Jimmy Akin – Page 362

The Petrine Fact, Part 1: Introduction

Note: This series is a work in progress. New material is being added, existing posts are being revised and expanded, and works used are in the process of being referenced. Please refer to the live blog pages for the latest versions.

Saint Peter, 5th or 6th century icon from St. Catherine’s Monastery at Sinai.

In my home library (overflowing, alas, the eight-foot bookshelves lining my home-office walls into double rows on the shelves and spills out into stacks covering the floor) are a couple dozen or so books by Eastern Orthodox writers, at least two of which are dedicated to the exploring the meaning of Peter’s primacy and the primacy of the Bishop of Rome.

Some Protestants are surprised to discover this, because they have the idea that the Eastern Orthodox “deny the primacy” of Peter and/or of Rome; but this is not the case. The nature and applicability of the Petrine and Roman primacies is certainly a subject of controversy, not only between the Orthodox and Catholic Churches, but also to an extent among different schools of Eastern Orthodox thought; but the fact of Peter’s preeminence both in the New Testament and in the tradition of the early Church, as well as the special role of Rome in the early Church, is so clear that there is little question of denying it altogether.

In this series of posts I will briefly explore the New Testament basis for Peter’s preeminence or primacy in the New Testament. I call this “the Petrine fact” because I see the fact of Peter’s preeminence or primacy as an intractable datum to be accounted for, regardless what theology or ecclesiology one subscribes to.

My intent for now is to maintain the following:

Peter’s preeminence and leadership role among the Twelve is seen in many different ways throughout the New Testament evidence, not just in one or two books (possibly indicating the special interest of a particular community), but in every major strand of NT tradition (Pauline, Synoptic as well as Acts, Johannine, and, within the Synoptic tradition, in “triple tradition” [all three Synoptics], “double tradition” [Matthew and Luke], and material unique to Matthew, Mark and Luke).
This primacy is different in kind from the preeminences of other prominent apostles (i.e., James and John on the one hand, Paul on the other). It is not merely a function of, e.g., Peter’s outspoken personality, or some other informal consideration. It is rooted in the choice of Jesus Christ, who indicated his intention for Peter to have a unique foundational role in the new People of God, a representative headship among the apostles, and a uniquely privileged relationship to Jesus himself in the kingdom.
The Petrine fact, and in particular Peter’s role as rock on which the church is built in Matthew 16, has for some time been widely recognized by Evangelical and Eastern Orthodox scholarship. Major challenges remain in unpacking how this Petrine fact is best understood historically and ecclesiologically, what significance it is understood to have for the early church, the church Fathers of the East and West, the Great Schism, and the Protestant Reformation — questions that have been debated for centuries and which have perhaps remain to be fully explored. (At this point I must resist the temptation to get sidetracked with important caveats for my Orthodox and Protestant brethren; bear with me.) But the Petrine fact itself I take to be, as it were, bedrock and ecumenical New Testament data.

In coming posts I will explore some of the biblical evidence regarding the Petrine fact, and perhaps try to offer some light on how it is to be understood.

Added: Bibliography (in progress)

Below is a partial list in progress of sources used and (slowly) referenced in this series. In particular, Joseph Ratzinger’s essay “The Primacy of Peter and the Unity of the Church” provided the template for the overall strategy of this series and for many of the individual insights.

Caragounis, Chrys C, Peter and the Rock (W. de Gruyter, 1990).
Chamblin, J. Knox, Evangelical Commentary on the Bible: Matthew (Baker, 1989).
Clément, Olivier, You Are Peter: An Orthodox Theologian’s Reflection on the Exercise of Papal Primacy (New City Press, 2003).
Fitzmyer, Joseph, “Aramaic Kepha’ and Peter’s Name in the New Testament,” To Advance the Gospel (W. B. Eerdmans, 1998 – 2nd ed), pp. 112–120.
Kasper, Walter (ed.), The Petrine Ministry: Catholics and Orthodox in Dialogue (Newman Press, 2006).
Meyendorff, John (ed.), The Primacy of Peter (St. Vladimir Seminary Press, 1992; first English ed. 1963).
Nichols, Aidan, Rome and the Eastern Churches (2nd ed.) (Ignatius Press, 2010).
Ratzinger, Joseph, “The Primacy of Peter and the Unity of the Church,” Called to Communion (Ignatius Press, 1996), pp. 112–120.

