Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."

Death of the Welfare State?

In 1991 Pope John Paul II wrote the encylical Centissimus Annus, in which he dealt with economic and workers’ rights themes following the collapse of Soviet Communism and the seeming triumph of capitalism as an economic system. While noting that capitalism unrestrained by moral values was a Bad Thing, he nevertheless notes its practical success. He went on to say this regarding the kind of welfare states that exist in much of the developed world, and particularly in Europe:

In recent years the range of such intervention has vastly expanded, to the point of creating a new type of State, the so-called “Welfare State”. This has happened in some countries in order to respond better to many needs and demands, by remedying forms of poverty and deprivation unworthy of the human person. However, excesses and abuses, especially in recent years, have provoked very harsh criticisms of the Welfare State, dubbed the “Social Assistance State”. Malfunctions and defects in the Social Assistance State are the result of an inadequate understanding of the tasks proper to the State. Here again the principle of subsidiarity must be respected: a community of a higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower order, depriving the latter of its functions, but rather should support it in case of need and help to coordinate its activity with the activities of the rest of society, always with a view to the common good.

By intervening directly and depriving society of its responsibility, the Social Assistance State leads to a loss of human energies and an inordinate increase of public agencies, which are dominated more by bureaucratic ways of thinking than by concern for serving their clients, and which are accompanied by an enormous increase in spending. In fact, it would appear that needs are best understood and satisfied by people who are closest to them and who act as neighbours to those in need [Centissimus Annus 48].

Unfortuantely, with the exception of Britain, Europe has been slow to wean itself away from welfare state ideology. Fortunately, there are now signs that Europeans are beginning to realize that the kin of welfare state utopia they hoped to build is unsustainable and must be abandoned.

This blog entry contains some fascinating analysis.

Where was the press?

SDG here. As details about the McGreevey scandal continue to emerge, it becomes abundantly obvious that much more is and has been at stake than one man’s family, administration, or notions of his sexual identity.

The emerging picture is one of significant institutional corruption in the Trenton Democratic machine — and astonishing complicity from the press, self-appointed guardians of the public’s “right to know,” which failed to press the questions, pursue the issues, make public what was, so we are now being told over and over, widely known.

In fact, it now seems “everybody” knew about McGreevey’s extramarital romantic interest — that is, everybody who is anybody, though not necessarily anybody who is nobody.

“Everybody” knew that the New Jersey Homeland Security Adviser was a non-U.S. citizen with no evident qualifications for his post other than McGreevey’s personal interest in him — an arrangement that has been likened to President Clinton putting Monica Lewinsky in charge of the CIA. “Everybody” knew, though of course I never heard.

While it is not yet clear whether “everybody” knew or knows if the relationship was “consensual,” as McGreevey claims, or if as Golan Cipel claims McGreevey used his authority to intimidate and harass him as a subordinate. (On the surface, Cipel’s claim seems problematic: After all, Cipel only got the job in the first place because of McGreevey’s interest. At least Monica Lewinsky was actually qualified to be an intern.)

I now read on Drudge that reporters questioned McGreevey on several occasions whether he was gay and whether he was having an affair with Golan Cipel — questions he dismissed as “ridiculous.” Apparently, the reporters let him get away with that dismissive answer. No reporting McGreevey’s denials, no reporting on the information that led them to ask the questions in the first place. No stories printed, no items broadcast.

Apparently, the possibility that New Jersey taxpayers were bankrolling the governor’s sexual identity experimentation — and that the security of the state was being looked after by a poet and former lieutenant in the Israeli Navy with no security experience — was not deemed worth reporting. Eventually Cipel’s lack of qualifications did become an issue — but only because the FBI cited his problematic status as the basis for their refusal to share information with him.

The American press may be biased, but it’s supposed to love a good scandal, and its distinct lack of interest in pursuing this one is disheartening, to say the least. (I heard one reporter in an interview comment that he along with other members of the press had been slow to tackle the story for fear of accusations of homophobia.) And of course the Democratic machine in Trenton had more than suspicions. They had to know.

So, once again, New Jersey, the home of the Sopranos and Frank Torricelli, makes headlines for its culture of corruption.

It would have been nice if someone in a position to let us know before now had done something about it.

The Death Of The West Revisited

Here’s the story: Westerners aren’t replacing themselves poplation-wise because they’re having too few children. Meanwhile, Muslims are experiencing unrestrained population growth. Soon the West will have effectively depopulated itself (at least until there aren’t any folks left except high-birthrate groups like highly conservative members of the Catholic, Evangelical, and Mormon communities, who will launch the next phrase of Western civilization), and Muslims will be encroaching everywhere, leading to a global degeneration to third world status, exacerbated by Muslim fanatacism.

Right?

Well, not exactly.

The dire predictions of the death of the West may be a little premature.

Oh sure, some places–especially Europe–are depopulating themselves right on schedule. So is Japan.

But a new population study suggests the following items:

1) America isn’t radically depopulating itself. Americans are the exception among Westerners and, although their birthrate isn’t quite break even, it almost is, so we’re more or less holding our own.

