John Zmirak on the Balance of Truth and Justice

Another gem from John.

There are things we say that are untrue that are not sinful.

Some are even heroic.

Lila Rose and her allies knew where the predators lurked and intervened to expose them and save the innocent. So did the German officers who schemed to assassinate Hitler. So do policemen who infiltrate drug gangs and soldiers who use deception (instead of torture) to interrogate terrorists. If we can find a better philosophical understanding of language, one that allows for the defense of the innocent instead of lumping it in with sodomy and adultery, I would call that a "win" for the Church and her credibility. Unlike Tertullian and some of his modern imitators, I take no satisfaction in believing what seems absurd. Yes, there are mysteries like the Trinity and the Eucharist that resist our rational scrutiny. The philosophy of language isn't one of them

Do We Need a Santa Claus Lies Encyclical?

More fine op-eds on the dust ups over the definition of 'lying':

One by Peter Kreeft HERE

And another by Francis Beckworth HERE.

Francis has some great scriptural references that demonstrates how God, in fact, blessed those who diverted killers by deceiving them.

In spite of this, Mark Shea has a story and he sticks with it HERE!

I was contemplating how to recalibrate our consciences in light of this new definition of the commandment not to bear false witness against our neighbor. It suddenly occurred to me that if Mark is right, generations of Catholics gave gone to hell in a handbasket over their lies about Santa Claus.

Wrap your head around it.

Has the Holy See been watching us all these years without a Santa Claus lies encyclical or kicking Santa's backside out of Church basements?

Are we all going down?

Should we alert the Confessors?

Ratched up a world-wide day of Penance?

Come on kiddies.

I'm shocked that smart Catholics are getting so caught up in the flawed definition of sinful lies.

Zmirak tries again to lay a theological foundation:

Lying is never okay. Murder is never okay. Lying, as the Church teaches, is an unjust deception. This entire argument has been over the definition of lying, and whether denying someone with manifestly no right to the truth, if need be by tossing them something else to distract them, amounts to sinful lying. The whole canard of "mental reservation" amounts to an attempt to deceive while fulfilling the LETTER of the putative law that we may never say things that are untrue, even to those who don't deserve the truth.

I will AGAIN use a simple metaphor. Truthful information is a good; let's use as a concrete example the formula for a medicine an inventor has developed. He wishes to sell this formula to drug companies who will use it for a medicine. But a drug dealer breaks into his lab and tries to get it from him at gunpoint. Instead of giving them the real formula, he gives them a fake one. That is the equivalent of telling untruths to the Nazis at your door, or to the abortionists you're investigating as a journalist. For this to be sinful, the thief would have to have the right to the formula. If the only way to keep him from getting what he has NO right to (the real formula) is to give him a decoy (a fake formula), I argue that it is just, and no more amounts to lying than it does to stealing.

Now, take this metaphor, abstract the principles in it, and apply it concrete situations. It will take the virtue of prudence, which I hope you have developed.

The lies people working at these death camps tell are exposed.

The lies our politicians have been telling to fund abortion are exposed.

Women have the opportunity to see what goes on under the surface.

Sinners are freed from committing these sins in the future, should they choose to take the opportunity with their free will.

When Christ said that every lie would be exposed, it is incomprehensible to me how Catholic teaching contorted into believing He meant exposing Lila Rose and Live Action.

The bearer of Light in this situation is Lila Rose.

Addendum:

Great Post at CMR.

From Kreeft:

You promised the Jews to hide them from their murderers. To keep that promise, you have to deceive the Nazis. Physical hiding and verbal hiding are two sides of the same coin, whether you call it lying, or deception, or whatever you call it. What it is, is much more obvious than what it is to be called. It’s a good thing to do. If you don’t know that, you’re morally stupid, and moral stupidity comes in two opposite forms: relativism and legalism. Relativism sees no principles, only people; legalism sees no people, only principles.

You Can't Lie But You Can Kill?

The punditry over Lila's apostolate is fascinating, isn't it?

The theology that you can't lie to save a life is truly tortured.

When killers are breathing down your neck and your life is in danger, it is permissible to preserve your life by killing them before they kill you. It is also permissible to preserve the life of others when they are in a similar situation and you are in a position to help them. This is the premise of the theology of just war.

Sometimes common sense can fly right out the window.

I've been thinking about how to break this out all week but John Zmirak has done such a masterful job HERE, he's saved me the trouble!

As usual with Zmirak, it is spectacular.

Enjoy.

