Easter Sermon Hints from Gregory the Great

 Holy Week having begun, many readers of the Egg (if only there were many such readers!) may be busy with printing bulletins, recruiting acolytes, arguing with cantors, and otherwise preparing for the Paschal Solemnity in ways other than prayer and study.  If so, there is some danger that such hypothetical readers might enter the pulpit come Sunday a tad unprepared.

Never fear.  Pope St. Gregory the Great has your back.

In his Homily 25, which is (mostly) concerned with St. John's account of the Resurrection, Gregory comments on some detail upon the Lord's appearance to Mary Magdalene.  It is all worth reading, including the fascinating and grotesque interpretation of Job 41:1.  In one lovely and much less grotesque passage, Gregory says:

"Mary Magdalene came and made known to [Jesus'] disciples, 'I have seen the Lord, and he said these things to me.'" See, how the sin of the human race was removed where it began. In paradise a woman was the cause of death for a man (Gen. 3:6); coming from the sepulchre a woman proclaimed life to men. Mary related the words of the one who restored her to life; Eve had related the words of the serpent who brought death.  It is as if the Lord was telling the human race, not by words but by actions, "Receive the draught of life from the hand of the one who offered you the drink of death."

The Christ-as-new-Adam typology is well known, as is its counterpart in Mary-Eve typology -- but of course the Mary in that usage is normally the BVM (surely, you recall the palindromic Ave/Eva from so many Annunciation paintings). We cannot remember seeing this blog's patroness recruited to make the same point.

The typology is rife with problems, not least the danger of a misogynistic reading.  Still, Gregory's image of the Apostle to the Apostles as the one who delivers the "draught of life" to her comrades is a powerful one, and raises Mary Magdalene to a stature more often afforded the Lord's mother.  (It is almost as if Gregory is apologizing for his great mistake, of officially identifying his subject as a prostitute).

A preacher might also find use for the pairing of Eden and the Empty Tomb as loci for life and death.

As a bonus, a very tired preacher looking for inspiration on Quasimodo Geniti, these days called Easter 2, might borrow from the stirring conclusion to the same homily:

Let us find evils distasteful, even if we have experienced them. Almighty God freely forgets that we have been guilty; he is ready to count our repentance as innocence. If we have become dirtied after the water of salvation, let us be born again from our tears. Accordingly, we must listen to the voice of our first pastor: Like newborn children, desire milk ((1 Peter 2:2). Return, little children, to the bosom of your mother, the the eternal Wisdom. Drink from the bountiful breasts of the lovingkindness of God. Weep for your past misdeeds; shun those that avoid what lies ahead. Our Redeemer will solace our fleeting sorrows with eternal joy -- he who lives and reigns with the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God forever and ever. Amen.

These references to God's breasts, while they may seem a little mischievous to contemporary congregations, were common enough in the Middle Ages, as Carolyn Walker Bynum has shown, and continued to be so at least into John Donne's time.  Easter may not be the best time to marshal defensive citations in proud array, but remember that they exist.

The Gay Divorcé

After single-handedly destroying the Anglican Communion, Gene Robinson -- retired [D&FMS of the] PECUSA Bishop of New Hampshire -- has announced that he is getting divorced.

The nerve of that guy!  Does he care nothing for the blood, tears and ink that have been spilled in defense of his marriage?  Does he not understand that his marriage is the single most important thing to happen in Anglicanism since Keble's Assize Sermon?  That, indeed, it may be the most important thing to happen in Christendom since there actually was a Christendom?

In other news:  Gay people -- they're just like other people.

In Which We Are Insulted By World Vision and Respond With Lamentably Uncharacteristic Charity

World Vision has just slapped our ELCA congregation in the face.  We are taking a deep breath and preparing to turn the other cheek.

As it happens, our congregation has a long history of participation in World Vision's fundraiser-slash-educational event, the 30-Hour Famine.  We are one of their largest contributors through this particular program, and are about to send them a check for almost $20,000.  That's a drop in the bucket compared to WV's billion-dollar annual budget, but represents sacrificial giving on the part of a small mainline church.  It is by far our largest single charitable donation for the year, the product of many hours of hard work by a large team consisting mostly of passionate teen-agers.

During the past week, World Vision has made big news for reasons that have little to do with its work among the world's poor people.  First, it announced with some fanfare that its hiring policies would no longer discriminate against people in same-sex marriages.  Their purpose, it seemed (according to this NPR story), was quite reasonable for an organization that works with many different churches:

 World Vision U.S. president Richard Stearns explained the organization was not endorsing gay marriage. Instead, gay marriage would join a series of issues — like divorce, remarriage, [infant] baptism, female priests — that many Christian churches disagree on.

Well, that was very nice of them.  An organization that works across denominational boundaries is well-served by building the biggest possible tent, and taking no position on disputed questions.  Whether the Christian who feeds a hungry person is a strict predeterminist or has been sold on that free will business makes no difference to the person eating the sandwich, and should not make much to the one who paid for it.  Why, we ourselves (we blush to admit) once accepted the hospitality of a church that preached Nestorianism.

So, World Vision decided to build a bigger tent.  That lasted a couple of days.

Under what we can only assume was withering pressure from some of its donor churches, World Vision has reversed course, going so far as to ask forgiveness for ... its briefly-held policy of nondiscrimination.

