The Present Collapse Of Evangelical Christianity

This is not another screed against Evangelical Christianity.

Indeed, in many ways I owe my Catholic faith to American Evangelicals who witnessed to their brand of Christianity when nary a Catholic would.  For me, my sojourn in Evangelical Christianity was like a way station:  a necessary step on a journey towards Christ that for a variety of reasons could never hold as a final destination in my worship of the Living God.  That said, without their enthusiasm, I may have continued to meander about in a secularist hell.

Among the problems with Evangelical Christianity, which, in any event, is more like mosaic than a monolith, are its lack of authority and its reliance on a personal experience -- a subjectivism -- as the touchstone for faith.  The former lends itself towards an inevitable drift away from orthodox Christian doctrine -- especially where hard teachings are concerned.  The latter is a defective means to authentic one's relationship with God -- it places religion as something dependent on feelings.  Our relationship with God waxes and wanes depending on mood.  Unless we are always "happy and shining" people, which, of course, we are not, our "faith journey" falls apart.  For this reason, Evangelicals are almost obliged to a person to present at times a false impression to the world:  they must never admit that their life is a mess, that their "faith journey" is faltering or that they are struggling.  They must, or so it seems, "fake it till they make it."  Moreover, if disaster strikes in one's Evangelical life, its theology does not offer a clear explanation of why.

Traditional Catholics, especially those who have never known Evangelical Christianity, will find this very strange.  After all, Catholicism properly understood provides us with the construct of "redemptive suffering" to make sense of the wickedness of the world around us.  The sacrament of Penance is a divine gift from God that corresponds with our need for continual renewal.  It is fair to say that almost in contradistinction to Evangelical Christianity, the more that one grows in Catholicism, the more it seems like their life is a mess, their faith journey is faltering and they struggle. For a Catholic, this should make perfect sense:  the closer we move to the Divine, the more we are exposed to how radically short we fall of what we could be, of what we should be.

Any Catholic should know that the Reformation was an iconoclastic explosion against both the alleged excesses of Catholic worship, doctrine, art, music and architecture.  It could be described a great white-washing -- a simplification.  The physical rendering of this iconoclastic movement is seen in the white-washed and bare Protestant churches, the removal of Christ from the Cross and the plainness of "worship."  Today, the juxtaposition of a solemn High Mass with a Baptist prayer meeting can lead to virtually no other conclusion that these are altogether different religions.  That is an overstatement but not far from the truth.  

This incipient tending towards "plainness" in all things is coupled with doctrinal drift.  The lack of an authority structure -- after all, the bible is not an authority, it is authoritative text in need of an authority -- necessarily has manifested itself in a great shedding of orthodox teaching.  These deformations come in all flavors but are most acute in the moral teachings of the Church.  Birth Control, Abortion, Divorce and Homosexuality are all areas in which many evangelicals have moved away, in whole or in part, from a Catholic understanding.  The movement seemed to move in proportion to how "hard" the teaching was to live by.  

Divorce, which is an absolute scourge upon Evangelical Christianity, was the first to go:  virtually all Evangelical Churches accept and admit members who are "divorced" and remarried.  We Catholics realize how hard this teaching can be:  after all, the idea of an abandoned innocent spouse forced to live without companionship is a great suffering.  Our response, as we know, cannot be that we twist God's word to ameliorate that suffering:  instead, the only choice is to embrace that suffering.  We Catholics also suffer from a divorce epidemic in first world countries: annulments are now the Catholic version of divorce-lite. That obviously has to stop. The central difference, however, between the Catholic and Protestant divorce problems (which for both are broad and profound) is that the Catholic one can be repaired as the doctrine is still intact (if seldom taught) -- the Protestant redefinition of doctrine down in terms of divorce cannot be recovered from.

The doctrinal drift -- especially in moral teachings -- has now moved into what we could characterize as even definitional Christian teachings.  The very essence of the Christian Creed is now under assault from certain Evangelical quarters.  The shift away from even any semblance of Christianity mirrors the art and architecture of the new Evangelicalism.  What was before a white-washed version of Christianity that was seen in neat and orderly plain church buildings is now something different:  the connection between a Catholic church and a Protestant one -- an evolution and descent that one could chart is now completely broken.  They are now coffee shops or conference centers or yoga centers.  There is not even a discernible trace of Christianity left to be found.  It is Evangelicalism without Christianity, which is exactly the admonition that the Fathers of the Counter-Reformation warned was the eventual endgame of the Reformation’s assault on Catholicism.

The secular Left cheers this development:  after all, they hate Christ; really, they hate him.  We can be sure that when the New York Times writes with wonder and praise of an Evangelical movement:  we can be sure without reading any of the article it is a movement away from Christ, away from the traditional moral demands of Christianity and away from the Catholic Church.  It is with this jaundiced eye that I read the following article published on June 7 by the New York Times:   Breaking the Evangelical Mold at a Church With Ethnic Roots

Before reading any further, I assumed from the title that this article would be about the secular commandments of diversity coupled with a new disinterest in the so-called culture wars.  After all, it seems like the Left, of which the New York Times is a veritable bible, cares only about furthering sexual immorality and diversity, which is now a code word for an antipathy for anything European -- especially classically European.  I was not disappointed.   The article is a both a testament to the destructive DNA within Evangelical Christianity and the Left's promotion of this disease.  Under the doctrine of Fair Use, I quote:

Last Sunday at Vox Veniae, a 200-person church in working-class East Austin, the volunteer baristas showed up an hour before worship services to make locally sourced coffee in the vaunted Chemex system, beloved of connoisseurs. To enhance the java-snob appeal, no milk or sugar was provided. “It’s a purist thing,” one barista said.

“Keep Austin Weird,” the local slogan goes. And the approach to coffee is just one unusual feature of this rule-breaking church in the notably alternative Texas capital.

There’s the building, for example. The church meets in what used to be Chester’s, an after-hours B.Y.O.B. club that shut down in 2007 after a fatal shooting close by. Members of Vox, as the church is known, cleaned up the building, christened it Space 12 and made it a hub for Austin-style activity. It’s their church hall, yes, but also a Wi-Fi-equipped space that freelancers can use for a small daily donation; a yoga studio; an art gallery; and the home of the Inside Books Project, which sends books to prison inmates.

