RELIGION, NATION, MARRIAGE: THE LOYALTIES OF MEN
PRAY, WORK, STUDY, PROTECT: THE DUTIES OF MEN


Tuesday, February 28, 2017

Catholic Sociobiology: APOSTOLIC FRATERNITY, MARIAN FEMININITY


"The differences between man and woman are not of the order of opposition or subordination, but rather of communion and generation, which is why the human person, male and female, can be said to be made in the image and likeness of God... The complementarity of man and woman – the summit of divine creation – is being questioned by what is called ‘gender ideology’ in the name of a society that is freer and more just... This is a sin against God as Creator."      (Pope Francis)
                                                                       
Catholic Sociobiology (outline of whole series) recognizes that human social organization is built upon sacralizing the different male and female realities in the order of creation. All three of the last popes have reflected on this complementary reality in marriage. We add to these reflections an argument that God has perfected masculinity in the Apostolic fraternity of the all-male priesthood, and femininity in the fruitful virginity of Our Blessed Mother. Below you will find links to our video series dedicated to these forms of communio. Another permanent link to these videos can be found at the top right sidebar of Anthropology of Accord.

The Apostolic Fraternity of the All-Male Priesthood

Marian Femininity Video Series

Monday, February 27, 2017

MAPS ON MONDAY: An Outline of AOA Maps

 II. The Middle East
  1. The Spread of Islam to AD 750
  2. The Sunni Arab States
  3. The Sunni Turkic Peoples
  4. Persia and Shia Islam
  5. Twin Threats: Saudi Arabia and Pakistan
  6. The Gulf States
  7. Saudi Arabia
  8. Pakistan
  9. Syria
  10. Nov 2017 Military Control Update of Syria and Iraq
  11. Yemen
  12. Turkey
  13. Iran
  14. Egypt
  15. Jordan
  16. Israel From Joshua to Jesus
  17. Mapping Holy Week in Jerusalem


Saturday, February 25, 2017

Religion and Geopolitics Review: Saturday, February 25

by Dr. David Pence and A. Joseph Lynch


I. WEEKLY BRIEF 

The Daily Alert is a newsletter of selected articles from a Dore Gold led Institute for Israeli Security in Jerusalem  compiled for the heads of American Jewish organizations.  The Feb 20 Alert had these three articles: Sec of Defense Mattis visited Israel and agrees Iran, Iran, and Iran are the three biggest problems in the Mideast. A second article applauded the de facto Saudi-Israel alliance against Iran. A third article quoted favorably the Saudi foreign minister depicting Iran as the regions "greatest state sponsor of terror." The war drums are beating against Iran. This is when we need a Democratic Party leader or educated journalists to make a counter argument. The strong military character of Mr. Trump’s top men bring their own hostility to the Iranian worldview. Mr. Trump continues to surround himself with strong patriots and clear thinkers with his pick of HR McMaster as national security advisor. He is not Condi or Susan Rice. And yet the war drums beat against Iran which had nothing to do with the 911 attack against our soil. Iran is fighting our true enemy- ISIS. Iran has been the one country in the region to support  the fledging Shiite country our men died to liberate-Iraq. Israel is a US ally and we do not favor cutting a new hostile state out of her side.  But Americans must come to grips with a central disturbing  fact about present Israeli foreign policy. They have clearly said Iraq and Afghanistan are their enemies. There are times when Israel's foreign policy and our foreign policy are at cross purposes. When that happens, let us put America First.


II. POPE FRANCIS AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

MICHAEL NOVAK (1933-2017) RIP: The last words Michael Novak shared with visitors during his last week were "God loves you and you must love one another; and that is all that matters." That is how Robert Royal begins his moving tribute to the great Catholic intellectual who made the journey from Kennedy Catholic to Reagan Republican to JPII Catholic and brought hosts of clerics and academics with him. His Spirit of Democratic Capitalism was especially influential. Let us pray that the writers at Catholic Thing who have written beautiful tributes will hear their old friend one more time. Another insightful tribute is from the dynamic public Christian writer Paul Kengor who was asked by Novak to write his biography. Novak gave Catholics who cared about civil rights and poor people a new path to fight the good fight without forfeiting our souls to the sexual left. If there is any comparable writer today who builds deeper agreements because he keeps his eyes on God, that might be Paul Kengor. See our review of his unique understanding of Ronald Reagan and the end of the Cold War.

THE BIRTH OF LIBERATION THEOLOGYTwo part series by Olavo de Carvalho. The key in Brazil were the ecclesial base communities not as loci of worship but as the new base of a political party. On their way to power, Jesus didn’t come with.


