"Why Is Pope Francis Promoting Sin?"

There's a click-bait headline that seduced me. It's an op-ed at Bloomberg.com.

By dwelling on inequality, the pope is promoting envy. The Catholic Church, I had always understood, disapproves of envy, deeming it one of the seven deadly sins. I would have expected Francis to urge people to think of themselves in relation to God and to their own fullest potential. Encouraging people to measure themselves against others only leads to grief. Resenting the success of others is a sin in itself.

Obviously, one can say the Pope is promoting virtue, notably charity. But the pitch comes from a Harvard professor, Lant Pritchett, whose expertise is in alleviating poverty, but hear him out. This next part may win over even the Pope fans:

While Jesus repeatedly preached against the love of riches, he was urging people to respond to a call to God and to become “rich to God.” It was not an appeal for people to resent the riches of others and obsess about material inequality. Jesus, when asked to remedy inequality, turned the focus back on envy and greed.

“Someone in the crowd said to him, ‘Teacher, tell my brother to share the inheritance with me.’ He replied to him, ‘Friend, who appointed me as your judge and arbitrator?’ Then he said to the crowd, ‘Take care to guard against all greed, for though one may be rich, one’s life does not consist of possessions.’” (Luke 12:13-15)

I am all for reducing poverty... What I’m against is talking about “inequality” as if that term denoted any of those concerns. Poverty matters; injustice matters. Mere inequality is beside the point.

Mere inequality is beside the point.

Megyn Kelly says lighten up.

And not in a race-bait-y way:

Taking a ridiculous racial issue and making it more ridiculous.

For some reason — ratings? — Megyn Kelly was on Fox News arguing with some lady who thought Santa Claus should no longer be depicted as a white man. Sorry, I'm not going to figure out the whole context of that proposal, but at some point Kelly emitted the following quote:

"Just because it makes you feel uncomfortable doesn't mean it has to change," Kelly said. "Jesus was a white man, too. It's like we have, he's a historical figure that's a verifiable fact, as is Santa, I just want kids to know that. How do you revise it in the middle of the legacy in the story and change Santa from white to black?"

Well, that's silly, perhaps, but she's got a guest on the show who needs to be prodded with questions. And the assertion that Santa is a historical figure is jocose for adults, a sop for the kids. The question is simply the usual conservative appeal to tradition: Why change anything? There's a reference to the reason for the change: It makes some people "uncomfortable." Is that a good enough reason for changing something we've done for a long time? This is the same way you could bandy about the question whether the Washington Redskins ought to change their name. It's standard fare for the Fox News crowd.

So here comes Jonathan Merritt in The Atlantic, turning that nugget o' Fox into something that Atlantic readers might find tasty. Hey, everybody, some idiot on Fox News said something stupid.

Setting aside the ridiculousness of creating rigidly racial depictions of a fictitious character that does not actually exist—sorry, kids—like Santa, Kelly has made a more serious error about Jesus. The scholarly consensus is actually that Jesus was, like most first-century Jews, probably a dark-skinned man. If he were taking the red-eye flight from San Francisco to New York today, Jesus might be profiled for additional security screening by TSA.

Kelly didn't demand "rigidly racial depictions." She was challenging her guest's attempt to turn the usual image of Santa into a racial problem. It's the guest who's yearning to impose the racial template. What's the "serious error" about Santa that Kelly is supposed to have made? None! But she made a "more serious error about Jesus," and I guess any error is a more serious error than no error.

What's the error? Merritt informs us that Jesus, being a first-century Jew, probably had dark skin. Jews are not white? One ceases to be white if one's skin is sufficiently dark? It may be silly to use the term "white" to label people by race, but white is a big category, and it includes a pretty broad spectrum of skin colors, such as, for example, the "white Hispanic" George Zimmerman. Maybe we should call Jesus a "white Semitic" to heighten the awareness of the subcategories of whiteness. Is that what Jonathan Merritt requires to avoid falling into "serious error"? Megyn Kelly was arguing for less racialism, and Merritt is arguing for more.

Merritt also casually implies that the TSA engages in racial profiling of those who look Semitic. It's a scurrilous charge, but, hey, it's a joke.

Merritt continues:

The myth of a white Jesus is one with deep roots throughout Christian history. As early as the Middle Ages and particularly during the Renaissance, popular Western artists depicted Jesus as a white man, often with blue eyes and blondish hair. 

