"She was strongly critical of some of Vatican II’s changes, not because she was a liturgical traditionalist per se, but because as an anthropologist, she understood that the Council fathers were doing grave damage to the Church on a symbolic level."
Isn't it simpler than that? If you watch somebody take a Sharpie to a Botticelli words like "traditionalist" and "anthropologist" are besides the point, it seems to me.
I think it's an important distinction. She might or might not have been a theological trad, I dunno. But I think it's useful to know that she came at it from an anthropological vantage point. Peter Brown, in his memoir, brings her up to talk about how her anthropological insights gave him an angle onto the history of Late Antiquity that had not been available to him through the usual ways of doing history at Oxford at the time.
This is how we know that the Catholics who say, "But Rome has not changed doctrine!" re: the same-sex blessings might be technically (on paper) right, but ultimately wrong. It takes an anthropologist to understand that process.
This is why the "popesplainers" leave me cold. Yes, I can read too and see that the documents says it is not changing doctrine, but in my gut I still know something is wrong.
I had thought the Brown book would be more "intellectual" than it is, in the sense that Brown would take on big ideas, but it's really not. That's not to say he doesn't talk about ideas, but only that it's a more straightforward autobiography than I expected. He takes on the ideas only insofar as they advance the story he's telling about how he became a historian, and which ideas shaped his approach to history. I'm very much enjoying it, though it's different from what I anticipated.
That’s the impression I got from a review of the book, that it’s an accounting of the arc of his career, what drove him aa historian.
On the main burden of these passages today and yesterday, here’s what I’d say: The men around Francis can explain all they want that the Church’s teachings have not changed. What’s clear to everyone is that they would not be instituting these “reforms” if they themselves actually believed those teachings. And this latter fact by itself is the crisis. Given who these men are.
The Church's teachings have not been changed in words-yet. They begin with imaging the new beliefs symbolically and visually, which for most Catholics is far more powerful. If not stopped, I would expect at some point for the mask of hypocrisy to be finally dropped, and the teaching to be officially changed, a la the Protestant mainlines. Complete of course with the assertion of what amounts to ongoing revelation from the Holy Spirit of God. In this case, perhaps with an appeal to the development of doctrine concept pioneered by Newman. Exactly how this is accomplished isn't the point; they already have their desired end in view, and it's just a question of the most efficient way to get there.
Their current assertions regarding “the voice of the Spirit” are such thin gruel that I’d say it amounts to evidence they’re not even really trying to persuade: that they don’t think the Holy Spirit is real beyond an imminent, psychological phenomenon, and that those who do think the Spirit is real, well, they’re not the ones who matter. It’s current globalist elites ($$$) who matter.
This finally became impossible for me to ignore, try as I may to offer them the benefit of the doubt. At the end of the recent bankrupt synod, before FS:
Excellent explanation of the distinction...the juxtaposition of all of us going to receive the Eucharist and the blessing of gay couples suggests a trundling down of meaning and the result is much lower expectations of us...just an excellent insight! The visualization of everyone receiving communion was a message to all, just as the visualization of gays receiving blessings will be a message to, and that message runs counter to that which is written on the subject. But the impression left by the visualization of the actions of the clergy will be stronger than the words written in the cathechism, or any doctrine, especially in an age when people (even educated people) don't read. I get it...and yes I do believe that gay marriage will happen in the Church.
2) The cat is Anna's ("he never liked anybody but Harry")
It's my favorite movie, easily. Where's the copy editing at TAC? I'm especially surprised because they ran a vituperative review of the new translation of The Iliad by Emily Wilson (daughter of A.N.), where she is described as a "self-proclaimed classicist". Um, she teaches Classics at Penn. There's no self-proclamation involved. That piece is what I've come to expect of TAC. The Rossi piece is fine, but it doesn't look like anybody edited it.
Thanks for tipping me to the article, Colin. I'd never have found it myself. The TAC website reminds me of a run down cemetery.
The most intriguing thing about the article was that the Holly part was offered to Cary Grant. Grant turned it down, and it went to Joseph Cotten, than whom it is impossible to imagine any other in the role.
It fascinates me because Grant was the greatest farceur in movie history, as anyone familiar with that history knows. Orson Welles told his friend, Henry Jaglom, that the reason Joseph Cotten had not had a more successful movie career than he had was because Cotten's brilliance was as a farceur, and he was never offered those kinds of parts in movies.
Well the coming together of Welles, Greene, Reed, Korda, Cotten, Valli, Howard, Krasker, and Karas, the whole team, was truly a happy conjunction of the stars. I would love to have been a fly on the wall when the first three were hashing out the plot and lines!
Wasn’t Cotten reputed to have been the best actor in Hollywood who never won an Oscar? In any event with “The Third Man” and other major films under his belt, when he looked back on his life he could truly say, with Theoden, “I go to my fathers. And even in their mighty company I shall not now be ashamed."
If you want to see Cotten and Olivia de Havilland playing roles in which their characters have turns which are shocking, in part because the two play them so well, watch the psychobiddy classic, "Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte."
If you look for it thoroughly enough, you can find a 1964 British TV show with The Beatles, in which they close the show with "The Third Man" theme.
The movie just doesn't get a thing wrong. Example. Sgt. Paine says to the balloon seller during the wait for Harry, "Scappa!" which is Italian for "clear out", not German. He served in Italy. That kind of thing.
"But no institution can be neutral — and any institutional authority aiming only for neutrality will immediately be captured by a faction more committed to imposing ideology."
Sadly I agree with Rufo there. Totalitarians - and the woke are totalitarians - will not allow institutions (or you) to be neutral.
Related, James Lindsay yesterday posted an excellent podcast on how the woke infiltrate institutions. One cannot be neutral and will not be allowed to be neutral for long when totalitarians are trying to take you over.
Neutrality makes sense only as a pact between willing partners to try and be reasonable and hear each other out. There never was "objective neutrality" anyway, because what would have acceptable eg as "neutral" in a 50s US context, would not be accepted as such in a Soviet context, or a 2010s US context. Neutrality as a premise refers to a basic shared set of beliefs, ie to a specific community. Thus it requires a high level of coherence and unity within the community to mean anything.
Correct. One agrees so much on the basics that one agrees to disagree and allows freedom on other things. At our best, us orthodox Anglicans are that way with both evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics in the same tent with both sticking to The Faith.
But, as you note, there must not be such agreement or neutrality with totalitarians because they eventually will not allow you to be neutral. Not to mention totalitarianism is objectively evil.
Comparing someone to Napoleon does not strike me a complimentary. The guy was a tyrant and aggressive warmonger who ravaged Europe for years and put many men (plus women and children) in the grave. He ultimately failed, rather disastrously. The recent "Napoleon" film taints that simile even further.
As far as the Harvard kerfluffle goes, I'll borrow the words of another conqueror, Alexander, who described Antipatros' victory over the Spartans as "a battle of mice".
Musing about the Gay affair, there's another academic at Harvard in a powerful position who has credibly accused of plagerism in a well-supported accusation, that Haravard has officially pronounced cleared (though the exculpuatory report has curiously never been made public).
The academic? Alan Dershowitz.
Yet I'm thinking this Gay affair may resurrect these decades-old accusations (which are supported by some pretty compelling pieces of evidence). But I'm doubtful if he'll fall.
I certainly wouldn't shed a tear over Dershowitz any more than I didn't over Gay. But although I think Gay's exposure of plagerism meant she should have been sacked, it's pretty obvious that her crime was not the plagerism, nor her wokeness, nor her hypocrisy over free speech issues on campus.
No, not that she was black, nor because she was a woman; but because of her insufficient reply to Stefanik's accusation about calls for Jewish genocide (since Stefaniks believes calls for a free Palestine or resistance against occupation is exactly the same as calls for Jewish genocide.)
And Dershowitz differs from Gay in precisely that trait, being one of the most fanatical apologists for Israel alive today.
Gay was demoted because she was beginning to damage the brand. The best thing Harvard has going for it is its brand name - that must be protected at all costs. She became a PR liability once it became clear that 'riding the storm out' and damage control weren't going to paper this over.
Dershowitz, whatever he may or may not have copied, doesn't damage the brand.
The brand has already sustained considerable damage, though - Harvard becomes the Bud Light of universities. Hey, isn't that Ivy school outside Boston supposed to be one of the greatest in the world? So what's with them going to the wall to defend a plagiarist? Isn't that counter to what they're supposed to be about? Lots of questions like that coming from this debacle, from the populace as a whole. And Harvard's eventual decision to hire the best candidate they can find to replace her - so long as she is black - won't inspire a whole bunch of confidence either.
A degree from the Ivy League isn't what it used to be, e.g., Justice Sotomayor, the "wise Latina" with degrees from Princeton and Yale, lacks even basic Constitutional knowledge and its basis for all our subsequent laws.
"The best thing Harvard has going for it is its brand name - that must be protected at all costs."
Somehow this seems to connect to what Mary Douglas writes about. "Harvard" is a symbol, and once people stop believing in what "Harvard" supposedly represents, the structures that are connected to "Harvard" will fall apart. Moreover, the undermining of Harvard as a symbol of excellence has been at least in part an inside job.
Talib was it Dershowitz? Are you sure? Could you be confusing him with Ogletree or Tribe? Both of them are Law professors and both were accused of plagiarism in the early aughts:
It seems to me that your point is that these cases should be revisited in light of this week's events. I agree 100%, and, if Dershowitz is also under a shadow that too should be illuminated.
To take matters further, I am unclear on a few major issues regarding Gay that should be clear, but are not. Firstly - will the Research Integrity Officer (RIO) be allowed to investigate the lengthy report of accusations, first filed on Dec. 19? By policy at Harvard a decision should have been made by Dec. 26 to investigate or not. I've read the report, it is very thorough. It is inconceivable that there was insufficient evidence to investigate - unless the board made that part of the deal for Gay to step down. If they did that is scandalous. I hope some eager reporter FOIAs the reports of the RIO and the emails to and from the Board (specifically Pritzker) since December.
Secondly - given that there is ample evidence of her having plagiarised, how can she "go back to the faculty" in a meaningful way? A faculty member needs to have scholarly credibility to teach, to do research, to mentor graduate students and to publish. How have these issues been addressed? Can she do any of these things now? Did the Corporation make a deal with her to resign that in fact cannot be academically acceptable? I suppose they can if all the best of academic values are overridden. But if they did that, then that too is a scandal; it is as if Harvard's Corporation does not understand, or care about academic values? Do any of the faculty members at Harvard care to ask these questions and to pursue the answers? If not, why not? Is it fear, or is it complacency? I'd love to hear others thoughts on this. It is a scandal within a scandal, within a scandal...and it seems that the whole of the Harvard community is turning a blind eye to these issues.
Yes, it was Dershowitz. Dr. Norman Finkelstein accused him of plagerism many years ago. Tribe was one of the ones who supposedly cleared him, but the report was never published.
Dershowitz tried to intimidate Finkelstein's publisher from letting Finkelstein's accusations go to print, but failed.