2) The Muslim world isn’t having a sustainable population explosion. In fact, the urge to have fewer children is hitting the Muslim world hard, and some Muslim countries (Algeria, Tunisia, Lebanon, Turkey) are now sub-replacement level countries when it comes to birth. As modernization spreads in the Muslim world, birthrates fall there, too.

3) The death rate is going up in many places, and lifespans are shrinking. This is particularly true in Africa, where widespread HIV infection is leading to plummeting lifespans. It is also true in other areas, where the problem may not be AIDS. In Russia, for example, the average lifespan has shrunk by four years due to incresed cardiovascular disease and accidents, both of which are precipitated by increased alcohol abuse.

4) This one (like the last one) isn’t really a surprise, but there are many Asian countries where there are now sharp, unnatural imbalances between the number of males and females. The normal birthrate is about 104-105 males per 100 female babies, but in some places the ratio has gone up to 130:100. These imbalances are caused by sex-selection (i.e., aborting female babies) in cultures that have a strong preference for sons and now have ultrasound technologies that can detect the sex of the child before birth. The imbalances have appeared, as one would expect, in China (where couples are limited to having one child per couple), but also in other places, such as India. This will cause a huge problem in 20 years (or less), when the young men want to get married and there aren’t enough women their age.

So. An interesting time ahead, but one not quite so dire as some have forecast.

NJ Governor McGreevey resigns in scandal

SDG here. My state has just lost its governor.

While Jim McGreevey supported some extremely evil policies, including NJ’s precedent-setting support for baby-killing fetal stem cell research, and while ordinarily I would be elated to see him go, the sordid circumstances behind his resignation and the domestic havoc it will entail for his wife and two daughters are so appalling that I can only express my sorrow at the tragedy he has made of his life.

I very briefly met McGreevey once, on Good Friday a couple of years ago, at the cathedral of my diocese, the Archdiocese of Newark. We were sitting in the second pew, and shortly after the liturgy began McGreevey was quietly ushered into the first pew, right in front of us.

Needless to say, it was a bit distracting to have my state’s top pro-death politician sitting in front of me on Good Friday in my diocese’s cathedral, although I was fairly confident that Archbishop Myers’ office would have made it clear to him that he would not be permitted to receive communion (this was before Archbishop Myers’ pastoral letter on pro-abortion politicians not receiving communion that some of you will remember Jimmy blogging at the time), and indeed that turned out to be the case.

While I was standing there, I gave a fair bit of thought to what I would say to McGreevey if I had the opportunity. I felt that a pro-death candidate in the cathedral of this archdiocese on this day should be under no illusions that he was among people who agreed with his policies, that he should not think he would not be confronted. But whatever I said, I knew it would have to be short, so that he couldn’t interrupt me or walk away, and I wanted it to have a prophetic force that might stay with him for awhile and perhaps bother him a bit from time to time.

So, after the liturgy ended, when he turned and held out his hand to shake mine, I leaned toward him and he inclined his ear to hear what I had to say. And I said, very quietly and calmly, “The Lord avenges the blood of the innocent.”

And he very calmly leaned back, looked at me, and said quietly, “Thank you.” A perfect political response, absolutely meaningless.

Much later, I learned that even though I only whispered the comment in his ear, word of the event somehow got back to someone in the archdiocese, and I later heard from Archbishop Myers himself that he was glad to hear that someone had said something to the governor that, in his words, he hoped might be an occasion of grace. (Archbishop Myers is the greatest.)

I have no idea if McGreevey ever again thought about what I said to him. And now, as his life dissolves, I find that I have nothing more to say.

the real McCoy?

SDG here. (I see there’s been some discussion about differentiating my posts from Jimmy’s; I thought of this yesterday and decided to begin my posts identifying myself.)

In my first post below I mentioned that I don’t share Jimmy’s active interest in language, but here’s a post about the one language I really do have a passion for: English.

I remember as a boy hearing the expression “K.O.” (or “kayo”) for the first time and not knowing what it meant. My mother had said something about plans being “kayoed” by some circumstance, and when I asked her about it she could tell me what the term meant but not what it stood for, what the origin was.

Turning the expression over in my mind a few times, I came to a crashingly obvious hypothesis: “Maybe it’s ‘O.K.’ backwards,” I suggested.

Startled by this insight, my mother felt sure that I was right — until my father appeared and we put the matter to him, and were informed that “K.O.” stands for “knock-out,” as in boxing. My mother was a bit disappointed that my plausible guess had been wrong, but I wasn’t finished yet: Perhaps “okay” was “K.O.” backwards? However, both my parents immediately intuited that this couldn’t possibly be right, even though neither was sure what “O.K.” did stand for.

