"--the Rev. Breyer actually uses this term--might, of course, prefer a Mary who is just your average pregnant teenager. You can identify with such a Mary. (Especially if you are a liberal who excuses such behavior for poor kids--but not for your own Ivy League-bound prodigies.)

The dogma of Christ's Virgin Birth is actually very central to the Christian story. It actually means something. I have an uncle who almost declined ordination to the Episocpal clergy at the last moment because he, at that point in his life, doubted this dogma. It was that important. Mind you, this was a long time ago. But all the theologians the Rev. Breyer cites as believing in the illegitimacy theory are beyond the pale of orthodox Christianity.

In other words, Ms. Breyer is (as Baptist minister Albert Mohler puts it) sharing her doubt about something central to Christianity. (Maybe she's like my uncle, only less honest?) Breyer's "belief in the illegitimacy of Jesus is 'entirely in keeping' with her worldview and belief system--a belief system that is profoundly not based in the authority of the Bible."

In another piece, Mohler asks if acceptance of the Virgin Birth dogma is necessary for a Christian:

What are we to do with the Virgin Birth? The doctrine was among the first to be questioned and then rejected after the rise of historical criticism and the undermining of biblical authority that inevitably follwed. Critics claimed that since the doctrine is taught in 'only' two of the four Gospels, it must be elective. The Apostle Paul, they argued, did not mention it in his sermons in Acts, so he must not have believed it. Besides, the liberal critics argued, the doctrine is just so supernatural. Modern heretics like retired Episcopal bishop John Shelby Spong argue that the doctrine was just evidence of the early church's over-claiming of Christ's deity. It is, Spong tells us, the "entrance myth" to go with the resurrection, the "exit myth."

Must one believe in the Virgin Birth to be a Christian? This is not a hard question to answer. It is conceivable that someone might come to Christ and trust Christ as Savior without yet learning that the Bible teaches that Jesus was born of a virgin. A new believer is not yet aware of the full structure of Christian truth. The real question is this: Can a Christian, once aware of the Bible's teaching, reject the Virgin Birth? The answer must be no....

Millard Erickson states this well: "If we do not hold to the virgin birth despite the fact that the Bible asserts it, then we have compromised the authority of the Bible and there is in principle no reason why we should hold to its other teachings. Thus, rejecting the virgin birth has implications reaching far beyond the doctrine itself."

Implications, indeed. If Jesus was not born of a virgin, who was His father? There is no answer that will leave the Gospel intact. The Virgin Birth explains how Christ could be both God and man, how He was without sin, and that the entire work of salvation is God's gracious act. If Jesus was not born of a virgin, He had a human father. If Jesus was not born of a virgin, the Bible teaches a lie.

As a Catholic, I might say the Bible with the illumination of the Church, but Mohler's argument is about the size of it. Dr. Mohler also quotes St. Augustine of Hippo on why it is important that Christ was God incarnate and not the son of (perhaps) a randy centurion:

"He, through whom time was made, was made in time; and He, older by eternity that the world itself, was younger in age than many of His servants in the world; He, who made man, was made man; He was given existence by a mother whom He brought into existence; He was carried in hands which He formed; He nursed at breasts which He filled; He cried like a babe in the manger in speechless infancy--this Word without which human eloquence is speechless!"

May I refer to the professor's remarks in yesterday's blog entry? The writers of the gospel were mad, lying, or telling the truth. Which is it?

A Christmas Gift from an Oxford Don

On the second day of Christmas, Loose Canon went to see "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe." It's a lovely movie. Georgie Henley, who plays little Lucy Pevensie so expressively, and Tilda Swinton, who plays the White Witch, deserve Oscars (honors no doubt destined for those who play gay cowboys or other unwholesome roles).

The movie features the four Pevensie children, evacuated during the blitz to a country house, where they walk through a wardrobe and into the land of Narnia. It is based, of course, on the children's novel of the same name by C. S. Lewis, the Oxford don and Christian convert. That has evoked sneering from the intelligentsia. John Miller noted some "enemies of Narnia" in a National Review cover story:

"Narnia certainly has its enemies. One of them is the White Witch, the fiendish creature who brings perpetual winter to the land. Another foe, in our own realm, is best-selling children's author Philip Pullman, who has described the Narnia series as 'one of the most ugly and poisonous things I've ever read.' (Pullman has explained his own motives for writing books for kids this way: 'I'm trying to undermine the basis of Christian belief.') The Narnia movie may not deserve to generate controversy, but there can be no doubt that it will, especially from the quarters that objected to Mel Gibson's interpreting the story of the crucifixion."

No doubt indeed. "Narnia represents everything that is hateful about religion," was the headline of a review by Brit reviewer Polly Toynbee. But Ms. Toynbee's view of Christianity may influence her take on the movie:

"Of all the elements of Christianity," Ms. Toynbee wrote, "the most repugnant is the notion of the Christ who took our sins upon himself and sacrificed his body in agony to save our souls. Did we ask him to?"