Former Muslim Martyr Saints

Over at the First Things blog First Thoughts there is a post in which a (necesssarily) unnamed missionary in the Middle East is quoted as follows:

In August of 2008 a young lady named Fatima al-Mutayri, age 26, was martyred in Saudi Arabia. She is from that country and became a Christian there by means of internet and satellite TV ministries, and was martyred there—she had her tongue cut out and was burned to death by her brother, who was carrying out the command of the Prophet who said, “who changes his religion, kill him” (man badala diinahu faqataluuhu).

This is, of course, horiffic. Words cannot convey the emotions that such an incident calls forth.

The missionary goes on to as some thought provoking questions, and I was asked for an opinion on them, so I'll do my best.

The missionary continues:

She was most certainly a Christian. I suspect that she was baptized but do not know for certain. And here is my two-part question: first, was she in full communion with Rome? I believe that she knew nothing of the debates between Catholics and Protestants. Moreover, I don’t think she ever had access to becoming a Catholic because the Catholic Church does not evangelize in Saudi Arabia and, of course, there no actual church buildings in that country.

The Catholic Church doesn't evangelize openly in Saudi Arabia, for obvious reasons, but there are certainly Catholics there who share their faith in an underground way, and these are able to baptize people, so the absence of above-ground evangelization and the lack of church buildings would be a practical impediment to a Catholic baptism but not something that would have made it altogether impossible.

So if she was baptized, it was at least possible that she was secretly baptized in an explicitly Catholic ceremony. If so, she would have by that fact been placed in full communion with the Catholic Church.

But let's suppose, as is likely, that if she was baptized that it was not in a Catholic ceremony. What then?

My understanding is that in former centuries it was common to regard any baptism as a Catholic one unless there was an express intent otherwise. On this view a person who was baptized with no specific knowledge of the Catholic Church would be regarded as a Catholic up until such time as the person might learn of and repudiate the Catholic understanding of the Christian faith.

Apart from very usual circumstances–especially in the Internet age–this kind of situation would be unlikely to arise, and current canon law seems to handle the situation differently.

The Code does not spell it out in the detail I would like, but the Green Commentary on the Code summarizes what I take to be common canonical opinion on the matter, which is that a person receiving baptism from a non-Catholic is held to be a non-Catholic unless there is a conscious intent for the person to be Catholic–for example, you are on a desert island and, before you die, you want to be baptized Catholic and the only person there is a Methodist, but he is willing to baptize you so you can be Catholic. (See the paragraph starting on the botton of the first column and its continuation in the second column, here.)

We don't have any evidence (so far as I know) that Fatima specifically intended to be Catholic if she was baptized, so it would be presumed that she wouldn't have been–that she would have been reckoned as a member of whatever specific church she was baptised into (if any) or just as a "generic Christian" if she was baptized non-denominationally.

At least the way such matters would be handled now, mere ignorance of disputes between Protestants and Catholics would not result in a baptism performed by a non-Catholic putting the baptizand in full communion with the Catholic Church.

I also wouldn't be quick to underestimate Fatima's awareness of the fact that there are different kinds of Christians. She was, it is reported, a Arabic-language blogger, and any amount of poking around on the Internet will reveal that there are different kinds of Christians. The pope being in the news on al-Jazeera and other Arabic news stations will result in awareness of the same thing. Fatima is supposed to have watched al-Haya (a Christian Arabic channel) and seen the programs of Fr. Zakaria Botros, who is Coptic. She also was involved with a significant variety of Christians on the Internet, and I strongly suspect she knew about Christian differences.

Does that mean she intended to join a specific Christian group upon her baptism? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe she just wanted to be a Christian and would figure out the who-to-affiliate-with question later (or never). No one can really say unless someone who knew her were to come forth and shed light on the subject.

On the other hand, maybe she wasn't sacramentally baptized at all. (We've been making a lot of assumptions thus far.)