Now, this puts us in an odd situation.  As an ELCA pastor, we are part of a church body that recognizes and performs same-sex marriages.  (Our particular congregation does not yet do so, but it has -- after an agonizing discussion -- chosen to remain faithful to a church that does.)  For a few days, in other words, World Vision accepted the practice of our church as a valid expression of Christianity.  Then it decided not to, and added insult to injury by asking other Christians to forgive it for ever having done so.

We have been, at least metaphorically, excommunicated.  That's a painful thing.  It is very much like being slapped.

If we were like the churches on the other side of this question, we would now be calling World Vision to ask whether they really wanted our check.  And indeed, that was our first impulse, until we remembered Whose church we are.

For years, we watched congregations offended by the discussion of sexuality hold back their synodical benevolence as a way to punish the denomination.  The irony was that, even though in those days we ourselves (and several of our parishes) disagreed with the existing practices of our church body, we remained faithful in our giving as in other kinds of service.  When the church finally embraced our position, we shrugged and continued on, basically unchanged.  Many of those who disagreed with us picked up their bat and ball and left, because they simply could not bear to be part of a community that disagreed with them -- even though we had been doing just that for many years.

Their behavior, we believe, is profoundly wrong.  We are saddened that Word Vision has copied it.

As it happens, long before this, we had begun to reconsider our parochial support for WV's 30-Hour Famine.  Friends in Africa had shared some reservations about the actual function of WV's charitable work -- a lot of money seemed to be going into showy SUVs and so forth.  Lutheran World Relief, a much smaller agency and one in both we and Charity Navigator have a lot of confidence, offers a similar fund-raising program.  We are Lutherans, and feel a certain obligation to support the home team -- even though our partners in its work, the LC-MS, disagree with us about ordaining women and marrying gay people.

So it is entirely possible that the big fat check we write to World Vision this year will be our last.  Or not; we are still discussing it.  But if so, it will not be because WV has chosen to embrace and then reject one of our church's theological positions.  It will not even be because we feel that they have insulted our church, and the churches that share this with us.  We are willing to work in Christian ministry with other Christians even when we disagree with them in details of faith and practice -- we earnestly desire to be part of a big-tent Christianity.

It's too bad Word Vision doesn't share this desire.

Failed Politician Turns Sex Tourist in Africa

One former congressman has been arrested.  Shockingly, the others have not.

Mel Reynolds has been arrested in Zimbabwe.  He has been living there since November, apparently without filing the correct immigration paperwork.  In those four months, Reynolds has rung up a $25,000 unpaid hotel bill.

Reuters also mentions that he was found to possess pornography, which is a crime in Zimbabwe.  The report does not specify what kind of pornography we are talking about.  A few dog-eared Playboys, for example, would hardly shock most of Reynolds' erstwhile constituents.

But we don't think that's it.

Reynolds was, again per Reuters, "a rising star in the Democratic Party" until

... he was forced to resign in 1995 after being convicted of sexual assault, obstruction of justice and solicitation of child pornography.

Ah.  Now we get it.

Yesterday, we'd never heard of Congressman Reynolds, perhaps for the good reason that he only served one two-year term, in the early 90s.  He has spent more time in prison than he ever did in Congress, first following a conviction for statutory rape and then following a separate conviction for bank fraud.

Ick.  Just ... ick.

It almost seems cruel to add that, in 2004, Reynolds attempted to regain his seat, the Illinois 2nd, and was crushed by the incumbent -- Jesse Jackson, Jr.  When you can't beat Jesse Jr., it's time to get out of the game.

Anyway, we point out Rep. Reynolds' problems only to observe that there is somebody, somewhere, who has less integrity than we ourselves.  Small victories, people.

Farewell, Furry Friend-With-Benefits

Apparently, Bigfoot porn is a real thing -- and just as we have discovered its existence, Amazon is taking it away from us.

This may be just as well.  Yes, it's a loss for freedom and diversity and all that -- but a victory for good taste.

Women of the Ekklesia

We meant to post this tidbit last week, but time permits us very little these days.  Still, while preparing our exegetical notes for Sunday's sermon, we spent some profitable hours with one of the Lord's many annoying injunctions.

Speaking of what his followers will be called to endure as the end draws closer, Jesus offers them the dubious solace that this will be their chance to offer "testimony," a word that is of course cognate with "martyrdom."  And of this testimony, he says:

So make up your minds not to prepare beforehand to defend yourselves. (St. Luke 21: 14)

This is, as we said, annoying, not least to those of us who spend much of our week preparing our own testimony of sorts, a "defense" or "apology" in the classical sense, not of ourselves but of Christ himself.  Is Jesus really demanding that we just wing it, week in and week out?  Some preachers think so, and perhaps they are correct.

In any case, this passage bears a little more attention.  In Greek, it reads:

qevte ou\n ejn tai'? kardivai? uJmw'n mh; promeleta'n ajpologhqh'nai,

The key words here -- promeletan apologethenai -- are, so a commentary told us, a technical expression from Athenian forensics, meaning specifically to memorize the speech with which one will defend a person in court or a proposition in debate.

