Y'Know What We Don't Care About?

Steroids, and who uses 'em.

Sure, it's cheating, and grown-ups should be embarrassed about cheating, especially grown-ups who already play games for a living. Not to mention very unhealthy.

But it's just a game -- baseball, bike racing, bocce.  They're fun, they're cool, they're whatever.  But in the end, they're entertainment.  So A-Rod or Lance or whoever using steroids matters about as much to us as Stallone or Arnold.  Or actresses shooting botulism into their faces.  Which, not for nothing, is gross.  But you don't hold congressional hearings about it.

For Neeks and Gerds: Battlestar Edition

We have figured out how the series ends, if anybody cares.  (Apart from Father and Mrs. Annonymous who -- choking up here -- maybe care a little too much, okay?). Not a spoiler, just a guess.

Arguably the best space opera of all time, and certainly the only television program we have ever seen which attempts to address both religion and politics without dumbing either one down, Battlestar Galactica is drawing swift to its close.  Humans and robots seem, at last, more interested in shared survival than in mutual assured destruction.  Their fragile alliance, almost destroyed last week, now seems secure.  Or secure-ish.   And oh, yeah, they found Earth but it was a radioactive wasteland.  So what's left?

Only one thing:  the Omega Point.

For those who have missed the fun, Frank J. Tipler is a mathematician at Tulane who has been slowly building a truly wacky hypothesis:  that he can prove mathematically the existence, in this order, of eternal life, God, and the other truths of Christian dogma, including Incarnation and Virgin Birth. 

His theory is that, someday, as the universe contracts toward its eventual "Omega Point," a moment will occur at which Life, broadly defined, occupies the entirety of space, and the universe itself becomes a vast living computer.  At this point, the computer will have the capacity to obtain and store virtual records of everything, and everyone, who has ever existed.  To the cybernetic constructs themselves, it will seem as though they are alive, and that they remain alive forever.

This is pretty much useless as theology, despite -- or perhaps because of -- its family connection to Teilhard de Chardin (near whose gravesite, incidentally, we have eaten several fine meals at the Culinary Institute of America).  Mathematical certainty leaves no room for faith, and the contributions of science to doctrine require a high level of scientific consensus.  There is, and we stress this, none whatsoever about Tipler's theories.  If there were, it would be a consensus that he's a silly mathematician, playing silly head games.  Sort of like the Joyce character who proves by logic (and, n.b., theology) that "Hamlet was himself his own father."

But as science fiction, this is an awesome tool.  Among our teen favorites was Philip Jose Farmer's To Your Scattered Bodies Go, in which every human being who had ever lived (along with one alien) was resurrected along the banks of a vast river.  Eventually, you had weird connections -- between Mark Twain and King John Lackland, or Sir Richard Francis Burton and Cyrano de Bergerac.  It was, as we said in those days, trippy.

Anyhoo, Farmer never gave a workable explanation, that we can recall, for how this miracle occurred.  Tipler does, and his explanation has been snapped up by a few writers.  We don't read much fiction anymore, and what we do tends to involve the bone-crunching adventures of Jack Reacher.  But we did enjoy Darwinia, by Robert Charles Wilson, because it explained how a World War I doughboy could encounter dinosaurs in Brazil.  And yes, the explanation was the Omega Point.

So, Battlestar Galactica.  Well, the robots -- Cylons, they're called, which we thought was one of the postwar miracle fibers -- already have the ability to "resurrect" themselves, by transferring memories from one body to another.  And one of the running arguments of the show has been whether Cylons are alive, and if so, what relationship their "life" bears to human life.  This question was sharpened considerably by the revelation that a significant number of human beings were actually Cylons -- and at least one of them, dead for some time, has already been resurrected. 

So the plot device is already there, in the form of this marvelous technology and of the fungibility of "natural" and "artificial" forms of life.  It is a comparatively small step, and a dramatically logical one, for the remnants of the human race to discover that they are in effect all Cylons, in the sense that none of them exists anymore except as an Omega Point construct, a tiny subroutine within a vast celestial computer.  Their real task was never to find Earth, but only to discover the truth about their own existence.

That's our prediction, for what it's worth.

Maybe We Misread the SSPX

The Society of St. Pius X has removed "Bishop" Williamson as the rector of its seminary, La Reja, outside Buenos Aires. Per the Times:

Bishop Williamson’s views [i.e., that Jews were never gassed to death] “in no way reflect the position of our congregation,” Rev. Christian Bouchacourt, the director of the Latin America branch of the Catholic Society of St. Pius X, said in the statement. He expressed “sadness” that Bishop Williamson’s statements had “discredited” the congregation.

"Discredited?"  To say the least.

This move seems to cast doubt upon our theory, outlined below, that the SSPX does not seek reconciliation with Rome so much as a leadership position among the crazies.  Time will tell.

Hey, Bloomie -- Call Off the Dogs!

New Yawk City, the metropolis spanning these Minor Outlying Islands, is run by a businessman, and a pretty good one, who takes an appropriately businesslike approach toward city finance.  That is to say, he encourages city agencies to collect taxes, fees and so forth, since these are how the city pays its bills. They call it "stepping up enforcement," which sounds like a good idea.  At first.

But here's the thing about American business:  it doesn't mind lying to get your money.  Think of all those robocallers offering to consolidate your non-existent debt, or help you refinance the home you don't actually own.  Or think of Enron, if that's easier.  Or Bernie Madoff.

In the last week (or perhaps ten days), Father A.'s splendid little parish has received three dunning notices from various government agencies, all of them specious if not fraudulent.  To wit:

1.  A $100 violation for ice on the sidewalk after the last snowstorm.  Well, there wasn't any.  Our sexton, armed with a brand new snow-blower, a battery of shovels, and enough calcium chloride to turn melt Greenland, works during and every every storm to keep a clear pathway, even when the neighbors can't be troubled.  Our sidewalks are immaculate.  But since we don't take dated photographs of every snowfall, to submit as documentary proof that an over-zealous sidewalk inspector had lied on his report, we paid the hundred bucks rather than spend a day in court playing "he said, she said."  Probably a mistake.

