House of Eratosthenes

Nobody owes anybody an apology just for being. That point’s non-negotiable. If this really is the Successor to Saint Peter talking, you can no longer be a member of that church and call yourself an American.

Read the first comment Morgan.
- tim | 12/16/2009 @ 08:23
Yeah, pretty priceless.
- mkfreeberg | 12/16/2009 @ 08:35
Catholic leadership at all levels has moved hard left. Look at the cardinals, bishops and priests that encourage illegal immigration by giving sanctuary and other assistance to illegals. Notice the deafening silence as lay-Catholics apathetically accept the sweeping changes.
- franklaughter | 12/16/2009 @ 09:58
I wasn’t aware that American citizenship was legally or ethically incompatible with reducing consumption levels and improving efficiency — when did it become un-American to call for people to be less wasteful? If anything, improving efficiency is the unique American talent.

Nobody owes anybody any apology for being, but when somebody brings donuts into the office and one person eats half of them before the other nineteen people get a chance at any of them, I’d say that crosses the dickishness line. (Especially if the glutton in question insists on his right to do so with some callous variation of, “Sorry, everyone, you snooze you lose,” and happens to be a 300-lb. ex-Marine to boot.)
- Stephen J. | 12/16/2009 @ 13:40
Also thought it was worth quoting from R.S. McCain’s comment page:

Don’t rely on the Guardian for papal coverage. They glossed over this huge caveat:

“On the other hand, a correct understanding of the relationship between man and the environment will not end by absolutizing nature or by considering it more important than the human person. If the Church’s magisterium expresses grave misgivings about notions of the environment inspired by ecocentrism and biocentrism, it is because such notions eliminate the difference of identity and worth between the human person and other living things. In the name of a supposedly egalitarian vision of the ‘dignity’ of all living creatures, such notions end up abolishing the distinctiveness and superior role of human beings. They also open the way to a new pantheism tinged with neo-paganism, which would see the source of man’s salvation in nature alone, understood in purely naturalistic terms.”
- Stephen J. | 12/16/2009 @ 13:46
I wasn’t aware that American citizenship was legally or ethically incompatible with reducing consumption levels and improving efficiency…

It’s not about improving efficiency. Find me someone who’s imploring strangers to live a more monastic “sober” lifestyle, and I’ll find you someone who attends to the most mundane errands on a private jet. It’s the guy imploring, or the guy imploring is in the employ of, or brainwashed, by the guy traveling on the private jet. This is no exception. What they really mean to say is “trim down your daily existence…unless you’re on my inner circle, in which case you’re one of the ‘good’ people, then don’t worry about it.” It is an assault on the decidedly American ideal that we’re all created equal. See here if you need further explanation.

Growing up working-class backwood Scandihoovian, I got an early insight into this treacherous deceit, this “I want people to live less life but I’m going to couch it in terms of being more ‘efficient’.” I’ve long since concluded this: It is sincere — maybe — if the message is one of “Be more efficient in your use of the resources so that you can do more of the good works you do without impoverishing yourself or others.” Failing that, it is exactly what I said it is, a demand for people to live less life, and be apologetic for the life they do live. It is a worship of poverty, and a worship of poverty is a worship of death. To me, that is not what Christianity is all about. Life is a blessing, and if we can only live a certain amount of it to keep it that way, that should be taken as a wake-up call that we’re not living it right. And if we’re only enjoying it when we work at telling the next guy that he needs to be living less of it, that, too, is a wake-up call that we’re not living it right.

You should be doing things, day-to-day, in such a way that if you could somehow do twice as much of it, the world would be better off. Don’t you agree with that?
- mkfreeberg | 12/16/2009 @ 14:27
If we really were heating up the earth in any significant way by our CO2 emissions, that would be one thing.

But it is clear that this theoretical threat has been exaggerated, embellished, and distorted to the point of absurdity, all the while the “scientists” hired to “prove” it have been panicking about why they can’t prove it and why they have to keep pushing the dire prediction further and further into the future as Carbon-ageddon fails to materialize — so they took to lying, suppressing, and covering up.

Me, if I were to pick an organized religion, it would probably be Catholicism. I am biased — I was raised that way, but IMHO it does seem to be the only one that tends to have any kahunas when it comes to morality. I don’t always agree with how some if its leaders have weighed in on certain issues such as this one and some of the wars, but by and large it’s pretty consistent. When you look at the history of its theological teachings (not talking about some of the bad deeds done in its name, but the theology itself) … it covers things like evil pretty well.

We must also keep in mind that what is right for you and me to strive for is different that the role government should play — our system was intended not to coerce, just as God gave us free will and left us free to choose the good path. When one is coerced into doing good, it doesn’t make them good. Good is a choice. Coercion should only come in when there is a clear violation of another’s inalienable rights.
- philmon | 12/16/2009 @ 20:55
Anyone who is sympathetic to the Catholic Church had better skip my post, because you aren’t going to like it.

I’m an evangelical Christian, which is to say a non-denominational Protestant, and I’ve got a lot of problems with what Catholics say, think, and do.

It’s maddening to me, because whenever I go to tell someone about Jesus, often the first thing I have to do is try and undo all the damage done by Catholics and Mormons. I have to talk the person out of all the nonsense and blatantly false ideas put in their heads by those two groups. I also have to sit and listen to the person go on about the misdeeds that those groups have perpetuated down through history. You know the ones I mean. “What about the Crusades? What about the Inquisition? What about all those child-molesting priests? Oh, I’ve got no use for that ‘organized religion’ stuff anyway.” As if there were anything particularly organized about meeting God face to face and having a personal relationship with His Son, which is sort of, oh, I don’t know, THE ENTIRE POINT?