Naturally, then, Ms. Toynbee didn't care for Aslan, the lion who symbolizes Christ in the movie and who takes on the sins of young Edmund Pevensie. Edmund has betrayed Narnia in return for Turkish delight from the witch. Toynbee and others have argued that children don't get the Aslan as Christ bit. I simply don't know. It is a children's movie and a children's book, and if it were terribly heavy-handed, that would be a shame. Aslan, by the way, is a beautiful lion with a wonderful voice done by Liam Neesom.

Narnia has lived in winter for more than a hundred years with the White Witch as queen. But, as one of the charming talking beavers (the scene in the amiable Mr. and Mrs. Beaver has Wind in the Willows elements) says, Aslan is "on the move." According to an ancient prophecy, the White Witch will be overthrown when two sons of Adam and two daughters of Eve--the Pevensie children--come to Narnia to lead the battle against her (this is very politically incorrect--Peter Pevensie wields a sword).

The special effects aren't as overpowering (or as confusing--who are these critters?) as in the Lord of the Rings movies, the creation of another Oxford don, J.R.R. Tolkien, who played an important role in Lewis's decision to become a Christian. But the grotesque disciples of the witch and the more attractive fauns and centaurs on the side of Aslan are quite wonderful, especially James McEvoy as the faun Mr. Tumnus. (He has a book on his shelf entitled "Is Man A Myth?")

As both sides prepare for battle, the White Witch demands Edmund Pevensie's blood for his transgressions. After a long conference in Aslan's tent, Edmund is spared--we all know, of course, that Aslan will die for Edmund's sins. But first, he welcomes Edmund with the comfortable words, "What is done is done." That is to say: "Your sins are forgiven." Aslan leaves alone at night to go to his death. He thanks Lucy and Susan Pevensie, who don't know what is up, for walking part of the way to the White Witch's camp with him: "I would be grateful for the company." The scene in which Aslan is slaughtered reminded me of a fantasy evocation of Christ's via dolorosa in Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ." No, it really did.

One more churchy observation: After Lucy and Susan find Aslan's body and grieve over him, they turn to leave--a sound is heard, and Aslan is alive again. As with the writers of the gospel, notable for the sobriety of their accounts of the Resurrection, Lewis makes no attempt to depict the miraculous event on which hinges so much. The crucial remark in the movie is made by the professor who owns the house in which they find the wardrobe. He's obviously been through the wardrobe himself. When Lucy, the first to go to Narnia, returns, the other children doubt the tidings she has brought. "There are only three possibilities," the professor says. "Either your sister is telling lies, or she is mad, or she is telling the truth. You know she doesn't tell lies and it is obvious that she is not mad. For the moment then and unless any further evidence turns up, we must assume that she is telling the truth."

Children, especially in our unchurched era, may miss Aslan as the Christ. But there are battles, mythical creatures and even a Father Christmas. And, perhaps, at some point in later life, they might reflect that Christ himself was either mad or lying or telling the truth.

Merry Christmas!

Loose Canon was thinking of leaving the tree lights nestled in their box this year, but then I read the pope's latest audience:

The Christmas tree is a sign of the 'brilliant light' of Jesus, says Benedict XVI.

The Pope said this Saturday when receiving in audience a delegation of Austrian pilgrims, including civil and Church representatives, who had donated the Christmas tree which now adorns St. Peter's Square. The 30-meter (100-foot) fir is from the forests of Eferding.

"At Christmas the joyful announcement of the birth of the Redeemer resounds in all parts of the globe: The hoped-for Messiah was made man and dwelt among us," the Holy Father told his guests in the Hall of Blessings in the Apostolic Palace.

"With his luminous presence," Benedict XVI continued, "Jesus has dissipated the shadows of error and sin and has brought to humanity the joy of divine blind love, of which the Christmas tree is a sign and a reminder."

The Pope recognized that, in this sense, the Christmas tree is an invitation to receive in one's heart the gift of the joy, peace and love of Jesus.

"To believe in Christ means to let yourself be encompassed by the light of his truth that gives full meaning, value and sense to our existence, given that precisely to reveal to us the mystery of his Father and of his love, he also reveals man fully to himself and shows to him his lofty vocation," the Pontiff concluded.

There are so many beautiful readings about light. One of my favorite is the reading from Isaiah that many Christians will hear Christmas Eve night:

"A people who walked in darkness have seen A great light; upon those who dwelt
in The land of gloom A light has shone."

In my youth and childhood, I heard inevitably this read in a heavy southern accent, which seemed incongruous but reminded me of how far the gospel had been carried, over land and sea, from the ancient world to a tiny church in Mississippi, the very edge of the civilized world (some may say beyond!) with rosy-cheeked acolytes in festal red and candles flickering on the altar.

