tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-57665380074980372822024-03-13T03:58:55.566-07:00Mudblood CatholicA conscientious objector in the culture war.Gabriel Blanchardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17607504369762849930noreply@blogger.comBlogger397125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5766538007498037282.post-59349794818351603462019-07-18T12:30:00.004-07:002019-07-18T12:30:58.649-07:00, Pursued by a Bear<div style="text-align: justify;">
Alright folks, it's official! <a href="https://www.patheos.com/blogs/mudbloodcatholic/" target="_blank">Mudblood Catholic on Patheos is now live</a>, and I'm moving my blogging there. This blog will remain up for anybody who still wants to read it, and I'll probably do some reposting from here too, but I won't be writing new posts on blogspot after this, and I'll stop curating comments here after a week or so as well. Patheos is compatible with Patreon, so if you'd like to keep funding me directly, you can (I will not charge a second time for any prior content that I repost on Patheos). And speaking of, thanks very much to my sponsors for all the support you've given me over the last few years; it's really helped keep me afloat. Catch you guys on Patheos!</div>
Gabriel Blanchardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17607504369762849930noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5766538007498037282.post-92180984410037415962019-07-16T15:58:00.000-07:002019-07-16T15:58:08.702-07:00Five Quick Takes<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-right: -18pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: white; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’m having some difficulty with my next post on gender, partly because, as I cannot stress enough, I am not an expert. It’ll probably be another couple days. In the meantime I do recommend ContraPoints’ recent video <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdvM_pRfuFM" target="_blank">Transtrenders</a>, though, for people who’d like to hear about trans theory from an actual expert (however fervently she may claim not to care).</span></div>
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<span style="color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Today is the memorial of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. I have always been fond of the Carmelite tradition: </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>The Dark Night of the Soul</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> by St John of the Cross (the poem, not the full mystical manual) was one of my first tastes of Catholic mysticism, and it carried me through some extremely black midnights of my own as a teenager grappling with sexuality and faith. I nearly took him as my patron saint, and one of the special pleasures of my parish is that our altar houses a relic of his. Given my voracious unchastity, I don’t really feel able to wear the Brown Scapular; but I still turn to St John of the Cross and St Teresa in prayer, and now and again I even get wild and read them.</span></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjua6ArW1f8FGsbarjLBF56Slr8F0xo1W1pxlnr7REhvkkBzcopUW7J1MmK9YHq6yw24P3R2i1zHAIs6ArCCHIlvtt9WfGBwzeAaOGPQya6kYnepsaI7MFpSjKk5CL6SRivAj5HhfQPQCU/s1600/Zurbara%25CC%2581n_St._John_of_the_Cross.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: white;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="309" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjua6ArW1f8FGsbarjLBF56Slr8F0xo1W1pxlnr7REhvkkBzcopUW7J1MmK9YHq6yw24P3R2i1zHAIs6ArCCHIlvtt9WfGBwzeAaOGPQya6kYnepsaI7MFpSjKk5CL6SRivAj5HhfQPQCU/s200/Zurbara%25CC%2581n_St._John_of_the_Cross.jpg" width="154" /></span></a></div>
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-b71b1ff1-7fff-39d3-2bca-7d36f7aad66a"><span style="color: white; font-family: "im fell english" , serif; font-size: 18pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">✠ ✠ ✠</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: white; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My friend <a href="https://quthbert.bandcamp.com/releases" target="_blank">Joey Prever</a> is getting surgery soon for some back and foot issues. If you’d say a prayer for him, that’d be cool of you. Incidentally, he was recently <a href="https://soundcloud.com/user-751890535-270111897/interview-11-joey-prever-from-roman-catholic-to-melkite-catholic" target="_blank">interviewed by the Convertigo podcast</a>, discussing his family’s faith journey and his own.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-right: -18pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’ve been grappling with symptoms of depression again, so I finally got my Zoloft refill. I forgot how much it messes with sleep: it doesn’t so much keep you from sleeping as make you awake, which I expect can’t be great for you but doesn’t actually feel </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>bad</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, and my depression manifests partly as insomnia anyway so it’s not like it’s interfering with sleep I’d otherwise be getting. A much bigger aspect of depression, though, is a lack of motivation; people tend to think of depression as being </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>sad</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, when it’s much more a matter of being </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>numb</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. That involves you in a kind of abstract sadness of course, but it’s a very different experience.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-b71b1ff1-7fff-39d3-2bca-7d36f7aad66a"><span style="color: white; font-family: "im fell english" , serif; font-size: 18pt; vertical-align: baseline;">✠ ✠ ✠</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I have </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>heard</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, though I have not verified, that ICE (which, fuck ICE) has gone as far as setting up fake Grindr profiles to entrap illegal immigrants (which, actually don’t fuck ICE, it will end badly). So if you’re on Grindr—which I don’t recommend, but if you are—and you either are undocumented, or could be assumed to be undocumented by a racist ICE agent … uh, be extra careful, I guess? Deleting the app would be better. Do that.</span></span></div>
Gabriel Blanchardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17607504369762849930noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5766538007498037282.post-11795250632525339332019-07-11T12:25:00.000-07:002019-07-18T21:43:27.985-07:00Gender Jamboree, Part Two<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 18pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: white; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I heard the squeak of the questing beast,</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: white; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">where it scratched itself in the blank between</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: white; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the queen’s substance and the queen.</span></div>
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<span style="color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">—Charles Williams, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">‘The Coming of Palomides’</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: white; font-family: "im fell english" , serif; font-size: 18pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">✠ ✠ ✠</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: white; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="https://www.patheos.com/blogs/mudbloodcatholic/2019/07/gender-jamboree-part-one/" target="_blank">Go here for Part One.</a></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxo2qmAUurlqaDlu11e0fH_nrEIctbnmF22Ugw59Dwc4SdChMxCoz666kJsTq2SLt2aSWHUVElSWazfSfMOeopuAErFYBH2Tzn_ySC3fWqWFc_H1XJ4_MFUIvKevaeovMUg66PgRKA4Uo/s1600/The_Rebuke_of_Adam_and_Eve.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: white;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1151" data-original-width="1600" height="230" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxo2qmAUurlqaDlu11e0fH_nrEIctbnmF22Ugw59Dwc4SdChMxCoz666kJsTq2SLt2aSWHUVElSWazfSfMOeopuAErFYBH2Tzn_ySC3fWqWFc_H1XJ4_MFUIvKevaeovMUg66PgRKA4Uo/s320/The_Rebuke_of_Adam_and_Eve.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="color: white; font-size: x-small;"><i>The Rebuke of Adam and Eve</i>, Domenico Zampieri, 1646 (<a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Rebuke_of_Adam_and_Eve.jpg" target="_blank">source</a>).</span></div>
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<span style="color: white; font-size: x-small;">Gotta love Adam's 'What?' shrug.</span></div>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: white; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So! God made mankind in his image, male and female, and that’s normally pretty straightforward, but in a small minority of cases we find male and female characteristics mixed; we call this physiology </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>intersex</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Accurate estimates of how many people are intersex are difficult to find, as the subject isn’t well-studied, but an estimate of about 1% seems to be a safe generalization from studies that have been done to date, making it only a little less common than red hair.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 7.199999999999998pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;">1</span></span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-right: -18pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ironically, this knowledge <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex_in_history#Middle_Ages" target="_blank">was actually a little </a></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex_in_history#Middle_Ages" target="_blank">more</a></i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex_in_history#Middle_Ages" target="_blank"> common</a> until a hundred or so years ago. The twentieth century saw an extensive use of surgery on intersex newborns, modifying or eliminating their unusual characteristics; when these surgeries had yet to be developed, and most babies were delivered at home and by midwives, it was familiar enough to them to deliver the occasional intersex baby. Legal cases right down to the eighteenth century make occasional mention of intersex people.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nor has intersexuality been wholly unknown to the Church. Although there are few references to the phenomenon in Catholic history, they are mentioned in passing (under the title </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>androgynes</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">) by St Augustine, and Gratian, the foremost canon lawyer of the Middle Ages, discusses them briefly. Those canonists who addressed the subject stated that if one sex could be determined to be predominant in an intersex person, that person should be treated as being of that sex (up to and including that a principally male intersex person could be validly ordained</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 7.199999999999998pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;">2</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">), while allowing that there might be cases in which it was impossible to judge for certain which sex predominated in a person’s body. At least one cleric at that time gave the opinion that, in cases where someone’s physiology was evenly mixed, they were to be given the choice, under irrevocable oath (no pressure), of which was their sex.</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZV5-0xAgCrGpOgLrkZeemGmnadzXXhNm0breOkd6Sr0gPH0QZsPN0pQMWnXvhsAi7oRFiee4gyJOQpKHCqxpDElq5b3ZnDSRkPmY_9aKaGvQcPG_dq3blv_9hBEC8eosa39brX78XlNc/s1600/cps_w17181v_fp_dd-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: white;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1176" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZV5-0xAgCrGpOgLrkZeemGmnadzXXhNm0breOkd6Sr0gPH0QZsPN0pQMWnXvhsAi7oRFiee4gyJOQpKHCqxpDElq5b3ZnDSRkPmY_9aKaGvQcPG_dq3blv_9hBEC8eosa39brX78XlNc/s200/cps_w17181v_fp_dd-2.jpg" width="146" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">However, to the best of my knowledge, only canon law has directly addressed intersexuality to date, and it’s done so rarely. Theological reflection on what defines male and female is not the same thing, though the two are related. St John Paul II’s extensive meditation on male and female in </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Theology of the Body</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> may, after adequate unpacking, speak to the question; but even understanding, let alone unpacking, that tome is going to be the work of generations. And in the meantime, the sciences do have something more to say, which theology needs to operate upon. (Like any science, theology operates upon facts: the differentia of theology is that some, though not all, of those facts are provided by God’s revelation. The rest are derived from observation and inference, the same place we get most facts.)</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The surgical </span><span style="font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 19.2px; white-space: pre-wrap;">‘</span><span style="font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.2; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">correction</span><span style="font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 19.2px; white-space: pre-wrap;">’</span><span style="font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.2; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> of intersexuality has come under fire. Initially developed in the 1950s, it was thought at the time that it would be easier for the child to develop as whichever gender they were raised, and that a confused identity would be avoided if the confusing body were adjusted. Nor was the practice even limited to intersex children. Anatomically typical male children who exhibited a micropenis,</span><span style="font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 7.2pt; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;">3</span><span style="font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.2; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> or whose genitals were irreparably damaged in infancy, in some cases received <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genitoplasty" target="_blank">vaginoplasty</a> and were raised as girls.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One notorious and particularly tragic case was that of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer" target="_blank">David Reimer</a>, born in 1965. His penis was destroyed in a botched circumcision</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 7.199999999999998pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;">4</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> a little before the age of two. His parents took the advice of Dr John Money (I swear I did not make his name up), a pioneer and advocate of performing sex reassignment in infancy, on the grounds that infants healed much more easily and completely and that surgeries of this kind would be less traumatic if they could not be remembered. Their son was surgically reconstructed as a girl, and raised in a thoroughly female environment. The much-crowed-over success of the procedure, accompanied by some </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>very</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> weird follow-up creepiness from Dr Money, lasted until he was 13. Reimer had never felt like a girl, he had become suicidally depressed, and he told his parents he would kill himself if forced to see Money again. The next year his parents told him the truth about his history, on the advice of his psychiatrist. Reimer then shed his feminine identity and began living as a boy again, seeking multiple medical interventions to restore his physical masculinity, including hormone treatment, a double mastectomy, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genitoplasty" target="_blank">phalloplasty</a>. He went public with his story late in 1997.</span></span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-right: -18pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: white; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That story came to an end just over six years later. His relationship with his parents, naturally enough, remained difficult, and he struggled with unemployment; his twin brother died of an overdose in 2002; and in 2004, his wife of over thirteen years asked for a separation. Two days later Reimer shot himself in the head.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: white; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A superficially similar, if somewhat happier, case is that of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christiane_V%C3%B6lling" target="_blank">Christiane Völling</a>, born in 1959, who in 2011 became the first intersex person to win a suit for damages over non-consensual sex reassignment surgery. Born with XX chromosomes, her phenotype was unclear at birth: she had ambiguous genitals but was assigned and raised male (an unusual decision at the time, since, to use a very crude phrase, it was considered ‘easier to dig a hole than build a pole’), and experienced a relatively early, vigorous, masculine puberty. Völling was found to have an undeveloped but complete set of female reproductive organs during an appendectomy at age 14; she was told only that she was ‘60% female,’ which caused her severe psychological distress. Her female reproductive organs were removed four years later, despite the fact that the full details of her diagnosis had been withheld from her in the name of protecting her mental health. She continued for some time after that to live as a man, but eventually transitioned into life as a woman. She was awarded €100,000, nearly forty years later, for receiving an unnecessary surgery without being able to give informed consent.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkABeEFcY4wPs8EFuwsTewv3c8OlAXiSQSpRjPl3wxQj_ConUMWR_23BaMPdaSeozd-VHn-oNc_4QZafeBg8ggBCIjy4Ah7jCX971RvWTrSvoVrWtvZD7uIt7AWYR0G9wdlD3GS0UMBv0/s1600/Olg-koeln-treppenhaus-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: white;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1158" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkABeEFcY4wPs8EFuwsTewv3c8OlAXiSQSpRjPl3wxQj_ConUMWR_23BaMPdaSeozd-VHn-oNc_4QZafeBg8ggBCIjy4Ah7jCX971RvWTrSvoVrWtvZD7uIt7AWYR0G9wdlD3GS0UMBv0/s200/Olg-koeln-treppenhaus-1.jpg" width="144" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="color: white; font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Olg-koeln-treppenhaus-1.jpg" target="_blank">Source</a>.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-right: -18pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So cases like these are clear-cut evidence of original biology over imposed sociology, right? Proof that no matter what you do to a person’s body through surgery, you can’t make a man into a woman or vice versa, and that trying to only makes them miserable. Right? Well … hang on. Before we can address that, we need to talk about gender dysphoria.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 7.199999999999998pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;">5</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_dysphoria" target="_blank">Gender dysphoria</a></i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is the distress a person feels due to their physical sex characteristics not matching their inner sense of gender identity. Most people who identify as transgender experience gender dysphoria, and vice versa, but the two aren’t the same thing. Reimer and Völling exemplify both the experience itself, and the therapeutic and medical steps generally taken to address it; the difference is that they were identifying with sexual characteristics that had been excised from them, whereas gender dysphoria is generally used to talk about people whose bodies have developed normally but whose identity or sense of self is in conflict with their bodies. And the thing is, both transgender identity and the dysphoria that typically accompanies it appear to be just as persistent—just as deeply rooted and intractable to all psychotherapy and socialization—as the gender identities that Reimer and Völling display.</span></span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-right: -18pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: white; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This doesn’t mean that trans identities are therefore automatically valid and unquestionable, no. What it does mean is that our analysis isn’t finished yet. I'll discuss dysphoria and identity further in my next.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: white; font-family: "im fell english" , serif; font-size: 18pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">✠ ✠ ✠</span></div>
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<span style="color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 7.199999999999998pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;">1</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That the intersex minority is a small one is not, philosophically speaking, significant. What makes intersex bodies important to the discussion is that they exist </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>at all</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, not how common they are.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 6.6pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;">2</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The canonists did say that intersex men could not be licitly ordained, due to canonical requirements forbidding the ordination of men with physical deformities. However, requirements of this kind could in principle be changed (as, e.g., the Church can and occasionally does relax the Roman ban on ordaining married men).</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 7.199999999999998pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;">3</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A micropenis is a penis that is at least 2.5 standard deviations smaller than the mean. It is not a health risk, although it can be caused by growth hormone deficiency, androgen insensitivity, and certain other conditions, as well as by intersexuality.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 7.199999999999998pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;">4</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The late circumcision was an attempt to treat <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phimosis" target="_blank">phimosis</a>, a condition in which the foreskin is too constricting and impedes penile function. Treating phimosis is not generally considered necessary until after the age of three.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: white;"><span style="font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 6.6pt; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;">5</span><span style="font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Though it appears in current DSM manuals, this term is controversial in some circles, as some people consider it pathologizing and stigmatory. I can’t really get into that discussion right now; the <i>thing</i> that the term ‘gender dysphoria’ is talking about does exist, and the term is already in use, so, with apologies to any readers who are bothered by it, it’s the term I’ll use for the present.</span></span></div>