2.  A $350 notice for back taxes.  We don't get many of these, being tax-exempt, but they do occur -- payroll taxes, in this case, with a tab of about $350.  At this moment, our parish secretary is looking at the check stub for those fees, which were paid long ago.  (This is actually a federal tax, so we can't blame Bloomberg.  That we know of.)

3.  This morning, a sternly-worded note from the Law Division, requesting payment of a $250 violation order.  It would be long overdue, if of course we hadn't paid it already.  On Father A.'s desk, at this moment, is a carbon copy of the money order he used to pay it, in person -- eleven months ago.

All this is routine.  A few years ago, the Dept. of Sanitation gave us a series of violations, all with a price tag, for leaving garbage out in front of the apartment building next door -- the one we don't own, have never owned, and with which we have no relationship at all.  Last year, there was a violation for the graffitti that an inspector reported observing on our walls.  It would have been a serious problem (we Lutherans really don't care for graffitti -- too wild for our taste).  But as we pointed out to the appropriate agency, there was no graffitti, and there had never been any graffitti.

(All this is apart from some longstanding FDNY and DOB concerns about our school building, which are -- at least arguably -- valid, although even there we have found the inspectors to be wildly unprofessional.  One fellow just comes every spring and screams.  Another dropped by, told us our building was fine but that it would never be approved because his new department head was motivated by political ambition, rather than the actual rules.  A third found the previous year's paperwork signed with his own name, but in somebody else's handwriting.  And when we have attempted to work constructively with the various commissioners, in their offices, the buck-passing has been a marvel of passive aggression.)

Now, we can't say for sure why this sort of thing happens, and the reasons probably vary -- from poor record-keeping and outdated computer systems to dyslexic inspectors.  But it wastes our time, and the time of the agencies we call to complain.  And, of course, it involves a certain amount of outright lying.  Which is immoral. And in any case, it can't possibly make the city as much money as it costs.

So here's what we think about "stepped-up enforcement" right now.  It's a scam, and we're getting a little sick of it.  The mayor has rigged a rule change to run for a third term and frankly, given some of the competition, we had considered giving it to him.  Right now, we would feel as though we were voting for the Robocaller voice.

Dept. of No Surprise: SSPX Thumbs Nose at Pope

As readers may imagine, the Germans are pretty huffy about this whole Society of St. Pius X thing.  Germans are sensitive about Holocaust denial and other signs of creeping neo-Fascism.  

In the spirit of that huffiness, Der Spiegel has a new piece on the flap, including some quotes from "Bishop" Williamson's lawyer, a man who is working overtime these days.  The writer professes to be shocked -- shocked, I tell you -- that in the midst of all its newfound notoriety, the SSPX isn't even making a pretense of "tempering its tone."  Consider, for example, one Fr. Franz Schmidberger, who 

... went on German radio on Thursday to censure German Chancellor Angela Merkel for her critical comments about the pope's handling of the scandal and about the need to clearly condemn Holocaust denial. "She doesn't understand, after all, she's not Catholic," he said. Then he turned his attention to the Prophet Muhammad. He had "sexual contact with an eight or nine year old girl," Schmidberger said according to a statement released in advance of the interview's broadcast. "In today's terminology, we would certainly call that child molestation...."

Oh, yeah. These guys want to play ball. Not. 

For our money, however, the most significant development is this one:

Still, as much as SSPX members like Schmidberger talk about submitting to papal authority, it has become clear just how little they do so. On Thursday, this disobedience once again became clear. {Another German paper] reported that Bernhard Fellay, the Swiss bishop who is also the superior general of the Society of Saint Pius X, inducted so-called "minor orders" -- as the lower ranks of Catholic clergy are called -- last Sunday.

For those who don't quite get it, here's the lowdown. Medieval Christianity distinguished between church offices which did not require perpetual celibacy -- the "minor orders" of porter, lector, exorcist and acolyte -- and those which did, such as subdeacon, deacon, and priest. The idea was that the minor offices were preparation for the major ones, sort of like baseball.  

Trent regularized it all somewhat, which was Trent's job.  Vatican II changed the game completely, by essentially suppressing the positions -- although as we understand it, they still exist within the Extraordinary Form (that is, the Tridentine Rite Latin Mass), and are therefore perpetuated by "indult societies," among whom the EF has long been permitted as, well, the ordinary form.  (If the SSPX has a future in communion with Rome, it would be as one of these indult societies).

Got that?  Here's the real point:  induction of people into these minor orders is a bishop's job.  With special permission, an abbot or other leader can do it, but the "ordinary minister" is a bishop.  And although Fellay is a "bishop" -- valid if not licit, remember -- he and the others remain under suspension, meaning that they are prohibited from exercising their ministry as priests and bishops.

In other words, he's acting like a bishop, even though the Pope told him not to.  And he's doing during an especially difficult public phase of his Society's ongoing search for reconciliation with Rome.  He might just as well hold a press conference and declare himself the anti-pope, because that is how much respect he has shown for the Chair of Peter.

So what's really going on here?  It's becoming clearer.  The SSPX doesn't really want reunion with Rome, except on its own improbable terms, which include the retroactive amendment of the Vatican II documents.  Instead, the Society is playing a public-relations game, building its brand among the lunatic fringe.   Its strategy is almost certainly to keep up the shenanigans until the pope -- this one or the next -- loses patience, and smacks the Society down permanently.  At which point, if all goes well, the SSPX will achieve its true goal, a position of leadership in the crazy-house of traditionalist, and non-Roman, Catholicism.

In this cynical maneuvering, the SSPX has found a surprising foil.  Pope Benedict is a man of unquestioned intellectual brilliance, who was long famed and feared as his predecessor's theological enforcer.  But, like so many priests and so many academics, this academic priest is turning out to be hopelessly naive about the ways of the world.  

