Religion of Peace, Part ....

... crap, we lost count.

Indonesian religious police raided a hairdresser's shop, because the women weren't wearing head scarves, and the men should have known that Sharia prohibits them from having a woman cut their hair. (The whole Jezebel thing, we suppose).

For crying out loud. When will people -- scratch that, the billion or so perfectly reasonable Muslims in the world -- get so sick of this nonsense that they put their collective foot down and demand a better way? Can you imagine a Christian religious police, in any nation on earth? No -- not since Cromwell. And there was a reason that after him they brought back the Stuarts.

Or, as Benedict XVI said, in one of those wicked quotes of his, "In religion, there is no coercion." And which repressive medieval anti-Islamic polemic did he get that one from again? Oh yeah -- the Quran.

The Sleep of Reason

A San Diego [make that Bakersfield -- see the first comment] man, draped in an American flag, poured gasoline over himself and lit a match. He did so -- get this -- to protest the school district's decision to uyse the terms "Christmas" and "Easter" in describing its vacation schedule. He was wearing a sign that said "[deleted] the religious establishment."

Honestly, people, we at the Egg would just like to point out, yet again, that secular types are as capable of being violent extremists as anybody else.

Give Me Liberty . . . .

Two large and historic Episcopal parishes are leaving PECUSA to join the Church of Nigeria. Truro Church and Falls Church, both in Virginia, have voted to deep-six their ongoing discussions with the denomination, and instead submit themselves to the authority of Peter Akinola, the Nigerian archbishop who has been a loud conservative voice in the Anglican wars over sexuality.

Now consider the irony. George Washington served on the vestry of the Falls Church, and Francis Scott Key later led services there. (Although, nota bene, Key was a lawyer and not a priest.)

In contrast to these two heroes of freedom, Archbishop Akinola has led a movement in his country to criminalize not only homosexual behavior, but any advocacy for the civil or human rights of gay people. He has supported laws that make it illegal to publish editorials or take part in demonstrations supporting these rights. Such is Akinola's contempt for gay people that, rather than hear them argue for their place in society, he would abrogate the freedoms of speech and assembly for which George Washington and others like him were willing to die.

The two parishes may imagine that they are "traditionalist" and "conservative," but then, the advocates of oppression often do.

Anglican Bishop Makes a Fool of Himself

Tom Butler, the Bishop of Southwark, attended a party at the irish Embassy, and turned up the next day, bruised and bloody, missing his briefcase and cellphone. He claims a memory lapse, and assumes he was mugged; the police think otherwise. Witnesses report seeing "a white haired man in a cassock" climb into the back seat of a Mercedes, throw toys around (!) and say "I'm the Bishop of Southwark, it's what I do."

Well, he made a fool of himself. But it's still not as bad as the new Episcopal PB's acilm that Episcopalians are proud to be in decline because it shows how smart and environmentally-conscious they are. And she was apparently sober when she said it ....

Christian Bookshops Drop Quran

SPCK, the UK's oldest chain of Christian booksellers, will no longer sell the Quran or other books it considers "inimical to Christianity."

Behind the story is something interesting: majority interest in the chain has been sold to representatives of an Orthodox agency, the mission of which is to build an Orthodox presence in still-nominally-Latin Britain. Anglicans still hold a minority position on the SPCK board, and voted against the decision to stop carrying "inimical" books.

As a matter of business strategy, the decision makes some sense. Define your brand, and so forth. And on the surface, it seems like a reasonable mission strategy as well. Why should any organization devoted to the "propagation of Christian knowledge" have an interest in propagating knowledge of other faiths?

But that question is not entirely rhetorical. Arguably, at least, Christians may be better-prepared to articulate their faith in a pluralistic society if they have a working knowledge of the other faiths with which it is inevitably to be contrasted. Any decent missionary knows this. So we wonder if the SPCK move, for all its common-sense appeal, does not in fact represent a step away from Christian engagement with non-Christian culture, and toward the sort of circle-the-wagons, last-holy-remnant attitudes which often seem to flourish in declining, ethnocentric churches -- like the Orthodox.