This is is the new "church," which is to say this is "no" church.  Welcome to the new and exciting world of post-Christian worship space.  We are, as the reader can surmise, far removed from the Roman Basilica.  The emphasis on worship space is critical: that the article leads with this is not accidental.  Might I suggest that we assume for a moment that Satan -- under his New York Times pseudonym wrote this article.  He knows that we human beings worship God in bodies -- in the material world, which is all that we know.  The fact that Christianity had developed ritual postures and spaces was not by happenstance:  it was the collective wisdom of the Church fathers that as we bend our bodies -- bend the knees of our hearts -- in worship of the living God, we conform our spirits with His will.  The Church Fathers also recognized that God gave us five material senses that are engaged in authentic worship:  we enter, as it were, in total physical worship of God with the totality of our physical experience.  

As an aside, it is for this reason that Novus Ordo Catholics misunderstand the Traditionalist critique:  it is not aesthetic in nature.  We object because the New Mass is a diminution of that total body worship.  In fact, with echoes of the Reformation's assault in mind, the New Mass is trumpeted on the basis of its ritual and sensory simplification.  We see the collapse of Catholic faith since the Council as related essentially to this error of equating authentic worship as simple worship.  

The Protestant errors could be reduced to this elimination of authentic worship:  their "worship" was reduced to the intellectual processing of words and ideas as the "sermon" takes pride of place.  This stripping of physical worship lent itself to a deformation of Christian discipline.  Protestant bodies, devoid of physical worshipping, eventually gave up the discipline necessary to abide by the hard moral teachings.  Make no mistake, the connection between Protestant doctrinal drift is inextricably tied to its worship style.  Thus, the fact that this author lauds this new anti-worship space -- a re-imangined broken down night club is no accident at all.  The fact that white-washed churches would eventually give way to spaces like this was more or less foreordained.

The article continues:

But what’s really unexpected about Vox, to anyone who knows American Protestantism, is that what began as a church for Chinese-Americans quickly became multiracial. Last Sunday morning, whites were in the majority, and in addition to Asian-Americans, there were Latinos and African-Americans in the pews — or, rather, the metal folding chairs around the small stage where a six-piece band played before the pastor, the Rev. Gideon Tsang, delivered his sermon.

In a country that is growing more racially diverse, and in an evangelical movement that is becoming more politically diverse, Vox Veniae, which is Latin for “voice of forgiveness,” may be, as Jesus said, a sign of the times.

Racially diverse churches are often led by white pastors who recruit in minority communities, usually by hiring nonwhite assistant pastors. It is less common to see an ethnic church attract whites. It may be that white people avoid churches where at first they will be outnumbered. Or perhaps the ethnic churches’ worship styles feel alien (especially if prayers and sermons are in a foreign language). Whatever the reason, white churches sometimes succeed in drawing minority worshipers, but minority churches rarely attract white people.

Mr. Tsang sports arm tattoos and the modish, buzzed-on-the-sides, long-on-top haircut that many young men who request it call “the Hitler Youth.” He was raised in Toronto, the son of a Chinese-Canadian pastor of an ethnic church. In 2006, he started Vox Veniae as an independent planting of the Austin Chinese Church, a larger church that wanted a mission to young people, especially University of Texas students. In 2007, the church opened Space 12, and in 2009, it moved its worship services there. Along the way, it began to draw older people. And whiter people.

If we could personalize the New York Times and the zeitgeist it represents and ask "him" what are the most important commandments, like the way our Lord was quizzed two thousand years ago, the answer that the New York Times incarnate would give would like be this:  Thou shalt be Diverse.  If we read the article's approbation and recitation of racial minutia in this way, we see that this "church" is living the mission.  

At first blush, we Catholics might fall prey to the idea that this piece of data -- this very idea -- is a benign one.  After all, the forced segregation of Protestant churches was a legacy of racism such that its diminishing is a sign of progress.  In that sense, we can agree but I submit that there is much more to Grey Lady's approbation here.   We should be very suspicious.

Initially consider that the worldwide diversity of the Catholic Church -- that its members span every racial and ethnic makeup is never lauded.  We have to ask why is Catholic diversity not as satisfying to the The Times as the Vox church?  Let me suggest a reason:  The Catholic Church is diverse but ideally it is unitive -- even obliterative.  When we consider that man today lives ethnically in the ruins of the Tower of Babel, we see the Church as a unitive force to place him -- black, white, brown or yellow -- in an authentic relationship with God.  His color, language and geography are not essential -- he or she is a human being made in likeness of God, endowed with dignity for that reason alone.  The Church is diverse but only inasmuch as man is diverse:  she strives to unify man before God such that this accidental distinctions race and culture disappear in authentic worship.

But for the Times, diversity is essential -- differences are to remain and be celebrated.  Indeed, if we see that the Devil's foremost goal is to divide us from God, and from one another, that he would want to see diversity as an end celebrated should not surprise us.  Where the Church seeks to repair the consequences of the confusion that still emanates from Babel -- the Devil wants to perpetuate and celebrate it.  

Again, as an aside, the traditional emphasis on the Church's worship in Latin served this worldwide unitive purpose:  it was a great equalizer.  It is a sorry lament that we have lost that and in many cities, multi-ethnic worship must take place in two or even three different languages.  

The article continues:

When Leena Pacak, now 33, was growing up, her parents were nonobservant Hindus. Ms. Pacak was baptized when she was 24, and met her husband, also now a Vox member, at a church in Chicago. She said that before becoming a Christian, she had to overcome negative impressions about evangelicals, who always seemed to be intertwined with the religious right.

“My impression from the community is there is a real mix, including a lot of liberal-thinking people here,” said Ms. Pacak, a midwifery student.

Her husband, Cole, said Vox felt freer than other churches on issues like abortion and gay marriage, poverty and Middle Eastern politics. “Vox is a church where no one political viewpoint is pushed, which is great,” Mr. Pacak said.

