This piece by a college student at “a well-known Catholic university” has to be seen to be believed. The piece is so striking from beginning to end it’s hard to choose a teaser excerpt to post here. All one can say after reading it is, George Orwell … at the very least seems to have been onto something …
44 thoughts on “If I had to guess I’d say George Orwell may have been onto something …”
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Orwell was right about a lot of things…
Orwell was right about a lot of things; http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.thornwalker.com%2Fditch%2F+%28Orwell+OR+Orwellian%29&btnG=Search these guys are rightly fond of invoking him… Bradbury was http://www.thornwalker.com/ditch/dtw_451.htm also prescient, too… And people are fond of pointing to http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=%22brave+new+world%22+huxley&btnG=Search Huxley, too, and with good reason, given the social engineering, drug abuse, and http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=gmail&q=%22bread%20and%20circuses%22 bread and circuses of our day, yet I think Orwell hit upon the nature of the State in our times more than anyone else has, and Bradbury did a decent job of that, too…
(As you http://antitechnocrat.net:8000/node/1389 can see, I had a bit of fun, invoking Orwell in my forum posting earlier…)
The Catholic Church has got
The Catholic Church has got some problems.
We need an analytical study of the pathologies that arise because (1) all traditional institutions, for example the family and related arrangements, are treated as a simple matter of oppressor/victim, (2) the situation is defined in accordance with the general rule that human differences that do not help constitute specifically liberal institutions (world markets and neutral expert bureaucracies) can’t have any social effect unwanted by the victim, (3) nobody is allowed to disagree, (4) the more the definition is at odds with reality the more comprehensive and compulsory the measures needed to put it into effect and the more offensive dissent becomes. Dissent, after all, could bring down the whole house of cards and so is extraordinarily threatening.
In this case I suppose we could add the tendency of male homosexuals at least to form gay mafias, hominterns, and the like.
Rem tene, verba sequentur.
Taking steps toward solving the priest sexual abuse problem
“The Catholic Church has got some problems.” (—Jim Kalb)
Yes, and it looks as if it’s on the way to solving one of them, as least: here’s a development which was inevitable in view of the Catholic Church’s need to preserve its moral authority fully intact and also to keep from being the defendant in endless series of the most shocking, humiliating law-suits (and ones repeatedly costing it multi-millions of dollars, it must be remembered):
“Word that a soon-to be-released Vatican document will signal homosexuals are unwelcome in Roman Catholic seminaries even if they are celibate has devastated gay clergy — and raised doubts among conservatives about whether an outright ban can be enforced. [Fred Scrooby note: even with less-than-perfect enforcement it would be far preferable to the situation the Catholics are facing now.] A Vatican official […] said Thursday that the upcoming ‘instruction’ from the Vatican’s Congregation for Catholic Education will reaffirm the church’s belief that homosexuals should not be ordained. In recent decades Vatican officials have stated several times that gays should not become priests because their sexual orientation is ‘intrinsically disordered’ and makes them unsuitable for ministry. [F.S. note: that extremely gratifying statement is about as un-PC as you can get and notice how it is made utterly without fear or cringing and offering no apology, though in one fell swoop it calmly denies, outright devastates, directly or indirectly about twenty-five percent of what undergirds post-modern cultural hegemony. No mainstream Anglican/Episcopalian on the planet today could make either of the two halves of that statement: that homosexuality is “intrinsically disordered,” or that it “unsuits someone for the ministry.” Reading that comment, you feel meaning suddenly coming back into a world given up as void, the way color suddenly comes back into a cheek given up as dead. That kind of moral certainty, that kind of meaning in the universe, is apparently what Christopher Hitchens despises about religion, if anyone can imagine a man being so lost as he must be. No two ways about it, there are certain things about strong religions—the Catholics, the Southern Baptists, the Orthodox Jews, the Hassidic Jews, the Moslems—which one has to admire, one has to love the way one loves water when one thirsts, meaning when one is meaningless. This rocklike refusal to bend with fashion, this anchor for what is adrift, is lifegiving.] The latest document is scheduled to be distributed within weeks, just as an evaluation of all 229 American seminaries gets under way under the direction of the same Vatican agency developing the seminary statement. The review, called an Apostolic Visitation, was ordered by Pope John Paul II in response to the U.S. clergy sex abuse crisis which erupted in 2002. Among the questions the evaluators will ask is whether ‘there is evidence of homosexuality in the seminary,’ according to the agency’s guide for the inspections. [F.S. note: It surely sounds like they’re dead-serious about this. I don’t see what choice they have. For one thing, it’s either this or bankruptcy, apart from plenty more abstract reasons …] […] Critics ranging from gay rights groups to advocates for victims have accused the Vatican of scapegoating homosexuals to divert attention from the church’s failures to protect children. [F.S. note: How DARE they! So, getting at the real root of the problem, which everyone including “advocates for victims” first and foremost has been bitterly criticizing the Catholics for not doing, is now ‘scapegoating’? How contemptible can this bunch get!]”
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Steve Sailer, a Catholic, speculates on a possible solution if it turns out doing what is the only choice now open to it leaves the Catholic Church with a severe priest shortage:
“Banning gays only makes recruiting enough priests an even tougher task. […] Two often-recommended [remedies are] to ordain women and to allow married priests. The first wouldn’t work without the second, because if you opened up the priesthood to unmarried women, there would eventually be a large lesbian element among priests, and nobody (especially the straight males who pay a lot of the bills) wants to go to church to be harangued by resentful lesbians. Lifting the 1,000-year-old requirement for priestly celibacy would make sense for several reasons, both in terms of broadening the pool of potential priests and lessening the chances for sex scandals. The celibacy rule made sense in medieval society as a way to fight nepotism in the Church when those were the best meritocratic positions available, but, today, there are lots of better jobs than in the Church so nepotism isn’t much of a problem.”
