*Really* Complex Carbohydrates

Nutrition_label
I’ve blogged before about the use of fiber in dieting, and I thought I’d give an update about how I’m currently using it.

Fiber is a kind of carbohydrate, but it’s a kind of carbohydrate that I’m actually friendly to.

Carbs, y’see, come in different kinds. On the one hand, there are simple, refined carbohydrates like those you find in table sugar or white flour that are absolutely horrendous for you. These are positively EVIL and are the cause of everything from obesity to diabetes to hardened arteries to who knows what. Bad, bad stuff. They are instantly digestible, cause huge insulin spikes, and humans cannot healthily have them in anything but small quantities.

Unfortunately, they are cheap to produce and have long shelf-lives, so the food industry is pushing them at us right and left.

Then there are "complex carbohydrates," which are harder for us to digest and that correspondingly have a lower impact on your blood sugar. These are found in things like whole grains, and they are much better (or at least less horrendous) for us. Some humans can healthily have these in large amounts. Others (like myself) cannot. It depends on your own particular metabolism.

Then there are really complex carbohydrates. In other words: fiber. Dietary fiber consists of the carbohydrates in our food that we either cannot digest or cannot digest very much. They are digestion-resistant (in humans) and so do not spike our blood sugar. They’re still carbohydrates, though, and so they get listed on nutrition labels (like the one pictured here) under the heading of "Total Carbohydrates."

This is why you hear low-carb dieters talking sometimes about "net carbs." Net carbs are those carbohydrates that have significant impact on your blood sugar. The way to determine them is to take Total Carbohydrates and subtract out Dietary Fiber. Since we can’t really digest that, it won’t mess up your blood sugar. In the example above, the product would have 10 grams of net carbohydrates (13g – 3g = 10g).

You can also subtract out certain other carbohydrates that don’t have a major impact on blood sugar, such as sugar alcohols (MORE INFO HERE.)

It’s important for low-carb dieters to understand how many net carbs they’re putting into their bodies, but fiber isn’t just a good thing on low-carb diets. It’s a good thing for everybody, even people who aren’t dieting.

Fiber not only helps fill you up so that you don’t eat more (good for dieters), it also can help lower your cholesterol, stabilize your blood sugar, stimulate your immune system, prevent certain types of cancer, and (of course) keep you regular.

In other words, IT’S JUST GOOD FOR YOU, OKAY!

The problem is, with the food industry pushing all those simple, refined carbohydrates at us, the average American doesn’t get anywhere near the amount of fiber he should have. An average adult should get at least 20-35 grams of fiber a day, and most of us just don’t.

Which is where fiber supplements come in.

There are different types of fiber, and they help with different things. Consequently, the best type of fiber supplement to take is a mixed fiber supplement–one that combines several different types of fiber. HERE’S THE ONE I USE.

This is a powder, so I mix it with water and then drink it down–fast, before it has a chance to gel up. It is also available in capsules, but I don’t normally use those because you have to take a bunch of capsules to equal the amount of fiber you get in one tablespoon, and that’s inconvenient. (It’s also cheaper to use the powder, and you don’t have to worry about whether all the capsules will dissolve; if some of them break before the others, they might gel up and keep the others from dissolving).

I do not recommend the use of compressed fiber tablets because you never know if they will dissolve or how much.

A while back I started drinking a glass of water with a couple of tablespoons of fiber in the morning and one again in the afternoon, but recently I changed my practice since I found that I would often forget to have my fiber on this plan.

What I do now is have a tablespoon of fiber each time I eat–either right before eating or right afterwards. By coupling the fiber with when I eat, I don’t forget.

There’s a benefit to taking fiber right before you eat in that it will help fill you up fast so that you eat less. That’s not as much of an issue for me, though, since I don’t generally eat three full meals, the size of which varies. I usually have six or so small snacks per day of 200-400 calories each, so I’m not tempted to overeat on particular occasions due to having gone without food for a longer period of time. Consequently, I often take the fiber after eating rather than before.

I also take extra fiber if I’m eating something that is a little higher in carbs or calories since it will help slow down the absorption of the carbs and reduce my blood sugar spike or reduce the absorption of the calories.

It can be hard, though, to always mix a glass of fiber, drink it, clean the glass, etc.–particularly during the workday, so recently I adopted another solution to this problem: Sticking a spoonful of fiber directly into my mouth and then washing it down with water (or, more likely, a diet coke, remembring that "coke" means any carbonated soft-drink; I don’t actually drink Diet Coke since it has caffeine and Aspartame in it).

The thing is, I can’t do that with the mixed fiber supplement recommended above. There’s something about the texture of that which requires it to be mixed with water and then drunk down. If you put it directly into your mouth it instantly clumps up and sticks to your mouth and the result is like trying to clean your mouth with your tongue if you’ve got peanut butter stuck all over it–only worse.

This effect does not happen, though, with all kinds of fiber, and so when I do the spoon-in-the-mouth trick I use powdered PSYLLIUM HUSKS.