Following the exaltation of diversity and obliteration of worship in any recognizable sense, the Times now commends the post-political nature of the Vox Church.   "Post-political" is code for the lack of any moral bearings spoken.  Christian ethics are reduced to a political (and unpopular at that) viewpoint -- the Vox church is refreshing because it is open on these issues, according to the Times.  When we read that Vox is a church "where no one political viewpoint is pushed," what should should be reading is that Vox is a church in which no moral demands are made on "believer," if you could even call a Vox member a believer.

So we are now reduced to no worship or moral demands and no beliefs except the essential goodness of diversity:  we are reduced to Evangelicalism without even the vestiges of Catholicism.  What is significant is that the Vox church -- and the article about it -- does not mention Christ in any meaningful way.  In a virtual expose on the Vox church in the New York Times, Jesus Christ is invisible -- not worthy of a mention.  His being omitted is to be expected: the pretense of Christ being related to this type of endeavor is no longer even needed.  

I admit I conflicted about this Evangelical conflagration:  I hate to see the elimination of our Lord's name even among our "separated brethren" but the heresy, as we know, had to eventually metastasize and result in the death of the patient.  That death is upon us.

Deo Gratis.

The Futility of Anxiety in the Face of Cultural Disintegration

Fear not, for I am with thee: turn not aside, for I am thy God: I have strengthened thee, and have helped thee, and the right hand of my just one hath upheld thee. Behold all that fight against thee shall be confounded and ashamed, they shall be as nothing, and the men shall perish that strive against thee. Thou shalt seek them, and shalt not find the men that resist thee: they shall be as nothing: and as a thing consumed the men that war against thee. For I am the Lord thy God, who take thee by the hand, and say to thee: Fear not, I have helped thee. Fear not, thou worm of Jacob, you that are dead of Israel: I have helped thee, saith the Lord: and thy Redeemer the Holy One of Israel. I have made thee as a new thrashing wain, with teeth like a saw: thou shall thrash the mountains, and break them in pieces: and shalt make the hills as chaff.

(Prophecy Of Isaiah 41:10-15)

A perfectly natural condition for fallen man is fear -- and I mean unholy fear and anxiety.  It is beyond the scope of this article to offer an explanation of this phenomenon other than to offer as an axiom that  since the fall of man -- without any perfected sense of the transcendent -- man is anxious, uncomfortable and powerless in his own skin.  

It is not without reason that a recurrent theme that straddles the Old and New Testaments is that the authentic believer should eschew unholy fear and anxiety.  The archetype of this new man -- this reconstructed man without fear -- are the great Saints who lived, as much as possible for a creature, with an utterly different faith; a faith that has no room for human concerns based in material and temporal existence (which, after all, are the roots of all fears).  No matter what situation -- no matter how dire or socially and physically stigmatizing -- the great Saints turned in trust towards God.  It is an ideal we should emulate but one that is very hard to live in practice.  

Part of fear stems from an overemphasis of the importance of the limited material reality in front of us.  We value of physical life, our material sustenance, our human comforts, our notions of companionship -- all in the physical world of space and time.  While we may parrot our belief in the eternal, our fears at death expose a faith and trust that is an inch deep.  If we had the faith of lions, we would not question  or fear God's good grace to order his creation in exactly the way he would or the points at which we enter or depart from time and space.  Indeed, if we believed wholly that we were eternal creatures destined for God and that death is merely a step in that eternal passage, we would not see it as a terminus and fear it accordingly.  All that said, such a faith is a work in progress and the Saints were not made overnight, and nor will we.  But fear ultimately has no place in the heart of the child of God.

But we live in world and are obliged as Christians to build up the Kingdom of God in our midst.  We therefore must rightly be engaged with the injustice and immorality in our lives, in our families, and in our communities.  We are required to straighten the crooked path inasmuch as God gives us grace and power to do so.  God's justice requires that we order our lives and families and communities in righteous way and in his ineffable mercy he provides us with the sacraments to nourish us with Godly food in order to do our work.  

What happens, however, when the task becomes so overwhelming that we cannot seem to make the slightest bit of difference?  For many who look about the cultural and moral currents around them -- especially here in the United States and other first world countries -- it would seem as though nothing can be done to stem to cultural disintegration happening around them.  I am surely not alone when I confess a sense of despair when I see what has happened in my country.  These "whats" can be enormous dislocations of the moral order -- like the 1973 "legalization" of infanticide by the United States Supreme Court or the more recent acceptance of "marriage" by homosexuals.  They can and often are smaller -- like the family members who no longer possess a moral vocabulary or ethical facility to know right from wrong -- or even consider it a relevant question any more.  

For example, the Boy Scouts of America's (BSA) recent decision to allow "gay" scouts (albeit not "gay" scout masters) struck me as yet another milestone in our collective and societal descent in to moral and social anarchy.  As I thought about, it was virtually inconceivable that the BSA would ever reverse their decision; indeed, the only direction this process seems to work is towards greater and greater moral chaos.  The only change -- and change surely will come -- is that the BSA will eventually allow "gay" scout leaders.  We never seem to move from less virtue to more.  That "seeming" fact -- the fact that we only move further from God, further from the good, and do so to rousing applause -- is what I determined was bothering me so much about the BSA's ill-conceived move.  And I was troubled at that seeming truism -- I feared for my life, for my children's life, at the world I am inheriting and the one they are certain to inherit.  

We do see things, however, that surprise us and give us hope.  Take for example the huge protests in France over homosexual "marriage" that I think genuinely shocked the world.  Who would of thought anyone in France still cared?  Or perhaps it is the largely ignored U.S. March for Life every January in Washington, D.C. that grows in number and youth?   There are rear guard movements that the liberal hegemonic forces fear that occasionally happen in unexpected ways.  We have to admit that the operative concept is rear guard -- they never seem to offer a vision for a new society but rather merely the preservation of some social custom or status quo that the Leftists are inevitably changing in a way opposed to good morality and order.  The rear guard movements -- as satisfying as they might be -- are fleeting so as to feel almost like a dream in which one wakes to the nightmarish world that is real.