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Might as well throw this in from Paul Belien’s blog: Flanders is a very Catholic country (which is one of the big differences between it and the other big Dutch country, Holland, which is very Protestant) so I’m sure we all assume Flemings go through life intensely curious as to … well … as to … they go through life intensely curious as to what the Virgin Mary looked like topless—what else! Well … at least the Belgian Culture Ministry seems to assume they do. (And people wonder why the Flemings want to break away from Belgium …) Yes, the play, written by a Moslem, opens next month on stage in Brussels then goes for a tour throughout the nation of Flanders, paid for in part by the Culture Ministry—who especially recommends it for schoolchildren apparently. But wait—isn’t this what Theo van Gogh got killed for but in reverse? And … remember that Rotterdam artist who was so upset at van Gogh’s killing he felt moved to paint a small poster-size mural on the outside wall of his artist’s studio which showed a cross, and angel ascending, and the words “Thou shalt not kill”—that was all—and the Gedapo had to come and destroy it because it “offended” Moslems attending a nearby Mosque? Do Moslems think Catholics might get offended at seeing a play featuring a topless Virgin Mary?
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And last but not least, also from Paul Belien’s blog: Remember the predictions that homosexual “marriage” would be followed by legalization of polygamy as night follows … well, as night follows … night? Check it out …
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Long live free Flanders!
Erratum
In my comment above, in the part where I quote from Steve Sailer’s blog, “remedies are” is not supposed to be a link (I mistakenly put brackets around it instead of the proper code for brackets, which made it come out looking like a link).
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Long live free Flanders!
It doesn’t say Mary was topless in the play, just in the poster
Excuse me, I just re-read the BrusselsJournal.com log entry on that play with the topless Mary and it doesn’t say she’s topless in the play, only in the publicity poster. Well, that’s a relief. But still—how come this poster doesn’t get the same treatment the Gedachtenspolitie (the Gedapo, the Flemish branch of the Belgian national Thought Police) meted out to that little mural in Rotterdam with the cross, angel flying upward, and “Thou shalt no kill” painted on it? What’s up with that? (As if we didn’t know … what’s up with it is multiculti, a word meaning every culture in the world may continue in existence … except white Christian culture …)
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Long live free Flanders!
Sorry, more explanations
“In recent decades Vatican officials have stated several times that gays should not become priests because their sexual orientation is ‘intrinsically disordered’ and makes them unsuitable for ministry.” (—from the FoxNews.com article linked above)
I got an e-mail asking why I felt celibate homosexuals weren’t suited for the ministry and I have to agree this distinction—celibate versus practicing—presents a difficult problem. My inclination is to view sexually-continent homosexual men as suitable priest material if they feel the vocation, so the above quote which I praised in my earlier comment is actually less-than-perfect from my point of view. BUT … there are problems with this as well, a few of which were fleetingly touched on in the article: how do the “investigators” know who’s homosexual where those with that inclination don’t practice it or show it outwardly? No one can know. If they seem effeminate it doesn’t necessarily mean homosexually-inclined, as is known in the world of psychology. So, perhaps many with that innate orientation who are sexually continent wouldn’t be culled, and perhaps that’s as it should be. Nothing in the outward physical appearance, behavior, or mannerisms of the Irish priest, Father O’Malley, played by Bing Crosby in the great 1940s Hollywood movie “The Bells of St. Mary’s” would, let’s say, necessarily rule him out as having private homosexual feelings but if he did have them but never acted on them who would know or care, and if he did have them and were excluded for them what a loss! On the other hand, as a priest points out in the article, the Church is afraid the pressures of an all-male world might cause even healthy outlooks to weaken. There’s also the question of whether an intrinsically-disordered private sexuality is optimal for the priesthood even in the case of a priest who keeps chaste—in other words, can there be a privately homosexual, non-practicing Father O’Malley? Thinking of these questions makes one appreciate that the task lying before the Catholic Church in this regard isn’t an easy one. It may also turn out that Steve Sailer is onto something.
The other e-mail I got pointed out that the Rotterdam police, being Holland-Dutch, couldn’t be thought of as Flemish Gedachtenspolitie. That’s right of course, and the ones who took down that harmless mural weren’t even necessarily from the Dutch Gedapo office—I don’t think they were (just as, during the Nazi period in Germany, not all police actions were by the Nazi Gestapo). But my intent was to take a swipe at the whole Gedapo phenomenon, the whole Gedapo Thought-Police mentality over there, whether it be among the Flemish Dutch or the Holland Dutch, without niggling too much about details. In posts elsewhere I’ve referred to the Gedapo in regard to outrages in Wallonia, where the Thought-Police would be French-speaking of course, and wouldn’t be called the Gedapo but something like La Gendarmerie des Pensées, I suppose—“La Gendapo” for short? (pronounced with a soft G of course like the second G in “garage” LOL) Or “La Gendapée”? (Ditto lol) Something like that. Look, the important thing is to realize what a hell it is for normalness over there, and how the Tranzis and their allies are in the process of literally destroying whole societies and nations. They’ve got to be stopped and normalness restored before it’s too late, that’s all there is to it.
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Long live free Flanders!
On the legalization of polygamy (see end of my comment, above))
This log entry in BrusselsJournal.com reporting the recent de facto legalization of polygamous marriage in Belgium has garnered, as I type this, over thirty-one thousand reads, fifty trackbacks, and sixty-four comments. What has amazed me about the readers’ comments is how many of them are defending the legalization of polygamy. Defending it! Had they limited themselves to defending the legalization of homosexual “marriage,” and saying they regretted the one led to the other (as had been widely predicted, by the way) I wouldn’t be surprised. But so many of them are defending the legalization of polygamy in that thread! One person defending it referred to traditional marriage as “heterosexual monopartnering.” Can anyone believe it? The other side just doesn’t stop. They just do not ever stop! When you think, “They’ve won that last battle in favor of depravity, so maybe now that they’ve gotten what they want it’ll end and they’ll be content and leave us alone.” But they’re never content, and they never leave us alone. They simply have no intention of ever bringing it to an end: they are going to keep pushing and pushing and pushing until we finally start pushing back hard, with a force equal to or greater than theirs, and then this will end, not before. These are not nice, decent, fair, magnanimous, generous, moral people we’re dealing with, but poorly-educated, conniving, destructive, hate-filled, jealous, mean, petty, vengeful, ignorant people who are bent on doing as much damage to society as they can. Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot, Fidel Castro, Kim Il-Sung, Kim Jong-Il, Saddam Hussein, Robert Mugabe, and all their ilk and these people are all birds of a feather. We’re confronted with a bunch of people on Robert Mugabe’s level of morality.