Psyllium is an excellent fiber. It’s the one that is used in most fiber supplements (like Metamucil). If you’re going to take an unmixed supplement, psyllium is the one to take. It’s very beneficial, and it–at least at the level it is normally ground to–does not stick to your mouth like peanut butter on steroids.

Consequently, it’s very easy to just stick a spoonful in my mouth, sip a little coke, swallow it, and then drink the rest of the coke–no having to get glasses, fill them with water, stir them up, clean them afterwards, etc.

I still use the mixed fiber supplement as well, but when I’m "on the go" and don’t have time for that, I use the psyllium (which, incidentally, is cheaper yet).

So whether your on a low-carb diet, another diet, or just want good health, I’d strongly encourage you to consider using a fiber supplement.

There are, however, a few notes:

1) You must drink fluids when you take fiber. They recommend something like 10-12 oz of water per spoonful. This is because the fiber is going to absorb water as it bulks up inside you, and if you haven’t drunk fluid along with the fiber then it’s going to start absorbing fluid that you need for other purposes, like keeping your innards lubricated. If you find yourself getting unexpectedly thirsty after taking fiber, this is a sign that you aren’t drinking enough fluid with the amount you’re taking.

2) You must ramp up the amount of fiber that you are taking. If you aren’t used to taking fiber and suddenly jump on a high dosage of it, it will cause uncomfortable bloating or cramping. You need to give your system time to get used to it. Start by taking one serving of fiber supplement a day, then when you’re used to that take two, then get used to that and take three, etc.

3) Not all fiber supplements are the same. Some manufacturers, in an effort to make the fiber more appetizing, will load it up with sugar, which makes it useless for dieting purposes. The brands I’ve linked above are pure–no sugar–but if you’re looking at other brands, be sure to read the nutrition labels and find out if they’ve got sugar in them (some versions of Metamucil are particularly bad in this regard).

4) Be sure that if you are taking medicines or nutritional supplements that you do not take them close to when you take your fiber. When the fiber bulks up, it could prevent them from being properly absorbed. Let an hour go by after taking fiber before you take medicines or nutritional supplements, and don’t take fiber quickly after the medicines or supplements, either.

5) If you’re taking fiber for weight loss, you should be aware that it will cause the illusion of temporary weight gain. The reason is that even a few grams of fiber absorb multiple ounces of fluid, and fluid has weight. This means that as you ramp up the amount of fiber you are taking, it will be carrying additional water with it through your system, so the reading on your scale will actually go up to reflect the extra water that is accompanying the fiber. This is NOT A BAD THING. The extra weight you see on the scale is NOT fat, it will go away within a day if you stop taking the fiber, but don’t do that because the fiber is doing it’s job in keeping you like you feel full, so you eat less and LOSE FAT (the purpose of dieting). The addition of fiber makes it look like you weigh more on the scale, but in reality it accellerates the amount of fat your are losing. It also is doing its other jobs like lowering cholesterol, stabilizing blood sugar, preventing heart disease, preventing certain types of cancer, etc.

MORE ON DIETARY FIBER.

Egyptian Conservationists Fight To Protect Dwindling Mummy Population

From The Onion (yes! apparently they do manage to write something clean once in a while!) . . .

Mummies
CAIRO—As the sun sets over Cairo, the streets are eerily quiet. Just a few years ago, the hillsides from Luxor to Giza would have been buzzing with the familiar sounds of tomb doors creaking open and bones snapping under the methodical shuffling of a slow, catatonic gait. But the telltale signs of Egypt’s indigenous mummy population have fallen silent recently, and the fearsome creatures that once lurched freely across the Valley of the Kings are disappearing at an alarming rate. If nothing is done, experts say, the Egyptian mummy will soon go the way of the Bavarian lycanthrope or the Transylvanian vampire, and vanish forever.

Afterlife Preservation Society president James Amarcas said he can recall a time when Egyptians did not have to go to a museum, but could look out their window and see an entire herd of shroud-wrapped forms staggering on missions of revenge.

"My grandchildren have still never seen a mummy," said Amarcas, who vividly recalls his first mummy sighting in 1947, when he was just 3 years old. "These terrible monsters are little more than a legend to them. It’s sad to think they might never see the bloodthirsty march of an undead Egyptian prince on a cool, calm night."

GET THE (HEARTBREAKING) STORY!

Somebody call Zahi Hawass!

About That Blue Mosque Visit

Blue_mosqueB16’s visit to the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, Constantinople, New Rome, Augusta Antonina, Byzantium (oh, heck, SEE HERE) raised a lot of eyebrows. More specifically, the fact that the pope prayed in the mosque did.

I was surprised when press reports emerged–initially reports that were unclear as to whether he’d actually prayed or just meditated quietly for a moment. Given Pre-16’s disapproval of the interreligious meetings at Assisi and his authorship of Dominus Iesus, it wasn’t something that I predicted.