In that case she could be described as having "baptism of desire"–either implicitly or explicitly–by virtue of her adopting the Christian faith. She also could be described as having "baptism of blood" by virtue of her death for the faith.

These would suffice for salvation (nothing else standing in the way), praise God!

But they would not place her in full communion with the Catholic Church in this life.

The missionary then asks another ques
tion:

And second: given this information, is it possible for her to be canonized? The canonization of an ex-Muslim woman who was born, lived, and died in Saudi Arabia, and who was martyred by her own family, would be perhaps the single most powerful statement that the Church has made on Islam since Vatican II (hardly a clear statement, and one that led many Catholics to believe, incorrectly, that the Church no longer was interested in evangelizing Muslims).

Vatican II's statement regarding Islam could definitely have been better phrased, and canonizing Fatima would indeed be a powerful statement. And if the circumstances were different, it could even be a possibility. It would not, however, be done as a statement on Islam. Instead, it would be a statement about the heroic virtues of this young woman who accepted martyrdom for her love of Jesus.

Pope Benedict certainly has the wherewithal to do such a canonization. He personally–as pope, at Easter Vigil–baptized the notorious Muslim apostate Maghdi Allam. Allam is a firebrand and a controversialist who repeatedly got into disputes with Muslims in Italy long before his conversion to Catholicism, and now there are pictures of the pope baptizing him and everything.

Pope Benedict did this not as a statement about Islam but as an illustration of the Church's willingness to accept everyone, regardless of their background, and of the right of everyone to embrace the gospel.

Given his willingness to do this, I have little doubt that he would be willing to canonize a former Muslim who was martyred for the faith. (Providing it was a genuine martyrdom; early in his papacy Pope Benedict notably clarified what martyrdom is to prevent the concept from being used sloppily.)

I can easily imagine Benedict asking, "Should we deny canonization to someone who died for the faith simply because the person who killed them was Muslim? Why should Muslims be an exception? If we do not deny canonization to one who was martyred by atheists or polytheists or any other group, why should we do so in this situation? Is their heroic witness to Christ worth less because their killers were Muslim?"

So I don't doubt that Benedict would be willing to do this . . . if the circumstances were different.

But they are what they are.

At least at this time, we don't have evidence that Fatima entered full commmunion with the Catholic Church in her life or that he had embraced the Catholic faith specifically at the time of her baptism by blood. Consequently, I don't see grounds for her canonization.

That's not to say that she's not in heaven and is not, in fact, a saint. If the facts are as described, I am very, very hopeful of her salvation and thus her objective sainthood (I can't say I'm certain, because in this life we can never be certain), but the Church tends only to canonize those who were members of it or who were intending to be members of it at the time of their martyrdom.

If evidence were to emerge that overcame this hurdle, there would still be many others, of a practical nature, that would have to be overcome before canonization could occur.

There would have to be someone petitioning for her canonization, and the relevant local bishop would have to oversee the initial phase of the process. That would be tricky since there are no bishops in Saudia Arabia.

Investigating the case would also prove difficult since, so far as we know, there were no witnesses outside the family. Unless one or more of them decided to speak freely on the subject and describe what happened at the end, investigators would not be able to distinguish evidentially between a scenario in which she maintained her faith to the end and a scenario in which she renounced her faith at the last moment but was too injured to survive (or was killed anyway out of rage).

Given the sensitivity of the subject in Saudi society, getting any people with knowlege of the situation–even non-family members who weren't eyewitnesses–to speak freely could be very difficult.

Internet hearsay is not enough, given the difficulties of verifying it.

One of the first things I did in preparing to write this post was to do some checking to see if I could verify that Fatima al-Martayri even existed. I don't want to be overly skeptical, but there is a reason God created Snopes.com.

While I wasn't able to find the kind of evidence I would have liked (perhaps because it's largely in the Arabic-language Internet), I was eventually able to find and verify enough pieces of the story that it looks like it's real.

(I also verified that Mutayri is real clan and thus "al-Mutayri" is not simply an Arabic term for "the Martyr.")