III. ISLAM AND THE MIDDLE EAST

CARDINAL BURKE ON ISLAM: From an article by Carl Olsen at Catholic World Report:
The key point, he said, is "I don't believe it's true that we worship the same God, because the God of Islam is a governor; in other words, fundamentally, Islam is sharia ... and that law, which comes through Allah, must dominate every man eventually." This law is not founded on love, he added, even if individual Muslims are gentle and kind people. The essential drive in Islam is to govern and control the world, whereas in Christianity, relying on right reason and sound metaphysics and true faith, "we make our contribution to society," mindful that the Church is not intent on governing and controlling the world. Relativism is a key problem, said Cardinal Burke, because it undermines respect for the truth. Too often there are general statements—"We all believe in the same God" being very common—but "this is not helpful" and if it is not addressed, "it will be the end of Christianity". Most people do not realize, he added, that there is not a natural law tradition in Islam, nor do Muslims understand conscience as Christians do.
This is Burke at his pandering worse. By his reasoning we must also say the  Jews and  Calvinists are not worshipping the same God and don't think twice about the Mormons. . His pronouncement is certainly not the position of the Vatican Council or any of the popes of the last century. Neither does he speak for the frontline  Mideast or South Asian Christians who have learned to distinguish between neighbors and murderers. And his over intellectualized argument that Christianity is about metaphysics and right reason instead of governing the world will strike all of us who pray the Our Father or know the third luminous mystery as alien indeed.
 His depiction of Islam as non-monotheistic is the position of two leading figures who expose the many sins of Muslim jihadists to a large swath of conservative Catholics. They are the Catholic writer William Kilpatrick and Front Page’s prolific, well informed, but  quite hateful Robert Spencer. Here is our review of Kilpatrick's excellent but flawed book on Islam, Atheism, and Christianity. Spencer puts out a very informative though invective laden daily Jihad Report. Spencer is upset with President Trump's new NSA General H.R. McMaster because McMaster has always argued Islam is not the enemy. He says the enemy is non Islamic-- a sect inside Islam who must be isolated and destroyed. Remember the genius of the "surge" was to organize Sunni tribesmen as the "Sons of Iraq" to expel the Sunni jihadists. Those Muslims did not fight as "moderates."  They fought against a demonic cult harming their country and their religion.
The  Christian objective in this war is to join those Muslims who truly want to pray and submit to the will of God but do not see God’s will as killing all Shia, nationalist Sunnis, Jews and Christians. That is how the salafist Sunnis of ISIS and the Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia define their religion and their enemies. In a religious war one needs to isolate one’s enemy -- not over-define him so he becomes the representative of a much larger group he can hide within.  Robert Spencer and William Kirkpatrick   are not the best alternatives to the "Islam has nothing to do with it" crowd. Cardinal Burke is no hero to those who want to clean the Catholic priesthood of its emasculating homosexual culture, and he is no general in defining the battlefield against the demonic Wahhabi Salafists who are waging worldwide war against God’s people. He distracts us from the proper battle lines in the shooting war and undermines our Holy Father in the spiritual contest.

THE WRONG ALLIANCE IN THE MIDEAST: The wrong Arab alliance. This article advocates a strategy which involves ditching the 9-11 families and their pending legal actions against the Saudis. Three Mideast strategies are emerging. 1) The McCain-Rubio-Lindsey Graham strategy of fighting everyone everywhere except Saudi Arabia (Surround Russia, China and Iran as major regional threats). 2) The Saudi-Israeli strategy of fighting Iran and all Shiite military groups starting with the Houthis of Yemen for Saudi Arabia and Hezbollah of Lebanon for Israel. 3) The Russian strategy of allying with Shia Iran, Iraq and Syrian governments against ISIS and the jihadist rebel groups destabilizing Syria. Eventually there must be a degradation of the Salafist manipulation of Islam through the Saudi role as guardians of the holy cities. No one of course states openly that final necessary decapitation of the head of the viper.  Russia and Syria  would  ally with Egypt as a major Sunni Arab ally and continue the alliance with China who relates to both Syria and Iran. The grand strategy of Putin  would be to win the US, Israel and Europeans to this alliance. A major French candidate concurs.

SAUDI-ISRAEL DE FACTO ALLIANCE AGAINST IRAN: Reuters catches up with the news.

THE DIVIDE AMONG THE SUNNIS: Terrific PDF analysis by S. Helfont of PRI.

FIVE YEARS AFTER 9/11, A 'NYTIMES' REPORTER ASKED COUNTERTERRORISM OFFICIALS ABOUT THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SUNNI AND SHIA: It wasn’t pretty. This year that divide remains. We also should ask if they know a Wahhabi from the Muslim Brotherhood from a Sufi from a "standard" Sunni. This is not playing gotcha. If we don’t want to fight all of Islam, and we think we are fighting some subset of Muslims who we have to vet out, then these are differences that matter.


IV. R&G SATURDAY ROUND UP

THE ROLE OF WILLIAM BUCKLEYExcellent review by John Coyne. In 1985, at 'National Review’s' 30th anniversary party, President Reagan would put it this way: "You and I remember a time of the forest primeval, a time when nightmare and danger reigned and only the knights of darkness prevailed; when conservatives seemed without a champion. And then, suddenly riding up through the lists, came our clipboard-bearing Galahad: ready to take on any challengers in the critical battle of point and counterpoint. And with grace and humor and passion, to raise a standard to which patriots and lovers of freedom could repair."

RUSSIAN SOUL AND BROTHERHOOD BY GOGOL: Kerry Bolton writes at FPI:
"The Cossack brotherhood is portrayed by Gogol as the formative process in the building up of the Russian people. This process is not one of biology but of spirit, even transcending the family bond. Spengler treated the matter of race as that of soul rather than of zoology. To Spengler, landscape was crucial in determining what becomes ‘race’, and the duration of families grouped in a particular landscape—including nomads who have a defined range of wandering—form ‘a character of duration’, which was Spengler’s definition of ‘race’. Gogol describes this ‘race’ forming process among the Russians. So far from being an aggressive race nationalism it is an expanding mystic brotherhood under God: The father loves his children, the mother loves her children, the children love their father and mother; but this is not like that, brothers. The wild beast also loves its young. But a man can be related only by similarity of mind and not of blood. There have been brotherhoods in other lands, but never any such brotherhoods as on our Russian soil.[18]
MANNERS AND THE MANFr. Rutler column.