Historically, memorization has been the mark of a skilled orator.  Cicero, we are told, spent many hours memorizing his speeches.  So have preachers through much of history, right up to the present.  (This was, for example, the custom of our own mentor Walter Kortrey).  For that matter, how many church members have been encouraged, in recent years, to memorize "an elevator speech," some sort of capsule account of their faith or the mission of their church.  (Nondenom here, Episcopal here, Orthodox here.  Oh, and atheist here). That Jesus recommends doing otherwise is noteworthy, but takes us into waters deeper than we choose to navigate just now.

Looking for an extra-Biblical use of this term, we were directed by our lexicon to a play we have not previously encountered, by a playwright we thought we knew better.  Aristophanes' Women of the Assembly appears to be a bookend to his more famous Lysistrata.  Both are about women taking charge and upsetting the social order.  In Lysistrata, they withhold sex until their menfolk end an onerous war.  In Women of the Assembly, they go further, and take over the government itself.  They wear false beards, make pompous speeches, and eventually institute a regime of equal distribution and more-or-less-free love, in which men are free to sleep around, provided they sleep with ugly women before pretty ones.  It is all, apparently, a satire upon the excesses of this then-still-new Athenian idea called "democracy."

The phrase in question occurs at line 117, rendered freely here by G. Theodoridis:

Praxagora:  We can make excellent speeches exactly because we are women!  Better than any man can.  They say that buggered youths make splendid orators, don’t they? Now, do we women know about fucking or don’t we?  We’re naturals, right? 

First Woman:  Oh, I don’t know, really.  Lack of experience is a dreadful thing, you know.  I mean about speeches. 

Praxagora: But that’s precisely why we’re here, darling; to get ourselves all prepared with what we’re going to say in there. [προμελετήσωμεν ἁκεῖ δεῖ λέγειν.]  Now, put your beards on quickly and, those of you who are ready to speak go ahead and speak!

First Woman:  Ha!  We’re all ready Praxagora! Who among us is not an absolute specialist in the art of talking, ey? Fucking and talking! We’re brilliant!

Well.  That's ... politically incorrect.

Anyway, here are the women "getting themselves all prepared" as orators do.  Not to mention crossdressing and talking about sex, all of it funnier then than it might be now -- but it would still be pretty funny, if you played it right.  Aristophanes isn't especially nice to women, but then he isn't nice to men, either.  Or to Socrates.

One thing about this play that will resonate with readers now in a way it could not have with its original audience is the title.  In Greek it is Έκκλησιάζουσαι -- "Ekklesiazusae."  The word ekklesia, assembly, has been so taken over by the Christian community that it is a challenge for us now to read it any other way.  If we did not know that this was a play about women in government, we would translate its title as "The Church Ladies."

This, in turn, adds an interesting element to the scene in which the women practice their speeches.  When one of them swears "by Demeter and Persephone," the ringleader berates her for using the names of goddesses, which will give away their identities.  She corrects herself, and swears by Apollo instead.  The implication is that men default to a masculine image of the divine, women to a feminine one.

Is this true?  Probably not, in our time any more than in ancient Greece.  Yet it is not entirely untrue, either.  From the 1970s through the 1990s, there was a lively discussion within American Christianity about how we would speak of God.  This went far beyond merely changing a few pronouns and saying "Lord" less often.  Although it is hard to believe in retrospect, there were serious voices advocating, with some success, a radical restatement of the Trinitarian name -- formulations like "Mother, Lover and Friend" were thrown around freely.  Perhaps we lead a sheltered life, but it seems to us that the dust has largely settled.  If the textual editing of hymnals like ELW and The New Century Hymnal seems heavy-handed, it is worth reflecting that things might well have gone much further.

Not coincidentally, the decades during which God's gender was put up for grabs in the theological community were also the decades during which ordained women came to take a larger role in Protestant church life, and the pressure to ordain women in Roman Catholicism began to mount (at least in America).

We're not sure where to go with all this, except to point out that an ancient pagan playwright neatly predicted a curious development in modern Christianity.  We aren't sure how, if at all, we might bring this insight to bear on the passage from Luke 21.  On the other hand, three years will pass before that one comes around again on the guitar, so we have plenty of time.  Let us know if you think of anything.

Our Secret Life

Here's our confession:  there is more to Father Anonymous than sex, religion and politics.  Not a lot more, frankly, but a little.

Like cartoons.

And the desire to make the world a better place, using cartoons.

One way to do this, as a friend pointed out years ago, is to make cartoons that inspire kids to do things they didn't think they could do.  For instance, letting little boys know that they can grow up to be peaceful and nurturing men -- not something you pick up easily from the mass media.

Or letting little girls know that they can grow up to excel at science and technology, and that they can use these tools to keep on making the world a better place.  That is the idea behind Gangly Sister.  We aren't ready to spill all the beans about this yet, but you can get some ideas from following the link.  Which you should.  Then like us on Facebook.  And support our Kickstarter.

Because, come on, don't you want the world to be better?

Party Down

Playboy Magazine has long managed to be "adult" in the sense of "pornographic" without being the least bit "adult" in the sense of "not juvenile."  From its lousy cartoons and it lame jokes to the leering double-entendres that accompany its photographs of women young enough to be your daughter, it has long been a monthly reminder to American men of just what it was like to be a horny pre-teen.

Or, uh, so we've heard.

Then, yesterday, it seemed that Playboy had turned over a new leaf, and started treating sex as a grown-up thing, to be engaged in thoughtfully and with mutual respect by the people involved.  Even if they were drunken frat boys.