Even then, though, details of the story diverge. Some sources say that it was her father who killed her. Others (who seem to be the majority) say that it was her brother (though it may only have been him who exposed her). Details also differ over whether she was 23 or 26 and whether the murder occurred in Qassim Province or in the Eastern Province. (One source, which claims to be a Muslim friend of Fatima but who nevertheless disapproved of the killing, tries to set the record straight; I'll link the source below
).

These facts aren't to say that the matter couldn't be sorted out, but they illustrate the problems of fact-finding in such a situation.

I thus don't see a plausible path to canonization for Fatima.

But we may still pray for her and all in similar situations–and there are many of those. (I know; I've dealt with delicate situations like this, with people behind the Muslim curtain who wish to be Christian. Fortunately, none of the ones I've dealt with have suffered Fatima's fate–yet.)

(And if anyone wonders why one might pray for a martyr–it may be a common and pious belief that martyrs go straight to heaven, but this isn't a doctrine of the Church; I'd rather pray on the safe side, trusting God at least to apply the prayers to the person cross-temporally in their final moments of life.)

A further note about Fatima: If she is in heaven, as an uncanonized saint, then her feast day is November 1st–All Saints Day.

At the First Thoughts blog, Joseph Bottum–who authored the post–has some additional insightful things to say, but he doesn't go into it at this length. (I'm long winded–at least if you don't give me a word count. Sorry.)

Oh, and as Lt. Columbo would say, there's one more thing . . .

If Fatima's case doesn't present a good instance for the canonization of a former Muslim who was martyred for faith in Christ, it should be pointed out that the Church actually does have saints who were former Muslims, such as St. Josephine Bakhita and St. Casilda of Toledo.

Furthermore, the Church also has saints who were former Muslims who were martyred by Muslims for their Christian faith. These include St. Abo the Perfumer, St.s Nunilo and Alodia of Huesca, and St.s Aurelius, Natalia, and Felix of Cordoba.

They may not be modern, contemporary individuals like Fatima, but they trod the same path, suffered the same fate, and may serve as inspiring examples for the many, many people today who yearn for Christ while being forced to live in the Islamic world.

May those in such situations look to them, and may their intercession guide us all.

Pizza of the Future

Still working on part 2 of Age of the Universe. Unfortunately hit a setback when some autodownloaded Microsoft updates caused my computer to repeatedly slam into the Blue Screen of Death (thanks, Microsoft!).

It's being fixed now.

In any event, here's a video that proves (surprise, surprise) that the ACLU not only isn't 100% evil but also that it has a sense of humor.

They're still just about as evil as it gets, but they're getting the following issue right.

Vatican Downplays

There are lots of stories out there with headlines beginning "Vatican Denies . . . "

There have to be.

The crazy Italian press guarantees lots of stuff that the Vatican needs to deny.

Sometimes the person doing the denying is even using a mental reservation (or something along those lines) when making the denial.

But you know it's significant when the headline only says "Vatican Downplays . . . " If the headline is accurate, it means that there is an implicit, up-front admission on the part of the person that the press interviewed that there is at least some truth to the story.

That's why I really like this headline:

Vatican official downplays report of planned liturgical reforms

As the story indicates, there apparently have been some liturgical reforms proposed by the CDWDS and some of its individual members to Pope Benedict.

We'll have to see what comes of that. Maybe a few things; nothing huge (I very much would doubt an outright ban on Communion in the hand); maybe nothing at all. But it's good that reformist proposals are being made.

(NOTE: I'm working on the next installment of the Age of the World series, but the text I'm dealing with is so rich that it's taking me a while to get the post done, which is why I went with this one today.)

The Age of the World–Part I

A subject that comes up from time to time is how old the world is–either the earth or the cosmos as a whole.

The responses to this question are typically divided into the well-known "old" and "young" camps, the former holding that the earth and the cosmos are billions of years old and the second holding that they are a few thousand or perhaps tens of thousands of years old. So, depending on just how many thousands or billions of years you posit, there are four to six orders of magnitude separating the two schools of thought.

In a short series of posts, I'd like to look at some magisterial texts that have a bearing on this question and offer a few thoughts on them.