MILO YIANNOPOULOS - IT'S COMPLICATED: This flagrantly open homosexual is a sworn enemy to all things politically correct and was the target of the student/anarchist violence at Berkeley that shut down his talk in Feb 2017. He is British, Catholic, and an editor at Breitbart News. A video of a talk he gave in the past has surfaced showing his views on teenage-adult homosexual sex. His views are utterly conventional in the male homosexual world but seldom spoken. He hates pedophilia and has exposed pedophiles several times. He thinks the age of consent in Britain (16) is "about right." However he says that he was fully able to consent much younger than that and then went on to defend the general homosexual experience of younger adolescents learning to accept their homosexuality by "relating" to older males who understand them "better than their parents." Anyone who has dealt with the huge homosexual subculture in the Catholic priesthood is quite familiar with this line of argument. The red herring in the priest scandal was pedophilia (sex with prepubescent children) which was rare and is often despised by male homosexuals. The overwhelming majority of abusive sexual contact was with adolescent males and was a direct consequence of the lavender seminaries in the 70s and 80s which favored homosexuals over more masculine young men as future priests (See Goodbye Good Men). The homosexuality at the heart of the continued corruption of the American and European Catholic priesthood has still not been addressed. The brilliant, often quite pathetic, Mr. Yiannopoulos was introduced to the craft by a Catholic priest. Let’s hope Milo isn’t the only one outed in this sordid mess we call urban gay culture in the modern west. Homosexual Catholic priests, the sexual left, the urban Democratic party, feminist careerists, and predator rich homosexual males are all major players in the American drama which cry out for a new Tom Wolfe. Here is a University of Chicago professor of medieval studies explaining  Milo the free speech agitator. Here is her much more colloquial (some very bad words appear) take on the pedophilia adolescent controversy. This is vulgar but she gets closer to the heart of things here than anything I have read. [A footnote about consent. In Catholic thinking, at the age of reason (about 7) a person can give consent to all sorts of good and bad acts. Confession is introduced in second grade. Consent for the life long covenant of marriage might be at 16. Consent for sodomy is not even a concept. This is why equating incest and sodomy to the marriage act leads to such bizarre conversations about traditional concepts like age of consent. One of the purposes of anti sodomy laws was to eliminate questions of consent as a defense. ]

Friday, February 24, 2017

AOA Book Reviews

I. American Politics and Presidents
1    George Washington by Flexner
2    Washington’s Pivotal Year by McCullough
3    John Quincy Adams
4    Alexander Hamilton
5    Harry Truman
6    LBJ and McCarthy by Caro
7    LBJ by Caro
8    God and Ronald Reagan by Kengor
9    Nelson Rockefeller
10  Norman Borlaug, Slayer of Famine
11  Samuel Morse
12  Robert Moses
13  Battle of New Orleans (Jan 8)
14  Catton and Appomattox
15  Ridgeway and Korea
16  Christopher Columbus
17  Bonds of Affection
18  Stone of Hope: Prophecy and Civil Rights
19  Harry Jaffa
20  Republicanism vs. Monarchy Foreign Policy in Civil War
21  Taking Land: Kelo and Eminent Domain
22  Jason Riley, Black Conservative
23  Dinesh D’Souza 9/11 and the Cultural Left
         24 Robert Nisbet: In Quest for Community

II. American Religion
1  Whitefield and Asbury: American Evangelists
2  Calvin and Geneva: Light for the City

III. American Culture, Literature, and Art
1    Moby Dick
2    Uncle Tom’s Cabin
3    Huck Finn
4    All the King’s Men
5    The Great American Novel: Our Picks
6    Our Town: A Sneaky Little Play
7    Shopcraft as Soulcraft
8    The Wright Brothers
9    Lewis and Clark
10  Five Painters of Early America
11  Lombardi
12  Phillip Rief and the Jew of Culture
13  Phillip Rief and Charisma - the Great “No”
14  Tom Wolfe – Back to Blood
          15 Captains Courageous: Esolen and Rudyard Kipling
       
          16 Flannery O'Connor-one wise country gal


 IV. Men and Nations
1    Deng Xiaoping 
2    Surviving China’s Red Guards 
3    Rethinking Chiang Kai-Shek
4    Lee Kuan Yew Interviews
5    Japan - The First Modern Asian Nation
6    The Collapse of Saigon
7    How the Central Powers Saw WWI
8    Armenia: The Calvary of the First Christian Nation
9    Yemen with Gregory Johnsen
10  Saudi Kingdom and Jihad
11  Spiritual Ignorance: Ignoring the Saudis
12 Pakistan: Five Books  
13  Afghanistan: Charlie Wilson’s War 
14  Iran
15  US and Israel by Oren
16  Christianity, Islam, and Atheism
17  Seeing Africa
18  Let Russia be Russia
19  Stalingrad
20  Spain and Empire
21  Bolivar
22  Napoleon
          23 Japan's Holy War 
          24 A Short History of England by GK Chesterton
          25 Oliver O'Donovan: The Desire of the Nations
          26 Adrian Hastings. The Construction of Nationhood: Ethnicity, Religion and Nationalism.
          27 Hitler's Religion by Weikart and AOA the Armed Darwin

V. Catholicism
1  Pope Francis: The Great Reformer
2  Archbishop Gomez: Nation, Citizen, Immigrant
3  Archbishop Ireland: Two Fisted Irish
4  God or Nothing: Cardinal Sara
5  Von Hildebrand’s Defense of Purity
6  Aquinas on Emotions
7  Padre Pio
8  Charles Peguy
          9 Augusto Del Noce The Age of Secularization 
         10 The Church and the Culture War: Joyce Little on Sacred Order and Sexual Anarchy 
          11 Who Decided the Books of the Bible?