Church of the Lost Ark

Archaeologists working at Shiloh have dug up a very, very old Christian church.

The article linked above may overstate the claim -- if it comes from the late 4th century, this won't come close to the house-church at Dura, for example. By the mid-4th-century, Constantine and his mother had already been on a bit of a church-building spree in the Holy Land. Should this prove to be part of that, it will tell us little or nothing about the most primitive, pre-Constantinian, era of Christian worship. (On the other hand, it will probably be the remains of a well-funded and therefore beautiful building.)

More interesting than the date of this building is its location. Before the construction of the Temple, the Ark of the Covenant was kept at Shiloh. In fact, the team (supported by locals) may keep digging, in hope of finding evidence of the ancient Tabernacle.

So it is kind of cool to know that 4th-century Christians built a church on this Jewish sacred site (as well as the overtly Christian sites connected to COnstantine, such as the Holy Sepulchre). After all the studies are in, we may know a lot more about how they perceived themselves in relationship to the Jewish heritage of Christianity -- and perhaps even in relation to the Law.

Anti-American Racist Freaks Oppose Episcopal Bishop

We've been reading a fair number of slams against the new PECUSA Presiding Bishop, Katherine Jefferts Schuori. Here at the Egg, we continue to be a little disturbed by her comparatively brief tenure as a priest, and her remarkable lack of parish experience before ascending to the throne.

But that said, these various slams -- many of them made in passing, by writers with other concerns -- have been troubling us. They are often pretty nasty in tone, but short on details.

Several complain that she apparently permitted same-sex unions in her former diocese, but provide no details. Now, for a bishop to "permit" something may mean any of several different things. It might mean that she was gung-ho for the practice, or simply that she lacked the canonical ability, or political clout, to discipline a popular maverick in the ranks of her parish clergy. She really ought to be judged not by an unspecified case or two from years ago, but by what she does in the next few months, as the Episcopal Church wrestles with its internal divisions and with the divisions of the Anglican Communion.

Others among the slamming community, however, don't even have this much ammunition to fire. They just write mean, sneering stuff, the general tone of which seems to be "I don't like her, and you -- my readers -- already know why."

Exhibit A: Bill Murchison. Our beloved godfather recently forwarded us a piece Mr Murchison had written for the Dallas Morning News. It mocked the new bishop's installation sermon, apparently -- one couldn't be sure -- for having a political agenda. The sermon argued that God's peace is made real in the world through care for the poor, and for the environment. Murchison said, essentially, that these were not the Church's business, but the business of politics and government. He accused her of betraying her heritage.

Oh, and he doesn't like Bono. Not sure how that fits into his article, but he mentioned it.

"Hmmn," though the Egg. "How odd." We had always thought that care for the poor was very much the Church's business. And we had also thought that the Church had a duty to promote that concern by speaking to politicians and governors. As to the matter of "heritage," we had thought -- been entirely certain, rather -- that the Anglican churches had been created in the crucible of a complex interrelationship between matters of faith and matters of public policy. (See under: Cranmer, Thomas; Stuart, James I et seq.; Tudor, all of them).

And for the record, we think Bono is a pretty decent guy.

So, having read this article, and finding it strangely free of ideas and just as strangely filled with nasty remarks, we were moved to wonder: "What's with this Murchison guy?" And we Googled his sorry cracker behind. Here's what we learned:

Bill Murchison used to be reporter; he teaches at Baylor, and has a reputation for solidly conservative Episcopalianism. No problem there. (Well, small problem -- he was brought on board by Sloan, a president so bad the faculty demoted him before he could dfestroy their institutional credibility.)

But a few more clicks revealed the remarkable fact that Murchison is part of something called the League of the South. This is a neo-Confederate organization. As in the Confederate States of America. As in the guys who lost the Civil War. The slaveholding, union-busting, Lincoln-assassinating Confederacy. The league is committed to secession from what it calls the American "empire." It's elected president, Michael Hill, advocates not only strict immigration control, but also kicking out "aliens," including Arabs and Jews.