Yeah, but Megyn Kelly didn't say Jesus had blond hair and blue eyes. Merritt's line is more erroneous, wafting the notion that white people must have light coloring. I'd say there are a lot more white people with dark eyes and dark hair than with blue eyes and blond (or "blondish") hair. So this is a completely screwy attack on Megyn Kelly, and it's actually pretty offensive to go out of your way to say that persons of Semitic ancestry are not white. Why go where Nazis have gone? What's the attraction? Because it's just so important to portray Fox News folk as idiots?

Perhaps fueled by some Biblical verses correlating lightness with purity and righteousness and darkness with sin and evil, these images sought to craft a sterile Son of God....

Now, you are way outside of anything having to do with Megyn Kelly. This sounds like some lesson from a fourth-rate racial studies course. And by the way, Merritt, that writing is terrible. The subject of your sentence is "images," and images don't seek to do anything. Images are inanimate objects. And how do you "craft" Jesus? Human beings do the seeking and crafting. And the images are crafted. The images are of Jesus. A person might craft a sterile image of Jesus. But an image can't craft — or even seek to craft — a sterile Jesus.

And we're subjected to the usual tripe about light and darkness — which correspond so strongly to the deeply emotional experience of day and night — being about skin color. Ever consider that Jesus looks the way he does in old paintings because the painter used models in his home town? That would mean the painter wasn't focused on race at all. But why not go with the idea that all those old painters were racists who lightened Jesus up to make him look like a better class of person? What's the point? And what the hell does it have to do with Megyn Kelly?

Merritt goes on to say:

In Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Advice for Living” column for Ebony in 1957, the civil-rights leader was asked, “Why did God make Jesus white, when the majority of peoples in the world are non-white?” King replied, “The color of Jesus’ skin is of little or no consequence” because what made Jesus exceptional “His willingness to surrender His will to God’s will.” His point, as historian Edward Blum has noted, is that Jesus transcends race.

Yes, Martin Luther King said some great things about getting past race. So could we? Here's what Merritt says next:

Those warnings hold just as true for believers today. 

What warnings? How is Jesus transcends race a warning? One could construct a warning: We'd better transcend race or terrible things will happen. But Merritt won't transcend race:

Within the church, eschewing a Jesus who looks more like a Scandinavian supermodel than the sinless Son of God in the scriptures is critical to maintaining a faith in which all can give praise to one who became like them in an effort to save them from sins like racism and prejudice. 

Only Merritt brought up the Scandinavian supermodel version of Jesus, but, yeah, it's critical to eschew making Jesus look like this. But who does that? If it's really so important to have the right colors to encourage everyone to identify, then a dark-haired, dark-eyed Caucasian is one of the best choices. But Martin Luther King said race is of little or no consequence, and Merritt said we were supposed to heed his warnings.

It's important for Christians who want to expand the church, too, in allowing the creation of communities that are able to worship a Jesus who builds bridges rather than barriers. And it is essential to enabling those who bear the name of Christ to look forward to that day when, according to the book of Revelation, those “from every nation, tribe, people, and language” can worship God together.

Until that day arrives, though, can someone please tell Megyn Kelly that Jesus is not white?

He just cannot let it go. Megyn Kelly must be stupid. Fox News must suck. Jesus can wait and Martin Luther King's dream will need to be deferred for however long it takes to kick that right-wing news blonde around one more time over less than nothing.

"Monkey Jesus priest hit with sex and fraud charges."

A sidebar teaser for the news from Spain that "The priest of a small Spanish village which rose to international fame after a local woman in 2012 'restored' a fresco of Jesus Christ has been arrested for alleged sexual abuse and the embezzlement of €210,000 ($285,000)."

Is there a connection between these charges and the "Ecce Homo" restoration that amused the world back in 2012? The priest's lawyer says absolutely not, but the restoration brought tourists to the little town of of Borja, and you have to pay €1 ($1.30) to get into the church. That makes a tempting pot of money.

Oh, noooooo!



A little old lady mucks up a portrait of Jesus and life was never the same in the little Spanish town of Borja.

It needs to be a movie, don't you think?

"An LDS Bishop went undercover as a homeless man in his congregation last Sunday."

"He wanted to use his disguise as a tool to teach on compassion this Thanksgiving." (Video at the link.)

Ward member Jaimi Larsen also didn't recognize the homeless man as [David] Musselman... "He was dirty. He was crippled. He was old. He was mumbling to himself"....

Larsen says she watched from the chapel as Musselman walked to the pulpit - his disguise so real, she had no idea that he was about to reveal himself as their bishop. "He quoted the song 'Have I Done Any Good in the World Today?'," said Larsen.

That story made me think of this passage in the New Testament:

“For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

"Crazy, I know, but I've actually been encouraging my son and his friends to use sexting — minus the lewd photos — to protect themselves..."

