Kakistocrat

I was reading an online article from Blender magazine recently and of interest to me is that the publication had taken on the daunting task of rating the 50 worst songs of all time. There was little to quibble with in their selection (Celine Dion made the list appropriately, Avril didn’t…) but on thing that caught my eye was that Billy Joel’s "We Didn’t Start the Fire" was ranked the 41st worst song of all time. This caught my eye, because I must confess that I very much enjoy this particular piece. (If you can put up with the comedic commentary and pictures that someone else has attached to Joel’s song, you can watch it by clicking here: "We Didn’t Start the Fire").

I concede that they lyrics are a touch unusual. They are simply a list (thankfully rhyming) of places, people, events and objects that were of significance between the year of Joel’s birth (1949) and 1989.

Harry Truman, Doris Day, Red China, Johnny Ray

South Pacific, Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggio…

His list is scrunched between the lyrics

We didn’t start the fire

It was always burning

since the world was turning.

We didn’t start the fire

No we didn’t light it

But we tried to fight it.

According to some, the song was borne out of a conversation Joel had with Sean Lennon (son of John). Sean Lennon was complaining that he was growing up in troubled times, and Joel’s lyrics don’t for a minute try to dismiss this, but they do go on the defensive a little, with Joel’s claim that his generation isn’t to blame for starting the ‘fire’ (for starting the troubles). Joel asserts that the human race has rarely known a moment when there wasn’t troubled times (the ‘fire’ after all, a representation of troubles ’was always burning since the world’s been turning’). What I appreciate about Joel, is that even though he recognizes that things are not as they should be, and that they haven’t been for sometime, he does not turn to despair. Rather, even though he himself isn’t responsible for the ‘fire’ starting, he accurately sees his role in the world. By saying ‘no we didn’t light it [the fire] but we tried to fight it’ he is claiming that even though troubles have existed since since the world started to turn, it is his responsiblity to fight them. And it’s ours too.

K.

Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was assassinated last October, once claimed that "A life that is not given so that the humble and insignificant people can live, is a wasted life."

I have been rereading Father Joseph Girzone’s My Struggle With Faith, which was wrongly savaged in the April edition of the Catholic Insight.

At one point Girzone mentions that once he became aware of the Church Fathers, they became an important part of his life. Yet he claims that what he read from and about them was rewarding, but that it was also disturbing. The reason:

Bishops back then were real leaders, unafraid of controversy and highly intelligent defenders of the faith passed on to them from the apostles. They were men of passionate faith, willing to sacrifice themselves totally, even to death, if need be, to defend their faith. As I was learning more and more about Church life today, I did not see very many bishops of that caliber. I saw them more as pious men who were rewarded for their faithful service—company men, as they would be called in industry. It was difficult to respect them; they seemed to be more concerned about their political future than about the priests or people under their care.

It was rare to here a spiritually inspiring sermon or one of a theological nature, discussing dangerous moral or unchristian ideas circulating among the Christian community. Bishops might mention them superficially if there was a current public issue, but they did not provide people with solid or rational theological arguments explaining what should be a thinking Christian’s understanding of such issues. I will never forget the night after a particular bishop was made archbishop; the man was being interviewed on television and was asked about his attitude to abortion. His answer was ‘I am naturally against abortion because it is contrary to the teachings of the Catholic Church.’ I cringed. What a sad reason for a religious leader to be for or against any issue…He could have at least said, ‘I am opposed to abortion because it is the destruction of a human life.’ That would have revealed a much stronger person who did his own thinking and could make a strong statement on a moral issue.

At the same time as the interview with the archbishop, there was an interview with the leading proponent of abortion in England. When asked if he believed the baby growing in its mother’s womb was a human being, he answered without hesitation, ‘You cannot deny that it is a human life; I admit that it is human. But….’ and the discussion continued from there. At least he did not just say, ‘I am in favor of abortion, because all my friends are in favor of abortion.’

Joseph Girzone, My Struggle With Faith (New York, NY: Doubleday, 2006), 105-107.

If people are concerned today about the state of the Church, they need not look to an increasingly empowered laity, nor is blame to be extended to politicians who scandalize their Church by particular positions they take. Rather, such concerned people should look no further than the Bishops, the successors of the Apostles. I suspect most concerned Catholics (and the irony here is that editorial board of the Catholic Insight are concerned Catholics as well) would agree with Girzone, that the caliber of Bishops is less than ideal. An exception is Archbishop Roussin of Vancouver, and his active opposition that was instrumental to Telus Mobility backpedalling in their plan to begin offering pornography sales through cell phones. Equally inspiring was his acknowledgment that he suffered from clinical depression. That showed courageous leadership as often the act of reigning over others is seen in terms of power, rather than as a humble call to serve others. Bishop Henry of Calgary is another, and can certainly not be accused of, to borrow a phrase from Girzone, being afraid of controversy. But these are exceptions to the sad general rule. We shouldn’t have to praise a Bishop for doing what he is supposed to do. Those who are mediocre should be the exception but right now they don’t seem to be. I am sure concerned Catholics in the archdiocese of Winnipeg cannot help but feel a little cynical about Archbishop Weisgerber’s reasons for refusing to allow James Loney to speak about peace at a recent Social Justice Conference. Could such concerned Catholics believe, for example, that the Archbishop’s actions were not related to the fact that he was at that moment in the process of being named the head of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops?