The South will rise again, and my gorge with it.

Basically, these people are to Timothy McVeigh what the Wahabis are to bin Laden: the theoreticians of terror. They don't actually make the bombs; they don't even tell anbody to use the bombs; hell, if pushed, they'll talk about how bad bombs really are -- but they do explain why it might be nice if some bombs exploded. And for the same reason: the bad old American Empire.

So if one of their mouthpices doesn't like the new Anglican primate of the United States, then we say "Rule Brittania."

Getting Ugly in New York

The New York senate campaign, pitting an obscure ex-mayor of Yonkers against the woman who has the Republican party trembling, has never promised anything more than theatrics. After all, John Spencer can't possibly beat Hillary Clinton, and everybody knows it. Rumors are that his whole candidacy is just a Trojan Horse to get back his old job. In Yonkers.

But theatrics can be entertaining -- in fact, that's their purpose. (At least if we read Aristotle's bit about provoking fear and pity to create catharsis as "entertainment.") So the question is whether Spencer was just playing his part with gusto when he claimed that his opponent had spent millions on plastic surgery, or whether in fact he truly is a mean-spirited sexist. (Not to mention blind. Any decent close-up shows that the incumbent has plenty of hard-earned and un-Botoxed wrinkles).

Spencer's team is spinning wildly (we'd give links, but are experiencing Blogger difficulty), but the best their candidate can come up with by way of an apology is, and the Egg kids you not, "At least I didn't call her a lesbian."

Even if the guy weren't wrong on the issues, even if his experience were even remotely comparable to Clinton's, he would still deserve to lose just for being such a jerk.

Regarding the Pope

In a novel Father A. once read, a newly-elected Pope keeps a cat in his private quarters; he swears his staff to secrecy about it, fearing that if he is known as a cat-fancier, the faithful will deluge him with their kittens.

The Egg has struggled with Pope Benedict's, um, indiscretion at Regensburg. In the context of his speech, the now-infamous quotation from Emperor Manuel Paleologus is clearly a small (and dispensable) point. He is talking about the role of reason in constructing a system of religious belief, which is precisely the sort of thing that Catholic theology should work at. And yes, he takes a moment in passing to drege up some medieval anti-Muslim rhetoric, cited as a not-very-effective testimony to the putative Western heritage of non-coercive apologetics.

The Pope was clearly having a momentary lapse of memory -- he thought he was a college professor, when in fact he is a Pope. Professors are allowed, even encouraged, to provoke their students with tendentious illustrations and sly asides. Popes, as Benedict will not soon forget, are required to exercise superhuman restraint, and neither speak nor write a word that has not been considered with extreme care. Otherwise, he will be deluged with kittens ... or much, much worse.

On the other hand, we continue to be outraged by the Muslim reaction to Benedict's lecture. It displays a level of intolerance, and a disregard for free speech, that are simply unimaginable to the post-Enlightenment West. In extreme cases, the violence and threats of violence suggest that Manuel Palologus -- not the Pope, mind you, but the dead mediaeval emperor he was quoting -- may have had a point.

Raymond Ibrahim, over at Victor Davis Hanson's righty blog, does a great job on this. Click the link, but here are his money quotes:

In the context of the Pope’s speech, the point in evoking this anecdote was twofold: 1) to show how even centuries ago, there was inter-religious dialogue — a good thing to be preserved; and 2) to show that there is no room for violence where faith is concerned. ... Moreover, the Pope made it a point to mention one of the Koran’s most tolerant verses — “There is no compulsion in religion” [Koran 2:256].