"... from being wrongly accused of rape. Because just as damning text messages and Facebook posts helped convict the high-schoolers in Steubenville of rape, technology can also be used to prove innocence."

Writes Roxanne Jones of ESPN. She's getting some attention for this, notably from Melissa McEwan, who's the type of blogger who, approaching this topic, begins with "[Content Note: Rape culture.]," which is — if I understand the culture of people who say "rape culture" —an enactment of the belief that encountering the topic of rape triggers a post-traumatic experience. Why doesn't the warning itself cause alarm? Isn't that the nature of warning? I suspect that the message isn't so much to the individuals who experience post-traumatic stress but to everyone: Never forget how deeply rape hurts.

After the warning, McEwan writes:

This is an actual fucking article authored by former EPSN [sic] vice president Roxanne Jones and printed at CNN in the year of our lord Jesus Jones two thousand and thirteen: "Young men, get a 'yes' text before sex."

Hey, why didn't we get a warning that you were going to use vulgar language and mock Jesus? Because McEwan is selective about which sensitivities to pet and which to kick in the ribs. It's a way to be funny, and fuck you if you don't laugh. Plus, some people like Jesus Jones. I kinda do. Saying "Jesus Jones" is like saying "Jiminy Christmas" or whatever cornball/hip substitution for "Jesus Christ" amuses you.

[Roxanne Jones] actually posits that a text message can verify consent, as though it's not possible to ask "Do you want to have sex with me?" followed by a series of any other conceivable questions that might elicit a yes, and then delete the interceding messages to make the "yes" look like a direct reply, irrespective of what the actual reply was.

But what Jones — Roxanne, not Jesus — wrote was: "Never have sex with a girl unless she's sent you a text that proves the sexual relationship is consensual beforehand." All McEwan is saying is that some efforts at concocting text evidence could be fake. But Jones said "a text that proves," without elaborating what text would be adequate proof. And McEwan doesn't seem to realize that deleted interceding messages would be recoverable, and the deletions themselves would be evidence against the accused. If Jones's idea is any good, it's because she's encouraging building relationships — however minimal — around sexual encounters and doing so in writing so you can defend yourself if you are falsely accused.

Give Jones some credit for saying "relationship." She also recommends "follow[ing] up any sexual encounter with a tasteful text message saying how you both enjoyed being with one another — even if you never plan on hooking up again." That's also about maintaining relationships. If your concern is avoiding accusations — false, true, or true-ishly false — don't do things that provoke the person who might go on the attack. Telling males to send some nice texts is interestingly similar to telling females not to go traipsing about in short skirts. It's don't-be-a-victim advice that some people find aggravatingly close to letting the victimizer off the hook.

But, of course, McEwan doesn't want to talk about the potential for false or false-ish accusations. She rails at Jones for talking about "stupid girls" who get drunk, throw themselves at young men, and then accuse them of rape:

Ms. Jones, I was not raped because I am stupid. I was raped because I had the misfortune of being in the presence of a rapist who was determined to rape me. Fuck off.

McEwan is an enforcer of the doctrinaire position that the issue of false accusations is such a distraction from the real problem that anyone who mentions it should be slammed down hard. Isn't it odd that extreme sensitivity about rape is expressed by telling another woman to "fuck off"? Why is fucking used as the metaphor for the expression of extreme hate? It sounds as though, in the mind of the person deploying the metaphor, fucking equals rape. It's a violent hateful action directed at the woman's body.

What is the true scope of this "rape culture" we are being warned about?

"The Sermon on the Mount, blessed are the meek? More like blessed are the deaf because they don’t have to listen to this eighth grade poem."

Jebediah Atkinson stands by his harsh review of the Gettysburg Address and other speeches:

What Justice Scalia really means when he says he believes in the Devil.

About halfway her wonderful interview with Justice Scalia, after some discussion of homosexuality in legal and in Catholic doctrine, Jennifer Senior pushes the old judge to worry about how history will look back on his era of the Court. The first prompt — "Justice ­Kennedy is now the Thurgood Marshall of gay rights" — gets merely a nod. She tries again, with another non-question: "I don’t know how, by your lights, that’s going to be regarded in 50 years." He says doesn't know and he doesn't care:

Maybe the world is spinning toward a wider acceptance of homosexual rights, and here’s Scalia, standing athwart it. 

Some might hear "standing athwart" homosexual rights and get an amusingly unintentionally sexual picture of Scalia straddling gay men. But I assume it's an allusion to William F. Buckley's famous 1955 mission statement for The National Review: "It stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it." The topic was history, you know. And who else says "standing athwart"?