Gabriel Blanchardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17607504369762849930noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5766538007498037282.post-6815004982553897902019-07-10T18:09:00.000-07:002019-07-10T18:10:54.613-07:00Review: "Good Omens" (Miniseries)<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-right: -18pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: white; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So I watched the Amazon </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: white; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Good Omens</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: white; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> miniseries, and I hated it so, so, so, so much. Hear me out.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-right: -18pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: white; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A note before I begin. I don’t do ‘They changed it, so it sucks’ reviews of adaptations. Sometimes changes are very much for the better—the book version of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: white; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Jumanji</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: white; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is eminently forgettable, while the movie (if a little dated) is great. Moreover, because film and page are different media, some changes are intrinsically necessary to suit the language of the new medium. But changes that take out good things that could have been included are defects, and changes that add bad or irrelevant things are defects. And changes aside, an adaptation should be able to stand on its own as a work of art. Make a movie with plot problems that are only resolved in the book you based the movie on, and what you’ve done is make a movie with plot problems. Having source material is no excuse for poor craftsmanship.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: white; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And to be clear and fair, two things I did </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: white; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>not</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: white; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> hate about the series were David Tennant and Michael Sheen as Crowley and Aziraphale. Their performances were exquisite, and almost carried the piece; in fact one of the things I hate about Amazon's </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: white; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Good Omens</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: white; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is that these two were squandered on such a dumpster fire of an adaptation. The chemistry between them is fantastic, and fits beautifully into the ‘Are they friends? Are they lovers? Are they enemies after all?’ ethos that the book conveys (the reason they’re not lovers being, in the book’s words, that ‘Angels are sexless unless they really want to make an effort’). Bravissimo to them both for outstanding performances.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-right: -18pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: white; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Josie Lawrence's cameo as Agnes Nutter also deserves a better series than this, and I'm not 100% sure Miranda Richardson could do a bad job acting if she tried, so her Madame Tracy is very winsome indeed. But Tennant and Sheen between them couldn’t quite save it, and Lawrence and Richardson can’t either.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What I hated was, above all:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">- the narration;</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">- nearly every other performance;</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">- many of the textual and character changes made from book to screen;</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">- the significant plot changes between the book and the script.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br />
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-right: -18pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The second worst-handled aspect of the miniseries is the narration. Now, I don’t share the hostility of Cinema Sins </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>et al.</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> to narration as such, and I really like Frances McDormand. But her performance is, on this occasion, not good: it sounds like the voiceover for </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Blade Runner</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, uninvested in the story and irrelevant to it, and not at all like the narrator is having a good time. And that’s a tragic waste, because the one thing that narration, and nothing else, could have translated to the screen from the book is the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>merriment</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> of its narrative voice. That merriment, the tell-tale quality of anything Pratchett touched, is almost entirely absent in the series, because so much of it comes from tone that McDormand didn’t capture and jokes that Gaiman didn’t include. And he came so close to so many, and it would have been </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>so</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> easy to put them in the voiceover! For instance, one of my favorite lines in the book is the isolated paragraph: ‘It has been said that the devil has all the best tunes. This is broadly true. But heaven has all the best choreographers.’ There were two scenes (one in heaven, one between Crowley and Aziraphale) where I felt sure we were going to hear that line in the narration … any minute now … nope.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br />
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-right: -18pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And joyless cuts like this are legion: gone is most of the drunk conversation about how long eternity is, gone are the details of the Chattering Nuns of the Satanic Order of St Beryl, gone is the allusion to a wave of low-grade goodness emanating from the destruction of a telemarketers’ office, gone is all of Dog’s internal monologue, gone is the explanation for why there’s so much </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Queen</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> playing.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 7.199999999999998pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;">3</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> As a result the whole tone of the script is so much less funny and light than the novel, while at the same time not landing its punches nearly as well. But we’ll get to that.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br />
</b> <br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-right: -18pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The actress playing Anathema Device gives a lifeless performance, without any of the aura of wit and keen good sense that Anathema possesses in the book. She just sort of says lines while facing the relevant character. But this may be at least partly because she wasn’t given a real character to work with. There’s no sense that she’s straining to make sense of her ancestress’ prophecies because she has a sense of mission and purpose, and no hint that she’d rather not be psychic, as there is in the book. She’s completely flat. They ,try to give her a sense of arc by including Newton’s line near the end, ‘Do you want to be a professional descendant your whole life?’ But since being a professional descendant has had no negative consequences for her to date and she’s expressed no dissatisfaction with it, it doesn’t represent a resolution of anything she </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>wants</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> as a character, and the emotional payoff is accordingly zero.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br />
</b> <br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-right: -18pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Shadwell, being a character defined as much or more by description than by words, is pretty gutted on a screen. Michael McKeen ,is a good actor, but it’d take an Anthony Hopkins or a Cate Blanchett to make the depiction work. Brian Cox as Death was also specially disappointing. Of course, it’s hard to convey just how delightful Death as a character is when he’s in Terry Pratchett’s deft hands; but Brian Cox isn’t the man to do it, and it isn’t done. The other three horsemen, War, Famine, and Pollution, aren’t </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>terrible</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, but their lines are (it was during Famine's first appearance on screen that I began to notice how uninteresting most of the dialogue was). Mostly they just say over and over that they’ve been waiting for the apocalypse for a long time, like a really long time, man, and they’re super into it. Let them tell you, they are super into the apocalypse, just stoked. I mean, they’ve been waiting for it for thousands of years, and now it’s here, and they are in. To. It. You don’t even know. They’re very big fans of the apocalypse, man.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br />
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-right: -18pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As a sidebar, this is one of several examples of the incredibly bad pacing of the series. For a few episodes it’s fine; then, about halfway through, as the eleven-year-old Antichrist levitates into the air and begins scaring his three friends, the plot just sort of parks there for a nap. He promises them that his new friends are coming … and then adds that his new friends are going to come real soon … with the extra detail that it won’t be long before his new friends are here. An entire episode passes without anything, you know, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>happening</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (and there are only six episodes in the series). This would be bad enough for a peripheral subplot, but it lies soggily at the center of the action, both structural and temporal.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br />
</b> <br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-right: -18pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Returning to the acting, the child acting of the Them is bad. Really bad. This is common enough for child acting, although cinema like </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Signs</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">,</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 7.199999999999998pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;">2</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>IT: Chapter One</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, and </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Stranger Things</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> have proven that it is not actually a necessity; and when four of the ostensible principals of the story, including the Antichrist, are eleven-year-olds, it's pretty momentously important that they be talented actors. The Them’s performances are not only stilted and unconvincing, but boring; you can't engage with them as characters at all.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-right: -18pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is partly because of big problem number three, which is a big number two: with the exception of Crowley and Aziraphale themselves, the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>characters</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> are mostly left out. This might be forgivable in a movie; in a miniseries, and one with the leaden-footed, repetitive plod of this one, it isn't. The Them’s funniest and most believable lines and scenes in the book (notably their Spanish Inquisition) are all whittled down almost past recognition, and often robbed of their significance when they do make it in. A perfect example is the description of the precocious Wensley: in the book it’s mentioned that his parents ‘called him Youngster, in the hope that he might take the hint.’ In the miniseries, it’s mentioned that his parents called him youngster, and that’s it. No payoff. Just a fact about Wensley’s life, with no relevance to literally anything. The children are not the only characters to be thus maimed, but, given that they are at the center of the convergence of the other disparate plot threads—the Horsemen, Anathema Device, Aziraphale and Crowley, and the representatives of Hell and Heaven that are trying to force the apocalypse—it shows worst in the Them.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br />
</b> <br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-right: -18pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Maybe some of these abbreviating changes were made in the name of giving Jon Hamm's Gabriel more screen time? Which would be a really odd choice, because Gabriel isn't even in the book and serves no narrative purpose in the adaptation that book-originals couldn't—for instance, the Metatron, whom he replaces in the crucial (anti-)climax for, to all appearances, no reason whatsoever. Or if they were dead-set on getting Hamm for star power, why not cast him as, I don't know, the Metatron? It’d be a wrench to give up Derek Jacobi’s appearance in anything, true, but the Metatron is an actual character who fits into the plot and themes of the book, in a way that Gabriel doesn’t. This is a pointless change that adds nothing. People who haven’t read the book don’t benefit by it, and assholes like me write two thousand word screeds denouncing it.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br />
</b> <br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-right: -18pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Speaking of the themes—I can hardly believe I’m saying this about a script written by one of the co-authors of the original novel, but it botches them badly. The theme is summarized pretty well in the moment at the book’s climax, when Aziraphale grabs Crowley by the wrist, staring at Adam Young with a light of joy in his eyes, and says that (despite everyone’s best efforts), ‘He isn’t good </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>or</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> evil. He’s just—human.’ This is transposed to Aziraphale and Crowley telling </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Adam</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> this in a weird video game cut scene, an emotional punch that has no force behind it, because Adam has never raised the question of his own goodness or badness and knows nothing about the efforts of others to control him.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br />
</b> <br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-right: -18pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This meandering blandness washes into the showdown between Adam and Satan, another adaptation addition, where Adam rejects Satan because … Satan’s not his real dad, because he wasn’t there for him as a kid? Yeah, that’s the reason. Huh. Okay. This big-lipped alligator of a </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>clichéd</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> let-me-explain-this-with-my-words motive has no setup, no relevance to anything that happens, and no character payoff since Adam had already made his pivotal decision, but there it is. Humans aren’t fundamentally good or evil! but if Satan had been emotionally available to Adam Young then maybe the world would have ended on schedule. Plot!</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br />
</b> <br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-right: -18pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And then we’re still not done for some reason because Aziraphale and Crowley have to be punished by their respective sides, because it’s not yet sufficiently clear that heaven and hell are actually both full of jerks, I guess. This isn’t terrible, and honestly almost any pretext to get Sheen and Tennant on screen as these characters is worth the contrivance, but—particularly though not only because of the twist it’s resolved in—it adds nothing and goes nowhere, since both the information and the character development it ostensibly represents are things we already had from the first five and a half episodes.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br />
</b> <br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-right: -18pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So, yeah. Thing Bad, or at best Thing C+ (I’d have said D- but Tennant and Sheen really are that phenomenal). I’m almost pissed I signed up for Amazon Prime to watch it.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br />
</b> <br />
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br />
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-right: -18pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 7.199999999999998pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;">1</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: x-small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Not to be confused with Michael Sheen.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-right: -18pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 7.199999999999998pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;">2</span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yes, I will fight you: the child acting in </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Signs</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is excellent. I admit I did start hating M. Night Shyamalan pretty late; I even enjoyed </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Lady In the Water</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, though I did and do acknowledge that it has some major problems and, ahem, dubious casting decisions. This doesn’t change the fact that Abigail Breslin and Rory Caulkin gave remarkably good performances in </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Signs</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 7.2pt; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;">3</span><span style="font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: x-small; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To be clear, the use of Queen does not <i>require</i> explanation in any context whatever; but when an explanation is (1) offered, (2) funny, and (3) one of the running jokes of the whole book, mayhap it belongs in the narration.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: x-small; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Also yes, I realized while copying this into blog post form that I'd moved a paragraph without correcting the footnote numbers. Sorry.</span>Gabriel Blanchardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17607504369762849930noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5766538007498037282.post-91756171430680823522019-07-05T19:59:00.000-07:002019-07-18T21:44:55.416-07:00Gender Jamboree, Part One<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 18pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: white; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Now I know your heart, I know your mind</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 18pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: white; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">You don’t even know you’re being unkind</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 18pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: white; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">So much for all your highbrow Marxist ways</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 18pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: white; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Just use me up and then you walk away</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 18pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: white; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Boy you can’t play me that way</span></div>
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<span style="color: white;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 18pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: white; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Well I guess what you say is true</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 18pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: white; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">I could never be the right kind of girl for you</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: white; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">I could never be your woman</span></div>
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<b id="docs-internal-guid-58ea66a6-7fff-dce0-e33f-34a351ef4623" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: white;"><br />
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<span style="color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">—White Town, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Your Woman</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"> (lyrics by Jyoti Prakash Mishra)</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: white; font-family: "im fell english" , serif; font-size: 18pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">✠ ✠ ✠</span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: white;"><br />
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-right: -18pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: white; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: x-small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;">Edit: Now that Mudblood Catholic is up and running on Patheos, I've re-written this post. <a href="https://www.patheos.com/blogs/mudbloodcatholic/2019/07/gender-jamboree-part-one/">You can find the new version here</a>.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: white; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;">Due to Reasons™, the new hot-button issue of the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;">kulturkampf</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;"> seems to have moved to trans issues rather than gay issues. Due to most Catholics understanding trans issues even more poorly than they understand gay issues—an unenviable accomplishment—I feel it’s worthwhile to do some mansplaining here at Mudblood Catholic. However, before I begin, I wish to make two disclaimers. One, which technically is a disclaimer appended to this entire blog (see the ‘About the Mudblood’ box at the bottom of the page), is that I submit everything I say to the final judgment of the Catholic Church. I contend pretty strongly that the Church has not in fact defined her final judgment in these matters, but if and when she does so, by ecumenical council or pontifical definition, I will accept that.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;"><span style="color: white;">The other is that I write this primarily because I know a lot of Catholics will listen to a cis</span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: white; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 7.2pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: normal;">1</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: white; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;"> person more willingly than they’ll listen to a trans person. I am not writing this because I’m any kind of expert on trans issues. I’m very much an amateur, and I urge anyone who’s willing to do so to go to trans sources rather than me. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQPWI7cEJGs&t=734s" target="_blank">Natalie Wynn of the </a></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: white; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQPWI7cEJGs&t=734s" target="_blank">Contrapoints</a></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: white; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQPWI7cEJGs&t=734s" target="_blank"> channel on YouTube</a>, though she wouldn’t suit everyone’s taste stylistically, is an intelligent and engaging exponent of trans theory whom I recommend; Daniel Ortberg, a columnist for Slate, is another prominent source on trans issues</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: white; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 7.2pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: normal;">2</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: white; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;">; and though I haven’t read their work, I understand that Thomas Page McBee, Imogen Binnie, Raquel Willis, and Akwaeke Emezi are generally well-regarded by the trans community.</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;"><br /></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj40i1txcJDikY9mA6MzO1sKNcQ5lBYxP0ErFn1UKiKqqH6-6Qea3nbzdy_OV1vFoWAD5vm5uiGDwJQCcDhbx9tJROkjwbuc397GPxSloUJ3IZnuJBY_aK4hxF2ZksJxV5AgJqYl_xl1ro/s1600/lgbtq.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="416" data-original-width="624" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj40i1txcJDikY9mA6MzO1sKNcQ5lBYxP0ErFn1UKiKqqH6-6Qea3nbzdy_OV1vFoWAD5vm5uiGDwJQCcDhbx9tJROkjwbuc397GPxSloUJ3IZnuJBY_aK4hxF2ZksJxV5AgJqYl_xl1ro/s200/lgbtq.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: white; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;">Right, now that those are out of the way, what’s up with this left-wing genderist stuff anyway?</span></div>