Had the Pope really wanted to defame Islam, he could have quoted from the much more numerous “sword-verses” of the Koran, which most Muslim theologians are agreed have abrogated the more tolerant ones: “Fight those of the People of the Book [Christians and Jews] who do not believe in Allah nor the Last Day, nor forbid that which has been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth [Islam], until they pay tribute with willing submission, and feel themselves utterly subdued” [Koran 9:29]. Or “When the sacred months have passed, slay the idolaters wherever you find them — seize them, besiege them, and make ready to ambush them” [Koran 9:5]

Ibrahim goes on to deal with a point that has not been made much by us in the tolerant lefty blogosphere, much less the press, but which is worth considering. Paleologus is right: most of the growth of Islam, in that era, had taken place as the result of military conquest. Growth as the result of trade and migration came only after the initial conquest of Arabia, North Africa, and western Asia. While peaceful growth may be the historic norm for Islam, conquest is the heart of the movement's creation myth.

Christianity is in many ways the reverse. For the first three hundred years, it spread entirely through peaceful, non-coercive preaching, including the willingness of adherents to suffer torture and execution rather than surrender their faith. Converts were, in fact, required to quit jobs such as soldier or judge which might require them to kill another human being. It was only after Constantine that Christianity was even considered compatible with military service. Of course, from that point forward, things began to change, so that well before time of Paleologus (and well afterward) the religion was indeed spread by armies of conquest. So, while conquest and colonization were for a long time the historic norm for Christianity, the heart of the movement's creation myth is preaching and persuasion.

The Old Switcheroo

Father A. tries to keep this blog centered on things that everybody cares about -- sex, religion, politics. And maybe a little Latin poetry. But tonight, he's going to go off topic for just a moment, to say one thing:

Watch Battlestar Galactica. Start now.

For those of you whose development was not arrested in adolescence, it's a teevee show, on the Sci-Fi network. About human beings traveling through space, hunted by robots. Sounds goofy, right? And in fact, the original, 1970s Galactica was pretty goofy -- Lorne Greene's lowest ebb, including the Alpo commercials. But the new show is a tense, gutsy drama, with some of the best-developed characters on television.

And these characters have real sex, the kind with with emotions and subtext. They have real politics, the kind with both ideals and compromises. And they have real religion -- the kind with both casual observers and intolerant fanatics.

All this was true last year, too. But this season, things took a wild twist. Without trying to explain a complicated story, let me just say this: All along, it has been possible -- natural -- to think of the story as an allegory for modern geopolitics, in which the human beings are bunch of decent, more-or-less secular people just going about their business, while they are stalked by a shadowy army of inscrutable killers, motivated by incomprehensible convictions about a God the humans don't understand. Pretty much the way the West sees itself in relation to Islamic fanaticism, right?

As of tonight's season premiere, things are suddently reversed. The humans had found a nice safe planet to settle down on, but the robots invaded it. For no special reason. They installed a puppet government, which everybody hates and any decent human being opposes. This government claims it wants peace and freedom, and wonders why the people it is crushing under foot don't greet its soldiers with open arms. Wonders why its human police force is regarded as a bunch of collaborators.

Oh, and the president claims his government doesn't torture, even though one of the main characters had an eyeball plucked out in prison.

So guess what? The robots are shocked when a few humans -- not all, by any means, but a highly motivated few -- begin suicide bombings.

It was an amazing premiere, specifically because, by the end of it, you could feel your guts tighten, as you tried to decide whether you wanted the suicide bombings to go on or not, tried to decide what you would do in the same position, tried to decide what the definition of words like "hero" and "necessary" and even 'war" really were.

Smartest piece of television I've seen in years. Even with robots.

Like Rugs

That's how the Bushies continue to lie, about 9/11, the Iraqi WMDs, and George Tenet. Today's Times (linked above) documents some of the misdirections and partial truths that continue to issue from the lying lips of the President's people.

Per the Times, Woodward's new book, while not perfect in every detail, accurately captures the then-new Administration's lack of concern about pre-attack intelligence, and its continuing effort to blame George Tenet and the CIA for what were in fact its own failures.