What's going to resurrect Dershowitz' troubles is the Epstein lists. He's already back in "I'm innocent, I was never there, and if I was, I only got a massage" defense mode.
Oh, Dershowitz has been fighting stories about him and Epstein for years.
For one thing, he was one of the attorneys who defended Jeffrey Epstein back in Florida back in 2006, and was one of the primary negotiators in the Non-prosecution Agreement that granted immunity from all federal criminal charges to Epstein, along with four named co-conspirators and any unnamed "potential co-conspirators". According to the Miami Herald, the non-prosecution agreement "essentially shut down an ongoing FBI probe into whether there were more victims and other powerful people who took part in Epstein's sex crimes". At the time, this halted the investigation and sealed the indictment. The Miami Herald said: "Acosta agreed, despite a federal law to the contrary, that the deal would be kept from the victims." Now why on earth would he do that...
And he did everything in his power to stop Virginia Giuffre's lawsuit, calling her an “admitted prostitute and a serial liar” but claimed that the then-teen was not victimized and in fact “made her own decisions in life.” He did admit to getting a massage at Epstein's Island... but said he kept his underwear on. You can watch the interview Dershowitz gave on the subject here:
Part of the reason I find Dershowitz so unconvincing is that wrote a controversial op-ed in the LA Times back in 1997 saying that statutory rape is an outdated concept. Note to Dershowitz: not in my world.
Dershowitz's plagiarism was far less serious than Gay's: this has been much discussed. No one is denying that he was very sloppy at times. He also published hundreds of respected academic papers compared to a handful of plagiarized hackwork pieces from Gay.
You may now return to your regularly scheduled Zionist world-domination conspiracies...
Oh, I wouldn't claim that Zionists dominate the world. It's pretty clear from periodic votes in the UN that the domination extends only to Israel, Micronesia, Palau, and the United States, most of the rest of the world doesn't buy the narrative as completely. (And even in the United States--even among American Jews--the Zionists aren't that popular except in the political class.)
And you're right that Dershowitz is far more of a respected academic than Gay. But that's a pretty low bar, isn't it?
I guess we'll see his keen legal mind on display as he's going to represent Israel to address the SA charges of genocide.
I don't much care for most of the Napoleonic program but he was a man of his times. He was one of the world's greatest generals and one of the world's greatest megalomaniacs. Millions died due to Napoleon's wars. Crushing and eliminating Napoleon was costly and only the combined weight of Britain, Austria, Prussia and Russia ultimately defeated him. I don't want to see his like again but his skills were many.
Agreed, and the movie does a serious disservice to actual history.
But I continue to see him through the lens of Germaine de Stael's opposition to his rule-- I discovered her and her history in my teens and I found it fascinating. By channeling all the energies of the French Revolution into his own aggrandizement and wars of conquest he complicated the history of the whole 19th century in Europe, and not in beneficial ways. French idolization of Napoleon is a big mistake, IMO.
Added: I would include Sweden under Marshall Bernadotte, which joined the final coalition, burying its hatchet with Russia despite the recent theft of Finland. And the Spanish patriots who bled and weakened Napoleon's armies for years.
Two days ago I had an interview with the priest for whom I serve as a deacon in our parish. He is convinced that Fiducia is fine, it does not change the teaching of the church and it is only a matter of blessing the good in the same-sex couple. He tried to get me to agree, not to oppose. I insisted that Fiducia was bad and I could only bless as a plea for repentance from sin. I felt a wall being built between us. He perceives me as a disruptor of unity in the church. Then yesterday, when the DDF issued instructions in which Victor wrote that there is no room to disagree with Fiducia and not accept her, it was clear to me. I think it won't be long before all ordained ministers will have to sign the Professio fidei. But I couldn't do that. suspension would probably follow. I get chills just writing about it. Our bishops in the Czech Republic are the only ones from Europe who have not yet taken a position.
Much to digest here, but off the top of my head I'd strongly recommend to Rufo and other "new conservatives" that they read Kirk's 'The Politics of Prudence,' which has just (fortuitously, if not providentially!) been reissued. It's an older book but it has much in it that's relevant for our times.
Yes, he (Christ) is. Have a good weekend, Rod. Stay warm.
PS. I indeed can still drive a bus. Gratifying. And I am set to resume my MDiv studies. I will finish it in three years or less. And by the time this year ends, I will have my pilot's license, have begun my studies in Aviation Mechanics and will be a Chaplain Candidate in the US Navy.
Off to a good start, and things are getting better.
Rufo is right. Young conservatives are going to have to blaze a new path. Looking back to Reagan or Goldwater or Buckley is pointless. And the politics of the 21st Century will be more cultural in nature. The left has given up on tax-and-spend and the nationalization of industries. Older folks like me can be useful but the young have more energy and have a better grasp of the culture as it is now rather than what it was in 1985.
To get a clear picture of just how pointless it is to look back to Reagan et. al. it's useful to read Goldwater's rant against the influence of religion in politics. It's astonishingly shallow. Sorry, I don't have a link but it shouldn't be too hard to find. I saw it quoted at length somewhere a few days ago.
Goldwater's work may be shallow, but I do think an explicitly sectarian politics is bound to fail. You need a big tent without purity tests, otherwise you end up a small sect hissing and spitting as the world marches by.
There's a huge distance between "explicitly sectarian politics" and "your religious convictions are not allowed in politics." I may be misjudging him on the basis of that one speech, but Goldwater's basic attitude sounded very much like the latter. Reminded me of Normal Lear's obnoxious "People for the American Way" ads.
We have a sectarian politics. The sect is a species of liberalism, the metaphysic which does not know it is a metaphysic.
Re: There's a huge distance between "explicitly sectarian politics" and "your religious convictions are not allowed in politics."
Sure, but how can anyone know that you are politicking out of religious conviction unless you tell them? And IMO we should advance secular reasons for positions in politics, since not everyone shares the same religious priors (duh) and many of those have but limited appeal*. For example, arguing for universal healthcare makes more sense on grounds "It would be better for our economy because it distorts the labor and healthcare markets less" than saying "Christ [or the Buddha or Allah] commands we labor to heal the sick."
* E.g., "God forbids alcohol use" appeals to Muslims and Mormons and some Baptists, but if you're opposed to having a bar granted a liquor license down the street from you, you'll likely find more support with "We don't want all the noise, traffic and disruption a bar would cause".
I agree that too often, even now, a lot of Americans seem oblivious to the fact of religious pluralism. I see it still in many of the people still living in my (small) hometown. They seem to think a vote for Trump will bring official prayer back to the schools and that the federal government will be dedicated openly to Christian ends. They really think that. And I wince when I see them post on Facebook, because they walk right into the traps waiting for them set by their more secular anti-Trump neighbors.
That said, those same seculars are too often themselves militantly anti-religious, out to tax small churches into oblivion, sue them for any allegation whatsoever and generally deploy a kind of civil version of Swatting in order to make it impossible even to maintain a church congregation. The Catholic scandal provided the model for such activity.
I think Rufo may be threading the needle just right in avoiding the mistake of simply advocating for truly neutral institutions but in arguing for the positive values implied by those institutions’ existence. But he’s engaged in a high-risk project.
It's worse than that. Modern conservatism is all about sucking up to special interests. The institutional Republican Party is light years away from where the likes of Rufo is going. Rufo is the future; the decayed corpse of what once passed for "conservatism" is the past, but that corpse won't go, and isn't going, without a fight.
Remember when Paul Ryan was elected to Congress? He was 28 years old and should have energized the Republicans. Instead, Ryan only showed signs of life when waxing poetic about tax cuts and quoting Ayn Rand.
There was a time when the four must read books were: Witness, God and Man at Yale, The Conscience of a Conservative, and Suicide of the West by Chambers, Buckley, Goldwater, and Burnham, respectively. I fear re-reading these works for the dated material underneath the collected dust. The young hero football quarterback, Jack Kemp, was supposed to show how America could achieve equity and greatness through tax cuts and enterprise zones. For a period of time, we were led to believe Ronald Reagan single handedly defeated the evil empire and It was during his administration that the NeoCons started to co-opt foreign policy. Might the merger of Crunchy Cons with the Benedict Option be the next phase of the conservative movement?
I finally read God & Man at Yale a few years ago and found it pretty thin. Disappointing. Burnham, read maybe 10 years ago, struck me as dated in details but fundamentally accurate in its insights. Goldwater?...kind of doubt he was in their class as a thinker or writer.
The material is dated insofar the lessons learned from the Cold War should not be applied in a contemporary post communist environment. The fact that western politicians believe Putin's Russia is no one else's Russia but Putin's and is no different in its international behavior than the Soviet Union leads me to believe the goal wasn't just containing or destroying communism, but eliminating all traces of Russian civilization because it's a threat to the global illiberal disorder advocated by the ruling elite. We've heard the joke many times: it doesn't matter if we vote Republican or Democrat, Conservative or Liberal, we always get John McCain. Much of the global bureaucratic structures in place are the result of how the West fought the Cold War. I agree that the books have some value in understanding the mentality of some figures in political and intellectual circles of an older time.
I voted for Reagan in 1980, and think a curse has befallen the hand which moved the lever. Otherwise, my guitar playing would be better.
It's been forty - three years since that election. Forty - three years before that, it had been 1937. Incipient or even moderately advanced dementia is no excuse for us Boomers who indirectly inflicted the death of the middle class on the American people. How can we fail to recognize that if something like national restoration is to occur, the Republican party must become economically what the Democrats used to be, populist adjacent if not populistic?
I had a cousin, two years older than I, who had been a victim of the withering of the middle class. Yet, for reasons impossible for me to understand, until his death a couple of years ago, his and his wife's email address was @reagan.com
I hate to say it this way, but a lot of people who ❤️ RR really seem to be in a cult. I really don’t have another word for it (so please forgive me), but when I was more politically active in the late 1990’s into the 2000’s, it was really hard to talk to older R’s about what my life was like as a younger person who never voted for RR. It was just out of the realm of their experience and they didn’t try to relate. They were more than happy to tell me how dumb my generation was and how my generation needed Jesus, but that was about it. I eventually left partly because I was just done with dealing with people like that.
It’s kind of like how people ❤️ Trump now. There’s just no talking to ‘the true believers’ about the negatives or effects of bad policy.
One of my husband’s relatives seems to glow every time he talks about he worked as a volunteer at the 1980 GOP convention. It’s weird to me, but a lot of it is that I was just a kid at the time. I just don’t share that historical moment in the same way. (The first presidential election I could vote in was 1996.) I’m glad this person had that experience and that it was transformative moment for him. Yet, what are the Republicans doing in the 21st century? In 2024? Where is the vision for the future?
I’ve always taken a ‘I can respect what he did to re-energize the Party, but what’s next?’ Approach. We still have problems to solve and the answer isn’t RR or tax cuts. Or Trump. Or ‘support the troops’, inc.
I've never understood any of it, either. I voted for Reagan because poor Carter, whom I'd voted for in 1976, seemed helpless. And because you don't remember the 1980s as I do, you'll have to take my word for it that there was an optimism about the decade which the anemic 1970s had lacked.
