The Cracking of the Eurozone

This:

The head of the European Union's (EU) main bail-out fund has dismissed the possibility of a break up of the 16-nation eurozone.

Klaus Regling of the European Financial Stability Facility said it was "inconceivable that the euro fails".

reminds me a little too strongly of this:

The Meaning of Life, the Universe

and Everything:

God first willed the world--willing and loving are the same with him--and the world budded forth and grew, as an outcome of his act of love. The world exists because God loved it; it continues because God continues to love it...--Charles Journet, The Meaning of Grace, trans. A. V. Littledale, (New York: Scepter Publications, 1996,) 18.

I'm only just beginning this book, but it seems like the best, clearest, most comprehensive summary of grace I've seen.  Highly recommended, especially for anyone looking for a good discussion of deification (Scripture, tradition, philosophical grounding, etc.)  For this we were created--to love, and be loved in return.

A Tribute

to a black, female civil rights pioneer:

On a Woman's Right to Choose

not to abort the child. A pro-life doctor on presenting about crisis pregnancy centers before the New York city council:

...They don’t care. And they are horrifically ill-informed.

We were asked by both people what was so wrong with being made to advertise at the door and in the waiting room that we don’t do abortions, nor do we provide contraceptives. I asked if the legislation would require the abortionists to post all of the side effects on their doors, and if they would require posting whether women were killed at a particular center? Well… you know the reaction.

Then we needed to address the calumny that we were endangering a woman’s right to choose. My rejoinder was clear and simple:

We are the ones who guarantee choice by providing an alternative to abortion. Choice requires more than one option, or else it isn’t a choice. Without more than one option, choice collapses into compulsion and coercion. I explained that we offer women services that many don’t even realize exist.

Blank stares...

Children's Author and Evangelist

Kristine Franklin tells her own story (raised in Tacoma, WA, by the way):

The jet made a careful descent between the three volcanoes that ring the sprawl of Guatemala City. It was April 19th, 1992. My husband, Marty, and I had reached the end of eight years of preparation to be Evangelical Protestant missionaries.

We were finally here, excited and eager to settle in Guatemala. We knew our faith would be challenged and stretched, but we were more than ready for it because above all else, we desired to serve God with everything we could offer. Our new life as missionaries had just begun.

I didn't feel even a twinge of regret over what we'd left behind in the States: family, friends, a familiar language and culture, and amenities like clean water and good roads we Americans so often take for granted. In spite of the unknowns ahead, I knew we were being obedient, regardless of the cost. We were living smack in the middle of God's will, and it gave us a great feeling of security. We had given ourselves fully to bringing Christ's light to the darkness of this impoverished, Catholic country.

As the jet touched down onto the bumpy runway, tears welled in my eyes. "Thank you, Jesus," I whispered as I reached over to squeeze my husband's hand. Marty and I had come to the end of a long journey, but we were also beginning a new one. "Some day, Lord," I prayed silently, "I hope this foreign place will feel like home."

I was elated as we walked down the exit ramp from the plane and began the long-awaited adventure of being Protestant missionaries - missionaries sent to "rescue" Catholics from the darkness of their religion's superstition and man-made traditions and bring them into the light of Protestantism...

Surprised by Joy

Light resplendent from a very interesting blog:

1. As icons are painted on gold, so the lives of saints are written on a background of light.

2. Evelyn Underhill knew a saintly man, Father Wainwright. ‘He was an indifferent – and in later years an inarticulate – preacher; people came to his sermons, not so much to listen as to look at his face.’

3. Why are the faces of holy people so important, not only in iconography but also in Christian experience and memory? Joy is the physical surfacing of the light of God. As the moon reflects the sun, so joy shines in the holy face.

4. Each thing shines with its own particularity, the irreducible strangeness of its difference. Chesterton speaks of ‘the startling wetness of water’, ‘the fieriness of fire’, ‘the unutterable muddiness of mud’. Joy is the vision of each thing’s shining, an awareness of the unbearably bright difference of every other thing...

7. The subjective precondition for joy is not earnestness or sentimentality (much less a posture of generic ‘openness’), but attention. Attention is the discipline of active passivity, an intense concentration on what is there. It is what Simone Weil calls ‘waiting’: ‘We do not obtain the most precious gifts by going in search of them but by waiting for them [attendus].’ This is why Paul speaks of joy not as aesthetics but as ethics. Writing to the Philippians in the chains of Christ, he subjects them to a moral imperative: ‘Rejoice!’...