The first thought, before I even get to the magisterial texts, is that both positions are compatible with the Catholic faith. You can be a good Catholic and hold that the universe is thousands or millions or billions or trillions or quadrillions or other numbers of years old. The Church does not teach any particular age or age-range for the earth or the cosmos. You can follow the evidence where you think it leads.

This is because the Magisterium has determined that the question of the ages of the earth and the cosmos are principally scientific questions that are not (or at least that do not appear to be) settled by the sources of faith.

This may not always have been so. I would not be at all surprised if there are past papal, curial, or conciliar texts that do indicate an age-range for the earth or the cosmos as part of ordinary magisterial teaching, perhaps in the thousands or tens of thousands of years range.

In fact, if a reader knows of such passages, I'd love to see them.

Such a prior position, at least of itself, would not pose a problem for the Church's current determination since ordinary magisterial teaching is nondefinitive and thus can be revised, as with the case of the Church removing the theological speculation of limbo from its ordinary teaching while still allowing the theory of limbo to be held (a rather striking parallel for what might be the case on the age of the world question).

However that may be, recent magisterial statements have made it clear that the age of the world is an open question and we are not limited to the thousands or tens of thousands of years age-range.

We will look at some of these texts in this series.

A second thing I'd like to point out before going to the first text is that the Magisterium's current judgment that this is primarily a scientific question puts the Magisterium in an interesting position in terms of how to articulate the position.

Of course, they could always say, "This is a scientific question; the sources of faith don't determine it," and leave it at that, but they usually aren't that concise in how they answer such questions. They want to say a little more about it, and so what they often do is express openness to the modern scientific view but without making a formal endorsement of this view as correct (i.e., "The universe is billions of years old, as modern science tells us").

It's good that they don't take that extra step because science can get things wrong and, after getting their fingers burned with Ptolemaic astronomy, they don't want to lock believers into having to accept a particular scientific account that might one day be proven wrong.

So that's all to the good.

Here is how the Catechism handles the question:

283 The question about the origins of the world and of man has been the object of many scientific studies which have splendidly enriched our knowledge of the age and dimensions of the cosmos, the development of life-forms and the appearance of man.These discoveries invite us to even greater admiration for the greatness of the Creator, prompting us to give him thanks for all his works and for the understanding and wisdom he gives to scholars and researchers. With Solomon they can say: "It is he who gave me unerring knowledge of what exists, to know the structure of the world and the activity of the elements. . . for wisdom, the fashioner of all things, taught me."

Here the Catechism takes an appreciative stance toward recent scientific studies on the question but without mentioning any particular numbers. It doesn't say anything about billions of years.

Yet surely that is what it has in mind. It could not be credibly claimed that the "many scientific studies" it refers to are ones being done at the Institution for Creation Research in El Cajon, California–or by similar young earth/young universe groups.

Surely it has in mind mainstream scientific studies which point to an old earth, and older universe, and some kind of evolutionary process working through the development of life forms and the appearance of man.

But note: None of those things are points of faith.

The results of particular scientific studies or the claims of particular scientific theories (e.g., evolution) are scientific matters, not things taught in the sources of faith.

As a result, these studies and claims cannot be binding on believers are matters of faith. And so one can be a good Catholic (good in his faith) even if he rejects all of them. If you accept the modern scientific account then you might ju
dge such a person a bad scientist (or at least badly informed on scientific matters) but not a bad Catholic.

This means that what we have in the first sentence of paragraph 283 of the Catechism is not per se a doctrine of the Church. Instead, it is a pastoral expression that seeks to appreciate and respect the findings of modern science without imposing them on the faithful as matters of faith.

That's not unusual. There are quite a number of places in the Catechism that are best classified as pastoral expressions rather than per se doctrinal or dogmatic ones.

There are also, of course, loads of doctrinal and dogmatic ones. (This is, after all, a catechism!)

It is important, when dealing with questions like this, to have an awareness of the fact that the Catechism uses different modes of expression. What particular mode is being used in a particular passage must be determined by the text itself as well as an awareness of the dynamics of the question theologically, as the above illustrates.