But in the midst of my despair, I recalled the words of the inestimable Richard Weaver in his full tilt political classic of sixty years ago, Ideas Have Consequences, where he observed that what we are experiencing in the West -- an obvious cultural disintegration -- is a process that does not end until we see the complete dissolution of the preexisting cultural norms and touchstones.  He put forward, axiomatically, the idea of cultural entropy that cannot be avoided.  Perversely, I was comforted by recalling his observation because I remembered that two important points:  (1) there is nothing "seeming" about the fact that we move only from good order to worse order -- we never move from less virtue to more; and (2) once understood as such, what I (and we by extension) should do in light of this reality became clear to me.  Instead of an anxiety over an apparently unintelligible phenomenon -- like the fear before a great contingent force of nature -- Weaver's observation placed me once again in an intelligible place. 

What does this inevitable entropic process mean?  Does it mean we disengage or opt-out of the world?  Not at all.  But it does mean that we must cease to see our efforts to reform the world through the prism of their human and social efficacy.  For example, we can and should continue to protest abortion -- not so much because we think we actually may convince jurists or voters to change -- because by doing so we witness to God's justice.  But what Weaver's observation does in a practical sense is remove the necessity of fear.  There is nothing contingent about our decline -- there is nothing we can do about it to reverse it to a prior and more ordered state.  It -- our Western culture -- is in terminal decline.  It is dying and the symptoms of its impending death are the very things we see as evils.

Rather than engaging the political reality around us, we instead be preparing for what will replace it.  That will be accomplished in a simple way:  holiness, personal and collectively.  What becomes critical for a culture of virtue to rise from the ashes of this wasteland is sanctity.  More than any other people that came before us -- certainly in recent centuries -- we need to be a people committed to a Eucharistic experience of worship and love.  We must center ourselves around right worship in which we bend the knees of our heart before the living God.  Holiness in liturgy, holiness in home life, holiness in matrimony, holiness in work, holiness in recreation, holiness in everything.  Everything.

What is required for the people of God at this juncture of history is an overriding zeal for God that puts Him before everything.  That puts right worship of him before everything.  

In our social lives, we must be people who radically reject the cultural paradigm today.  If the average decadent American family has 1.8 children, we should have 10.  We should homeschool if for no other reason that it insulates our children from the variety of deadly social toxins that swim freely.  We should not fret how we'll pay for college -- the American obsession with upwardly mobility is every bit as malignant as so many other points of its culture.  We should be obsessed with an upward mobility towards virtue and wisdom -- and money has nothing do with it.  

But to return to the theme, fear is natural for us:  fear is a part of how we experience the world.  The fear that people of good will feel in the face of the variety of moral calamities around them is one that should be looked at differently.  It is not a call to despair or hide:  it is a call to build, to build up the Kingdom of God here and now -- and the world to come -- with a fearless heart.  Small and insignificant (seeming as it were) steps in faith towards personal holiness and virtue will provide the necessary seedbed for the future flourishing of a great culture to come and, oh by the way, it will also secure our salvation in God's good grace.  In that world to come, you will no longer be the social outcasts that you are today but remembered as the faithful stewards of the Lord who were blessed to live in an age when God needed cooperative righteous builders -- and you were one of them.

Deo Gratias.

The Great Stereotopican Weaves Another Story ...

According to inestimable Richard Weaver, the modern media is the Great Stereotopican -- a force of manipulation that projects images, words, ideas and themes through varied sensory means to create and maintain the culture of the people we are -- and are to become.

While the American newspaper has been in terminal decline during the last thirty years -- a death hastened by the advent of the internet's free dissemination of news and information -- it nonetheless wields a tremendous influence on what constitutes "news," what is within the norm of "acceptable," what is objectionable -- what is not, what is worth preserving and what is worth destroying.  We all know that the modern media -- like virtually all intellectual fields today -- is overtly and manifestly socialist, atheist, and progressive.  It drives the stories that that they want us to care about.  

For example, if two homosexuals sexually assault a preteen boy in a neighbor's house in Alabama, this would not be a "national" story because, according to the media, there is no "there" there.  (That is actually a true story).  If however a couple of drunk rednecks assault and kill a homosexual in a bar in Wyoming, it becomes a "national" story and Matthew Shepherd becomes a national icon.  The latter story fits within a narrative that the media implicitly pushes with relentlessness.  The former obviously does not fit within the narrative and therefore ignored.  If we knew the name of the Alabama boy molested by homosexuals and not the name of Matthew Shepherd -- the very nature of the debate of deviant sexuality might be different in this country. 

Here is another theme:  liberals, even if their big government policies are counter-productive on occasion, are really the best and biggest hearted among us.  They just love us too much.  Even if conservatives are right on some point, we know, or so the narrative goes, they are simply motivated by selfishness or close-mindedness.  That liberals -- most of them in fact -- are lemmings.  They are what one friend of mine law school so aptly put when looking at the clowns rummaging around the clothes bins at Urban Outfitters:  nonconforming conformists.  While the activists among them are dedicated communists and socialists -- who hate with their very core all that is good and pure about a patriarchal right-ordered Christian society -- that know exactly what they believe even if they are insufferably sanctimonious.  They are exactly what they condemn in others:  dogmatic with an a priori belief in their world view.  But the vast majority of Democratic voters are losers -- indeed, if you have a job in this country, you know, get up in the morning, shower, shave and go to a job, you probably are not rich and you are much less likely to be a democratic voter (unless you are are union activist and then you don't really work either).  Half the country does not pay any federal income tax as it is:  for whom do you think that they vote?

I used to wonder why liberal talk radio failed over and over again.  Then it occurred to me:  the people driving around during the day have jobs -- they are working  They don't want to hear Air America.  They don't want to hear about how they don't pay enough taxes or how criminals should be set free or how their country is a bad place, etc.   But we have reached a point that the activists + losers = enough votes to win national elections.  What Plato warned about Democracy has come to fruition -- selfishness and feeding at the public trough has overtaken any former sense of self reliance.  It is easier to take from your neighbor than to work honestly.  Too many Americans -- far too many -- have no sense of honor anymore.  

