Islam Controversy Update

B16_2It’s always interesting when you read two different, allegedly objective news stories and come away with contrary impressions of the state of the facts.

Take THIS ONE and THIS ONE as examples.

Both are covering the current controversy regarding Pope Benedict’s remarks on Islam, but they convey significantly different impressions of the state of things.

For example, the first article–by Reuters–has this hopeful note:

One of the few signs that the crisis may have peaked came from Iran’s hard-line president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who told NBC television in New York that now that the Pope has taken back his statement "there is no problem."

That makes it sound like the controversy may have peaked, and it is a quite significant thing when a hate-inflamer like Ahmadinejad is saying that there is no problem. That sounds like a signal that he will not be using his government-controlled hate press to further inflame passion on this the way he did with the Danish cartoons.

But the second article–by The Evening Standard–conveys a different impression:

Pope Benedict faces a growing chorus of demands to make an unequivocal apology for remarks seen as portraying Islam as a violent faith, despite attempts by Western leaders and churchmen to defuse the crisis.

That makes it sound like the controversy is still building.

Admittedly, these matters are subjective and hard to gauge–but then THAT’S THE POINT, isn’t it? Unless the pieces are clearly labelled as opinion or analysis then they’re supposed to be objectively sticking ot the facts–or so the MSM would have us believe.

Then there’s another matter where the two pieces convey a different impression of the facts, and here the contrast between the two news services is reversed. According to Reuters,

In Turkey, Mehmet Ali Agca, who tried to kill Pope John Paul in 1981, warned Benedict not to make a planned visit to the country in late November, saying his life would be in danger.

"As someone who knows these matters well, I say your life is in danger. Don’t come to Turkey," Agca, who is serving a sentence for the killing of a newspaper editor in the 1970s, said in comments released in a statement by his lawyer.

From this one would think that Mehmet Ali Agca is sincerely concerned about Pope Benedict’s wellbeing (which he may indeed be) and issuing what could be sound advice (and it may indeed be) based on being an apparently sane and balanced individual with a realistic view of things, whatever his past crimes may have been.

In fact, Mehmet Ali Agca is a dangerously unbalanced fantasy-prone individual who regularly makes wild, non-reality-based statements that apparently come from his own delusional inner life.

While The Evening Standard doesn’t make as blunt (and as evaluative) a statement as I just did, it does at least report the facts in a way that allows the reader to infer what a crazyman Agca is:

In his two page letter to leading Italian Rome based daily La Repubblica, Agca, who was a member of the Turkish terrorist cell the White Wolves, wrote: "Pope Ratzinger listen to someone who knows these things very well.

"Your life is in danger. You absolutely must not come to Turkey. Pope Benedict you must know that between 1980 and 2000 I was in contact with various Western intelligence services and with the Vatican.

"In those twenty tears I learnt many things and I came into possession of many classified secrets."

The letter closed with Agca imploring Pope Benedict to resign for his own safety he wrote: "For your own welfare you must make a grand gesture of honour and resign.

"Then you must return to your native land (Germany) and in your place an Italian cardinal can be elected Pope, possibly (cardinal Dionigi) Tettamanzi or (cardinal Tarcisio) Bertone.

"Then the Vatican should become a centre of peace and fraternity. The world has a need of this it does not need hatred and vendetta."

While it’s praiseworthy that The Evening Standard reported the facts regarding Agca’s current letter more fully and thus put the reader into a better position to evaluate the sanity of the man, it was still writing the piece according to a scare script, pouring the story into a pre-formed mold and to my mind still constitutes shallow reporting since Agca has repeatedly said totally bizarre things and the reader is not informed of this fact.

If it was going to make Agca the centerpiece of its story, it at least should have interviewed someone who could offer an assessment of the reliability of the man.

For example, shortly before the death of John Paul II he gave an interview with La Repubblica, in which he asserted:

In the 1980’s, certain Vatican supporters believed that I was the new messiah and to free me they organized all the intrigue about Emanuela Orlandi and the other incidents they won’t reveal" [SOURCE].

Meanwhile, the Vatican Information Service released the following text from Pope Benedict’s Wednesday audience concerning his speech at the University of Regensburg:

"I chose the theme," he said, "of the relationship between faith and reason. In order to introduce my audience to the dramatic nature and current importance of the subject, I quoted some words from a Christian-Muslim dialogue from the 14th century in which the Christian – the Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologus – presented to his Muslim interlocutor, in a manner we find incomprehensibly brusque, the problem of the relationship between faith and violence.