But my gosh, zombie Reaganism, indeed! The Reagan tax cuts did by several means begin the garroting of the American middle class. And Clinton, whose only credo politically was success, having seen what had happened to old Bush when he broke his promise not to raise taxes, wasn't about to mess with The Program, anymore than young Bush would. By Obama's time, The Finance Party ruled the country.
Why didn't Trump try to reverse the Reagan tax cuts? Why didn't he pursue antitrust prosecution? ( Maybe someone had something on him? ) Why didn't he advocate a doubling of the minimum wage? He could have sealed the southern border in two weeks by federalizing the state National Guards of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California and stationing them at the border. He didn't.
He had run as a sort of Populist. If he were a serious man and had pressed such an agenda, he would have been in a position to be another FDR.
He's not a serious man. Obviously. It's sad that the American people have become so damned stupid.
You're right that these so-called blessings are going to pave the way for gay marriage in the Church. I have no doubt that that development is intended by Rome.
A while back I read “The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self,” by Carl Trueman, which I of course found via your writings. For some reason after reading your essay today, I thought about the book and felt like I didn’t remember him mentioning Mary Douglas at all. Sure enough, she isn’t listed in the index.
Trueman’s book is a big one and I’m not going to claim having a photographic memory, but what I seem to remember is that he argued that Western man’s subjective orientation, or psychological man—“a type characterized not so much by finding identity in outward directed activities as was true for the previous types but rather in the inward quest for personal psychological happiness”—more or less begins with Rousseau. I was totally on board with that idea until I read the excerpts from Douglas today. I wonder what Trueman would have to say about the idea that the seeds of this may have started with Luther.
I’m tempted to read Trueman’s book, as his essays are often worthwhile, but yes, there’s that. He’s doctrinally blocked from seeing what may be the real roots of this sick plant that’s blossomed.
Still, it’s an immensely difficult task to pinpoint the ultimate origin of our disorders. And maybe it’s a vain task, if the goal is to find where to place historical blame. Better to focus on our own present guilt, and how best to repent from it.
Yeah, I realized that my comment was going to be provocative to some. I don't mean to start a religious war! But, we can't be afraid where inquiry may take us.
I'm no theologian, but as a working definition I'm going to say that the purpose of religious practice, as a Christian, is to come to know God and what he wants of us, so as to better live according to his plan (with the idea of uniting with him). So, that's how I see the connection between Luther and Rousseau.
The connection between the above description of "psychological man" and Rousseau is easy enough to see. But when I consider the distinction between faith and works, or faith alone, and add to that the distinction between Church teachings and sola scriptura, we arrive at the same place: namely, religious practice is at root personal experience.
The description I gave above of the purpose of religious practice can be boiled down to achieving happiness. Of course, "happiness" means something much more profound in the context of religion, as opposed to secular concerns. Rousseau's Romanticism kicks this all off in the secular realm. But I think it's fair to argue that Luther kicks off the primacy of personal experience in the religious realm. And the one follows from the other.
I’m not sure how you connect “the primacy of personal experience in the religious realm” with Luther. His Large and Small Catechism would indicate the opposite. The only personal experience I note from Luther is the “for me” that Christ was crucified and risen, and in the Eucharist this Real Presence is not some generic promise but for the forgiveness of my sins.
As I've said, I'm no theologian. I'm coming from a viewpoint of history and philosophy, so let me sketch out my thinking a little more.
When I'm talking about Luther, I'm referring to him kicking off the Reformation. I remember a line of thinking from my college history courses that Luther was actually rather conservative in his thinking and that, much to his dismay, the Reformation "got away from him." In other words, he opened the door to innovation.
The innovation that I'm talking about—and, again, I'm painting with a fairly broad brush—is that there is no authority but Scripture. Now, accepting that, we come to the question of who interprets Scripture. So far, I don't think anything I'm saying is controversial.
The Reformation opens the door to the Bible reader himself interpreting Scripture. This is what I mean by the primacy of personal experience in the religious realm. Whether Luther wanted this or not, isn't what I'm considering. I'm merely saying that the Reformation starts with Luther, and proceeds from there by what's implicated in his teachings.
It is about Luther, not Lutheranism, but still worth reading. It's very good (and I have both a high esteem of and a long friendship with its author). It also lends, somewhat indirectly, support to your "thesis" about Luther as a precursor to Rosseau.
I have to disagree. Luther believed that the bread and wine become the actual Body and Blood of Christ. The death of sacramentalism seems to me to have begun in Geneva. It was Calvin who argued that Christ was "spiritually" present in The Lord's Supper.
Even so, it's a mistake to believe that classical Protestantism argues a "my Bible and me" approach to spiritual growth. There have always been the fringies, the same kinds of people who will tell you they have "a word from the Lord" for you. But classical Protestantism has always upheld the necessity of a well taught clergy, and admonished believers to remember that, as the Bible says, there is wisdom in a multitude of counselors.
Putting aside the “cafeteria Catholics,” if the Catholic Church teaches a thing as part of its catechism, it’s not counseling. It’s instructing. It’s telling the Catholic what a Catholic believes. There’s no shopping for other interpretations.
"The death of sacramentalism seems to me to have begun in Geneva. It was Calvin who argued that Christ was "spiritually" present in The Lord's Supper."
I would say that it began in Zurich with Zwingli, who held that Christ was not in any sense present in or with the bread in wine, but rather that the Holy Communion served as a reminder to Christians of Christ's death for their sake, and also as a pledge by the Christians participating in it to Christ and to each other to remain faithful.
It was Calvin's long-term ambition to find a "middle way" between the errors of Luther's ideas about Christ's actual/physical body and blood being present "in, with, and under" the bread and wine, and the errors of Zwingli (far worse in Calvin's view) that Christ was not present at the Supper in any way other than as he was present in all circumstances, spiritually but not materially or physically, to all faithful Christians at all times. Calvin believed that the bread and wine of the Lord's Supper remained bread and wine, but served as "instruments" or "conduits" by which Christ's body and blood were conveyed by the Holy Spirit to "worthy recipients" (which to Calvin meant "the elect"). He once wrote that as the bread and wine are received by the worthy communicant through the mouth Christ's body and blood are received "through the eyes of his mind." What does that mean? (He shared with Bullinger and Cranmer an abhorrence of any gestures of adoration towards the consecrated bread and wine - gestures on which Lutherans put much emphasis from 1550 onward as a visible token of their belief that the Reformed rejection of the presence of Christ's body and blood was a detestable and damnable error, far worse than Catholic errors about the Eucharist in their view.)
The Lutherans spurned Calvin's views. Even Melanchthon, who in his last years seems (he died in 1560) to have become increasingly uneasy with Luther's views about "spiritual union" between the bread and wine, on the one hand, and Christ's body and blood, on the other, such that adoration and worship were due to the bread and wine after they had been consecrated - Luther thought that all the leftover elements should be consumed immediately after the service, as he was uncertain whether the "sacramental union" persisted after the service was over, or whether they reverted to being simply bread and wine - although he corresponded in friendly fashion with Calvin, could never bring himself to believe that Calvin was right about "spiritual" presence only. So in 1549 Calvin and Zwingli's successor in Zurich, Heinrich Bullinger, came to a doctrinal agreement in which, as to the Eucharist, Calvin made all the concessions. Bullinger had a warmer spiritual understanding of the Sacrament than Zwingli, but he saw it as an enacted parable of the working of divine grace on the individual Christian's soul, for which any "real or corporal presence" of Christ associated with the bread and wine was superfluous (as well as popish). That 1549 agreement - the Consensus Tigurinus - is why ever since the 16th century and to this day one will find Reformed churches in which Calvin's theological influence on sacramental doctrine had been strong (e.g., the Scottish Presbyterians and the French Huguenots) and others in which it has been overshadowed by the "Zurich tradition" of Zwingli and Bullinger (e.g., the Swiss Reformed churches and the Hungarian, the Polish, and the Transsylvanian reformed churches, with the Dutch and German reformed churches being influenced by both strains). I won't address the English Reformation here, but Cranmer's views seem to have been largely identical with (although expressed in a manner differing from) those of Bullinger.
In the longer term in Lutheranism, however, Melanchthon's views on the Eucharist superseded Luther's, in practice if not in theory. Luther believed that it was at the recital or chanting of the Words of Institution that the bread and wine entered into a "sacramental union" with Christ's body and blood. First-generation Lutheran reformers were (mostly) willing to reserve portions of the consecrated sacramental elements to give communion to the sick and dying, but Luther disliked this because he believed that Scripture provided no information (if that's the right word to use) whether the "sacramental union" persisted after the communion service was over, and preferred an abbreviated bedside communion service for the sick or dying. Melanchthon, however, believed that the Words of Institution were addressed to the congregation to prepare them to receive the Sacrament and that the "spiritual union" took place only as a certain "quantum" of bread and a certain "quantum" of wine entered the mouth of each individual communicant. The consequence of such a view was that all the bread and wine that had not been consumed had never entered into a "sacramental union" with Christ's body and blood, so the leftovers could be put back into the sacristy cupboard's breadbox or wine flagon and used again at the next communion service.
Yes, I'm not saying "Luther did this!" I'm perfectly fine with the idea that this springs mostly from Rousseau. I'm just saying that Douglas makes me think that we can peel things back a bit more and find Luther's contribution worth considering.
If I may go on…
From a religious point of view, God is the ultimate reality. From a secular point of view, material existence is. These are different metaphysics. With each, however, the next question is epistemological: meaning, how do we know the what.
I'm saying that Luther—or, more broadly speaking, the Reformation—dispenses with the authority of the Church and ultimately lands with the authority of the believing Bible reader. This is a dramatic shift from something external and more permanent than oneself to the personal. Yes, Scripture is still external to oneself, but the interpretation—which is everything—is personal. To me, Rousseau then does the same thing with material reality.
At the start, I was talking about definitions of "happiness" and what knowing it and achieving it entails. Rousseau says that's ultimately up to you. It's ultimately personal. I'm arguing that the idea that scriptural interpretation is the right and responsibility of each individual Christian is an idea along the same lines. Thus, "happiness"—what a believing Christian thinks it is and how one obtains it—is personal, by that line of thinking.
Mario, I am repeating a reply to you which I left a moment ago: classical Protestantism has never argued that ultimate authority rested with "the authority of the believing Bible reader."
The Reformers didn't believe this, to be sure, but where did ultimate authority rest once the Reformers began to disagree seriously with one another, such that Lutherans and Reformed held each others' views on the Lord's Supper to be damnable and blasphemous, as well as erroneous? With the King? With the City Council? It was bound in the end to come to "the authority of the believing Bible reader," or else to the view that areas of doctrinal disagreement among Protestants were less significant than areas of common spiritual experience and practice.
Professor, you know fully well that intraProtestant disputes aside, all classical Protestants believe that salvation is by grace through faith in Christ alone. We may differ about the sacraments and about eschatology, about liturgy, about Wesleyan mysticism, you name it, but we have the main thing in common.