OK, but I am off message here.  Yes, I really think a sizable contingent of Democratic voters are selfish losers who want something from someone else.  I really do.  I think most Republican votes are middle class people that work for a living and struggle to raise a family.  As a traditional Catholic, I know that political virtues and parties are, in the end, largely irrelevant.  After all, we are playing in a masonic sandbox when it comes to the U.S. Constitution.  But I am still living here in the country watching its demise -- perhaps foreordained by the Constitution or other forces -- but I am still watching it.

So, again, back the the Stereotopican's narrative.  I read with amazement today's article in the Grey Lady about bisexual actress Cynthia Nixon and her aw-shucks commitment to great political movements.  Really, the article made me want to vomit because it was so hagiographic.  It was one of the near perfect examples of the liberal narrative that I had to stop what I was doing and write this missive.

I cite the New York Article in the Style Section (which itself is telling and appropriate), Cynthia Nixon, a Liberal, but With No Limousine, in full with my editorializing:

A couple of months ago, Cynthia Nixon sent Alec Baldwin an e-mail that had nothing to do with a potential film project, a play that either of them might have been considering or even what to do about pesky tabloid reporters (although both actors are familiar with those). 

Instead, Ms. Nixon was writing because she had seen Mr. Baldwin on television discussing the New York mayoral race and saying that he was leaning against the perceived front-runner, Christine Quinn, the speaker of the City Council, and toward Bill de Blasio, the public advocate. Ms. Nixon explained that she was thrilled to hear this and that she hoped she might be able to persuade him to deliver a formal endorsement on behalf of her candidate.

Soon enough, an e-mail came from Mr. Baldwin that Ms. Nixon later described as “completely adorable.” In it, he apologized for having assumed — “lamely,” in his words — that Ms. Nixon would be supporting Ms. Quinn (both, after all, are famous lesbians), and that he would be happy to endorse Mr. de Blasio. [A wonderful demonstration of her post-LGBT open-mindedness -- this is a theme that will be repeated again]

Ms. Nixon’s entreaties didn’t stop with the “30 Rock” actor. Over the next several weeks, she piled up endorsements and donations from Tony Kushner, Susan Sarandon, Sarah Jessica Parker and Jon Robin Baitz, among others. 

She organized an LGBT benefit for Mr. de Blasio that featured gender-bending performers like Justin Bond, Flotilla de Barge and Tina Turnstyle. She is also a key member of the Women for de Blasio committee. 

“There are weeks where four or five days in a row, I’m doing something with Cynthia,” Mr. de Blasio said. “She’s that fully involved with the campaign.”

None of this comes as much of a surprise to Ms. Nixon’s friends, who, over the last decade, have seen her become more and more involved with a number of high-profile progressive causes and emerge, along with Mr. Baldwin and Sean Penn, as one of the more prominent celebrity activists on the political left. 

In the last two years, Ms. Nixon has traveled around the country to campaign in states where amendments to legalize gay marriage were on the ballot. She has gone to Washington to speak for Planned Parenthood and to protest rollbacks of Roe v. Wade. [Why do Lesbians care so much about killing babies in utero?  Do they desperately want to preserve choice if they change their minds about in vitro babies?  It is rather the narrative of authentic freedom -- that they are products of a narcissistic sense of self so they need to afford others the same radical choice even if it means crushing the heads of babies in utero.]   She went to Florida and Virginia on behalf of President Obama’s re-election effort and to Minnesota, on behalf of Al Franken, a senator from that state. “She’s not dabbling at all,” Mr. Franken said in a phone interview. “We had given her material on what I had done, but she really internalized it and put it together in her own way. She knows what she is talking about."

And, with her [not] spouse, Christine Marinoni, the former New York director of the Alliance for Quality Education, Ms. Nixon has been a tireless advocate for increasing financing to New York City’s public schools. [A veritable progressive saint]

“She’s incredibly bright, and she understands that there is an opportunity for her to be a voice when others might not have that opportunity,” Ms. Parker said. “Cynthia can stand in the front at a rally and speak because she will bring attention; she will have a presence that creates curiosity.”   [The narrative is that all bright people with curiosity are liberals who want to be voices for others who can't speak]

Ms. Nixon’s work as an activist dates back to roughly 2001, when she was on “Sex and the City” and became an advocate on behalf of public education. She had grown up in Manhattan and had attended public schools. Her father was a radio journalist who spent much of the ’60s covering the civil rights movement, and her mother was an actress who trained with Uta Hagen. 

When Ms. Nixon had children, she said she never considered sending them anywhere other than public schools. Then, a recession hit and the city was faced with budget cuts, just as Ms. Nixon’s daughter was entering kindergarten. So Ms. Nixon sprang into action. (Ms. Parker called it “kind of her gateway” into politics). 

“Anything that could be cut was cut,” Ms. Nixon said last week over a late lunch at the NoHo Star, where she was sitting in a booth in a trim black peacoat from Bendel’s, a pair of fitted jeans and cowboy boots. “The school was so overcrowded, kindergarten classes were housed in trailers in the back."  [It is a piece in the Style section after all]

So Ms. Nixon began attending rallies — even got herself arrested protesting at City Hall. “We marched on up, sat down and blocked the entrance,” she said. “The police very politely asked us to move, and we declined. They pulled up the police van and put us in.”
Soon enough, Ms. Nixon met Ms. Marinoni, who until recently worked for the Alliance for Quality Education, as well as Mr. de Blasio.   [Liberal street cred]

“Bill was then, as he is now, very much the education guy,” Ms. Nixon said. “Not only from being a public school parent himself, but sitting on school boards and seeing as I see that public schools are the cornerstone to how our city works and how our city offers opportunity and plans for its economic future.” 

Still, it was the actress’s relationship with Ms. Marinoni that garnered the most attention in the tabloid press. Before their involvement, Ms. Nixon had been heterosexual. She had two children with Danny Mozes, a teacher and photographer she had met in high school.
But once Ms. Nixon fell in love with Ms. Marinoni (they [did not] married in New York last year), she quickly came out publicly and began doing work on behalf of gay rights. 