Many today, of course, do not think Christ brought light into the world and would like to snuff out what they regard as a backwards faith. But here's a nice piece from an atheist in England who would not like to see it put out:

"The modern Left exercises a militant anti-Christianity not so much because of a cultural cringe in the face of immigrant minorities, but because of its general wish to dismantle history. Once you have erased Christianity, you have erased (or at least made appear irrelevant) much of the past 1,400 years. 'Modernisation' in all its political forms is about the tabula rasa, and there are few ways of creating one of those so effective as the destruction of the traditional faith."

Ho Ho Ho: Men in Red

In hopes of adding to your Christmas cheer, Loose Canon offers a few items that are light in a different way: "St Nicholas returns to take on his red imposter," is a headline in the London Times. (The article is about Canon Jim Rosenthal, a lay canon in the Anglican communion, who is trying to teach children about St. Nicholas.)

Our St Nicholas was about as real as they get, and as jolly. The previous weekend he had led a similar celebration through Canterbury in his medieval bishop's garb and the Archbishop's son Pip sat beside him as his little helper. This Advent he has also visited Newcastle Cathedral, Maidstone Allington, St Matthew's Westminster, Great St Mary’s Cambridge and even St Luke’s Church, Germantown, Philadelphia....

"The society believes that St Nicholas helps young and old see what the true spirit of Advent and Christmas can be for us all, especially for those who find the holidays very stressful. It is our hope that jolly old St Nicholas will become, once again, in English-speaking parts of the world, a focus of celebration in his true identity. Santa is not bad, but St Nicholas is just better. I believe there is a bit of the spirit of St Nicholas in all of us."

I don't know what Canon Rosenthal wears when he's doing his St. Nick thing--but I do know that Santa isn't the only man in red this Christmas. Not only has Benedict gotten a lot of ink for wearing his new camauro--a red hat with ermine trim--but some critics think he looks a lot like Santa in it. Here is a picture.(Popes wore it in the 17th century, and I for one am delighted to see the Holy Father bringing back some old papal sartorial customs.)

And, finally, believe it or not, Fireside Chat with the Rector is not talking about gay Bishop Gene Robinson this time: "The 'Gay Bishop' can lead to divisions in one's family, and its introduction into a large group seems to make the gathering diminish and eventually fade away into obscurity and irrelevance." Bottoms up, is it?

Silent as Light

Our new Holy Father, Benedict XVI, has asked us to cultivate our "interior wonder" about Christmas. The Holy Father's injunction came to mind the other day as I was listening to my latest CD acquisition, Hymns of Grace, sung by the choir of men and boys at San Francisco's Episcopal Cathedral.

It's a treasure in its entirety, but one hymn in particular caught my attention as good for the creation of interior wonder--it's the old hymn that begins "Immortal, invisible, God only wise" (you can listen to it here on the Oremus hymnal). Here are the first two verses:

"Immortal, invisible, God only wise,
in light inaccessible hid from our eyes,
most blessed, most glorious, the Ancient of Days,
almighty, victorious, thy great Name we praise.

"Unresting, unhasting, and silent as light,
nor wanting, nor wasting, thou rulest in might;
thy justice like mountains high soaring above
thy clouds, which are fountains of goodness and love."

It was composed by Walter Chambers Smith (1824-1908), a pastor of the Free Church of Scotland. "Unresting, unhasting, and silent as light"--that is not the way we tend to think of God today. It is more majestic than God Our Buddy. The Ancient of Days--the very appellation inspires awe.

Christmas, one might think, evokes just the opposite sort of reflection on God, the God who became one of us. But we cannot begin to grasp the magnitude of God's choice to do this unless we know that it was a deity unresting, unhasting and silent as light, who chose to be born in a stable. I think we often fail to be impressed by God's majesty, though His handiwork is all around us.

As readers of this blog may have guessed, I love hymns. There are some wonderful CDs available to help us cultivate interior wonder. The Prayer Book Society offers a recording of the Anglican Communion, the 1928 Prayer Book, by the Choir of St Thomas' Church, Houston and Chorus Angelorum. It has the crispness and clarity of a bell. The Benedictine monastery of Solemnes in France preserved the Gregorian chant; there are few more wonder-producing forms of music than this chant. I do not yet own any Solemnes CDs, but I know that Barnes & Noble has a CD of Christmas chants from other monasteries and choirs in Europe. I am not very good at praying, but I take solace from St. Augustine, who said, "He who sings prays twice." I hope it doesn't matter if you're tone deaf, as I am, as long as you give yourself over to wonder.

ID: Which Side Are the True Believers On Anyway?

Oh, golly, did John E. Jones III, who handed down a "withering" ruling against the teaching of Intelligent Design, ever have his jollies. There are some personal slings and arrows for the defendants and some harrumphing about the hizzoner himself:

"Those who disagree with our holding will likely mark it as the product of an activist judge. If so, they will have erred as this is manifestly not an activist Court."