My problem with Catholicism is that I agree with the late Evangelical apologist, Walter Martin, that the Roman Catholic Church is "a large, backslidden church," a church "fallen from grace," in that so many of its communicants really do not seem to understand that salvation is by faith in Jesus Christ alone.
Trueman's book is very good irrespective of his possible misplacement of the root of the problem. Also, I've just ordered a recent book along the same lines by the Girardian theologian Gil Baillie, 'The Apocalypse of the Sovereign Self,' which was just published in June. Baillie, a Catholic, said somewhere recently that he didn't have access to Trueman's book at the time he was writing his, but came to some related conclusions.
Well, everybody has parents and all ideas have antecedents. There are, though, critical points that represent moments of choice. Perhaps it was William of Ockham.
At baptism, I was given four prayer saints, but a fifth chose me. I was looking at an Orthodox blog, and someone commented that his brother was a fan of John Muir, and asked whether anyone could suggest a saint as an alternative. I suggested St. Cuthbert, because he was born in the same town as Muir, Dunbar, in SE Scotland, and was a nature-lover and environmentalist, who introduced the first laws to protect birds. I then went to check I was right about Dunbar, and found to my astonishment that it was St. Cuthbert’s day that day. It’s fitting for me, from northern England, as he is the patron saint of Northumbria.
Do you know who absolutely loves St. Cuthbert? The historian Tom Holland. Funnily enough, last year Tom took Martin Shaw and me to his literary club in Soho, and we sat there listening to him talk on and on, wonderfully, about the glories of Cuthbert and his age. Then Martin chimed in talking about Anglo-Saxon and Celtic mythology. I didn't want it to end.
They surely told you about St. Cuthbert and the otters frolicking around him as he walked along the seashore. But did they mention that part of St. Cuthbert's actual priestly stole survives? It's the oldest specimen of Anglo-Saxon embroidery and depicts St. Gregory on one end, his "straightman" Deacon Peter on the other.
There's a lovely novel from the '50s, BROTHER PETROC'S RETURN by S.M.C. (pen name of Welsh nun Sr. Mary Catherine Williams) that was popular when I was in high school. The title refers to a 16th C. monk, not the old saint.
I read somewhere that his body remained incorrupt until his tomb was broken into under Henry VIII, after which it started to rot in disgust, but I have no idea whether that is true.
St. Cuthbert is said to have founded several churches across what is now southern Scotland and northern England. One of the most well-known is in Edinburgh. It is still called St. Cuthbert's Church, despite being Presbyterian (my understanding is that Presbyterian churches don't usually have saints' names): https://www.scotlandschurchestrust.org.uk/church/parish-church-of-st-cuthbert-edinburgh/
Well, Evelyn Waugh loved the name. William Boot's anonymous benefactor (who calls himself Mr. Baldwin) in Scoop has a silent servant named Cuthbert, and the Cuthberts run the seaside residential hotel where old Mr. Crouchback lives in Sword of Honour.
It's odd how the decline of Christianity in Europe coincides with a fascination with pilgrimage, so numerous new routes have been devised, and the Camino de Santiago de Compostela had a record number of walkers last year. Apparently, numerous people set off on the Camino atheist and convert to Catholicism on the way.
The Northumberland Coast is one of those areas where the veil between the worlds feels thin. I went to university in Newcastle, and used to sometimes cycle up the coast. I remember once seeing early-morning mist covering the sea and the farmland, with only the long line of sand dunes visible.
Lindisfarne / Holy Island is very touristy, but nevertheless quite astonishing. It's a tidal island, like Mont St. Michel and St. Michael's Mount.
The Farne Islands, where St. Cuthbert died, are uninhabited, and to visit you have to get a guided tour, which is mainly oriented towards bird-watchers. The same is true of Coquet Island, further south, where he met a king at one time.
Rufo is right that there aren't any neutral institutions. As for the chief vectors of value transmission, I'd add to his list television and popular culture in general. They are subtly and profoundly subversive.
Right - but that means they have to play defense. They have to focus more on defense than playing offense. And that makes them vulnerable to someone, like Rufo or any sort of nascent conservative movement, that doesn't have to play defense at all.
I absolutely agree with Rufo's essay, but can we also settle our sights on something else? Conservatives really need to get their friggin moral house in order. Trump is the most glaring example of this, but when the congressional ranks are full of tarts like MTG, Boebert, Gaetz, et al what centrist let alone center left voter is going to vote across party lines without feeling like they've spent a morally debased all inclusive weekend at club Epstein? MLK knew this better than anyone. The guy wasn't exactly the paragon of moral behavior, but damn did he understand PR. His marches were usually subdued affairs. You weren't going to see the same off-putting vitriol and rabble that coursed through your average Malcolm X or Black Panther rally. MLK knew that the only way people weren't going to be threatened by his position is by appearing ethically immaculate. He had to be (or at least appear) better than the people who were opposing him. Conservatives don't seem to get that. Image matters, especially in politics. Who are conservatives going to be? The party of upstanding, impeccable citizens or the party of your crazy ass uncle who lives in the apartment over the top of your garage?
Because being bit incessantly tends not to endear one towards the biter. I also wonder how much effect it really has other than serving as a mild annoyance. The biting is really just for the benefit of the flies.
In fairness, I think a lot of the enthusiasm for Trump is a defensive enthusiasm, as you might defend your crazy ass uncle because he's close kin and the people who are after him are worse than he is.
Still, I wonder what might have happened if a Hawley or a Vance had run for the nomination? DeSantis was supposed to be "that guy," and it's dismaying that while he may be, he can't convince voters of it.
DeSantis’ poor reception has mystified me. Maybe I just liked him too much to see the flaws, but he strikes me as an effective doer, unlike Trump, who is far more flash and talk than deeds.
Same here, C.T. It really does call into question whether the "traditional" American exists in significant plenitude anymore, or whether it's really all about "owning the libs."
The fact that "Let's Go, Brandon!" could be seen as a significant warcry by someone who isn't an idiot makes me fear I have my answer.
I’ve wondered just that myself. I had my own skepticism regarding my age group (b. 1961). We gave the world Obama, after all. But while my elderly mother is still around, I guess I’ll have this illusion that her Goldwater voting cohort is still out in force.
Egad. I abhor Goldwater. Libertarianism started to take over Republicanism with Goldwater's ascendancy. And yes, Reagan carried it close to economic fulfillment, which has destroyed the American middle class.
Johnson, obviously, was no great blessing. My first and proudest vote was for George McGovern. I should have quit while I was ahead.
Goldwater, Johnson, and McGovern had in common that they were American patriots. They could never have accommodated themselves to contemporary America.
I consider myself a paleoconservative, with the exception of their too - common anti - Semitism.
It isn't impossible that we could fix much which ails us. I certainly don't see paulryanism as any answer. We need an America which cares about its own people. The kind of government I want would seal our borders, deport illegals, make Muslim immigration to America illegal, gut the military - industrial complex while imprisoning the wusses and freaks who have gutted our fighting forces, at least double the minimum wage, enforce antitrust laws, abrogate destructive trade agreements, declare war on the surveillance state, reverse the Reagan tax cuts and the nasty array of kicks which the poor are vulnerable to.
But we're finished. We have lost the favor of God, which I do think we had. In the last fifty years, we've aborted seventy - five million babies. I hardly need to do more than allude to the sex and gender madness.
Disagree. Acting with discretion is hardly getting "their friggin moral house in order". Neko is baying at the moon. If this is the bog standard of the House, then there we are. I'd concentrate on winning elections.
When I was a child in the 60’s only about 1/3 of the people in the pews would go up to communion. Confessions were heard Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays and there were lines. Now, as you say, the entire congregation gets up. If you stay put, perhaps for missing Mass without a good reason, you feel like everyone is looking at you as at least a felon, and a half hour of confession on Saturday is provided for a parish of 3000 souls.
Our bishop has instituted entire days of confessions in lent and advent. The first year the priests were convinced no one would come and equipped themselves with books. They were busy all day. Thousands of people showed up all over the diocese.
We were all told after Vatican II that confession, rebranded reconciliation, was outdated and thoroughly optional. You are absolutely right that these boomer priests do not believe in sacramental grace or transubstantiation. Whether there will be any Church left to save when the younger, more conservative, priests are left remains to be seen.
We are blessed with two, and the number of activities on offer at our downtown parishes is amazing! Our pastor spares no effort to provide something for all age groups, seeking to blend the Latin Mass attendees with the exceptionally reverent English Masses. The pope is attempting to deal a death blow to these men. May their bishops have the courage to resist on their behalf.
"She was strongly critical of some of Vatican II’s changes, not because she was a liturgical traditionalist per se, but because as an anthropologist, she understood that the Council fathers were doing grave damage to the Church on a symbolic level."
Isn't it simpler than that? If you watch somebody take a Sharpie to a Botticelli words like "traditionalist" and "anthropologist" are besides the point, it seems to me.
I think it's an important distinction. She might or might not have been a theological trad, I dunno. But I think it's useful to know that she came at it from an anthropological vantage point. Peter Brown, in his memoir, brings her up to talk about how her anthropological insights gave him an angle onto the history of Late Antiquity that had not been available to him through the usual ways of doing history at Oxford at the time.
This is how we know that the Catholics who say, "But Rome has not changed doctrine!" re: the same-sex blessings might be technically (on paper) right, but ultimately wrong. It takes an anthropologist to understand that process.
This is why the "popesplainers" leave me cold. Yes, I can read too and see that the documents says it is not changing doctrine, but in my gut I still know something is wrong.
I'm not impressed with taking refuge in technicalities, either. "Let your yes be yes, and your no be no".
These meditations on Douglas have been great. Also convincing me I need to read Peter Brown’s book.
I had thought the Brown book would be more "intellectual" than it is, in the sense that Brown would take on big ideas, but it's really not. That's not to say he doesn't talk about ideas, but only that it's a more straightforward autobiography than I expected. He takes on the ideas only insofar as they advance the story he's telling about how he became a historian, and which ideas shaped his approach to history. I'm very much enjoying it, though it's different from what I anticipated.
That’s the impression I got from a review of the book, that it’s an accounting of the arc of his career, what drove him aa historian.
On the main burden of these passages today and yesterday, here’s what I’d say: The men around Francis can explain all they want that the Church’s teachings have not changed. What’s clear to everyone is that they would not be instituting these “reforms” if they themselves actually believed those teachings. And this latter fact by itself is the crisis. Given who these men are.
That's really insightful, Eric. Thank you.
The Church's teachings have not been changed in words-yet. They begin with imaging the new beliefs symbolically and visually, which for most Catholics is far more powerful. If not stopped, I would expect at some point for the mask of hypocrisy to be finally dropped, and the teaching to be officially changed, a la the Protestant mainlines. Complete of course with the assertion of what amounts to ongoing revelation from the Holy Spirit of God. In this case, perhaps with an appeal to the development of doctrine concept pioneered by Newman. Exactly how this is accomplished isn't the point; they already have their desired end in view, and it's just a question of the most efficient way to get there.