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Long live free Flanders!
Polygamy’s de facto legalization is generating huge interest
In the nine days since that BrusselsJournal.com log entry was posted (see my comment of 10/1, above) it’s had, by itself, over forty-three thousand reads, fifty-eight trackbacks, and eighty readers’ comments (this, by the way, at a blog that’s only been in existence about four months)—for the stats, scroll down the blog’s home page till you come to the entry.
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Long live free Flanders!
Probably giving some people
Probably giving people some new ideas. This will probably be the next wave of rubbish from the degenerates in SF.
exactly…
… and don’t forget: the pro-polygamy crowd will have allies amongst not only sexually depraved degenerates and lifestyle libertines, but amongst some who otherwise might be thought – wrongly – by neoconservatives as potential “allies” in the culture war: Muslims, and Mormons (or at least their “fundamentalist Mormon” cousins, who still practice polygamy; here in Canada the fundy-Mormons in Bountiful, B.C. are on record as saying, basically, “If queers can be married in Canada, why is polygamy still outlawed?” Why, indeed.).
It is instructive that this happened in the Netherlands, a nation which is at once more liberal than almost any other nation on the planet, and at the same time, is in danger of having a Muslim majority by as early as 2015… The Netherlands is Ground Zero for the war between the post-Christian “Brave New World Order” and the Dar-al-Islam’s mujahideen: the politician who raised the biggest stink about Islamic immigration and its effects in the Netherlands was the late (assassinated) Pim Fortuyn, a homosexual pedophile and extreme cultural liberal. And now, in this “marriage”, there is something that actually brings together both the sexual perverts and the Muslims: legalized polygamy in a Western nation. Perhaps the only issue which brings them together… (And which will prevent the possibility of it being possible to oppose it politically at the ballot box in the next Dutch election.) And further grieves us traditionalist-conservative partisans of Western, Christian civilization.
Was polygamy legalized or were we just imagining things? ….
In this BrusselsJournal.com log entry and comments thread is a bit of discussion regarding whether or not the recent seeming polygamous marriage in Holland was closer to a Vermont-style “civil union” (in Vermont, the state I live in, “civil unions” are considered to be very nearly equivalent to marriage) or to what is merely a legal agreement for property-sharing among non-romantically-involved acquaintances living in the same domicile. It can be hard to form an opinion on this sort of thing when you’re not expert in legal affairs. Nevertheless, the fact that this even has to be debated in this way means things have already gone way too far in the wrong direction and need to be rectified, pronto!
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Long live free Flanders!
Ottawa covets 1st-place in implementing “Beijing Action Program”
Canada’s apparently determined to be second to none in implementing the Beijing Action Programme (see my comment of 12/21, 2:08pm):
up today at iSteve.com:
“A new study for the [Canadian] federal Justice Department says Canada should get rid of its law banning polygamy, and change other legislation to help women and children living in such multiple-spouse relationships.”
George Soros’s NGOs and the Ford Foundation are going to be giving Ottawa lots of gold stars for this—I don’t think even the the Unitarian “Church,” the current reigning gold-star champion, has gotten this many gold stars from them (not to mention Frank Griswold’s Episcopalians! …). Hey this is BIG! Move over, Unitarians! Move over Episcopalians! Ottawa’s now the one to beat!
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Long live free Flanders!
Polygamy
I read the excerpt at Sailer’s site. The reports says it’s a “women’s issue.” I guess in this day and age that settles it.
Was it Paul Martin who said that Canada is a “nation of minorities”? If Canada interprets itself as such, and establishes itself as a “multicultural state,” from whence do its laws gain their legitimacy, and how can it even make laws of general application? Nearly every law will conflict with some cultural tradition or taboo, and will therefore insult the national self-understanding as a “multicultural state.”
It used to be that immigrants and minorities were “assimilated” into the national culture. Now, apparently, counter-cultural minorities are accepted as permanent features of the landscape, whose traditions and customs are to be accomodated in law as such.
It all seems totally incoherent to me, and a recipe for disaster.
the multicultural nation
Apparently, some don’t understand how a “multicultural nation” is supposed to work. Police investigate a high-ranking Muslim cleric in Britain who made statements regarding homosexuality. http://timescolumns.typepad.com/gledhill/
meanwhile, over in Russia,
meanwhile, over in Russia, they’re also proposing polygamy, to appease the Chechens, ‘twould seem…
It turns out it wasn’t polygamy that was legalized but polyamory
Alexandra Colen, a member of the Belgian House of Representatives and a blogger at BrusselsJournal.com, has a must-read log entry up about some of the fall-out from Holland’s recent de facto legalization of polygamy. Her piece, which was prompted by an article by Prof. Stanley Kurtz in the Weekly Standard analysing the situation, is chock-full of thought-provoking tidbits such as the following tiny sampling:
— “Patriarchy is considered to be a thing of the past, while equality is the current norm. Moreover, procreational sex is considered to be outdated, while recreational sex is part of the modern way of life.”
— “All this leads one to suspect that the crisis of traditional marriage that we are witnessing in Europe and America may at heart be a crisis of fatherhood.”
— “According to [Bella] Abzug and her followers the two sexes – male and female – do not exist. Instead there are five genders – male, female, homosexual, lesbian and bisexual. People can move from one gender to another, according to choice or at will, which liberates them from the sexual constraints of nature.” (This of course perfectly illustrates the point Mark Richardson has often made about liberals feeling that in order to be fully human people must reject that which they’ve inherited, in favor of creating themselves entirely out of whole cloth based on their individual will and reason.)
— “Every year, the government in Belgium (as those of all other countries) is obliged by law to submit a report to Parliament outlining what progress it has made in implementing the Beijing action programme.”