Well, your honor, don't get tangled in your robes patting yourself on your back.

This is not to say that I believe that Intelligent Design should be taught in public school science classes. It should not. Evolution, until and unless there is further notice, is the leading scientific theory on how we got here.

Evolution should be taught in science class. Of course. While ID should not be taught, is there anything wrong with discussing it? Why not encourage students to ask questions: Is the theory of evolution correct? Must evolution be random? I can imagine some lively arguments, and arguing in a lifely manner is the essence of getting an education.

The judge wrote:

In making this determination, we have addressed the seminal question of whether ID is science. We have concluded that it is not, and moreover that ID cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents....

To be sure, Darwin's theory of evolution is imperfect. However, the fact that a scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation on every point should not be used as a pretext to thrust an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion into the science classroom or to misrepresent well-established scientific propositions.

No, ID is not science. But why must ID "uncouple itself" from its religious origins to be worthy of discussion in schools? I'm talking about it--you probably talk about it. Why not youngsters in school? Of course, it can't be taught--but I think we’re getting to the point that it can’t be talked about in class. It strikes me that the adversaries of ID are more fanatical than its adherents.

They may also be just as faith-based. For example, the judge opines that Darwinian evolution hasn't "yet" answered all the questions. Maybe it will answer all these questions; maybe it won't. I have no faith in this matter one way or the other.

Almost as pompous as Judge Jones on the subject is Margaret Talbot of the New Yorker, whose coverage reportedly played a role in the judge's decision. Editor & Publisher has this on Talbot:

"Asked in a Q&A at the New Yorker's Web site about what factors contributed to the case, Talbot replied: 'One consistent division I noticed, and that I wrote about, was between people who read and trusted the very good local newspapers [nearby York has two, which is pretty unusual for a small American city these days] and those who just didn't trust them. The plaintiffs were the newspaper readers; the pro-intelligent-design school-board people were the newspaper rejecters.'"

In other words, the plaintiffs have faith in the New York Times and other organs blessed by Ms. Talbot and Co. Being a newspaper rejecter is the ultimate sin in that set. Did not somebody wise once say, Don't believe everything you read?

P.S. The Ten Commandments had a better day than ID.

Marlboro Men Acting Funny

Well, Loose Canon promised you her review of "Brokeback Mountain," the new gay love story that is tout la rage--and here it is.

Where to begin? The outdoor scenery is gorgeous, I loved the sheep (Jack Twist and the monosyllabic Ennis Del Mar are actually shepherds, not cowboys), and the movie did some interesting things aesthetically: namely, it made every setting but Brokeback Mountain ugly, but in an aesthetic way. Most of the people--Jack (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Ennis (Heath Ledger) excepted--were also ugly in an aesthetic way. It would be hard to make Ledger and Gyllenhaal ugly, but Ledger's Ennis, played with all the verve of a sack of potatoes, was so lethargic that it made you wonder if Jack wasn't really a necrophiliac.

My colleague Charlotte Allen and I have been predicting that "Brokeback Mountain" is this year's "Million Dollar Baby," a flick designed to poke middle America in the eye. Like MDB, Brokeback, already nominated for seven Golden Globes, will walk away with top prizes Oscar night, even if--as I predict--it is a box office disaster--just like MDB.

Overall, the analogy works, but "Million Dollar Baby" and "Brokeneck Mountain" are not peas in a pod--Brokeback is less obviously preachy, which is a relief (more on that from the New York Times' Frank Rich in a minute). "Million Dollar Baby" is nihilistic. So, last year's MDB was tragedy, and this year's is farce.

Yes, "Brokeback Mountain" has already been a skit on Saturday Night Live, with Alec Baldwin and Will Forte as two gold prospectors who fall for each other, tumbling together and sniffing each other's longjohns. It kills me that I missed Nathan Lane's parody on the Today Show: "I can't quit you, Katie." For all the movie's portentousness, gay Marlboro men, who don't remove their sweat-stained cowboy hats even when they are otherwise naked as jay birds, are intrinsically funny.

But the pillars of the intellectual elite don't see the humor. Not getting the big fat joke, Frank Rich of the New York Times writes "Two Gay Cowpokes Hit a Home Run"):

What if they held a culture war and no one fired a shot? That's the compelling tale of 'Brokeback Mountain.' Here is a heavily promoted American movie depicting two men having sex - the precise sex act that was still a crime in some states until the Supreme Court struck down sodomy laws just two and a half years ago - but there is no controversy, no Fox News tar and feathering, no roar from the religious right. 'Brokeback Mountain' has instead become the unlikely Oscar favorite, propelled by its bicoastal sweep of critics' awards, by its unexpected dominance of the far less highfalutin Golden Globes and, perhaps most of all, by the lure of a gold rush. Last weekend it opened to the highest per-screen average of any movie this year."

