Well, my latest Soapbox -- such as it is -- is about Christmas.
As if I couldn't stuff one more topic in an essay that flits from one topic to another, I left references to Lewis's Xmas and Christmas on the cutting room floor. A hat tip to Mark Shea who pointed out the story.
In case I don't revisit the blog before then, have a Merry Christmas, everyone.
Islam apparently does. Jonah Goldberg links to Edward Feser's Does Islam Need a Luther or a Pope?, and reminds everyone that he had already expounded on the topic in Islamic Rites.
I enjoyed Mr. Goldberg's piece, and I even wrote him a nice short note stating so. Edward Feser's piece goes into greater detail, and I'd say he's spot on except for one important detail... the conclusion. Mr. Feser goes on in great detail describing the similarities between Protestantism and Islam, and then concludes that Islam needs a pope. This flaw is not apparent in this long (but not long-winded) piece, but there you are: a religion very much like Protestantism needs a pope.
If Protestantism were to have a pope, it would no longer be Protestantism. It would change its essential characteristic. I mentioned this before about Islam in Whispers in the Wasteland:
And yet a separation of mosque and state could be effected simply by giving Islam a pope, who would by papal decree declare all the unpleasant bits to be null and void. If I were a more cynical type, I would say, "hey guys, that's a neat plan for destroying Islam with modernism," but sadly I think these guys honestly believe that this is how religions "evolve." Sadly, they miss the parts about the authority of tradition, and how the Koran itself is the source of that authority. And they misunderstand the authority of popes as well as the sources of authority in their own traditions.
I'm in agreement with Mr. Feser when he states that the status of the Koran in Islam is very much the same as the status of Bible in some forms of Protestantism under the doctrine of sola scriptura. The fundamental problem with the Koran is that there is no scriptural support for a Pope (as far as I know). In the Koran, the secular and religious leader Muhammad was the last prophet and there is no basis for papal authority or for the separation of secular and religious authority. I have claimed and will continue to claim that authority springs from Tradition (I touch on this partly here in By What Authority?). A pope imposed on Islam is an innovation that will destory Islam, unless they find some way to torture the text of the Koran support it.
Feser describes the very essense of Catholic authority:
The authority of councils and Popes is at bottom merely the authority of the night watchman who guards a museum whose works he could not have created himself, and would not presume to tamper with. The teachings of a Pope are never strictly his teachings, but merely those of the 2,000-year old institution of which he is a temporary steward and to which he must submit as dutifully as any of the faithful. Far from being an arbitrary despot, he is merely the servant and executor of a system of law he did not make and cannot change. He is, one might say, the very model of the Hayekian statesman, transplanted into the sphere of religion.
Conversely, Feser identifies the fatal flaw in Protestantism (and by implication, Islam), "The Bible ends up saying whatever the individual believer thinks it says -- however ill-educated or bigoted that believer might be, and whatever extra-Biblical agenda he may unconsciously be reading into it. Every man becomes, in practice, his own authority -- which means, in effect, that there is no authority at all." The Islamic extremes such as Wahhabism have just as much claim to legitimacy as any Protestant sect has.
Recently, I've been attacking just this sort of egalitarianism with respect to chess and music (see here and here). The truth is that elites will fill the void, but those elites are just as likely to be charlatans as the real thing. People will coalesce around experts, real or fake, because they've no way, no grounding to discern the good from the bad. That includes politics and religion as well as chess and music (Note: I've pointed out before, and would like to point out again, Secret Agent Man's posting and explication of Orestes Brownson's essay, "Catholicity Necessary to Sustain Popular Liberty" which is well worth a read, and be sure to read Balint Vazsonyi's Men for All Seasons).