His Regensburg lecture remains the locus classicus.  The world took it as a wilful slap in the face of Islam, but in context it has always seemed to us more like the usual work of a gifted college professor, stringing together surprising ideas and obscure references to challenge the preconceptions of his classroom audience -- sophisticated and comparatively liberal Western Europeans.  It was as though he had forgotten that the whole world now pays attention.

His handling of the SSPX looks like more of the same.  We do not doubt his genuine pastoral concern for the souls of these men (whose souls, we note in passing, are evidently at incalculable risk).  We suspect that he may also be measuring his own papacy against the dominating figure of JPII, and long to either complete the great man's work or even exceed it, by bringing the Lefebvrists back into the fold.  But, at least absent some pretty stern words in the near future, his eagerness for results seems to be getting the better of his good sense.

The Bailout is Awesomely Big

Nice catch from St. Superman:

"To put a trillion dollars in context, if you spend a million dollars every day since Jesus was born, you still wouldn't have spent a trillion," [Senate Republican leader Mitch] McConnell said.

Be Still, Our Heart

Shakira -- yes, that Shakira, do you know another? -- is really quite something.  The Egg pressroom doesn't play a lot of contemporary pop music, in general.  But we make an exception for this one.  And it's not just the belly dancing in vinyl slacks, either.  For a while, a few years back, we had "Whenever, Wherever" in heavy rotation.  Us and a junior-high girls worldwide.  Not that our masculinity is easily threatened.

Anyway.  Among the many things we love about Shakira is that she is not just a talented songwriter (in two languages, no less), but that she also does her bit for a better world.  Like building schools in her native Columbia -- five so far, including a new one in Barranquilla.

Oh, sure, some people point out that she has built five times as many schools as Oprah.  But we want to point out that she's five times hotter than Brooke Astor.  Not that we need to prove our masculinity.

Of Ministeria

Father Anonymous spent most of Wednesday attending a meeting of his synod's ministerium.  As the name suggests, this is a gathering of the clergy (or at least a portion thereof -- maybe a quarter, in this case).  They are called every now and then, perhaps twice each year, and we suppose there are worse ways to kill a few hours.

It was a pleasant enough day.  One loves one's colleagues, and delights to see them.  A brief Mass was celebrated, which is always a joy, particularly when someone else does the chanting.   The organ was played beautifully by an especially fine organist.  The main event was a presentation by a former pastor, now turned organizational consultant.  She was polished and lively, and even though -- as she admitted up front -- she had nothing especially original to say, she said it well, and it was the sort of thing that bears repetition.  Oh, and the chicken a la King was quite good, for a church event.

So.  A day well spent, and no complaints.  And yet we at the Egg, from whom no nit escapes unpicked, can't help fussing. 

The gathering was held at a large and well-appointed Episcopal church -- larger and better-appointed than anything we Lutherans have to offer, at least in Manhattan.  But why?  Our buildings may be more modest, but many are lovely, and would have offered ample space for the small crowd.  And they are ours, which -- even in the age of full communion -- means something.  They have been built by Lutherans, and consecrated to the ministry of the Gospel as Lutherans understand it.  Surely, they can't all have been booked at the same time.  

That is a small thing, and we are bashful even about mentioning it.  Of more concern is the absence from this gathering of so many synod pastors and -- in particular -- virtually all of those publicly identified with our "conservative" wing.  ("Conservative," at long last, means little more than "anti-gay-rights."  Fr. A. himself is a confessional conservative, by any reasonable definition, and about as as liturgically conservative as Lutherans get.  But those things don't matter anymore, or so it would seem from the way we all talk, and the way people talk about us.)  Our aging memory may fail us, but apart from two military chaplains, we can't recall a single one of the people who normally stand at microphones with a red card in their hand, telling the synod assembly that it is as blasphemous as Sirmium.  Gregory?  Steven? Ernie? Johnny Mac? Rodney? High-church Eric? Low-church Eric? Even Brenda? Where were you people?  

Anyway, that's a sad sign of the times, but there's nothing to be done about it.  What concerns us most are the premises upon which the event appears to be grounded.  This was, simply, a few hours of continuing education for the clergy, arranged (at admirably rock-bottom prices) by our bishop and his staff.  Nothing wrong with it, and we applaud them for the thoughtfulness.  But it also makes us sad to reflect that this is all that remains of the New York Ministerium. 

For those who don't know, the first Lutheran synods in North America were the Pennsylvania Ministerium (1748) and the New York Ministerium (1773, at least by some reckoning).  These were in essence organizations of the clergy, to which laymen came only to report on the conditions of their home parishes.  It was the duty of the clergy to prepare and ordain pastors, to work out their theological positions, edit and publish hymnals and service-books, and organize whatever else needed to be organized beyond the parish itself.

Eventually, a different -- and superior -- system prevailed, by which laymen (and much later laywomen) were given a significant voice in church affairs.  The system is superior on both theological and practical grounds: theologically, since the whole Church is one holy nation and royal priesthood, and practically, since many pastors don't know a damn thing about, inter alia, money.  

But as late as the mid-20th century, in New York, synod assemblies included separate sessions for the clergy ("the Ministerium," as it says in the records) and for the laity ("the Brotherhood").  It was evident, to a church as recent as that into which our grandfather was ordained, that God's gifts are distributed differently to different people.  Specifically, to the ordained had been given the spiritual gift (not to mention academic preparation) for discernment in theological matters, such as the fitness of certain candidates for the ordained ministry.  As a practical matter, Henry Eyster Jacobs also observed that clergy-only sessions greatly enabled conversation with and about those candidates who might prove unfit.