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<span style="color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;">A </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: line-through; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;">review</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;"> complete revision of high school biology is in order to start with.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 7.199999999999998pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: normal;">3</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;"> The format we were taught was that, at conception, XX chromosomes make a girl and XY chromosomes make a boy. This is roughly true, but it is an oversimplification because it was high school biology. Without touching the other aspects of gender (social, psychological, and spiritual), we may consider at least three on a strictly biological basis: chromosomes, gonads, and phenotype. This is going to get kind of technical, so bear with me.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;">There are two basic sex chromosomes in </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;">Homo sapiens</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;">, codified as X and Y. Most humans have two sex chromosomes in their cells, of which one is always X: thus, a vast majority of people have either XX chromosomes or XY chromosomes. XX people are female, XY people are male. Clear, but not </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;">quite</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;"> accurate to all human biology.</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDYv0TldYion396pHMDIpYKiqoZE7Kg17nl10JYN_qbkDqEEH51FtT6kVjInfgw4mqPcv0VF52QdlpIl1QRlk9_X2PsXtZDUut-TX5RTQso02uXgHUVND6OtRNx-iurVZK57I_U0LuNAI/s1600/science%2521.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="366" data-original-width="507" height="144" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDYv0TldYion396pHMDIpYKiqoZE7Kg17nl10JYN_qbkDqEEH51FtT6kVjInfgw4mqPcv0VF52QdlpIl1QRlk9_X2PsXtZDUut-TX5RTQso02uXgHUVND6OtRNx-iurVZK57I_U0LuNAI/s200/science%2521.png" width="200" /></a></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-right: -18pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: white; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;">The other two biological components of sex are gonads, or reproductive organs (either ovaries or testes), and phenotype, or the shape and appearance of the body (including the external genitals, the breasts, and secondary sex characteristics such as body hair and voice). Most of the time, these three things develop straightforwardly and together, but occasionally they do not.</span></div>
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<span style="color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;">There are several ways and reasons that chromosomes, gonads, and phenotype can diverge from each other. Sometimes the divergence comes in the reproductive cells themselves. For instance, there are a tiny number of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XX_male_syndrome" target="_blank">XX males</a>: the sex-determining SRY protein, which is normally attached to the Y chromosome, in rare instances gets exchanged to an X chromosome during the production of sperm, thus producing persons who are genetically female (XX chromosomes) but who frequently appear entirely male (male phenotype) and have testes rather than ovaries (male gonads). This is one of many </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;">intersex</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;"> conditions,</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 7.199999999999998pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: normal;">4</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;"> biological states in which male and female characteristics are mixed. Sometimes intersex conditions produce visible ambiguities, sometimes not.</span></span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-right: -18pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;">Another example of intersex biology is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complete_androgen_insensitivity_syndrome" target="_blank">CAIS, complete androgen insensitivity syndrome</a>. People who have CAIS have XY chromosomes and testes, but their cells do not respond to androgens at all (androgens are the hormones responsible for masculine sexual development and characteristics; testosterone is the best-known androgen). Hence, their phenotype is wholly female: the testes don’t descend, but remain where the ovaries would be in the abdomen; a vagina rather than a penis forms—often the passage is shallower than in cissex</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 7.199999999999998pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: normal;">1</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;"> women, but it’s there; the breasts develop in feminine form; body hair and voice are typically female. CAIS typically isn’t discovered until puberty, at which point the absence of menstruation generally prompts a visit to the doctor.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 7.199999999999998pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: normal;">5</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: white; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;">There are other <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromosome#Aberrations" target="_blank">intersex or otherwise unusual biologies in human beings</a>, and I won’t linger over them, interesting though the subject is. The point I’m making here is not that gender is a social construct because biology is a confusing science—we’ll get to that discussion—but simply to point out that, even though it covers a majority of people, the black-and-white idea that male and female are totally obvious in every case just isn’t true. That doesn’t mean that male and female don’t exist, any more than the phenomena of dawn and dusk mean that day and night don’t exist. But it is a very good reason to be patient and cautious and ready to learn, before we make snap judgments about other people. It certainly calls for theological examination and reflection, as distinct from simply quoting Genesis 2 and calling trans people Satan.</span></div>
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<span style="color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;">As a matter of fact, <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=genesis+2.4-25&version=ESV" target="_blank">Genesis 2</a>, and the rare <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=i+corinthians+11.2-16&version=ESV" target="_blank">passing reflections</a> on it made by St Paul, seem to hint at the coïnherence as well as the distinction of the sexes. Adam is caused by God essentially to </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;">give birth</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;"> to Eve</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 7.199999999999998pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: normal;">6</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;">; he is male, and yet he is maternal, as is artistically proper to a person formed out of the earth (which is always </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;">Mother</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;"> Earth in myth). And the Apostle says frankly, in the very act of confirming the distinction between women and men in the symbolism of liturgical dress, that nevertheless woman and man depend upon each other and each comes from the other, and both from God—harking back, maybe, to his earlier</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 7.199999999999998pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: normal;">7</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;"> letter to the churches in Galatia, in which he said rapturously that there is no male or female in Christ. Indeed, the Virgin Birth itself, re-rooting the human race and the Second Adam in a sinless woman, reverses the pattern of the creation narrative: again birth takes place by the direct intervention of God, but this time it is a woman who is given the role then appointed for the male, and the flesh of her flesh, whom she also names, is the male—the same Man who, once again in sleep, gives birth from his side to the Church.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;">Again, none of this is to say that sex or gender don’t really exist. It </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;">is</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;"> to say that we may not always understand them perfectly, and that God is apparently prepared to do surprising things with them sometimes. There’s a great deal more to be said—we haven’t even gotten to trans identities as such yet. But I think this forms a good period for the moment.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;"><a href="https://mudbloodcatholic.blogspot.com/2019/07/gender-jamboree-part-two.html" target="_blank">Go here for Part Two</a>.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: white; font-family: "im fell english" , serif; font-size: 18pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;">✠ ✠ ✠</span></div>
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<span style="color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 7.199999999999998pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: normal;">1</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;">For those not familiar, the prefix </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;">cis-</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;"> is simply the opposite of the prefix </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;">trans-</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;">; both are derived from Latin: the former means approximately ‘on this side of,’ while the latter means ‘on the far side of, beyond.’ (For example, when a part of the Gaulish people settled in northern Italy, the Romans referred to that region as </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;">Cisalpine Gaul</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;">, i.e. ‘Gaul on this side of the Alps,’ and to the area of modern France as </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;">Transalpine Gaul</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;">.) </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;">Cisgender</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;">, or </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;">cis</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;"> for short, is thus simply the contrary of transgender.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 6.6pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: normal;">2</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;">Because qualifiers are necessary for friggin everything: I’m not saying I agree with everything these people have written (e.g., both are firmly pro-choice, and Wynn at least is an atheist). But it’s always better to learn about a human experience from the horse’s mouth.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 7.199999999999998pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: normal;">3</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;">In starting here I am not saying that biology is the only thing to consider, nor the most important thing. But I do think biology is moderately accessible to people of all political and religious views, and it is something that (to be blunt) some churchmen do not seem adequately acquainted with, so it seems like a decent starting point.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 7.199999999999998pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: normal;">4</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;">Intersex people used to be called </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;">hermaphrodites</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;">; the word comes from a myth about Hermes and Aphrodite having a child together, who had male genitalia, feminine breasts, and long hair, whom they uncreatively named Hermaphroditus. However, the word never really signified all intersex conditions in the first place, and is found insulting by some intersex people.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 6.6pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: normal;">5</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;">There’s an <a href="https://house.fandom.com/wiki/Skin_Deep" target="_blank">incredibly problematic </a></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;"><a href="https://house.fandom.com/wiki/Skin_Deep" target="_blank">House</a></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;"><a href="https://house.fandom.com/wiki/Skin_Deep" target="_blank"> episode about CAIS</a>, if incredibly problematic </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;">House</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;"> episodes are your thing.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 6.6pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: normal;">6</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;">Perhaps we see here the faintest of hints from the Holy Ghost of our own future scientific discoveries, a sort of Easter egg. Adam has XY chromosomes, and Eve is made from Adam but is not simply a copy of Adam; she is made from his X side alone, which is then doubled, forming a person who is reflective and yet different. Thus man, in meeting his fellow, meets himself and becomes fully human by relationship. (Whether and to what extent Genesis 2 represents historical as well as mythical realities is for our purposes immaterial.)</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: white;"><span style="font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 6.6pt; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: super; white-space: normal;">7</span><span style="font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistle_to_the_Galatians#Earliest_epistle" target="_blank">Fight me</a></span></span></div>
Gabriel Blanchardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17607504369762849930noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5766538007498037282.post-87424989493995859362019-07-03T20:54:00.002-07:002019-07-03T20:54:57.666-07:00Brebeuf Jesuit vs Indianapolis Archdiocese: Electric Boogaloo<blockquote class="tr_bq">
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<i>All extremes except extreme devotion to the Enemy are to be encouraged. Not always, of course, but at the present period. Some ages, of which the present is one, are unbalanced and prone to faction, and it is our business to inflame them. Any small coterie, bound together by some interest which other men dislike or ignore, tends to develop towards the outer world a great deal of pride and hatred which is entertained without shame because the ‘Cause’ is its sponsor and it is thought to be impersonal. Even when the little group exists originally for the Enemy’s own purposes, this remains true. We want the Church to be small not only that fewer men may know the Enemy but also that those who do may acquire the uneasy intensity and the defensive self-righteousness of a secret society or a clique. </i></div>
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<i>—C. S. Lewis, </i>The Screwtape Letters</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjn0lQL-zze5mzt-S6vAVtWvTVySM4jelO2tamxyQyao6N7PF8VBBsHmuBLJNMFoFl4lrhMrMZR0MAdFuQ_R5ucEiXTXJFX-nX7cYumfjZ9yvcWHwt7GpaKsAOZAhcCBG0yjtNMb522js/s1600/traddies.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="240" data-original-width="375" height="127" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjn0lQL-zze5mzt-S6vAVtWvTVySM4jelO2tamxyQyao6N7PF8VBBsHmuBLJNMFoFl4lrhMrMZR0MAdFuQ_R5ucEiXTXJFX-nX7cYumfjZ9yvcWHwt7GpaKsAOZAhcCBG0yjtNMb522js/s200/traddies.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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You’ve likely heard of the clash between the Archdiocese of Indianapolis and the Jesuit-run Brebeuf Jesuit Preparatory School over the latter’s refusal to fire a gay teacher for entering a same-sex marriage. Cathedral High School, run by the Holy Cross brothers, did fire a gay teacher for similar reasons at the request of Archbishop Thompson, shortly after the Archbishop declared that Brebeuf would no longer be permitted to describe itself as Catholic. Given the ticklish situation, a.k.a. utter shitshow, that is Catholic-LGBTQ relations, evaluating this stuff is a delicate business, and this piece turns on a dime more than once in trying to sort out the details. I hope you’ll bear with me.</div>
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I waited a bit to weigh in on this because I wanted to have more facts at my disposal. Stories are easy to twist; I’m not an expert in canon law; I haven’t met any of these people; and certain relevant details to making a judgment have been, quite reasonably, kept private—even the names of the teachers in question, I believe, have gone unreleased, probably to protect them from harassment. <a href="http://mudbloodcatholic.blogspot.com/2019/03/stop-crying.html" target="_blank">The hate mail or even the loathsome ‘charity’ doled out by some Catholics even to avowed celibates who come out as gay is revolting enough.</a></div>
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For instance, one very pertinent detail that has gone unexamined (as far as I know) in the assorted hot takes on the dispute is: how do the two men in the civil same-sex marriage understand their union? I know more than one Side B couple, committed to chastely celibate lives, who are married in order to be able to extend legal benefits to their partner (insurance, hospital visiting rights, etc.) and who don’t consider this arrangement equivalent to the sacrament of matrimony. If the teachers at Brebeuf and Cathedral were in partnerships of that kind, surely there can be no objection to that? except, possibly, that it risks scandal, but that is easily addressed by just explaining the situation to the people whose business it is. I don’t consider this a <i>likely</i> description of the teachers in question—not because it’s intrinsically implausible, but because the Side B community is in fact fairly small; small enough that I might have heard about this through the grapevine instead of the news, if the teacher in question were connected with one of our groups—but it isn’t something that either the Jesuits or the Archdiocese seem to have considered.</div>
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The takes I’ve seen from Fr James Martin and co. have mostly focused on primacy of conscience, which, yes, is a vitally important Catholic moral doctrine. But conscience does not entitle people to their jobs, and disagreeing with Catholic moral teaching (as we may probably, though not certainly, suppose the teachers do) seems like a good enough reason to resign from teaching at a Catholic school. On the other hand, that is a reason to <i>resign</i>, which is not the same thing as cause to be fired. <span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>[1]</b></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgd30T30yXKqP5QUgaXQWKf09XHQrxtf0_NBTVPoyRiS9grkB8s9DgAF5u7hdC3vVciImZlsHQxpwGIhJEHwJz7TIh3PlOS3xhNrKU3LKCCB8BSujQPBwmVcT2ehEwREhJRPrLtnTO8zkY/s1600/intBodley_DavidIliff.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="589" data-original-width="843" height="139" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgd30T30yXKqP5QUgaXQWKf09XHQrxtf0_NBTVPoyRiS9grkB8s9DgAF5u7hdC3vVciImZlsHQxpwGIhJEHwJz7TIh3PlOS3xhNrKU3LKCCB8BSujQPBwmVcT2ehEwREhJRPrLtnTO8zkY/s200/intBodley_DavidIliff.png" width="200" /></a></div>
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On the third hand, well, it <i>isn’t</i> intrinsically unreasonable for a Catholic school to ask its teachers to exemplify Catholic beliefs and values, about marriage as much as anything else. This last has, in substance, been the line of argument taken by the Archdiocese of Indianapolis. And canon law itself states that ‘teachers must be outstanding in … uprightness of life’—so the argument goes that since homosexuality is held by the Church to be contrary to natural law, i.e. that sphere of conscience which can be discerned by human reason without the special assistance of revelation <span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>[2]</b></span>, entering a gay marriage is <i>ipso facto</i> disqualifying to the ‘uprightness of life’ clause, even for a non-Catholic or non-Christian.</div>
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Here’s why I don’t buy that. For background, <a href="http://www.intratext.com/IXT/ENG0017/__P2M.HTM" target="_blank">the text of the canons about Catholic schools</a>, in a little more context, reads thus:</div>
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Canon 803 §2. Formation and education in a Catholic school must be based on the principles of Catholic doctrine, and the teachers must be outstanding in true doctrine and uprightness of life.<br />
Canon 804 §2. The local Ordinary [normally a bishop] is to be careful that those who are appointed teachers of religion in schools, even non-Catholic ones, are outstanding in true doctrine, in the witness of their Christian life, and in their teaching ability.<br />
Canon 806 §1. The diocesan Bishop has the right to watch over and inspect the Catholic schools situated in his territory, even those established or directed by religious institutes. He also has the right to issue directives concerning the general regulation of Catholic schools: these directives apply also to schools conducted by members of a religious institute, although they retain their autonomy in the internal management of their schools.</blockquote>
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The thing is, Catholic schools habitually hire non-Catholic and even non-Christian employees, up to and including teachers, and the Archdiocese of Indianapolis hasn’t make a peep about that, to my knowledge. I’d be surprised if they had, given that it’s a longstanding practice of Catholic schools, hospitals, charities, and even parish offices. Yet if beliefs that are, you know, <i>Catholic</i> are key to being ‘outstanding in true doctrine’—and I’d hope most Catholic bishops would feel that they are—then how in the name of Elvis is it okay to violate one aspect of Canon 802, but then trot it out as a reason to fire someone for transgressing a different aspect of the <i>exact same canon</i>? How come having a teacher who denies Catholic doctrine as a Protestant or an observant Jew or even an atheist is fine, but having a teacher who denies Catholic doctrine <span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>[4]</b></span> as a gay man is not?</div>