10. Happiness is analogous to joy as Facebook is analogous to friendship, or as a brothel is analogous to marriage. Happiness is the gratification of desire. Joy does not fulfil desire but exceeds it so majestically as to obliterate it. Joy is ascesis, the criticism of desire. The criticism of desire is also desire’s purgation and renovation. Joy is the baptism of desire, its drowning and rising again. The fullness of joy is an ache of absence. ‘Our best havings are wantings’ (C. S. Lewis)...

Euro-Zone...Cracking?

And what the heck does that mean?

...Spain is the line it is said that German taxpayers will not cross. If they balked at assisting Spain and a German government did not participate then the euro starts to break up. It is hard to see such an eventuality having anything less than horrendous implications, including default, chaos and widespread penury.

Can the crisis be stopped short of Madrid, the euro saved and terrible consequences avoided?

It will likely require much closer integration of the euro-zone countries that goes beyond what is currently on the table. Full-scale political integration is what is being contemplated but it is unclear whether, if Germany formally demands it, it will be viable or capable of gathering support in individual countries with their fractious and soon-to-be-frightened electorates.

But it is worth remembering that it is not just individual economies and a currency that are under pressure. Several big ideas are being stress tested here.

First, the bailing out and unlimited guaranteeing of banks—a major factor in the Irish end of the crisis. The orthodoxy that established itself after the collapse of Lehman Brothers stipulated that the inter-connectedness of financial institutions made it unthinkable that major players should be allowed to fail. That was the logic of the panic of late 2008 and early 2009.

Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, says that this has gone too far, and that eventually bond holders and institutions must take a share of the pain. But the result of her comments on the matter was an acceleration of the crisis in Ireland and eventually a giant loan to bail out the Irish banks.

It seems that once you start bailing out banks it is difficult to stop, and if you accept the theory of inter-connectedness then is there anything large and financial you won't rescue to buy a bit of stability, even if it is for half a day?...

Sometimes big ideas fail. And history suggests that right up until the moment that they do, very large numbers of people will maintain that failure is unthinkable.

Perhaps that is not about to happen in terms of European togetherness, and the crisis will slow down with order restored. But what is holding together the euro zone together today? It is now no longer the dreams of an elite determined to construct a rival to the U.S. that could parley on equal terms with the emerging powers. Today it is being held together by simple fear of the alternative.

Another Financial Crisis Round-Up

Cause there's too much news to do it one story at a time.

First--the pot of gold is empty:

Ireland will seek emergency international aid totaling as much as 60 percent of the size of its economy, dwarfing the Greek bailout, to save its banks and bolster its finances.

Ireland will ask for about 95 billion euros ($130 billion) from the European Union and International Monetary Fund, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. estimates. UniCredit SA put the package at as much as 85 billion euros, while Deutsche Bank AG sees a 90 billion-euro plan. The 110 billion-euro aid for Greece in May was the equivalent of 47 percent of its gross domestic product.

The cost of bailing out Ireland will be inflated by the price of shoring up its banking system, which Goldman puts at almost a third of the total request. The bursting of the real- estate bubble in 2008 pushed its banks close to collapse and plunged the country into recession...

Second--the Spaniards appear to be next:

the next in line for European Union and International Monetary Fund money may be Portugal, and then Spain, analysts said.

"We're getting near the end-game in terms of Ireland, and that was a good bailout, and we did all the right things; but hot on the heels of Ireland we have Portugal and then Spain, and Spain will be the biggie," Meyer said.

She predicted that a Spanish bailout would likely cost up to 500 billion euros; but there is no "real mechanism" to deal with it, Meyer added.

"We saw it with Greece and the unhelpful way of solving the Greek problem and we saw it again with Ireland and some very unhelpful comments out of Germany," she said. "We really need to get to a modus operandi."...

And here at home--caught with the hand in the cookie jar:

Federal investigators have turned up the heat on Wall Street, raiding three hedge funds in what one of the targets called a wide-ranging probe of insider trading.

The FBI on Monday searched the New York offices of Level Global Investors LP, and the Stamford, Conn., headquarters of Diamondback Capital Management LLC, a law enforcement official said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss an ongoing case.

Another FBI official said the agency also searched a third site, at 30 Federal St. in Boston. Hedge fund Loch Capital Management LLC has its headquarters at that address.

The FBI said in a statement that it had executed search warrants in the three states "in an ongoing investigation." Agency spokesmen said they could not comment further because the court documents are under seal...