Well, no, "Brokeback" was never unlikely for an Oscar--it was always going to get the nod from the Academy, and the Golden Globe nomination comes as no surprise. Folks like Rich are ecstatic that only two years after a law against sodomy was struck down, this movie is being made. For them, "Brokeback," strikes at traditional values.

Why are people so ugly in the movie? Well, that is what people in the rest of the country look like to sophisticates who make movies: ugly. Jack's wife ends up looking like Annette Funicello times ten, with blond hair and a cigarette. (By the way, there is plenty of sex with wives, too, though this is not a movie for fans of the missionary position.) There is also a subtheme that gays frequently are killed in America, though that might have surprised my lesbian aunt, Willie Johnson, who wore men's clothes on the streets of Natchez in the 1920s.

Both Rich and I saw the movie in packed theatres: The audience where I saw it was an almost totally gay one, so eager to see the movie that they had come to a 4 o'clock showing on a Monday. I couldn't help but notice the sly and unbecoming laughter when Ennis' wife sees the men kissing. But I started laughing when she uttered her now famous line: You wasn't fishing up there, or something similar. Unlike Rich, who does cite some impressive early box office figures, I predict that this movie will become mostly a film that attracts gay audiences.

Frank Rich adds:

In the packed theater where I caught 'Brokeback Mountain,' the trailers included a National Guard recruitment spiel, and the audience was demographically all over the map. The culture is seeking out this movie not just because it is a powerful, four-hankie account of a doomed love affair and is beautifully acted by everyone, starting with the riveting Heath Ledger. The X factor is that the film delivers a story previously untold by A-list Hollywood. It's a story America may be more than ready to hear a year after its president cynically flogged a legally superfluous (and unpassable) constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage for the sole purpose of whipping up the basest hostilities of his electoral base.

By coincidence, 'Brokeback Mountain,' a movie that is all the more subversive for having no overt politics, is a rebuke and antidote to that sordid episode. Whether it proves a movie for the ages or as transient as 'Love Story,' it is a landmark in the troubled history of America's relationship to homosexuality.

The Hollywood/New York pseudo-sophisticates are raving about "Brokeback" for the very same reason they are denigrating The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe: Narnia upholds civilization, Brokeback seeks to undermine it. That is why the pathetic U.S. Catholic Conference's review ("As the Catholic Church makes a distinction between homosexual orientation and activity, Ennis and Jack's continuing physical relationship is morally problematic. The adulterous nature of their affair is another hot-button issue....") is so gutlessly problematic. But, really, the joke's on them.

Well, At Least, This Guy Wasn't Ordained

This could get nasty: "I don't give a rat's ass about the Catholic Church at this point in my life," writes a gay former seminarian, "but I think it's particularly ridiculously scandalously hypocritical for a bunch of closeted and quasi-closeted bishops to implement a policy such as this [the Vatican's instruction banning homosexual ordination in most circumstances]. There's only one adequate response left at this point for the collective gay community: Out these losers."

A Doctor Who Never Said, "Take Two Aspirins and Call Me in the Morning"

Blogging is light today because Loose Canon is going to mosey on down to Dupont Circle and make a second attempt to see "Brokeback Mountain", the saga of two gay cowpokes (okay, they're actually shepherds). But there is no end to uplifting movies in store for Loose Canon? Don't hold your breath (but it would be sort of appropriate if you did), but Wesley Smith reports that Hollywood has found yet another hero: "jailed murderer Jack Kevorkian may soon be the subject of a laudatory movie biopic."

Smith adds tantalizingly:

"The producer is an unknown named Steve Jones, whose Bee Holder Productions owns the rights to an unpublished biography co-authored by Kevorkian acolyte Neal Nicol--a man so devoted to his mentor that he once allowed Kevorkian to infuse him with cadaver blood, resulting in a nasty case of hepatitis. Any thought that the movie might be an accurate portrayal vanished when Jones claimed in a press release that Kevorkian 'walks in the footsteps of Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela.'"

While Kevorkian has been portrayed as a doc who helps the terminally sick die more comfortably, "In reality, Kevorkian's notorious assisted-suicide campaign, which dominated the headlines throughout most of the 1990s, was driven by a ghoulish desire to conduct human vivisection, or 'obitiatry,' as he liked to call it. Yes, you read right. Kevorkian's primary motive in all that he did was to create the social conditions that would permit him to experiment on the people he was putting to death."

"Maybe someone should tell Dr. Kevorkian, who's now in prison without access to dying bodies to observe or experiment on, that the thing he's interested in sounds an awful lot like the human soul, and that there's already quite a lot of information available on that subject," notes Elizabeth Kantor.

Press in a Bubble

The President was right to call the leaking of the secret surveillance tactics of people with terrorist connections a shameful act. The press conference was great. The press looked like it was in a bubble, asking only questions that sound like Democratic National Committee talking points. The president made it clear that the people being spied on are not ordinary U.S. citizens, even though the New York Times and Washington Post have chosen the sinister term "Spying on Americans."