Specifically, Playboy's annual list of Top Ten Party Schools -- or something like it -- was published on the web, with a truly touching preface:

 Over the years, it has been brought to our attention that some of our long-standing party picks have a not-so-toast-worthy, rape-ridden side to their campus life. 

Somewhere in the countless hours we spent tallying up co-eds and scoring beer pong, we lost track of the most essential element of the Playboy lifestyle: sexual pleasure. Rape is kryptonite to sexual pleasure. The two cannot co-exist. For our revised party guide to live up to our founder’s vision, we had to put a new criterion on top. Namely, consent. 

In other words… A good college party is all about everyone having a good time. Consent is all about everyone having a good time. Rape is only a good time if you’re a rapist. And fuck those people.

A couple of great paragraphs, and we wish that the real editors of the real Playboy had written them. We also wish they'd come up with the prudent list of "commandments" for mutually respectful collegiate nookie that follow.

The site is a hoax -- or anyway, a parody -- put together by FORCE, which is committed to "upsetting the rape culture."  Apparently, they also came up with a lot of fake press coverage, too, and planted it all over the web.  Very impressive work.

Parenthetically, let us pause to ask:  What kind of horrible world do we live in where groups like that are necessary?  Where there is an identifiable "rape culture"?  Lord, have mercy.

Anyway, we applaud FORCE for doing such a fine job of this.

MIley Cyrus!

Well, that should get us some click-throughs, shouldn't it?

The truth is that Father A. is getting so danged old that he isn't really sure who this Miley Cyrus person is, or what exactly she did wrong at the VMAs a few nights back.  Honestly, he's not even sure what a VMA is.  Virginia Medical Academy, maybe?  Much less this torching twerping twerking thing that everybody seems so goll-dinged unhappy about.

But we do have one question:  Why on earth would a pretty female pop star dance provocatively on stage?  The nerve of that attention-seeking young whippersnapper!

In related news:  Madonna's album Erotica, and the novelization, a coffee-table book called Sex, just celelbrated their twentieth anniversary.  Seems more like thirty, dunnit?

What is Chelsea Thinking?

Shortly after his sentence was delivered, the Army's Private Bradley Manning issued a public statement, explaining that he is in fact a woman, and wishes to be known as Chelsea.  Manning hopes to begin "transitioning" from male to female right away, and even to receive hormone treatments -- in a military prison.

Ooookay.

We have a lot of sympathy for the lives and challenges of transgendered people.  It must be hard, unspeakably hard, to go through life feeling that you are in the wrong body.  And if you are bold enough, or privileged enough, to actually do something about it, life doesn't get all that much easier.  Both cross-dressers and transsexuals are often the objects of ridicule, discrimination and ultimately violence.  We desperately wish that it were otherwise.  Someday, it probably will be -- but that day is still far off.

And prison makes everything worse.  Let's be blunt:  prison is one of the places where a man is most likely to be raped.  He doesn't have to be young and cute, but it helps; he doesn't have to be effeminate*, much less actually gay, but those things probably help too.  We're just betting that a self-declared woman in a man's body, much less one with a super-high media profile, is going to be like candy to the depraved and violent.

So why the hell did Chelsea set herself up for this?  The wisest course of action, by far, would be to gut it out for seven years (or however many it takes), seek parole, and then quietly transition when you are safely on the outside.  Sure, it means denying your inmost self-understanding; but it could also save your life. So why declare now, on the eve of your imprisonment?

If Manning were to be imprisoned with women, of course, the likelihood of violence would be much lower.  In that case, this public declaration might be a sort of self-protective Hail Mary pass, a last ditch effort to avoid the worst of what is coming.  The problem is that the military, as perhaps you've heard, isn't really up to date on the whole gay thing, much less the transgendered one.  (Honestly, they still haven't got the "no raping women" business down.)  We've heard that there are state prisons in which TG inmates may be placed among other prisoners of their preferred sex, and given hormones and other medical interventions.  If the Army provides this for Manning, however, it will mark a major (and we think improbable) change of policy.

Because of Manning's high profile, it is likely that there will be voices pushing hard for the Army to bend.  Maybe that's the real point of the announcement:  to make sure that there is a public movement keeping an eye on things, and encouraging the officials to make Manning's imprisonment no more wretched than it must be.

However, there is another side to all this, and one that we find quite dark indeed.  Although a hero to some, Manning is also a criminal, convicted of extremely serious crimes against the US.  Hostile observers, those already inclined to distrust the transgendered, will make a connection here.  They are wrong, of course; being transgendered certainly does not lead to this sort of crime, any more than being gay led to the crimes of Anthony Blunt. But just as, in the deacdes after Blunt, it was harder to get a security clearance if you were gay, so it is entirely possible that Manning will harden the hostility of the armed services, if not the entire national security apparatus, toward transgendered people.

In other words, we are afraid for Manning's life and safety.  But we are even more afraid that Manning will now manage to set back the cause of justice for transgendered people in America.


__________________________________
*What the hell does "effeminate" even mean?  Can somebody tell us, please?  Not lexically, but as a matter of practice.  Does it mean a man is beardless?  LIkes dresses?  or just that he goes to the opera (which, by the way, we ourselves have occasionally done)? We still use the word, occasionally, but with less conviction each time. Sometimes we think it means something, and sometimes we don't.