And what, pray tell, might the “Beijing action programme” be? It’s this:
— “Since the United Nations’ Fourth World Conference on Women, which was held in Beijing in September 1995, the word ‘sex’ has been replaced in official texts throughout the world by the word ‘gender.’ At Beijing an international agenda was drawn up with an accompanying action programme of moving ‘towards the common goal of gender equality around the world,’ ‘undertaking statistical gender analysis and mainstreaming a gender perspective in policy development and the implementation of programmes’ and working ‘to break down persistent gender stereotypes.’ ”
Now, a glance at the following makes me ask where the impetus for all this is coming from—who is funding it? That someone must be funding it is clear, since coordinated movements like this usually don’t just happen spontaneously but are the result of hard work and lots of money coming from some quarter. Here’s more:
— “Every year, in the Autumn, members of the parliaments of various European countries meet to compare how far their respective countries have advanced towards the common goal of gender equality. One of the Beijing objectives is to ‘adopt all appropriate measures, especially in the field of education, to modify the social and cultural patterns of conduct of men and women, and to eliminate prejudices, customary practices and all other practices based on the idea of the inferiority or superiority of either of the sexes and on stereotyped roles for men and women.’ ”
To me it seems clear the humungously wealthy radical left-wing foundations such as Soros’s outfits and the Ford Foundation have played a role in pushing this stuff through their NGOs.
— “The Beijing agenda has permeated the way our society thinks. This programme was not carried out overnight, but proceeded on a step by step basis. To me, as a politician who has witnessed the process unfold since 1995, and has attended some of the annual gatherings of European politicians, there is no doubt that a planned agenda is being implemented.”
Damned straight there is. This stuff is not just springing up spontaneously but is being pushed and pushed hard from behind the scenes. David Horowitz’s blog, Moonbat Central, had an outstanding series of exposés on how the Marxist-through-and-through Ford Foundation and like-minded outfits fund stuff like this (Moonbat Central was discontinued last month but I think those particular exposés should be archived at FrontPageMag.com—I’ll try to hunt them up and post links).
— “After the acceptance and legalisation of homosexuality, the promotion of bisexuality is the next step.”
Yes, and then “polyamory” after that, and so on. The so-called “Unitarian Church”—which I view as no longer a legitimate church, whence my use of “so-called” and enclosure of the term in quote marks—had “workshops on polyamory” at their annual meeting a year or so ago in California. What was once upon a time the Unitarian Church is now long since dead and gone, and these people running the outfit they call by that name are nothing but the equivalent of “The Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” impostors who’ve wormed their way into the dead corpse and begun animating it with ghastly artificial movements.
Anyway, there’s lots more thought-provoking stuff and good links in the BrusselsJournal.com log entry—it’s worth checking out.
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Long live free Flanders!
Elton John engaged … (three guesses with whom? …)
Incidentally, it’s just been announced Elton John is to wed his boyfriend. I haven’t had time yet to look up the details—am at the moment in a rush, headed out the door.
What’s the world coming to? Can anyone believe it?
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Long live free Flanders!
Elton John’s “husbandâ€
Elton John’s “husband” is, alas, Canadian…
BTW, you know how the Netherlands, Belgium and Canada paved the way for the U.K.’s legalization of “gay marriage”? Well, here’s another sad “first” of sorts for Canada: the Canadian Supreme Court has legalized swingers’ clubs…
No end yet in sight to brazen legislating from the bench
“the Canadian Supreme Court has legalized swingers’ club…” (—Will S.)
From the article linked in Will’s comment:
“Swingers clubs that feature group sex and partner-swapping are legal because they cause society no harm, the Supreme Court of Canada said Wednesday”
What’s wrong with that is obviously that the Supreme Court is here legislating from the bench: who are they to say whether a community is right or wrong in deciding that local swingers clubs offend against the community’s moral standards and therefore do damage of a non-material spiritual kind? Who do they think they are to deny the community’s say-so on that?
” ‘Moral views, even if strongly held, do not suffice,’ wrote Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin. ‘As members of a diverse society, we must be prepared to tolerate conduct of which we disapprove.’ “
Just who in the hell does she think she is to say that—to invalidate in one fell swoop the community’s sense of what is morally appropriate in its proximity, in the proximity of its kids especially?
What these two men say in their dissenting opinion is exactly right:
“In a biting dissent, justices Louis LeBel and Michel Bastarache accused the majority of turning their backs on public morality and the established legal order. Furthermore, the majority decision could lead to ‘anti-social behaviour,’ they wrote. ‘This new harm-based approach strips of all relevance the social values that the Canadian community as a whole believes should be protected. The explicit sexual acts performed in the accused’s establishments clearly offended the Canadian community standard of tolerance.’ “
What the Canadian Supreme Court did here is shocking. Thanks for linking it, Will. When will courts finally stop usurping the legislative function?
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Long live free Flanders!
Public morality
This is essentially the position of the SCOTUS, as expressed in Lawerence v. Texas. In dissenting, Scalia noted the decision ended all morals legislation on the part of the individual states.
Swingers clubs and such in the US (strip clubs, adult video stores, etc.) are usually dealt with by means of zoning legislation, restricting their locations. These zoning restrictions are usually upheld. I’m not aware that any outright ban on such establishments has been upheld in the US, although of course that was tried at one point. The zoning strategy was then adopted.
During his confirmation hearings, Justice Roberts noted that one important right in a democracy, often overlooked, is the right of a community to govern itself, and this right gives actual effect to the oft glorified right to vote. He then went to note that “individual rights” must be balanced against a community’s right to govern itself. This is decidedly NOT a liberal position, and is contrary at bottom with the theory underlying the Lawrence v. Texas decision.
Interestingly, Justice Breyer (one of Clinton’s liberal apppointees) has written a book on Liberty, in which he describes two kinds of liberty: active and passive. Passive liberty is the right to be left alone, the right to operate a swingers club, for example; this is what people usually think about when they talk about human rights in a democracy. Active liberty (which is practically dead in the US) is the right of a community to govern itself, and requires some active participation in the community and an active interest in its shape and governance. It is this latter kind of liberty to which Roberts was referring, and is the use that our Founders employed in their writings. Of course, within liberalism, active liberty is threatening and oppressive, and must be restricted, discounted, ignored, or denied at every opportunity. But Breyer, being an academic, apparently couldn’t resist reviving a long dead notion of American liberty. I wonder if it will have impact upon any of his Court decisions.
a footnote: some of the laity in the Catholic Church, and other large, centralized denominations, often demand “active liberty” in the Church, more power, more involvement, more consultation, etc. This is an interesting phenomenon in the United States, where active liberty in the civil sphere is, for all practical purposes, dead. My humble opinion is that these activists within the Church are actually liberals, who wish to transform the Church into their own image, and at that point will lose interest in any active liberty on the part of the laity or anyone else. This has been the general history of the Episcopal Church; once the liberals got what they wanted, notions of participation, local options, big tents, lay involvement, etc. came to an end, and a liberal orthodoxy was imposed.