Scalia has shifted from the topic of Kennedy's legacy to his own and — declining to guess what the people of the future will think — he says: "When I’m dead and gone, I’ll either be sublimely happy or terribly unhappy."

That is, he pulls Senior back to the perhaps-more-comfortable topic of religion. She obliges, asking him if he believes in heaven and hell, which he does, and they go back and forth about who goes where, and then, as she proceeds to a new topic — "your drafting process" — he pulls her back again: "I even believe in the Devil."

You do?

Of course! Yeah, he’s a real person. Hey, c’mon, that’s standard Catholic doctrine! Every Catholic believes that.

He's already connected his Catholicism to the accession to the authority of Catholic doctrine. The devil is in the doctrine, he's Catholic, and ergo, he believes in the Devil.

Asked for evidence of the Devil lately, Scalia says:

You know, it is curious. In the Gospels, the Devil is doing all sorts of things. He’s making pigs run off cliffs, he’s possessing people and whatnot. And that doesn’t happen very much anymore....

What he’s doing now is getting people not to believe in him or in God. He’s much more successful that way.

Later, he asks Senior if she's read "The Screwtape Letters," and not having read "The Screwtape Letters" in decades, I'm not sure if he's lifting these nifty observations from C.S. Lewis or not.

Senior wants to know whether it's "terribly frightening to believe in the Devil." He says:

You’re looking at me as though I’m weird. My God! Are you so out of touch with most of America, most of which believes in the Devil? I mean, Jesus Christ believed in the Devil! It’s in the Gospels! You travel in circles that are so, so removed from mainstream America that you are appalled that anybody would believe in the Devil! Most of mankind has believed in the Devil, for all of history. Many more intelligent people than you or me have believed in the Devil.

He seems to be trying to get a reaction out of her, because she defends with: "I hope you weren’t sensing contempt from me. It wasn’t your belief that surprised me so much as how boldly you expressed it." He says:

I was offended by that. I really was.

She doesn't grasp his statement or at least what she says next indicates that she didn't. She says: "I’m sorry to have offended you," as if he was an ordinary person taking offense, when in fact, he's cracking a joke. The joke is to point at her surprise at his bold expression. It was a subtle way to say: Hey, I thought I was famous for bold expression! But he's not so bold — or so bad a comedian — as to redo a joke to drive it home. Either you get it or you don't. He moves forward. Here's where he brings up "The Screwtape Letters," which she says she's read. He says:

So, there you are. That’s a great book. 

That suggests all the interesting things he's throwing out about the Devil are ideas in or closely tracking that book he likes.

It really is, just as a study of human nature.

And there you are. He believes in the Devil not just, perhaps, because he yields to the authority of a religion of dogma and authority, but he believes in the Devil because the Devil is a literary device for exploring human nature, and how can we not believe in human nature and literature?

"'What happened today was not credible,' were the stunned and wooden words of Tom Clancy..."

A line on page 4 of the Martin Amis book "The Second Plane/September 11: Terror and Boredom," which I began rereading last night.

Tom Clancy died last Tuesday, and I did not blog about it, because I don't blog every obituary and because I've never read (or felt motivated to read) a Tom Clancy book. It doesn't mean anything — of course, I'm not superstitious — that I'd never taken an interest in Clancy and then I run into his name on the second page of the first essay in a book I happened to take down from the shelf for no apparent reason — was it on Tuesday?

I took the book off the shelf and immediately saw something I'd written inside the back cover. I didn't remember getting this idea, but I could recognize it as my own thinking and knew that something in the book had inspired me to think that. Because my graphomania extends to marginalia — as the first post on this blog attests — I'm able to find the place in the text that inspired the back-of-the-book notes.

First, I'll show you the Amis text (with my marginalia). It's on pages 13 and 14:




Now, I'll let you read my notes:

"The Calling of St. Matthew" — the Caravaggio painting often contemplated by Pope Francis.

"That finger of Jesus, pointing at Matthew. That’s me. I feel like him. Like Matthew."

"It is the gesture of Matthew that strikes me: he holds on to his money as if to say, ‘No, not me! No, this money is mine.’ Here, this is me, a sinner on whom the Lord has turned his gaze. And this is what I said when they asked me if I would accept my election as pontiff." Then the pope whispers in Latin: "I am a sinner, but I trust in the infinite mercy and patience of our Lord Jesus Christ, and I accept in a spirit of penance."

"I was happy with his work — and even happier with his presence in the house because he was a great moral force."