My favorite is John Ashcroft's snarky remark that he was never briefed on the impending attack by Tenet, and "I'm surprised he didn't think it was important enough to come by and tell me." Classic half-truth: the CIA head didn't do the briefing perosnally, but Ashcroft was briefed. He was warned, in advance, that terrorists were planning a second attack on New York City. But Ashcroft (who, in all fairness, is clinically insane) was more interested in recording patriotic country songs and draping naked statues with velvet to, I dunno, protect America.

Islam is Religion of Peace

That's what they keep saying. And when the Pope suggested otherwise, by quoting a long-dead Byzantine emperor (who was being held captive by Muslim armies when he wrote), modern-day Muslims got pretty ticked off.

How ticked off are they? Well, they killed a nun in Somalia, they bombed a church in Nablus, they burned the Pope in effigy all over the world. That was for starters.

And more recently, according to CNN, an al Qaeda franchise vowed a war against the "worshippers of the cross":

"We tell the worshipper of the cross (the Pope) that you and the West will be defeated, as is the case in Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya," said an Internet statement by the Mujahideen Shura Council, an umbrella group led by Iraq's branch of al Qaeda, according to the Reuters news agency.

"We shall break the cross and spill the wine. ... God will (help) Muslims to conquer Rome. ... God enable us to slit their throats, and make their money and descendants the bounty of the mujahideen," said the statement."

But we figure they must not be serious. After all, jihad is spiritual combat, not real war. And Islam is a religion of peace.

See, I am Doing a New Thing

Interesting debate growing within evangelical church-growth circles: Should sermons be plagiarized?

An Ohio pastor named Steve Sjogren recently published an article entitled Don't Be Original -- Be Effective, in which he proposed that rather than write their own sermons, pastors should copy (verbatim) sermons preached at growing megachurches. Choosing originality over effectiveness, Sjogren says, is the sin of pride.

In response, a professor named Ray Van Neste says that this approaches reduces preaching to a matter of performance, when in truth it is something far more important:

Our people do not need a performance. They need to gather with their brothers and sisters to hear their own pastor, who knows and loves them, and to hear the overflow of his heart resulting from his own wrestling with the text that week.

So, you may ask, what does the Egg think on this? Those of you who recall our furious rampage against college students copying papers from Wikipedia may be surprised to hear that we find Sjogren's idea . . . well, defensible at least.

The title is catchy, and there's a grain of truth in it. Given the choice between originality and effectiveness, who wouldn't choose the latter? You could even argue that we owe it to our congregations. And for the record, most good preachers are students of preaching, perfectly willing to borrow a trope from Chrysostom or Donne, from Wesley or Willimon. Some of them make a big deal about mentioning it, others don't, and the sermon isn't better or worse for their decision.

The devil of course is in the details -- what does it mean to be "effective"? Sjogren seems to take for granted that it means "prone to create larger congregations." There are at least two problems with this idea: (1) many factors other than preaching create large congregations -- favorable demographics, skilled team-building, a clear vision for ministry shared by pastor and parish alike; and (2) "effective" preaching, for many Christians, simply isn't measured by the number of rear ends on the pews. It is measured by eloquence, by faithfulness to the community's confession of faith, and by relevance to the life of the particular group of people assembled in that particular place. By that last measurement, a sermon preached by somebody else, to somebody else, in some other location, will never amount to much.

Effective preaching is also measured, in our experience, by the degree of trust that it inspires -- trust that the preacher is honest, and can be relied upon to speak honestly about the Gospel. Outright plagiarism will sooner or later erode that trust, no less than deception regarding sex or money or any of the other things that pastors get themselves into trouble with.

So, with a heavy heart, we have to conclude that ripping off sermons from better preachers than oneself is really not a good idea. Because people don't want to hear a stranger's take on the Gospel. They want to hear their pastor's. They want -- they need -- to hear the Gospel from the person who baptized their baby, who confirmed their kid, who buried their mom and who may well bury them, too. And if their pastor's sermon isn't really their pastor's sermon -- if it is somebody else's ideas, even words, passing through their pastor's mouth -- then they aren't going to trust their pastor.