VI. Christianity
1  Dawson: Movement of World Revolution
2  Dawson: Judgment of Nations
3  Alexander Schmemann and Liturgical Theology
4  Grassroots Asian Theology - Chan

VII. Christian Literature
1  Silence by Endo 
2  Everlasting Man by Chesterton
3  Graham Greene and the Whiskey Priest
4  A Jesuit in Soviet Prison
5  Brideshead Revisited
6  Auden on Lord of the Rings
7  Hopkins on Christ the King
8  Dante
9  Mark Twain on Joan of Arc
          10 The Heliand: The Saxon Gospel

VIII. Russian Literature
1  Solzhenitsyn
2  Tolstoy and Anna Karenina I
3  Tolstoy and Anna Karenina II
4  Dr. Zhivago
5  Crime and Punishment I
6  Crime and Punishment II
7  Russian Composer Shostakovich

IX. Literature and Art
1  Arthur Conan Doyle and Medieval Chivalry
2  Recessional by Kipling
3  Dr. Johnson
4  Bleak House by Dickens
5  Roethke: Poetry Alive
6  A Torah Teacher is Gathered to the Fathers

X. Philosophy and Science
1  Remi Brague on the Structure of World and Man
2  Aristotle’s Children

                                                          XI. Books with Blonigen    
          
           1  Reviewing the Reformation: Five New Books
           2  You are a Priest Forever: Four Recent Books
           3 The Heroic Quest of Jordan Peterson: 12 Rules for Life
           4 Why Liberalism Failed? Patrick Deneen 
           5 From 1947& 2017: Books on Catholicism by Henri de Lubac S.J and Thomas White OP
           6 How God Became King by N. T.  Wright.

Friday BookReview: Archbishop Ireland and "the days of the two-fisted Irish clergy"


[first published October 17, 2014]






Years ago I read this superb biography of John Ireland (who died about a month before the end of the First World War). He was the leader of the Catholic Church in Saint Paul, Minnesota; close friend of railroad tycoon James J. Hill and of Teddy Roosevelt; and church builder extraordinaire.

The book was written by Father O'Connell, a priest of our archdiocese, who taught for many years at Notre Dame.


To begin to understand Saint Paul's first archbishop, it helps to view him against the backdrop of "Dagger John" Hughes -- the first archbishop of New York City.

                                     
                                                     

From 'National Review' magazine:
In 1844, faced with a Nativist threat to burn down St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral (at Prince and Mott streets), John J. Hughes, the Irish-born bishop (and later first archbishop) of New York, gathered several thousand of his mostly Irish parishioners and deployed them around the church. Any attack on the cathedral, warned the man known as “Dagger John,” would be repulsed with force. The Nativists backed down. 
During the Civil War, Hughes undertook a secret mission to Europe at the personal request of Abraham Lincoln, to rally support for the Union cause and keep Britain from entering the war on the side of the Confederacy. This he did in part by explaining the facts of life to the English: that they’d have no luck in raising troops in restive, famine-stricken Ireland to fight against America, and a great deal of trouble if they tried. 
Those were the days of the two-fisted Irish clergy, who understood their dual American roles as both the spiritual leaders of their people and — when necessary — political figures as well. 


Archbishop Hughes died in 1864. During the previous year, John Ireland finished his stint as Civil War chaplain for the Fifth Minnesota Regiment. Here is an excellent review of Ireland’s life by a former bishop, former President of St Thomas--James Shannon.) Here is our July 4 tribute to him recalling his profound speech on the relationship of religion and patriotism. 

(To me, there is a bit of Jimmy Cagney -- the Lower East Side street-fighter -- in both men.)
                                                           



From a profile of Archbishop Ireland by Maria Stella Ceplecha:

"He is best remembered for several achievements: his lifelong crusade for temperance, his early and staunch support for the founding of the Catholic University of America (CUA), his establishment of the St. Paul Diocesan Seminary and the College (now University) of St. Thomas, and the construction of two edifices, the imposing Cathedral of St. Paul and the graceful Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis. The cathedral sits on a bluff overlooking downtown St. Paul and the state capitol building. A long, double boulevard, appropriately called John Ireland Boulevard, stretches down from this spiritual center to the government center. Across the Mississippi River in Minneapolis is the Basilica of St. Mary. The first to be built in the nation, it was almost lost not too many years ago to an ever-encroaching freeway system."

                                           


For a Minnesotan traveling around America, to gaze upon other Catholic cathedrals is to be brought up short -- even in Chicago, the bishop's church strikes one as a glorified sacristy with attached broom closet!

                                     



And some photos of the Basilica of St. Mary:

                     



"Law is order in liberty, and without order liberty is social chaos."   (Archbishop Ireland)


                                  


Thursday, February 23, 2017

Christian Realism: An Outline of the AOA Argument

I. An Introduction to Christian Realism
1  What is Christian Realism in Foreign Policy?
2  What is Realism in Foreign Policy? Social Darwinism Posing as Reality
3  Three Geostrategic Thinkers: Mahan, Mackinder and Spykman
4  Religion, Men, and Nations
          5 The 20th Century: Religious Men and Nations Win their Wars against Racism and Atheism.  Baby boomer Power Couples Wage Their War Against Nature.
               