Thanks for those
Thanks for those explanations, MD. I had assumed this was a “zoning” case where a neighborhood group didn’t want that in their neighborhood.
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Long live free Flanders!
Decency
From the press report on the Canadian ruling:
“The ruling, which legal experts described as a liberal move, overturned the conviction of Montrealer Jean-Paul Lebaye. He was fined $2,500 for running a “common bawdy house” for the “practice of acts of indecency” after police busted his club, L’Orage, six years ago.”
Apparently, the Canadian decency law criminalized the operation of such a club. So, it wasn’t a zoning case. If the Canadians were to adopt a zoning strategy, they could conceivably drive these clubs out of private homes, or entire geographical areas of cities and towns.
In the United States, local “decency” laws, which are subject to continual court challenges, usually attempt to legislate such things as the clothing of strippers (they must wear pasties, for example) or strippers’ behavior (touching customers; “lewd and lascivious acts”, etc.). And, at least for now, prostitution may still be criminalized.
Smut Peddlers
One thing these sleaze shops have been doing anymore setting up on the highways, outside the city limits, where they are are able to prey on travellers instead of locals. I don’t get out of the Midwest too often, but this is all over, say, MO and OK. It’s where you can’t even feel comfortable on the highways because you’re being assaulted by these pigs every two miles. They can get harassed with zoning regulations, which help minimize damage for a while, but then figure something else out. It’s getting to be an impossible situation, and with these idiot judges, it may get worse. I don’t personally know the pornograpers reasoning behind their ‘country strategy,’ just a guess.
This is the ‘pickle’ decent folks have been forced into by the loss of any concept of public morality, of the State’s duty to keep pornographers, abortionists and other sludge in jail or in the dark shadows that they usually dwell within. Any attempt to do this is met with cries of derision from the masses, “Oh, it’s just a victimless crime.” Of course, if you don’t believe in personal sin or in the concept of society and our obligations to our neighbor, you will end up espousing such a shoddy ideal (i.e. so many libertarians).
Quite right
Quite right. By setting up shop outside the city limits, they avoid not only city taxes but also the city’s zoning regulations. In many areas, the zoning ordinances of counties are more lax than that of the cities within those counties. That’s the case here, so the adult stores and strip clubs are located outside the city, and sit in the middle of nowhere out in the county.
WND has a chilling thought
WND has a chilling thought about possible implications of this ruling…
Nightmare scenario!
Will, that WorldNetDaily.com follow-up article on that Supreme Court decision is absolutely riveting. In it, concerned individuals outline a nightmare scenario whose ghastliness comes in large part from the fact that their appalling predictions are so likely to actually come true! Miss Reisman, who predicted the ruling will attract pedophiles worldwide to come prey on 14-year-old children, got it right when she starkly summed up the situation the liberals are handing us as this: the government 1) forces a situation on us in which 14-year-old girls and boys will be prey for predatory pedophiles flocking in from around the world the way sex tourists flock to and Morocco and Bangkok—but don’t worry about the kids’ moral welfare or physical health because the same goverment has laws in effect that will 2) treat the venereal diseases the 14-year-olds end up contracting from all this and 3) for the girls among them, make sure they get all the abortions they need in a timely, hassle-free manner. So, the government has taken care of all eventualities: making sure that 14-year-old kids can get all the sex they could possibly need or want, assuring that their venereal diseases will be dealt with by government-paid doctors, and guaranteeing they’ll have access to all the abortion-on-demand they could possibly need.
Hey, what’s not to like about liberalism and liberals? They really take care of our wants and needs, leaving nothing out! It’s a complete, self-contained system! Aren’t they great? Damn right they are!
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Long live free Flanders!
It is a nightmare scenario, indeed, Fred
It is a nightmare scenario, indeed, Fred. I have trouble believing this is happening here in my country, right here; I too, immediately thought about Tangiers and Bangkok. (I remember back in the ’90s, I was pissed off when I heard a song by an American rock group named “Blues Traveller”, which was called “Canadian Rose”, about a cross-border relationship; it had the same sexploitation feel as those songs about sexy Mexican senoritas, or Jamaican pretty women stealing one’s money and breaking one’s heart; I was outraged to think that some Yanks were viewing Canadian women (my people, and fellow First-Worlders of Americans) in the same way as Third World women from elsewhere in this hemisphere; I’m outraged now to see that my country could become a magnet for sex-tourism of the most depraved sort.)
Excellent post.The United
Excellent post.
The United Nations is deeply involved in this, as are the usual suspects, Hillary Clinton, Stienem, NARAL, Nussbaum, the left-wing foundations, etc. “Reproductive rights” are now considered universal, regardless of culture. The battle against AIDS in Africa is framed as an issue of “women’s rights.” And so on.
“All this leads one to suspect that the crisis of traditional marriage that we are witnessing in Europe and America may at heart be a crisis of fatherhood.â€
Duh. Just look at the replacement birth rates in Europe. They are catastrophic.
More deeply, the crisis is not limited to fatherhood; it’s limited to all traditional loci of authority, in this case the family and the father. Within liberalism, all traditional authority is suspect at best and oppressive at worst, and must be eradicated at the earliest date possible, by edict if necessary. In the absence of traditional authority vested in either a father or a mother, those roles are reduced to functions, enforced by law (child support, paternity testing, enforced visitation, inheritance laws, child abuse and neglect, etc.).
The EU will do its worst, I’m sure.