And if you do not trust the preacher, how can you trust the Word that is preached?

Priest Leads Mass on 100th Birthday

This is the best news of an otherwise dreary week.

The Pope has set Christian-Muslim relations back by decades. Muslims have set Christian-Muslim relations back by centuries. President Bush is close to declaring himself infallible.

But Father Kingsley Laws, an Anglican priest who officially retired in 1979, celebrated his 100th birthday by saying Mass at his former parish in Somerset. Mind you, he said the service from memory, because his "eyesight is not what it was."

Neither is mine, sir. Neither is mine.

Violent Buddhists

Sounds like an 80s downtown band, doesn't it?

We at the Egg have always marvelled at the public-relations coup which has caused Westerners to think of Buddhists as sinned against without ever sinning, uniquely peace-loving and non-violent in a way that adeherents of the world's other great religions somehow are not.

In fact, Buddhist history is as jam-packed with blood, betrayal and imperial ambition as the histories of Christianity, Islam, or Hinduism. (And don't get us started about those Zoroastrians!) I mean, these are the people who invented kung-fu. In a monastery, for crying out loud. If the Benedictines had invented boxing, all the Franciscan peace activists in the world wouldn't save Christianity's reputation.

So when a group of Buddhist monks in Sri Lanka attacks an orphanage run by the Dutch Reformed church, threatening to burn the staff alive if they don't abandon the place, it so flies in the face of popular mythology that many Westerners simply will not be able to absorb the words. But it happened, according to a recent report (click up top).

In another Sri Lanka story, a peace rally involving Christians, Hindus and Buddhists was turned into a fistfight by a "group of fiery pro-war Buddhist monks."

Maybe Thich Nhat Hanh and the Dalai Lama should plan an intervention.

Perditum Non Duco

Despite the lighting strike and its associated trauma, despite the neoconservative war against America's religious and philosophical tradition, and despite a whopping case of sciatica, Father A. and his strikingly beautiful consort are endeavoring to get a bit of West and Wewaxation in the Adirondack Mountains. (The photo's not our place, but it gives the general idea).

As is my tradition on these summer vacations, I've been translating some Latin poetry (now you know why I'm so much fun at parties). Here's a morsel that's been making me think: Miser Catulle, desinas ineptire / et quod vides perisse, perditum ducas. Roughly, it means: "Poor Catullus! Stop being a dope, and give up for lost what you can see is lost."

Catullus, of course, goes on to talk about faithless women and their lip-nibbling. [He was that kind of guy.] On the one hand, this is straightforward worldly wisdom, of the sort that everybody has given to a heartbroken pal in a bar at three A.M. (Or that Jesus gave to his apostles, when he advised them to brush the dust off their sandals). And it sometimes seems, in a world of struggle, that this is just the advice we need: Stop fretting! Admit defeat; move on to the next challenge.

But honestly, friends, I just can't do it. Not on the big things, anyway -- the future of the Church, or of the Republic; not on matters of war and peace, life and death. Even when it seems that the Flying Monkeys have taken over Washington, that pietist halfwits have taken over the ELCA, that the sheer bigotry is destroying the Anglican Communion and Rome's "defenders" are her greatest enemies -- even then, I can't just walk away and let them have their fun. And so I type, pissing and moaning and doubting it does much good today, but hoping it may do some good tomorrow. As Cicero says, somewhere, Spero meliora: I hope for better days.

[P.S. -- Those of you who enjoy Catullus and his sweet-and-sour approach to life might click on two blogs that have mentioned him lately: Professor Zero and grammar.police]

Neocons Hate Protestantism

Only half-true, but snappier than the sort-of-obvious "neocons hate liberal modernity." Still, it does appear that a Roman Catholic neocon cabal, led by Richard John Neuhaus, has been waging a long war of attrition on mainline Protestantism in America. And winning.

