Readworthies I

A handful of interesting, informative, and insightful articles.

News, editorials, columns, essays, et al.

Then came the name "Josephum" and gloom set in by Damian Thompson @ London Telegraph (quoted ellipsis in original):

.... "Lord, remember your Church throughout the world; make us grow in love together with Benedict our Pope..." This phrase, or variants of it, will be spoken by Roman Catholic priests at thousands of Masses throughout England and Wales today, just after the magical moment of transubstantiation.

In most churches, and especially traditionalist ones, the words will ring out joyfully. But in liberal parishes — which, though relatively few in number, exercise a disproportionate influence on English Catholicism — some priests will be trying not to choke on them. Make us grow in love together with Ratzinger? Not in their bleakest nightmares did the liberals think they would be asked to do such a thing....

Suppose We Had a "Liberal" Pope by James V. Schall, S.J. @ Ignatius Insight:

From various sources, here and abroad, I have heard that not a few are "disappointed" at the election of Pope Benedict XVI.

When we examine what they are "disappointed" about, we find that it is about "moral" things. They hoped that the Church would finally be "up-to-date." What this being "up-to-date" usually means is that the Church will finally approve of birth control, abortion, cloning, the ordination of women, divorce, gay life and marriage, and other pious habits. Seldom do we hear any other reasons for "disappointment." Thus, what the essence of such objections comes down to is that the Church, in being what it is, is wrong on such fundamental points.

Being "wrong," evidently, means that a mere flick of the papal wrist can set things right. All Pope Ratzinger has to do is sign a document stating that abortion, divorce, ordination of women, birth control, and gaydom are just what we need in the modern world to cure its ills. Behind this kind of attitude, of course, is the theoretical position that the criterion of truth is what is presumably accepted and practiced in the modern world....

Love's Language Lost by Bradley C. S. Watson @ Claremont Review of Books (italics and quoted ellipses in original):

It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words.... In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.... In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking — not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.

So says a philologist — an expert in "Newspeak" — in George Orwell's 1984. He is explaining to the novel's hero, Winston Smith, the ultimate purpose behind the manipulation and command of language.

The advocates of same-sex marriage have a similar political and linguistic purpose. They have pushed their agenda with stunning rapidity. Laws that confer unique legal status and benefits on the union of a man and woman have come under attack only recently. In America, the first major legal decision was Baker vs. State of Vermont (1999), in which the Vermont Supreme Court held, on the basis of indeterminate language in the state's 1777 constitution, that the state legislature must provide same-sex couples in "committed relationships" with identical benefits to married "opposite-sex couples." The Vermont legislature responded by creating "civil unions" — though not marriage — for same-sex couples. Under the Baker holding and subsequent legislation, civil unions were to be materially and therefore legally indistinguishable from marriage for all purposes of Vermont law and the benefits it conferred. But much more was at stake than the right of same-sex partners to enjoy such mutually fulfilling experiences as filing a joint state tax return....

Life After the Death of Theory by Thomas H. Benton @ The Chronicle of Higher Education:

"Of course, you're doing theory, right?" the woman next to me asked in one of my first graduate seminars in English. She was wearing a leather motorcycle jacket covered with zippers, and her orange hair was styled in dreadlocks. It was the early 90s.

"I guess that's what we're here for," I said. I didn't want to seem like a square, even though I was wearing tan khakis and a blue button-down shirt. "I'll probably do something Foucauldian," I said, with a hint of worldly boredom. I had heard of Foucault, and I grabbed his name like a piece of floating wreckage....

Our Role in The Church by Pia de Solenni @ The Washington Post:

Before I went to Rome to do my doctoral work in theology in the mid-1990s, I was inclined to believe, like many American women, that the Catholic Church's teaching on women was a bit skewed, if not flawed. At times, it seemed to me that there was no unique place for women in the church. In fact, they seemed subordinated to men in almost every way, beyond their ineligibility for ordination.

Yet over the course of six years of study at pontifical universities and a short time working at the Vatican, I found that I was actually more respected as a woman there than I have been in most other environments. I was taken seriously and challenged as a thinker in a way that I haven't been almost anywhere else. Given the preconceptions that most Americans have, I know how surprising this can sound. But I've wished more people could be aware of it as I've watched, listened to and debated the reactions to the new pope, Benedict XVI....

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sat. 04/30/05 07:50:08 AM
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