Last year, Ms. Nixon drew the ire of a number of gay activists when she gave an interview to The New York Times Magazine in which she discussed her relationship with Ms. Marinoni and seemed to question the idea that being gay is a fixed identity for everyone and cannot ever be a choice. [Here we are working towards a post-LGBT world when sexuality will not be strictly straight or gay -- it will be evolving and self-referential -- it will be liberating from even our genetic straight jackets.  It will lead exactly back to where we started, which is that sexuality is at its core a question of children and morality]

“I probably should not talk about this now,” Ms. Nixon said, pointing out that any attempt to extricate herself from a controversy invariably winds up prolonging it. 

Nevertheless, the experience annoyed her, because she thought she was being attacked, and because she believes gay men and lesbians have a multiplicity of experiences that ought to be acknowledged and celebrated rather than muzzled for the sake of political correctness.  

“Different strokes for different folks,” she said. “My view of my sexuality is just my view. It has nothing to do with your view of your sexuality or even my view of your sexuality.”

Today, Ms. Nixon and Ms. Marinoni live near SoHo with Ms. Nixon’s two children from her relationship with Mr. Mozes, as well as a child Ms. Marinoni conceived in 2010. They buy groceries at Whole Foods and ride the subway everywhere. [A humble and everyday saint]

“What am I going to do, take a limousine?” said Ms. Nixon, who is proud of what “Sex and the City” did for women but somewhat less enamored of the way it celebrated conspicuous consumption. 

“It’s an aspect of the show I never liked,” she said. “I remember when we screened the first movie in London, when Mr. Big shows Carrie that closet he’s built for her and the entire audience clapped. I found that devastating. Maybe that’s a strong word, but I was disheartened. Because I thought: ‘Is this what these women in the audience think true love is? A man who has enough money to buy you a walk-in closet?’ ” [This is unbelievable, a show that show serial obscenity, philandering and fornication -- and she is "devast[ed] by audience clapping at a walk-in closet?  Evidently, the sin of conspicuous consumption is a great one in the liberal narrative.]

Similarly, she’s uneasy with the changing face of New York and its growing disparity of wealth. She can rattle off statistics about the percentage of children living in poverty in the city today (30 percent), and is eager for a mayor who she thinks will fight harder to secure affordable housing for the poor and the middle class. [Socialist call to arms]

“I’ve got to say, I’m not anti-Chris Quinn,” Ms. Nixon said. “I worked alongside her in the marriage fight, and I believe she was incredibly eloquent and incredibly effective. But apart from that particular gay issue, I don’t see a lot of stuff where I line up with her.”
And as Ms. Nixon sees it, there’s something rather nice about finally being at a point when an openly lesbian actress can oppose an openly lesbian politician. “I think it’s a sign of progress,” she said. “It’s like the smoke has cleared in some way and gays, blacks, Caucasians and everybody is able to see beyond the person that might look like them, and go more for the person’s voting record or the person’s plan for the city.”

The Great Stereotopican thrives in part because most votes are "low information" voters.  While this is generally true, there is something more at stake than ignorance.  We all know that the narrative is just as important -- what do you think that an article like this conveys.  Can you imagine this article being written in the Style Section of any newspaper extolling the political virtues of those brave souls who opposed gay "marriage" or abortion or the like?  Unthinkable -- utterly.  If such an article were written, if some conservative personality had captured the imagination of the public (like Dr. Ben Carson), the article would not only be less panegyric -- it would have to offer the Stereotopican's narrative's qualifications.   And so it goes -- the narrative goes on unabated.  And I know now what a hero the bisexual Cynthia Nixon is.

Deo Gratis.

Church of England at it again...

From Reuters:

The Church of England published a plan on Friday to approve the ordination of women bishops by 2015, a widely supported reform it just missed passing last November after two decades of divisive debate.  It said the new plan, outlined in a document signed by Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby and Archbishop of York John Sentamu, would be presented to the General Synod, the Church legislature, in July to begin the approval process. The proposal would make allowances for traditionalists who oppose women clergy, a minority that blocked the reform at the last Synod meeting, but each diocese will have to have a bishop willing to ordain women to the priesthood, it said. The issue pits reformers, keen to project a more modern and egalitarian image of the church as it struggles with falling congregations in many increasingly secular countries, against a minority of conservatives who see the change as contradicting the Bible.
"We are perhaps at a moment when the only way forward is one which makes it difficult for anyone to claim outright victory," said Bishop Nigel Stock, chairman of the working group drawing up new proposals after the reform's defeat last November. "The Church of England should retain its defining characteristic of being a broad Church, capable of accommodating a wide range of theological conviction," he said in a statement.
The mother church to the world's 80 million Anglicans was thrown into turmoil when the reform won 73 percent support but failed because it fell four votes short in the House of Laity.  Legislation needs a two-thirds majority in the Synod's houses of bishops, clergy and laity to pass. Because of the legislative process, Synod members had said it would take five years before the reform could come up for another vote.
"WILFULLY BLIND"
"It seems as if we are willfully blind to some of the trends and priorities of ... wider society," outgoing Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams said at the time.
A Sunday Times survey in March showed 80 percent of those polled favored allowing women to become bishops and almost 50 percent thought the Church was wrong to oppose British government plans to legalize same-sex marriage.  The Church approved the ordination of women priests in 1992, but delayed making them bishops because of opposition within its previously all-male clergy. Bishops play a key role in many Christian churches where only they can ordain new clergy.  Women already serve as Anglican bishops in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States, but Anglican churches in many developing countries oppose any female clergy and are working together to shield themselves against such reforms.  Several Protestant denominations allow women clergy, including bishops, but the largest Christian churches - the Roman Catholics and the Orthodox - do not. The Church of England decided to allow celibate gay bishops in January, earning stinging criticism from traditionalist African Anglican leaders.  The new plan would allow conservative bishops to continue in office while opposing women's ordination, but said "there should no longer be any dioceses where none of the serving bishops ordains women as priests."  It also suggested that future appointments might be influenced by a bishop's views on women clergy, saying that "many dioceses will want to insist that their diocesan bishop should be someone who ordains women".