"That is the title of the Post's lead editorial today," Power Line noted a few days ago. "Spying on Americans sounds like a bad thing until one remembers that we do it all the time when we have reason to believe that Americans are engaged in, or assisting with, ordinary criminal activities--ones that pose far less of danger to society than terrorism. We certainly spy on mobsters, and the much maligned Patriot Act is in part just an attempt to permit the government to use techniques we employ against the mob to investigate terror suspects."

The press mocks authorities when officials don't have enough intelligence to act effectively (as in this incident, though it could be worse--al-Zarqawi could be in Guantanamo without a lawyer!) but blows the cover on a secret intelligence operation. Anything to hurt Bush, even if people die because of the press's actions.

Brokeback Bishops

Okay, sure, the very notion of a gay pride day in Jerusalem sounds like a joke. But there was one last spring. The good news is that the newly-appointed papal nuncio to the U.S., Archbishop Pietro Sambi, then stationed in the Holy City, called the event "a provocation to the Jews, Christians, and Muslims of Jerusalem and all over the world." Time was you didn't have to be thankful when Catholic prelates denounced sin. But that was before the U.S. Catholic hierarchy had this to say about Brokeback Mountain, the new rave movie on gay love:

"While it is the story of an intimate relationship, more to the point it's the relationship of two emotionally scarred souls. Ranch hands Ennis (Heath Ledger) and Jack (Jake Gyllenhaal) share a sheepherding assignment on a mountain in Signal, Wyo., in 1963. Ennis is a man of few words; Jack is somewhat more open."

"While the actions taken by Ennis and Jack cannot be endorsed, the universal themes of love and loss ring true. ..."

Our brokeback bishops at first gave the movie an L (for limited audience) but changed it to O for offensive when complaints were heard from viewers apparently more conversant with Catholic moral theology.

I'm off to see the movie this afternoon--tried Friday, but the Dupont Circle area theatre was so full of cowpokes on a date that I could not get in. Expect my rave review momentarily.

A Day to Remember

The success of the Iraqi election wasn't really such a big surprise. We know that the anti-war media is painting a bleak and unbalanced picture of Iraq. Nevertheless, the election was a thrilling non-surprise, a tribute to the human spirit. And, specifically, to the human spirit of the courageous Iraqi people.

In an exuberant paean to December 15, Ben Elliot, a Reagan White House speechwriter, notes that yesterday "marks a turning point in the Middle East as millions of Iraqi voters literally carried their country across the rubicon to become the first free and democratic Arab nation."

Encouragingly, the Sunni faction, which boycotted the last election, turned out in force. New York Times reporter John Burns gauged the change among the Sunni population by hanging out with some Sunni children. "A new willingness to distance themselves from the insurgency, an absence of hostility for Americans, a casual contempt for Saddam Hussein, a yearning for Sunnis to find a place for themselves in the post-Hussein Iraq--the boys' themes were their parents', too, only more boldly expressed."

Ya gotta hand it to the indefatigueable Washington Post, which found an anti-American angle in the large Sunni turnout: "The Sunni outpouring was a long-hoped-for victory for the Bush administration, concluding a U.S.-planned timeline aimed at establishing a government that will hold together after U.S. troops withdraw. An overwhelming number of Sunnis made clear, however, that they were drawn to the polls by their dislike of the U.S. occupation and Iraq's U.S.-supported, Shiite-led transitional government."

For the Post reporter, the real heroes of yesterday's voting seemed to be a temporarily pacific bunch of "insurgents":

"But at least one Iraqi insurgent group made good on a promised election day moratorium on attacks, even putting masked gunmen on the streets to guard voters against the foreign fighters of al Qaeda in Iraq and let the marginalized Sunni minority try to address grievances through ballots rather than bullets."

Just for the record, the Sunni minority was marginalized because it refused to vote last time. And, oh yeah, some of them were in cahoots with a bloody tyrant who terrorized the Shiites. But I'm glad that they're switching from bullets to the ballot. We can thank the steadfastness of the Bush administration for that. It was bound to happen--if we stayed the course.

Yesterday could not have brought unalloyed joy to the Defeatocrats. Military expert Ralph Peters asked:

"Where were the 'Pull our troops out now!' protesters yesterday, as 15 million voters from every ethnic and religious group in Iraq went to the polls to shape their country's future?

"Surely, the anti-war crowd couldn't all have gone to the movies to see 'Brokeback Mountain'?"

Columnist John Podhoretz contrasts the courageous Iraqis and the white flag Democrats (you might also enjoy this cartoon posted on Powerline):

"In each election, turnout was higher than the last--and the word being used everywhere to describe yesterday's voting numbers is 'overwhelming.' Sunnis who had stupidly decided to boycott Election No. 1 finally came out in force. They've figured it out, even though the lunatics on the left in this country and elsewhere haven't yet: Representative government has come to Iraq, and you gotta represent.