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Someone could argue that, e.g., Jews and Protestants are of different faith traditions, and faith is a supernatural gift rather than a matter of natural law, so it isn’t fair to hold them to the same standard. Fine. But why do the beliefs of a gay man (perhaps devoutly religious; look at Pete Buttigieg) count for nothing in this equation? If his religious tradition and convictions inform him that gay sex is intrinsically innocent, then of course we as Catholics disagree, but are we also saying that his religion has somehow ceased to be a religion for that reason? Are we saying that it’s okay to hire Jews and Protestants as long as they’re Catholics? And what about the agnostic or the atheist employee, whose absence of belief or positive disbelief are <i>also</i> described by the Church as being contrary to natural reason? If there are any (and it’s not unlikely), has Archbishop Thompson come down on them?</div>
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Maybe canons can be applied with prudent, pastoral consideration by bishops; maybe they can even bent as long as they’re not broken; I don’t know, I’m not a canonist. If they can, I think the Archbishop has in fact acted with great imprudence and in a profoundly unpastoral manner. Applying canons strictly only when it targets LGBTQ people is homophobic, even in <a href="http://mudbloodcatholic.blogspot.com/2013/11/an-appendix-to-raw-tact-catholic.html" target="_blank">the very restrictive definition I gave to it in this post from a few years ago</a> (dating to before I’d lost all moral confidence in the hierarchy). The Catholic tendency to scapegoat gay men is unjust and unreasonable, contrary to the explicit teaching of the Church, and damaging to LGBTQ people in general, especially young people.</div>
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Moreover, it causes the exact thing it’s typically framed to avoid: scandal. The world at large already knows the Catholic Church thinks gay sex is wrong. It’s often one of the few Catholic doctrines they do know, in contrast to little things like the Real Presence. Accenting the teaching on homosexuality is not nearly such an urgent necessity as people who are extremely comfortable with that teaching tend to insist. But what a great mass of those outside the Catholic Church do think, is that the Church <i>hates</i> gay people, and that that’s where the teaching comes from. The latter is, I believe, false. Is the former false too?</div>
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Think about it. When an archbishop singles out gay people who live out of line with Catholic beliefs and ignores straight people who do the same thing, what message does that send? Not just to gay people and to the world at large, but to the very students they are trying to form as Catholics? Doesn’t it matter that they’re being presented with a decision that, at the absolute best, is going to look like a homophobic double standard? and in the exact, perfect situation where they could have been given a beautiful example of how to respect and embrace people whom we deeply disagree with?</div>
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It’s been said that when the Vandals invaded Africa, St Augustine remarked, ‘God has called us to evangelize the nations, and he has just brought the nations to our door.’ How much more is that true of people who <i>aren’t</i> marauding through the countryside in full Conan-mode?</div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>[1]</b> Kindly don’t come to me with any ‘He wasn’t going to be <i>fired</i>, they just wouldn’t have renewed his contract!’ nonsense. When you’re relying on a job, losing it is losing it, and the pedantic reasons offered by your ex-boss for why it isn’t his fault do not matter.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>[2]</b> For instance, the obligation not to murder people is an obligation we know by natural law <b>[3]</b>, an extension of the morally intuitive Silver Rule (do not do unto others what you would not have them do unto you); it comes from God like all right and wrong does, but it didn’t need to be specifically revealed to us by supernatural means: the natural witness of conscience and intellect are enough. By contrast, the obligation to get baptized is something we could never get to just by thinking it out. It was revealed by the personal command of Christ, and has since been passed on from one person to another. The Church claims not only that having gay sex is wrong, but that we can know it’s wrong apart from revelation, by natural conscience and reasoning.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>[3]</b> I don’t actually subscribe to natural law theory myself, but I’m trying to articulate the argument as well and fairly as I can.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>[4]</b> Always supposing the teachers in question do deny Catholic doctrine. Again, that’s plausible and statistically <i>likely</i>, not certain.</span></div>
Gabriel Blanchardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17607504369762849930noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5766538007498037282.post-30955229893470678862019-06-27T20:57:00.001-07:002019-06-28T08:01:57.368-07:00The Stonewall Inn and the Sacred Heart<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">
<i>I had been in enough riots to know the fun was over. … The cops were totally humiliated. This never, ever happened. They were angrier than I guess they had ever been, because everybody else had rioted … but the fairies were not supposed to riot … no group had ever forced cops to retreat before. </i></blockquote>
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<i><span style="color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">—Bob Kohler, eyewitness of the Stonewall Riots</span> </span></i></blockquote>
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<i><br />I therefore take You, O Sacred Heart, to be the only object of my love, the guardian of my life, my assurance of salvation, the remedy of my weakness and inconstancy, the atonement for all the faults of my life, and my sure refuge at the hour of death. </i></blockquote>
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<span style="color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">—St Margaret Mary Alacoque, from the</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"> Act of Consecration to the Sacred Heart of Jesus</span></span></blockquote>
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In the wee hours of the morning on 28th June, 1969—eight days after the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus was observed that year—New York City police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar. All gay bars were technically underground establishments at the time; laws instituted after Prohibition ended forbade liquor licenses to ‘disorderly houses,’ which was interpreted by the government to include any establishment frequented by gays or prostitutes, among others. The mafia was therefore largely in control of the city’s gay bars <span style="font-size: x-small;">[1]</span>, and bribed the cops to be able to carry on with business. That night, the NYPD hadn’t gotten their bribe, so they raided the Stonewall and started arresting people. But that night was different. <span style="font-size: x-small;">[2]</span> Many of the patrons were drag queens, hustlers, trans women, or homeless young people (the categories overlapped), who weren’t allowed in other covertly gay-friendly establishments or couldn’t afford them; the Stonewall Inn was for many purposes their home. And that night, they fought for it.</div>
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Three names stand out from that first night: Stormé DeLarverie, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/29/arts/transgender-monument-stonewall.html" target="_blank">Sylvia Rivera, and Marsha P. Johnson</a>; Rivera and Johnson were trans women <span style="font-size: x-small;">[3]</span>, DeLarverie a lesbian. As DeLarverie was being loaded into a police van, she cried out to the watching crowd, ‘Why don’t you guys do something?’ and was thrust forcibly into the van. </div>
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It was then the spark caught. As the rumor spread that the raid was in response to a missed bribe, the crowd began throwing pennies at the police. Rivera said, ‘You been treating us like shit all these years? Uh-uh. Now it’s our turn!’ and Johnson (though accounts vary) is reported to have thrown a shot glass and shouted, ‘I got my civil rights!’ The police tried to continue with the arrests, tried to make the crowd disperse, but the riot had taken hold. The police were driven back, and the demonstrations went on for days. The gay rights movement as we know it today had begun.</div>
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I grew up in an America after Stonewall, after the AIDS crisis of the eighties, after the early phase and early failures of the ex-gay movement. The queens of Stonewall are the reason I could and can be openly gay at my college, at my jobs, at my parish, with little fear of harassment or expulsion or violence or getting fired. Little rather than none, but little. I owe them for that.</div>
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But what has any of this got to do with the Sacred Heart of Jesus?</div>
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Well, strictly speaking, every human person has to do with the Sacred Heart of Jesus, because it is the center of all humanity and indeed of all creation. Charles Williams put it thus:</div>
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Compassion is the union of man with his fellows, as is the blood. The permitted devotion to the Sacred Heart is the source of both. The physical heart is, in this sense, an ‘index’ to both. The visionary forms of the occult schools are but dreams of the Divine Body. … The temples of the Holy Ghost are constructed all on one plan: and our duties to our material fellows are duties to structures of beatitude. … The Sacred Body is the plan upon which physical human creation was built, for it is the center of physical human creation. The great dreams of the human form containing the whole universe are in this less than the truth. As His, so ours; the body, in this sense of an index, is also a pattern. We carry about with us an operative synthesis of the Virtues … <span style="font-size: x-small;">[4]</span></blockquote>
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But although that truth sets the brain aflame with its implications, it doesn’t pertain to homosexuality more than to anything else, still less to gay rights more than to anything else. (At least, not as far as I’ve discerned to date.)</div>
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For me personally, I feel like the Sacred Heart and gayness cross paths in two ways. One pertains to the Pulse shooting three years ago. That was the event that, for lack of a better word, radicalized me. It was the first thing that had ever happened that made me fear for my safety as an out gay man—even the brutalization of Matthew Shephard hadn’t done that; and also the first clear realization I had that, while individual Catholics might, <a href="http://mudbloodcatholic.blogspot.com/2016/06/who-is-he-that-smote-thee.html" target="_blank">the Catholic Church in general did not care about LGBTQ people</a>. Or maybe they did, but their care wasn’t worth having. I had believed sincerely that if, God forbid, something like Pulse happened, they would show that they really did believe in avoiding every sign of unjust discrimination. But the bishops were silent: fifty-odd words of colorless sympathy on Twitter was the best they could do. <span style="font-size: x-small;">[5]</span> After that, incidentally, I was kind of forearmed for the McCarrick scandal and everything that’s come after it; my illusions about the <i>bona fides</i> of the clergy were gone. My faith had never depended on those illusions, thank God. But all the same, I had genuinely believed they meant it when they said they loved us. When it turned out they were lying about that, I wasn’t as shocked by their lies about so much else.</div>
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But here’s the thing. That is not how Jesus feels about gay people. The night those forty-nine people were shot in Orlando, <i>he</i> was shot forty-nine times. The blood of their deaths and the blood of his sacrifice are both the life of the image of God: <i>for the life of all flesh is the blood thereof</i>. No matter how faithless his Church is, he is not faithless to her nor to humanity. He held those forty-nine people in his arms as they died, and unless they finally refused him, he holds them still. Their wounds are in his Heart as I write these words.</div>
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Which brings us to the other intersection between that Heart and homosexuality. Nothing is wasted. No injury, no indignity that was inflicted on Jesus was wasted; every moment of pain was used to restore creation. There’s so much meaningless suffering in the world—the promise of the Sacred Heart is that, in reality, all that suffering appears meaningless <i>but it isn’t</i>. Any belief in a just deity includes the belief that, from the cruelest to the pettiest, every evil will be acknowledged and recompensed in the Last Judgment; devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is an adamant assertion that all those evils will not only be stopped, they will be transformed into greater goods—not only made powerless, but humiliated in their turn—evil does not, ever, get the last word in any way at all. No concession is made to it when its very existence is made the felix culpa that summons a glorious Savior.</div>
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It’s easy to distort this truth into the petty, saccharine maxim that <i>Everything happens for a reason</i>. No. <i>Not</i> everything happens for a reason. At any rate, not in the sense the people saying that think. Not only the pain of suffering, but also the horror of meaninglessness, will be honored by the final consummation; otherwise it couldn’t really be final. But for that exact reason, there must be no rushing to the end, no pretending that we have the final meaning now. That is why, in its ikons, the Sacred Heart still bleeds as well as burning. The grief of the world will end, but it has not yet ended.</div>
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Which has what to do with being gay? My traditionalist readers will probably think I’m talking about what a wound being gay is, while some of my progressivist readers may think I’m unconsciously reflecting the unnecessary burden laid on me by the Catholic Church. I take neither of these views, actually; though I’d point out to both that Jesus did not carry his cross in secret, and asking me to conceal either my sexuality or my beliefs is, accordingly, not going to land. In any case, I believe in a standard of chastity that I cannot manage to live up to; and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3Zyye7myaA" target="_blank">that's uncomfortable to a lot of people</a>. They want something neat, something that makes sense, something that fits their categories, and I don't offer that.</div>
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But the mystery of the Sacred Heart leaves me with some (some) assurance that the messy and uncertain life I lead is not a <i>waste</i>. Being gay in a world that’s mostly straight is hard; being gay in the Catholic Church is hard; being Catholic in the queer community is hard. But not fruitless. As bitterly as loneliness and guilt and anger and worry still, often, bite into me, I’m not afraid like I once was that they’re symptoms of a pointless life. Whether suffering comes from the inner struggle for self-discipline, or from homophobic (or, occasionally, Romaphobic) sources without—I might be scared of the pain, because who isn’t, but I’m not scared that it’s all for nothing, because I see that picture of a bleeding Heart above me, and that’s the center of everything. And that blood runs through every heart, <i>in heaven and on earth and under the earth</i>.<br />
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Happy fiftieth anniversary.</div>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>[1]</b></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"> Were you honestly thinking that the law was going to stop any queen from getting her vodka soda on and dancing to ‘Sugar, Sugar’? </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>[2]</b></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"> For one thing, it was the night following Judy Garland’s funeral, so raiding a gay bar was not perhaps the most cunning thing the NYPD has ever done.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>[3]</b></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"> At the time, the commonest term was <i>transvestite</i>; the term <i>transgender</i> had not yet been coined. Nonetheless, they would most probably fall under the transgender umbrella today, especially as both used female pronouns.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>[4]</b></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"> From the <i>Dublin Review</i> of July 1942, republished in the posthumous collection <i>The Image of the City</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>[5]</b></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"> My parish did better than average. Our pastor added a petition for the victims to the Bidding Prayers (it was actually the first thing I heard about Pulse), and I had an opportunity to give <a href="http://mudbloodcatholic.blogspot.com/2016/11/understanding-homosexuality-from.html" target="_blank">a couple of lectures</a> on <a href="http://mudbloodcatholic.blogspot.com/2016/11/understanding-homosexuality-from_22.html" target="_blank">homosexuality and Christianity</a> a few months later. But the Church in general proved too apathetic, or too cowardly, or too hateful, to even say (let alone do) anything of substance.</span></div>
Gabriel Blanchardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17607504369762849930noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5766538007498037282.post-42494956426441427952019-06-25T13:56:00.001-07:002019-06-25T13:56:45.627-07:00Review: "I'm Gay" by Eugene Lee Yang<blockquote class="tr_bq">
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<i>Every single courageous act of coming out chips away at the curse of homophobia. Most importantly it’s destroyed within yourself, and that act creates the potential for its destruction where it exists in friends, family, and society.</i></div>
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<i>—Anthony Venn-Brown,</i> A Life of Unlearning</div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Photo by <a href="http://www.noamgalai.com/" target="_blank">Noam Galai</a></span></div>
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Eugene Lee Yang of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpi8TJfiA4lKGkaXs__YdBA" target="_blank">the Try Guys</a> (a foursome who try weird new experiences on YouTube) recently released a coming out video, simply titled <i><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpipLfMiaYU" target="_blank">I’m Gay</a></i>. It tells his story wordlessly, through dancing and music, and while ‘interpretive dance’ sounds … well, put bluntly, pretty fucking stupid to anybody who grew up in my generation, this video floored me. I first saw it on Saturday and I’ve already watched it six or seven times, as well as <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QruHsyt8paY&t=819s" target="_blank">his making-of video</a>. It’s stunning. And I am not the first to observe that, of the possible ways, an intricately designed, visually spectacular internet video of interpretive dance is arguably <i>the</i> gayest way to tell people that you’re gay.</div>
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The story is arranged in six scenes, corresponding to the six colors of a typical Pride flag: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple. Yang tells his archetypal yet fairly complex story with incredible economy—only a single scene (the red) lasts longer than one minute, and every movement is choreographed to communicate its meaning vividly. The best way I can review it is just to describe it, pointing out a few of the symbols that stood out to me. I’ll take the scenes one by one, adding the keywords from the making-of video.</div>
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This presents Yang in a family setting. A coffee table surrounded by a couch and two chairs sits in front of a red wall, with father, mother standing behind, brother and sister on the couch on either side of Yang; he is dressed in an androgynous red costume representing his different-ness, while his family are in grey, suggesting that they have not yet taken a side, perhaps not recognized a conflict. Childhood, playfulness, and innocence are the salient characteristics of most of the children’s movements. At first their playfulness is not gendered, their mother’s beauty and their father’s rigidity are equal ingredients in all three; but their play soon begins to be an imitation of the same-sex parent—except Yang, who begins imitating his mother more than his father. The camera pulls out more and more, away from the wall, showing that its confines are artificial and belie the real shape and size of the room and that there are large windows letting in bright light further off. When Yang is about to use his mother’s lipstick, his father slaps it out of his hand and hits him; then the family marches offscreen into the next scene.</div>
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A large crowd of people dressed mostly in grey, American clothing (save for Yang, who is in orange-colored clothes that seem to be some variety of <i>hanbok</i>, traditional Korean garb) are marching into a room full of benches. This is stated in the commentary to represent school and work as well, but the primary imagery chosen is that of a church, with a cross-bearing pulpit and two candelabra full of bright orange candles. The main mass of people march in an ordered pattern, sometimes covering their eyes or grabbing their heads as if in pain or anger. Yang’s dancing and leaping become wilder and more joyful as he goes, until one of the grey-clad people stops him, moving his body into a rigid, pious posture like the others, then forcing him to bow and dismissing him. Yang takes a seat in a pew with a toothy smile, and the grey clothes of the others shift to white and black: sides are being taken, opposition expressed. The man behind the pulpit is in white, as are the people on the far side of the aisle from Yang, whose side is in black; the pastor figure begins making violent gestures like a fundamentalist preacher, and the camera zooms in on Yang’s face as he looks away.</div>
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This scene is particularly complex in its action. The music shifts suddenly to a lighter passage, building gradually through the scene. Sitting on a bench in front of a stand of trees and sunflowers and golden streetlamps, dressed in a vest and yellow trousers, Yang sees a girl in black dancing. The floor is covered in yellow leaves, as if signifying the organic change that is about to take place. He gets up to dance with her, and they leap and swirl for a while, until he sees another figure, a male, also dressed in yellow trousers. He moves into a <i>pas de deux</i> with him, with acrobatic, extraordinarily graceful movements. At first the two men move away from the girl and she moves more slowly after them. Then the men briefly move back: Yang reconnects with her, and she gives a kindly gesture connecting the two men again. (Yang describes her as representing the genuine ally, helping him discover and accept himself.) The other man lays himself on the ground, catching Yang in a suspended hold and slowly lowering him onto his body. They are about to kiss as the scene changes.</div>
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Here Yang appears in an elegant, sequined, deep green drag costume with a large pompadour wig, going down a set of stairs, greeting and embracing other drag queens and women as they head down to a dance floor. Their costumes are in an assortment of rainbow colors, but green predominates, at once dark and lush. The music has become energetic again, and characters dance for a few moments—then a figure in white, shown only from behind, approaches them, his fingers in the shape of a gun: likely a tribute to the mass shooting at Pulse three years ago. The dancers pause; then the outer ring ducks out of sight, then the rest, leaving only Yang visible, his face fearful as he raises his hands as if to stop the shooter, but then arms reach up from below and pull him out of the frame.</div>