Condolences to the New Bishop

The Rev. Elizabeth Eaton, Bishop of the ELCA's North East Ohio Synod, has been elected presiding bishop on the fifth ballot.  She will replace the Rev. Mark Hanson, who has served in that capacity for twelve years, and who was one of the candidates this year as well.  Eaton will be the first woman to hold the post.

Many readers will know more about the events of the day than does poor Father Anonymous, who has been busy unpacking boxes in the Specus Pecuniarum.  It was surely an exciting election.  The day that Stephen Bouman unseated James Sudbrock for the episcopacy of metropolitan New York remains one of the most memorable, and harrowing, experiences of our ecclesiastical life.  This will no doubt be as memorable for many of you.

We know little about Bishop Eaton.  Months ago, we very seriously considered a call to a splendid congregation in her synod, and although her name came up rarely, it was then spoken with warmth.  We came away with the sense that she was popular and distinctly liberal.

Truth be told, we know little enough about Bishop Hanson.  We met him once, for about five minutes, in his office.  He was wearing a gray striped suit that looked ghastly with his clericals.  He seemed earnest and distracted.  Come to think of it, that is how his tenure as PB has impressed us:  earnest but distracted.  He has stood up for all the things his church wants him to stand up for, especially the left-leaning ones.  He has given sober sermons and seemed like a decent fellow.

To our way of thinking, however, Hanson's signature achievement is the restructuring of the ELCA's churchwide organization.  Managing decline is neither sexy nor popular, but it is what mainline leaders are often called to do lately, and when the time came, Hanson was forthright about it.  Not everybody would have been.

And if it seems to you that we are removed from all this, not just geographically but emotionally, then you are correct.  A turn of events that would once have excited us very much indeed, and provoked days of armchair analysis, seems at present mildly interesting.  Less pressing, certainly, than the young mother struggling with cancer in our congregation, or even the nice couple wooed away by the  predatory NALC pastor down the street.  Always local, we seem to be entering a stage of life that is truly and deeply parochial.

Still, we can't help noticing this sort of dumb paragraph in a news report by Sarah Pulliam Bailey, who writes for RNS and GetReligion, and really should know better:

Eaton joins Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, who in 2006 became the first woman to lead a church in the worldwide Anglican Communion. The two churches share a full communion agreement that allows shared clergy and joint ministry.

It's not wrong, mind you.  But it certainly is strange; Anglicans and Episcopalians have nothing to do with this.  A better paragraph might have read:

Eaton joins Church of Norway Presiding Bishop Helga Haugland Byfuglien [EDIT:  and Canadian National Bishop Susan Johnson] on the very short list of Lutheran national primates who are women.  Bishop Margot Kaessman, leader of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) resigned her post in 2010 after a DUI arrest.  Although Lutherans began to ordain women in the mid-20th century (1948 in Denmark, 1958 in Sweden, 1961 in Norway, 1970 in the US), it was only in 1992 that Maria Jepsen was chosen to be the first female Lutheran bishop, serving the see of Hamburg in the North Elbian Landeskirche.

Anyway.  We extend our deepest sympathies to Bishop Eaton and her family, and assure them all of our fervent prayers in the coming six years.

Cogito, Ergo Sugo

A well-known philosopher named Colin McGinn has resigned his post at the University of Miami after being accused of sexual harassment by a female student.  He is reported to have defended himself with a string of big words, linked together in ways that ultimately translate into "But I was her teacher, and teachers get to do this."  Lovely fellow.

This is all remarkable, we suppose, only because McGinn got canned; it seems certain that most sexual harassment in the academic world goes unpunished; much, indeed, unreported; and quite a bit, we expect, unrecognized even by its victims.

The truth is that many people, both male and female, still have not wrapped their minds around sexual misconduct in a university setting.  When is it love and when is it abuse?  Under what circumstances is something unacceptable even between consenting adults?

The Church has historically given narrower answers to this than the secular world, and especially the academy.  But even so, several of our own seminary professors married their own students -- in one case, serially.  In another case, the professor actually sat on the student's dissertation committee.  The faculty and administration were barely troubled by this, although many students -- reflecting a clear generational difference -- found the situation shameful.

A Harper's symposium at the time found that, at a table of college presidents, only Bard's Leon Botstein found faculty-student romances to be a de facto abuse of power.  We expect that today, the table would be more evenly divided.  McGinn has had few serious defenders, except for a few other philosophers.

And why philosophers?

L'affaire McGinn has led to several interesting comments on the practice of philosophy as an academic discipline.  One is by philosopher Nathan Schneider, at Real Clear Religion.  Schneider writes that

While working on my ... history of philosophical arguments about the existence of God, it gradually became clear that my undertaking was in fact a study of masculinity, so shot through were these arguments with gendered assumptions and ideals. And, as a study of masculinity, it was also a study of patriarchy. ... 

Philosophy serves as a domain in which men can imagine a world made up only of themselves and what goes on in their minds. 

As anybody who has attended a philosophy conference or been in a philosophy department knows, it remains a severely male-dominated discipline. And, according to one of philosophy’s chief commentators, Brian Leiter, “Sexual harassment, from the mild to the severe, is widespread.”