II. The Thought of Christopher Dawson
1  The religious roots of culture and history
2  Russell Hittinger on Dawson
3  The Judgment of the Nations 
4  European Nations, World Nations: Dawson on the Movement of World Revolutions
 
5  Dawson, Aquinas, and Dante
III. Thinkers on Global Order
1  Samuel Huntington: The Clash of Civilizations and Remaking of World Order
2  Samuel Huntington: Learning from Huntington while teaching him Religion
3  Francis Fukyama: An honest man without God (Part One)
4  Francis Fukyama: An honest man without God (Part Two)
5  Henry Kissinger (TBA)
6  Timothy Snyder: Insights and Blindspots—Learning from Timothy Snyder  
7  Pacem in Terris: Pope John XXIII on Peace and Order  by Russell Hittinger
          8 Earthly Powers and Sacred Causes: Religion and Politics by Michael Burleigh

IV. Thinkers on the Nature of the Polity
1  Christian Realism and Sacral Order: How Sex Roles Protect Life
2  The Emasculation and Fragmentation of Political Thought 
3  American Nation as Brotherhood under God—Beyond Race and Class
4  Catholic Social Thought: Fraternity, and Nations—the Deficit (TBA)
5  Pierre Manent on Nations as Covenants
6  Daniel Mahoney: On Manent, Solzhenitsyn, and DeGaulle
7  Russell Hittinger: Understandingthe Polity in Catholic Thought
8  Kuyper on Holy Nations and Pillarization (TBA)
9  Richard  Neihbur on America, Christian Realism and the Kingdom of God    
10 Adrian Hastings and the Construction of Nationhood: Religion. Language, Ethnicity. 
          11 Fraternity as a Political Category        11a  Renan on the Nation as Spiritual Principal
          12 Oliver O'Donovan, The Desire of the Nations, the Kingship of Christ and Political Authority
          13 Shain on the Myth of American Individualism and the Protestant
                Origin of American Political Thought
          14  Noah and his Sons: Natural Law and the Nations
          15  Hannah Arendt: Public man; Political man; Speaking man from The Human Condition
          16  Pope John Paul II: Memory and Identity on Native Land, Nation and State
          17  Machiavelli and Republicanism: Florence, England, America
          18 The Civic Fruit of the Protestant Reformation: the American Nation as  Christian Republic.
          19 A Short History of England by GK Chesterton
          20 Augustine and the City of God
          21  Robert Nisbet: The Quest for Community
          22  Michael  Novak:  Christian Roots of the American Founding
          23 Thomas Kidd: The God of Liberty. America's Public Religion
          24 American Nationalism is Christian Nationalism

V. The Twentieth Century and the Revolt Against God
1  The Fall of Imperial Britain-from Protestant colonies to the racial empire of  English Speaking Anglo Saxons
2  The Mystical Body of Japan
3  Darwin Armed: Hitler as a Realist    3a Hitler's Religion by Weikart
4  Atheistic Science of Communism: Soviets, Chinese and National Wars of Liberation (TBA)
5  Atheistic Nationalism:  Ataturk and Turkey. Armenian Genocide, Caliph Removed (TBA)
6  Atheistic Feminism: Postwar Europe, America, and Gender Ideology (TBA)

VI. The Return of Religion and the Rise of Nations
1  Fall of the Empires and Rise of Nations (TBA)
2  Religion and Nations in the World Wars (TBA)
3  Religion and Nations in the Fight Against Communism (TBA)
4  The Restoration of Israel (TBA)
5  Noah and the Nations: The Peace of the Rainbow (TBA)
           6  Sacred Order; Sexual Order
           7 Russia Consecrated and the Return to Christ
           8 Biblical Personalism: Beyond Conservative Philosophers and Progressive Liberators

VII. Islam
1  Ibn Khalid and Islamic History (TBA)
2  Islam and the British Empire (TBA)
3  Jihad against the Soviets (TBA)
4  Iran—A Shia Nation (TBA)
5  Salafists and States: Egypt and Indonesia (TBA)
6  Ummah, Caliphate, Ethnicity, and State (TBA)
7  Islam and Orthodox Christians: Living Together (TBA)
8  Muslim, Hindu, Sikh: The Great Partition (TBA)  
9  The Spiritual Nature of ISIS
          10 Mapping the Schools of Islamic law to locate the epicenter of terror 

VIII. Christianity
1  The Biblical Narrative of Fatherhood, Filiation and Fraternity
2  Bonaventure and History
3  Global Christianity and the Nations: The New Christendom
4  Grassroots Asian Theology
5  Finding the Elder Brother in China
          6 Perfecting the Body of Christ: Missionary Andrew Walls on the recurrent renewal of the
                                 Church from the periphery and NT Wright on the Kingdom and the Pleroma.
          7 The Heliand: The Saxon Gospel
          8 Orthodoxy Renewed: Learning from Fr. Alexander Schmemann

IX. Christian Movements for World Order in the 20th Century
1  The World Council of Churches (TBA)
2  The Spirit in the 20th Century: Pentecostalism, the Civil Rights Movement  and the Second Vatican Council 
3  Four Christian Americans: Woodrow Wilson, FDR, John Foster Dulles, JFK (TBA)
4  The Return of Christian Russia and Lev Gumilev
          5  Billy Graham and Global Christianity

X. The Failure of the West as a Common Cause
1  America’s Strategic Dilemma: Religious Nations against the Atheist West
2  Plato to NATO: Christianity and Civilization Not the West against the Rest 
          3 Capitalism, Democracy, Communism, Feminism: Four Faces of a Godless West.