On When Condoms May Be Used

from the founder of Ignatius Press (be sure to read the whole thing--includes comments on issues of translation in the Pope's comments):

...Here’s an example of this distinction that parallels what the Pope said. Muggers are using steel pipes to attack people and the injuries are severe. Some muggers use padded pipes to reduce the injuries, while still disabling the victim enough for the mugging. The Pope says that theintention of reducing injury (in the act of mugging) could be a first step toward greater moral responsibility. This would not justify the following headlines: “Pope Approves Padded Pipes for Mugging” “Pope Says Use of Padded Pipes Justified in Some Circumstances”, Pope Permits Use of Padded Pipes in Some Cases”.

Of course, one may morally use padded pipes in some circumstances, e.g., as insulated pipes so that hot water flowing through them doesn’t cool as fast. And one may use condoms morally in some cases, e.g. as water balloons. But that also would not justify the headline “Pope Approves Condom Use”, though in this case it could be true. But it would be intentionally misleading.

In sum, the Pope did not “justify” condom use in any circumstances. And Church teaching remains the same as it has always been—both before and after the Pope’s statements.

"Then government is insolvent..."

An ominous forecast:

"We have too much private debt in the case of Ireland," according to Nouriel Roubini.

But the nub of the crisis is this: "We have decided to socialize the private losses of the banking system. Now you have a huge increase in public debt—going from 7 percent to 100 percent of GDP. Soon it will be 120 percent."

And, turning more broadly to the rest of Europe, "Greece is already at 120 percent."

Roubini believes that further attempts at intervention have only increased the magnitude of the problems with sovereign debt. He says, "Now you have a bunch of super sovereigns— the IMF, the EU, the eurozone—bailing out these sovereigns."

Essentially, the super-sovereigns underwrite sovereign debt—increasing the scale and concentrating the problems.

Roubini characterizes super-sovereign intervention as merely kicking the can down the road.

He says wryly: "There's not going to be anyone coming from Mars or the moon to bail out the IMF or the Eurozone."

But, despite the paper shuffling of debt at the national level—and at the level of supranational entities—reality ultimately intervenes: "So at some point you need restructuring. At some point you need the creditors of the banks to take a hit —otherwise you put all this debt on the balance sheet of government. And then you break the back of government—and then government is insolvent..."

A Voice from One of the Outer Rings

of Hell.  There's something sort of casually depraved about this, jaded and off hand. Key passage:

I, who have no name, no opinions, and no style, have written so many papers at this point, including legal briefs, military-strategy assessments, poems, lab reports, and, yes, even papers on academic integrity, that it's hard to determine which course of study is most infested with cheating. But I'd say education is the worst. I've written papers for students in elementary-education programs, special-education majors, and ESL-training courses. I've written lesson plans for aspiring high-school teachers, and I've synthesized reports from notes that customers have taken during classroom observations. I've written essays for those studying to become school administrators, and I've completed theses for those on course to become principals. In the enormous conspiracy that is student cheating, the frontline intelligence community is infiltrated by double agents. (Future educators of America, I know who you are.)...

I'm not sure what to say. The whole thing is one man making his money off of lies and people not seeking for the truth themselves. He blames the system for not catching and punishing the students upon whom he lives. Weird.

Ordained at Dachau

A bit of good amongst so much evil:

Leisner was diagnosed with tuberculosis, and in Dachau his condition began to deteriorate. Fearing that the great dream of his life — to be a priest — would never be realized, he and the priests in his cellblock secretly sent a petition to a local cardinal (aided here, and in so many areas, by a heroic nun known as the “Angel of Dachau,” Sister Imma Mack.) The cardinal granted permission for a French bishop detained in the camp to perform the ordination, and asked Sister Imma to deliver a ritual book and chrism needed for the rite; Sister Imma was told to return these items, along with written documentation of the ordination, if they were able to celebrate it.

A number of prisoners, including some non-Catholics who worked in different work areas of the camp, made full sets of vestments for the bishop and Deacon Leisner. The ordination was celebrated in 1944 in secret, and the documentation was smuggled to Sister Imma, who then delivered it all to the cardinal. (The photograph here shows the newly ordained Fr. Leisner moments after his ordination. It is one of the few taken to capture this incredible event.) But Fr. Leisner’s health was so weak, he was only able to celebrate mass, again in secret, once. Shortly after the camp was liberated, he was sent to a hospital for the terminally ill, where he died in the summer of 1945. He was 30 years old...

It is fascinating to consider the sort of co-operation that had to exist among prisoners–Catholic and non-Catholic–for this ordination to have happened. At any moment, anyone involved was exposing himself (or herself) to life-threatening risk. But then again, these people were all resisting an unambiguous evil, living in a place–and an era–where relativism did not have such primacy over our reason, as it does now.