So after a fashion, I agree with Goldberg and Feser, but I would go farther. As a Catholic, I'm obviously biased, and I would say that the whole world needs a pope, the Catholic Pope. When Vladimir Soloviev from the Russian Orthodox Church embraced the Catholic Church he did not see himself repudiating Orthodoxy. Father Ryland explains, "He did not regard this as abandoning his ties with the Russian Church, but rather as their fulfillment." In the same sense, Judaism is fulfilled by Christianity. In the same sense, former Protestants like Mark Shea see their Evangelical background fulfilled by their Catholicism. And since Catholic apologist and writer Hilaire Belloc saw Islam as a Christian heresy, after a fashion (if you squint your eyes really tight) Islam might also be seen to be fulfilled by Catholicism.
Lest my Protestant brothers get the wrong idea that I believe them all to be wrong-headed heretics, I should point out that I appreciate that it was those Puritan-Calvinists who sought to establish that "city upon a hill," and when it came to that just separation from the British Empire, the Enlightenment was grounded by the Great Awakening. Jonathan Edwards essentially got that ball rolling and US News seems to have done a pretty fair essay on him and his heirs.
[This was first posted at GIGO]
I sent the following e-mail to Jonah Goldberg. It's in response to George Will's Massachusetts Marriage and Goldberg's Federal Marriage Amendment a bad idea, but I only have Jonah's e-mail address.
Dear Jonah,
I have a complaint. Why does it seem that your more forceful arguments for federalism are in support of the gay agenda? Little Lucy may learn about "Tajikistan," but she won't learn how to pronounce "Leviticus" in public schools. Just as the 14th imposes the 1st Amendment onto the states (we won't see any Bible teachings in either of the state laboratories of New York or Missouri any time soon), the 14th raises gay rights under the banner of equality.
The problem with this social experimentation is the implied promise that once this social experimentation proves to be disaster in the laboratory, we'll just roll back the clock. Hey, you never know, you might have a calling to sell bridges in Brooklyn. I just don't see any roll back in the liberalization of divorce laws, do you? I'm unlikely find anyone who won't concede that this divorce policy has been a social disaster. But I don't hang around in your social circle, perhaps you can find a supporter of no fault divorce laws.
I don't like tinkering with the Constitution any more than you do. When NRODT came out in support of FMA, I was opposed to it. I saw the FMA as a bandaid on the gaping wound of judicial activism. I had hoped that we would discover how to counter activist judges, but apparently nothing short of dismantling Marbury will stop them.
As others have pointed out, a marriage that has only partial recognition is worthless. A marriage in Massachusetts will have to be recognized in Texas, because a situation similar to Dred Scott will be in place. Recount that then, the Supreme Court decided that a slave in Texas had to be recognized as a slave in Massachusetts (of course this is a rhetorical device, Massachusetts and Texas were not the two states involved in the Dred Scott decision). There is a strong case to make that the Court was correct about Dred Scott, that it was the inevitable conclusion that America would only be all slave state or free state, but not a mixture of both.
The flaw was in the Constitution created in 1787. Remember that the compromise on slavery was necessary in order have any chance of implementing the Constitution in the first place. Many founding fathers held their noses at the compromise, and disliked even the backhanded acknowledgement of slavery in the wording of Constitution. That many conservatives treat the Constitution as sacrosanct is admirable, but there are moments when pristine principles meet with muddy practicality.
The courts are tampering with one of the Permanent Things, that conservative social institution called marriage. When such social tinkering is proposed, conservatives should feel the same sort of tepidation that J. Robert Oppenheimer claims to have felt in Los Alamos. It's a brave new world. Marriage will survive sodomy. However, society won't.
Perhaps it would have been most accurate to say, I'm bored by opera because I don't understand it. I never intended to slight opera as highfalutin culture. Nor did I wish to convey that I'll never appreciate opera. I had a specific point to make and in order to avoid making it personal, I made an example of myself.
I'm an uncouth barbarian who lives in a cave. I disliked Shakespeare during high school, but somewhere along the line, an appreciation crept in. But it doesn't have to be high art. I thought that The Simpsons was dreck until I actually watched the show (actually, I'm on the other side of the bell curve now, I don't care for the culture that it's reflecting).