I don't know why but I do follow the events of the Church of England.  It is my version of reality television; it is always a train-wreck but entertaining nonetheless.

Last November, the Anglicans, by the slimmest of margins among the laity, voted down female "bishopettes" much to shock and consternation of the modernist "church" men and women. In light of the vote, one "bishop" of Chelmsford, Stephen Cottrell, lamented: "There's a risk the national church will become a national embarrassment."  Sorry Mr. Cottrell, the national embarrassment time has long since passed and you are playing a central role.

How far the CofE has come:  my goodness.  Bishopettes, homosexual and divorced clergy (perhaps both), rampant indifferentism, abortion, birth control, denial of virtually every dogma of the Church.... and it goes on and on and on.  The CofE is proof positive of an ecclesial body's inevitable descent into moral and doctrinal madness once it is cut off from an authentic authority.  It may not seem like a straight line, but the path between Hugh Latimer and Thomas Cranmer leads directly to the chaos of today's CofE.  

What never ceases to amaze me is the rationale put forward by CofE leaders:  we need bishopettes to get with times.  That is what Christianity has been reduced in England:  venerable (and stolen) buildings and a vapid modernist rot masquerading with miters and staffs.  And there are Catholics that think we should follow the CofE into oblivion?  

The end is near for the CofE:  it will linger on as some sort of halfway house between national museum and church until rigor mortis finally sets in and it is reduce to the same status as old castles and ruined monasteries.  Sad but ultimately inevitable.

Another Fine Example of Higher Ordered Catholic Thinking...

Jewish leaders in the media are in large part responsible for American acceptance of gay marriage, Vice President Biden said Tuesday night. “I believe what affects the movements in America, what affects our attitudes in America are as much the culture and the arts as anything else,” he said at a Democratic National Committee reception for Jewish American Heritage Month. He cited social media and the sitcom “Will and Grace,” giving Jews a large part of the credit for both. “I bet you 85 percent of those changes, whether it’s in Hollywood or social media are a consequence of Jewish leaders in the industry,” he said. “The influence is immense, the influence is immense. And, I might add, it is all to the good.” The vice president also praised Jewish contributions to science, immigration reform, the civil-rights movement, the arts, the law and to feminism. “I think you vastly underestimate the impact you’ve had on the development of this nation,” he said. “We’re a great country because of the contributions and most importantly because of Jewish heritage and the values you brought.” The praise was so profuse that New York Magazine’s Jonathan Chait found it worrisome, noting that white supremacists are already taking Biden’s speech as evidence of a secret Jewish conspiracy.

Biden: Jewish leaders helped gay marriage succeed

This article -- and our esteemed Vice President's comments -- are so unbelievable on so many levels.

First, consider if virtually anyone made the same comments, i.e., "nearly 85%" of the liberalizing social changes in the last fifty years are a direct consequence of Jewish influence:  they would be immediately be branded as vicious anti-semites.  Second, our "good" Catholic Vice President is extolling people on their alleged influence to move society in a manner that is diametrically opposed to traditional morality in every meaningful way.  Isn't it great guys, you have totally debased civilization -- awesome job :)  Third, what a sickening display of obsequy -- I mean, a modern Uncle Tom.

I will leave the questions to Jewish influence to someone else -- but I will say that I would view the comment as a terrible canard.  

Gay "marriage" is one of the great social advances our Vice President lays on their feet.  Read "feminism" and be sure he means birth control and infanticide and divorce.  Great, isn't it:  lets have sex with anyone(s) at any time with no social consequence.  Let's grovel like pigs in our own filthy sin.  Wow, this is great.  The breakdown of the nuclear family is so wonderful and liberating; especially for the children who get a bedroom at both Mommy's and Daddy's house.

Where -- where is the Churchman to call out this absolute disgrace of a human being?  Where?  He will be roasting on a spit in Hell for eternity and our Bishops ignore it.  Do they even care about him or the legions of people he deceives?  And if I were merely an ignorant Catholic, what would I think of this man?  Isn't he a "good" Catholic in "good" standing who receives the Blessed Sacrament every Sunday?  You mean I can be a "good" Catholic and also support gay "marriage."  Really, great, that sounds awesome -- you see, this way, I don't have to take a position that is not publicly popular.  This unbelievable fool is leading soul upon soul to Hell with him.  

Where is the culpability for his soul?  Where is the Bishop that will stand up to this blowhard and tell him to repent or never darken the door of any Catholic Church in preparation for his hellish destination?

Every day it seems like a new outrage.  Every single day.  

Unlike the poor soul who committed suicide in the Cathedral of Notre Dame just a few days ago -- evidently in despair of France's decision to equate sodomy with Holy Matrimony, I refuse to despair.  The blasphemers should be the ones quaking -- God's justice will be mocked for only so long.  

I continue to do what I always do:  pray, pray and pray that God may show mercy on my country; that he may cleanse his Church with alacrity; that he might raise up new lions of faith who might re-convert the world.  

If my words are harsh, they are offered in response to a "Catholic" abortion whore.  I offer no apologies for that.

Things Fall Apart, The Center Cannot Hold

Oh troika, winged troika, tell me who invented you? Surely, nowhere but among a nimble nation could you have been born in a country which has taken itself in earnest and has evenly spread far and wide over half of the globe, so that once you start counting the milestones you may count on till a speckled haze dances before your eyes... Rus, are you not similar in your headlong motion to one of those nimble troikas that none can overtake? The flying road turns into smoke under you, bridges thunder and pass, all fall back and is left behind!... And what does this awesome motion mean? What is the passing strange steeds! Has the whirlwind a home in your manes?... Rus, whither are you speeding to? Answer me. No answer. The middle bell trills out in a dream its liquid soliloquy; the roaring air is torn to pieces and becomes wind; all things on earth fly by and other nations and states gaze askance as they step aside and give her the right of way.

Dead Souls, Nikolai Gogol

From the Gallop Organization:


Woe to you who call evil good and good evil.