Said the great writer Joan Didion about Harrison Ford, who worked as a carpenter on her beach house in 1971.

Imagine having a beach house in 1971, being 37 years old, having a 29-year-old Harrison Ford, doing carpentry work for you and experiencing him as a great moral force.

Didion was married, you should know. She married John Gregory Dunne in 1964, and they remained married until he dropped dead in 2003. I say "dropped dead" because I read "The Year of Magical Thinking," which begins with that scene.

But how was the young carpenter a moral force? Here's a little song:

Did Reza Aslan, a Muslim writing about Jesus in "Zealot," intend to say anything about the politics of today's Middle East?

Asks Jonathan Kirsch of Jewish Journal. Aslan said:

I really didn’t. I was very careful in not trying to make any overt political point with this book. It’s a historical biography about a man who lived 2,000 years ago, and nothing else. But a lot of people have brought it up, because nothing much has changed. The politico-religious context of our world is something that Jesus would have understood. The arguments that Jesus made against authority are being made today on the streets of Cairo and Jerusalem. And the role of religion in providing a sense of dignity to marginalized and oppressed people, regardless of their religious background, is a universal that exists in all places and all religions.

Here's the book "Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth." And for those who'd like to see him write about Islam, here's his book "No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam."

By the way, I was surprised to see that Reza Aslan is the 6th most popular author on Amazon.

Female politicians "have resorted to flexing their womb-manhood."

Writes Kathleen Parker, riffing on Sarah Palin's statement that "goes something like this: 'I’m more fertile than you are.'"

(If you scroll down you'll get to the actual quote: "I say this as someone who’s kind of fertile herself." Palin was reacting to Jeb Bush's recent awkward reference to the fertility of immigrants. Parker seems to like to rewrite quotes: What Jeb said "sounds an awful lot like, 'Hotahmighty, those people can’t tie their shoes without getting pregnant.'")

It wasn't just Sarah Palin who flexed her womb-manhood to make a political argument. Parker also points to Nancy Pelosi:

When challenged about the difference between late-term abortion and the killing of babies who survived late-term abortions at the hands of the convicted murderer Dr. Kermit Gosnell, Pelosi hid behind the skirt of her own bassinet.

Rather than answer the question, she invoked her five children and declared any discussion of abortion “sacred ground” to her Catholic sensibilities. Fecundity, apparently, triumphs over moral reasoning.

Parker acts as if Pelosi were claiming authority solely by virtue of her motherhood and declined to engage in "moral reasoning," but Pelosi was saying I believe in Catholic doctrine. She didn't just say she had 5 children. She said "my oldest child is six years old the day I brought my fifth child home from the hospital." That's offered as proof that she believes the doctrine — including the proscription against birth control. In my book, that translates into a statement of morality. Maybe some people don't think that's "moral reasoning," because it's the acceptance of religious doctrine (and not individual philosophizing). But clearly Pelosi was saying: I have very deep beliefs about morality here and my life as I've lived it vouches for the sincerity of these beliefs.

Parker's next sentence is:

Most likely, Pelosi is deeply troubled by what her politics requires and what her Catholic mother-heart tells her is true. 

Catholic mother-heart? Pelosi claimed she is a believing Catholic. Beliefs exist in the brain as well as in the emotions. You can call the emotions "heart," but it's still not just something her heart is telling her. It's religious doctrine that she knows and purports to accept. Now, of course, it's very easy to say that Pelosi cannot square her support for abortion rights with her Catholic beliefs. And Pelosi deserves that hit because she did have a how-dare-you shaming tone in her voice and she refused give an elaborate response to the questioner who wanted to hound her about Gosnell.

But I know what the answer is. It's that when the question is about enduring a pregnancy, the beliefs of the woman within whom that pregnancy exists are what matters. The true moral answer is that you should never have an abortion — that's the Catholic's religious belief — but the legal answer is that every woman has freedom of belief and her own beliefs control what she does with her body.

I think this is like what Jesus said about divorce:

The Pharisees also came to Him, testing Him, and saying to Him, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for just any reason?”

And He answered and said to them, “Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.”

They said to Him, “Why then did Moses command to give a certificate of divorce, and to put her away?”

He said to them, “Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, permitted you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery; and whoever marries her who is divorced commits adultery.”

I know that Moses didn't say it, but one might say abortion is permitted because of the hardness of your hearts.

With 2 references to hearts — Parker's "Catholic mother-heart" and Jesus's "the hardness of your hearts" — I am reminded again of the Supreme Court's notion of what it called "the heart of liberty": "the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life." That's the basis of the right to have an abortion: the individual's freedom of belief.