More viscerally, an anonymous Gawker commentator, himself a career academic with some philosophers in the family, writes that

It is my considered opinion that to a man/woman, philosophy professors are pond scum. Or, at the very least, they enable the pond-scumming of their colleagues. They are wanking little boys and scared little girls who justify their unconscionable actions with a dizzying amount of bullshit. And the abuse is cyclical: you only get tenure/published if you fuck so-and-so, which means that once you establish yourself, you're not going to vote for anybody's tenure/book unless they fuck you. It's quid pro quo on ugly nerd steroids. 

It makes it really hard for everyone else in the humanities... and believe me, the other humanities profs are no picnic, either. 

Philosophers are the worst of the worst. I don't know a single academic who disagrees with me. Some just haven't noticed it yet, but if you ask them point blank, they immediately say, "Oh, well, yeah... now that you mention it, there was that one time my GA got roofied by Dr. X. Wow. Philosophers are pretty yucky, aren't they?"

This is a striking assessment of people who are, at least in theory, committed to seeking the good and the true as well as the beautiful.

[Insert Weiner Joke Here]

In July of 2011, Anthony Weiner, an extremely fit-looking congressman from New York, resigned in disgrace.  After the revelation that he had been exchanging sexy text messages (including naughty pictures) with women other than his wife, Weiner had lied for more than a week in efforts to protect himself.  In May 2013, less than two years after his resignation, Weiner announced his intention to run for mayor of New York City.  This struck many of us as a remarkable display of chutzpah.

Now, in July 2013, he is embroiled in accusations of further sexting activity, with at least one woman to whom he is not married.  Then details are unclear.  Last we heard, Weiner's office had admitted that "some" of the messages were authentic; what remains to be seen is whether

Some people say, in essence, "This is between him and his wife."  We disagree.  The guy is a liar and a cheat.  Worse than that, he seems to lack the sort of self-discipline that is required for effective, long-term leadership, especially in a high-pressure position.

Yes, it is true that many effective politicians -- FDR, Ike, JFK and LBJ make four in a row -- were less than faithful to their wives.  And one takes for granted that politicians are liars as a class.  Still, Weiner looks like an addict to us, a man powerless over his own compulsions.  We predict that the sex scandals of a Weiner mayoralty would make those of Rudolph Giuliani's tenure pale by comparison.  (And Giuliani, lest we forget, announced his divorce to the media before telling his wife, whom he then kicked out of the house.)

Even if the serendipitous combination of his name and his most famous selfie were not a joke by itself, his campaign certainly would be.  Seriously, New York -- don't vote for this guy.

[P.S.:  Eliot Spitzer may not be quite as compulsive as Weiner, and comptroller isn't quite as tough a job as mayor.  But don't vote for him either.  Unless you're a high-rent hooker, in which case this guy is your best friend.]

The Republican Party Hates My Bookstore

We live, these days, in a smallish town.  Small enough, at any rate, that it has only one bookstore, a place which sells used paperbacks. It's called BJ's, a name which has inspired quite a bit of sophomoric humor around the rectory.  ("Honey, come here.  I've finally found a store that specializes in the two greatest things in the world," and so forth.  Have we mentioned that Father A. is a pig?)

Anyway, the Republican candidate for governor of our new home state, Ken Cuccinelli, has declared war on our little town's used bookstore.  At least that's what we think it means, when he declares that if he is elected, "BJs will be made illegal."

Actually, he may be thinking of something else.  After all, politicians don't care about books; politicians care about sex.  Because that's what we elect them for, right?

Cuccinelli has, in fact, declared that as governor he would attempt to reinstate Virginia Code 1950, 18.2-361, a statute which, in its first paragraph, makes both oral and anal sex illegal -- even when performed between consenting adults, including married couples.

Incidentally, the Supreme Court has found laws like this to be unconstitutional.

Cuccinelli claims that his real interest in in the succeeding paragraphs, which deal with child abuse and incest.  But it happens that, when the Virginia legislature considered striking the first paragraph, which includes consenting adults, it was Cuccinelli himself who helped kill the move.  Here's how he explained it a few years later:

My view is that homosexual acts, not homosexuality, but homosexual acts are wrong. They’re intrinsically wrong. And I think in a natural law based country it’s appropriate to have policies that reflect that. ... They don’t comport with natural law. I happen to think that it represents (to put it politely; I need my thesaurus to be polite) behavior that is not healthy to an individual and in aggregate is not healthy to society.

So, no matter what the Supreme Court says, Cuccinelli supports anti-sodomy laws.

To call the US a "natural-law based country" is tendentious at best.  Natural law, like common law, plays a role in our complex legal theory.  But final authority, it seems to us at the Egg, rests with the consent of the governed.  And in the US, the governed have been notoriously reluctant to cede control of their private lives -- not leas their love and sex lives -- to the government.

Tip o' the biretta to Father Nedward, and the fine writeup at AlterNet.

Decent Obscurity

Did you know the ELCA had a gay bishop?  Openly gay, we mean?  We didn't.  Somebody really ought to talk about this sort of thing.  Also, we've got an American Indian bishop.  Same guy!

When the Episcopalians elect a gay bishop, the media (and the Africans) have a collective seizure.  Here?  Not so much.  Alas, we Lutherans -- despite outnumbering the PECUSA by a significant margin -- are doomed to live in shadows.