Live and Let Die

I was out spending some time with a friend at a Chinese restaurant a few weeks back and got this message in my fortune cookie: "Not just live and let live...but live and HELP live." It wound up on the table in front of my couch so it was staring me in the face as I've kept up with the commentary on the human baby butcher in Philadelphia.

Did you know the proabortion lobbyists are trying to say that the findings at Gosnell's clinic have nothing to do with abortion?

Terry Nelson has some good thoughts about it HERE.

There really isn't a dime's worth of difference between what was found at Gosnell's clinic and what happens every day inside of an abortuary. Killing children by slitting their necks was legal up until 2003 and no legal prohibition is in place against tearing them apart, burning them or crushing their skulls unto death.

I keep asking myself... how could we have let this go on so long?

I want to talk about what is happening... and in no uncertain terms.

I want the Catholics who have been lobbying for proabortion politicians to come face to face with the raw truth...and drive the tripe underground.

Some poor woman interjected herself into a facebook conversation I had up about Obama's state of the union. Defending him, she wanted to know what our gripe was. When I told her, out came the straw man arguments we've all heard a million times.

Pro-lifers are insensitive to taking care of the needs of people after they're born, the death penalty, all life is sanctified...ad nauseum.

Isn't it common sense that when you believe in killing people who are disadvantaged your commitment to taking care of needs of people after they're born isn't all it's cracked up to be?

How did the proabortion lobby get to characterize themselves as the arbiters of caring for disadvantaged children after they are born when they believe it's compassionate for our country to license people to kill them?

It is truly ludicrous.

Have you ever heard that Jesus condemned organized religion? This is what she told me. That's a new one on me. What a pitiful waste of an Incarnation, 33 years of suffering and an execution to leave us a Paraclete and the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.

The curiosity is killing me. Do these people know what they're saying when they say the Creed and "Amen" at the Holy Sacrifice? Or. does their brain check out in the Narthax?

Why bother claiming you're a member of a religion when you reject its credo? If that's the case, you can be a Catholic a wiccan, a Jew, a Buddist and a Muslim, all at the same time.

I apologized for my impatience with her opinions and told her it was painful to see that she had been so deluded. But... I was not apologetic or craven in responding to the tactics of diversion:

The man in the white house lobbies for butchering children and you and those
who support him believe this is a price that has to be paid for getting a ride
on a fast train, supercomputers and whatever other pagan widgets he is offering
dripping with the blood of our children. You support him. That's what this
conversation is about. It isn't about the death penalty, which even the Pope
acquiesces can be carried out. It isn't about your false notion that pro-lifers
are cheapskates who don't care about life after people are born. It's about the
butchery of our children and the support of people like you who elect
politicians that have legislated the right to kill children.

We've have to stop this kind of punditry in its tracks. Let the Gosnell clinic put an end to the 40 years of inviting people to form their consciences with their feelings and opinions. A person's conscience is guided by truth and that truth has been squelched for 40 years because we didn't want to hurt people's feelings. Better to hurt people's feelings than sitting silent as they lobby people to be complacent about 52 million dead babies to get a faster ride on the choo choo.

We are not a country of liberty when we have licensed the right to kill other human beings. All God's people shall be free. One way or the other. They don't have to believe us, just check out the stories of what happens after exhausting sending His messengers to beg the king for freedom.

I loved this piece from Zmirak today. "The Catholic religion is at once both repugnant and offensive. It offends me all the time with the outrageous demands it makes on my fallen nature and the sheer weirdness of It's claims..." Rich in wisdom - it's a must read.

If you want to follow in the footsteps of our fearless leader, your vocation is martyrdom. For most of us, thankfully, the martyrdom is bloodless.

It was also encouraging this week to read the Pope's words on St. Joan as a model for leadership. God in His wisdom always seems to send the exact words we need to hear. The Pope said that her judges were theologians who lacked the charity and humility to see God acting in St. Joan's personal engagement in the liberation of her compatriots.

This is a woman who literally led a brutal war. That's something people always trying to claim Christ is a gentle whisperer or leaders of war are out of good favor with the Pope will never acknowledge. Their claim that they are the voices of charity and humility only adds to the irony.

Living to let live and let die is the of charity and humility of a yellowbelly.

Spiritual Homicide

Some days I don't know how trouble finds me.

There I'll be having a pleasant conversation with faithful Catholics and the next thing you know the beast arises out of the abyss to blow smoke up everyone's fanny and I just can't keep my mouth shut.

