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Monday, October 19, 2015

Reprise: Christian Conservatism: "The Saved," "The Damned," "The Rich," "The Poor"


Dear Fred,

Thanks for your email.

Thomas Bertonneau and The Thinking Housewife beg meta-level analysis.

They are so "close to the trees" that they lose sight of the forest, honoring "the sacred" at undue cost to "the secular." 

 Caesar deserves payment. 

"The terrible thing about our time is precisely the ease with which theories can be put into practice.  The more perfect, the more idealistic the theories, the more dreadful is their realization.  We are at last beginning to rediscover what perhaps men knew better in very ancient times, in primitive times before utopias were thought of: that liberty is bound up with imperfection, and that limitations, imperfections, errors are not only unavoidable but also salutary. The best is not the ideal.  Where what is theoretically best is imposed on everyone as the norm, then there is no longer any room even to be good.  The best, imposed as a norm, becomes evil.”  
"Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander,” by Trappist monk, Father Thomas Merton

Often, what Bertonneau (and Laura) actually "say" is not as important as what they do not say.

It is their custom -- perhaps their compulsion -- to appeal to fabricated human constructs; to proclaim orthodox doctrine and to contemn all else. 

Jesus Rails Against Human Traditions Of "Our Great Leaders Who Lived Long Ago"


What are we to make of the following? 

In Laura's supposedly "orthodox" view, "The pope is not Catholic."

What next?

The revelation that "Bears don't s___ in the woods?

Absent from Bertonneau and Laura's writing is any recognition that the corporal works of mercy, undertaken without reference to a person's "condition" -- be s/he saint, sinner, idolater, infidel, toothless meth-head or deadly enemy --  is the sine qua non of actual goodness. http://www.bostoncatholic.org/Being-Catholic/Content.aspx?id=11412

Pick any post from Orthosphere or Thinking Housewife and conduct a key-word-search for "poor." 

In the unlikely event you find reference to poverty, it will not be accompanied by nitty-gritty enjoinder to get down and dirty. 

Such egregious complacency in their treatment of "Jesus, the least among us," recalls the facile comfort often associated with the Gospel verse: "The poor will always be with you." 
"The Sheep and The Goats"
The Gospel of Matthew

Dorothy Day on "Loving The Least"

Tom Weston, S.J. "The Best Thing Ever Said By A Jesuit" 

For many conservative Christians, the poor need not be tended since they are "undeserving" and -- even more unforgivably -- responsible for their own poverty. 

Kurt Vonnegut: "America Is The Wealthiest Nation On Earth But Its People Are Mainly Poor"


Not one rigid Christian in a thousand considers "food stamps" a way to "feed the hungry." 

Instead they promote the erroneous medieval belief that "the church" can manage the poor single-handedly. 

Why then is the church incapable of providing affordable education even for its own poor?

"The poor" are deemed "undeserving" because they are outside the sanctioned fold and therefore non-compliant with orthodox litmuses. 

Everything Jesus (And The Apostles) Had To Say About "The Rich" And "The Poor"

"The undeserving" do not exhibit the characteristic traits of "The Saved" (at least as construed by Pharisees and neo-Pharisees) and therefore it is not only justifiable -- but obligatory -- to wag one's finger at "The Damned" in eager anticipation of the bliss they will experience looking down from the ramparts of Heaven upon souls ceaselessly tormented in the unquenchable Lake of Fire.

Conservative Christians harbor a deep strain of sado-masochism. Not always, but often.

Luke 18:9-14 

The Story of the Tax Man and the Pharisee

He told his next story to some who were complacently pleased with themselves over their moral performance and looked down their noses at the common people: “Two men went up to the Temple to pray, one a Pharisee, the other a tax man. The Pharisee posed and prayed like this: ‘Oh, God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, crooks, adulterers, or, heaven forbid, like this tax man. I fast twice a week and tithe on all my income.’ “Meanwhile the tax man, slumped in the shadows, his face in his hands, not daring to look up, said, ‘God, give mercy. Forgive me, a sinner.’” Jesus commented, “This tax man, not the other, went home made right with God. If you walk around with your nose in the air, you’re going to end up flat on your face, but if you’re content to be simply yourself, you will become more than yourself.”  http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+18:9-14&version=MSG

"Who Were The Tax Collector's In Yeshua's Time?"