XI. Applying Christian Realism
1  Rethinking Allies and Enemies
2  The Mideast: Isolating the Demonic Jihadists of Wahhabi Salafism
          2a A nationalist policy in the Mideast

3  Protecting Christians Globally
4  Awakening the Latin Church of South America (TBA)
5  European Nations of the East: An interview with Peter Rieth
          5a To Protect Europe, Build a Fraternity of Armed Nations 
6  A New Paradigm for China 
7 The Russian Soul: Europe, Asia and Lev Gumilev 
          7a The Krushchev Speech that Shook the Communist Tyrants  
8 Bandwagon with dominant regional powers.  Reject balancing policy of  "the three  encirclements".   A nationalist foreign policy that respects the civilizational nations
          9 Buddhism, Muslims and Myanmar
          10 Asia and the Revival of the Nations
          11 Notes on Africa: The religious fault line; many tribes, few nations; Francophones and
                                           linguistic identity. The Leader, the Law, and the Land.
          12 The Restoration of Sexual Order in Political Life: Fraternity as Foreign Policy
          13 A Fellowship of Christian Nations and the Symphony of Civilizations
          14 A Pictorial Depiction of the Culture of Life vs the Cult of Death 
          15 Understanding the 20th Century: Religion, Men, Nations and the Baby Boomers
          16 The Intelligence Failure Compounded: Same officials who ignored the Saudi role in
                                                    9/11/2001 fabricated the role of Russians in the 2016 election

Christianity and American Foreign Policy: Five Book Reviews 
1  Sword of Faith, Shield of the Spirit (TBA)
2  Redeemer Nation (TBA)
3  America’s God (TBA)
4  Promised Land, Crusader State (TBA)
5  Special Providence: American Foreign Policy (TBA)

Anthropology of Accord has more articles on Christian Realism not outlined above. To browse and read all of our articles on Christian Realism, please follow this link: AOA on Christian Realism.

Christian Realism and Sacral Order: How Sex Roles Protect Life

                                                       
by Dr. David Pence  
                  

When 42-year-old Omar Gonzalez ran across the White House lawn on September 19, 2014, he entered the front door and overpowered the female guard on duty. He, then, was able to penetrate deep into the mansion before a man tackled him and stopped the intrusion. We don’t know all the details, but the fact that the vanquished guard was female was soon removed from the stories of major newspapers. Anonymous White House spokespersons said her gender was irrelevant. The first-ever female head of Secret Service who resigned last week got her promotion the old-fashioned way -- when a sex scandal removed a host of men from the service and she was selected to give the agency "credibility." Was her failure to protect, and the female watchman’s lapse, a quirk of fate or the fitting fruit of our age?

The same God who endowed humans with the gift of life has also hard-wired our social nature to protect life in the face of danger and evil. The God of Nature and History knew there were both evil spirits and natural dangers. So, in fashioning humans, He imprinted us with the ability to form bonds of love and protection. He made motherhood and he made male protective groups. Males form protective groups to act in a contested world of foes. Our national love of pro football is an emotional testimony to this historical reality -- even during the silly weeks of the season when the warriors are forced to wear pink.

The great generational error of American public life has been the banishing of God as the primal social glue of the nation, and the deliberate inversion of the sexual protective order. Like many American errors, this started with an excess of good intentions and ended with a tyranny of thought-control enforced with a maze of regulations. We thought by banishing God we were respecting the religious liberty of the atheist; and by banishing sexual differences we were completing the civil rights movement, this time for the "sexually oppressed."

But the American order which set men free for the highest of loves has been perverted. The God we are meant to serve has been banished from places of public honor. His name is everywhere taken in vain. Public thanks to God -- the most natural and human of all activities -- has been outlawed as coercion of atheist bystanders.  The liberty of publics to acknowledge the Living Presence of God -- a shared practice that distinguishes us from chimps -- has been sacrificed to an autonomous individual who will not honor God when others do.

When men lose their sense of the sacred Other, we soon lose our general ability to make fundamental distinctions -- most notably the sacred differences between men and women. A man who has lost his awe of God will be baffled by covering the female as a religious sign of purity and the interior life. To paraphrase Saint Paul to the Romans: when men substitute their wisdom for God’s, then men will become so disoriented as to lie with men as though they were women. Our sexual confusion was preceded by our loss of the Sacred. It further turns out that sexual confusion is very dangerous. Or as my daddy used to say, "When men lose their headship to the tribe’s women, they will eventually lose their heads to another tribe’s men."

Different tasks require different kinds of communal association. Breast-feeding calls for a mother and child; procreation, a husband and wife; and social protection is best done by a male group, often a very large group. Men excel at forming large groups because brotherhood is fed by task completion, not by intimacy. To safeguard a culture of life, we must rebuild a culture of protection. We do that by honoring motherhood, and reconstructing the multicolored masculine brotherhood of American men. Consider these three arenas where the masculine bond is the missing answer to social breakdown.

       1) City fathers could calm the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, by welcoming the young men there to share in the common protective duty of male citizens as the proper entry to American manhood and social identity.
       2) Men socializing together strictly as men and fellow citizens across party lines in the House and Senate could restore the legislative branch of government.  A crayola-painted “No girls allowed” sign might remind us all that our forefathers were not unevolved bigots waiting for the enlightenment of the 1960s.  They were American brothers and fellow citizens who engaged in the high masculine calling of political statesmanship.
       3) At every level of our military, police, and protective forces the reinstitution of masculine groups under a male leader must be allowed to form as the most effective and natural fighting force in human history. When Christ set out to dethrone Satan, he didn’t form a power couple with Mary Magdalene. He picked twelve men and named Peter their head.
                                                 

When American men were integrated across the color line in our military and sports cultures, both baseball and the Army got stronger. We improved in fighting and competing. We bettered ourselves by acting (in the words of Scripture) "as one man." The ideologically enforced elevation of females in male political, protective, and religious roles has had the opposite effect. The dissipation of our State Department, the emasculation of our military service academies, and the collapse of the White House security detail have exposed the folly of the experiment that substituted female careerists for statesmen and warriors. This masquerade party is not a continuation of the black civil rights movement, but its betrayal by the self-absorbed preening of spoiled white girls.