The Marxist Ford Foundation’s extremely destructive influence
David Horowitz has commissioned a series of exposé articles on the Ford Foundation which have appeared at his web-sites (see my comment above, 2:08pm), FrontPageMag.com and MoonbatCentral.com (the latter now discontinued). You can sum up the achievements of the Marxist Ford Foundation by saying everything bad that’s happened since the 60s they’ve been major funders of, and everything good that’s tried to happen since the 60s they’ve been major funders against—something like that just about sums it up. No Ford family members (descendants of Henry Ford of automobile fame) have sat on the board of directors of the Ford Foundation since the 70s when the last of them resigned in disgust at how it had been taken over by the most extreme left-wing radicals and Marxists imaginable—something the Ford family were powerless to undo so they simply left. You can see the Horowitz series of investigative exposés of Ford by going to FrontPageMag.com, clicking on Search, specifying FrontPageMag.com as the domain to be searched and not the World Wide Web, and typing in “Ford Foundation” enclosed in quote marks as the key words to be searched for. This should be the first page of results to come up, out of a total of several pages of google results. The following is a small sampling of the articles in this long series: “How the Ford Foundation Created Multiculturalism,” “How Ford Funds the Left,” “The Ford Foundation: Funding International Terror?,” “The Ford Foundation’s Proxy War with the Roman Catholic Church,” “The Biggest Funder of the Left,” “The Open Borders Lobby and the Nation’s Security After 9/11,” and “How the Ford Foundation Created Women’s Studies.” There are many more. NGOs funded by hyper-leftwing outfits like the Ford Foundation and George Soros, acting in tandem with lefty counterparts in the U.N. who are themselves influenced directly or indirectly by these same leftwing NGOs, are certainly playing a role in setting up and fobbing off cretinism like this “Beijing Action Programme” the naïve parliamentarians in Europe apparently are running around kowtowing to (referred to by Alexandra Colen, as mentioned in my other post).
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Long live free Flanders!
Building
I don’t know about you, but I’ve called a general contractor to get to work on my Wall of Oppression.
I want the best. But that would be classism. Well, I’m sure I want it painted white. But that would be racism. I will definitely use the English language. But that would be ethnocentrism. So I’ll hire some linguists and use representative language groups from around the world. But that would be ableism. The wall blocks my neighbor’s view of the birds. Ugh, environmental degradation and private-property-ism. I will most surely include GLBT on my wall. But that would neglect the polyamorous and be discriminatory. And what about Muslims? Religionism. Of course, I can’t include Mother Teresa, Bernadette of Lourdes, or the Little Flower. They’re all Christians, and Christians built the Wall of Oppression in the first place. I must learn to employ Intolerance in a tolerant, empowering way. I’ll hire a black contractor to build the Wall! But the only black contractor I know is married to a woman (of all things!). Heterosexism. And a black contractor would neglect the Latino contractors. More racism. I know—I need a contractor of mixed race, color-blind, genderless, and preferably in a wheel chair with a bisexual, transgendered partner on his/her own journey. Where’s the Yellow Pages?
Predictions coming true: the word “marriage” is now a target
In Britain, as noted by Mark Richardson posting over at MajorityRights.com, the word “marriage” is falling by the wayside, as homosexuals find it “offensive”:
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From [the] Melbourne Herald Sun:
Marriage is a dirty word
Britain’s registry offices are dumping the words “marriage†and “wedding†in the name of gay equality.
Registry offices, which supervise more than 180,000 weddings a year, will not refer to marriage except where legally necessary – even though weddings are expected to outnumber gay partnership ceremonies 200 to one.
Of 109 offices the Daily Mail surveyed, 84 had ditched “marriage†signs and had or planned civil partnership signs.
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[And here it’s taken up by the U.K. tabloid, The Daily Mirror:]
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11 January 2006
OFF THEIR WEDS
Word ‘marriage’ removed so gays aren’t offended
By Rod Chaytor
THE word “marriage” is being taken off register office signs—in case it offends gay couples entering into a civil partnership.
Councils are following guidelines which also suggest altering couples’ stationery from “Your Wedding” to “Your Ceremony.”
Wolverhampton Register Office’s two marriage rooms have been renamed ceremony rooms while the Crown Marriage Suite in Stourbridge is now the Crown Suite after recommendations from the Local Authorities Coordinators of Regulatory Services.
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Long live free Flanders!
So this is our future: gay
So this is our future: gay marriage everywhere to make the queers happy, and polygamy everywhere to attempt to placate the Muslims…
Marriage
I’ve maintained that “gay marriage” is not, as advertised, an effort to “include” gays in traditional marriage, but rather an effort to make homosexual marriage normative for heterosexuals. It therefore represents the destruction of heterosexual marriage, at least in law.
In Ontario, as I understand it, the marriage and domestic relation laws have been amended to prohibit the use of the words: “husband,” “wife,” “mother,” “father,” and “natural child.”
No one can say we weren’t warned. This was all predicted.
“In Ontario, as I understand it, the marriage and domestic relation laws have been amended to prohibit the use of the words: ‘husband,’ ‘wife,’ ‘mother,’ ‘father,’ and ‘natural child.’ “ (—MD, 1/15, 10:22am)
This was all predicted, of course. I don’t remember whether or not anyone predicted the demise of the word “marriage” specifically (its threatened demise took me somewhat by surprise—I didn’t expect that word in particular to come under attack)( * ) but Lawrence Auster, for one, certainly predicted the demise of the others—“husband,” “wife,” “bride,” “groom,” and I’m pretty sure other commentators did as well.
What’s happening, then, was largely predicted: it’s painful to see such predictions come true, of course, but no one can say we weren’t warned.
Ordinary people having ordinary common sense and decency, and those relatively few élites with the same, must now rise up and stop all this or it will get a lot worse, perhaps very seriously worse—and perhaps with tragic violence being some sort of direct or indirect result of it all—before it gets better.
One of the major problems is the élites won’t permit questioning of it, which they slander as “hate.” So, they’re forcing us into an intolerable situation, and then forcing the lid down on the pressure cooker, refusing to let any steam escape.
What do they think is going to happen if they keep that up? It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out the answer.
The fault for what’s going on lies with the élites, not with the ordinary people, because the élites have intelligence they’re not using, intelligence and gifts of subtle discernment and judgment which the ordinary people don’t have. The ones not doing their job in all this are the élites. Therefore the blame for whatever happens can be laid at their feet—and not for the first time in history, either: how many times in history haven’t we seen the élites up to the same lazy, selfish dishonesty and mischief? Too many to count! Well … they’re at it again! You’d think they’d have learned their lesson.