Modern Lutheran polity (at least in the ELCA) works overtime to erase the distinction between lay and cleric.  Synod assemblies, once entirely clerical and by the 1930s typically half-clerical, are now nearly 2/3 lay.  Committees, commissions, even seminary faculties are likewise mixed, in different proportions.  This is much to the good, for the theological and practical reasons noted above, and many others.  And yet what has been lost is the idea that, perhaps, there is something that the clergy have to offer as a college, distinct from the contribution of the laity.  The wheel has turned full circle.

At least in these Minor Outlying Islands, some memory of the early days has long been preserved.  Meetings of the Ministerium often discuss matters which will later come before the synod as a whole -- the ELCA's pending statement on sexuality, or most recently, the election of a bishop.  Although these meetings have no legal standing at the assembly, and we have never seen one so much as generate a resolution, they are at least a way for pastors to chew over the matters together, as roughly as we may need to, so that each of us, aided by the Spirit, can shape and re-shape our own opinions and those of our colleagues before we begin a serious discussion within the parish or on the assembly floor.

(To some militant anticlerics, guided by a grossly deficient understanding of the shared priesthood of the baptized, this may sound like a sinister clericist cabal.  But they're wrong.  We dare you to say that you would want a clergyman in the room for every conversation you ever have.)

Anyway.  The gradual diminution of the New York Ministerium from its role of sole unquestioned leadership, to leadership equally shared, to minority voice, is difficult enough.  Yesterday raised the spectral dread that the Ministerium, as such, may now be like a toothless old relation, who must be spoonfed pablum every now and then to keep him from complaining, but whose opinion on household affairs need no longer be sought or considered.  

Well.  At least the food was good. 

SSPX Redux -- And a Shout-Out to the Muslim Press

Benedict XIV has sorta-kinda lowered the boom on "Bishop" Richard Williamson of the Society of St. Pius X.  The Pope has declared that Williamson must publicly disavow -- "recant," according to all the news reports, although the word seems excessively Romantic -- his Holocaust denial, "if he wants to serve as a prelate in the Catholic Church."

This looks tough, but it is in fact a display of Papal weakness on several counts.  

Sign of Weakness #1:  Letting the media control the message.

The original issue in the excommunication, remember, was that Williamson was part of a group whose episcopal ordinations had been carried out over the express objection of John Paul II.  Said ordinations were apparently what canon law would call "valid but not licit."  That is to say the form of the rite was correct, but its intention was not.  The difficulty between the Vatican and the SSPX is not, and has never been, the Holocaust.

But of course Holocaust denial is an enormous problem -- it offends Jews (not to mention all other reasonable people), violates German law, and risks igniting a firestorm in the secular media.  Having already alienated Muslims worldwide, the Pope doesn't need to piss off the Jews as well.  So he is demanding this disavowal not in response to any canonical or theological imperatives, but in response to catcalls from the public. 

Sign of Weakness #2:  Not doing your homework.

Benedict claims he didn't know Williamson was a Holocaust denier, and he is certainly telling the truth.  But a more circumspect pontiff would have investigated the SSPX personnel better, seen what was coming, and let them continue marinating in their own vitriol. 

Sign of [Massive] Weakness #3:  Rewarding disobedience.

Most seriously, at least for the Roman Catholic faithful themselves, is that the new declaration links Williamson's obedience [regarding the Holocaust] to his future ability to serve as a bishop.  Um, hello?  His service as a "bishop" is itself a sign of his disobedience.  His orders may be valid, but a stronger pope would never recognize them as licit.  Instead, a strong pope would restore Williamson -- and the other "bishops" involved -- to communion with the Church, and then exile their disobedient butts to a monastery in Nigeria.  Holding out the possibility that these "bishops" will ever serve as such with the approval of Rome is a betrayal of John Paul II.

But, on a positive note -- and one you have to read to the very bottom of most news articles -- the recent declaration also stipulates that the SSPX must accept all the teachings of Vatican II .  This is the real heart of the matter, and insistence upon it is a sign of strength.

Incidentally, press coverage of this, while plentiful, has been astonishingly bad.  It might well lead casual readers to believe that the entire flap is about anti-semitism, which it obviously is not.  The ABC News story linked above is especially bad.  But you know whose article gets most of the main points across, thoughtfully and accurately?  Brace yourself: it's Al-Jazeera.

School of Magic UPDATE

Google books is the greatest time-waster ever invented.  Courtesy of its determination to skirt copyright laws in the interest of home research, we at the Egg have been able to turn up a little more information on the Defense Against the Dark Arts Course supposedly offered in Luther's town.

According to Norwegian Folk-Tales, by Reidar T. Christiansen and Pat S. Iversen, Europeans of the late Renaissance shared a belief that such a school existed somewhere.  (It was called "The Black School," and its basic text was "The Black Book." Even handling said book was considered dangerous.) Logically, the school had to be some place with a major university -- Salamanca, maybe.  Once Lutheranism was declared by royal fiat, Norwegians naturally assumed that the school must be located in the Lutheran capital.

Marlowe's Faustus, of course, was "of Wittenberg doctor," which suggests that it was not only Scandinavians (or Lutherans) who put the school there.   But to a 19th-c. translation of Goethe,  James Adey Birds adds an introduction which talks about the sources of the poem.  The early sources (which are pretty well known to historians; we have seen them elsewhere, and often) certainly do place Faust is critical Reformation cities -- Basel, Wittenberg -- as well as Wuerttemburg and Vienna.  But some of them, including one attributed to Melanchthon, claim that his magical training had come at Cracow.  (In the Renaissance, Cracow's Jagiellonian University was indeed an international center of learning, particularly distinguished in the natural sciences -- alma mater of Copernicus). 

So in all fairness, it may not have been the Lutherans who formed the original Slytherin House.  It may have been the Spaniards or the Poles.  Or maybe, after the Reformation, we started our own. 

Lutheran Defense Against the Dark Arts

Paging Professor Snape!

As most Egg readers will recall, yesterday's Gospel lesson included the bracing story of Jesus casting out an unclean spirit.  It comes complete with horror-movie dialogue -- "Have you come to destroy us?  We know who you are ...!"  