"This quotation, unfortunately, has lent itself to misunderstandings. However, to an attentive reader of my text it is clear that in no way did I wish to make my own the negative words pronounced by the medieval emperor, and that their polemical content does not express my personal convictions. My intentions were quite otherwise: on the basis of what Manuel II subsequently said in a positive sense … concerning the reason that must guide us in transmitting the faith, I wished to explain that not religion and violence, but religion and reason, go together.

"The theme of my talk was, then, the relationship between faith and reason," he added. "I wished to call for a dialogue of the Christian faith with the modern world and for dialogue between all cultures and religions. I hope that at various moments of my visit – when, for example, in Munich I underlined how it important it is to respect what is sacred for others – what emerged was my deep respect for all the great religions, and in particular for Muslims who ‘worship the one God,’ and with whom we are committed to promoting ‘peace, liberty, social justice and moral values for the benefit of all humanity.’

"I trust, therefore, that following the initial reactions, my words at the University of Regensburg may constitute an impulse and encouragement towards positive, even self-critical, dialogue both among religions and between modern reason and Christian faith" [SOURCE].

Regarding the Wednesday audience, the Reuters piece noted this significant fact:

[A]s is customary, the Pope still was driven among the crowd standing on the back of an open jeep as it passed among tens of thousands of people in the square.

Which is one of the reasons I say B16 isn’t afraid to be martyred.

Despite what happened in that same square when Mehmet Ali Agca–a Muslim–tried to kill John Paul II, and despite the imminent reasonability of using a bullet-proof popemobile for security purposes, one of the first things B16 did in office was return to the practice of using an open vehicle–a clear signal that he is willing to accept the risks that this entails in order to be more accessible to those he is trying to serve.

Mystery Bag In Space

BaginspaceSNIP:

Tuesday night, Hale showed another photo taken by Atlantis’ crew of a second mystery object floating near the shuttle.

"While we have not definitively put this interesting little picture to bed, there is considerable thought that it is just a plastic bag that came from somewhere and got loose," Hale said.

I don’t get it.

Every space pirate worth his space salt knows that the shuttle always jettisons its trash just before going into hyperspace.

OH WELL.

Safe landing, guys!

How Do You Solve A Problem Like Milingo?

MilingoSigh.

How to put this delicately?

( . . . still waiting for inspiration.)

Okay, let’s not put it delicately.

Archbishop emeritus of Lusaka Emmanuel Milingo is out of control. (Actually, that was pretty delicate compared to what I’m tempted to write.)

Worse, he’s out of control and rampaging through the United States, campaigning for married priests with his own civil law wife (I have to be in the qualifier becaue he’s not really married to her; he is impeded from being able to validly contract a marriage due to his holy orders, so his union with her is automatically null–same thing goes for all the non-laicized priests who "left the priesthood" to get "married"; see Canon 1087), who was personally picked for him by the long-time lunatic and antichrist, Sun Myung Moon.

HERE’S GENERAL BACKGROUND ON MILINGO.

Now, to address the question posed in the title of this post: Just how do you deal with an enfant terrible like this?

I mean, if you’re B16, you’ve got to do something. You can’t just let him rampage through downtown Tokyo, detroying buildings left and right.

AND PRESS ACCOUNTS INDICATE THAT SOMETHING IS, INDEED, IN THE WORKS.

But preciesely what’s going on isn’t fully clear.

ED PETER HAS THE STORY.

Pay No Attention To That Man Behind The Camera

In the current uproar about the pope’s words and whether they were or were not offensive to Muslims the attention has centered almost exclusively on whether the pope was wrong to say what he said (either at all, or in this context, or in this way) and whether Muslims are overreacting.

The answer to the latter question is: Of course they are.

But there is, as the like to say in Latin, a tertium quid that should be considered in assessing the question of who–or what–is to blame for the current situation.

That third thing is the mainstream media.

Canadian editorialist DAVID WARREN makes a persuasive case, including fingering one of the chief offenders.

EXCERPTS:

The BBC appears to have been quickest off the mark, to send around the world in many languages, including Arabic, Turkish, Farsi, Urdu, and Malay, word that the Pope had insulted the Prophet of Islam, during an address in Bavaria.

This was not a crude anti-Islamic polemic; nor was it so at the end of the 14th century. It was a quest for peace and amity, then as now.