I side with Balint as far as determining the "best." I'm willing to admit that Eminem has talent, but is he really worth my time? I believe that the only possible cultivated answer is no, and that Eminem fits Balint's charlatan archetype who is able to reach the heights when folks lack a grounded value system. It doesn't really matter who the "artist" is, it could be Britney Spears for all I care. The important thing to note here is that Balint acknowledged that it is certainly possible to disagree over whether Beethoven is the best, but it should be no contest when the argument is whether Beethoven or Eminem is better.
This carries over into politics. The "charmers" aren't really great charmers. It's people -- lacking the basic tools, those necessary items supplied by a grounded or anchored value system -- who can't tell the charlatans from the real thing.
At Zillas I came upon this quote, "I really don't like chess. It is boring."
And I replied thusly:
I really don't like opera. It is boring.
At the risk of offending our resident opera critic, Billy Dean Rawls, that's not the best way to put it. A better way to put it is: I really don't like X, because I find it boring.
In reality, it says more about me -- my uncouth upbringing -- than anything about opera.
Chess is much more than nerdy types whiling away the time. It is an art form, but I don't expect anyone else to agree with me unless they understand chess. I don't mean "understand" in the sense of knowing how to move the pieces; that would be the same as saying you understand Beethoven because you know the notes. The understanding I'm emphasizing is one of appreciation. There is beauty out there for those who know how and where to look.
It was during this brief note that the light bulb came on. I got it.
There is a difference between the intellectual understanding of a sentence and a connection to a sentence -- as in a shared experience.
When I read the late Balint Vazsonyi's Men for All Seasons, I knew that I intellectually understood what he meant, but that I had failed to grasp the complete and whole gestalt. Frankly, I don't know the difference between Garth Brooks and Beethoven. Nuance warning: yes, I can tell the difference between Garth and Ludwig, but I don't consider myself qualified to make a value judgement on their respective musical talents. This is a perfect opportunity to quote Dr. Vazsonyi:
But ridiculing the opposition falls short of the explanation required. In this age of mega-libraries, CD supermarkets and the Internet, how are new generations to divine what should claim their limited time and attention? All matters of judgment and taste need cultivation — a slow process, which requires keeping company with the best. Only in the last thirty years have people ceased to believe that there is such a thing as "best." Indeed, most people in most places and most of the time agreed on what that "best" was. Disagreements among the cultivated may pit Haydn against Mozart, or Wagner against Verdi, but never Beethoven against Elgar.
When I originally read this in 1996, I had to place myself in the same category as the young lady who raised Scott Joplin to the same level as Beethoven. Not because I wouldn't have sided with Dr. Vazsonyi -- I surely would have, but because I couldn't completely connect with his argument. I could not find an analogy that would embrace the same meaning as his example. Until now that is.
I'm not a chess grand master, but that isn't necessary to appreciate the wonderful complexity of the game, the fluid motion, the ballet of pieces. I've played many wargames from Risk to Europa (only diehard fans of old know that the complete set of board game Europa would take up an entire room and that it had several thousand pieces). They don't compare.
Chess, opera, and music aren't really the point here. Dr. Vazsonyi understood this weakness in contemporary American culture, "The only realm in which they steadfastly refuse to entertain a system of values is the spiritual, the intangible."
It's simply not permissible to have an elite in this egalitarian culture. Oh, there are exceptions. For instance, except when we're talking about the Hollywood elite -- since when does making a movie make you an expert about anything? And except when you put Supreme Court Justice in front of your name, then all of a sudden you are qualified to shape the culture beyond all law: natural and unnatural.
It's possible to disagree with this assessment. But ask yourself this: how many Americans would follow the Pope's spiritual leadership? Catholics are fair game. Really. How many Catholics really follow Catholic teaching? (Hint: think birth control, pre-marital sex, abortion, ect.)
And then think about Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and and the point of Balint Vazsonyi's essay.