You’d think wrong.
Andrew Sullivan, you call yourself a Catholic? Rev. Gene Robinson, you call yourself an Episcopalian? You call yourselves men of honesty and integrity?
I call you something else.
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( * Of course my mistake was not taking notice of the fact that the way things have been shaping up legally with homosexual “marriage,” often the word “marriage” is reserved for heteros and some other word, such as “partnership,” is used for homos. That right there means the word “marriage” has to go. Obviously. Think about it. Boy, was I stupid!)
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Long live free Flanders!
Moscow Patriarchate
Moscow, December 27, Interfax – The Moscow Patriarchate has suspended relations with the Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Sweden after it decided to establish an official ceremony on blessing homosexual couples.
http://www.interfax-religion.com/?act=news&div=737
We are in the midst of the greatest re-alignment of Christianity since the Reformation.
In the West the lunatics are running the asylum.
“We are in the midst of the greatest re-alignment of Christianity since the Reformation.” (—MD, 1/15, 4:09pm)
Isn’t it amazing?
I can understand sexual perverts badly wanting this inconceivable made-up thing, this non-existent entity, which they term homosexual “marriage” but I can’t fathom what makes normal people—sexually normal members of our highest élites—cling to it so passionately, to something they must know in their heart of hearts is pure fantasy and so immoral and unchristian it’s simply a non-starter and utterly beyond the pale of what’s conceivable, cling to it to the point of pushing for it, insisting on it, fighting for it, sacrificing for it, causing schisms in whole churches for it, blithely just disregarding thousands of years of some of the deepest philosophy, moral teaching, and tradition anywhere in existence for it, not to mention perfectly sound ordinary common-sense notions of right and wrong that prevail, I believe I can say, among the common people in every society on earth and have done in every society that’s ever existed.
What in the world is the attraction for normal, non-sexually-perverted élites to this bizarre fantasy called homosexual “marriage”? Why such intense, unshakable attraction to and support for it?
Truly, it boggles the mind.
Thank God for these Eastern and Central Europeans emerging from communism who know the value of things. In Western Europe and its offshoots all around the Anglosphere the lunatics have taken over the asylum.
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Long live free Flanders!
Lunatics
I can’t answer that in a single catchy phrase, but you’re right in your conclusion: the lunatics are running at least some of the asylums.
Christianity is splitting into two large blocks, at present delineated by the homosexuality issue, but other issues will present themselves as time goes by. Right now, I compare the homosexuality issue to the issue of indulgences in Luther’s time. It’s just the canary in the coal mine, the obvious indicator that something is very wrong.
We can divide present-day Christianity by theology, and more particularly into two camps identified by their respective theologies.
The first camp is the Orthodox, and requires no explanation (this includes both orthodox Catholics and orthodox Protestants). We will call the Orthodox theology the “theology of Redemption,” centered on Jesus Christ.
The second camp has developed a new religion based on a new theology, which has been called the “theology of Affirmation,” centered on “the Spirit.” This theology could also be called the “theology of inclusion” or the “theology of pluralism.” This theology has very little use for Jesus Christ, because it has excised the doctrines of redemption and atonement, enacted within history by the passion and resurrection of Jesus. Generally, the orthodox ideas of judgment, repentance, conversion, and salvation have been jettisoned by the new theology, so the person and acts of Jesus aren’t all that important. The new theology is based, rather, upon the simple notion that God is love, God’s love includes everyone, therefore we should include and affirm everyone. How do we know this, how do we know of this New Revelation of affirmation and inclusion? The Spirit of course; the Spirit is “doing new things” among the “prophets” among us. Thus, the new theology emphasizes the Spirit at the expense of any focus on the salvific acts of Jesus (his passion, crucifixion, and resurrection).
This new theology is gnostic, in substance and in language. It is a new religion, and cannot co-exist with orthodox Christianity. There has to be a schism. Much of the West will go gnostic, and the global South and East will be orthodox, with the partial exception of Australia. Obviously, many orthodox will remain in the West, and they will experience the schism first-hand.
IMHO, the schism has already occurred in people’s minds and convictions; it remains only to formalize it within the several Western churches, and every church and every member will have to choose. Within large orthodox churches, like the Roman Catholic Church, gnostics will remain in the church and preach the new theology as if it were orthodox. This is already happening. So, we will have a situation reminiscent of the Third and Fourth Centuries, when the Church had it out with gnosticism through internal battles.
I think you have a point, MD
I think you have a point, MD (your comment of 1/15, 10:27pm). Just as what’s going on is unprecedented politically in modern terms (post-, let’s say, Renaissance—or, certainly post-1700s), it’s unprecedented religiously. It’s the political/cultural/religious suicide of the West. The Moslems are for sure looking at us with mouths agape unable to believe what they’ve stumbled into—a civilizational suicide taking place right before their eyes and all they have to do is walk in and take over from the cadaver. What difference does it make what’s happening to them in Baghdad when we’re handing them European Christendom on a silver platter? You might be onto something in calling it the biggest upheaval in Christianity since the Reformation. I think it’s got to be that. A Hasidic Jewish rabbi around the turn of the last century who took an interest in Christianity—I forget his name—said Christian sects that toyed with denying the divinity of Jesus were theologically just sawing off the very branch they were sitting on. He was completely right, of course—it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that. These Christians today who endorse the full homosexualist agenda are indirectly doing the same: sawing off the very branch they’re sitting on. Christianity and they cannot co-exist. It’s as simple as that. One or the other has to go.
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Long live free Flanders!
Islam
Of course it’s a gift to Muslims. This new gnosticism is unworldly and narcissistic in the extreme: it’s naive, self-absorbed, escapist, and other-worldly. It’s unable to see the true nature of things in the world, unable to recognize threats, and unwilling to preserve its heritage (which it views as unenlightened and oppressive).
This new religion believes God’s love is an object to be possessed, and that they possess it. It’s a system of self-salvation, centered on the individual self. They therefore believe they have created the millenium here on Earth (and those who don’t believe are “bigots” or “hateful” or “exclusionary”).