By turning the story back-to-front, so that what’s promised in the lead — a crude attack on Islam — is quietly withdrawn much later in the text, the BBC journalists were having a little mischief. The kind of mischief that is likely to end with Catholic priests and faithful butchered around the Muslim world. Either the writers were so jaw-droppingly ignorant, they did not realize this is what they were abetting (always a possibility with the postmodern journalist), or the malice was intended. There is no third possibility.

From the start, the BBC’s reports said the Pope would “face criticism from Muslim leaders” — in the present tense. This is a form of dishonesty that has become common in journalism today. The flagrantly biased reporter, feigning objectivity, spices his story by just guessing what a man’s enemies will say, even before they have spoken.

While I don’t mean to pick especially on the BBC, when other mainstream media are often as culpable, they are worth singling out here to show the amount of sheer, murderous evil of which this taxpayer-funded network is capable.

GET THE STORY.

Hello Vader

Pinkvader_2

Have you cleaned up the soda spewed all over your keyboard yet? Good. Reading blogs does carry certain risks you know.

When I saw this photo over at Dyspeptic Mutterings, I just had to share it here.

POSSIBLE CAPTIONS:

  • "Sister?  So, you have a twin sister.  As do I!"
  • "Today will be a day long remembered.  It has seen the death of Kenobi, who died because he laughed at me."
  • "I find your lack of taste disturbing."

Please add your own contributions in the combox.

Yarr!! It Be Talke Like A Pirate Day!!!

PirateToday be Tal kie Like A Prrriate Day! (PHT t’th’rrrrreader which ee-mail’d!)

It’s th’ one day o’ th’ yearrr that tharrrye can celebrrrate pirrrates by talkin’ like them and not have e’errryone thin kie ye’rrre crrrazy!

(Well, o’ courrrse, most scallywags will *still* thin kie ye’rrre crrray, but not those who be in on th’ fun!)

(Well, okay, a bit o’ them will, too, and a bottle of rum!)

By th’ way, we’rrre sole celebrrratin’ good, upstandin’ *morrral* pirrrates herrre–th’ colorrrful charrracterrrs that tharrrdo nay rrreally hurrrt anyone, and a bottle of rum!

Like those fine chaps frrrom yon Gilberrrt and Sullivan’s "The Pirrrates o’ Penzance (orrr The Slave o’ Duty)"

Speakin’ o’ which, that’s anotherrr good way t’ celebrrrate Tal kie Like A Pirrrate Day! Go watch "The Pirrrates o’ Penzance"–a lovely tale, and a bottle of rum! All about keepin’ yerrr duty and booty like that, and a bottle of rum!

And pirrrates, o’ courrrse, and a bottle of rum!

It’s out on DVD in se’errral verrrsions, and a bottle of rum! The Canadian Strrratforrrd Festival verrrsion be likely th’ best one out at th’ moment, and a bottle of rum! It’s quite good, and a bottle of rum! Though I ca nay ferrr th’ dismal exist’nce o’ me figurrre out why in th’ name o’ Davy Jones t avast do nay rrrelease th’ outstandin’ Kevin Kline, Rex Smith, Linda Rondstadt verrrsion, and a bottle of rum!

Aaaarrrgh!

Yarr! An’ don’t ferget t’get THIS YERE BOOKE BY MISTERRR TIMOTHEE POWERSE.

By th’ way, if ye’d like t’ learrrn morrre about Tal kie Like A Pirrrate Day,

GO HERE, and a bottle of rum!

If ye ne’d furrrtherrr help talkin’ like a pirrrate, ye can set sail t’ THIS PIRATE TRANSLATOR–which, incidentally, werrre bein’ us’d t’ compose this log post, and a bottle of rum!

Have fun, Mateys! Aarrrgh!

P.S. Go pirates! Beat ninjas! Yarr!

Western Catholic At Eastern Catholic Liturgies

A reader writes:

I grew up Roman Catholic in a small town in the Midwest where only the Novus Ordo was available for weekly Mass. I know live in an area where the Tridentine Rite was recently allowed. After going to a Tridentine Mass for the first time I became interested in other expressions of the Catholic Mass and started looking for Eastern Rite parishes in the area. Luckily it has a number of Eastern Rite Churches. I have visited a Melkite Greek Catholic parish and a Byzantine Catholic parish.

I asked a few knowledgeable Catholic friends if receiving Communion was permissible at these Masses. All agreed that if the church is in communion with Rome then that is permissible. Is that the case?