In his sermon, Father A. addressed the fact that most Lutherans don't take the supernatural all that seriously.  (He didn't explicitly mention the grim specter of Rationalism, but we all know it was there).  One fascinating bit of trivia that didn't make its way into the sermon illustrates this point.

You know The Exorcist, William Peter Blatty's classic chiller?  It is, famously, based upon an actual event.  And at least according to this guy, who claims to have read the diocesan reports, the mother of the possessed child child was a Lutheran.  So when her kid (a boy, pace Linda Blair) started acting strangely, she took him to her Lutheran pastor, who

was dubious about the whole matter. ...  Because of his Protestant theology, the minister sought a natural explanation. Unable to come up with one, he categorized the whole incident under unknown forces.

Oh, man, what a missed opportunity.  That could have been one of us played by Max von Sydow (who actually used to be a Lutheran).  Of course, the character of Damien Karras would have to have been renamed "Hans Schnackenberg," no doubt leading to a string of 70s knockoff thrillers with titles like Hans:  the Omen, and Hans III.  And probably a Marvel Comics series called Schnackenberg:  the Son of Satan.

But the question is whether Lutheranism and its "Protestant theology" (a term that is at best difficult to define) is intrinsically hostile to supernatural -- or, more precisely, preternatural -- explanations for observed phenomena.  After all, we have no difficulty affirming the preternatural presence of Christ in the Eucharist.  Likewise, we do affirm the Scriptures as the source and norm of our faith -- and those Scriptures include a smattering of exorcisms.  And Luther himself, famously, spoke often and vigorously of his nocturnal struggles against the Devil.

One of Fr. A'.s most esteemed colleagues, nameless here only for fear of embarrassing him, has done some research into the subject.  Years ago, he presented a drop-dead fascinating paper on the community that gathered around Johannes Kelpius and his crew of mystical monastics outside colonial Philadelphia. The paper included a review of the varied bits of folk-wisdom and superstition that were part of the Renaissance pastor's armamentatium, from herbs to amulets.  Such things seem to have struggled under Lutheran Orthodoxy, recovered among the Pietists, and been killed off utterly by the advent of Rationalism.

But as our friend observed, the reductionist worldview that created Rationalist theology has largely disappeared.  We live in a world where Newton seems overly simple, and even Einstein's equations don't (quite) account for the invisible "dark energy" that scientists know is out there somewhere.  The Freudian narrative of individual development according to eternal templates is slowly being supplanted by a combination of two far more complex explanations for human behavior, one based on family systems and the other based on the stochastic interaction of genetics and environment.  All in all, the emerging worldview -- either despite or because of the vast amount of quantitative data now available -- is far less deterministic than the world of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries.   

So what would our theology, and our parish practice, look like if they were stripped of the knee-jerk materialist determinism that we picked up during those centuries?  And, as an aside, would a church life that took seriously the reality of a rich and complex spiritual world also be more faithful to the witness of the Reformers?

Here are some further anecdotes to suggest so. 

1.  When, during the Reformation, a minority of Lutheran liturgists attempted to remove the exorcism ritual from baptism, they met with considerable resistance.  According to historian Steven Ozement, in Flesh and Spirit (Penguin, 1999), a Dresden butcher threatened to split his pastor's head with a meat cleaver if the rite was omitted at the baptism of the butcher's daughter. 

2.  Well, okay.  But that was the Middle Ages, you say.  After  while, people gave up worrying about such superstitions.  Right?

Wrong.  According to a Norwegian-American legend, published by Thor Helgeson in 1917 and reprinted in James O'Leary's Wisconsin Folklore (U. of Wisc. Press, 1998), there was once 

... a school of magic at Wittenberg, Germany. ... If a student wished to become a pastor of any influence in olden times, he had to matriculate at this school in Wittenberg and take his examination [in "black magic"] there.  There were always 12 students at the school.  When they had taken their examination, 11 were allowed to leave, but the twelfth one Professor Erik [who,in context, may be the Devil] kept as an assistant.  The students drew straws to see who was to become Erik's boy.

The legend includes a story of a a Norwegian pastor, Rasmus Lygn of Faaberg, who began his career by outsmarting Professor Erik, and later distinguished himself as an exorcist.  

While not literally true -- the existence of such a school is not documented elsewhere -- the story suggests that well into modern times, some Lutherans expected  their best pastors to be well-versed in what at Harry Potter's Hogwarts was called "Defense Against the Dark Arts."  

And why not?  Too many of us are eager to dispense the wrong kinds of advice -- psychological, personal, financial, even medical.  And the faithful, rendered susceptible by years of confusion over what pastors really ought to do, pressure us for more of the same, and reward us when we offer it.  But few of us are trained for such things, for the good reason that -- historically -- it wasn't our job.  Our job is the cure of souls: calling sinners to repentance, reconciling penitents, praying for our people and leading them in their own prayers.  In that context, it only makes sense for us to do things that many shy away from:  to bless people, homes and objects, for starters.  We actually have rites for such things, even if they are sometimes used reluctantly.  And yes, this includes cleansing people who have been possessed by unclean spirits, a task for which we no published rite, and for which nearly none of us is prepared.

But, when you think about it, this ought to be one of the most basic tools in a pastor's kit.  Once upon a time it was, literally, as common as baptism.  And the faithful have a right to ask:  if a pastor can't defend them from evil spirits, then -- really -- what good is he?

Janet Jackson's Revenge

Per the AP, a Tucson station's cable Superbowl coverage was interrupted by ten seconds of pornography.  So much more than a mere wardrobe malfunction ....

Manifest in Making Whole

We at the Egg spend a lot of time razzing our Anglican friends, and have made no secret of our hostility toward the Anglican right, both in America and abroad.  But we came across this story -- a Chuck Colson press release, found on the Virtue Online site, about a founder of the Anglican Mission in America.  Normally, any of those phrases would make the spittle fly.