Anyway:  the Rev. R. Guy Erwin was elected bishop by the Southwest California Synod.

Bishop-elect Erwin teaches theology at California Lutheran University.  He is also Native American, another first for the ELCA, although one likely to attract less attention.  This makes us rather sad, as there are lots and lots of gay Lutherans, but comparatively few Osage ones.

We wish Erwin and his synod God's blessings.

Home of the Cowardly

The House of Mouse is emphatically not the Home of the Brave this week.  It is, instead, chickening out on one of its best and most thoughtful character designs, in a way that is almost guaranteed to harm its fan base and annoy their parents.

Pictured up top are two versions of Merida, the heroine of Disney's medieval adventure cartoon Brave. On the right is Merida as she appeared in the movie itself; on the left is her revised "official" look, as Disney announced it in advance of what their press release called her "coronation" -- official recognition as the 11th of the fabulously overmarketed Disney Princesses.

This, in other words, is the version that will appear on cups and t-shirts and lunchboxes, if little girls still carry lunchboxes.  It is the one you will see at Disneyland and in advertisements and in a million other places.

Notice that New Merida's hair is less frizzy.  Her dress is more heavily decorated.  Her expression seems a bit more knowing.  And, critically, her waist is smaller and her little adolescent breasts are proportionally bigger.  (Although this picture excludes her bow and arrow, they are still part of the official look -- thank heaven.)

Slate gives Disney credit for "democratizing" its recent princesses, at least up to a point.  To be a Disney princess, you don't need to be born in a castle; you can be poor and black (like Tiana); a crossdressing warrior (like Mulan).  But, as Slate goes on to observe:

... two restrictions remain. You have to be young. You have to have a very particular body type and long, perfect hair. The edits to Merida reflect those priorities. Her famous hair, which took six Pixar employees—a mix of artists and engineers—three years to design, has been smoothed out, made less kinky, less frizzy, and less alive. Her waist has been slimmed down, emphasizing her breasts, but at the expense of Merida's solid frame, which is a real shame given the way Brave celebrated Merida's pleasure in her body's capacities.

We hope we need not point out how unfair this makeover is to girls whose bodies (and wardrobes) don't conform to the type, which is itself just a shade less barbarically unrealistic that Barbie's.  We have already signed a petition at Change.org, and encourage readers to do likewise.

Abstinence Aids Sex-Trafficking

The soi-disant Evangelicals in the US and Britain have fastened onto human trafficking as the new form of slavery, and are engaged in a major effort to publicize it and ultimately defeat it.  This is a noble thing, and we support them.

At the same time, it must be noted that these same Evangelicals are the principal advocates of "abstinence only" as a model of sex education.  So we hope they will think hard about the possibility that this model may inadvertently make it harder for sexual slaves to seek their own freedom.

Elizabeth Smart was kidnapped at 14, raped, and held captive for nine months.  Since her rescue, she has grown to adulthood, formed a foundation to educate children about sexual crimes. Speaking recently at a Johns Hopkins human trafficking forum, she talked about why it was so hard for her to escape:

[Smart explained that] she was raised in a religious household and recalled a school teacher who spoke once about abstinence and compared sex to chewing gum.

"I thought, 'Oh, my gosh, I'm that chewed up piece of gum, nobody re-chews a piece of gum, you throw it away.' And that's how easy it is to feel like you know longer have worth, you know longer have value," Smart said. "Why would it even be worth screaming out? Why would it even make a difference if you are rescued? Your life still has no value."

Let's not overreach.  For one thing, Smart was not raised in an Evangelical Christian household, but in a Mormon one.  For another, she was kidnapped, rather than than "trafficked" in the commercial sense.  And, critically, we are aware of no evidence at all that the women trafficked for sexual purposes are more likely than any others to come from religious families.

Still, "abstinence only" educational efforts are only one of the many ways that societies worldwide have historically used sexual shame to exercise control over their members, and especially over women.  Take away the shame, and how many enslaved prostitutes might not feel free to break their chains?

Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?

Who watches the watchmen, asks the satirist Juvenal.  In respect of which comes today's lovely little fable:

The United States Air Force has an unfortunate track record with scandalous sexual behavior.  A 2003 investigation at the Air Force academy, 70% of the women who had graduated the previous year reported that they had been subjected to sexual harassment, and 12% reported that they had been victims of rape or attempted rape.  Recently, two generals (including a female ex-astronaut) have made the controversial decision to reverse judgments against officers convicted by a military court of misconduct.  More recently still, a series of 18 military trials connected to Joint Base San Antonio- Lackland has revealed a vast network of sexual abuse, including rape, and resulted in the conviction of a dozen instructors and the high-profile discipline of 5 commanding officers.

Fortunately, they have put somebody in charge of policing this sort of misconduct:  Lt. Col. Jeff Krusinski, chief of the Sexual Assualt Prevention and Response Program.  The program's website includes stern messages from the brass, talking about respect, core values, personal responsibility and moral courage.  Secretary Donley says, "Sexual assault is a crime and is categorically unacceptable."  General Welsh reminds his people that "You know what right looks like," and adds that, the way he sees it, "You're either part of the solution or you're part of the problem."

The Pentagon estimates that sexual misconduct in the military is on the rise -- up 35% since 2010,

Early last Sunday morning, Col. Kusinski was arrested for sexual battery.