Next . . . another text.

Peak Nonsense

Periodically there are stories saying that we are running out of petroleum and natual gas, that we are near or even have passed "peak" production of these resources because Earth is running low on them.

Not so fast.

While there is, undoubtedly, a finite amount of this stuff on earth because there are a finite number of atoms on earth, the fact that there is a limit-in-principle doesn't in any way mean we're near it.

Folks I know in the industry tell me that there are lots of resources there–even known resources–that they simply can't tap because environmentalists and global warming alarmists have taken over local governments and they are using every trick in the books to keep drilling from happening.

Remember a while back when gas was at $4 a gallon and people were saying, "Let's drill in the Artic National Wildlife Reserve," and people in Congress were saying, "That won't help; it'll take ten years to get that online," and their opponents were responding, "Funny . . . that's exactly what you said ten years ago when we wanted to drill"?

Nuff said.

Well, Investor's Business Daily has an interesting editorial about current attempts to tap a natural gas resource right here in the U.S. that could supply our natural gas needs for 65 years.

Is the proposal meeting opposition?

THREE GUESSES AND THE FIRST TWO DON'T COUNT.

Oh, and there's an eye-opening word in the editorial. In this context it means something totally different than what the same word means on Battlestar Galactica, but given how often it occurs in the article, I'm guessing that whatever editor wrote the piece for IBD is a BSG fan who experienced enormous secret glee while penning the piece.

Ponyo and Miyazaki

SDG here with a public service announcement:

If you have a child (or a nephew, niece, grandchild, etc.) under the age of ten … or an open-minded child of any age … or if you remember childhood well enough to watch films like Bambi and The Many Adventures of Winnie-the-Pooh with five-year-old eyes … there is a movie in theaters you really should see, from a filmmaker whose work you really should know.

Ponyo

It does not have commando guinea pigs or magical museum displays in it — thank goodness. In fact, other than Up, it may be the summer’s highest point for family audiences, if not the only other high point.

Ponyo, from Japanese animation master Hayao Miyazaki, opened modestly this weekend — too modestly for a film this charming and imaginative. That parents are taking their children to the likes of G-Force, Transformers and G.I. Joe at multiplexes where Ponyo is playing right next door is downright depressing.

My Neighbor Totoro

Ponyo is in the tradition of Miyazaki’s 1980s family classics My Neighbor Totoro and Kiki’s Delivery Service — and if you have a child (or a nephew, niece, grandchild, etc.) under ten, etc., you definitely ought to catch those films on DVD. (Recently at Decent Films someone asked me for my top picks for kids under five, and both films made the cut.)

Roger Ebert rightly included My Neighbor Totoro in his first collection of Great Movies, and it’s a close runner-up for my hypothetical all-time top 10 list, if I ever officially drew one up. Kiki’s Delivery Service is also a masterpiece, very similar in spirit — gentle, humane, nearly plotless, full of magic, wonder and humor.

Kiki’s Delivery Service

Ponyo isn’t in the same league as these two films, but how many films are? This weekend I went to see it with eight kids ranging from almost 15 to 3. Everyone enjoyed it, including the two 14-year-olds; the three-year-old was mesmerized (and commented on the action throughout), and the six-year-old loved it.

Miyzaki has also created a number of movies that aren’t this gentle and childlike, but are mostly near-masterpieces in their own right — or better. If you don’t know Miyazaki, trust me, he’s well worth checking out. (There’s a reason that Miyzaki is revered and looked to for inspiration at Pixar.)

Spirited Away

Miyazakis I particularly recommend include the Animated Film Oscar winner Spirited Away (widely — and rightly IMO — considered the director’s masterpiece) and the sci-fi action epics Castle in the Sky / Laputa and Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. All of these are favorites in our family, though we haven’t shown Spirited Away to the younger ones.

Castle in the Sky

Other Miyazakis include the critically acclaimed Princess Mononoke (which I’m not as fond of), the (rightly IMO) less acclaimed Howl’s Moving Castle, the comparatively overlooked but enjoyable Porco Rosso, and the offbeat The Castle of Cagliostro, an early effort in an independent series about an adventuring thief (lots of fun, but language warning on this one … and note that it’s the only Miyazaki in this post with a Region 1 DVD distributor other than Disney).