This forty years of wandering in the desert has been the work of both parties as power couples of the political elite and the careerism of their daughters has replaced the masculine group rituals for establishing hierarchy and excellence to lead the male group.  American men fought for “equality among men” so our political hierarchy would be based on merit and character. The cultural and legal assault on male groups has especially deprived us of the oldest political form -- the male orator calling the men of the polis or tribe into fraternal unity. The destruction of all-male institutions, from Rotary Clubs to the service academies to combat forces, has been a bipartisan blood sport only matched by the fervor of feminist English departments in abolishing the representative male pronoun.

Within a decade of the presidential election between Democrat Bill Clinton and Republican Bob Dole, each of their wives was elected as a senator in  a state controlled by their party cliques. Republican careerists battle Democrat careerists, and they besmirch the honorable masculine craft of fraternal civic life by christening their self-seeking as "politics." If a man today spoke in the manner of Washington, Jackson, Lincoln, and Kennedy -- as men across party lines to "my fellow countrymen" -- what shrieks we would hear. Would we rejoice that a leader is evoking the public fraternity always needed in times of crisis? Or would someone shout "patriarchy, old boys club, male privilege," and send the man stuttering and stammering looking for a female running mate.

The American spiritual movement for interracial brotherhood under God can calm our streets at home and pacify the periphery abroad.  Shared duty binds the men of our country as brothers. Together as older men and younger, black, brown, and white -- we can solve the spiritual, intellectual, and physical problems of our beloved country.

Let us pray for our President who now, more than ever, needs his brothers to help him fulfill the duties of his office. Let us respect his office and so honor our forefathers and the flag that makes us one. Let us be spiritually renewed by conforming ourselves to God’s will and shutting our ears to the Father of Lies. That old trickster condemns the Christian forms of love: male brotherhoods and male/female marriages. That "murderer from the beginning" has perverted the natural force for love and protection of maternity into the most hideous form of domestic violence (abortion). He has desecrated brotherhood with a celebration of incest, and shames men who condemn these abominations as bigots.

Like the men of Israel, let the men of our land repent our many sins and let our voices stutter no more. In the words of the spiritual:

                             Rise up, O men of God!
                             The kingdom tarries long.
                             Bring in the day of brotherhood
                             And end the night of wrong.

Wednesday, February 22, 2017

Masculine Anthropology and Reform of the Catholic Priesthood

I. THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF MALE COMMUNION: FATHERHOOD, FILIATION AND FRATERNITY
1  Catholic Sociobiology, Patriarchal Fraternity and the Original Mission of Adam
2  Men Have Different Vocations than Angels
3  Noah and His Sons: Natural Law and the Rainbow
4  The Original Mission of Adam
5  Adam's Sin Disrupted Male Agreement

II. THE APOSTOLIC PRIESTHOOD AS THE SACRAMENT OF ORDERED MASCULINE COMMUNION AND A MODEL TO THE NATIONS
1  Consecrating Masculine Fraternity: The Formalized Covenant of Circumcision.
2  Solemnity of Sts. Peter and Paul: What is an Apostolic Church?
3  Africans and Anglicans: A Catholic Anthropology of the Priesthood
4  Bonds of Brotherhood and the All-Male Clergy
5  Catholic Sociobiology: Audio-Video of Talk on the All-Male Priesthood
6  Catholic Sociobiology: Audio-Video of Talk on Marian Femininity
7  The Obedience of the Beloved Son. The Restoration of Authority and Brotherhood in Scripture: Fatherhood, Filiation and Fraternity 
          8  You are a Priest Forever: Four Books Reviewed by Blonigen
          9 The Apostolic Priesthood: An Icon of the Trinity; A Template for the Nations.


III. REFORMING THE CATHOLIC PRIESTHOOD
  1. Holy Thursday: The perennial mandate to cleanse the priesthood by the washing of their feet
  2. Ash Wednesday: A real Lent for the predators and their protectors: Inquisitions and  Penitentiaries
  3. Protecting Our Lady by Punishing Judas
  4. The Sacred and the Taboo: One lesson from the Bishops’ Synod on the Family was the perverse confusion about fraternal love among several European bishops
  5. THE ACT ITSELF should separate the man from the Priesthood and render him incapable of offering the Sacrifice of the Mass
  6. The Necessity of Punishment by Ecclesial and Civil Rulers. Capital punishment and the Rite of Degrading a Bishop
  7. Beware the psychological homosexuals in the conservative orthodox movement. No lay commissions should interrupt the chain of command in the Apostolic fraternity of Holy Orders. Do not discuss this at Sunday homilies in front of children
  8. Cardinal Wuerl and Cardinal Burke; The Two Faces of Fatherhood Betrayed
  9. The Pope's Magnificat: Prayer and Fasting to prepare for Exorcism
  10. A Strategy for Reform  August, 2018
  11. Between the American Bishops' Meeting Nov 2018 and the Bishops' Retreat January 2019
  12. A Doctor's Prescription: Keep the Lady Alive. Kill the Malignancy
  13. The Murder of Dan O'Connell and the Cleansing of the Catholic Priesthood

Under the Apostolic Priesthood category, there are several short critiques of the Chicago, Kansas City, and Philadelphia scandals. Names are used. Here is a more extensive PDF report on the subversion of the priesthood in the Archdiocese of Minneapolis-St Paul.

The mysteries of the JESUS PRAYER


A fine blog to check out: Eastern Christian Books. It is run by Adam DeVille who teaches at the University of Saint Francis in Indiana.