Consider Catholic traditionalists' horror at Pope Francis who challenges them so existentially that Laura's website describes his compassion as "pornographic," just one manifestation of traditionalists' derogation of the "sedevacantist's" a priori insistence on The Works of Mercy. 

Above all, Christian conservatives must believe that salvation lies in devout recitation of creeds and championship of traditional forms. 

Whatever else salvation entails, it must NOT depend on sustained service to "the least of us" --- to those we find repellent, sinful, deserving-of-contempt and destined, inexorably, for eternal torment.

In effect, they want to save themselves by clambering out of hell on the stacked bodies of The Damned.

Pope Francis: There Are Two Ways Of Having Faith: "We Can Fear To Lose The Saved," Or...

G.K. Chesterton: "The Anarchy of The Rich"

G.K. Chesterton On Charity, Hope And Universal Salvation

G.K. Chesterton Quotations... And More




















Next time you see these guys -- shell-shocked vets? -- take note of your reaction.
Feel free to report back.

 G. K. Chesterton on love.:

In an extraordinarily subtle way, formalists are so self-absorbed by their own salvation that they try to demonstrate it by describing their indisputable superiority over unobservant prostitutes, wine tipplers and tax collectors whose company Yeshua preferred to the upstanding churchgoers of his day. 


Concerning Bertonneau's dismay at the illiterate (also referred to as "the post-literate") it is clear to my circle of friends (educated in the 60s, 70s and early 80s) that "college kids today," in the main, are far more academically accomplished than we were. 

We "elders" joke among ourselves that our own high school credentials would not get us into the colleges where our own children now attend - The University of Toronto, Duke, UNC-Chapel Hill, Swarthmore, Notre Dame, Bryn Mawr, University of Kentucky Law.

Since moving to North Carolina in 1989 - where I taught public high school for seven years - I experienced this epiphany: Relationships fall apart -- both personal and institutional -- when people focus disproportionately on the omnipresent human "shadow.' 

We are all compounded of light and darkness (as Luke's tax collector well knew) and therefore each of us can, in fact, find unadulterated evil wherever we wish; in ourselves, our spouses, our scapegoats, our politicians, our political parties, our clergy, even our Pope. 

While it is "necessary and just" to conduct well-proportioned criticism wherever truth and goodness are lacking, it is intrinsically destructive to wear blinders that exclusively focus "the human shadow" - even more so when our primary purpose is to draw attention to the indisputable brilliance of our own light.

To the extent that we see such Light, we are also blinded by it whenever we fail to prioritize "the least" in our Human Family.

Luke: 5:29-35

29-30 Levi gave a large dinner at his home for Jesus. Everybody was there, tax men and other disreputable characters as guests at the dinner. The Pharisees and their religion scholars came to his disciples greatly offended. “What is he doing eating and drinking with crooks and ‘sinners’?”
31-32 Jesus heard about it and spoke up, “Who needs a doctor: the healthy or the sick? I’m here inviting outsiders, not insiders—an invitation to a changed life, changed inside and out.”
33 They asked him, “John’s disciples are well-known for keeping fasts and saying prayers. Also the Pharisees. But you seem to spend most of your time at parties. Why?”
34-35 Jesus said, “When you’re celebrating a wedding, you don’t skimp on the cake and wine. You feast. Later you may need to pull in your belt, but this isn’t the time. As long as the bride and groom are with you, you have a good time. When the groom is gone, the fasting can begin. No one throws cold water on a friendly bonfire. This is Kingdom Come!
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%205:29-35&version=MSG

"Behold, the Kingdom of God is among you."

It IS now. 

Or it is not...

Yes, "The Incarnation" began with "The Word."

But now, dwelling in the same carnally-enfleshed world that "God so loved he sent his only son into it" we not only confront, but are embedded, in "The Word made flesh."

Will we help creation groan its way to full realization? http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans+8%3A18-25&version=ESV

Or, will we renounce "the world God so loved" and flee, tail twixt legs, back to the ethereal Word? Back to the unimpeachable purity of transcendent Heaven?

I am sure the New Heaven will work itself out.