No one living in a Nazi prison camp had difficult discerning good from evil. The “luxury” of being confused on something so basic only comes in times of “relative” peace and prosperity, when the focus is on things much less urgent than merely staying alive for another day, and we feel free to ponder our personal moralities to the nth degree...

On Health Care

and social justice:

Health Care is a Right (boo hisss! say the "Health Care is Not a Right" crowd of corporatists), it *is* the obligation of government to help secure that right since he says, "healthcare justice must be one of the priorities on the agendas of governments and international institutions" (boo! hisss! says every Talk Radio, Fox News, Tea Party Righty in the US), and it must conform to God's Law (boo hissss! say the "Abortion is a Right" crowd of child killers).

Our health care package, naturally, seems calculated to benefit corporatists *and* kill children. The genius of the American system of compromise.

On Torture

and Catholic teaching:

...ADDENDUM (to Living Tradition, #119)

After the above article was published, Pope Benedict XVI, in a speech of 6 September 2007 on Catholic prisons ministry, personally endorsed a statement against torture found in the 2005 Vatican Compendium of the Church's Social Teaching. Citing article 404 of this document, the Holy Father said, "In this regard, I reiterate that the prohibition against torture 'cannot be contravened under any circumstances'".

In the above article I have already cited and discussed, in my section A13 and endnote 27, this article 404 of the Compendium, which is a publication of the Pontifical Commission for Justice and Peace. I have pointed out that this and other statements authored by the Commission itself - as distinct from the statements of Popes and Councils which it cites abundantly throughout the Compendium - does not possess magisterial authority; for the various Vatican commissions, unlike the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, are not in themselves arms of the Church's magisterium (teaching authority). However, now that Pope Benedict himself has personally reiterated this particular statement of the Compendium, I wish to state that I accept the Holy Father's judgement on this matter, and so no longer hold that Catholics can ever legitimately defend the use of torture - not even in extreme circumstances to gain potentially life-saving information from known terrorists. Accordingly, the last sentence of the above article, regarding "the present status quaestionis" on torture, should now be taken as withdrawn.

On Blessed Mary, Mother of God

a famous theologian speaks.

On Christian honor of Mary:

The veneration of Mary is inscribed in the very depths of the human heart...

[She is the] highest woman and the noblest gem in Christianity after Christ . . . She is nobility, wisdom, and holiness personified. We can never honor her enough. Still honor and praise must be given to her in such a way as to injure neither Christ nor the Scriptures...

One should honor Mary as she herself wished and as she expressed it in the Magnificat. She praised God for his deeds. How then can we praise her? The true honor of Mary is the honor of God, the praise of God's grace . . . Mary is nothing for the sake of herself, but for the sake of Christ . . . Mary does not wish that we come to her, but through her to God...

On Mary as Mother of all Christians:

Mary is the Mother of Jesus and the Mother of all of us even though it was Christ alone who reposed on her knees . . . If he is ours, we ought to be in his situation; there where he is, we ought also to be and all that he has ought to be ours, and his mother is also our mother...

On the Immaculate Conception:

It is a sweet and pious belief that the infusion of Mary's soul was effected without original sin; so that in the very infusion of her soul she was also purified from original sin and adorned with God's gifts, receiving a pure soul infused by God; thus from the first moment she began to live she was free from all sin...

She is full of grace, proclaimed to be entirely without sin- something exceedingly great. For God's grace fills her with everything good and makes her devoid of all evil...

 On her perpetual virginity:

Christ, our Savior, was the real and natural fruit of Mary's virginal womb . . . This was without the cooperation of a man, and she remained a virgin after that.

A new lie about me is being circulated. I am supposed to have preached and written that Mary, the mother of God, was not a virgin either before or after the birth of Christ . . .
Scripture does not say or indicate that she later lost her virginity . . .

When Matthew [1:25] says that Joseph did not know Mary carnally until she had brought forth her son, it does not follow that he knew her subsequently; on the contrary, it means that he never did know her . . . This babble . . . is without justification . . . he has neither noticed nor paid any attention to either Scripture or the common idiom...

Citations and further quotes in the original.  The site has a number of other noted biblical scholars and theologians on the same topics...

Okay, okay.  Those quotes?  All from Martin Luther.  Here's a recent Lutheran/Catholic document on Mary and the Saints.

5000 Bomb Shelters

sitting on a wall...passing around a bottle of vodka...and doing what, exactly?