But not this time.  This is wonderful, and we are grateful to David Virtue and Chuck Colson for letting us know about it:

In a large open area of a Rwandan prison, Anglican Bishop John Rucyahana spoke to a crowd of killers responsible for the 1994 genocide. "Close your eyes," he instructed them. "Go back in your mind to 1994. What did you see?" he asked. "What did you smell? What did you hear?"

Many in the crowd began to weep. He told the men to see their victims' faces. The sobs grew louder. "Now," said Bishop John, "that which made you cry, that you must confess."

It's amazing enough that Bishop John, himself a Tutsi, would speak to the Hutu perpetrators of the genocide. It's even more amazing when you consider that John's own niece, Madu, was brutally raped and killed during the genocide. But Bishop John had a reason to reach out to these men in compassion-for he, too, had found forgiveness of his sins through Jesus Christ.

... [Bishop John] found Christ while growing up as an exile from his native Rwanda. He puts it better than I've ever heard before: "I did not accept Jesus. Jesus graciously met me and accepted me." This is a man who understands how we come empty-handed to Christ.

There's more, and you can click above to find it.  We still lament AMiA and the deviltry that followed.  But you know what?  For today, at least, Bishop Rucyahana is our hero.

Acid Oceans by 2050

A recent study commissioned by the UN predicts that the world's oceans will be filled with carbonic acid by 2050.  This will kill off all the coral reefs, and screw up the marine food chain.  The culprit (need we even say it?) is atmospheric carbon dioxide, mainly from fossil fuels.

This is the less-researched parallel to global warming.  The oceans have normally been able to filter up to a quarter of the available carbon dioxide, thus helping slow the rate of climate change.  But as the gas dissolves, it turns to acid in the water.  And the acid kills stuff. 

This process has been going on since the Industrial Revolution, and the oceans are already 30% more acidic than they were in the 17th century.  And the change is accelerating.  As a result, coral reefs are already deteriorating, and the shells of marine creatures are growing thinner.

For upstate New Yorkers, this is a familiar movie, now projected onto a much larger screen.  Acid rain -- the result of emissions from the Michigan automobile industry -- has long since poisoned the lakes and ponds of the Adirondack region.  More than one in six Adirondack bodies of water is no longer able to sustain life.  

The prospect of this happening to the oceans ought to be terrifying.  Frankly, we're stunned that today's Times relegates it to the back pages, way below the fold, and that a similar report last August didn't attract more attention.  This is potentially apocalyptic stuff.

The History of Breastfeeding

... is as long as the history of the human race.  Longer, of course, since other creatures do it as well -- but we are surely the only species to make such a fuss over it, much less consider alternatives.

The subject, about which we had thought rarely in the past 45 or so years, has been on our mind lately, as Baby Anonymous keeps sucking away.  We were more amused than outraged when Facebook banned the photos posted by proudly breastfeeding mamas, on the grounds that they were "erotic."  Seriously?  No.

And then we read the fascinating article, linked above.  It's worth a gander.

The New Yorker's Jill Lepore is well on her way to becoming indispensable.  Her writing may lack the zing that once defined the magazine -- Dorothy Parker!  A.J. Liebling! -- and which is now restricted principally to Adam Gopnik and, especially, Anthony Lane.  In its current incarnation, the magazine has a soft spot for earnestness, no doubt because editor David Remnick does it so well, and one of its earnest back-page features are essays on historical and literary topics of no special interest to the smart set.  These are often written by Simon Schama (good enough) and Louis Menand (quite good).  Jill Lepore's essays are the best of this sort.  She zooms in on her topics -- occasionally quite academic ones -- and extracts from them the images and ideas that make them seem suddenly important.

In her nursing essay, Lepore both begins and ends in the present.  As you probably know, breastfeeding is on the rise among bien-pensant mothers of the middle and upper classes (this includes the administration of milk which has been pumped and bottled, which is a rather different thing).  Much of Lepore's time is spent on the ironies, injustices and outright follies that have come with this.  A striking instance:  corporate lactation rooms are often meant only for pumping -- women aren't allowed to actually feed a child in them.

But understanding the present requires a tour of the recent past, and this is where Lepore shines.  Linnaeus, the great classifier of species, originally tried to distinguish the class to which human beings and horses belong as quadropedia, "four-footed," which caused confusion; later he invented the term mammalia, "nursing."  During the years that he revised the system, not coincidentally, his wife bore and nursed seven children.  The category was deemed "scandalously erotic" by critics but has endured -- although, as Lepore observes, by a a very strict definition, men cannot actually be "mammals."  (And from his youth, Fr. A. recalls at least one ladyfriend suggesting that he was indeed a lesser reptile or amphibian.)

The most gripping bit of Lepore's historical section is the late 19th century, when

... bizarrely, American women ran out of milk. “Every physician is becoming convinced that the number of mothers able to nurse their own children is decreasing,” one doctor wrote in 1887. Another reported that there was “something wrong with the mammary glands of the mothers in this country.” It is no mere coincidence that this happened just when the first artificial infant foods were becoming commercially available. Cows were proclaimed the new “wet nurse for the human race”....  Tragically, many babies fed on modified cow’s milk died. 

Lepore nicely avoids pinching the usual suspects, in favor of a more subtle sociological observation:

But blaming those deaths on a nefarious alliance of doctors and infant-food manufacturers, as has become commonplace, seems both unfair and unduly influenced by later twentieth-century scandals ....  In the United States, nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century physicians, far from pressing formula on their patients, told women that they ought to breast-feed. Many women, however, refused. They insisted that they lacked for milk, mammals no more.

There's much more, and it is all fascinating.  Egg readers in particular may be struck by a bit of religious trivia.  Colonial preacher Cotton Mather decried the European custom of wet-nursing:

 “Suckle your Infant your Self if you can,” [he] commanded from the pulpit. Puritans found milk divine: even the Good Book gave suck. “Spiritual Milk for Boston Babes, Drawn Out of the Breasts of Both Testaments” was the title of a popular catechism.