One of the bloggers Morgan linked to a couple of weeks ago wrote, “Christians believe whatever their priest tells them to believe.” This was highly offensive to me and I haven’t been back to his blog since. First of all, once more, I’m an evangelical, so I don’t have a priest. My church is led by ministers, but they’re there only as guides, and I have actually up and left churches – permanently – because I felt that something the minister said wasn’t in harmony with Scripture. A real Christian is always comparing what he hears, to the Bible. And this gets me to my next point.

A lot of secular people seem to think that Christianity = Catholic Church. No more, no less. And so what I’m trying to talk to them about gets swept up with nearly 2,000 years of Catholic misdeeds and false teaching. They don’t seem to be aware of the existence of millions of others who follow Christ, yet find Catholicism to be a counterfeit doctrine. Hello? Have these people never heard of Martin Luther, or for that matter, Henry VIII? No, not the “I have a dream” guy, the sixteenth-century German monk.

I got outraged at Catholics awhile back for some of the same reasons Morgan stated – in that particular case, it was the “stashing illegal immigrants” thing. I guess for these so-called churchmen, skin color is more important than following the laws of your country. Some Christians, eh? I’m disgusted to be even remotely associated with such people.

Hearing that the Catholic Church continues to lean left on social and political issues only increases my sense of irritation with it. Up until now, I thought that it was at least a reliable stalwart on thorny moral issues like abortion. Who am I kidding? A lot of its members have been staunch Democrats for generations.
- cylarz | 12/17/2009 @ 01:20
I won’t even get started on how they always seem to be finding images of the Virgin Mary in a plate of spaghetti or something. These people are as clueless about God as atheists are.
- cylarz | 12/17/2009 @ 01:37
What about the Crusades?

When someone asks that question, it’s obvious that they know dick about history, as the Crusades were defensive wars.
- Physics Geek | 12/17/2009 @ 05:46
Of course, no other religious denomination has ever had child molesters in its ranks, and the only people who have ever seen Jesus in carpet stains have been Catholics, right? Physics Geek is right about the Crusades … they were fought to halt and reverse Islamic aggression that was closing in on Europe from both ends.

Helping illegal immigrants is one thing and Christ would have condoned — sheilding them from deportation is another. I doubt that it is church dogma to break just laws on their behalf. The whole give to Ceasar what is Ceasar’s thing.

American Bishops and priests have done all kinds of things that have been out of step with Rome over the years. Men are imperfect. They fail. Kind of a core teaching, really.

This is really not unlike what the left has done with America. To me, America is the Constitution. The left runs around pointing out all kinds of bad things Americans have done, and even mistakes America has made on the world stage …. bashing, bashing, bashing – but these are generally cases where Americans have stepped outside of what our founding ideals, our dogma — is. The left says it must be “fundamentally transformed”. “It’s out of date.” “Too many bad things have been done in it’s name to keep it around anymore.”

Similarly, the Catholic Church has it’s ideals and dogma, and these have been abused by various members and sub-groups over the years.

Tossing the whole thing, Constitution or Core Dogma because of the sins of some is like throwing the baby out with the bath water.
- philmon | 12/17/2009 @ 06:40
Nobody owes anybody any apology for being, but when somebody brings donuts into the office and one person eats half of them before the other nineteen people get a chance at any of them, I’d say that crosses the dickishness line

And there’s the fundamental difference in the way progressives see the world, and the way we see the world.

To progressives, there are just “doughnuts”. They just “are”. They magically appear like rain from the sky, and greedy people hog them leaving the meek to starve.

To us, somebody makes the doughnuts. They take a big risk putting bunches of money into a business that may very well fail and bankrupt them, especially if they don’t work very long hours for several years doing everything they can to help it succeed.

In this case, someone else works hard to make widgets to trade for doughnuts, and they bring them in to work. The socialists at work take over and dictate the rules by which the doughnuts are distributed. There’s enough for about one for everbody, but the guy who bought them got two — and he’s the greedy one.

It’s the Little Red Hen story. Wealth is created, it doesn’t just exist and get gobbled up by some people at the expense of others. It does tend to aggregate itself near those who created it, and what of it? If it were not for that incentive, nobody would bother to create it, and we’d all be poorer for it.

With CO2, we’re talking about something that some people have alleged is a problem, but they’re having a difficult time proving it. The data just won’t cooperate.

So with nothing but theory to back it up, we all have to give up our wealth to poor countries and go back to the stone age over what looks more and more to me like a religious belief that man is a cancer on the earth that would best be eradicated — and the ones who are left would be ruled by a wise Goracle and kept in check — controlled by leaders who dictate their morality, likening themselves to gods.

Frankly, I’d say something’s rotten in Denmark.
- philmon | 12/17/2009 @ 07:38
Physics Geek is right about the Crusades … they were fought to halt and reverse Islamic aggression that was closing in on Europe from both ends.

I believe that was one of the objectives, yes. The other was to retake Jerusalem and the rest of the Holy Land. The first succeeded, the second did so only temporarily.

But you’ve nailed it – people bring it up and use the word “crusade” like a club – as if it’s supposed to be some kind of ugly, festering wound on church history in general (meaning Christians who live today) and the Catholic Church in particular. It’s mentioned in the context of being some kind of example of unprovoked Christian aggression against innocent Muslim peoples living peacefully in what is now Israel. As is often the case, the truth is much more complicated than that.

My dad told me that people threw the same crappola at him when he was in college and the subject got around to Jesus. Apparently, Christians have been having the same worn-out catchphrases hurled at them for generations, probably going all the way back to the actual Crusades. You’d think that 500-1000 years later, the secular among us could come up with some new talking points.
- cylarz | 12/17/2009 @ 18:35

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Wednesday, December 16th, 2009