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This is maybe the toughest part of the video to watch. We see Yang from above, in a crowd of anonymous white-clad people, bloodied and being kicked from every side. He is dressed only in a pair of jeans that are much longer than his legs; he cannot walk, cannot escape. The brutalizers disperse suddenly, and the camera moves down, showing him pulling himself along the ground, a blue dumpster and garbage bags behind him. Suddenly his family reappears: his mother and brother are now in black instead of grey, and his father and sister are now in white. His mother and brother move to help him up, but his father and sister begin fighting them, and before long his family are all fighting each other and slide out of the shot; Yang is pushed onto the ground again as they leave, and lies there, convulsing, trying to get up. Darkly echoing the first scene with the red lipstick, Yang touches the red blood on his mouth as he finally manages to sit up, then stand.</div>
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Yang is again in an arresting drag outfit, indigo shading into violet. He rises from the ground, at first with his back to the camera, but he quickly turns, anxious in his beauty. Crowds of people, some in white, some in black, surround him; some of those dressed in black reach out as if to caress or encourage, some of those in white shove or paw him, but most are busy yelling at each other as he slowly walks forward, finally reaching a point beyond the crowd; as he does, the shot switches to a distant and unfocused one that slowly pulls back in to his face. The music climaxes and stops, and we hear the angry arguments behind, but the shot lingers on Yang’s face: uncomfortable, anxious, defiant, the lips moving slightly, the eyes going back and forth uncertainly and then—just a couple of seconds before the scene ends, it all smooths out. Yang’s mouth is set, his eyes steady, his brows un-knotted. A peaceful, self-assured dignity closes the scene.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgG8zBVZJwQ-XNj76qZERE0nlA56aWd2ivwojvmYjc-W2MoPaI6y1Str1DmpE7gHfSlYNOD__zrmkPAxWmSPC77FN0TzpQVaOL_VTsafyQS3mrJaRLQ_kVZDqH-Nvi0bZiNZMtvpy3fTAk/s1600/ELY2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="348" data-original-width="598" height="186" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgG8zBVZJwQ-XNj76qZERE0nlA56aWd2ivwojvmYjc-W2MoPaI6y1Str1DmpE7gHfSlYNOD__zrmkPAxWmSPC77FN0TzpQVaOL_VTsafyQS3mrJaRLQ_kVZDqH-Nvi0bZiNZMtvpy3fTAk/s320/ELY2.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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The credits play over a final, narrative-less scene. Yang is dressed in a luxuriant robe, apparently an open-breasted version of the <i>shenyi</i> (a traditional Chinese robe for men), silver and turquoise in color with what looks like a tea-green <i>obi</i> (a Japanese garment that’s a little reminiscent of a corset), seated alone in the room from the red scene, now with the encroaching wall removed. He rises, gesturing with the magnificent trailing sleeves that had at first appeared to be a gown; as if in response, six figures from the green scene—one in each color: red, purple, blue, orange, yellow, and green—file in. When they have all taken their positions, mirroring the arrangement of the family from the beginning, Yang sits down again in the center, and the legend <i>For the LGBTQIA+ Community</i> appears on the screen.</div>
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This is one of the most powerful and visually captivating short videos I’ve ever seen. I rank it with the music videos for <i><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GHXEGz3PJg" target="_blank">Hunger</a></i> or <i><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iC-_lVzdiFE" target="_blank">Spectrum</a></i> by Florence + the Machine. I recommend it to anyone with a taste for dance or design, or anyone who cares about LGBT issues. Or really, anybody who’s open to watching it. Hats off to Eugene Lee Yang for a beautiful piece of art.</div>
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Gabriel Blanchardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17607504369762849930noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5766538007498037282.post-27986500974186211762019-06-22T18:12:00.000-07:002019-06-22T18:13:16.558-07:00Five Quick Takes<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
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Readers may have noticed I’m posting more often; I’m trying to adjust to the schedule and volume Patheos is going to want from me (two or three posts a week at five hundred words minimum). No fixed date yet for the change-over, but I did want to suggest to <a href="https://www.patreon.com/mudbloodcatholic" target="_blank">my Patreon sponsors</a> (thank you for your support!) that now might be a good time if you want to make adjustments to your pledges, since supporting three or four posts a month at $X is quite a different thing from supporting a dozen posts a month at the same rate.</div>
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I’ve heard about <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/20/us/jesuit-school-indiana-gay-teacher/index.html" target="_blank">the clash between the Jesuit school that won’t fire a gay-married teacher and the Indianapolis archdiocese that won’t let the school call itself Catholic</a> so long as it perseveres in its refusal. My initial impression is ‘unimpressed with the archdiocese,’ but I’m waiting to weigh in until I have more facts at my disposal. For the present, I’ll say only that the archdiocese seems to have a better case, canon-law-wise, than it is being given credit for in some quarters; and that <a href="http://mudbloodcatholic.blogspot.com/2013/11/an-appendix-to-raw-tact-catholic.html" target="_blank">I am not mollified by this</a>.</div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Yours truly with the inimitable Grant Hartley, whose workshop on queer culture for Christians was a delight.</span></div>
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Revoice’s second year continues to release its effects into me. On the positive side of things, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3Zyye7myaA" target="_blank">Johanna Finegan’s excellent keynote</a> is now available on YouTube, <a href="https://www.patheos.com/blogs/evetushnet/2019/06/ecstasy-in-celibacy-the-workshop.html" target="_blank">Eve Tushnet’s excellent workshop on celibacy</a> has been posted on her blog, and I bought three copies of <a href="https://www.leadthemhome.org/" target="_blank">Lead Them Home</a>’s excellent book <i>Guiding Families of LGBT+ Loved Ones</i> and gave one to my pastor.</div>
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On the more melancholy side, a number of friends of mine left the Side B community shortly after the conference, and that’s been hard for us. It’s always a little gloomy to see a fellow laborer leave the field you’re in, even if you’re confident they will continue to do good work.</div>
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Today is the memorial of SS John Fisher and Thomas More: Fisher was the sole dissenting voice among the English bishops, imprisoned and eventually martyred, for refusing to sign the Act of Supremacy; Sir Thomas More, martyred on similar grounds, was actually executed on 6 July, but I think they slated the two together to give Fisher a little more notice.</div>
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The film <i>A Man For All Seasons</i> was my introduction to St Thomas More, and his story was a major element in my initial opening to Catholicism; I encountered it at a time when I believed that sincere, consistent Catholics went to hell, and it was mighty hard to maintain that belief in the face of his obvious devotion to Christ. Who could forget that simple and magnificent last confession: ‘I die the king’s good servant; but God’s first.’ I nearly took him as my patron saint for Confirmation—St Joan and St John of the Cross were strong contenders as well, and they remain part of my little family of favorite intercessors.</div>
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Tomorrow being <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corpus_Christi_(feast)" target="_blank">Corpus Christi</a> and also my parish’s picnic, I made cupcakes in honor of the Real Presence: red velvet—first time making them!—for the Precious Blood, with white frosting to represent the Host, and silver foil wrappers for the chalice (I couldn’t find golden ones). I also have some white and red sprinkles, with which to make white cross designs on the frosting, and to dot them with red spots of blood as if they were Eucharistic miracles, because Catholicism is just that metal.</div>
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Gabriel Blanchardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17607504369762849930noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5766538007498037282.post-79868622854389995322019-06-18T22:01:00.001-07:002019-06-19T07:32:55.686-07:00Caution: Contents Toxic, Under High Pressure<blockquote class="tr_bq">
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<i>Lilith, checked in her monotonous gabble by the radiant vision who let in the sun’s new light, stared at it with old and blinking eyes. She saw the shape of the woman; and did not know beatitude, however young. She supposed this also to be in need of something other than the Omnipotence. She said, separating with difficulty words hardly distinguishable from gabble: ‘I can help you.’</i></div>
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<i>‘That’s kind of you,’ Pauline answered, ‘but I haven’t come to you for myself.’</i></div>
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<i>‘I can help anyone,’ the old woman said, carefully enunciating the lie.</i></div>
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<i>Pauline answered again: ‘Adela Hunt wants you.’ She could and would say no more …</i></div>
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<i>The other said, in a little shriek of alarm, such as an old woman pretending youth might have used for girlish fun, ‘I won’t go out, you know. She must come here.’</i></div>
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<i>—Charles Williams, </i>Descent Into Hell</div>
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<a href="https://mudbloodcatholic.blogspot.com/2019/06/are-celibate-gays-really-gay.html" target="_blank">After my last</a>, I’d feel remiss if I didn’t make a note of some Christian individuals and organizations that I would warn fellow LGBTQ people against. Not all of them profess the ex-gay label; it has lost a great deal of its selling power. But this does not mean that their practices have changed or that their goals are different.</div>
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The ex-gay movement has certainly changed since it began the 1970s; by the mid-2000s, it was increasingly clear that those who had left were not just quitters, but had recognized that orientation change was not a realistic goal and that attempts to effect it were doing at least as much harm as good; but this led largely, not to a frank admission of failure and apology for hurts caused, but to a quiet decision to redefine what the goal was. Heterosexual attraction, which could not be achieved, was shelved, in favor of heterosexual self-concept, which could. It couldn’t be honestly achieved, but it could be achieved, and it still can: the substitution of what straight, American evangelicals find normal and comfortable for the natural outlook and self-expression of people outside that category, this was the new and improved goal. And while there are some die-hard proponents of SOCE even today, the heteronormative identity redefinition folks (I shall call them HIRs) are the present face of the ex-gay movement that persists. Many of those on the non-exhaustive list below are HIRs rather than self-professed ex-gay groups; this does not greatly move me.</div>
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In fairness—yes, even to destructive ex-gay drivel—I am not saying that every person involved in these movements is individually a bad person, or that nobody gets anything out of these programs. I’ve said more than once that I got a great deal from my first therapist despite the fact that he was a pretty bad therapist. But that is not a defense of bad therapy. The good aspects of these groups can be gotten better, and more safely, elsewhere; and they help give a veneer of plausibility to practices that are deeply toxic and harmful.<br />
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The <b>American College of Pediatricians</b>—what a reassuring, professional-sounding name. Too bad they only have one employee, inflate their membership numbers by more than double, aren’t the peer-accepted American Academy of Pediatrics, and have been accused of misrepresenting scientific research by the National Institute of Health and of being a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Their principal work is in promoting conversion therapy and opposing gay couples’ legal right to adopt; neither of which sounds to me the layman like they constitute pediatrics per se, and both of which are opposed right back by the AAP.</div>
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Brothers On a Road Less Traveled is how <b>People Can Change</b> decided to rebrand themselves when it turned out people could not change. PCC [1] is a relative newcomer to the ex-gay scene, founded in 2000; its best-known thing is Journey Into Manhood (boy they did not think that name through), which claims to provide the groundwork for men to become heterosexual ‘over time.’ One of the group’s co-founders, David Matheson, an early <i>protégé</i> of Joseph Nicolosi (see NARTH below), left PCC early this year, stating that he now identifies as gay.</div>
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<b>Courage International</b> does not technically promote orientation change, but they promote the hell out of other groups that do, like NARTH (see below), so yeah, they get a spot on the list. The group was founded in 1980 by Fr John Harvey, and operates on a twelve-step model derived from Alcoholics Anonymous. Fr Harvey has been quoted as saying that there are no homosexually oriented people, only heterosexuals with a homosexual tendency (because that’s a useful and necessary distinction in any way at all). The leadership remains more than a little yikes-y, to my mind; Courage helped organize a conference before the synod in Rome in 2015, for which one of the speakers was Cardinal Sarah—as in, the same Cardinal Sarah who compared gay people to Nazis and called trans people Satanic.</div>
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<b>Desert Stream Ministries</b>, also known as Living Waters, was founded by Andrew Comiskey, some time before he became a Vineyard pastor in 1981. He has authored multiple books, in which he says that homosexual relationships are demonic and that homosexuality ‘defiles God’s very image’. The organization has remained in operation to this day, surviving not only Comiskey’s controversial decision to embrace Catholicism in 2011, but a blog post from the previous year, in which he rejoiced that there had been no media coverage of the revelation that a member of their staff had abused a teenage boy who came to DSM for help. This was not quite true; a family had sued DSM in 1998 for a similar case of child abuse, and the LA Times had covered that.</div>
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<b>Equipped to Love</b> is the organization behind the self-styled CHANGED Movement—it’s not an acronym as far as I can tell, and no, I don’t know why they’re yelling—associated with Bethel Church in Redding, California. Bethel’s worship band has apparently drawn a great deal of notice nationwide, kind of like Hillsong, and their ex-gay drivel has come along for the ride. They offer #OnceGay stories, links to groups like DSM (above) and RHN (below), and of course, merch! Mostly books, but they’ve got some tees as well, including one trendy one in that gotta-have-it sans-serif font. This seems to be the newest group of the bunch, so I’m guessing we’ll start seeing the fallout from ETL and CHANGED begin in earnest in ten or fifteen years.</div>
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Although Exodus International was shuttered in 2013 by its president Alan Chambers, <b>Exodus Global Alliance</b>, the worldwide network supporting ex-gay organizations around the world, continues to operate. Not every group in this list is affiliation with EGA, but any group that is linked with EGA can be relied upon to be an ex-gay organization.</div>
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<b>Genesis Counseling</b> is headed by the notorious Joe Dallas, who not only practices and promotes conversion therapy, but has been an energetic contributor to the kulturkampf against ‘the homosexual agenda,’ [2] authoring three books (two family-centered and one apologetics-oriented) on that subject. He is a featured speaker at Focus on the Family’s ex-gay conference ‘Love Won Out.’</div>
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<b>Homosexuals Anonymous</b> is just what it sounds like, another twelve-step group. Also begun in 1980, one of its founding leaders, Colin Cook, stepped down only six years later due to having been found to have had sex with at least a dozen of his male patients—this, after having been defrocked in the Seventh-day Adventist Church for having had relations with another man in his church in 1974. Nonetheless, HA continues to operate to this day, including the active involvement of Cook, and it held an ex-gay conference in Kenya in 2009, just five years before Uganda tried to pass a bill instituting the death penalty for homosexual behavior.</div>
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JIFGA, the Jewish Institute for Global Awareness, was a clumsy attempt to evade the 2015 court order closing <b>JONAH</b>, Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing—clumsy enough that JIFGA too was ordered to shut down this very month, and its founders, Arthur Goldberg and Elaine Berk, forbidden by the court to serve in the leadership of any non-profit in the future. JONAH was specifically ordered to close on grounds of violating the state of New Jersey’s Consumer Fraud Act, for claiming to be able to change sexual orientation. The group’s practices were considered bizarre even in the ex-gay world, including counselors ordering patients to strip naked and touch their genitals during counseling sessions, or having them beat up effigies of their mothers, who were blamed for their sons’ homosexual feelings. Jewish organizations such as the Orthodox Rabbinical Council of America had already publicly repudiated JONAH as early as 2012. Whether this, too, will reëmerge in yet another shape remains to be seen.</div>
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<b>Joel 2:25</b> comes to us from Texas, and aims for ‘far more than sexual sobriety and abstinence’ (these being, for the record, what Scripture actually enjoins upon us); rather, it seeks ‘healing of emotional wounds and relational brokenness,’ standard evangelical coding for heterosexuality, heteronormative identity and behavior, and marriage. The group states that a life of unrepentant sexual sin—a term which appears to include disagreements about what sexual sin consists in, though I admit I’m not sure—inevitably results in damnation.</div>
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<b>NARTH</b>. Oh, NARTH. The National Association for the Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, now calling itself the ‘Alliance for Therapeutic Choice and Scientific Integrity’ (uh huh) or ATCSI, was the 1992 love-child of Joseph Nicolosi and Charles Socarides. Nicolosi, until his death in 2017, was the figurehead of the organization. They’ve been peddling the farther-and-smother theory of homosexuality for close to thirty years now, and getting less credible as they do it. Their status providing continuing education credits for therapists in California was revoked in 2011 for non-payment of dues to the California Board of Behavioral Scientists, and their non-profit status was revoked by the IRS in 2012 for non-filement of the required paperwork for several years.</div>
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<b>North Star</b>, a Mormon group, is a little ambiguous. They certainly were involved in promoting conversion therapy, via links to PCC and JONAH (see above), but they seem to have stepped back from this; one of the group’s leaders renounced ties to PCC in 2015. They haven’t earned their way off the watch list, in my judgment, but perhaps they could.</div>
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<b>PATH</b>, or Positive Alternatives to Homosexuality, is a worldwide network of groups supporting ex-gay programs and conversion therapy, with a frightening number of affiliates. Many of the groups on this list are members of PATH (or were before being shut down for fraud). It was founded by one Richard Cohen, who also founded the International Healing Foundation (which closed in 2015), got expelled from the American Counselors Association for promoting conversion therapy, and is not a licensed therapist in the first place.</div>
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Restoration Path is the rebranded name of the infamous ex-gay group <b>Love In Action</b>. LIA was one of the first ex-gay organizations; one of its founders, John Evans, abandoned the organization and the ex-gay movement after a close friend of his committed suicide over his sexuality. John Smid was a member of the group’s leadership for over twenty years, finally leaving in 2008 and stating publicly that he didn’t think he had ever encountered a single genuine instance of orientation change. LIA was also embroiled in a legal battle with the state of Tennessee in 2005, due to one of their ‘Refuge’ camps there operating unlicensed mental health living facilities, including dispensing medications without qualifications to do so. The suit was settled the next year, and the Refuge program closed down the year after that. The renaming took place in 2012.</div>
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The <b>Restored Hope Network</b> took on the mantle of Exodus International, beginning shortly before the latter closed its doors; RHN’s founders felt that Exodus was not sufficiently opposed to homosexuality. James Dobson, Albert Mohler, and (a little odd in such company, but only a little) Christopher West are on their Board of References, whatever the hell that is. RHN promotes the same theories and techniques that Exodus did, though with a definite air of doubling down; they feature Anne Paulk, for example, the ex-wife of John Paulk, who left Exodus and returned to ‘the lifestyle’ in 2013, making a formal apology to the gay community at large for having ever been involved in promoting ex-gay therapy.</div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 7.2pt; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;">[2]</span><span style="font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Why do so many people hate Taco Tuesday?</span>Gabriel Blanchardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17607504369762849930noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5766538007498037282.post-11316502782298058102019-06-16T11:32:00.000-07:002019-06-16T11:48:33.607-07:00Are "Celibate Gays" Really Gay?<blockquote class="tr_bq">
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<i>Dryden also ‘meant’ by </i>wit<i> the essential gift of the poet. He defined this gift as … ‘propriety of thoughts and words.’ … This definition would commit us to the consequence, ‘Euclid was the greatest wit that ever set pen to paper.’ It may also be asserted almost safely that no human being, when using the word </i>wit<i> to talk with and not talking </i>about<i> the word </i>wit<i>, has ever meant by it anything of the sort. Nor does Dryden himself anywhere make the slightest use of this definition …</i></div>