Absolutely! The Code of Canon Law provides:

Can.  844 §1. Catholic ministers administer the
sacraments licitly to Catholic members of the Christian faithful alone, who
likewise receive them licitly from Catholic ministers alone, without prejudice
to the prescripts of §§2, 3, and 4 of this canon, and can. 861,
§2.

The word order in this canon is a little awkward for the point in question, but "Catholic members of the Christian faithful . . . receive [the sacraments] licitly from Catholic ministers." Given that, you can receive the Eucharist from any Catholic minister unless there is a specific prohibition otherwise, and in the case of the Eucharist there is not. You are perfectly free to approach an eastern Catholic priest or deacon (or other eastern Catholic minister of Holy Communion).

There was some disagreement if attending these other Masses fulfilled my Sunday Mass obligation. Most thought they did, but some disagreed.

The ones who disagreed were incorrect. The Code of Canon Law expressly provides for you to be able to fulfill your Sunday obligation at a divine liturgy in an eastern Catholic church:

Can.  1248 §1. A person who assists at a Mass celebrated
anywhere in a Catholic rite either on the feast day itself or in the evening of
the preceding day satisfies the obligation of participating in the Mass.

The reader then asks:

Finally, I would like to know what would be necessary to join an Eastern Rite parish if I wished to do so. Since I am already in full communion with Rome, so it wouldn’t be considered a “conversion,” would it?

It would not be a conversion, no. It would be one of two things, described below.

First, if you just want to join a parish then all you would have to do (I suppose) is fill out their registration card. This would not mean that you belonged to the Eastern Church of which this parish is a part. If you registered at a Byzantine parish you would not thereby become a Byzantine Catholic. You would still be a Latin (Roman) Catholic who happened to be registered at an Byzanting parish, and you would still be subject to the Latin Church’s Code of Canon Law (which I have been quoting above since it is the one that is relevant to you; the Eastern Catholic Churches have their own code of canon law, known as the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches).

Second, it would be possible for you to change rites and become an actual member of an Eastern Catholic Church by law. Thus if you changed rites to join the Melkite Church, you would at that point no longer be a Roman Catholic but a Melkite Catholic and would be subject to the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches, as well as the particular law of the Melkite Church.

The way to do this has evolved somewhat since the Code of Canon Law was released in 1983. According to what is on the books, you would need to obtain the permission of the Holy See (Can. 112 §1, no. 1), but my understanding is that the Holy See has modified this in practice in subsequent years. If you decide to take this step, consult with your (Latin) diocese for further assistance.

Be aware that this is a big step and should not be taken lightly. It also may not be as easy to change back to the Latin Church if you decide you want to do that later on. The Church (as a whole) permits the faithful of every individual Church within it to receive the sacraments and participate in the ecclesial life of every other individual Church (which is part of what it means to be in ecclesiastical communion with each other), but it posses additional barriers to the faithful changing from membership in one of these Churches to another.

The purpose of this (in part) is to help preserve the identities of the individual Churches by not allowing transfers to happen willy-nilly.

If you do decide that you wish to legally transfer to another rite, I would suggest that you spend a considerable period of time (at least one whole year, so that you can see the whole liturgical year and the laws that apply to it) attending a parish of the Church in questoin so that you can make sure you will be comfortable there long-term.

By the way, if anyone has an opportunity to go to Sunday Mass in an Eastern Rite Parish, you should give it a try. The liturgy is so beautiful and reverent. There isn’t any doubt as to the Real Presence at these Masses.

Indeed. I have been to Eatern Catholic liturgies many times, and I always find it a very moving experience.

Self-Defense In The Face Of Muslim Violence

A reader writes:

With all the angry Muslim responses over the pope’s statements, including now the attacks on the churches in Gaza, it is safe to say that, assuming he doesn’t give them the apology they want, and that their anger doesn’t abate (it usually doesn’t), we will see greater violence done against Christians.

My question is this: at what point are Christians allowed, or even obliged, to take up arms to defend themselves?  It’s not that I want this to happen, just that it seems likely to become an issue sooner rather than later in some countries.

Does it make a difference whether the Christian is defending, for example, a church building vs. his home?  A priest vs. a family member?  Under what circumstances would a non-governmentally aligned community of Christians be allowed to take up arms and counterattack?

I know we are to rely of legitimate government to defend us from attack, but one could certainly argue that some of those Middle Eastern locations don’t have a government that is truly committed to defending ALL their citizens, or any effective government at all.