Several years ago, he interviewed Orthodox priest John McGuckin (pictured).


One of the things Father mentions is the movie project he helped with -- traveling to assorted Christian monasteries around the world, gathering insights from holy men of God about recovering the love of prayer.

Here are 30 minutes of excerpts from that film.



Tuesday, February 21, 2017

Catholic Sociobiology: The Idea of the Holy


by David Pence


Rudolph Otto (1869-1937) was the Chairman of Theology at Marburg University in Germany. The Lutheran theologian’s book Das Heilige (1917) has never gone out of print, and has been translated in over 15 languages. It influenced both Karl Barth and Mircea Eliade. Otto’s unique depiction of the Divine was triggered by his 1910-1911 trip to the East when he visited North Africa, Egypt, Palestine, India, China, and Japan. After that (says his friend and English translator, John Harvey) he would see Christianity always in terms of humanity and as a culmination of the world religions more than a truth to be upheld against the arrogance of Western science. He set aside his argument with the materialists and took up a broader conversation with men trying to know God. He thought his earlier work was important, but now he had become a global Christian not a disputant in the quarrels of the West. In his introduction to the 1923 English translation he wrote, "I spent many years of study upon the rational aspect of that Supreme Reality we call God and the results of my work are contained in my books (e.g. Naturalism and Religion, 1907). I feel no one ought to concern himself with the ‘Numen ineffable’ who has not already devoted assiduous and serious study to the ‘Ratio aeterna.’"

Otto objected to reducing God to a set of ethics or a universal morality of humanity. Something fundamental to religion was missing in such projects. He defined this as "Holiness -- the holy -- is a category of interpretation and valuation peculiar to the sphere of religion." He had taught comparative religion enough to know that such studies often lead to a subjectifying of religion. It was no longer the divine that was being studied, but men and their many ways of mistaking psychological experiences for an encounter with God. Such a book was written by American psychologist-philosopher William James: The Variety of Religious Experiences (1902).

Rudolph Otto wrote a very different book. He set out to explain certain characteristics of the Holy -- of the mysterium tremendum et fascinans.  He has several important things to say about the human soul and man’s capacity for the holy, but first he described what was outside of man. He tried to isolate the particular element of the holy that is beyond absolute goodness or ethical perfection.
"Our inquiry into that element which is separate and peculiar to the holy… minus its moral factor… minus its rational factor all together. By means of a special term we shall keep the meaning apart and distinct -- beyond the meaning of goodness. For this purpose I adopt a word coined from the Latin 'numen.' Omen has given us ominous and there is no reason why from the word numen we should not similarly form a word numinous."
                           

He proposed studying the external fact of the numinous as well as the numinous state of mind, but it is contrary to his project to identify the object with the one who perceives it. We can talk about listening and appreciating music but that would never give us permission to discard the orchestra. This is always a problem in talking religion with the modernists who reduce the conversation to the faith of believers, which starts as psychology and ends in pathology. The modern must reduce the experience of the numinous to a state of mind or desire or deficiency on the part of the believer without paying any heed to the reality of the spiritual being encountered. Otto is not trying to convince moderns of God’s presence. He is helping those around the world and through history who have reported their encounters by introducing a vocabulary -- the numinous, the mysterium tremendum et fascinans. In the early chapters he even requests "those who cannot call to mind a moment of deeply felt religious experience to read no farther." He will not trouble the blind with lectures on color. Otto also insists for his reader that we will understand better the Holy, and man’s capacity for the Holy, if we focus on what is unique in religious experience. To be rapt in worship is one thing. To be morally uplifted by the contemplation of a good deed really is something else.

Mysterium tremendum et fascinans.

Otto’s book is 200 pages long and there are a full twenty pages describing these three words. It is worth it to read them.

Mysterious has to do with total otherness. It invites reflection, if not comprehension.

Tremendum is the terribleness inciting wonder, awe, and fear. Something can be so terribly potent that it would be fatal to even innocently touch it -- like the man struck dead after steadying the ark. There are constant warnings in the Old Testament that if one would see G-d face to face, he would not live. When we are confronted by this reality of tremendum we know. We fall to our knees, not to embrace but worship while shielding our eyes. The tremendum is the fear of the Lord. Sensing that one is in the presence of such a power, there is an "inner shudder."
 
Fascinans: "Love, mercy, pity, comfort, religious bliss and even a strange ravishment, rising often to dizzying intoxication; the Dionysiac element of the numinous."

"These two qualities, the daunting and the fascinating, combine in a strange harmony of contrasts… that from the daemonic dread onwards is at once the strangest and most noteworthy phenomenon in the whole history of religion...The creature cowed and cast down… and yet it allures with a potent charm."

The Holy, says Otto, is 'a priori.' We do not have fathers and project the fatherhood of God. We are not afraid of a snake and then fear the devil. Both the Holy and our ability to perceive the Holy are a priori to other experiences. Experiences are often analogous, but the soul has an eye of its own. A capacity for the divine is a defining characteristic of the human soul. Our three numinous faculties (the intellect, the will, and the heart) let us know, choose, and desire not just physical objects but the spiritual realities. These faculties "issue from the deepest foundation of cognitive apprehension that the soul possesses."

Professor Otto died just as his country was being drawn into a mysterium tremendum et fascinans which most certainly was not holy. It was, however, another kind of proof that what he wrote about was closer to reality than the stunted world of rationalists and empiricists who understood neither the racial movement of the Nazis nor the spiritual depths of religion.

Numen:  a divine presence over a thing;  (derived from a nod, as if the Divine Presence is a gesture from God nodding to us.)    Encounter Him in the Jesus Prayer.