An issue to be aware of is that Miyzaki’s films often express reverence for nature and environmental concerns in imaginative idioms reflecting the filmmaker’s cultural background, i.e., animism and Shinto. Tree spirits, river gods and (in Ponyo) sea-goddesses inhabit many (not all) of his films.

Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind

I’ve written about the moral issues this raises for Christian viewers in my reviews of My Neighbor Totoro and Spirited Away, among others. FWIW, Miyazaki films that do not raise significant issues along these lines include Castle in the Sky and Kiki’s Delivery Service (see my review for comments about the film’s thirteen-year-old witch protagonist).

I’d like to write up some more Miyzakis when I have some time (I did a DVD Picks column on most of these films for next week’s National Catholic Register), and maybe later this week I’ll do another blog post on Miyzaki’s main themes and things to look for in his movies.

For now, make plans to see Ponyo. You won’t be sorry, I think.

READ THE REVIEW.

President Opposes Free Speech! (Mostly. For Some.)

It's true!

In the video clip below, Barack "I'm the President" Obama discourages the widespread use of free speech by certain parties, saying that he doesn't want those who got us into "this mess" to do "a lot of talking."

Instead, he wants them to "get out of the way" and let his administration clean up "the mess."

So, these parties should take warning. The president wants them to not oppose his administration's efforts (get out of the way) and not exercise free speech much (not do a lot of talking).

Got it?

Presumably, if they do exercise their free speech right too much, they could be reported to the president's "fishy speech" reporting center.

Now, how are the parties to know who they are? Well, in the clip above the president doesn't specify which issues he's talking about (presumably he did before the clip began), but I'm guessing that they're financial and related to the housing crisis.

In that case, the president is opposing the use of too much speech by people like Barney Frank and Chuck Schumer. . . .

Or maybe, if he was thinking of the mess of Medicare and Medicate, he's putting LBJ ON NOTICE.

Orwell Update

Sen. John Cornyn (Texas) has sent a letter to President Obama about the White House's program to have Americans snitch on fellow citizens who they believe are saying "fishy" things about health care and undermining the administration's position.

In the letter, Cornyn asks Obama to contemplate the massive outrage that would have been unleashed if former President Bush's White House had asked Americans to report fellow citizens who were saying things critical of his administration's policies.

He also asks what the White House plans to do with the data it collects–specifically what action it intends to take regarding the people reported as engaging in "fishy" speech and how it will use their names, e-mail addresses, and IP addresses.

It's a good letter.

READ IT. (WARNING: .pdf)

How Orwellian Is This?

Appearing on the White House blog creatively titled "The Blog" yesterday was a post that said the following (EXCERPTS):

Scary chain emails and videos are starting to percolate on the internet, breathlessly claiming, for example, to "uncover" the truth about the President’s health insurance reform positions.

There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.

Huh?

I can understand the desire on the part of people in the White House to keep a handle on the claims and arguments being used in a policy debate, but . . . isn't it their job to keep track of those?

I mean, just yesterday there was that video of the former totally objective ABC reporter turned Democratic White House staffer Linda Douglass explaining that that was one of her jobs (along with, no doubt, others at the White House). She even showed us her computer, which was using the lame program Microsoft Internet Explorer to connect to the Internet, so we know she can read blogs with the best of them.

But the White House seems concerned that it doesn't have the resources to monitor everything that goes on in America "below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation." So they're asking citizens to report "fishy" statements made by other American citizens to the White House.

Color me skeptical, but creating a program to "flag" e-mails and web sites that take a contrary position to the White House's–a program that relies on citizens reporting their fellow citizens when they send or post something that "seems fishy" (meaning: contrary to the message the White House wants to get out)–strikes me as a misstep.

I imagine whoever is monitoring the e-mail address will get a lot of protests in addition to whatever tips come in. And there will be negative coverage of this on the Internet.

On the other hand, the folks at ReasonTV are taking a constructive attitude . . .