The kicker is, it can be the most innocuous conversation, like saying there are effects of sin upon a soul, a culture, a country - or in Scripture, the Woman delivers the Word Made Flesh and as the beast waits to devour Him, is in pursuit of Him and His followers, the Bible is a big old story from Genesis to Revelation about the pursuit.

Now who in their right mind would feel the need to spend hours of precious time explaining that these thoughts are akin to Joe Stalin and conspiracy theories and the culture has grown to a place where these ideas need reform?

The Pope's comments make sense if one is dealing with the issue as a pastor, who suggests prudence as the best way to engage the moral questions of the age. People often have a poor ability to comprehend their conscience; any pull to follow an element of the conscience is good, even if the objective good has not been met. This is exactly what Pope Benedict is working with in his comments, and what is said by the Vatican continues with this. There is no conspiracy to counter Benedict by the Vatican; there is, however, many people trying to keep a form of legalism in place and try to find ways to continue it. The Church has had a long history of such legalists-- if one studies history, one will note such legalists have often found themselves in schism (and often, heresy) -- they ignore mercy and grace and how that works on hardened hearts. Once again, I would recommend caution against legalism and the assumption of "my thoughts are true, and if I don't see what I expect, there must be a scandal and apostasy all around the Pope." Taking more authority on oneself than one has is dangerous, especially for those who think they know the faith, but when something goes beyond a simple presentation they see error in what is said. One must make distinctions, as St Thomas Aquinas was known to point out. So many confuse their interpretation of the Church's teaching to be the Church's teaching. This, again, is a way of self-deception where people are unwilling to learn and go forward and develop. Just like a Protestant with a Bible, so many Catholics, without proper understanding, demand their lack of understanding is "not my view, but the Church's."  Your interpretation of them are not the same thing as being the teachings of Jesus' Church. Again, many people will say "see, I quote the Bible, therefore I am right. If you disagree with me, you disagree with God." No, because there is more to be done than merely quote verses. Texts out of context are pretext; texts taken out of context, without proper exegetical work, are not the same thing as God's truth. Again, explain to me what your lifting of verses and just using them and saying "see, it's not my opinion" differs from a Protestant following Sola Scriptura saying the same thing to reject the Pope?...One, there is not just "one interpretation" to Scripture, but many levels of meaning to it. There are erroneous interpretations, but there are many complementary valid interpretations, which the Church understands and mentions. 

Two, again, we must not assume our interpretation of Scripture (or a Magisterial statement, or the comments of a saint, or even of someone else) are themselves necessarily correct. It is, again, often the case that those in error will quote saints, popes, and the like to validate their error, forgetting that heresy is the grasping of one truth in such a way that other aspects of the truth are neglected or rejected. The "this is true" does not mean our interpretation or use of it is true.

What difference does it make if God speaks in person or if he speaks through ministers, be these angels or men. 'But,' you may protest, 'men are often mistaken in their apprehension of what is God's will in cases of doubt, and so may lead us astray.' And what is that to you, who are more ignorant than they are?" St. Bernard of Clairvaux, On Precept and Dispensation, IX.21.

"Putting aside all private judgment, we should keep our minds prepared and ready to obey promptly and in all things the true spouse of Christ our Lord, our Holy Mother, the Ecclesiastical Church." St. Ignatius of Loyola, Spiritual Exercises, Rules for Thinking With the Church #1.

You continue to respond with non-sequiturs and lies. The fact that you are unable to appreciate:

1) Scripture has multiple meanings

2) That you jump from an interpretation of Scripture to "therefore I am correct" which is invalid and what heretics and schismatics have always done. "Oh, there is a battle" That was what Luther also said. No has denied this, what they have denied is what you come out of it "And this is what the battle means, this is what is going on, and look at me, I am right and everyone else is wrong!!!!! It's a conspiracy!" Seriously, get a grip....
Jesus said we should look to ourselves. Looking to others to trumpet oneself is not a sound spiritual condition.

Is it me or is he saying there is no such thing as objective Truth and Jesus Christ's Church teaches It - only subjective opinions that can be trumped with other opinions when lying, conspiracy mongering Joe Stalins like me come along?

Is there another interpretation out there about the Woman giving birth to the Child and the beast lies waiting to devour us all?
If so, repeated attempts asking him to cite them fell upon deaf ears.

 I swear, I was on my best behavior!  (n.b. Does anybody know how many legs St. Josaphat had?  Was he a little yellow fellow with an up-do?  Anyone have a statue of him sitting in the lotus position? )

I'll tell you something, there is much less damage done to souls by people who are intellectually honest about their dissent.  