But where was Kathleen Parker going with this column? Two highly partisan women used their own personal fertility to leverage a political argument. Noted. The 2 women are on opposite sides of the political spectrum, but they were arguing about different issues: immigration and abortion. Now, we know Palin is pro-life, and Parker declares Palin's position "more palatable," but she proceeds to knock her for "her coquettish reminders that her field is still tillable," which, Parker says, "diminishes her credibility as anything other than a one-liner comedienne." I take it that's Parker's way of stating the conclusion that women ought to refrain from flexing their womb-manhood.

I think it's fine to include one's own personal experience as part of a political argument. It's a problem if you do it badly. (You don't want your audience to perceive you as coquettish!) And it shouldn't be your only argument. (You don't want to seem to be saying I have more children then you, so shut up.) But talking about real-world experience gives depth, color, and credibility to a politician's speech. As with any political speech, you need to do it well.

"What's so 'ugly' about the mockery?"

Asks grinder, in the comments to the post — "Texas Congressman: Masturbating Fetuses Prove Need for Abortion Ban" — about pro-abortion-rights bloggers mocking the statement of Rep. Michael Burgess, a former OB/GYN, who commented on the "purposeful" motions of 15-week-old unborns who may "stroke their face" and "have their hand between their legs."

I answered in the comments:

The Congressman described the fetus's humanity: It does something that we are invited to recognize as part of our shared human condition and therefore to appreciate its reality and to feel empathy.

The mockers are taking this delicately stated image of the fetus touching or holding its genitals and turning it into a picture of a baby masturbating — "jerking off," "spanking the monkey" — and asking us to laugh at it, even as we are expected to accept its being killed. The very thing that the Congressman used to call us to think of it as human, they would laugh at before killing it.

If you are going to take it into your hands to kill a human being, you don't diminish it and laugh at it first. For example, an execution — assuming it is permitted at all, as it is in the United States — is carried out with somber respect. Even as this human being will be killed, we must demonstrate that we understand the profundity of what we are doing.

Picture executions where the condemned person is subjected to mockery first. (That was done to Jesus, by the way.) Some would say any death penalty is wrong, just as some would say that any abortion is wrong. But few would say that ridiculing the condemned being — dehumanizing him — is acceptable.

In their eagerness to deny that the fetus is a person, abortion rights proponents — some of them — are making sport of it.

This reminds me of Kermit Gosnell joking about a large fetus, saying that it was big enough to walk to the bus stop. Think about why that was considered shocking by many people.

Let's remember that, under the law, the abortion right — in the Supreme Court's idealized image — is based on the idea of the woman's entitlement to define her own concept of "the mystery of human life." This is a "philosophic exercise" that "originate[s] within the zone of conscience and belief." This is a deeply serious matter — to the Court. But who believes it? Abortion opponents resist the idea either because they are sure the fetus is a human being or because they wouldn't trust the woman to base her decision whether to abort on sincere conscientious beliefs about the humanity of the unborn. Those who support abortion rights seem — for the most part — to have forgotten the nature of the decision that is reserved, under the law, for the woman. Laughing at the unborn is egregious evidence of this forgetting.

Here's an idea for an abortion regulation that I've never heard anyone else discuss, but which occurred to me as I've read and reread the Supreme Court cases. A woman seeking an abortion must sign a statement: I have reflected on the nature of the procedure I am about to undergo, and I attest to my sincere belief that it will not kill a human being.

Insincere "Jesus."

A topic this morning at Meadhouse is the insincere use of "Jesus" in pop songs circa 1970.

1. "Jesus Is Just Alright."

The song's title makes use of the American slang term "all-right," which during the 1960s was used to describe something that was considered 'cool' or very good. The song has been covered by a number of bands and artists over the years, including The Byrds, Underground Sunshine, The Doobie Brothers, Alexis Korner, The Ventures, DC Talk, Shelagh McDonald, and Robert Randolph (featuring Eric Clapton).

2. "Spirit in the Sky."

[Norman] Greenbaum... was inspired to write the song after watching Porter Wagoner on TV singing a gospel song. Greenbaum later said : "I thought, 'Yeah, I could do that,' knowing nothing about gospel music, so I sat down and wrote my own gospel song. It came easy. I wrote the words in 15 minutes." "Spirit in the Sky" contains lyrics about the afterlife, making several references to Jesus, although Greenbaum himself is Jewish.

3. "One Toke Over the Line." ("One toke over the line, sweet Jesus...")