"While Iraqis braved the terrorists, many Americans trembled before them.

"'We can't win in Iraq,' shouted Howard Dean, who might have confused Iraq with Iowa, where he couldn't win."

The defeatists may have taken the day off yesterday. But they'll be back because, as Peters explains:

Our abandon-Iraq dissidents are driven by two things that have little to do with the situation in Mesopotamia.

First, they're just plain anti-Bush, closet authoritarians who have no more respect for the American voter than they do for the Iraqis. They long for voter rolls restricted to like-minded intellectuals--and a president who delivers his state-of-the-union address in French.

Which brings us to the second characteristic of the 'declare failure' crowd: They don't much like democracy, no matter where it appears. Have any of those obsessed with giving Saddam a fair trial praised Iraq's attempt to build a democracy? Do they really believe that the millions who voted yesterday were better off under a brutal dictatorship? Was Saddam more humane and just than a free election?

Tony Snow explains why the pullout mindset is the logical extension of the philosophy that drives the Democrats.

No Longer Hwanging Tough

My reaction to news that Korean researcher Hwang Wu-suk might have faked the results of his human cloning experiments was relief: Thank heavens. The horror of human cloning had not yet taken place. Of course, as my friend Tom Bethell (a big week for Tom--he's been cited on Loose Canon twice!) points out, challenges to the authenticity of this experiment are not good news to all and sundry:

Professor Hwang's work, originally published by Science in June, was hailed as a breakthrough--a "tremendous advance," according to Stanford University Nobelist Paul Berg. It was also used as an object lesson for retrograde American politicians--read George Bush--who had thrown up ethical obstacles to such important research by restricting federal funding. Americans were being left in the dust by go-ahead scientists from around the world who were not hamstrung by medieval qualms and superstitions, we were warned....

As of this writing, Prof. Hwang is refusing to say what really happened. But if fraud is confirmed it will be a major setback for stem-cell research worldwide. The underlying science will probably have to be reviewed from scratch. The problem of immune-system rejection itself only became apparently quite recently, which is why Hwang's work was considered so important.

When I worked on the stem-cell chapter for my book, some eyebrows were raised because I declined to take the view, often adopted by conservatives, that it was the ethics of stem-cell research that needed to be questioned; the science, we should concede, was no doubt valid and above reproach.

But I had already spoken to two scientists who were familiar with work in the stem-cell field and both had told me the same thing: that the difficulties involved in 'coaxing' stem cells to become specialized cells of the body were very great. In fact, one told me, embryologists had been trying for over a hundred years to understand how the cells of the developing body manage to do this in the normal course of gestation. They were unlikely to find the answer by studying these cells in isolation, or because there was political pressure to do so, or because they would be rewarded by newspaper headlines.

Apparently, Hwang has just admitted that he faked the results.

Is There Really a War between Science and Religion?

There has been so much lately about the supposed conflict between science and religion (with the fanaticism much more pronounced on the allegedly scientific side). Two new books raise intriguing questions about this issue.
Baylor University social science professor Rodney Stark's "The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success," comes out this month. In a piece adapted from the book, Stark raises an interesting historical question:

"When Europeans first began to explore the globe, their greatest surprise was not the existence of the Western Hemisphere, but the extent of their own technological superiority over the rest of the world. Not only were the proud Maya, Aztec, and Inca nations helpless in the face of European intruders, so were the fabled civilizations of the East: China, India, and Islamic nations were 'backward' by comparison with 15th-century Europe. How had that happened?"

Stark argues that the Christianity was one of the prime factors in the advancement of Europe and of the growth of science that made this possible:

A series of developments, in which reason won the day, gave unique shape to Western culture and institutions. And the most important of those victories occurred within Christianity. While the other world religions emphasized mystery and intuition, Christianity alone embraced reason and logic as the primary guides to religious truth. Christian faith in reason was influenced by Greek philosophy. But the more important fact is that Greek philosophy had little impact on Greek religions. Those remained typical mystery cults, in which ambiguity and logical contradictions were taken as hallmarks of sacred origins. Similar assumptions concerning the fundamental inexplicability of the gods and the intellectual superiority of introspection dominated all of the other major world religions.

But, from early days, the church fathers taught that reason was the supreme gift from God and the means to progressively increase understanding of Scripture and revelation. Consequently Christianity was oriented to the future, while the other major religions asserted the superiority of the past. At least in principle, if not always in fact, Christian doctrines could always be modified in the name of progress, as demonstrated by reason. Encouraged by the scholastics and embodied in the great medieval universities founded by the church, faith in the power of reason infused Western culture, stimulating the pursuit of science and the evolution of democratic theory and practice. The rise of capitalism also was a victory for church-inspired reason, since capitalism is, in essence, the systematic and sustained application of reason to commerce--something that first took place within the great monastic estates.