But it wasn’t something that I thought totally out of character for him. He has articulated principles in the past that would allow him to do something like this, and I could see him saying to himself, "Like Jews and Christians, Muslims do worship God, and in view of the grave world crisis we are presently in and my own obligation as the Vicar of Christ not to inflame it, I should go as far as I possibly can to settle the situation down."

This was a way that was possible given the principles he has articulated before, and so he did it.

Not everyone, though, is familiar with what Pre-16 wrote on this subject, and I was glad to see that John Allen provied a nice column on how to view the event in light of what B16 said before he was B16–as well as the fact that the pope felt is was possible for him to do this without loading it up with theological explanations and qualifiers that would have killed the effect.

Why did he feel that he could handle the matter in that way?

ONLY NIXON COULD GO TO CHINA.

Low-Carb Milk

When I first went low-carb, one of the things that vanished from my diet was milk. It wasn’t a big loss in that I had never been a big milk drinker anyway (now if I’d had to give up diet cokes–in the broad, inclusive sense where "coke" means any carbonated soft drink–then that would be another matter!), but over time I did miss it, and I’ve found a number of alternatives, which I thought I’d share with y’all.

The problem is that, unlike dairy products such as butter or cheese or heavy cream, normal milk contains way too many carbs. If you want a make-shift low-carb equivalent to milk then the thing to do is get heavy cream or whipping cream (which have virtually no carbs) and then dilute it with water to taste. For a long time, low-carbers had to do that, but now there are a wide variety of alternatives. Here are several, as found behind Door #2 on my fridge:

Low_carb_milk

The best alternatives to high-carb milk that I’ve found are the two in the center: Hood’s Calorie Countdown products. Here I have their Fat Free and Chocolate varieties. They also have a 2% variety, though I generally don’t get that one.

Hood’s Fat Free Calorie Countdown, to me, tastes indistinguishable from normal skim milk, and there’s a good reason for that: It’s made from real milk, but with the carbs extracted. Along with most of the calories. As you can see if you squint a little, it has 70% fewer calories than whole milk (45 calories per serving), making it good for dieters of any kind–not just low-carbers. It also has 75% less carbs and sugar than regular milk (3 grams of each per serving instead of 12 grams of each).

The taste of Hood’s Chocolate Calorie Countdown is delicious. This is a 2% reduced fat product, so its calories are a little more than the Fat Free version. It’s got 90 calories per serving (compared to 230 calories in a standard chocolate milk). And it has 4 net grams of carbs per serving (5 total grams, less one gram of fiber), which compares to 31 grams of carb in a normal chocolate milk. It’s also got WAY less sugar: 3 grams as opposed to 29 grams! So even if you aren’t on a low-carb diet, this is a great chocolate milk to use.

Incidentally, both of these also come with 8 grams of protein per serving.

The Hood company is based in the northeast, and if you live in New England you can even get it delivered to your home. SEE THEIR WEB SITE FOR DETAILS. Out here in California, you can get it in the stores, but you may have to ask for it. Albertsons carries it and Vons used to but doesn’t have it now unless you ask (at least that’s the way it is in my neighborhood). You can probably get it by special request from your grocer no matter where you are.

Here in California there are sometimes kinks in the pipeline getting it from New England, and so I’ve also researched other substitutes, and I can tell you about the two that you see on the ends, both of which are forms of soy milk.

The first thing to know about soy milk is that while it can be low carb, it isn’t automatically low carb. Apparently the manufacturers of a lot of soy milk load it up with sugar, which completely ruins it for dieting purposes. If you’re wanting to use it as part of a low-carb diet, what you need to get is UNSWEETENED soy milk (NOT the same thing as "plain" soy milk; "plain" means "doesn’t have a flavor like vanilla or chocolate added").

SILK is one of the bigger soy milk producers. They’ve got a bunch of varieties and are commonly available in supermarkets. Here I have pictured their unsweetened version–recognizable by its green carton. It has 80 calories per serving, but only 3 net grams of carbs (4 total minus one gram of fiber). It’s also got 7 grams of protein. Now, if you’re used to reading nutrition labels, you’re saying, "Okay, so if it’s only got 3 grams of carb and 7 grams of protein, how can you get 80 calories per serving out of that?" The answer is that this is not a fat free product. It’s got 4 grams of fat per serving, which makes it quite rich tasting, and fat is not a problem on a low-carb diet.

If your grocer has any of the Silk soy milks on his shelves, he should be able to get the green-cartoned, unsweetened one for you.

Incidentally, since this isn’t actually made from milk (unlike Calorie Countdown), there’s a little difference in the taste. I initially perceived it as a faint soy-like aftertaste, but it isn’t unpleasant, and I got used to it very fast and don’t even notice it now.

The final product–on the far right–is Westsoy’s Unsweetened (there’s the key word) Vanilla Soymilk. From a nutritional perspective, this one is quite interesting. It’s got 100 calories per serving, 4.5 grams of fat, and 9 grams of protein, making it the highest in protein of any of these products. It’s also the lowest in carbs. According to the nutrition label, it’s got only ONE gram of carb per serving (5 total grams minus 4 grams of fiber, which means it’s also a good source of fiber).