Their current assertions regarding “the voice of the Spirit” are such thin gruel that I’d say it amounts to evidence they’re not even really trying to persuade: that they don’t think the Holy Spirit is real beyond an imminent, psychological phenomenon, and that those who do think the Spirit is real, well, they’re not the ones who matter. It’s current globalist elites ($$$) who matter.
This finally became impossible for me to ignore, try as I may to offer them the benefit of the doubt. At the end of the recent bankrupt synod, before FS:
https://claytestament.blogspot.com/2023/11/synodality-to-synodolatry-imperial.html
Excellent explanation of the distinction...the juxtaposition of all of us going to receive the Eucharist and the blessing of gay couples suggests a trundling down of meaning and the result is much lower expectations of us...just an excellent insight! The visualization of everyone receiving communion was a message to all, just as the visualization of gays receiving blessings will be a message to, and that message runs counter to that which is written on the subject. But the impression left by the visualization of the actions of the clergy will be stronger than the words written in the cathechism, or any doctrine, especially in an age when people (even educated people) don't read. I get it...and yes I do believe that gay marriage will happen in the Church.
On another subject, fyi: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-third-man-at-75/
Thanks. That's a really nice piece. However
1) Joe spelled his name "Cotten"
2) The cat is Anna's ("he never liked anybody but Harry")
It's my favorite movie, easily. Where's the copy editing at TAC? I'm especially surprised because they ran a vituperative review of the new translation of The Iliad by Emily Wilson (daughter of A.N.), where she is described as a "self-proclaimed classicist". Um, she teaches Classics at Penn. There's no self-proclamation involved. That piece is what I've come to expect of TAC. The Rossi piece is fine, but it doesn't look like anybody edited it.
Something about my Uncle Harry?! Thanks!
Free of income tax, old man: free of income tax.
Thanks for tipping me to the article, Colin. I'd never have found it myself. The TAC website reminds me of a run down cemetery.
The most intriguing thing about the article was that the Holly part was offered to Cary Grant. Grant turned it down, and it went to Joseph Cotten, than whom it is impossible to imagine any other in the role.
It fascinates me because Grant was the greatest farceur in movie history, as anyone familiar with that history knows. Orson Welles told his friend, Henry Jaglom, that the reason Joseph Cotten had not had a more successful movie career than he had was because Cotten's brilliance was as a farceur, and he was never offered those kinds of parts in movies.
Well the coming together of Welles, Greene, Reed, Korda, Cotten, Valli, Howard, Krasker, and Karas, the whole team, was truly a happy conjunction of the stars. I would love to have been a fly on the wall when the first three were hashing out the plot and lines!
Wasn’t Cotten reputed to have been the best actor in Hollywood who never won an Oscar? In any event with “The Third Man” and other major films under his belt, when he looked back on his life he could truly say, with Theoden, “I go to my fathers. And even in their mighty company I shall not now be ashamed."
If you want to see Cotten and Olivia de Havilland playing roles in which their characters have turns which are shocking, in part because the two play them so well, watch the psychobiddy classic, "Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte."
If you look for it thoroughly enough, you can find a 1964 British TV show with The Beatles, in which they close the show with "The Third Man" theme.
The movie just doesn't get a thing wrong. Example. Sgt. Paine says to the balloon seller during the wait for Harry, "Scappa!" which is Italian for "clear out", not German. He served in Italy. That kind of thing.
Well, it is a perfect movie, indeed. And truly, no film actor ever had a better entrance than Welles.'
And all those Dutch angles.
"But no institution can be neutral — and any institutional authority aiming only for neutrality will immediately be captured by a faction more committed to imposing ideology."
Sadly I agree with Rufo there. Totalitarians - and the woke are totalitarians - will not allow institutions (or you) to be neutral.
Related, James Lindsay yesterday posted an excellent podcast on how the woke infiltrate institutions. One cannot be neutral and will not be allowed to be neutral for long when totalitarians are trying to take you over.
https://newdiscourses.substack.com/p/how-the-woke-infiltrate
Neutrality makes sense only as a pact between willing partners to try and be reasonable and hear each other out. There never was "objective neutrality" anyway, because what would have acceptable eg as "neutral" in a 50s US context, would not be accepted as such in a Soviet context, or a 2010s US context. Neutrality as a premise refers to a basic shared set of beliefs, ie to a specific community. Thus it requires a high level of coherence and unity within the community to mean anything.
Correct. One agrees so much on the basics that one agrees to disagree and allows freedom on other things. At our best, us orthodox Anglicans are that way with both evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics in the same tent with both sticking to The Faith.
But, as you note, there must not be such agreement or neutrality with totalitarians because they eventually will not allow you to be neutral. Not to mention totalitarianism is objectively evil.
»Christ is in our midst!«
He is and ever shall be!
Comparing someone to Napoleon does not strike me a complimentary. The guy was a tyrant and aggressive warmonger who ravaged Europe for years and put many men (plus women and children) in the grave. He ultimately failed, rather disastrously. The recent "Napoleon" film taints that simile even further.
As far as the Harvard kerfluffle goes, I'll borrow the words of another conqueror, Alexander, who described Antipatros' victory over the Spartans as "a battle of mice".
Musing about the Gay affair, there's another academic at Harvard in a powerful position who has credibly accused of plagerism in a well-supported accusation, that Haravard has officially pronounced cleared (though the exculpuatory report has curiously never been made public).
The academic? Alan Dershowitz.
Yet I'm thinking this Gay affair may resurrect these decades-old accusations (which are supported by some pretty compelling pieces of evidence). But I'm doubtful if he'll fall.
I certainly wouldn't shed a tear over Dershowitz any more than I didn't over Gay. But although I think Gay's exposure of plagerism meant she should have been sacked, it's pretty obvious that her crime was not the plagerism, nor her wokeness, nor her hypocrisy over free speech issues on campus.
No, not that she was black, nor because she was a woman; but because of her insufficient reply to Stefanik's accusation about calls for Jewish genocide (since Stefaniks believes calls for a free Palestine or resistance against occupation is exactly the same as calls for Jewish genocide.)
And Dershowitz differs from Gay in precisely that trait, being one of the most fanatical apologists for Israel alive today.
Gay was demoted because she was beginning to damage the brand. The best thing Harvard has going for it is its brand name - that must be protected at all costs. She became a PR liability once it became clear that 'riding the storm out' and damage control weren't going to paper this over.
Dershowitz, whatever he may or may not have copied, doesn't damage the brand.
That's a fair take. Institutions primarily act to preserve themselves, and Gay's demotion was a result of that.
The brand has already sustained considerable damage, though - Harvard becomes the Bud Light of universities. Hey, isn't that Ivy school outside Boston supposed to be one of the greatest in the world? So what's with them going to the wall to defend a plagiarist? Isn't that counter to what they're supposed to be about? Lots of questions like that coming from this debacle, from the populace as a whole. And Harvard's eventual decision to hire the best candidate they can find to replace her - so long as she is black - won't inspire a whole bunch of confidence either.
A degree from the Ivy League isn't what it used to be, e.g., Justice Sotomayor, the "wise Latina" with degrees from Princeton and Yale, lacks even basic Constitutional knowledge and its basis for all our subsequent laws.
"Wise Latina."
Do you see on X that the bien pensants are playing the Guinea card on Rufo? Not even I would have credited that. This just keeps getting better.
"The best thing Harvard has going for it is its brand name - that must be protected at all costs."
Somehow this seems to connect to what Mary Douglas writes about. "Harvard" is a symbol, and once people stop believing in what "Harvard" supposedly represents, the structures that are connected to "Harvard" will fall apart. Moreover, the undermining of Harvard as a symbol of excellence has been at least in part an inside job.
Talib was it Dershowitz? Are you sure? Could you be confusing him with Ogletree or Tribe? Both of them are Law professors and both were accused of plagiarism in the early aughts:
https://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/24/nyregion/when-plagiarisms-shadow-falls-on-admired-scholars.html
It seems to me that your point is that these cases should be revisited in light of this week's events. I agree 100%, and, if Dershowitz is also under a shadow that too should be illuminated.
To take matters further, I am unclear on a few major issues regarding Gay that should be clear, but are not. Firstly - will the Research Integrity Officer (RIO) be allowed to investigate the lengthy report of accusations, first filed on Dec. 19? By policy at Harvard a decision should have been made by Dec. 26 to investigate or not. I've read the report, it is very thorough. It is inconceivable that there was insufficient evidence to investigate - unless the board made that part of the deal for Gay to step down. If they did that is scandalous. I hope some eager reporter FOIAs the reports of the RIO and the emails to and from the Board (specifically Pritzker) since December.
Secondly - given that there is ample evidence of her having plagiarised, how can she "go back to the faculty" in a meaningful way? A faculty member needs to have scholarly credibility to teach, to do research, to mentor graduate students and to publish. How have these issues been addressed? Can she do any of these things now? Did the Corporation make a deal with her to resign that in fact cannot be academically acceptable? I suppose they can if all the best of academic values are overridden. But if they did that, then that too is a scandal; it is as if Harvard's Corporation does not understand, or care about academic values? Do any of the faculty members at Harvard care to ask these questions and to pursue the answers? If not, why not? Is it fear, or is it complacency? I'd love to hear others thoughts on this. It is a scandal within a scandal, within a scandal...and it seems that the whole of the Harvard community is turning a blind eye to these issues.
Yes, it was Dershowitz. Dr. Norman Finkelstein accused him of plagerism many years ago. Tribe was one of the ones who supposedly cleared him, but the report was never published.
Dershowitz tried to intimidate Finkelstein's publisher from letting Finkelstein's accusations go to print, but failed.
Here's a pretty good summary of the controversy: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dershowitz%E2%80%93Finkelstein_affair
So we have Dershowitz, Ogletree and Tribe all in the shadow of plagiarism or as Harvard calles it "misusing sources." Incredible!
Yup. The whole system is rotten. Yes, there are good academics who do good work, but the leadership class and those on top is unbelievably corrupt.
Here's something Dr. Finkelstein said about his tiff with Dershowitz in light of the Gay affair, see here: https://youtu.be/Roultg47wqE?si=rzo1KKtvBs7VyMb8
What's going to resurrect Dershowitz' troubles is the Epstein lists. He's already back in "I'm innocent, I was never there, and if I was, I only got a massage" defense mode.
I didn't catch his name was on the Epstein documents before...which adds a whole new dimension to Finkelstein's comment at 13:06: https://youtu.be/Roultg47wqE?si=EACtidOHSaadf7iB
(And also explains the thumbnail on the video).
Oh, Dershowitz has been fighting stories about him and Epstein for years.