During the past century Western intellectuals have been more than willing to trace European imperialism to Christian origins, but they have been entirely unwilling to recognize that Christianity made any contribution (other than intolerance) to the Western capacity to dominate other societies. Rather, the West is said to have surged ahead precisely as it overcame religious barriers to progress, especially those impeding science. Nonsense. The success of the West, including the rise of science, rested entirely on religious foundations, and the people who brought it about were devout Christians. Unfortunately, even many of those historians willing to grant Christianity a role in shaping Western progress have tended to limit themselves to tracing beneficial religious effects of the Protestant Reformation. It is as if the previous 1,500 years of Christianity either were of little matter, or were harmful.

The other new book is Tom Bethell's "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science." In it, Tom, an old friend of Loose Canon's and an inevitably provocative writer, also argues that religion is not the enemy of science. One canard Tom addresses is the notion that ignorant Christians were rabid flat-earthers. Long before Columbus sailed the ocean blue, according to Tom, this was hardly the case:

"During the early and medieval Christian eras, the leading lights of the age, Saint Augustine, the Venerable Bede, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Roger Bacon, and Dante all affirmed a spherical earth. So did 'the greatest scientist of later medieval times,' as [Stephen Jay] Gould identifies them, Jean Buridan (1300-1358) and Nicholas Oresme (1320-1381)."

Bethell says the earliest promoter of the myth that Christians believed the earth to be flat was none other than Washington Irving, the creator of Rip van Winkle. Columbus biographer Samuel Eliot Morison labeled Irving's account as "misleading and mischievous nonsense."

Gay Fathers

The press has been insatiable for stories about gays who feel they have been wounded by the Vatican's instruction on homosexuals and ordination. Here's the latest--a protest by gay priests in Italy.

But what about homosexuals who agree with the Church? The National Catholic Register had a piece by a young man who struggled to overcome the urge to engage in homosexual sex. He wanted to be a priest at one time and only wishes that the Vatican instruction had come out earlier.

He writes:

In our culture, we have developed the absurd habit of seeing vocation in terms of rights. But "equality before the law" does not mean that everyone is equally capable of fulfilling every role in our society. The priesthood is not an entitlement, it is a calling; God gives some men, and not others, the requisite gifts to live out the priesthood....

Indeed, a moment's thought should convince anyone that this is true of every vocation, not just priesthood. Someone who panics at the sound of gunfire must not be sent into combat. People who faint at the sight of blood should not become surgeons. Narcoleptics should not be night watchmen. And so forth.

This is not discrimination. It is simple realism. It is God's deep knowledge of us, calling us to true self-knowledge, the prerequisite of wisdom.

For myself, painful as my disappointment was, I soon realized that priesthood was not the only way I could strive to do 'something beautiful for God.' I should have known that my real calling was to be a writer, and shortly after I accepted my lay vocation, God gave me the opportunity to publish a book. He rescued me from a vocation to which I was ill-suited, and led me to a fulfilling apostolate in keeping with my natural aptitudes.

The New Oxford Review--which isn't online--also has an interesting piece about gay fathers--of a different type. This story changed my mind on whether adopted children of same-sex couples should be permitted to attend Catholic schools. No Christian would want to punish children for the sins of their two fathers--or their two mothers, right?

Well, no, I don't want to punish these children. Nor do I believe same-sex couples should be permitted to be Trojan horses in the battle for acceptance of same-sex unions. Here is a relevant bit from NOR's "Joey Has Two Daddies: Homosexual Activism Meets Catholic Kindergarten," by Michael S. Rose:

Rumors of the children's enrollment at the school were confirmed publicly in October 2004, when the St. John the Baptist family directory listed [Mike] Farina and [Ron] Morelos as 'father' and 'father' of the children. Jack Nixon, who had a son in the same kindergarten class, said he was especially disappointed to find that school and parish officials had given their public blessing to the situation by publishing the directory. More importantly, however, Nixon was concerned that the same-sex couple was going out of its way to be visible presence at the school. "I object to children seeing this sort of thing," he said of the double fathers fetching their children together from the school. "It's not a sexual issue so much as it is a political one," he emphasized. "It seems to me that these two had a political agenda to make [same-sex family arrangements] acceptable at a Catholic school."

One mother, who asked to remain anonymous out of fear of retribution from the school, said her kindergartner was obviously getting a distinct message about the "diversity" of families: "He would come home and tell me that Joey has two daddies." She added that she was worried that Farina was making a "big impression" on her child. "Mike [Farina] was always surrounding the kids after school," she said, "and trying to be friends with them; but what really bothered me was that he would talk to my son in my presence but would never acknowledge me. That alarmed me." Jack Nixon agreed. He said that his experience with Faruba was similar. "In my book," he said, "that's an improper way of acting. It's a red-flag."

Victory: The Only Exit Strategy

Loose Canon had the pleasure of being in the audience this morning as the President delivered an excellent