Now, you may be wondering how this could be so different from the milks discussed above–how it can have so much more fiber and so much less carbs than they do–and yet taste like normal milk. The answer is that it doesn’t. This is the least milk-like-tasting product of the ones considered. It has a thinner consistency and has a kind of nutty flavor, like almonds (which is interesting, because it isn’t almond milk–THEY ALSO MAKE THAT). It’s not an unpleasant taste, but it’s just not as milk-like as the others.

I got the above carton of Westsoy Soymilk at Trader Joe’s, but it’s available in a lot of other places, including normal supermarkets, too.

Incidentally, the soy milks don’t have lactose in them so they are also good if you’re lactose intolerant–a condition that is surprisingly common around the world. I was floored when friends of mine from other countries told me that not only were they lactose intolerant, but basically everyone in their home countries was as well. It appears that most people around the planet are lactose intolerant and you can only tolerate lactose well if your ancestors drank a lot of milk straight–without processing it into cheese first–as is the case with northern (not southern) Europeans, certain groups in the Middle East, and certain nomadic groups in Africa and Asia. MORE HERE. AND HERE.

So, whether you’re a low-carb dieter, a low-calorie dieter, or have a personal disagreement with lactose . . . Cheers!

P.S. Just ’cause I know folks will ask: The packages you can see to the right of the milk cartons are tofu . . . mostly nigari tofu, which is really good with worchestershire sauce. Mmmmmm.

My Worst Nightmare (Other Than Hell)

A reader writes:

I didn’t know who else to turn to.  My fiancé asked me a very interesting question which I don’t have an answer to.  I am hoping that you may be able to shed some light on this topic:

Is it possible for the Pope to convert to Islam?  I mean is he protected with special graces that would prevent him from accepting anything but Jesus as the savior of the world?  Can he have and make an opinion regarding his own personal conversion and what would that mean for the Seat of Peter? 

I personally think he can’t because he is guided by the Holy Spirit, but I am wondering if he could express an opinion regarding personal conversion?  Especially when he is not speaking Ex-Cathedra.  I am not interested the slightest bit in Islam or its violent ways of achieving peace.  I am a devout Catholic and support our Pope 100%

The pope is guided by the Holy Spirit, and when he speaks ex cathedra he is protected from binding the consciences of the faithful to believe error (i.e., he’s infallible), but this so far as we know there is not a charism that prevents–absolutely prevents–the pope from embracing error outside of ex cathedra situations.

We may hope that the Holy Spirit would never allow a pope to apostatize from the Christian faith, but we do not have the assurance of faith that he would not allow it to happen. The pope still has free will, and we do not have doctrinal assurance that he would be absolutely prevented from using this free will to commit the grave sin of apostasy (i.e., the total repudiation of the Christian faith).

In fact, some would argue that this actually happened once in the early days of the Church, during the time of the persecutions. Here’s an entry from the Oxford Dictionary of Popes by J. N. D. Kelly:

MARCELLINUS, ST (30 June 296-? 304; d. 25 Oct. 304). While nothing is known of his background, much the greater part of his reign fell in a period when the church enjoyed external peace. His sole recorded action in these years was, according to an inscription, to authorize one of his deacons, Severus, to carry out certain structural modifications in the cemetery of CALLISTUS. On 23 Feb. 303, however, Emperor Diocletian (284-305) issued his first persecuting edict ordering the destruction of churches, the surrender of sacred books, and the offering of sacrifice by those attending law-courts. Marcellinus complied and, probably in May 303, handed over copies of the Scriptures; he also, apparently, offered incense to the gods. Several of his clergy, including the presbyters MARCELLUS, MILTIADES, and SILVESTER, all three to become popes, were later said to have acted with him. The Donatists used these facts, of which they had documentary evidence, in their controversy early in the 5th cent. with St Augustine, who, while denying the allegations, did so in a perfunctory and embarrassed manner. Marcellinus’s guilt is borne out by the facts that his name was omitted from the official list of popes and that DAMASUS I completely ignored him when composing verse tributes to previous popes. By the end of the 5th and the beginning of the 6th cents. it is evident that his apostasy was frankly acknowledged, and efforts were being made to present it in a favourable light. Thus LP [the Liber Pontificalis or "Book of Popes"], basing itself on a now lost Passion of St Marcellinus, relates how he was ordered to sacrifice and proceeded to do so, but a few days later was filled with remorse for his weakness; he was then beheaded with three others on Diocletian’s orders. An independent account of his apostasy, and supposed avowal of it at the pseudo-council of Sinuessa (west of Capua), appears in the apocryphal acts (early 6th cent.). There is in fact no evidence of his martyrdom; no one in the 4th cent. seems to have had any inkling of it, and St Augustine made no reference to it when dealing with the Donatists’ charges. On the other hand, his surrender of sacred books disqualified him from the priesthood, and if he was not actually deposed (as some scholars argue) he must have left the Roman church without an acknowledged head. The date of his abdication or deposition is not known. He died on 25 Oct. 304, and was buried in the cemetery of Sta Priscilla on the Via Salaria; this was presumably chosen because it was private property of the powerful family of the Acilii Glabrioni, the church’s official cemeteries having been confiscated by the government at the beginning of the persecution. Because of the story of his execution at the emperor’s behest he came to be venerated as a martyr. Feast 2 June.