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<i>We might tax our brains for a long time to explain how a man of Dryden’s stature could have said anything so false to all actual usage, so useless, and so unsupported, if we did not realize its tactical function. He is thinking neither about what the word actually meant nor about what it could, in the interests of clarity and precision and general utility, be made to mean. It is a valuable vogue-word. Therefore a strong point in the critical battle. He wants to deny the enemy the use of it.</i></div>
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<i>—C. S. Lewis, </i>Studies In Words</div>
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Yes.</div>
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Freelance journalist Brandon Ambrosino tweeted up a storm about ex-gay organizations a day or two ago, and concluded with a shot at self-identified celibate gays, stating in no uncertain terms that anyone who abstains from gay sex due to traditionalist moral or religious beliefs doesn't even qualify as gay. As he put it, ‘Gayness is more than gay sex, but it can’t be less’ (I think I recall that correctly). I'm not at all sure why he came after me and my friends <span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>[1].</b></span> Perhaps he had us on the brain because Revoice just took place, I don't know. Regardless, he did it—and seemed more than a little thin-skinned about it: anyone who wishes can go to his Twitter feed and look it up, but I can’t, because he blocked me and several other people who, in his words, <i>came for him</i> and got bitchy.<br />
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Anyway. I actually don't want to just rag on Mr Ambrosino for a whole post: partly because I have no intention of obeying a guy who’s not my dom, partly because I've liked a lot of other things he's written, but chiefly because I do think I understand where he’s coming from. Ex-gay organizations have taken to rebranding and moving the goal-posts a hell of a lot in the last fifteen years or so, as it became irrevocably clear that orientation change does not work, but many of them remained unwilling to really face up to the facts. Some ex-gay people have even appropriated the Side B label, notwithstanding the fact that Side B’s salient characteristics are rejecting SOCE and embracing LGBTQ identity and culture. <span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>[2]</b></span></div>
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Further still, some people’s experience of Side B has been toxic for a variety of reasons. A lot of my own attempts at chastity as a Side B person were shot through with problems that could easily have wrecked my mind, if I hadn’t had the help of guides much wiser than myself. Defensiveness and suspicion toward celibate gay identity are perfectly understandable in these circumstances.</div>
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But that doesn’t make this gatekeeping definition of gayness a sound one. I believe it’s not only a poor use of language, but actually damaging to the community it’s ostensibly meant to serve, for a great many reasons. I will list just seven.</div>
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<b>1. It’s not how anybody actually uses the word.</b> Okay, ‘anybody’ is an overstatement. There is an ideologically driven minority among gay people who do insist that the word be used to indicate beliefs as well as orientation; and thirty or forty years ago, that meaning was much commoner currency. Nonetheless, it isn’t how the majority of people use the word now. It normally indicates orientation, experience, and self-identity, none of which depend on having sex to exist. That is how we know we’re gay before trying gay sex, after all.</div>
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There is one other group, however, who habitually use this definition. This leads me into a second and bigger issue …</div>
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<b>2. It endorses a definition of gayness originally designed by homphobes to justify and maintain homophobic practices.</b> Now, the origin of a term or definition is not the only thing that determines its value, but it is one of them. And, well, in this case, it's a doozy.</div>
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I mentioned ex-gay practices above, which I endured personally. The definition expressed by Ambrosino is the exact same one drafted and used by ex-gay organizations like the Restored Hope Network to this day, because it’s one of the things that helps them move the goalposts. You’re ‘not gay anymore’ because you stop having gay sex, which they can then sell with all the appeal of orientation change—a bait-and-switch change of identity. It downright encourages ambiguous, deceitful language and thought patterns, both with oneself and others. It’s arguably the most basic tool in the ex-gay box. Insisting on gay sex as a qualifier for gay identity gives ex-gay groups more room to maneuver and ammunition to do it with, not less.</div>
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<b>3. It erases ace and demi identities.</b> Asexual, aromantic, demisexual, and demiromantic identities all have queer expressions (indeed, insofar as they depart from the het norm, they’re queer by definition). An asexual but homoromantic woman is every bit as entitled to call herself a lesbian as a sexually active polyamorous lesbian is. <span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>[3]</b></span> Under a you-must-be-open-to-gay-sex definition, grey identities are implicitly excluded.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjH-uZGNb-RU8MGk4J9_jQnYmoRWJXD22hJMp5l8GyEoe-BwJpsp_vGBnI1sudBd5O-5uw64-mbyLyqq4_WFHBZdYgYGqOlMV0WMiYVuU-ha98HrdMOdKsWorxOhdLPrl0roSl9fP86VC0/s1600/pan-ace_flag.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="233" data-original-width="234" height="199" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjH-uZGNb-RU8MGk4J9_jQnYmoRWJXD22hJMp5l8GyEoe-BwJpsp_vGBnI1sudBd5O-5uw64-mbyLyqq4_WFHBZdYgYGqOlMV0WMiYVuU-ha98HrdMOdKsWorxOhdLPrl0roSl9fP86VC0/s200/pan-ace_flag.png" width="200" /></a></div>
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<b>4. It forces people who are still navigating their own feelings into a false dichotomy.</b> This is especially true of teens, I think, who have the most navigating to do and the most at stake in doing it; but it’d certainly apply to, e.g., the heterosexually married Christian man in his thirties who’s finally facing up to the fact that his feelings about his best guy friend are erotic, not just affectionate. A person who’s told that they have to have gay sex (or at least be open to it) in order to ‘really’ be gay is being given an ultimatum about their feelings and identity, and maybe being asked to choose between deeply held religious convictions and powerful instinctive and emotional desires—being asked to call one of those things false and insignificant, when they aren’t ready to do that. What good does that do to anyone? Why is a choice like that necessary? They should not be compelled by others to choose what part of themselves to lie about.<br />
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This is normally what Side B is saying to fellow traditional Christians. In this case, we find ourselves saying it to fellow LGBTQ people. The dichotomy is artificial either way.</div>
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<b>5. It erases Side B Christians who support gay civil rights, including those of us who’ve been traumatized by SOCE.</b> Okay. In the name of not pulling a bait-and-switch myself, I’ll say frankly here that there are Side B people who don’t support complete political equality between, e.g., gay and straight marriages. <span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>[4]</b></span> But a lot of us do support full political equality, and have paid for that belief among our families, friends, and churches. Furthermore, a lot of us are ex-ex-gays, survivors of conversion therapy. We rejected that stuff because it’s unnecessary, wrongheaded, and toxic. We learned that the hard way—which, if I may be a bit tart, is more than can be said of Mr Ambrosino. We paid for our identities. Having those identities invalidated <i>again</i>, by members of the very community we’ve been vilified for asserting, is a blow upon a bruise.</div>
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<b>6. It adds an ideological modifier onto an identity more defined by experience than by behavior.</b> Don’t misunderstand me; I’m not saying that every LGBTQ person’s experience is the same. But the shared thread among them is the experience of being othered, excluded, demeaned, treated as less than, on the basis of our attractions or gender expression. We all experience that, in our fears while we're closeted and in our lives when we leave it. <i>That</i> unites lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, trans people, and everyone else in the community, not sexual activity.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXnUx4oOW4noeclH1vQLfZAdJ6UhAt3p2gbbBiL1dmhA-JCnCPGRjV6A6akNj1zhydg2B6-bIemMyp48GTtoMoIXmCwRFuEU-evFzY3fYkLzIJ4CEOISObPu40ippEC1XpCjm9L9pUCzs/s1600/Gay-Men-Holding-Hands.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="282" data-original-width="424" height="132" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXnUx4oOW4noeclH1vQLfZAdJ6UhAt3p2gbbBiL1dmhA-JCnCPGRjV6A6akNj1zhydg2B6-bIemMyp48GTtoMoIXmCwRFuEU-evFzY3fYkLzIJ4CEOISObPu40ippEC1XpCjm9L9pUCzs/s200/Gay-Men-Holding-Hands.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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Really it <i>couldn’t</i> be sex that united the gay community, not just because (for a variety of reasons) some of us never have any, but because our sexual acts and experiences are so radically different. An act of gay sex usually contains none of the same ingredients as an act of lesbian sex; in that way, each resembles <i>hetero</i>sexual sex more than the other. This is, of course, a ridiculous line of reasoning, but that’s kinda why I don’t take this view.</div>
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<b>7. It drives an unnecessary wedge between LGBTQ people during a time when anti-gay sentiment appears to be rising rather than falling.</b> Infighting is dull and wasteful at the best of times. When you have a homophobic administration elected by a right-wing portion of the populace, it’s dangerous. And sure, the media distorts things and my own consumption of media is kinda random; but I’ve been seeing a lot more stories about homophobic violence lately, including a couple of nasty scares even at Pride events. This is not a smart time to be fractious.</div>
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When Side B people speak up for ourselves and the LGBTQ community as a whole, that is precisely what we’re doing: speaking up for ourselves, and for the LGBTQ community as a whole. If you think we don't get targeted for harassment and hatred because our families or our churches know we're 'the good gays,' you're wrong. We are endangered when the gay community is endangered, and vice versa. Homophobes don’t generally care that (most) Side B people are attempting celibate lives; they care that we’re gay. That’s the thing they hate. That is why, for example, an institution like the Catholic Church can be at one and the same time welcoming on paper, full of homosexually active clergy, and riddled with homophobia in its attitudes, rhetoric, and policies. They’re targeting the identity, the rallying point for the community: often as not, they’re prepared to ignore the sex.</div>
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Want to deprive your enemies of a word? Fine. But know who they really are first. You might learn something.</div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "im fell english" , serif; font-size: 18pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">✠ ✠ ✠</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>[1]</b></span> At any rate, many of my friends can truthfully claim celibacy. I admire celibacy, and I consider celibacy and monogamous heterosexual marriage the only two intrinsically licit sexual states; but, phrased gently, it would be generous at the expense of accuracy to describe me as chaste, and I'm certainly not going to marry a woman. <span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>[5]</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>[2]</b></span> With qualifications? Sure. But then again, St Augustine embraced Neo-Platonism with qualifications, St Thomas Aquinas embraced Aristotle with qualifications, St Edith Stein embraced Phenomenology with qualifications. That doesn’t make any of them not part of those traditions: it just means they’re a different part of the tradition.</div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>[3]</b></span> Yes, she might well add the qualifier <i>ace</i> lesbian at her discretion. But that’s exactly what it is: a qualifier, added at her discretion, not a contradiction.</div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>[4]</b></span> I’m not crazy about this fact. But I don’t want to be accused of pinkwashing a movement that is pretty diverse in certain ways, including some ways that a lot gay people would find objectionable. All the same, I don’t consider it a very damning criticism of the Side B community, since there are outliers in the gay community, like Milo Yiannopoulos or Jack Donovan, that most LGBTQ people find objectionable, too.</div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>[5]</b></span> Phrased <i>less</i> gently, I’m kind of a whorebag.</div>
Gabriel Blanchardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17607504369762849930noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5766538007498037282.post-52372311937323904902019-06-13T18:28:00.000-07:002019-06-13T18:28:10.309-07:00Sometimes You Really Need a F***ing Break From This Stuff<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b>CW: Sexual abuse, homophobic imagery</b></div>
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It has been a grueling few days.</div>
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The day before yesterday, I went with a friend of mine to the Waterfront Marriott in Baltimore. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops is meeting there, and my friend was asked at the last minute to help provide music for the Mass; I went along to look after my friend's baby during the evening Mass. Being surrounded by bishops was itself something of a trial for both of us: my friend had been horribly mistreated while working for the Archdiocese, badly enough to need therapy (and badly enough that the Archdiocese footed the bill for said therapy). For myself, the revolting, myopic conduct of the bishops over the sex abuse crisis had me seriously wondering whether I'd get hauled out of the hotel if I just spat in one of their faces. (I didn't, so I guess we'll never know.)</div>
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Yesterday, I went to the same place with a different friend, the lovely and talented Eve Tushnet. The Survivors' Network of those Abused by Priests held a press conference outside the hotel that evening, and she and I went in support. SNAP had apparently sent a letter to Cardinal DiNardo, the current president of the USCCB, asking him to come out and meet them. Neither he nor any representative of the episcopal conference was in evidence. The little group, about half a dozen people, read stories of their own experiences of abuse; the one that hurt the most to hear was from a man singled out and groomed by a priest whom his family adored, until one night when he and the priest were having dinner alone together. The young man was excited to have such an important, attentive friend. Then the priest drove them to a secluded area and assaulted him. After some groping, the young man told the priest to stop. Eventually the cleric complied, telling him angrily that 'I thought you were ready for my special attention,' and that he was a disappointment to God.</div>
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I tried to take today slow and easy, to detox from all this. And then, for no reason, in a group devoted to discussing Aquinas, this:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidtscBfNnTGs4ZFEmUpDdWV1Q0s70asXsMKjC1yDeJ4gx7GSqVNIyeXZ2Oj5lK0rIHUEQ4NK2u0METgm9YKbUSloi_cN-0mzpSEOBHKN-7vAjZBJicjp_8WXVQidAPjBt54JPC8dhhGTM/s1600/Screen+Shot+2019-06-13+at+8.46.01+PM.png" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="308" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidtscBfNnTGs4ZFEmUpDdWV1Q0s70asXsMKjC1yDeJ4gx7GSqVNIyeXZ2Oj5lK0rIHUEQ4NK2u0METgm9YKbUSloi_cN-0mzpSEOBHKN-7vAjZBJicjp_8WXVQidAPjBt54JPC8dhhGTM/s320/Screen+Shot+2019-06-13+at+8.46.01+PM.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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The Nazi Party imprisoned, tortured, and killed gay men. And yes, some of the early Nazis were gay; that is, until Hitler betrayed them, having them murdered <i>en masse</i> on the Night of the Long Knives, up to and including the man who had been maybe his only real friend, Ernst Roehm. But sure, <i>we're</i> a bunch of fucking Nazis because we put a rainbow on something.</div>
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I am sick to death of all of this.</div>
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I can't write any more right now. Pray for me, and for the people who behave this way.</div>
Gabriel Blanchardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17607504369762849930noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5766538007498037282.post-68582319078273914692019-06-09T19:45:00.000-07:002019-06-09T21:32:04.699-07:00Revoice 2019: A Brief Retrospective<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 18pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: #990000; font-family: "im fell english" , serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">And O! such joy I saw my Lady wear</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #990000; font-family: "im fell english" , serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">When to that shining heav’n she entered in,</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #990000; font-family: "im fell english" , serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">The planet’s self grew brighter yet with her;</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #990000; font-family: "im fell english" , serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">And if the star laughed and was changed, what then</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 31.5pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: #990000; font-family: "im fell english" , serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Was I, whom am but flesh, and ticklish</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #990000; font-family: "im fell english" , serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">To touch of change, and all the moods of men?</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #990000; font-family: "im fell english" , serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">As in a fish-pond still and clear, the fish</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #990000; font-family: "im fell english" , serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Draw to some dropped-in morsel as it goes,</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #990000; font-family: "im fell english" , serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Hoping it may provide a dainty dish,</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #990000; font-family: "im fell english" , serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">So I saw splendors draw to us in droves,</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #990000; font-family: "im fell english" , serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Full many a thousand, and from each was heard:</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #990000; font-family: "im fell english" , serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">‘Lo, here is one that shall increase our loves!’</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "im fell english" , serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">—Dante Alighieri,</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "im fell english" , serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Paradiso</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "im fell english" , serif; font-size: 18pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">✠ ✠ ✠</span></span></div>
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I was at <a href="https://revoice.us/" target="_blank">Revoice 2019</a> <span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>[1]</b></span> from Wednesday till this morning. My mom came this year, and she really enjoyed it. Saturday was technically the last day, but since our flight didn’t leave till Sunday and a lot of people hang around anyway, I stayed and observed Pentecost in St Louis, in the beautiful basilica cathedral.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiG1keguqf-Qd3TlYVru72qYqeNo49PtkEdJfmjz4OCflZlRwSIS1A_TaaQmV9zwjoM8Vml4eMMTcbA4NOEQcB47HJKo0Twx_1ejOPPS7uFXWHZyqfaoDhfDjBtpOIuONE2vSq8p1GyL-U/s1600/QueenofApostles.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="400" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiG1keguqf-Qd3TlYVru72qYqeNo49PtkEdJfmjz4OCflZlRwSIS1A_TaaQmV9zwjoM8Vml4eMMTcbA4NOEQcB47HJKo0Twx_1ejOPPS7uFXWHZyqfaoDhfDjBtpOIuONE2vSq8p1GyL-U/s200/QueenofApostles.jpg" width="160" /></a></div>
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It always feels huge, being at gay Christian events. There’s a weight that comes off you when you’re among people you don’t have to <i>defend</i> yourself to. A weight you forget you’re even carrying most of the time, and you wonder sometimes why you feel hunched and aching; and then you get to a place like Revoice, and suddenly you can stand up straight again.</div>
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Just like last year, the workshops were great: even better, a lot of the ones that I loved last year were given again this year so I know other people got to profit from them, and a lot of the ones I missed last year due to scheduling conflicts were also given again this year and I got to go to them this time. I probably enjoyed Eve Tushnet’s workshop on healthy celibacy the most, closely seconded by Ty Wyss’s on intimacy as an antidote to sexual shame; I also went to the lovely and talented Grant Hartley’s talk on redemptive aspects of queer culture, and Raw Low’s on how to protect your witness from being coöpted by heteronormative Christians. I’m looking forward to them all being posted on YouTube so I can rewatch them.</div>
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Both Ty and Eve touched, perhaps accidentally, on some things that I really profited from last year, at the workshop on recovering from spiritual abuse given by David Gill and Sara Collins—for instance, Eve’s incredibly succinct and clear summary of spiritual abuse: ‘People can try to make you obey in ways that are about them and not about Christ.’</div>
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But the thing I’ve been especially ruminating on, since I heard it, was something from Ty’s talk. The ways he spoke about experiencing and understand shame lay partly on a gradient: shame tends to tell us that we are either Not Enough, or else Too Much (or sometimes both). He gave the example from his own life of his coming out: that same week, his parents went to church and got saved; which, yay, but it also sent the message: <i>You’re so Too Much that we had to call on the God of the universe to be able to deal with our own son</i>. But shame is far more diverse than that of course, and he laid out a sort of sample phrase for understanding how it operates in our own lives (using Too Much and Not Enough as prompts more than as rigid categories): ‘Shame tells me that I am _____.’</div>
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I thought about it for a minute, trying a phrase or two that were true enough but didn’t really resonate emotionally. Then it came to me: <i>Shame tells me that I am on probation</i>. Screw up too much, and you’re done.</div>