Here is a living and breathing example of how to water down and mute consciences with intellectual tripe. 


A long treatise on when a child is 'ensouled'.  


What part of I knew you before you were born"  and the Magnificat is getting lost in this tortured theology?  God is the author and Creator of each and every life.  God the Father knew the plans He had for Christ before Christ was created.  He knew what Mary's life was going to be because she was created without original sin.  The only human being to be created without original sin.  Christ's life was planned out  at least 17 years before God the Father would send Gabriel to ask Mary to carry Christ in her womb.  


When the Virgin is conceived without sin, that tells you that she had a soul at conception.


The numbing of the intellects around us is frustrating and maddening all at the same time.


What kind of hogwash will people swallow when the most basic facts makes a treatise like this impossible?


John the Baptist was conceived with original sin but when he recognized Christ's presence while each of them were in their mother's wombs, his original sin was wiped out and so while he was born without original sin, he was conceived with it.


Common sense should tell you that the recepticle has to be there at conception when the rest of us received original sin but in Mary's case, the decision was made to spare her concupisence.


You have to get up pretty early in the morning to fool me!


Seriously, trowing around this kind of theological dung for people to read has serious consequences.   Somebody reading it may find herself with an unexpected pregnancy and remember this rubbish and not only will that life end, the woman who commits the grave act against the life that God created will suffer the terrible consequences of this sin.  Her life may spiral.  She may never get her feet back on the ground.  Her life may be wasted and she may die out of communion with God, her salvation in peril from all the things she did in the sick state of her mind and soul.  




Here is a more concrete example of the reason I have zero tolerance for soul killers.  A child who was given every teaching faithfully was exploited by people who wanted to give her alternative opinions to Truth on theology.  This crept into many aspects of this beautiful soul's life until she fell into a moment of despair from the consequences of the traps people led her into with 'pastoral' approaches to theology.




People being 'pastoral' by omitting truth or watering it down so your feelings wont get hurt are actually keep you distanced from God.  What is pasoral about letting you wallow in your sins where you may make a stupid mistake that you or others will pay for for the rest of your life?  They make 'church' an attractive place by connecting their self-esteem and connections to the people in the pews or to the priest.  They tell you that your sins are virtue as your life spirals away from God from the effects of sin. 


Leading people away from truth with  slick intellectual malarkey is a terrible offense against our brothers and sisters and more importantly, against God.  I think it's worse than a "vocation" leading people into an alley and robbing them of their wallets, beating them and leaving them for dead.   I have no tolerance for enabling this kind of spiritual homicide.  I would like to say I wish I did but quite frankly, I wouldn't wish that upon anyone.


Still, I felt a little troubled that the conversation led me to have to say the things I had to say.  I was trolling the internet looking for some spiritual reading when I saw Michael Voris' Vortex was on the virtue of prudence.  


What a stroke of luck I thought to myself and settled down to be fed.


Have you seen it?


It's by far, the best Vortex he's done IMO....but it wasn't exactly what I was expecting.





Then, I came across Deal Hudson's piece on being divisive, then John Zmirak's piece on the condom kerfuffle....and finally Simcha put the frosting on the cake...


By the time I was done with all that, Karlson's offer to lend me his spiritual advisor and to adopt silence before I made any more of "an ass of myself " wasn't looking like something I was going to be taking him up on.  


You can count this ass among the growing chorus of people who are saying if selling intellectual tripe to souls or leaving them inmmersed in the effects of sin is your idea of the Cardinal virtues, keep your stinkin virtues to yourself.   


We can not  stop fools and malcontents from twisting and misapplying them or using them as an excuse to not do or say the right thing but we can get off that train and start living up to our baptismal call.


My Saviour, He can move the mountains,
My God is Mighty to save,
He is Mighty to save.
Forever, Author of salvation,
He rose and conquered the grave,
Jesus conquered the grave.

Shine your light and let the whole world see,
We're singing for the glory of the risen King...Jesus

Peter Kreeft's Kappa Malong Malong

I have a great deal of respect for Peter Kreeft.  He's been out in the public square teaching our faith and courageously defending the Deposit of Faith for years.

I must say though that I'm puzzled by his treatise on Islam.

With my head so deeply immersed in what's going on in Boston, I first caught wind of it at Terry Nelson's blog Abby Road. (BTW - I hope you are visiting the fabulous bloggers linked in my blogroll).