For one thing, he was one of the attorneys who defended Jeffrey Epstein back in Florida back in 2006, and was one of the primary negotiators in the Non-prosecution Agreement that granted immunity from all federal criminal charges to Epstein, along with four named co-conspirators and any unnamed "potential co-conspirators". According to the Miami Herald, the non-prosecution agreement "essentially shut down an ongoing FBI probe into whether there were more victims and other powerful people who took part in Epstein's sex crimes". At the time, this halted the investigation and sealed the indictment. The Miami Herald said: "Acosta agreed, despite a federal law to the contrary, that the deal would be kept from the victims." Now why on earth would he do that...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Epstein#Legal_proceedings
And he did everything in his power to stop Virginia Giuffre's lawsuit, calling her an “admitted prostitute and a serial liar” but claimed that the then-teen was not victimized and in fact “made her own decisions in life.” He did admit to getting a massage at Epstein's Island... but said he kept his underwear on. You can watch the interview Dershowitz gave on the subject here:
https://www.theroot.com/alan-dershowitz-sure-i-got-a-massage-at-jeffrey-epstei-1836314016
Part of the reason I find Dershowitz so unconvincing is that wrote a controversial op-ed in the LA Times back in 1997 saying that statutory rape is an outdated concept. Note to Dershowitz: not in my world.
I hadn't been keeping up with Dershowitz except for his Israeli apologetics...but wow. What a piece of work.
I have had very little use for him ever since I heard about the NPA agreement he negotiated for Epstein. That was vile.
Dershowitz's plagiarism was far less serious than Gay's: this has been much discussed. No one is denying that he was very sloppy at times. He also published hundreds of respected academic papers compared to a handful of plagiarized hackwork pieces from Gay.
You may now return to your regularly scheduled Zionist world-domination conspiracies...
Oh, I wouldn't claim that Zionists dominate the world. It's pretty clear from periodic votes in the UN that the domination extends only to Israel, Micronesia, Palau, and the United States, most of the rest of the world doesn't buy the narrative as completely. (And even in the United States--even among American Jews--the Zionists aren't that popular except in the political class.)
And you're right that Dershowitz is far more of a respected academic than Gay. But that's a pretty low bar, isn't it?
I guess we'll see his keen legal mind on display as he's going to represent Israel to address the SA charges of genocide.
I don't much care for most of the Napoleonic program but he was a man of his times. He was one of the world's greatest generals and one of the world's greatest megalomaniacs. Millions died due to Napoleon's wars. Crushing and eliminating Napoleon was costly and only the combined weight of Britain, Austria, Prussia and Russia ultimately defeated him. I don't want to see his like again but his skills were many.
Agreed, and the movie does a serious disservice to actual history.
But I continue to see him through the lens of Germaine de Stael's opposition to his rule-- I discovered her and her history in my teens and I found it fascinating. By channeling all the energies of the French Revolution into his own aggrandizement and wars of conquest he complicated the history of the whole 19th century in Europe, and not in beneficial ways. French idolization of Napoleon is a big mistake, IMO.
Added: I would include Sweden under Marshall Bernadotte, which joined the final coalition, burying its hatchet with Russia despite the recent theft of Finland. And the Spanish patriots who bled and weakened Napoleon's armies for years.
He's a complex figure. The Code Napoleon really did bring the rule of law to many places that were still suffering under feudalism.
Still, I would put him closer to Lenin in moral character than to George Washington.
::::faceplant::::
Jon, the comparison is to Napoleon as a supreme strategist.
Thank you Rod. Good to read you in de Standaard too.
Two days ago I had an interview with the priest for whom I serve as a deacon in our parish. He is convinced that Fiducia is fine, it does not change the teaching of the church and it is only a matter of blessing the good in the same-sex couple. He tried to get me to agree, not to oppose. I insisted that Fiducia was bad and I could only bless as a plea for repentance from sin. I felt a wall being built between us. He perceives me as a disruptor of unity in the church. Then yesterday, when the DDF issued instructions in which Victor wrote that there is no room to disagree with Fiducia and not accept her, it was clear to me. I think it won't be long before all ordained ministers will have to sign the Professio fidei. But I couldn't do that. suspension would probably follow. I get chills just writing about it. Our bishops in the Czech Republic are the only ones from Europe who have not yet taken a position.
My connection to the institution in Rome is getting more and more tenuous. 2024 is going to be a pivotal year for the Church.
Much to digest here, but off the top of my head I'd strongly recommend to Rufo and other "new conservatives" that they read Kirk's 'The Politics of Prudence,' which has just (fortuitously, if not providentially!) been reissued. It's an older book but it has much in it that's relevant for our times.
Russell Kirk's writings are all worth reading carefully!
Yes, he (Christ) is. Have a good weekend, Rod. Stay warm.
PS. I indeed can still drive a bus. Gratifying. And I am set to resume my MDiv studies. I will finish it in three years or less. And by the time this year ends, I will have my pilot's license, have begun my studies in Aviation Mechanics and will be a Chaplain Candidate in the US Navy.
Off to a good start, and things are getting better.
Rufo is right. Young conservatives are going to have to blaze a new path. Looking back to Reagan or Goldwater or Buckley is pointless. And the politics of the 21st Century will be more cultural in nature. The left has given up on tax-and-spend and the nationalization of industries. Older folks like me can be useful but the young have more energy and have a better grasp of the culture as it is now rather than what it was in 1985.
To get a clear picture of just how pointless it is to look back to Reagan et. al. it's useful to read Goldwater's rant against the influence of religion in politics. It's astonishingly shallow. Sorry, I don't have a link but it shouldn't be too hard to find. I saw it quoted at length somewhere a few days ago.
Agreed!
Goldwater's work may be shallow, but I do think an explicitly sectarian politics is bound to fail. You need a big tent without purity tests, otherwise you end up a small sect hissing and spitting as the world marches by.
There's a huge distance between "explicitly sectarian politics" and "your religious convictions are not allowed in politics." I may be misjudging him on the basis of that one speech, but Goldwater's basic attitude sounded very much like the latter. Reminded me of Normal Lear's obnoxious "People for the American Way" ads.
We have a sectarian politics. The sect is a species of liberalism, the metaphysic which does not know it is a metaphysic.
Re: There's a huge distance between "explicitly sectarian politics" and "your religious convictions are not allowed in politics."
Sure, but how can anyone know that you are politicking out of religious conviction unless you tell them? And IMO we should advance secular reasons for positions in politics, since not everyone shares the same religious priors (duh) and many of those have but limited appeal*. For example, arguing for universal healthcare makes more sense on grounds "It would be better for our economy because it distorts the labor and healthcare markets less" than saying "Christ [or the Buddha or Allah] commands we labor to heal the sick."
* E.g., "God forbids alcohol use" appeals to Muslims and Mormons and some Baptists, but if you're opposed to having a bar granted a liquor license down the street from you, you'll likely find more support with "We don't want all the noise, traffic and disruption a bar would cause".
I agree that too often, even now, a lot of Americans seem oblivious to the fact of religious pluralism. I see it still in many of the people still living in my (small) hometown. They seem to think a vote for Trump will bring official prayer back to the schools and that the federal government will be dedicated openly to Christian ends. They really think that. And I wince when I see them post on Facebook, because they walk right into the traps waiting for them set by their more secular anti-Trump neighbors.
That said, those same seculars are too often themselves militantly anti-religious, out to tax small churches into oblivion, sue them for any allegation whatsoever and generally deploy a kind of civil version of Swatting in order to make it impossible even to maintain a church congregation. The Catholic scandal provided the model for such activity.
I think Rufo may be threading the needle just right in avoiding the mistake of simply advocating for truly neutral institutions but in arguing for the positive values implied by those institutions’ existence. But he’s engaged in a high-risk project.
When Goldwater died, Robert Novak noted that Goldwater was less libertarian-conservative giant and more a man steeped in 1950s business-thinking.
It's worse than that. Modern conservatism is all about sucking up to special interests. The institutional Republican Party is light years away from where the likes of Rufo is going. Rufo is the future; the decayed corpse of what once passed for "conservatism" is the past, but that corpse won't go, and isn't going, without a fight.
A lot of older R’s are struggling with the fact that younger R’s don’t hero worship RR and Buckley in the same way they do.
I’m thrilled that younger R’s realize that they need to blaze a new path.
Remember when Paul Ryan was elected to Congress? He was 28 years old and should have energized the Republicans. Instead, Ryan only showed signs of life when waxing poetic about tax cuts and quoting Ayn Rand.
There was a time when the four must read books were: Witness, God and Man at Yale, The Conscience of a Conservative, and Suicide of the West by Chambers, Buckley, Goldwater, and Burnham, respectively. I fear re-reading these works for the dated material underneath the collected dust. The young hero football quarterback, Jack Kemp, was supposed to show how America could achieve equity and greatness through tax cuts and enterprise zones. For a period of time, we were led to believe Ronald Reagan single handedly defeated the evil empire and It was during his administration that the NeoCons started to co-opt foreign policy. Might the merger of Crunchy Cons with the Benedict Option be the next phase of the conservative movement?
Chambers has dated not at all. One of the great American autobiographies.
Very much agreed.
I finally read God & Man at Yale a few years ago and found it pretty thin. Disappointing. Burnham, read maybe 10 years ago, struck me as dated in details but fundamentally accurate in its insights. Goldwater?...kind of doubt he was in their class as a thinker or writer.
The material is dated insofar the lessons learned from the Cold War should not be applied in a contemporary post communist environment. The fact that western politicians believe Putin's Russia is no one else's Russia but Putin's and is no different in its international behavior than the Soviet Union leads me to believe the goal wasn't just containing or destroying communism, but eliminating all traces of Russian civilization because it's a threat to the global illiberal disorder advocated by the ruling elite. We've heard the joke many times: it doesn't matter if we vote Republican or Democrat, Conservative or Liberal, we always get John McCain. Much of the global bureaucratic structures in place are the result of how the West fought the Cold War. I agree that the books have some value in understanding the mentality of some figures in political and intellectual circles of an older time.
I voted for Reagan in 1980, and think a curse has befallen the hand which moved the lever. Otherwise, my guitar playing would be better.
It's been forty - three years since that election. Forty - three years before that, it had been 1937. Incipient or even moderately advanced dementia is no excuse for us Boomers who indirectly inflicted the death of the middle class on the American people. How can we fail to recognize that if something like national restoration is to occur, the Republican party must become economically what the Democrats used to be, populist adjacent if not populistic?
I had a cousin, two years older than I, who had been a victim of the withering of the middle class. Yet, for reasons impossible for me to understand, until his death a couple of years ago, his and his wife's email address was @reagan.com
I hate to say it this way, but a lot of people who ❤️ RR really seem to be in a cult. I really don’t have another word for it (so please forgive me), but when I was more politically active in the late 1990’s into the 2000’s, it was really hard to talk to older R’s about what my life was like as a younger person who never voted for RR. It was just out of the realm of their experience and they didn’t try to relate. They were more than happy to tell me how dumb my generation was and how my generation needed Jesus, but that was about it. I eventually left partly because I was just done with dealing with people like that.
It’s kind of like how people ❤️ Trump now. There’s just no talking to ‘the true believers’ about the negatives or effects of bad policy.