Pardon our pedantry, as we observe that the image of the Scriptures as mother's breasts was not original to the Puritans.  Even more extravagantly, Carolyn Walker Bynum has found numerous instances in Cistercian monastic writing in which the abbot, and Jesus himself, are called "mothers," precisely because one is to drink the milk of wisdom from them.  Father A. (ahem) devoted a chapter of his STM thesis to sermons in which John Donne uses the same image to describe a parish priest in relation to the faithful.

John Updike, RIP

He was 76.  Strangely, we thought he was older.  

Updike's books, and his reputation have been a part of the American cultural scene since before Father A. was born.  They formed a row of spine-broken paperbacks on the parental bookshelf, and our first inspiring English teacher had a secret crush on him.  (One of our best history teachers had a similar crush on Joan Baez.  it was another era, friends.)

That said, we have never really enjoyed reading Updike, and have therefore read very few of his 50 or so books.  As the Village Voice says, This was a writer with an ambivalent reputation among people of a certain age (and an impossibly glowing one with people of another). 

Still, we have our favorites.  The Centaur, about a bright boy raised in the country, struck us hard in the seventh grade, not least because the narrator was afflicted (as Updike was, and as Father A. is also) with eczema.  It's a minor affliction, to be sure -- and yet we had never seen anybody acknowledge its existence in print, much less experiment with its metaphorical possibilities.

Of more general interest, Updike was among the fairly small class of important living writers to speak comfortably and publicly about their Christian faith.  (Offhand, none of the others seems nearly as significant -- Gail Godwin?  Madeleine L'Engle?  No, not even Garrison Keillor.  Maybe Mary Gordon, someday. The closest is probably the poet Denise Levertov, who has written about how difficult it was for her to acknowledge her faith as she built a career in the world of "cultured despisers").  The Beauty of the Lilies has been on our to-do list since it was published, and by gum we will do it.

A WaPo blog post, linked above, quotes a nice remark that Updike made, speaking at St. Bart's a couple of years ago:  

When I haven't been to church in a couple of Sundays I begin to hunger for it and need to be there.  It's not just the words, the sacraments. It's the company of other people, who show up and pledge themselves to an invisible entity.

Good thought.  We wish that more novelists -- not to mention plumbers, housewives, and magazine editors -- felt the same way.

Chicks Dig Monkey Porn

The raciest Times article ever tells all, specifically about new research into the mysteries of female sexual response.  Suffice it to say that they remain mysteries.

But the lede is awesome:  

Meredith Chivers is a creator of bonobo pornography. She is a 36-year-old psychology professor .... The bonobo film was part of a series of related experiments she has carried out over the past several years. She found footage of bonobos, a species of ape, as they mated, and then ... she showed the short movie to men and women, straight and gay.

And guess who liked the money porn?

Kristol's Last Column

Surprise!  It sucks.

William Kristol has been a terrible op-ed columnist for several reasons.  His prognostications have been comically bad, his commentary reliably partisan and lacking in genuine analysis.  And, honestly, he just seems a little dim.

Today's valedictory -- not only for himself but, according to him, for the entire conservative movement, is more of the same.  First, he talks about all the areas in which, since 1980, the conservatives supposedly "got it right":

... about Communism and jihadism, crime and welfare, education and the family. Conservative policies have on the whole worked — insofar as any set of policies can be said to “work” in the real world. Conservatives of the Reagan-Bush-Gingrich-Bush years have a fair amount to be proud of.

Really, Bill?  You really want to claim that conservatives were right about jihadism?  You really want to tell us that their friendship -- and in particular the friendship of the Bush family -- toward the Saudi rulers didn't tacitly permit the cynical use of Wahhabism as a tool of governance, thus virtually creating Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda?  You really want to tell me that the president who ignored a brief headed "Bin laden Determined to Strike Within US" was somehow right?  Or that his policies of denying prisoners any basic human dignity has somehow helped to reduce the threat from their embittered allies?

And so far as we can tell, the nation is moving, slowly but inexorably, toward a definition of "family" so broad that Reagan wouldn't have recognized it.  Score one more for the liberals.  

As for "crime and welfare," the biggest improvements there occurred under Bill Clinton's watch.  Now, if you consider Clinton's centrism to be essentially conservative -- as some Dems do -- then you can argue that this is a point for your own side.  But if you think of Clinton as the most successful conservative on domestic issues, why didn't you support him?  Hmmn?

We will grant you Communism, and consider education an equal-opportunity disaster.

In all fairness, Kristol allows that conservatives

... also have some regrets. They’ll have time to ponder those as liberals now take their chance to govern.

Fair enough.  They have some regrets.  This might have been a good time to name them, if only in the interest of helping to rejoin a national discussion that is moving on past your tired partisanship.

And that's what Kristol can't absorb.  His whole point is to declare that Obama is a liberal, and to challenge him to be as good a liberal as FDR was.  This would be a perfectly reasonable thing to have said if an avowed liberal had actually won the election -- and several were running.  They lost, because Americans made it pretty damned clear that this wasn't a year for the conventional polarities of right and left.  Why do you think McCain called himself a "maverick" every two minutes, and kept Lieberman tethered to his waist?  And Obama made a point of being not only post-racial but post-partisan, an idealist perhaps but above all a pragmatist, committed to governing based upon facts -- precisely the opposite of Bush's discredited ideology-first approach. 

Kristol has a chance to get it.  He claims that the inaugural address "suggests that [Obama] may have learned more from Reagan than he has sometimes let on."  Well, yes -- except that he did let on about this, in an interview during the campaign and in some of his published writing.  