The catchy single, "One Toke Over the Line," peaked at #10 (#5 in Canada), garnering notice from Spiro Agnew for what he saw as its subversiveness. Ironically, the song was performed (by Gail Farrell and Dick Dale) on The Lawrence Welk Show, which billed it a "modern spiritual."[2] The song is notably mentioned in the opening of Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and was notably "sung" by Dr. Gonzo (Benicio Del Toro) in the film of the same name. "

Any more examples? Help me out here. The topic is: Insincere (or arguably insincere) references to Jesus in popular songs in the days before Christian rock was a thing.

I know there's also "The Christian Life" on the Byrds album "Sweetheart of the Rodeo," — which came out a year before the album with "Jesus Is Just Alright" — but I'm not putting it on the list, because I don't think it was played on the radio. The Byrds suddenly switched from psychedelic rock to country music, which was a strange thing to do at the time and it didn't feel like a bid for another hit record.

"'Christian Life' was performed tongue-in-cheek," said [Chris] Hillman. "After Roger [McGuinn] sang it, he admitted to going overboard with the accent. Roger was from Chicago and here he is, doing this heavy, syrupy country twang."

My buddies shun me since I turned to Jesus
They say I'm missing a whole world of fun
I live without them and walk in the light
I like the Christian life

MORE: Maybe it all started with the Paul Newman movie "Cool Hand Luke" — "I don't care if it rains or freezes/Long as I have my plastic Jesus/Riding on the dashboard of my car...":



IN THE COMMENTS: Fr. Denis Lemieux cites "Suzanne," by Leonard Cohen:

"Jesus was a sailor when he walked upon the water, and he spent a long time watching from his lonely wooden tower, and when he knew for certain only drowning men could see him, he said all men shall be sailors then, until the sea shall free them...'

Not exactly insincere... more a use of Jesus outside of orthodox Christian theology, I guess. I find this a fascinating topic, though - intersection of faith and culture.

I agree that this is not insincere. It is mysterious/mystical... and that is religious. Suzanne herself explains:

BBC's Kate Saunders: Could you describe one of the typical evenings that you spent with Leonard Cohen at the time the song was written?

Suzanne: Oh yes. I would always light a candle and serve tea and it would be quiet for several minutes, then we would speak. And I would speak about life and poetry and we’d share ideas.

Saunders: So it really was the tea and oranges that are in the song?

Suzanne: Very definitely, very definitely, and the candle, who I named Anastasia, the flame of the candle was Anastasia to me. Don’t ask me why. It just was a spiritual moment that I had with the lightening of the candle. And I may or may not have spoken to Leonard about, you know I did pray to Christ, to Jesus Christ and to St. Joan at the time, and still do.

Saunders: And that was something you shared, both of you?

Suzanne: Yes, and I guess he retained that.

And El Pollo Real prompts me to include Bob Dylan on this list, but I refuse, because I don't think Dylan was insincere about Jesus — not on "Slow Train Coming" and not on earlier references: "Even Jesus would never forgive what you do" ("Masters of War" on "Freewheelin'"), "Jesus Christ was betrayed by a kiss" ("With God On Our Side," on "The Times They Are A-Changin'"), "You know they refused Jesus, too" ("Bob Dylan's 115th Dream," on "Bringing It All Back Home").

"But since my cancer diagnosis, I’m beginning to empathize with Jesus at Gethsemane..."

"... Just as he’d gotten his life’s work going, just as he was planting the seeds of a new society, just as he was gaining followers willing to give up everything for justice and love, he found out he was probably going to die, at the age of 33...."

When has your life experience caused you to change which character you identify with in an old story?

Or is this a big sermon cliché? First, we identify with the sleeping disciples because blah blah blah but then etc. etc....

Eh. Maybe it's a big but great cliché. Let's have your examples.

I can't offhand think of any of my own, but I think of that mother in the BBC documentary we were watching last night who described her son as always identifying with the villain in the story and who gives — as her one example — Cruella De Vil. It's a power fantasy, and he doesn't seem to mind — mom says — that the character loses in the end. She probably thinks the BBC documentary viewer identifies with her, the devoted mother of a difficult child. Why would she have invited the documentarians into her home otherwise?

It's a cliché of documentaries to lure us into identifying with one character and then tempting, then forcing us to switch to another character. How else are you going to build narrative energy? And yet you invite these devils into your home. They seem so empathetic as you open up not just your house but your soul.

I said I couldn't  offhand think of any examples of my own, shifting from empathizing with one character to another. But now, in the context of that BBC documentary, I realize I do it all the time in blog posts. I get interested in one person, and I start writing, and I find — make?! — a narrative thread that ends up turning my empathy around. I'll bet there are over 1,000 examples of my doing that in this archive.