Another one of my Catholic heroes,  John Zmirak (who moderated the debate) weighed in yesterday.

I really look forward to John's pieces.  He has a unique way of building momentum and then taking our foolishness and laying it to waste with acerbic wit.   As I read his piece..building my own excitement...waiting for the punch line...

It is this primal vigor that Kreeft finds admirable in Islam, and throughout the book he skillfully shows how it contrasts with the haughty, narcissicistic skepticism that prevails throughout the post-Christian West, even among many who claim to be somehow Catholic. (This problem is surely worse in Boston than almost anywhere else on earth, except perhaps Louvain.) And that is the message Kreeft repeated at Thomas More College -- reiterating what he suggested in Between Allah and Jesus: that terrorism, military jihad, and the use of violence to subjugate "unbelievers" are perversions of Islam, as witch-burnings, inquisitions, and religious wars were distortions of Christianity.

...Yes, yes, yes.  I couldn't wait for the delicious punchline!

Robert Spencer, the author of ten painstakingly researched books on political Islam (such as The Truth About Muhammad), replied that Kreeft was playing a dangerous game, scoring points against liberal Catholics -- who surely deserve it -- at the price of soft-pedaling the truth about Islam: that it is every bit as much an ideology as a religion. Orthodox Islam, as codified in the Koran and propounded by every authoritative school of interpretation, demands that Muslims seek to dominate the world, imposing on polytheists (such as Hindus) the simple choice of conversion or death. Christians and Jews face a third option: accepting with "willing submission" a second-class, servile status called "dhimmitude," which is comparable to the status African-Americans had under Jim Crow laws.  

Earlier this week, I interjected into a conversation on Facebook with some  Obama and Muslim rock redneck a who was warning Christians and Catholics in comment boxes that the post-Obama era would see the eradication of Christians and Catholics evangelizing in the public square.  He said he would fight it to his death.  After some back and forth [with the anti-Christian bigot] where several of us gave him the heads up on our Constitutional and civil rights and moreover our 2000 year history of martyrdom, we wished him lots of luck.    At one point, when pointing out the history of the codified violence in the Koran and its mission to wipe out the rest of us out with death, he "ROFLMAO".    "You mean to say you think Muslims are violent?"

I think there are many Muslims who have escaped the violent thugs but the victims of this 'religion' cry out to the heaven for justice and I told him he better be doing some research on what's going on in Muslim countries or better yet, go there himself.    I'm not going to make a mockery out of their deaths by pleading ignorance.

Anyway..back to John:

Kreeft deferred to Spencer's account of Islam in practice, but insisted on his main point: that the heritage of the Western Enlightenment is far more dangerous to the Church than the faith of Muslim immigrants. While orthodox Muslims threaten our bodies and our freedoms, the Enlightenment threatens our souls. "Our real enemies, as Christians, are demons....It's a fascinating exchange between two men with first-rate minds who love the Church.

That's it???


Bummer.


I can't say I disagree with this conclusion but in a period where our White House is occupied by an anti-American muslim terrorist sympathizer who treats our own military and police as the boogeymen, I think we ought to be a little less fatuous and a little lot more courageous about what the cult of Islam 'is'.


That is all.

What does John Zmirak eat?

I want some.

Today, he makes mince mean out of the pennies from Heaven crowd.

Do skip over the insufferable comments and find delightful rebuttals.

God Bless this man!

John Zmirak's Screed on The Perverse Use of of Christian Impulses

I absolutely love reading John Zmirak. He has such a way of zeroing in on our flaws and using biting sarcasm. His style is entertaining, enlightening, shocking and if you're sauntering along the road of trying to perfect your own flawed and sinful nature-it's a fabulous spiritual tool. Especially if being mocked is up your alley.

There's always a good hearty laugh at his perspective of worldly things that are driving us crazy as warriors and a little dose of what's driving the people around us crazy.

I've seen people really do this -- for instance, Catholic bloggers who seem to boast about the depth of their former sins, and wallow in their specialness compared to dreary, bourgeois churchgoers who've always tried to follow the rules. There's a certain type of "penitent" who delights in playing the perpetual prodigal son, always deserving of the fatted calf. Just by going one more day without doing heroin, or cheating on their spouses, they think they are forever causing greater joy in heaven than whole cloisters full of holy Carmelites. The trick is to stay the "lost sheep," and never blend in and become one of those boring 99 . . .

He takes on the Litany of humility like nobody else could.

Give yourself a gift and read his latest screed:

Please Allow Me to Humiliate You.