Sometimes you come across information that make you stop and go, Say What! Russia Today just put out a video and news report that Russia is building 5000 more bomb shelters in Moscow. This will be done on a hurried time frame by 2012...

It just struck me as very strange that it would be pronounced so strongly and with a haste that this will and must be done by 2012...

The expression “Cold War” has made a huge comeback in the news and now it seems to be invading our lives again whether we want it to be there or not…

Paganism Resurgent

And yet (as Lewis noted) strangely unlike its formerly vibrant self:

If I had been a Heathen,
I'd have praised the purple vine,
My slaves should dig the vineyards,
And I would drink the wine.
But Higgins is a Heathen,
And his slaves grow lean and grey,
That he may drink some tepid milk
Exactly twice a day.

If I had been a Heathen,
I'd have crowned Neaera's curls,
And filled my life with love affairs,
My house with dancing girls;
But Higgins is a Heathen,
And to lecture rooms is forced,
Where his aunts, who are not married,
Demand to be divorced.

If I had been a Heathen,
I'd have sent my armies forth,
And dragged behind my chariots
The Chieftains of the North.
But Higgins is a Heathen,
And he drives the dreary quill,
To lend the poor that funny cash
That makes them poorer still.

If I had been a Heathen,
I'd have piled my pyre on high,
And in a great red whirlwind
Gone roaring to the sky;
But Higgins is a Heathen,
And a richer man than I:
And they put him in an oven,
Just as if he were a pie.

Now who that runs can read it,
The riddle that I write,
Of why this poor old sinner,
Should sin without delight-
But I, I cannot read it
(Although I run and run),
Of them that do not have the faith,
And will not have the fun.
          (G. K. Chesterton - 1913)

Martha and Mary

from the first Bishop of Peoria:

The Church needs both the men who act and the men who think; and since with us everything pushes to action, wisdom demands that we cultivate rather the powers of reflection. And this is the duty alike of true patriots and faithful Catholics. All are working to develop our boundless material resources; let a few at least labor to develop man. The millions are building cities, reclaiming wildernesses, and bring forth from the earth its buried treasures; let at least a remnant cherish the ideal, cultivate the beautiful, and seek to inspire the love of moral and intellectual excellence.

On the Indwelling Trinity

Hilary of Poitiers (c.300-368) speaks:

...where is the Lord’s seat and eternal dwelling place now? What precisely is that temple which is fit for his habitation?

It is the one of which it was said: You are a temple of God; and the Spirit of God dwells in you.

To this, the same Prophet bears testimony: your holy temple, wonderful in its proportions. The holiness of men, their judiciousness and self-re­straint – that is the temple of God.

The house, then, must be built by God. Any house made by the works of men will not endure; neither can any based on the maxims of this world stand its ground; neither can our vain labours and useless worry have any lasting effect.

The construction and the maintenance must be otherwise. The beginnings must not be made on water and shifting sands, but foundations laid on the Prophets and the Apostles.

Then living stones must serve to build it up; the cornerstone to keep it in place and hold it together; the interlocking pieces making up the whole man, built on the scale of Christ’s body, to be adorned by the beauty and elegance of spiritual graces.

What is built by God, that is to say his teachings, will not fall down. Israel, once made captive after the abundance and prosperity of the nations, will now secure the building of this house.

This house is itself growing, into more houses, so as to build up the faithful at every turn and to beautify and extend that blessed city in each one of us.

Papal Condoments: An Analogy

As ever, the Dark Lord Sheavius tells it like it is:

...In a startling change to the Catholic Faith, Pope Benedict XVI announced today that tossing people down elevator shafts could represent a first step in assuming moral responsibility "in the intention of reducing the risk of having your own son electrocuted to death before your very eyes."
The Imperial Mainstream Media Center has taken this as a signal that the Church intends to canonize Darth Vader for his saintly courage in tossing Emperor Palpatine down an elevator shaft as he was torturing his son to death with huge bolts of electric Force energy. In addition, the Imperial Mainstream Media Center has also declared that the Pope therefore means to say that destruction of whole planets, as well as the subjugation of billions of inhabitants all over the galaxy, the betrayal of his closest friends, the slaughter of the Jedi and their younglings, and his conversion to the Dark Side "don't matter". But most importantly, according to an Imperial Mainstream Media spokesman, "The point is, throwing people down elevator shafts is now formally accepted by the Church as moral behavior and Catholic need to think about how to incorporate this new development of doctrine into their lives. If you feel that throwing people down elevator shafts is the safe and right thing for you, then," says the Imperial Mainstream Media Center, "we believe the Pope means to say, 'Do it with my blessing.'"