Perhaps you should turn against me. Perhaps I am the devil you've let into your house.

"Sometimes by nature, the Church has got to be out of touch with concerns, because we’re always supposed to be thinking of the beyond, the eternal, the changeless..."

"Our major challenge is to continue in a credible way to present the eternal concerns to people in a timeless attractive way. And sometimes there is a disconnect – between what they’re going through and what Jesus and his Church is teaching.  And that’s a challenge for us."

So said Archbishop of New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan. He was talking to the less-than-eternal and somewhat attractive George Stephanopoulos, who naturally asked him about same-sex marriage. The answer:

“Well, the first thing I’d say to them is, ‘I love you, too.  And God loves you.  And you are made in God’s image and likeness.  And – and we – we want your happiness.  But – and you’re entitled to friendship.’  But we also know that God has told us that the way to happiness, that – especially when it comes to sexual love – that is intended only for a man and woman in marriage, where children can come about naturally,” Dolan said. “We got to be – we got to do better to see that our defense of marriage is not reduced to an attack on gay people.  And I admit, we haven’t been too good at that.  We try our darndest to make sure we’re not an anti-anybody.”

I wonder if a solution could be for the government to recognize same-sex marriages, so that gay people aren't deprived of any of the legal rights, and the religious people who think God has proscribed gay sex could simply view these gay couples as friends and stop thinking about what they might be doing sexually. Even if you think gay sex is a sin, isn't it also sinful to put time and effort into thinking about what sins other people are committing? Even where you don't think sex is a sin — for example, where a married man and woman engage in fully loving sexual intercourse — isn't it wrong to pry into another couple's sexual interaction? Why not back off and concentrate on doing your darndest to make sure you're not anti-anybody?

ADDED: Remember that Jesus said:

"Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye."

And if that log is other men's cocks, really, get it out of your eye. You look ridiculous.

"Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?"

"And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people."

2 Corinthians 6:14-16, one reason why Puritans did not celebrate Easter. Another reason was that the celebration (as opposed to the event commemorated by the celebration) doesn't appear in the Bible.

Some Christian groups continue to reject the celebration of Easter due to perceived pagan roots and historical connections to the practices and permissions of the "Roman" Catholic Church. Other "Nonconformist" Christian groups that do still celebrate the event prefer to call it "Resurrection Sunday" or "Resurrection Day", for the same reasons as well as a rejection of secular or commercial aspects of the holiday in the 20th and 21st centuries....

Members of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), as part of their historic testimony against times and seasons, do not celebrate or observe Easter or any other Church holidays, believing instead that "every day is the Lord's day," and that elevation of one day above others suggests that it is acceptable to do un-Christian acts on other days....

Today is Easter, a day that is celebrated for religious reasons and, alternatively, in a completely secular fashion. It is also a day that some people do not celebrate, and the reasons for noncelebration can also be religious — even among Christians — as well as secular.

Opposition to a celebration can be based on a problem with that particular celebration — as the Puritans objected to Easter because it's not in the Bible — or on a more general objection to holidays — the belief that all of our days deserve equal celebration. That idea too can be religious. As the Quakers say "every day is the Lord's day." And that idea can be secular: the recognition of the beauty and promise in every day.

Happy Easter/Happy Day to everyone, believer and infidel, yokemates and yolkmates.

"As the viewer is struck with eggs spilling out in all directions twisting like an egg tornado and wondering how all that was packed into a flat card..."

"... and further how in the world will all that mess ever close back, depicted in black and white and in a smaller scale behind all of that, Jesus of Nazareth ascends in triumphant pose presiding over all, but his astonishing Earth-shattering demonstration of survival of the death experience goes unnoticed because attention is misdirected to the movement of colorful eggs."

"I know what you're up to. This is the strange Lutheran thing, isn't it?"

"Stranger even than what the Mormons get up to. It's why you guys are oddly so cool and taciturn about this time of year, the most joyous of all for the promise it holds and for its demonstration of life eternal."

That's Chip Ahoy, in last night's Glacier Café, the one with this picture:



Chip's riff:



If you don't recognize the image within the image, it's from yesterday's "What does Jesus look like?" post, the one that began with a discussion of a leaflet illustration of (supposedly) Jesus, the one where Meade said "If Chip Ahoy had a son, he'd look like Jesus." Because Chip Ahoy really does look that Jesus. Not the guy-that-got-thrown-out-of-the-darts-tournament Jesus, the Jehovah's-Witnesses-leaflet Jesus.



Especially this pic (nicked from the sidebar at Chip's here):