One of my husband’s relatives seems to glow every time he talks about he worked as a volunteer at the 1980 GOP convention. It’s weird to me, but a lot of it is that I was just a kid at the time. I just don’t share that historical moment in the same way. (The first presidential election I could vote in was 1996.) I’m glad this person had that experience and that it was transformative moment for him. Yet, what are the Republicans doing in the 21st century? In 2024? Where is the vision for the future?
I’ve always taken a ‘I can respect what he did to re-energize the Party, but what’s next?’ Approach. We still have problems to solve and the answer isn’t RR or tax cuts. Or Trump. Or ‘support the troops’, inc.
I’m really tired of the personality cults.
Word.
I've never understood any of it, either. I voted for Reagan because poor Carter, whom I'd voted for in 1976, seemed helpless. And because you don't remember the 1980s as I do, you'll have to take my word for it that there was an optimism about the decade which the anemic 1970s had lacked.
But my gosh, zombie Reaganism, indeed! The Reagan tax cuts did by several means begin the garroting of the American middle class. And Clinton, whose only credo politically was success, having seen what had happened to old Bush when he broke his promise not to raise taxes, wasn't about to mess with The Program, anymore than young Bush would. By Obama's time, The Finance Party ruled the country.
Why didn't Trump try to reverse the Reagan tax cuts? Why didn't he pursue antitrust prosecution? ( Maybe someone had something on him? ) Why didn't he advocate a doubling of the minimum wage? He could have sealed the southern border in two weeks by federalizing the state National Guards of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California and stationing them at the border. He didn't.
He had run as a sort of Populist. If he were a serious man and had pressed such an agenda, he would have been in a position to be another FDR.
He's not a serious man. Obviously. It's sad that the American people have become so damned stupid.
You're right that these so-called blessings are going to pave the way for gay marriage in the Church. I have no doubt that that development is intended by Rome.
A while back I read “The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self,” by Carl Trueman, which I of course found via your writings. For some reason after reading your essay today, I thought about the book and felt like I didn’t remember him mentioning Mary Douglas at all. Sure enough, she isn’t listed in the index.
Trueman’s book is a big one and I’m not going to claim having a photographic memory, but what I seem to remember is that he argued that Western man’s subjective orientation, or psychological man—“a type characterized not so much by finding identity in outward directed activities as was true for the previous types but rather in the inward quest for personal psychological happiness”—more or less begins with Rousseau. I was totally on board with that idea until I read the excerpts from Douglas today. I wonder what Trueman would have to say about the idea that the seeds of this may have started with Luther.
I’m tempted to read Trueman’s book, as his essays are often worthwhile, but yes, there’s that. He’s doctrinally blocked from seeing what may be the real roots of this sick plant that’s blossomed.
Still, it’s an immensely difficult task to pinpoint the ultimate origin of our disorders. And maybe it’s a vain task, if the goal is to find where to place historical blame. Better to focus on our own present guilt, and how best to repent from it.
Yeah, I realized that my comment was going to be provocative to some. I don't mean to start a religious war! But, we can't be afraid where inquiry may take us.
I'm no theologian, but as a working definition I'm going to say that the purpose of religious practice, as a Christian, is to come to know God and what he wants of us, so as to better live according to his plan (with the idea of uniting with him). So, that's how I see the connection between Luther and Rousseau.
The connection between the above description of "psychological man" and Rousseau is easy enough to see. But when I consider the distinction between faith and works, or faith alone, and add to that the distinction between Church teachings and sola scriptura, we arrive at the same place: namely, religious practice is at root personal experience.
The description I gave above of the purpose of religious practice can be boiled down to achieving happiness. Of course, "happiness" means something much more profound in the context of religion, as opposed to secular concerns. Rousseau's Romanticism kicks this all off in the secular realm. But I think it's fair to argue that Luther kicks off the primacy of personal experience in the religious realm. And the one follows from the other.
I’m not sure how you connect “the primacy of personal experience in the religious realm” with Luther. His Large and Small Catechism would indicate the opposite. The only personal experience I note from Luther is the “for me” that Christ was crucified and risen, and in the Eucharist this Real Presence is not some generic promise but for the forgiveness of my sins.
As I've said, I'm no theologian. I'm coming from a viewpoint of history and philosophy, so let me sketch out my thinking a little more.
When I'm talking about Luther, I'm referring to him kicking off the Reformation. I remember a line of thinking from my college history courses that Luther was actually rather conservative in his thinking and that, much to his dismay, the Reformation "got away from him." In other words, he opened the door to innovation.
The innovation that I'm talking about—and, again, I'm painting with a fairly broad brush—is that there is no authority but Scripture. Now, accepting that, we come to the question of who interprets Scripture. So far, I don't think anything I'm saying is controversial.
The Reformation opens the door to the Bible reader himself interpreting Scripture. This is what I mean by the primacy of personal experience in the religious realm. Whether Luther wanted this or not, isn't what I'm considering. I'm merely saying that the Reformation starts with Luther, and proceeds from there by what's implicated in his teachings.
You should read this
https://www.amazon.com/The-Making-of-Martin-Luther/dp/B076M95KYG/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2A2BMXYDKX1MH&keywords=rex+making+of+martin+luther&qid=1704494873&sprefix=rex+making+of+martin+luther%2Caps%2C76&sr=8-1
It is about Luther, not Lutheranism, but still worth reading. It's very good (and I have both a high esteem of and a long friendship with its author). It also lends, somewhat indirectly, support to your "thesis" about Luther as a precursor to Rosseau.
Thank you!
I have to disagree. Luther believed that the bread and wine become the actual Body and Blood of Christ. The death of sacramentalism seems to me to have begun in Geneva. It was Calvin who argued that Christ was "spiritually" present in The Lord's Supper.
Even so, it's a mistake to believe that classical Protestantism argues a "my Bible and me" approach to spiritual growth. There have always been the fringies, the same kinds of people who will tell you they have "a word from the Lord" for you. But classical Protestantism has always upheld the necessity of a well taught clergy, and admonished believers to remember that, as the Bible says, there is wisdom in a multitude of counselors.
Putting aside the “cafeteria Catholics,” if the Catholic Church teaches a thing as part of its catechism, it’s not counseling. It’s instructing. It’s telling the Catholic what a Catholic believes. There’s no shopping for other interpretations.
"The death of sacramentalism seems to me to have begun in Geneva. It was Calvin who argued that Christ was "spiritually" present in The Lord's Supper."
I would say that it began in Zurich with Zwingli, who held that Christ was not in any sense present in or with the bread in wine, but rather that the Holy Communion served as a reminder to Christians of Christ's death for their sake, and also as a pledge by the Christians participating in it to Christ and to each other to remain faithful.
It was Calvin's long-term ambition to find a "middle way" between the errors of Luther's ideas about Christ's actual/physical body and blood being present "in, with, and under" the bread and wine, and the errors of Zwingli (far worse in Calvin's view) that Christ was not present at the Supper in any way other than as he was present in all circumstances, spiritually but not materially or physically, to all faithful Christians at all times. Calvin believed that the bread and wine of the Lord's Supper remained bread and wine, but served as "instruments" or "conduits" by which Christ's body and blood were conveyed by the Holy Spirit to "worthy recipients" (which to Calvin meant "the elect"). He once wrote that as the bread and wine are received by the worthy communicant through the mouth Christ's body and blood are received "through the eyes of his mind." What does that mean? (He shared with Bullinger and Cranmer an abhorrence of any gestures of adoration towards the consecrated bread and wine - gestures on which Lutherans put much emphasis from 1550 onward as a visible token of their belief that the Reformed rejection of the presence of Christ's body and blood was a detestable and damnable error, far worse than Catholic errors about the Eucharist in their view.)
The Lutherans spurned Calvin's views. Even Melanchthon, who in his last years seems (he died in 1560) to have become increasingly uneasy with Luther's views about "spiritual union" between the bread and wine, on the one hand, and Christ's body and blood, on the other, such that adoration and worship were due to the bread and wine after they had been consecrated - Luther thought that all the leftover elements should be consumed immediately after the service, as he was uncertain whether the "sacramental union" persisted after the service was over, or whether they reverted to being simply bread and wine - although he corresponded in friendly fashion with Calvin, could never bring himself to believe that Calvin was right about "spiritual" presence only. So in 1549 Calvin and Zwingli's successor in Zurich, Heinrich Bullinger, came to a doctrinal agreement in which, as to the Eucharist, Calvin made all the concessions. Bullinger had a warmer spiritual understanding of the Sacrament than Zwingli, but he saw it as an enacted parable of the working of divine grace on the individual Christian's soul, for which any "real or corporal presence" of Christ associated with the bread and wine was superfluous (as well as popish). That 1549 agreement - the Consensus Tigurinus - is why ever since the 16th century and to this day one will find Reformed churches in which Calvin's theological influence on sacramental doctrine had been strong (e.g., the Scottish Presbyterians and the French Huguenots) and others in which it has been overshadowed by the "Zurich tradition" of Zwingli and Bullinger (e.g., the Swiss Reformed churches and the Hungarian, the Polish, and the Transsylvanian reformed churches, with the Dutch and German reformed churches being influenced by both strains). I won't address the English Reformation here, but Cranmer's views seem to have been largely identical with (although expressed in a manner differing from) those of Bullinger.
In the longer term in Lutheranism, however, Melanchthon's views on the Eucharist superseded Luther's, in practice if not in theory. Luther believed that it was at the recital or chanting of the Words of Institution that the bread and wine entered into a "sacramental union" with Christ's body and blood. First-generation Lutheran reformers were (mostly) willing to reserve portions of the consecrated sacramental elements to give communion to the sick and dying, but Luther disliked this because he believed that Scripture provided no information (if that's the right word to use) whether the "sacramental union" persisted after the communion service was over, and preferred an abbreviated bedside communion service for the sick or dying. Melanchthon, however, believed that the Words of Institution were addressed to the congregation to prepare them to receive the Sacrament and that the "spiritual union" took place only as a certain "quantum" of bread and a certain "quantum" of wine entered the mouth of each individual communicant. The consequence of such a view was that all the bread and wine that had not been consumed had never entered into a "sacramental union" with Christ's body and blood, so the leftovers could be put back into the sacristy cupboard's breadbox or wine flagon and used again at the next communion service.
Yes, I agree, and we should remember that complex phenomena are multiply determined.
Yes, I'm not saying "Luther did this!" I'm perfectly fine with the idea that this springs mostly from Rousseau. I'm just saying that Douglas makes me think that we can peel things back a bit more and find Luther's contribution worth considering.
If I may go on…
From a religious point of view, God is the ultimate reality. From a secular point of view, material existence is. These are different metaphysics. With each, however, the next question is epistemological: meaning, how do we know the what.
I'm saying that Luther—or, more broadly speaking, the Reformation—dispenses with the authority of the Church and ultimately lands with the authority of the believing Bible reader. This is a dramatic shift from something external and more permanent than oneself to the personal. Yes, Scripture is still external to oneself, but the interpretation—which is everything—is personal. To me, Rousseau then does the same thing with material reality.