Needless to say, this was not an infallible papal canonization.

It is to be pointed out that J. N. D. Kelly is an Anglican, and this sometimes affects his take on things, but he  also acknowledges a great deal of the Catholicity of the early Church–so much so that his book Early Christian Doctrines played a significant role in my conversion. In his subsequent entries on Marcellus, Miltiades, and Sylvester he defends them against the charges that they–before they were pope–had apostatized (and then obviously repented), saying that the charges against them appear false, but the one against Marcellinus appears true.

The Catholic Encyclopedia defends Marcellinus against the charges, though its authors were Catholic and living in an age in which everything, including Church history, was viewed through the lens of apologetics, and that could skew their perspective.

I haven’t studied the evidence up close for myself, and it can be read both ways. The authors of the Catholic Encyclopedia’s best argument seems to be that if Marcellinus had apostatized then it would have been more loudly trumpeted by pagans, though I don’t know how much we have from this time period, and it was just before Constantine, at which point mention of an apostate pope would have become an embarrassment. Kelly points to attempts by his successors to suppress his memory, but this–if it happened–could have occurred for other reasons.

I bring up the subject because it is a potential datapoint in the argument that the Holy Spirit would not automatically prevent a pope from using his free will to apostatize, and that gives us all the more reason to pray for the pope.

As to what would happen if a pope did apostatize–today, in the global media age, with 24/7 satellite news and the Internet everywhere–well, obviously it would throw the Church into an enormous convulsion and gravely harm the Christian faith, far more so than would have happened before the advent of telecommunications and when the Church was still a persecuted, semi-underground organization.

Even back then, according to Kelly’s account, it looks like there was a significant problem. Here’s the beginning of his entry on Marcellinus’ successor, Marcellus:

MARCELLUS 1, ST (Nov./Dec. 306-16 Jan. 308). Because of internal divisions as well as the persecution, the Roman see remained vacant for just over three and a half years after MARCELLINUS’s apostasy. With the accession of Emperor Maxentius 306-12) and his adoption of toleration, an election became practicable. The man chosen, Marcellus, had been a leading presbyter under Marcellinus, and had probably played the key role during the vacancy. It is very unlikely that the Donatists’ later allegations that he had surrendered sacred books to the authorities along with Marcellinus were true, for he proved a merciless judge of such conduct and seems to have expunged Marcellinus’s name from official lists of popes.

Today it wouldn’t take three and a half years to get a new pope. The conclave would be as short as the cardinals could possibly make it, and they’d likely elect the most conservative of the papabile possible in order to send reassurances to the public about the stability and solidity of the faith. They wouldn’t want someone who over-nuance things and risk saying or doing something that would create a new wave of doubt after the Church had just suffered such a blow.

Efforts would be made for the former pope to be reconciled, of course. Assuming he returned to the faith, he would be treated gently, would make a public speech and issue a public statement explaining his moment of weakness and begging forgiveness, and then he would be whisked away to a life of private prayer and penance.

How this would be handled canonically is not clear, since canon law does not contain any provisions for a pope losing his office except by death or resignation. The way the law is written, he could not canonically be deposed if he apostatized. Nor would he automatically lose office the way the penalties section of the Code is written. It would, of course, start a fierce canonical debate if an apostate pope wanted–per impossibile–to somehow remain pope. However, if he had truly apostatized then it would be almost certain that he would resign, either de jure by announcing his resignation or de facto by walking away from the job.

His resignation might even happen like this: If the pope were kidnapped by Muslim terrorists and tortured and, in a moment of human weakness, he broke then, as soon as he was released, he would resign (if he didn’t already do so in the video the terrorists uploaded to YouTube), acknowledging that his moment of weakness made him an unfit leader for the Church, and then he’d whisk himself off to a life of private prayer and penance.

Or his resignation might be triggered automatically upon his capture. It is reported that, when Pius XII was expecting Hitler to seize the Vatican and kidnap him, he prepared a secret document specifying that he resigned his office upon the moment of his capture so that a new pope could be elected. For all we know, there may be such a secret document out there right now specifying a papal resignation in the event of capture by Muslims or others.

Let’s just pray that the Church and all its future popes are spared such horrors.

It’s the stuff that nightmares are made of.

Immaculate Conception

Immaculate_conception

Today is a holy day of obligation in the United States, so if you’re in the United States, be sure to go to Mass.

Also as a result of it being a holy day, I won’t be blogging, but feel to have fun with the archives and the comboxes!