This at least is the argument of a fascinating article at Media Transparency, synopsized at Political Cortex. The article is well-documented, including some especially damning remarks by Damon Linker, the former assistant editor of Neuhaus's on-paper blog, First Things. The idea is that the board of the Institute on Religion and Democracy (which includes Neuhaus, George Weigel, Mary Anne Glendon, and so forth) has spent decades promoting a pitiless critique of mainline Protestant denominations, while leaving Roman Catholic institutions largely uncritiqued. In theory, this is because the mainline Prots (or at least their national bodies) have leaned consistently left, while the church of John Paul II has been a bastion of traditionalism and conservatism.

In other words, at a point in history when Roman/Prot relations are comparatively warm, this bunch of renegades has been running a private war. Call them the Latin Hezbollah. And like the other "Party of God," they have led their formerly-dominant adversaries into a bad spot. Schisms are breaking out all over, especially in the Episcopal and Presbyterian churches, often spearheaded by IRD-trained "renewal" groups.

Obviously, this coup d'eglise is part of a larger sociocultural strategy. The issue isn't merely the transient political tendencies of mainline leaders; it is the historic resistance of their theological traditions to authoritarianism and oversimplification. Linker puts it in the strongest possible terms:

The America toward which Richard John Neuhaus wishes to lead us -- [is] an America...in which moral and theological absolutists demonize the country's political institutions and make nonnegotiable public demands under the threat of sacralized revolutionary violence, in which citizens flee from the inner obligations of freedom and long to subordinate themselves to ecclesiastical authority, and in which traditionalist Christianity thoroughly dominates the nation's public life.

All manner of qualifications are in order here.

First, this bunch is really only as Catholic as they feel like being at the moment. The IRD crowd is often (and rightly) criticized by liberal Catholics for misrepresenting official doctrine on social issues -- they never came to terms with JPII's critique of capitalist materialism, for example; they promoted the Iraq war despite the Pope's strong objections. And I will never forget the issue of First Things in which both Avery Cardinal Dulles and Antonin "The Godfather" Scalia were induced to publish articles declaring that opposition to the death penalty really isn't Catholic doctrine, no matter what the Pope says.

Second, let's not pretend that the mainline Prots aren't out of touch, both with solid doctrine and, more often than not, with their own constituencies. Nor should we pretend that they are anything less than ponderous bureaucracies staffed by pastors who washed out of the parish. They are, and would be suffering the consequences regardless of anything a second-rate think tank wrote about them.

And so forth. But all that said, the animus of the IRD crowd toward the forms of religious life that largely shaped the nation they themselves grew up in is undeniable. The Freudian kill-the-father element is most undeniable in Neuhaus himself, a convert from Lutheranism. But then, that's what's "neo" about neoconservatism: it doesn't actually seek to conserve any traditional institutions or values, so much as to undermine the midcentury political consensus. (That "consensus," of course, included bitter political and ideological enemies, all of them -- from Roosevelt to Goldwater! -- now dismissed as "liberal.")
Here's the good news, such as it is: The pendulum is already swinging. These guys have had their heyday -- it was Iraq, more and more evidently a disastrous box-up. They have had their president -- more and more evidently guilty of LBJ's inept warmongering without any of LBJ's high ideals. Rumsfeld actually makes Macnamara look like a man of wisdom and integrity. And America is beginning to sicken of the petty ideologues whose vitriolic psychodrama has been passed off as "conservative intellectualism" for the past generation.

Today's Democrats may be feckless, and the mainline Protestant denominations irredeemable, but mark old Father A's words: there is a new consensus building. And it is, it will be, in the broadest possible sense, a liberal consensus.

Seriously Bad News

Father A.'s church was hit by lightning the other night. No joke -- a serious strike that did serious damage. We'll spend a long time now dealing with insurance people, contractors and the inevitable massive fundraising drive.

There's something about a church hit by lightning, though, that makes you think. Should I have been a Baptist? A Presbyterian? A Satanist? Should I change my politics to something more Erastian? Or are all those low-church types right when they claim that Gothic architecture has outlived its usefulness?