At the start, I was talking about definitions of "happiness" and what knowing it and achieving it entails. Rousseau says that's ultimately up to you. It's ultimately personal. I'm arguing that the idea that scriptural interpretation is the right and responsibility of each individual Christian is an idea along the same lines. Thus, "happiness"—what a believing Christian thinks it is and how one obtains it—is personal, by that line of thinking.
Sorry if I'm repeating myself!
Mario, I am repeating a reply to you which I left a moment ago: classical Protestantism has never argued that ultimate authority rested with "the authority of the believing Bible reader."
The Reformers didn't believe this, to be sure, but where did ultimate authority rest once the Reformers began to disagree seriously with one another, such that Lutherans and Reformed held each others' views on the Lord's Supper to be damnable and blasphemous, as well as erroneous? With the King? With the City Council? It was bound in the end to come to "the authority of the believing Bible reader," or else to the view that areas of doctrinal disagreement among Protestants were less significant than areas of common spiritual experience and practice.
Professor, you know fully well that intraProtestant disputes aside, all classical Protestants believe that salvation is by grace through faith in Christ alone. We may differ about the sacraments and about eschatology, about liturgy, about Wesleyan mysticism, you name it, but we have the main thing in common.
My problem with Catholicism is that I agree with the late Evangelical apologist, Walter Martin, that the Roman Catholic Church is "a large, backslidden church," a church "fallen from grace," in that so many of its communicants really do not seem to understand that salvation is by faith in Jesus Christ alone.
Trueman's book is very good irrespective of his possible misplacement of the root of the problem. Also, I've just ordered a recent book along the same lines by the Girardian theologian Gil Baillie, 'The Apocalypse of the Sovereign Self,' which was just published in June. Baillie, a Catholic, said somewhere recently that he didn't have access to Trueman's book at the time he was writing his, but came to some related conclusions.
Trueman's book is very good!
Yes, I plan on reading Baillie as well. On my list for the coming year.
Well, everybody has parents and all ideas have antecedents. There are, though, critical points that represent moments of choice. Perhaps it was William of Ockham.
I love the Dark Age British saints.
At baptism, I was given four prayer saints, but a fifth chose me. I was looking at an Orthodox blog, and someone commented that his brother was a fan of John Muir, and asked whether anyone could suggest a saint as an alternative. I suggested St. Cuthbert, because he was born in the same town as Muir, Dunbar, in SE Scotland, and was a nature-lover and environmentalist, who introduced the first laws to protect birds. I then went to check I was right about Dunbar, and found to my astonishment that it was St. Cuthbert’s day that day. It’s fitting for me, from northern England, as he is the patron saint of Northumbria.
Do you know who absolutely loves St. Cuthbert? The historian Tom Holland. Funnily enough, last year Tom took Martin Shaw and me to his literary club in Soho, and we sat there listening to him talk on and on, wonderfully, about the glories of Cuthbert and his age. Then Martin chimed in talking about Anglo-Saxon and Celtic mythology. I didn't want it to end.
They surely told you about St. Cuthbert and the otters frolicking around him as he walked along the seashore. But did they mention that part of St. Cuthbert's actual priestly stole survives? It's the oldest specimen of Anglo-Saxon embroidery and depicts St. Gregory on one end, his "straightman" Deacon Peter on the other.
There's a lovely novel from the '50s, BROTHER PETROC'S RETURN by S.M.C. (pen name of Welsh nun Sr. Mary Catherine Williams) that was popular when I was in high school. The title refers to a 16th C. monk, not the old saint.
BROTHER PETROC'S RETURN is a wonderful book. It is on a bookshelf behind me as I write this.
The relics of St. Cuthbert can be seen at Durham Anglican Cathedral, which is a magnificent cathedral to visit for its own sake: https://www.durhamcathedral.co.uk/explore/treasures-collections/saint-cuthbert-relics
I read somewhere that his body remained incorrupt until his tomb was broken into under Henry VIII, after which it started to rot in disgust, but I have no idea whether that is true.
St. Cuthbert is said to have founded several churches across what is now southern Scotland and northern England. One of the most well-known is in Edinburgh. It is still called St. Cuthbert's Church, despite being Presbyterian (my understanding is that Presbyterian churches don't usually have saints' names): https://www.scotlandschurchestrust.org.uk/church/parish-church-of-st-cuthbert-edinburgh/
Well, Evelyn Waugh loved the name. William Boot's anonymous benefactor (who calls himself Mr. Baldwin) in Scoop has a silent servant named Cuthbert, and the Cuthberts run the seaside residential hotel where old Mr. Crouchback lives in Sword of Honour.
There's a nice, amateurish and personal, little video about St. Cuthbert here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWvk4doXWng&t=903s
I like the point about the attraction of wild saints.
There's St. Cuthbert's Way, a recently devised pilgrimage route, linking Melrose Abbey, St. Cuthbert's Cave, and Lindisfarne: https://britishpilgrimage.org/portfolio/st-cuthberts-way/
It's odd how the decline of Christianity in Europe coincides with a fascination with pilgrimage, so numerous new routes have been devised, and the Camino de Santiago de Compostela had a record number of walkers last year. Apparently, numerous people set off on the Camino atheist and convert to Catholicism on the way.
The Northumberland Coast is one of those areas where the veil between the worlds feels thin. I went to university in Newcastle, and used to sometimes cycle up the coast. I remember once seeing early-morning mist covering the sea and the farmland, with only the long line of sand dunes visible.
Lindisfarne / Holy Island is very touristy, but nevertheless quite astonishing. It's a tidal island, like Mont St. Michel and St. Michael's Mount.
The Farne Islands, where St. Cuthbert died, are uninhabited, and to visit you have to get a guided tour, which is mainly oriented towards bird-watchers. The same is true of Coquet Island, further south, where he met a king at one time.
Rufo is right that there aren't any neutral institutions. As for the chief vectors of value transmission, I'd add to his list television and popular culture in general. They are subtly and profoundly subversive.
I wouldn't call popular culture "subversive". Maybe it was at one time. But now? They're supporting all those in power today.
Their "subversion" is over, since they've won. They're in the "support the establishment" mode now, because they're part of it.
Yes, you're right about the current state of affairs. My point was more that we'll be fighting against those vectors as well.
Right - but that means they have to play defense. They have to focus more on defense than playing offense. And that makes them vulnerable to someone, like Rufo or any sort of nascent conservative movement, that doesn't have to play defense at all.
I absolutely agree with Rufo's essay, but can we also settle our sights on something else? Conservatives really need to get their friggin moral house in order. Trump is the most glaring example of this, but when the congressional ranks are full of tarts like MTG, Boebert, Gaetz, et al what centrist let alone center left voter is going to vote across party lines without feeling like they've spent a morally debased all inclusive weekend at club Epstein? MLK knew this better than anyone. The guy wasn't exactly the paragon of moral behavior, but damn did he understand PR. His marches were usually subdued affairs. You weren't going to see the same off-putting vitriol and rabble that coursed through your average Malcolm X or Black Panther rally. MLK knew that the only way people weren't going to be threatened by his position is by appearing ethically immaculate. He had to be (or at least appear) better than the people who were opposing him. Conservatives don't seem to get that. Image matters, especially in politics. Who are conservatives going to be? The party of upstanding, impeccable citizens or the party of your crazy ass uncle who lives in the apartment over the top of your garage?
Why not both? The crazy uncle (myself included) often plays the role of gadfly.
Because being bit incessantly tends not to endear one towards the biter. I also wonder how much effect it really has other than serving as a mild annoyance. The biting is really just for the benefit of the flies.
Comment of the year so far.
In fairness, I think a lot of the enthusiasm for Trump is a defensive enthusiasm, as you might defend your crazy ass uncle because he's close kin and the people who are after him are worse than he is.
Still, I wonder what might have happened if a Hawley or a Vance had run for the nomination? DeSantis was supposed to be "that guy," and it's dismaying that while he may be, he can't convince voters of it.
DeSantis’ poor reception has mystified me. Maybe I just liked him too much to see the flaws, but he strikes me as an effective doer, unlike Trump, who is far more flash and talk than deeds.
Same here, C.T. It really does call into question whether the "traditional" American exists in significant plenitude anymore, or whether it's really all about "owning the libs."
The fact that "Let's Go, Brandon!" could be seen as a significant warcry by someone who isn't an idiot makes me fear I have my answer.
I’ve wondered just that myself. I had my own skepticism regarding my age group (b. 1961). We gave the world Obama, after all. But while my elderly mother is still around, I guess I’ll have this illusion that her Goldwater voting cohort is still out in force.
Egad. I abhor Goldwater. Libertarianism started to take over Republicanism with Goldwater's ascendancy. And yes, Reagan carried it close to economic fulfillment, which has destroyed the American middle class.
Johnson, obviously, was no great blessing. My first and proudest vote was for George McGovern. I should have quit while I was ahead.
Goldwater, Johnson, and McGovern had in common that they were American patriots. They could never have accommodated themselves to contemporary America.
I consider myself a paleoconservative, with the exception of their too - common anti - Semitism.
It isn't impossible that we could fix much which ails us. I certainly don't see paulryanism as any answer. We need an America which cares about its own people. The kind of government I want would seal our borders, deport illegals, make Muslim immigration to America illegal, gut the military - industrial complex while imprisoning the wusses and freaks who have gutted our fighting forces, at least double the minimum wage, enforce antitrust laws, abrogate destructive trade agreements, declare war on the surveillance state, reverse the Reagan tax cuts and the nasty array of kicks which the poor are vulnerable to.
But we're finished. We have lost the favor of God, which I do think we had. In the last fifty years, we've aborted seventy - five million babies. I hardly need to do more than allude to the sex and gender madness.
We're done.
My first vote was for McGovern too. I regret not having voted for Nixon, however.
Disagree. Acting with discretion is hardly getting "their friggin moral house in order". Neko is baying at the moon. If this is the bog standard of the House, then there we are. I'd concentrate on winning elections.
When I was a child in the 60’s only about 1/3 of the people in the pews would go up to communion. Confessions were heard Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays and there were lines. Now, as you say, the entire congregation gets up. If you stay put, perhaps for missing Mass without a good reason, you feel like everyone is looking at you as at least a felon, and a half hour of confession on Saturday is provided for a parish of 3000 souls.
Our bishop has instituted entire days of confessions in lent and advent. The first year the priests were convinced no one would come and equipped themselves with books. They were busy all day. Thousands of people showed up all over the diocese.
We were all told after Vatican II that confession, rebranded reconciliation, was outdated and thoroughly optional. You are absolutely right that these boomer priests do not believe in sacramental grace or transubstantiation. Whether there will be any Church left to save when the younger, more conservative, priests are left remains to be seen.
The wonderful thing about the young is their enthusiasm and energy.
We are blessed with two, and the number of activities on offer at our downtown parishes is amazing! Our pastor spares no effort to provide something for all age groups, seeking to blend the Latin Mass attendees with the exceptionally reverent English Masses. The pope is attempting to deal a death blow to these men. May their bishops have the courage to resist on their behalf.