Morally speaking, individuals are warranted (permitted to) use lethal force in self-defense whenever their own lives are gravely endangered. Thus as soon as your life is gravely endangered (e.g., someone pulls a gun on you) then you would be permitted to use lethal force in self-defense.

(NOTE: I’m speaking in terms of moral justification, here, not legal justification; some U.S. states have laws that prohibit people from using lethal force even though their lives are already in grave danger and–for example–require the person to try fleeing to get away from the danger instead of facing it. These laws require one to do more than what morality does and–to my mind–they are boneheaded. Requiring a person to flee from a gun-wielding maniac may, in fact, put the person at greater risk of death than using lethal force on the maniac–not to mention that it leaves the maniac free to continue his rampage and kill others.)

Though one is permitted to use lethal force in self-defense when one’s life is gravely in danger, one is not required to do so. One can refuse to defend one’s own life and, if one does so in a context in which one is being killed for one’s faith but refuses to use the means of escape one has, one accepts a martyr’s death.

One is also morally permitted to use lethal force in the defense of another person as soon as that person’s life is gravely in danger. One is not automatically required to do so, however. Possible reasons for not doing so include: (a) the person does not wish to be defended or (b) defending him could put your life in grave jeopardy, and it is not required that one put one’s own life in grave jeopardy for an person for whom you do not have special responsibility.

One is not just permitted to but required to use lethal force in the defense of those for whom we have special responsibility. This includes parents for their children, husbands for their wives, and governments for their citizens.

The use of lethal force is not morally legitimate if the stakes are less than life. You cannot legitimately use lethal force to defend property for its own sake, for example. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a house or a church. One can, however, use sub-lethal force proportionate to the value of the property. And, if one is patrolling the property to defend it and one comes under attack personally then one can of course use lethal force in self-defense.

While the offense against religion is greater if a church is burned or a priest killed, the offense against property and against life is not different and thus does not change the criteria for the use of lethal force.

Even before life or property are in grave danger one is warranted in taking steps to see to their defense. If I were a Christian in an area in danger of Muslim violence, I would do everything in my power to obtain sufficient weapons and ammunition to defend myself and my family.

As to when individuals are morally permitted to organize for their self-defense, you have already named the condition that is required: the inability or unwillingness of the government to provide for their defense.

I’ll also touch on something that Catholic readers may wonder about–namely, the use of force in defending the Eucharist against desecration.

Jesus–in the Eucharist–of course is alive, and the Eucharist does not constitute property, so what can be done to defend the Eucharist?

Although there are steps one can legitimately take to prevent a person from desecrating the Eucharist (e.g., shoving him away from it so he can’t get it or snatching it out of his hand), one cannot kill a person who is about to desecrate the Eucharist. If someone at Mass took the Eucharist and was about to stomp on it, you could not kill him to stop him from doing it. He would  not be killing Jesus by doing so, or harming Jesus in any way since Jesus is now glorified in the beatitude of heaven. The offense is one that does not result in damage to Jesus. It results instead in damage to the soul of the desecrator and to the moral order, but Jesus has chosen by allowing such desecrations to occur to subject himself to this kind of treatment, and–while it is mortally sinful and incurs automatic excommunication reserved to the Holy See–we are not authorized to use lethal force to prevent it from happening (any more than Peter was authorized to use force to keep Jesus from going to the Cross).

This is not to say that the pastors of churches in areas subject to Muslim violence should not take action to prevent desecration of the Eucharist in case of possible attack by fanatics. If I were a pastor in such a situation, I would ensure that the Eucharist was not kept in the church or other locations where it would be in danger of desecration. This might mean reserving it in a hidden location or not reserving it at all and, for example, consuming all of the Eucharist that was reserved previously.

Chapel Veils Redux

I’ve blogged a few times before about the subject of head coverings and whether women are still required to wear them under current canon or liturgical law.

The reason that this keeps coming up is that there are people out there who are spreading the erroneous idea that it is still mandatory for women to do this. Some are even sellers of chapel veils who are self-interestedly misrepresenting the law.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I like the custom of women wearing headcoverings in the liturgy. But I’m adamantly opposed to misrepresenting the law and people fostering scruples or "more Catholic than thou" attitudes or laying a greater burden on people than the Church does.

When I’ve blogged about this subject, I’ve been confronted with counter-arguments that, to put it delicately, have no canonical validity, and I’ve refrained from responding in some cases.

BUT IT’S NICE TO SEE COMPETENT CANON LAW FOLKS MAKING THE SAME POINT.