I was born in 1971 -- a child of the New Springtime in America and the Church.  When I was a nine year old boy, my country elected Ronald Reagan as President.  The country I knew is gone.  Like Gogol who wondered in the mid-nineteenth century, Russia, whither are you speeding?  I lament, where America, where will it end.

What is amazing is how quickly it descended.  There is undoubtedly a multiplier effect in moral descent:  the more immoral we become, the faster we become even more immoral.  I am not sure where it all ends, but I do know this:  the natural consequences of a nation that embraces widespread immorality, as this one is now totally comfortable, is ruin.  Not from fireballs from the sky, not from brimstone, but from the perfectly natural consequences of the sin.

I am not privy to the mind of God but if we take our clue from the bible, it is a fearful thing to contemplate God's wrath.  We are a wretched, immoral people.

Church, where are you?  Bishops, where are you?  Priests, where are you?  You let this rot fester in the heart of the Church, you created the Andrew Cuomo's and Edward Kennedy's and Kathleen Sebelius's and Joe Biden's of the world.  You made nice with politicians who blithely and relentlessly legalize and defend the "right" of monsters to crush the skulls of babies in utero!  Shame on you, shame, shame, shame.  You made nice with politicians who would sanction sodomy as equal to Holy Matrimony.  The Society of Saint Pius X is in "schism" yet the massive and widespread and open moral laxity and dissent and negligent teaching continues unabated in official church-dom.

You have single-handedly destroyed two thousand years of orthodox Catholic teaching in the minds of Catholic people in a mere two generations.  The New York Times still hates you no matter how hard you try.

OK -- this is a rant.  I admit it.  I am so disgusted with my fellow Americans.  I am so disgusted by the Churchmen who failed us.  I am so disgusted with myself that I did not do more.  The coming persecution is upon us now.  May God give us the strength to persevere.

Deo Gratias.

"Busyness" and Spiritual Direction

Help me O God, look with favor upon your lowly servant.

For about a year, I have met monthly with a spiritual director.  Father X has differed from every spiritual advisor in my past by his emphasis on concrete and discrete actions.  While he has the capability of theoretical discussions (indeed, he does), spiritual direction with him takes the form of what are you concretely doing in steps to strengthen your bonds with God.

Several months ago, after yet again falling into accustomed failings, I wrote extensively about my personal despair.  That point was an important one in my mind because it was one at which I normally would have stopped spiritual direction -- I would have said I cannot bear talking about my problems with Father because they are too great, too overwhelming and I am too weak to meet the challenge of them.  In addition to his practicality, Father X is dogged.  He did not let that happen and we continued to meet.

I have incorporated generally many of the actions and themes that Father X has instructed and while I have had instances of failure -- and this is no happy justification -- my proclivities and their outbursts are beginning to be fewer.  Don't get me wrong, I still struggle mightily and I still have instances in which I am bested.  Moreover, I take no particular solace in their diminution --I want to see them stopped.  But I do see myself on the road towards that goal -- bad habits that took twenty or thirty years to take root will take some time to extirpate.  In other words, it took time to get in and will take time to get out.  This is a long way to say that I am doing my best not to despair while desperately trying to avoid the sins that had become so ingrained.  It tests the limits of my ability to operate on two different tracks -- one that is mercilessly unforgiving and the other is focused entirely on the mercy of God.  If you understand this, no more is needed -- if not, I don't think I can further explain.

Given the size of my family, job, commute, and other commitments, it is fair to say that I am very busy. There can be no doubt that some of this is my own making -- that this is exactly what I want and I prefer a busy life to a docile one.  But my inability to say "no" to things, my overestimation of my time is something that foils me regularly.  It is not an exaggeration that I literally have something going on almost every night.  My work of late has mirrored that pace as well -- it has been a whirlwind.

The last few weeks have been very bad in that regard -- I have been totally overwhelmed by work and personal.  Moreover, I have began seriously to move in different direction in terms of career and those thoughts have dominated my psychic RAM to such a point that I have been fundamentally distracted even in my quiet moments.  Indeed, I do not have the mental order that I routinely crave.  I am just not sure what I do next and that makes me uncomfortable.

My spiritual director has recommended a number of things:  more regular non-Sunday Mass attendance, more spiritual reading, more mental prayer, recourse to other prayers, etc.  The last few weeks have been blisteringly busy and I fell off of almost everything but praying my rosary (with more than usual difficulty), my morning offering, and my nightly examination of conscience.  I have not had anytime to go to other masses, my spiritual reading has been tabled, my mental prayer has been spottier than in the past and my addition of new prayers has not happened regularly.

I now understand that slothfulness is not the same as idleness -- that work-aholics can be slothful because they eschew what they should be doing in a cloak of frenetic activity.  In some ways, that has been me since I last met with my spiritual director.  Much of the activity has been imposed from without, but that little precious time I have had left, I have not used as well as I could have.

I am meeting with Father X in the next few weeks:  I have to tell him of my failures since the last time we met (which have been a few a month or so ago), I have to tell of my activity and failure to observe diligently all he has requested.  I have some time to right my ship before we meet again -- and these monthly meetings serve a reproach to me -- an injunction to stay on the right path.

So I begin again to some extent -- here is what I need to do:

• Pray my morning offering and invoke my guardian angel every day without fail;
• Pray my rosary each day;
• Pray the Angelus each day twice;
• Fifteen minutes of mental prayer without fail;
• In addition to Sunday, two other Masses during the week
• make a regular examination of conscience each night; and
• Fifteen minutes of spiritual reading.

Obviously to the ordinary lay Catholic, this seems like an extraordinary amount of spiritual activity -- I know that my parents would see it that way.  But Father X knows better -- and truth be told -- I know better.  It is very little in the grand scheme of things we do and all of the time that God graces us with.  I can do these things, I just need to make it a priority and do it.  

Sweet Mother, Most Amiable, look kindly on this suppliant before you and intercede with your Son, the Lamb of God and Savior to the World, that I might conform my life rightly and cooperate with the grace that your Son has given me.

Blessed be God.