God bless!

Here’s what the Compendium has to say about the Immaculate Conception:

96. What does the “Immaculate Conception” mean?

God freely chose Mary from all eternity to be the Mother of his Son. In order to carry out her mission she herself was conceived immaculate. This means that, thanks to the grace of God and in anticipation of the merits of Jesus Christ, Mary was preserved from original sin from the first instant of her conception.

And here’s what the Catechism has to say:

491 Through the centuries the Church has become ever more aware that Mary, "full of grace" through God, was redeemed from the moment of her conception. That is what the dogma of the Immaculate Conception confesses, as Pope Pius IX proclaimed in 1854:

The most Blessed Virgin Mary was, from the first moment of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege of almighty God and by virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, Saviour of the human race, preserved immune from all stain of original sin.

492 The "splendour of an entirely unique holiness" by which Mary is "enriched from the first instant of her conception" comes wholly from Christ: she is "redeemed, in a more exalted fashion, by reason of the merits of her Son". The Father blessed Mary more than any other created person "in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places" and chose her "in Christ before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless before him in love".

493 The Fathers of the Eastern tradition call the Mother of God "the All-Holy" (Panagia), and celebrate her as "free from any stain of sin, as though fashioned by the Holy Spirit and formed as a new creature". By the grace of God Mary remained free of every personal sin her whole life long.

MORE INFO ON THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION.

Black Hole Eats Star. Film At 11.

Black_hole
THIS IS REALLY INTERESTING.

It seems that we’ve just observed the central black hole of a galaxy eating a star.

The galaxy in question is 4 billion light years away and in the constellation Bootes.

This is apparently not an every day event. EXCERPTS:

Scientists used NASA’s Galaxy Evolution Explorer, an orbiting telescope sensitive to two bands of ultraviolet wave lengths, to detect an ultraviolet flare coming from the center of a remote elliptical galaxy.

"This ultraviolet flare was from a star literally being ripped apart and swallowed by the black hole," Suvi Gezari of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and lead author of the paper describing the findings in Astrophysical Journal Letters, said in an interview.

"This is the first time that we’ve actually been able to monitor the flare of radiation from such an event in detail. Only once every 10,000 years will a star pass close enough to a (galaxy’s) central black hole to be ripped apart and swallowed in this manner," Gezari said.

Scientists continue to use the telescope to observe the ultraviolet light as it fades while the black hole snacks on the final table scraps from the devoured star.

"We looked at the galaxy in 2003 and there was no ultraviolet light coming from the galaxy at all," Gezari said. "And then in 2004, we suddenly saw this very bright source."

"The only way to explain such a luminous ultraviolet flare is if the black hole swallowed a star," Gezari said.


GET THE STORY.

Allah = God?

A reader writes:

The thought comes from one of your commenters, and I
think it’s worthy of a blog entry (because I’m trying
to work it out myself).
Is the Christian God the same god as the Muslim Allah?
I think most orthodox Catholics will answer yes, but
that generates the question, what does that mean?

The immediately obvious discrepancy is that Muslims
deny the Trinity. But other characteristics fail as
well. Muslims would shudder at the description of God
as “Father.”

So if suffient characteristics of their description of
God diverges suffiently from our description of God,
do we have different gods?

I wrote a philosophical paper on this question a few years ago that I meant to submit as a journal article, but I’m afraid that I haven’t gotten around to it. At this point, I’m not even sure what hard drive it’s on, so I’ll have to do some digging around.

In the meantime, lemme see how well I can come up with a quick encapsulation of the overall argument.

For purposes of simplicity, let us consider the question of prayer, with the understanding that what is said about this topic can be applied in a general way to other forms of relating to the divine, such as offering praise, adoration, etc.

Prayer can be defined in various ways (lifting the heart and mind to God, petitioning God for some good, etc.), but let’s use an understanding of prayer that anyone can understand: Prayer is talking to God.

So the question becomes: When Muslims talk to Allah, are they talking to God?

We need not be detained by the fact that the word “Allah” is not the normal English word for God. It is the normal Arabic word for God, and it is used by Arabic-speaking Christians as a designator for the true God all the time.

We also need not be detained by alleged origins of the term in pre- and proto-Muslim history. Where a term comes from does not determine its meaning. How it is used determines its meaning (otherwise the word “nice” would mean “ignorant” since it comes from the Latin word nescius) and so, regardless of where the word came from, how Muslims use this word today is key to determining whether they pray to the same God we do.

How important it is to recognize present use is illustrated by the fact that Arabic-speaking Christians also use “Allah” as a descriptor of the true God. When they so use it, they have in mind a Trinitarian Being, the Second Person of whom became incarnate as Jesus Christ. That’s what Arabic-speaking Christians mean by “Allah.”

Arabic-speaking Muslims (and other Muslims) obviously mean something different, and the question is whether their usage of the term is different enough that it would prevent prayers they address to Allah from being prayers addressed to God.