K.

In popular culture, the relationship between science and religion is often seen as uneasy. To suppose that this tension reflects reality, at least according to the late Stephen Jay Gould, is false, unnecessary, illogical and even mythical.

In the place of the supposed tension, he proposes the Non-Overlapping Magisterium (NOMA), and suggests that rather than being a recent addition to the debate, NOMA actually "represents a longstanding consensus among the majority of both scientific and religious leaders [and is] not a controversial or idiosyncratic resolution (64)."

Gould identifies a magisterium as a "domain where one form of teaching holds the appropriate tools for meaningful discourse and resolution (4)," and he proposes that science holds the tools for meaningful discourse and resolution in one domain, namely that of the "documentation of the factual character of the natural world, and [the ability] to develop theories that coordinate and explain these facts (4)," while religion possesses the tools necessary to provide discourse and resolution for "the equally important, but utterly different, realm of human purposes, meaning and values (4)." The domains do not overlap, and one is not superior to the other.

Jesuit philosopher Job Kozhamthadam refers to NOMA as "a great improvement over the ‘conflict and warfare’ model, but that it suffers from serious deficiencies." Perhaps we can flesh these deficiencies out in the comment section (Job won’t be with us however), but until then perhaps one example will suffice.

Richard Dawkins notes that

It is completely unrealistic to claim, as Gould and many others do, that religion keeps itself away from science’s turf, restricting itself to morals and values. A universe with a supernatural presence would be a fundamentally and qualitatively different kind than one without. Religion makes existence claims, and this means science claims (64).

Adherents to the more historical understanding of Christianity believe that the Mother of Jesus virginally conceived him. Such a claim cannot lie solely in the realm of the religious for it makes a claim that is grounded in reality and therefore intelligible via science. Similarly, Christians who believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus are also making a claim that enters into the scientific realm of explanation. The Ascension of Jesus, the Assumption of Mary, the general miracle stories, the Marian apparitions, all of these fall within the domain of science, and this must not simply be seen as overlap, but also as a breach of faith between the scientific and religious communities if NOMA is to be accepted, especially since in the case of each of these instances, religion seeks the subordination of the scientific realm, which would otherwise have must to say regarding the probability of such irregularities.

K.

Stephen Jay Gould, Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life (New York, NY: The Library of Contemporary Thought, 1999).

Richard Dawkins, ‘You Can’t Have it Both Ways: Irreconcilable Differences?’ Skeptical Inquirer 23, no. 4 (July/August, 1999).

Granting that Muslims worship ‘the One God,’ the late Pope claims that believers in Allah are particularly close to Christians as they too worship "one God, living and subsistent, merciful and omnipotent, the Creator of heaven and earth."

Especially given the rising storm of extremist interpretations of Islam, it is understandable that some people might get bent out of shape regarding the late Pope’s comments. However, though John Paul II sees Muslims as worshipping the same God, he highlights the difference between each of these two monotheistic approaches to God.

Conceding that some of the most beautiful names for God are found in the Koran, the Pope warns that Allah is ultimately "a God outside of the world, a God who is only majesty, never Emmanuel, God-with-us. Islam is not a religion of redemption. There is no Cross and the Resurrection."

Jesus is mentioned, and his Mother as well (we have spoken of Mary’s place here in the Koran as well) "but the tragedy of redemption is completely absent."

And yet John Paul II is not without admiration:

It is impossible not to admire, for example, their fidelity to prayer. The image of believers in Allah who, without caring about time or place, fall to their knees and immerse themselves in prayer remains a model for all those who invoke the true God, in particular for those Christians who, having deserted their magnificent cathedrals, pray only a little or not at all."

I don’t think more Evangelical Christians in general have learned how to dialogue with Islam. John Paul talks about extremism briefly, but it comes in the form of a few concluding words, while today, and this is especially obvious in Evangelical circles, Islamic extremism seems to be the introduction, body and conclusion to any attempt to come to an understanding of Islam. Further this extermism is rarely seen as a warping of Islam, but rather is seen as its genuine expression. 

K.