As it turns out, though, no one else is really totally sure what “O.K.” stands for either. Many dictionaries give “Oll Korrect,” a Germanic expression associated with President Andrew Johnson, as the etymology, but this derivation is uncertain. Other possible eytmologies include “Old Kinderhook” (a nickname of President Martin van Buren), “Aux quais” (a mark on bales of cotton in Mississippi river ports), and “0 Killed” (a negative nightly death toll report in WWI).

There are also many other common expressions in English the actual origins of which are as murky as “okay,” but that have very plausible explanations — as plausible my idea about “kayo” seemed to my mother and me — that are widely believed by many people, but are either actually wrong or else at least only possible, not certain.

For example, many people are certain they know the origin of the phrase “the whole nine yards.” It refers to nine cubic yards of concrete carried by concrete trucks. Or it refers to nine square yards of material used to make a high-quality suit (thus also the phrase “dressed to the nines”). Or it is related to some aspect of WW2 aircraft, or to sailing-ship yardarms rather than yards.

The fact is, no one knows exactly where “the whole nine yards” comes from. Other familiar phrases with similarly uncertain origins include “the real McCoy,” “posh,” and “scot free.”

To read about various proposed or popular explanations for these terms — as well as accepted derivations of phrases such as “high on the hog,” “ringing the changes,” and “willy-nilly” — visit this website!

Operations Notes

A thoughtful reader pointed out that Steven and my posts didn’t have sig lines, making it hard to tell them apart. I’d assumed the system automatically turned those on when I added Steven as an author and didn’t notice that this wasn’t the case. They’ve now been turned on. Thanks for pointing it out!

The right hand bar has been loading a little slower than I like, so I’ve turned off the links to the recommended books, though they’ll be back in the future.

The Passion Prompts Murderer To Confess

After all the warnings that Mel Gibson’s movie The Passion of the Christ would cause violence and have a harmful effect on people’s . . . well, morals, presumably, if it was going to cause violence . . . comes this amazing story of a murderer being driven to repentance and confessing his crime after seeing the film.

What this man did is horrendous, but the story shows the power of the story of God’s Son, even via the medium of film, to touch the most hardened hearts.

Jesus Christ, Super… man?!

Thanks for the welcome, Jimmy.

Yes, it’s true: I’m not Jimmy. I don’t even play him on TV. At least for awhile, though, I’m going to be blogging on his site. (Since Jimmy is a guest critic on my site, Decent Films, perhaps there’s some cosmic balance in me being a guest blogger on his site.)

As Jimmy mentioned, this is my first venture into the blogosphere (as a publisher I mean), so I’m not sure yet what I’m going to blog about. I have a lot of the same areas of interest as Jimmy (language being one notable exception — not that I’m UNinterested in languages, but I don’t study them), so hopefully if I think something’s interesting it will stand a good chance of interesting those of you who read this site regularly (as I do).

So, here’s my first item: Could Jim Caviezel, best known as Jesus in Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, be the next Superman?!

As a film critic and a comic-book fan, I follow closely news regarding comic-book movies, which, beginning with X-Men in 2000, have experienced a resurgence (and indeed have surged to unprecedented levels) after almost dying off with Joel Schumacher’s horrible franchise-killing and almost genre-killing Batman movies.

Until 2000, the big player in comic-book movies was DC Comics / Warner Bros, with their Superman and Batman franchises. Marvel Comics, home of Spider-Man and the X-Men, kept trying to get movies off the ground, but was bogged down in endless rights disputes resulting from terrible decision-making and ill-advised licensing agreements.

Lately, though, the shoe’s been on the other foot. Marvel has enjoyed a number of hits, especially in the X-Men and Spider-Man franchises (Spider-Man 2 is my favorite so far). DC, on the other hand, has been struggling for, like, almost a DECADE to get a new Superman movie made. A parade of potential directors (Tim Burton, Brett Ratner, McG), scripts, and stars have all come and gone, all to no effect.

Tim Burton, I kid you not, wanted to cast Nicholas Cage as Superman. Yes. Nicolas Cage. This from the same guy who cast Michael Keaton as Batman. And while Batman has arguably NEVER been well cast, Superman has never been POORLY cast. George Reeves, Christopher Reeve, Dean Cain, Tom Welling — they’re all good. Fortunately, Burton and Cage are long since gone from the project.

Now, though, DC may finally have gotten their act together. They’ve hired the creative team from the X-Men movies, including director Bryan Singer, to make Superman Returns (currently slated for 2006). Casting isn’t yet underway, but I’m sure Singer will make a good choice. After all, this is the guy who cast Patrick Stewart as Professor X, and it doesn’t get any better than that.

Would Jim Caviezel be a good Superman? Maybe. His work on The Count of Monte Cristo, more than anything, suggests he’s up to the challenge. In the abstract, though, I’m not sure I’d want to see Jesus playing Superman. Somehow I worry that it might alter my experience of The Passion of the Christ. Yet I enjoy Caviezel in Frequency and other roles without worrying about that. So maybe it would be all right after all.

BTW, it looks like Batman might finally be getting a break too. Christopher Nolan is directing Batman Begins, and has cast Christian Bale in the title role. The trailer looks promising.