What characteristics does a Muslim typically envision Allah as having? I would advance the following list as some of the most important characteristics:

1) Is an uncreated being
2) Is the creator of the universe
3) Appeared to Abraham
4) Is just
5) Is merciful
6) Will raise the dead
7) Is not a Trinity
8) Is not incarnate as Jesus of Nazareth

Characteristics 1-6 are ones that Christians agree with Muslims about. It is characteristics 7 and 8 that are the key points of disagreement. Are they sufficient to keep God from receiving Muslim prayers directed to him?

Before answering that question, take note of this fact: A non-Christian Jewish person would say exactly the same list of characteristics applies to the God to whom they direct their prayers.

Christian tradition and the Bible itself acknowledge that Jewish individuals do worship and pray to God, even if they do not understand that he is a Trinity or that he is incarnate as Jesus of Nazareth. If you’re going to say that belief in the Trinity and the Incarnation are essential for worshipping or talking to God then you’re going to have a huge problem with Scripture, Tradition, and the Magisterium.

And yet the person’s understanding of God is different than the one that the Church proclaims.

I think that light on this question can be shed by recognizing that it is quite possible for us to talk to someone even if there are things that we don’t know about them or even if we have false beliefs about them.

To illustrate this point, let’s take the case of someone with a secret identity: Bruce Wayne.

Suppose that I am a paperboy who delivers copies of The Daily Planet in the neighborhood where stately Wayne Manor is located, so one of my customers is millionnaire playboy Bruce Wayne, who always comes out to get his paper promptly, being as interested in local and world affairs as he is. One day as I’m pitching The Daily Planet in the neighborhood, I see him out on his lawn, and I say, “Howdy, Bruce!” He waves back and says, “Hi, Jimmy!”

I had this (brief) conversation with him even though I–as a normal Gothamite (transplanted from Texas)–am totally unaware of the fact that he is secretly Batman. There thus can be things about a person that I do not know and do not believe about him, yet it doesn’t stop me from having a conversation with him.

This is analogous to the situation of the Jewish people in the Old Testament, who prayed to God even though the doctrine of the Trinity had not yet been revealed.

But it’s not analogous to the situation of someone after the revelation of the Trinity who has considered and rejected the doctrine, so let’s go back to the thought experiment.

Suppose that one day as I am pitching copies of The Daily Planet and I notice an article on page one by Lois Lane that is headlined BATMAN IS REALLY BRUCE WAYNE!

Now, I’ve read all of Lois’s previous attempts to prove that Superman is really Clark Kent, and every single time she’s run a story like that, it’s been disproved. So I long ago concluded that Lois Lane is an unreliable source on the subject of superhero identities.

When I see her latest such story, I just laugh and shrug it off, and when I pitch the paper to Mr. Wayne, I call out “Hey, there’s a story on page one that you should really get a kick out of! Haw-Haw!” and Bruce smiles and says, “I know. I already read it on the Internet and had a good laugh. By the way, the Internet is driving dead-tree newspapers out of business, so you should start looking for a new job. May I suggest apologetics?”

Bruce and I were able to have this conversation even though I had already entertained and rejected the claim that he is Batman.

So if I can talk to someone about whom I have false beliefs, what would prevent a person from talking to God even though he has false beliefs about God?

Let me go back to the thought experiment one more time to unearth an insight that should be of help.

The next day I’m tossing papers and I see Mr. Wayne on the lawn and there is a TV reporter there interviewing him. I toss him his paper and shout, “Hey, Mr. Wayne! Thanks for that tip about apologetics! I put in my application with a group in California!” and he calls back, “Good for you, son!”

Unbeknownst to me, the person I talked to this time was not actually Bruce Wayne. In reality, it was Chameleon Boy from the Legion of Super-Heroes, who used his shape-shifting power to impersonate Bruce Wayne so that he coud be interviewed by a reporter while the real Bruce Wayne was being interviewed on TV with Commissioner Gordon at the same time across town, setting up “proof” that Batman and Bruce Wayne are two different people and thus once again denying Lois Lane the prize of outing a superhero.

In this case I believed that I was talking to Bruce Wayne, but in fact I was not. I was actually talking with Chameleon Boy.

In this case I had a massive number of false beliefs about the person I was talking to. I believed that he was (a) a human being, who was (b) a resident of Gotham and (c) a native of the 20th century and (d) from the planet Earth, and (e) a millionnaire and (f) a middle-aged man and (g) someone who possesses no superpowers.

In reality, I was talking to (a) an alien being, who will be (b) a resident of Metropolis and is (c) a native of the 30th century and (d) from the planet Durla, and (e) has no special wealth and (f) is a teenager and (g) possesses the power to change shape.

How could I get so much wrong about the person I was talking to and yet be talking to him? What was it that allowed my words to be addressed to him even though almost every belief I had about him was wrong?

It would seem that there is some set of minimal core criteria that allow me to talk to a person even though almost everything I believe about him is wrong. What might this be?