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Especially when I believed in <i>sola fide</i>, I was abjectly terrified that I wasn’t good enough for God. My experience of sola fide was toxic because the way the doctrine was articulated to me was that, while you’re saved by faith alone, genuine faith produces good works—which trapped me in the inescapable prison of wondering whether my works were good enough to prove my faith was genuine. I gaslit myself for a decade, doubting every thought, word, and deed as perhaps being (how could I ever tell?) the secretly rotten fruit of hypocrisy.</div>
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Catholicism, which offered me a means of placing even the most mixed motives under the influence of grace, saved my faith and probably my life; yet Catholic culture too provides lots of space for scrupulosity, self-righteousness, and fear, and a greater multitude of methods by which to seem to oneself to be earning celestial approval. The <i>mechanics</i> of Catholicism, just as such, aren’t enough. Without the matured and patient wisdom of many guides, living and dead, I would probably have wound up merely in a larger prison—one defined by the concrete acts of confession and penance, instead of the bottomless chasm of whether I were sincere, but a prison all the same. And I’m neither surprised nor angry nor scornful that others, finding themselves in such a prison, have chosen to break out of it. Who wouldn’t? If God sounds like a jailer, why would you want to go to heaven?</div>
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Thus far, most of my attempts at reconciling my sexuality with my faith have had a strong element of shame in them. Not, for a long time now, shame about the bare facts of who I am and what kinds of relationships and sex I long for. But shame of a different and more calculating kind, a shame rooted in that idea of being on probation with God. The God that shame depicts for us doesn’t love us; he wants something from us—a performance. Which, given a moment’s thought, is ridiculous. As if he needed anything! Or as if a parent would evaluate their child’s drawings and decide whether to keep the child based (however gently and reasonably) on an increase of skill!</div>
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I haven’t altogether worked out where to go from here. But simply to name the problem seems like progress.</div>
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<span style="font-family: "im fell english" , serif; font-size: 7.2pt; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;">1</span><span style="font-family: "im fell english" , serif; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span>For those who don’t know, Revoice is a nationwide conference founded for Side B Christians (queer-identifying Christians who subscribe to a traditional sexual ethic), to provide support and fellowship and increase visibility. It first met last year.</div>
Gabriel Blanchardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17607504369762849930noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5766538007498037282.post-85234324290143373712019-06-04T20:44:00.000-07:002019-06-04T21:48:36.574-07:00The Forked Tongue of Bishop Tobin<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">
<i>He is the son of one Saywell, he dwelt in Prating-row; and he is known of all that are acquainted with him, by the name of Talkative in Prating-row, and notwithstanding his fine tongue, he is but a sorry fellow. … Religion hath no place in his heart, or house, or conversation; all he hath lieth in his tongue, and his religion is to make a noise therewith.</i></blockquote>
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Bishop Tobin of Providence (of whom I had not heard before) tweeted several days ago that Catholics must not attend gay Pride events, since they are incompatible with Catholicism and harmful to children. He was promptly hung, drawn, and quartered by half the internet.</div>
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He deserved it. This is the man also <a href="https://www.providencejournal.com/news/20180821/providence-bishop-thomas-j-tobin-says-abuse-was-outside-his-responsibility" target="_blank">had the gall to say</a>, about a year ago, that back when he was the auxiliary Bishop of Pittsburgh, he did know about cases of child abuse but didn’t do anything about them because ‘My responsibilities … did not include clergy assignments or clergy misconduct … I was not contacted by the Grand Jury, interviewed, nor mentioned in their report [well have a fucking cookie Your Excellency] … In my experience, the Diocese of Pittsburgh has been very responsible and transparent in responding to allegations of sexual abuse’—which is why, when four priests of that diocese took photos of a fifteen-year-old boy stripped naked and posed as Christ crucified, we all learned about it at the time, and not decades later when the truth was forcibly extracted by the pressure of the law and incorporated into <a href="https://www.attorneygeneral.gov/report/" target="_blank">the Pennsylvania Grand Jury report</a>. The <i>responsibility and transparency</i> of the Diocese of Pittsburgh, we have these to thank for the fact that Fr Richard Zula was removed from ministry and reported to the authorities the <i>first</i> time a complaint was made about ‘violent sexual activity with a minor,’ as opposed to, say, letting him rake up <i>one hundred and thirty</i> criminal charges and <i>two confessions of his own</i> before informing the authorities. The snake who learned about cases just like these and decided ‘Not my area’ <a href="http://mudbloodcatholic.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-banquet.html" target="_blank">wants to warn us</a> about other people’s conduct being ‘harmful to children.’</div>
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Is Bishop Tobin the most hypocritical and corrupt member of the USCCB? I doubt it. Have another cookie.</div>
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I was frankly outraged to see Bishop Strickland of Tyler speaking in Tobin’s defense, given that Strickland was one of the few American bishops for whom I had any respect left, since he seemed like he was going to practice some real, public repentance and reform.<span style="font-size: x-small;"><b> [1]</b></span> That list is now down to pretty much just Bishop Persico of Erie, who actually met with the Grand Jury and has made some concrete effort to deal with his diocese’s guilt. Whether Tobin's right (which, no) is irrelevant. After the way he's behaved, he, like many, many other Catholic bishops, should be deposed <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04677c.htm" target="_blank">and degraded</a> yesterday.</div>
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I remain a Catholic (one <a href="http://mudbloodcatholic.blogspot.com/2018/09/confiteor.html" target="_blank">with sins of my own that I cannot take back</a>) by God’s grace. Nothing else. As Flannery O’Connor said, the one thing that makes the Church bearable is that she feeds us Jesus. Literally, and in spite of herself.</div>
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It rips me up inside to think of people who lose that because the behavior of her priests was so sick and sadistic, and that of her bishops so self-centered and cowardly, that they couldn’t bear to be near it. Those for whom a golden cross evokes memories not of the gift of the Eucharist or the tender Heart that endured the Passion, but of unwanted hands and tongues and eyes. And it disgusts me that there are still Catholics willing to go to bat for the same bishops who allowed this stuff to go on unchecked, these hirelings that care nothing for the sheep, and blame those who leave for being driven away.</div>
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I’m staying. I’m staying for the Eucharist, which is Jesus. I hope those who have been driven away come back for Jesus. But I don’t blame them for running from the wolves; nobody should. Nor do I blame them for not trusting shepherds (hell, I don’t trust shepherds), when they know shepherds chiefly as men who bring wolves into the fold and tell everybody they’re sheepdogs.</div>
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<span style="font-family: "im fell english" , serif; font-size: 7.2pt; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;">[1]</span><span style="font-family: "im fell english" , serif; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> In fairness to Bishop Strickland, perhaps he didn’t know about Bishop Tobin’s atrocious remarks last August. They weren’t front-page news.</span>Gabriel Blanchardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17607504369762849930noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5766538007498037282.post-1901297472159229702019-05-31T20:36:00.000-07:002019-05-31T20:36:15.493-07:00Antifascism 104A: Why America?<blockquote class="tr_bq">
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<i>This third thing is not a sentiment but a belief: a firm, even prosaic belief that our own nation, in sober fact, has long been, and still is markedly superior to all others. I once ventured to say to an old clergyman who was voicing this sort of patriotism, ‘But, sir, aren’t we told that every people thinks its own men the bravest and its own women the fairest in the world?’ He replied with total gravity—he could not have been graver if he had been saying the Creed at the altar—‘Yes, but in England it’s true.’ To be sure, this conviction had not made my friend (God rest his soul) a villain; only an extremely lovable old ass. It can, however, produce asses that kick and bite. On the lunatic fringe, it may shade off into that popular racialism which Christianity and science equally forbid. </i></div>
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<i>… If our nation is really so much better than others it may be held to have either the duties or the rights of a superior being towards them. In the nineteenth century, the English became very conscious of such duties: the ‘white man’s burden.’ What we called natives were our wards and we their self-appointed guardians. … And yet this showed the sense of superiority working at its best. Some nations who have also felt it have stressed the rights, not the duties. </i></blockquote>
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<i>—C. S. Lewis,</i> The Four Loves</blockquote>
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But why is this even happening? How is it fascism, of all ideologies, getting a comeback tour? Weren't the upsets of Fascist Italy in 1943, Nazi Germany in 1945, and Nationalist Spain in 1974, enough to establish that this is a political dead-end?</div>
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Honestly, no—for a mixture of reasons, some more thoroughly unflattering than others. In this post I will begin to address just two of the relevant culprits. One is the nature of fascism, and the other is the history of American politics.</div>
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Let's start with that second one first. We all know, in a vague and general way, that the U.S., like a child who has thrown up only once, is not done getting racism out of its system. Our almost-definable right, infighting-riddled left, and aggressively shapeless center all insincerely and equivocally agree about that. What our various factions disagree about is what racism consists in, how it manifests itself, and how to correct it; so, most things. Two rough models of what an American might mean by racism can be described. I’ll refer to these models as the Whig and the Jacobin, because I feel like it. Most self-described conservatives in this country use the Whig model, and most self-described liberals, the Jacobin.</div>
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The Whig model defines racism as being primarily an issue of <i>personal arrogance, prejudice, and dislike</i>, and thus as a primarily moral issue. Racial bigotry and spite are acknowledged to be real problems and (by Christian Whigs) serious sins, but insofar as the problem is a moral one of individual attitudes, a systemic solution is neither called for nor helpful, on this view—and most Whigs, while they will allow that government interventions are occasionally necessary, maintain that the government is even less to be trusted than the individual and that its interventions (whether political or judicial) are to be avoided accordingly.</div>
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By contrast, the Jacobin model defines racism as being primarily an issue of <i>power dynamics among groups of people</i>. (The groups in question may be socially constructed, and so in a sense artificial, but this does not make them fake, any more than the fact that a house is a construct rather than an organic growth means the house is fake.) Racism is, primarily, a tool for keeping racial minorities—black, brown, red, or yellow—at a group-wide disadvantage as compared to whites; the occasional excelling minority person is not a threat to this system, because it is precisely occasional and exceptional. Reform of these diseased systems is therefore both necessary and appropriate as a response.</div>
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Thus you can have a Republican (Whig model) arguing with a Democrat (Jacobin model), or a Green (Jacobin model) arguing with an Independent (Whig model), and they can all be agreeing that racism is bad and yet coming away from the discussion each thinking the other is a total idiot. I don’t know that I personally have ever met a Republican who didn’t admit both that the South is pretty racist, and that that was a serious problem; but they’re basing that belief on the stereotype (fair or not) that more Southerners are personally disdainful of black people than elsewhere in the country, not that the South has more egregious systemic problems. Even if the latter were true, and acknowledged to be true by the Republicans I’ve met, it wouldn’t enter into their calculations of racism (although it might enter into their view of a society’s general healthiness, independent of its political structure). A shared <i>term</i> with a disputed <i>definition</i> is worthless. <span style="font-size: x-small;">[1]</span></div>
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It’s no secret that I think both the Whig and the Jacobin approaches, insofar as they can be reconciled, are right; and I think they can be reconciled a lot more than many of their proponents think. Any social and political system is more than the sum of its parts, and having laws and systems that encourage (even if they cannot compel) a just outcome is desirable: that is the Jacobin side. But it must also be recognized that every system is constructed and enforced by individual people, individuals who aren’t necessarily better than anybody they’re drafting laws and policies for: that is the Whig side. I don’t consider this problem totally insoluble—but it’s a genuine problem.</div>
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But here’s the thing. American history has a <i>lot</i> of systemic keeping-the-coloreds-down shit in our history, quite apart from slavery. Segregation is the ur-example: ‘separate but equal’ was the mantra, but it was obvious to anyone who wanted to look that the separation was into two flagrantly <i>unequal</i> segments of the populace, and anyway, why have a separation in the first place if we’re equal citizens? Or there’s the Muskogee syphilis experiments, or the Japanese-American internment camps of the 1940s, or the current US policy of ripping families apart for requesting asylum (something that can <i>only</i> be done <i>on</i> US soil). The US treatment of First Nations is an equally egregious: one of the less-publicized facts about the Dakota Access Pipeline that caused so much controversy in 2016 and 2017, was the fact that it violated the territorial sovereignty of the Sioux tribes in the area, which the US <i>had guaranteed by multiple treaties</i>. A white-centric idea of America may have arisen from individual prejudices first; it is surely not something that can be totally eradicated by law, because laws aren’t perfect; but it is something that’s incarnated in our history, our habits, and even our laws—not just a phenomenon of individually awful human beings.</div>
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Fascist ethnonationalism plays to this. Not many people would want to go to bat for everything the US government has ever done, but not many people would want to go through and repent of all of it, either. The exercise would be exhausting. And fascism offers a way around it, a way to define all those whiny brown and black and yellow and red people as Somebody Else: as critics of America rather than wronged Americans, people whom we therefore don’t have to listen to—because who can really blame <i>any</i> nation for looking after itself? It’s what we have nations for, isn’t it? All of these Other People should go to their own nations if they want to complain about it!</div>
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By defining itself in terms of ethnicity and appealing to a colonial history defined by whites, modern fascism makes itself instantly appealing to people who are bothered by a sense of socio-historical guilt, but aren’t sure what to do with it, or resent it, or just find the people who talk about it insufferable. (To be fair, many people who talk about socio-historical guilt <i>are</i> insufferable: being right does not make a person pleasant.) It’s pretty natural that this should become appealing at some point following the early successes of the Civil Rights Movement of the 50s and 60s. If anything, it’s something of a miracle that it took this long to do so.</div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[1]</span> Of the two definitions, I’ll confess to having more sympathy with the Whig one, partly because it’s the understanding I grew up with, and partly because it does often seem to animate the use of the term by leftists and liberals. I mean, when a journalist or a politician calls somebody a racist, I doubt they even frequently mean ‘You participate in a system that disfavors nonwhite racial groups!’, nor would that term be very useful if they did, since (on Jacobin principles) that described basically everyone in the US. Rather, what I take them to mean is closer to ‘You’re bigoted against people of nonwhite races!’ And while we can never be completely certain of that charge, we can be certain enough to make the term a useful one.</div>
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Nonetheless, the thing that the Jacobin usage defines as racism is a real thing, and merits a term to denote it. I don’t know that I have a good alternative; ‘systemic bias,’ maybe?</div>
Gabriel Blanchardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17607504369762849930noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5766538007498037282.post-11314027422328390292019-05-28T20:34:00.000-07:002019-05-28T20:34:20.467-07:00Review: "Jennifer the Damned"<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 18pt; margin-right: 18pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: 'IM Fell English', serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">When my mother sat me down at the kitchen table one night, about a month before my </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: 'IM Fell English', serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">class was </span><span style="font-family: 'IM Fell English', serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.2; white-space: pre-wrap;">scheduled to receive Holy Communion, I had no idea she was about to tear my world apart. My </span><span style="font-family: 'IM Fell English', serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.2; white-space: pre-wrap;">mind could not conceive of anything worse than that she was going to have to work a double shift </span><span style="font-family: 'IM Fell English', serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.2; white-space: pre-wrap;">again.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: 'IM Fell English', serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">‘Jennifer, you won’t be receiving Communion with the rest of your class.’</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: 'IM Fell English', serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">‘Communion is not meant for us.’</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: 'IM Fell English', serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">‘Sister Joan says it’s meant for everyone, to save our souls from the devil.’</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: 'IM Fell English', serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My mother smiled her crooked, perverse smile. ‘Jennifer, you and I … </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: 'IM Fell English', serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">we don’t have souls</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: 'IM Fell English', serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.’</span></span></div>
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So not only is <a href="https://www.facebook.com/CatholicVampireFiction/" target="_blank">Catholic vampire fiction</a> its whole own subgenre, we have a Facebook page now! We are: Karen Ullo (<i><a href="https://www.wisebloodbooks.com/store/p80/Jennifer_the_Damned%2C_by_Karen_Ullo.html" target="_blank">Jennifer the Damned</a></i>), Eleanor Bourg Nicholson (<i><a href="https://www.ignatius.com/A-Bloody-Habit-P3030.aspx" target="_blank">A Bloody Habit</a></i>), J. B. Toner (<i><a href="https://www.sunburypressstore.com/Whisper-Music-9781620060803.htm" target="_blank">Whisper Music</a></i>), and myself (<i><a href="http://clickworkspress.com/book/ddk/" target="_blank">Death’s Dream Kingdom</a></i>). I’ll be reviewing my three compatriots’ novels, beginning here with Mrs Ullo’s book, which I got last week and whose nigh-400-pages I devoured in just a few days. (All four novels, I believe, can be purchased on Amazon; I have included direct-from-publisher links for each, both because the books are sometimes cheaper that way and because screw Amazon.)</div>
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<i>Jennifer the Damned</i> is set in contemporary Louisiana and California. The titular Jennifer was stolen from her birth mother by the lovely, heartless, and masterful Helen Carshaw, a vampire centuries old, who chose Jennifer as her <i style="font-style: italic;">protégé</i><i>. </i>She raises Jennifer as her own daughter—feeding her only the raw or rare meat that she can digest—and places her in Catholic school, in order to nurture her in both knowledge of God’s love for humanity and hatred that that love is withheld from the likes of them.</div>
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As the novel opens, Helen has disappeared, and Jennifer Carshaw has been in the care of a small convent of teaching nuns for a few years. She has been receiving a robustly Catholic education, and even a fairly normal high-school-misfit social experience—save that she alone is excluded from the sacraments, and especially from the Communion, that she so badly yearns for and envies her classmates for being able to access.</div>
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But Jennifer is experiencing her transfiguration into a full-fledged vampire, and the insatiable bloodlust that goes with it. The very smell of the Precious Blood at Mass drives her close to blind frenzy. Left to navigate undeath on her own, Jennifer decides to attempt a balance between her secret life as a vampire and the life she wants as a human being.</div>
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The attempt, though valiant, fails. Jennifer learns a degree of self-control and develops the cunning to dispose of her kills without leaving any incriminating evidence behind, but she cannot truly balance the demands of the human life she has led till now with the new urges of the vampire: after a handful of anonymous disappearances, she loses control and kills the boy she has been dating. Around the same time, Helen’s bizarre plans, which involved turning a classmate of Jennifer’s named Jeremy into a vampire as her ‘brother,’ gradually become clearer: Jennifer despairs of ever managing a semblance of human life at home, and, as the FBI zero in on her, finding more and more evidence of her murders, she deserts the nuns and her school, adopting a false identity and telling Jeremy how to reach her later.</div>