It seems that, in a Virginia parking lot, he drunkenly fondled a stranger's breasts and buttocks.  In addition to committing a crime, abdicating personal responsibility, and violating his force's core values, he let women in the Air Force know just what sort of respect and moral courage they could expect from his program.

The Air Force says that Kusisnski has been relieved of duty.  The police are unable to say how he got the cuts (or are they scratches?) that appear on his face in the booking photos.

Lots More Naked Ladies

The Atlantic has posted many pictures of Femen-associated protesters in Europe, walking the streets topless in solidarity with Aminah Tyler.  Big, glamorous pictures.

The comments posted below the pictures are also worth a quick read.  One reader, man, points out rather angrily that many women feel liberated by Islam, rather than oppressed.  This is absolutely true, and the reasons are pretty well known.  Modest dress, for example, makes objectification more difficult.  But the follow-up comments poke holes in his argument, pointing out that nobody objects to a woman wearing a veil if she chooses.  The problem is that some women are not given any choice in this or in many more serious matters.

For non-Muslims trying to understand this particular argument, it may be helpful to consider analogies to the Hebrew scriptures.  Much of what we find there, when read against the prevailing legal codes of the ancient Near East, marks a significant advance for the dignity and autonomy of women.  For example, Moses permits the daughters of Zelophehad to inherit and own property, a subject that remained iffy in Western law right into the modern era.  Even the less obviously appealing purity legislation, such as the command to leave the camp when you are menstruating, may be subjected to this sort of re-interpretation.  (For that matter, so may the Christian practice of "churching" women after childbirth.  Some people regard it as an unpleasant suggestion that parturition has somehow defiled a new mother; others see it as a loving ritual of welcome back into the community after a life-changing personal transition.)

Among the problems, of course, is that we no longer live in the ancient Near East, nor in medieval Europe nor 17th-century Persia.  Times have changed.  It is no longer particularly radical to "allow" women to own property.  In matters of dress, there is a new understanding that not judging women (or harassing them) because of their appearance is a man's responsibility, no matter what they may or may not be wearing.  And so forth, through a long list of questions, as small as the right to wear a scarf and as large as the right to leave the house without being raped.

Traditional religions are wise and right and often justified when they excavate the "liberationist" elements of their teaching.  The mistake is to insist upon the letter at the expense of the spirit.  Ultimately, the decision to bare one's breast or cover one's head must rest with the owner of the breast and head.  Society may have a legitimate interest in the matter -- no public nudity, San Franciscans! -- but it does not have the final say.

(On the) Download

The guys at TorrentFreak did a little checking and discovered what kind of pornography gets downloaded at the  Vatican. (Gawker has, of course, more data on specific titles.  Also links to Fleshbot's NSFW details.)

This sort of story, prurient and tacky, only exists because it sounds so naughty -- Celibate priests watch porn!  Ooooh!  It's really just a modern, and tamer, version of the hundreds of old books dedicated to "revelations" concerning the sex lives of people who aren't supposed to have sex.  (Compare it to Charles Chiniquy's Fifty Years in the Church of Rome and The Priest, the Woman and the Confessional, or to Maria Monk's fraudulent Awful Disclosures.)

What is more interesting to us than the sexy bits, though, is that these are illegal downloads.

In fact, TorrentFreak makes the same point.  Their lede is about a parish priest in Ireland who drops by his local video store to rent old movies, and mentions having seen a number of pictures that he has seen a number of new ones lately -- nothing racy, just new.  He mention several films that haven't been released locally, or on DVD -- Les Miserables, Django Unchained, and Lincoln -- and reveals that he's seen them as part of a "film club" at the local monastery.

In other words, the priest and the monks are stealing intellectual property.

We claim no moral high ground here, mind you.  After three years in Romania, which must be the torrent capital of the planet, our already-blase attitude toward illegal downloads has grown even blase-ier.  We don't do it ourselves, because of a few vestigial moral qualms but principally because we are bad at the technical stuff, but we have no doubt watched hours and hours of TV and movies downloaded illegally by other people.  So we are guilty.

But how guilty?  The laws governing intellectual property are a mess.  They disagree from one nation to the next, and from one form of property to another.  America, in particular, has jiggered them to give creators ever-longer and ever-broader rights.

This lead to every sort of anomaly:  sixty-three years after the death of its author, Tarzan of the Apes is a novel in the public domain; "Tarzan," however, is a protected trademark, so good luck writing your own sequel.  The story of Winnie-the-Pooh has become the permanent property of Walt Disney, which has turned Pooh and Tigger into superhero detectives, and replaced Christopher Robin with a little American girl.

In Eastern Europe, piracy is rife.  On the other hand, legally downloading an episode of Mad Men is quite a challenge for those of us unfamiliar with the world of proxies and anonymizers -- it can be done, but even so you have to lie about who and where you are.  Once you lie, you may as well steal.  As The Economist argued years ago, studios are so frightened of losing money from piracy that they have simply abandoned markets like Romania -- in which piracy then becomes the norm.

So, yeah, the priest in Ireland shouldn't have pirated Django.  And somebody at the Vatican should get his wrists slapped, except that he'd probably like that.  But, for us, the real question is how conscience and law will interact in the coming age of freely available "paid" media.