But what Obama admits to having learned from Reagan is the power of strong communication and new ideas.  Kristol misses the point completely when he gloats that "Obama’s speech was unabashedly pro-American and implicitly conservative," because it spoke about the Founding Fathers, the Constitution and the rule of law.  Is he truly so deluded -- so blinkered by his inherited partisanship -- that he believes these things are the exclusive province of the right?  If so, he is more than a little dim.

Pope Benedict Works First Miracle

And it's not a nice one.  He has led the well-known neocon Papist George Weigel to say something with which Father Anonymous is in complete agreement.  We only wish the circumstances were less grim.

Here's the sitrep.  In 1970, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre founded his infamous Society of Saint Piux X, dedicated to the proposition that the Second Vatican Council had strayed from the Catholic faith.  It has been, and remains, a favorite of the far-far-right.  In 1988, operating against the direct instructions of John Paul II, he ordained four SSPX priests as bishops.  By doing so, he incurred automatic excommunication for himself, another bishop, and the four "bishops" they "ordained."  Although there are technical arguments about the terminology, by any reasonable standard, the SSPX had created a schism.

To Rome's credit, it has continued in conversation with these guys.  Everybody deserves a chance to repent.  To his shame, however, Pope Benedict has this week lifted the excommunication upon those who remain.  They are a vile bunch.

The Times article linked above concentrates upon one of the supposed bishops, Richard Williamson, and his Holocaust denial.  Williamson is indeed a despicable piece of work, and for evidence, watch this recent interview:

No wonder the guy now runs a seminary in Argentina.  You know, where, ahem, those guys went after the War.

Now, let's be clear:  What Williamson is saying seems, especially toward the end, to be intrinsically linked to the sort of pre-Vatican II Catholicism that the SSPX exists to sustain.  Unless we miss our guess, he is on the verge of saying that "anti-Semitism" is a lot of nonsense because after all, Truth compels us to hate those who killed the Savior.  Maybe we're wrong, but it sounds like he's winding up for that particular spitball.

This is bad, and we understand why the Times led with it.  But this focus risks obscuring some of the other wretchedness in play.  Theologically, the Lefrebvrists continue to make themselves arbiters of Catholic tradition, above and beyond a council.  And their rhetoric is bespeaks an utter contempt for the actual Roman Catholic Church.  Here is Williamson in 2006:  

One thing above all should always be remembered ... for as long as this post-Conciliar crisis will last, namely that it consists in a war to the death between two directly opposed religions: the Catholic religion centered on God, and the Conciliar religion centered on man and the modern world. The Conciliar religion is a diabolically skilful counterfeit of the true religion. Between these two religions, as such, there can be no peace until one of them is dead.

Hey, Benedict -- he just said he was going to destroy your church.  We're sorry, but what Pope in his right mind would un-excommunicate that guy?  (Although, actually, come to think of it, who do the SSPX sound like?  Rebellious leader believes the Church has fallen into error; rejects teachings of Council; gets excommunicated -- swap out "Vatican II" for "Lateran IV" and it's the story of Luther.  Of course, there are about a thousand SSPX members and 60 million Lutherans.  Does that mean Benedict will welcome us back without asking us to give up any of our distinctive teachings?  Because we're listening.)

Rome is engaged in tense negotiations with the SSPX, exemplified by some recent letters. (Reuters lays this out in some detail).  The language(s) are all open interpretation, but -- bottom line --  the excommunication has been lifted even though the SSPX has given no clear signal that it will accept the validity of Vatican II.  In other words, Rome caved on a major point, while the SSPX has not.  

The Pope blinked.  Needless to say, John Paul -- who was no less dedicated to dialogue with the SSPX, and to the "conservative" interpretation of Vatican II -- would not have.  He had plenty of chances, and he didn't.  He may have turned a wilfully blind eye to lots and lots of child molestation, but blinking in a negotiation wasn't his thing.

Benedict has damaged his own standing, both outside the Church (where he will be associated with the anti-semites) and within, where he will simply look weak in the face of an especially unpleasant and supercilious adversary.

And that supercilious thing is where we stunned ourselves by agreeing with Weigel.  Here's the Times again:

[Weigel] said he was troubled by [SSPX leader] Bishop Fellay’s implication in his letter that the schismatic group represented the tradition, while “the rest of us are, somehow, the true schismatics.”

We've seen this in our own camp, too.  The further right they get, the more routinely they claim to be exclusive mouthpieces for Tradition.  But upon close examination, this claim is often difficult to sustain -- the problem is that nobody tries it.  Conservatives don't examine tradition because they assume they're it; liberals just assume they've moved past it.  Both sides might be surprised by some solid historical research.  Weigel adds, with a forgiveable snark:

“It is not easy to see how the unity of the Church will be enhanced unless the Lefebvrists accept Vatican II’s teaching on the nature of the Church, on religious freedom, and on the evil of anti-Semitism, explicitly and without qualification; otherwise, you get cafeteria Catholicism on the far right, as we already have on the left.”

Britain's First Female Bishop

... is a Lutheran.  This means that nobody will make a big fuss about her, the way they do (on both sides of the pond) about all things Anglo-Episcopalian.  and in all fairness, there are fewer than 3,000 Lutherans in the UK. But still:

History was made on Saturday 17 January 2009, as the first woman bishop to serve in a British church took office.

While the Church of England debates how and when women should be introduced to the episcopate and the Catholic Church maintains that only men can serve as priests or bishops, the Lutheran Church in Great Britain, became the first to take what some see as a radical step - and others as a necessary act of justice or a long overdue recognition of the grace of God.

The Rt Rev Jana Jeruma-Grinberga, whose parents were Latvian refugees but who was born in England, was consecrated as the Church’s first woman bishop at a ceremony in the City of London.

Lutherans in mainland Europe ordain women regularly. The service took place in the historic Wren church of St Anne & St Agnes on Gresham Street, in the City of London.

Jeruma-Grinberga's predecessor, the Rt Rev Walter Jagucki, presided at communion for the service, and bishops and other clergy from Nordic and European Lutheran churches participated in the consecration.

We wish her well.