In the case of an ordinary conversation, I would suggest that the fundamental criterion of who we are talking to is something we aren’t always fully conscious of.

Suppose that on the third day I had a partner with me in the car, helping me roll papers, and after I finished speaking to Chameleon Boy, he turned to me and said, “Who were you just talking to?” I reply: “Bruce Wayne,” and my partner says, “Who’s that?” Annoyed, I point and say, “That guy over there.”

“That guy over there” is the real descriptor of who I was talking to. I believed that this person was Bruce Wayne (which was false) and that he was not Batman (which was true), but in reality I was talking to a particular person “over there.” As long as there was someone “over there” (i.e., as long as I wasn’t hallucinating) then that is the person I was talking to, even if I was mistaken about the person’s identity and everything else about him.

Notice thus that we have two different kinds of characteristics that apply to the person I was talking to. The primary criterion is that he was “that guy over there,” while everything else about him (the idea that he was Bruce Wayne, that he was not Batman, that he was a human, that he was a millionnaire playboy) were secondary criteria.

This is the way conversations work when we are talking to someone in person: The person we are talking to is the one who satisfies the primary criterion we have in mind–usually “that person over there”–even if none of the secondary criteria we have in mind apply to that person.

Upon discovering that none of the secondary criteria apply, we may say “Oh! I wasn’t talking to you!” but we refer in this case to who we intended to talk to, not who we were talking to. If I discover that the person I have been talking to is not who I thought he was, that doesn’t change the fact that I was talking to him.

So we’ve got a handle on how conversations work in person, but what about conversations with people who aren’t physically present and we can’t think of as “that person over there”?

In this case, it seems to me, we have to decide which criteria we are going to treat as primary and which as secondary.

Suppose that I am a person who is unsure whether Christianity is true. I believe that God exists and that he created the world, but I am not sure whether he is a Trinity or whether he incarnated as Jesus of Nazareth. So I pray, “God, please guide me so that I realize the truth about you and whether I should become a Christian.”

In this case, the primary criterion of who I am addressing would presumably be “Creator of the Universe” or something like that, and thus the Creator of the Universe would understand that I was addressing him, even though I am uncertain about other things concerning him.

Suppose, though, that I was a person who really hated Christians and was unwilling to address their God, even if he exists. In this case the criteria I am applying to the person I am addressing might be something like “the Creator of the Universe as long as he isn’t the Christian God.”

In this case my prayer would be addressed to no one because, in fact, the Creator of the Universe is in fact the Christian God. Up in heaven, God would say, “Sorry, but if you’re really determined not to talk to the Christian God then you’re not talking to me. You’re talking to the void.”

Now suppose that I believe that the Creator of the Universe isn’t the Christian God, but I’m willing to talk to him if he is. In this case my primary criterion is “Creator of the Universe” but “is not the Christian God” is a secondary criterion. As long as this is the case, I’m still going to be talking to God. Up in heaven, God will say, “Okay, you’re wrong about me not being the Christian God, but you’re still willing to talk to me even if I am, and so your prayers are addressed to a real Being.”

If we’re going to ask about the prayers of Muslims in particular and whether they are addressed to God, I would say that it depends on the Muslim in question. Some Muslims may be so anti-Christian that they would be unwilling to talk to God–to Allah–if it turned out that he was the God of the Christians. Those Muslims would not be talking to God because there is no being that corresponds to the description “the true God who is not the God of the Christians.” They would be talking to the void.

But the vast majority of Muslims don’t seem to be in that condition. They may not believe that God is a Trinity or that he incarnated in Jesus of Nazareth, but they are still directing their prayers to something like “Creator of the Universe” or “God who appeared to Abraham” or “the one true God” or something like that.

This is what enables the Catechism to state that Muslims “acknowledge the Creator” and that “together with us
they adore the one, merciful God” (CCC 841).

Whew!

Okay, that ended up being longer than I meant it to, but I hope it sketches some of the philosophical basis for how a person can genuinely talk to someone (including God) about whom one has false beliefs.

That’s something we need to happen because, no matter who we are, at some point in our lives all of us have entertained false beliefs about God–even from misunderstanding perfectly orthodox catechesis in childhood–and we still need God to answer our prayers in those times and to guide us toward a correct understanding of him.

Congratulations, John!

I was delighted yesterday when word hit the Catholic wires that His Awesomeness B16 has appointed Dr. John Haas to the Pontifical Academy of Life.

Dr. Haas is (among other things) head of the National Catholic Bioethics Center, which is an orthodox Catholic organization devoted to bioethics. They’re very sharp and very faithful to the Magisterium, and at Catholic Answers we regularly point people their way.

Dr. Haas is a stand-up guy who has made time to discuss bioethical questions with me on the phone, and I was delighted to see his work being honored with this new appointment.

Congrats!

HERE’S AN ARTICLE BY DR. JOHN HAAS.

ABOUT THE PONTIFICAL ACADEMY OF LIFE.