What lies in the lurch, however, is the creation of a New Earth. http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation%2021&version=NIV

Pax tecum

Alan

PS I encourage you to read Bertonneau's essay on "Apokatastasis" which shows surprising willingness to disenthrall from right-wing delight in Apocalypse, Armageddon (construed as a terrestrial event) and Eternal Damnation of "The Other." http://orthosphere.org/2013/07/11/apokatastasis/ His follow-up essay, in which he no longer relies on Lydia McGrew's "The Glorious Liberty of the Children of God" shows signs of backsliding and is not nearly as good.


These are the road-soiled feet Jesus washed at the last supper.
Ready for The Second Coming?


---------- Forwarded message ----------

From: Fred Owens <froghospital911@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Jan 10, 2014 at 1:05 PM
Subject:
To: Alan Archibald <alanarchibaldo@gmail.com>

Thomas Bertonneau is one of Laura Wood's people. He teaches at a small college in upstate New York.

Here is his take on post-literacy

Fred Owens
cell: 360-739-0214

My gardening blog is  Fred Owens
My writing blog is Frog Hospital

Fred Owens
35 West Main St Suite B #391
Ventura CA 93001

***

Follow-Up

Dear Fred,

Tomorrow, I will finish my response to Orthosphere's "Post Literacy."

***

Is texting a new language? 

Should it be honored with recognition?

I don't see that texting is intrinsically different from my Mom's "shorthand" which was taught in the nation's schools as soon as it was devised a "mechanism" whose mastery was immediately rewarded in the marketplace.

True, texting is generalized and shorthand was specialized but this distinction begs another set of questions.

A fundamental purpose of high school is not -- as "patriots" pretend -- to learn "content," but to learn how to behave. 

For most Americans, well-regulated behavior, punctuality and "just showing up" are the trinitarian outcomes of public instruction. Otherwise we would have neither Tea Bags nor Fundamentalist Christians.

I have no problem with social promotion as long as assignation of workplace "posts" does not normalize the employment of "the socially promoted" over "the academically promoted."  There will, of course, be exceptions to the rule, but I don't think social promotion presents any existential threat to marketplace preference for the learned.

Fear of social promotion is a tempest in a teapot - a textbook illustration of conservative alarmism.

Conservatives Scare More Easily Than Liberals

Conservatives are bent on pilpulistic  justice and cannot stand the thought that somebody -- somewhere -- might get a free lunch. 

This is because conservatives require a "God" who is absolute arbiter of merciless, non-indulgent justice, a God who plays by the rules and knows them as well as Shylock. (I have long held that indulgence is a high water mark of Catholicism, not reason for criticism,)

Concerning "the free lunch..."

On New Year's Day I greeted everyone: "Happy New Year! Another free trip around the sun!"

Still, there are always people who lack the wherewithal to pay their way, and one way or another they will fill their bellies even if means "eating the rich."

"The rich," on the other hand, are imbued with an unquestionable conviction of absolute entitlement and believe they can keep all their money simultaneously sequestering an ever larger slice of the pie. 
"The Rich Aren't Just Grabbing A Bigger Slice Of The Pie. They're Taking It All"

And so inequality worsens until the rank-and-file eventually rise up. 
"The Pitchforks Are Coming For Us Billionaires"
Amazon Financier, Nick Hanauer

The profoundest truths are paradoxical. 

The Roaring Twenties, followed by The Great Depression led to the New Deal. 

Similarly, The Great Recession will give way to a new, New Deal of which Obamacare is the first installment.

Obama's move toward socialized capitalism is his signal achievement, a movement that is now unstoppable.

"Republican Rule and Economic Catastrophe: A Lockstep Relationship"

Pax tecum

Alan

On Sat, Jan 11, 2014 at 5:15 PM, Fred Owens <froghospital911@gmail.com> wrote:
Post-literacy is a lively topic. Is it inevitable? That would be the first question.
Is texting a new language? Should texting be honored with recognition?
If  high school students refuse to read, but otherwise behave well, should they be promoted?
Fred Owens
cell: 360-739-0214

My gardening blog is  Fred Owens
My writing blog is Frog Hospital

send mail to:

Fred Owens
35 West Main St Suite B #391
Ventura CA 93001



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