So, it’s unlikely it can even recognize a threat from Islam (or any other source), and if it did it has no theological equipment to resist it.
new theologies
http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=3459
Bruce Flickenger is a prebstyer in the Episcopal Church USA. In this article he claims that the Episcopal Church has adopted a “non-theistic” theology; that is, a theology without a god, which is something of a oxymoron.
Flickenger says, in part:
“The new “Gospel” of the majority of leaders in the Episcopal Church holds not to what is known in the philosophy of religion as “theism” (and the Christian form of theism was in part given just above), but hold instead to what is known as a “non-theistic” view of God. In this view God is not a Person or a Personal Being. God is not a Being at all. God is not even a Spirit in the usual accepted sense of “Spirit” or “spirit.” God is more a force, or an influence, an energy or power that permeates everything and animates everything. It cannot even be said, if the non-theist is to be precise and consistent in their language and philosophy, that God is even alive.
In non-theism, there is no creator God, no benefactor, no God to be in fellowship with, to ascribe appropriate worth to, etc., etc. God in the non-theistic point of view can be described only very vaguely if at all. Yet, the non-theist wants to still use God-talk while emptying it of any real referential meaning. “God” essentially becomes a verbal and written symbol that stands in substitution for the Universe. Why not just worship the impersonal Universe which does not care one whit about our existence or our lives?
Yet, non-theism is pervasive among the leadership and intellectuals of the Episcopal Church. The articulate proponents of non-theism, in varying types, which have had profound influence on the thinking and orientation of the leadership and intellectuals of the Episcopal Church, are: Donald Cupitt, Michael Goulder, John Shelby Spong, and John Macquarrie, among others lesser known.
The advantage of non-theism with its God-talk is that it permits a bishop or priest or intellectual Episcopalian who has rejected the traditional Gospel to still sound like a Christian. One can use all the old terminology but mean something radically different and most people – who are uninformed about theology and what has happened intellectually in the Church – won’t catch on. Only a few of the non-theists are as brave as Don Cupitt and John Spong and actually spell out what they mean and don’t mean and risk being rejected for their denial of traditional Christianity, and even fewer are as brave as was Michael Goulder and admit he was no longer a Christian and simply leave the Church of England.”
> The advantage of
> The advantage of non-theism with its God-talk is that it permits a bishop or priest or intellectual Episcopalian who has rejected the traditional Gospel to still sound like a Christian. One can use all the old terminology but mean something radically different and most people – who are uninformed about theology and what has happened intellectually in the Church – won’t catch on.
Exactly… This, of course, is what Trinity-denying heresies (on which we all – Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant – can agree definitely constitute heresies) do, too, such as Mormonism and Jehovah’s Witnesses, and it is in so doing that they fool some people into believing they are Christians…
It is interesting, and I believe instructive, that only now that all the Trinitarian, orthodox Christian traditions are on the wane in terms of influence, in the West, that people are even pondering the possibility that a Mormon could run for the U.S. presidency, and that one is apparently attempting to do so. Fortunately, it appears he still will not get anywhere, praise God, but one of his ilk wouldn’t have even considered running if Christianity was still the predominant, guiding ethos of the West…
Sea of Faith
http://www.sofn.org.uk/
“Sea of Faith” is a British group, with a website, promoting “spirituality” without a theistic God and without revelation. It has an entry on the Sea of Faith and Roman Catholicism (and other traditional Western Christian faiths).
This is from its Home Page:
“The Network explores the implications of accepting religion as a human creation; promotes this view of religion, and affirms the continuing validity of religious thought and practice as celebrations of spiritual and social values. The Network has no creed. It welcomes people from all faith and non-faith traditions.”
If religion is a “human creation,” there has been no revelation; there goes Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. It’s not clear from the site if this implies that there is no God, or if God is simply disinterested.
It seems to say that God is merely a human idea, and exists merely as an idea, whereas in other places on the site it emphasizes the priority not of the idea but of experience. By emphasizing experience, it makes the individual self (and not God) the center. To this extent, it’s gnostic.
It describes itself as “non-realist,” “post-Christian,” and “postmodern”, and then defines those terms as follows:
“Non-realist. SoF uses “non-realism” to refer to the belief that God has no “real”, objective or empirical existence, independent of human language and culture; God is real in the sense that he is a potent symbol, metaphor or projection, but has no objective existence outside and beyond humanity.
Post-Christian. One who has passed through and gone beyond Christianity. The Post-Christian may acknowledge roots and values deeply embedded in Christian culture and tradition, but has cut loose or drifted free from Christian dogma, doctrine, and belief-systems, and perhaps from participation in any kind of church life and practice.
Post-Modernist. The post-modernist believes that there are no objective facts; there is only language and interpretation. If “God” is a useful concept for structuring our experience, that makes him as real as anything else.”
Notice, in the last sentence, how God has become a mere function (somewhat like a toaster or a vacuum cleaner), which we can use, if we see fit, to “structure our existence.”
This kind of thinking (or “experiencing”) is rampant in Christianity today. This is the best website I have found that lays it all out, and in effect announces the death of Christianity and an implicit claim that its belief system is now legitimate Christianity.
Ekklesia
Just yesterday I noticed the website of a British think tank, Ekklesia, that carries the concept over into politics. Their basic pitch seems to be that all distinctions among human beings should be abolished, presumably apart from those (e.g., bureaucratic position and certified expertise) needed to maintain a universal social order based wholly on utterly abstract and content-free principles like equality.
Rem tene, verba sequentur.
Ekklesia
The two sites link to one another.
The phenomenon of these groups is part of a more general development in which the premises and dogmas of liberalism are substituted wholesale for the dogmas of Christianity within a Christian community or church, thereby emasculating the community of its Christian content and leaving behind a husk of an institution inseparable and indistinguishable from the reigning zeitgeist. It’s a wholesale loss of differentiation between the spiritual and the temporal, a central characteristic of liberalism (which Mr. Kalb usually describes as a loss of or prohibition upon transcendence).
I suppose the lesson is: Never underestimate the power of the zeitgeist (or, perhaps, Never underestimate the pretensions and ambitions of liberalism).