For the moment, my answer to all the above is (as it has always been) a big No, with some Bronx cheer added for good measure. But I do have a newfound respect for the humble lightning rod . . . .

Monsters

A military hearing in Baghdad has revealed the events of March 12 in Mahmudiya, Iraq. It's bad.

Click the link above for an Australian paper's account of the events themselves. It's brutal, sickening stuff. A group of soldiers from the 101st Airborne were on duty at a checkpoint, drinking, playing cards and driking, when -- without provocation of any kind -- they took it upon themselves to dress in black outfits and ski masks, and commit rape and mass murder. Here's the worst of it, slightly edited:

The girl, Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi, and her father were standing outside a house. The soldiers allegedly dragged them inside and pushed the man, his wife and younger daughter, 6, into a side room where one soldier stood guard over them.

Another soldier pushed the girl to the floor and tore off her clothes as the first held her down. She held her knees together and struggled as he tried to rape her.

A gun shot came from the side room as the men switched places. More shots were heard from the side room and a soldier emerged with an AK-47. He allegedly said, "They're all dead," before raping the girl and shooting her several times.

Then her body was set alight. They opened the house's propane tank to set it on fire. They burnt their clothes, threw the gun into a canal and, back at the checkpoint, celebrated by grilling chicken wings.

Obviously, these men are dangerous sociopaths. But here's another disturbing thing: the Fox News report of the same story puts its emphasis on the soldiers' defense, which is, essentially, that they were under stress and expected to die before getting home. Unlike, say, everybody else in Iraq.

I sincerely hope we will not have to listen to months of "pity the poor soldiers" before these monsters are permanently removed from society.

Bush Flunkie Gets Probation

Claude Allen is a Duke-trained lawyer and, until recently, a ranking White House advisor on domestic policy. He has also confessed to shoplifting stuff from department stores and returning it for the refund money.

Where to begin? First off, this is obviously a sick man. His government salary was $161,000, so it's not like he needs the money. (He was stealing from Target, for pity's sake, not from Neiman Marcus.)

But second, the guy's a jerk. Here's a taste of an old article from LAWeekly:

In 1984, Allen accused [his employer, Senator Jesse] Helms’ Democratic challenger, then-Governor James Hunt, of having links to "queers," "radical feminists," socialists and unions (Hunt was, in fact, a Bible-quoting right-wing Dem.) And Allen forged his odious reputation as a black capo for the racist right when he continued working for Helms despite the senator’s militant opposition to making Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday a national holiday.

Lovely man, eh? During a stint at Health & Human Services, he also did his best to make AIDS organizations promote abstinence rather than condoms. But wait, as the Ronco adverts used to say -- there's more!

After he was first arrested, Allen started suggesting to friends and the media that maybe his twin brother was the real culprit. Yes, you heard me. He tried to frame his own brother. Man, that's cold even by the standards of anti-feminist, anti-gay, pro-racist kleptomaniacs. And yet, astonishingly, there's more.

When he confessed today, Allen explained why he had chosen his life of petty crime: He "lost his bearings" because he was working 14-hour days after Hurricane Katrina.

The hurricane made him do it. Poor feller was just working too hard. Happens to all of us. Why, after Holy Week, I often run out and jump a few turnstiles, snatch a purse or two, maybe kill a hobo.

So Claude Allen is (1) demented, and (2) a jerk. But here's the part that really burns my biretta: he got away with it.

Judge Eric "Softy" Johnson gave him 40 hours of community service, $1350 in restitution and fines, and two years probation. But if he doesn't get caught stealing again for two years, his record will be expunged -- the guy may even be able to practice law. It will be as if this were all a bad dream (Which is how I have come to think of the Bush Administration as a whole).

Compare that wrist-slap to the judge who gave a 15-year sentence to each of three New Orleans residents for stealing some booze after the hurricane. I mean, if you want to talk about Katrina-related stress, you really might want to start with people who were caught in the storm.