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A few years later, while she is living in Los Angeles and working as a makeup artist, she meets someone new, a young actor named Conner who takes a shine to her. She begins toying once again with the idea of leading a human life, at least part of the time. But Jeremy, who is now experiencing his own growth into full vampire-hood, comes to find her: abandoned by their pseudo-mother, they have only each other to rely on as fellow undead. Nevertheless Jennifer opens herself up, little by little, to Conner’s increasing affection and seriousness about their relationship. Against all her prior experience, Jennifer even begins to see signs of mortality returning to her body—until her false identity is exposed and, like a pantomime demon out of a trap-door, Helen emerges. Helen informs them that she, Jennifer, has become the most pathetic of creatures, a mortal vampire, and demands that her two pseudo-children kill Conner and come with her; driven by rebellion and revenge for the humanity she took from them, they instead destroy her.</div>
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Jennifer leaves Conner, hospitalized after their confrontation with Helen, with a note expressing her regret and her love for him, and returns to Louisiana and the nuns. She confesses what she has been and done, including all her murders, and agrees to face justice, asking only to receive the Eucharist first, now that she at long last is sure she has a soul. The priest consents, she drinks the Precious Blood, and there the novel ends.</div>
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<i style="font-style: italic;">Jennifer the Damned</i> is comparable to <i style="font-style: italic;">Twilight</i> in premise, yet with the superior craftsmanship of Anne Rice. It takes the psychological and spiritual gravity of being a vampire seriously, in a way that many of its rivals fail to do, even <i>Dracula</i>, whose vampires are indeed evil but merely evil, without the depth of a human sinner or even of a fallen angel like the possessed Weston of <i>Perelandra</i>. Feeling cut off from humanity not merely in a social way, but in an urgently sacramental sense, is something I’ve rarely come across outside of Rice’s work. I wonder whether the choice of Louisiana, such an important location in <i>Interview With the Vampire</i>, may itself be a tribute to Rice. (Louisiana has become virtually the Transylvania of Southern Gothic, also popping up in <i><a href="https://whitewolf.fandom.com/wiki/Vampire:_The_Requiem" target="_blank">Vampire: The Requiem</a></i> and the <a href="https://www.ancient-origins.net/unexplained-phenomena/vampire-new-orleans-mysterious-case-jacque-and-comte-de-st-germain-009019" target="_blank">stories of Jacques St Germain</a>).</div>
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Structurally, the novel works well enough; stylistically, though it has a few sags into <i>cliché</i>, it’s generally very good—better than <i>Dracula</i>. But where <i>Jennifer the Damned</i> really shines is its pacing. This is itself a <i>cliché</i>, I know, but I couldn’t put it down! I always needed to know what was going to happen next: I cared what happened to Jennifer and the people around her.</div>
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If the novel has weaknesses, they are two: audience grasp of the mechanics of vampirism, and the ending. Now, it is appropriate that we don’t fully understand how being a vampire works at the beginning, partly because we the readers are learning with Jennifer as the story progresses. However, a major mechanical shift away from what we had been led to think, one that’s highly plot-relevant, takes place fairly close to the end without really being foreshadowed. This leaves us feeling more like the mechanics have been fiddled with to convenience the plot, than that we are continuing to learn with Jennifer and that if we’d been a little cannier with the facts we had we might have seen this twist coming. It’s not a fatal flaw but it’s the worse of the two, in my opinion.</div>
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The other flaw is that the closing feels kind of rushed. Jennifer’s love interest in the last third of the book falls for her so quickly that I was inclined to put it down to vampire charm, but then that explanation seemed to be repudiated, which resulted in the romance coming across as over-idealized—though, to be fair, not cloying or problematic like Stephenie Meyer’s; the characters’ behavior and dialogue stays convincing. The one truly important death of the book happens with little fanfare, which was a real disappointment. And while I can’t quite bring myself to call this a problem—because if I’m truthful, it’s kind of the point of the book—I am furious over the openness of the very end! I want there to be sequels so I can find out, even indirectly, what happened.</div>
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If you are a fan of vampire literature or coming-of-age stories, definitely! All in all I give <i>Jennifer the Damned</i> a B+, with the note that it could’ve gotten an A- if Ullo had stuck the landing just a little better (and if there are sequels I am optimistic that she will). <a href="https://www.wisebloodbooks.com/store/p80/Jennifer_the_Damned%2C_by_Karen_Ullo.html" target="_blank">Go forth and buy</a>.</div>
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Gabriel Blanchardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17607504369762849930noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5766538007498037282.post-55510067364679701202019-05-23T17:11:00.001-07:002019-05-23T21:16:00.115-07:00Beauty and the Horde of Ruiners<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Does Belle have Stockholm Syndrome?<br /><br />No.<br /><br />Thank you for watching. Like, share, and subscribe to my channel. Thank you of course to all my lovely patrons, I couldn’t do this without y- … oh. You want me to actually, like, talk about the thing.<br /><br />—Lindsay Ellis,</i> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syYCO0QVkZo&t=137s">Is ‘Beauty and the Beast’ About Stockholm Syndrome?</a></blockquote>
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So listen. I am here for weird, creepy readings of films. The <i>Brazil</i> reading of <i>Sleeping Beauty</i>, for example: it makes more sense to think that after Prince Philip’s capture by Maleficent, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLqAFIMgpIU">the rest of the film is an illusion crafted by her to keep him quiescent</a>. After all, she knew about Flora, Fauna, and Merriweather (fairies so incompetent they can’t bake a single cake in secret), and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsKC5Y4M1GM">Maleficent is </a><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsKC5Y4M1GM"><i>the mistress of all evil</i></a>—how plausible is it that she would leave the one person with the ability to break her revenge spell, <i>unguarded</i> no less <span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>[1]</b></span>, in a dungeon that her principal rivals can enter and leave at will? It makes much more sense to suppose that the vision of Aurora in the castle is only the beginning, and that the rest, fairies, dragon, and triumph, is still part of the vision. Prince Philip never gets out.</div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Or, <i>this</i> woman lost. Which is plausible. Sure. Sarcastic? Why would you ever think I'm being sar<i>cast</i>ic?</span></div>
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Or the interpretation of <i>101 Dalmatians</i> that it’s secretly a coded anti-nuclear satire, in which the dogs are the ordinary people who will be both metaphorically and literally skinned by the H-bombs crafted by the wealthy and insane elite, and—wait, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Starlight_Barking">this was the actual premise of a bizarre sequel to the novel</a>? Really? Huh.</div>
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Or the incredibly uncomfortable reading of <i>I, Robot</i>, which, well, was just not a very good movie in the first place; but it becomes rather nauseatingly lucid if you read it as a race allegory, with the humans as white people and the robots as their black slaves. Detective Spooner is an abolitionist, not although but <i>because</i> he’s a racist: basically he doesn’t trust the robots to be slaves, which is an unkind but not wholly false interpretation of the original Republican Party (look up <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon#Statehood" target="_blank">how Oregon handled the slavery controversy</a>); meanwhile Sonny, the good robot, is a race traitor, raised to the level of human free will by a kindly, white-man’s-burden-minded scientist. Through the race lens it is a <i>super</i> fucked up movie, though to be fair I doubt this was intentional on the part of the filmmakers.</div>
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But there is a steaming cold take that I am not here for: partly because it ruins the single best Disney film ever made, yes I will fight you, but chiefly because it isn’t actually justified by the story. And that is the obnoxious ‘<i>Beauty and the Beast</i> is about Stockholm Syndrome and/or falls into the toxic I-can-fix-him trope’ take. <span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>[2]</b></span> These takes typically rely on the fact that the Beast is savage at first, but later Belle falls in love with him. Which, yes, that’s the plot of the movie. What it <i>isn’t</i> is an adequate analysis of Stockholm Syndrome or the I-can-fix-him trope.</div>
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Now, there is dispute in the psychiatric and law enforcement professions about whether Stockholm Syndrome is even real; it has not been thoroughly researched and does not appear in the DSM-V. So rather than beg that question, and since the trope of <i><a href="https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/mental-domestic-abuse-signs#1">abuse victim</a> who is <a href="https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/mental-domestic-abuse-signs#3">loyal to their abuser</a> due to <a href="https://www.thehotline.org/">affection-based denial</a></i> does <a href="https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/mental-domestic-abuse-signs#3-7">have a basis in reality</a>, independently of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome">the events the putative disorder is named for</a>, I’m going to refer to this trope as <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_TTo0zCUsg"><i>Frollery</i></a>. Frollery, thus defined, would include all varieties of loving and trusting an abuser or believing that one can ‘fix’ an abusive partner with enough longsuffering sweetness and obedience. The question, thus re-termed, is this: is Belle a victim of Frollery?</div>
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The answer is still no: Belle maintains her freedom, her own judgment, and (most importantly) complete clarity of mind throughout.</div>
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Let’s start with Belle’s captivity in the Beast’s castle. She agrees to this under some duress—well, <i>she suggests</i> it under duress; the Beast either isn’t mean enough (not likely, he’s still in jerk mode at this point of the story) or isn’t cunning enough (more plausible) to suggest this; but it is still under duress, insofar as it’s to save her father from imprisonment and possible death. <span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>[3]</b></span> So I’m prepared to agree that she’s being held against her will. Captivity, check.</div>
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… Except that it’s quickly made clear that she has <i>no</i> intention of respecting the promise she made if the Beast gets intolerable, as he does over the enchanted rose. He acts violently, maybe not toward her <i>per se</i> but in a way that could certainly have injured her; she leaves immediately, and to all appearances for good. Whatever implicit threat there may have been in living with the Beast, there is evidently no threat involved in leaving the Beast, implicit or explicit.</div>
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And even after he saves her from wolves, there is a clear moment of hesitation in Belle’s face over whether to take him back to the castle and patch him up, or to just leave. She <i>chooses</i> to take him back out of compassion—which is demonstrated even further by her repeated, point-blank refusal to accept his blame-shifting or excuses in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kH_vcb2fQ2c">the scene where she tends his wounds</a>. She gives absolutely no weight to anything he says, and isn’t even intimidated by his roars of anger, insisting that no, both this situation and this narrative are going to go down her way. This is not only uncharacteristic, it’s the <i>exact opposite</i> of how a victim of Frollery behaves. Placating and agreeing with an abuser are the traits of Frollery, not telling him in no uncertain terms that this mess is entirely his fault.</div>
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Moreover (though this is a less important note), it’s worth pointing out—as Lindsay Ellis does in the excellent video that I’m more or less ripping off—that the animation of the Beast and the backing score after his rose-rage episode, showing a sudden devastating realization that he’s made a horrible mistake, reveals a genuine example of something that abusers like to pretend to have: genuine regret. An abuser <i>exhibits</i> their regret to the victim as a manipulation tactic. The Beast, though he has this beat of regret, never brings it up to Belle at all; it is shown exclusively to the audience: the Beast, in a moment where he can gain nothing by it, experiencing and exhibiting remorse. Taken together with his trying to <i>save face</i> with Belle in the wound-tending scene, as opposed to trying to manipulate her by saying how sorry he was that she drove him to his bad behavior, that is one of several reasons we have to credit his change of character as the film proceeds.</div>
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And speaking of that change of character, while it’s occasioned by Belle, she doesn’t prompt it. That is, she doesn’t take it upon herself to be his therapist, or threaten to leave again if the Beast doesn’t clean up his act. He feels for her, wants to be better because of her, and she responds to him <i>actually doing</i> that. At no point does she set out to fix him. He fixes himself. The literary parallel is Darcy's change of character in <i>Pride and Prejudice</i> after being called out by Elizabeth, not the dubious penitence of Christian Grey.</div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Grey is a Gaston type when you think about it; he only gets away with it because </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Jamie Dornan's </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">smouldering gaze and sharp jawline and perfectly sculptured torso, </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">which is </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">set off so perfectly by the lines of suit, and, uhh, what was I talking about?</span></div>
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The famous library scene has been criticized on the grounds that the Beast was really just informing Belle of an additional room in the house that she hadn’t known about, which is stupid on two different levels. To begin with, him giving her the library as a gift is not just telling her about a room. It’s a transfer of ownership (i.e., what a gift is, guys). That library is now hers. She could ban the Beast from it, like he banned her from the West Wing, if the mood struck her. She could demand to take the books with her if she ever decides to leave again.</div>
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Which leads us to the second point. Belle, as she has demonstrated, is prepared to leave; she’s staying because she made an agreement, but she doesn’t think that agreement outweighs her safety. There’s no indication that the Beast could leave even if he wanted to, but even supposing he could, where is he going to go? He’s not only a monster, he’s one who has a curse to break that’s intimately connected with his castle. Other than (i) the castle itself or (ii) some of its contents (like, say, a library), what the hell was the Beast <i>supposed</i> to give Belle? And the choice to give her a library, i.e. something that’s transportable at least in principle, suggests that this is <i>not</i> an attempt to bribe her to stay. He’s doing this because <i>he likes her</i> and wants to do something for her <i>that she will enjoy</i>. Remember your fairy-tale rules: something other than genuine love wouldn’t have broken the curse.</div>
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And speaking of the agreement and of fairy-tale rules, here, as so often, the fairy-tale tellers show a very sound instinct for orthodoxy and even for canon law. Westley in <i>The Princess Bride</i> is a similar exemplar, quite correctly pointing out that Buttercup’s putative marriage to Humperdinck was invalidated by both <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoSHmVkjmuA&list=PLIoNYIGXvDqokpiD0C9gGIBOA-sRqjIRj&index=17">defect of form and lack of consent</a> on her part. Belle being held in the Beast’s castle is cited by some critics of the story as a diriment impediment to their possible marriage, a diriment impediment being one that voids a marriage (as distinct from a prohibitory impediment, which simply makes it an act of disobedience to the Church but still a valid marriage).</div>
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But what the crucial Canon 1089 of the Code actually states is this: <i>No marriage can exist between a man and a woman who has been abducted or at least detained with a view of contracting marriage with her unless the woman chooses marriage of her own accord after she has been separated from the captor and established in a safe and free place</i>. Well, the captivity itself was suggested by Belle in the first place and had nothing to do with marriage, even on the Beast’s end (since it is mutual true love that he needs, not marriage); but even if we fudged those facts, Belle was separated from the Beast and established in a safe and free place when she went to rescue her father from dying of exposure. True, her village rapidly became unsafe for her—thanks to Gaston, who had been stalking her and ignoring her <i>No</i> for months at least, and who is the only character in the film who <i>does</i> imprison her against her will, in the cellar, while he leads the townsfolk off to murder the Beast. And speaking of Gaston, his increasing violence throughout the film and especially his threat to commit Maurice does arguably bar him from ever validly marrying Belle: Canon 1103 says, <i>A marriage is invalid if entered into because of force or grave fear from without, even if unintentionally inflicted </i>(an ameliorating clause, but Gaston clearly can’t plead even that)<i>, so that a person is compelled to choose marriage in order to be free from it</i>.</div>
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A <a href="https://www.cracked.com/article_19336_6-beloved-characters-that-had-undiagnosed-mental-illnesses.html">last-ditch effort I’ve seen to make </a><a href="https://www.cracked.com/article_19336_6-beloved-characters-that-had-undiagnosed-mental-illnesses.html"><i>Beauty and the Beast</i></a><a href="https://www.cracked.com/article_19336_6-beloved-characters-that-had-undiagnosed-mental-illnesses.html"> problematic</a> is the argument that Belle is self-isolating, even that she has Schizoid Personality Disorder—which is characterized by a lack of interest in relationships, detachment, apathy, and emotional coldness—on the grounds that she has no real friends in the village. This, it is argued, is why she doesn’t respond to Gaston’s advances either, and it also explains why she is more at home with a castle full of animated objects than she is in the town.</div>
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But here again, the actual facts of the film refuse to fit that narrative. For one thing, Belle does have relationships she cherishes, not only with her father Maurice but with the bookseller; she’s even shown trying to be friendly with the baker, telling him about the book she’s reading, but <i>he</i> shuts <i>her</i> down with a dismissive ‘That’s nice’ and immediate pivot to his business concerns. And the notion that Belle is emotionally self-isolating and cold is ludicrous. She’s introverted, certainly, and it doesn’t help that the villagers harp ceaselessly on her oddness, that being the only thing other than her beauty they’ve bothered to notice—of course it’s going to be hard to make friends in that environment. But she’s capable of everything from casual kindness to animals and strangers (as shown in “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAzxnHP4erQ">Bonjour!</a>”) to finding compassion for a hideous monster. Cold, she ain’t.</div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdAR-lK43YU" target="_blank">Critique is so limiting and emotionally draining</a>.</span></div>
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So yeah. If you want a bona fide example of Frollery romanticized and justified, try the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGfW3saxM6E"><i>Fifty Shades of Grey</i></a> franchise, or <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overboard_(1987_film)"><i>Overboard</i></a> (which is a fun romp and was also <i>Problematic Romance: The Movie</i> before E. L. James ever set pen to royalty check). Or hell, look to something like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interview_with_the_Vampire"><i>Interview With the Vampire</i></a> for a toxic romance acknowledged and deconstructed within the narrative itself. But get your grubby illiterate paws off <i>Beauty and the Beast</i>’s innocence, ruiners.</div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>[1]</b></span> And don’t give me any ‘But there’d be no point in guarding him because her minions are incompetent’ stuff. She’s well aware of that after their failure with Aurora, and if Maleficent can transmogrify herself into a dragon, I decline to believe that she can’t magick up a simple home security system with fairy-oriented facial recognition software.</div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>[2]</b></span> Note that I am not saying the film couldn’t be used as a manipulative <i>pretext</i> by an abuser; it absolutely could. But I don’t consider ‘An abuser could lie about it’ to be a particularly damning critique of anything.</div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>[3]</b></span> Not that the Beast was planning to kill Maurice or anything. But it was a freezing, drafty cell, and Maurice was an old man.</div>
Gabriel Blanchardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17607504369762849930noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5766538007498037282.post-57885518061177893502019-05-09T21:35:00.001-07:002019-05-10T09:10:01.997-07:00Antifascism 103: Chinks in Catholic Armor<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">
<i>I had not forgotten my promise to consider whether we should make the patient an extreme patriot or an extreme pacifist. All extremes except extreme devotion to the Enemy are to be encouraged. … Any small coterie, bound together by some interest which other men dislike or ignore, tends to develop inside itself a hothouse mutual admiration, and towards the outer world a great deal of pride and hatred which is entertained without shame because the ‘Cause’ is its sponsor and it is thought to be impersonal. Even when the little group exists originally for the Enemy’s own purposes, this remains true. … The attitude which you want to guard against is that in which temporal affairs are treated primarily as material for obedience. Once you have made the World an end, and faith a means, you have almost won your man, and it makes very little difference what kind of worldly end he is pursuing.</i></blockquote>
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<i>—C. S. Lewis, </i>The Screwtape Letters</blockquote>
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<b>CW: White ethnonationalist/neo-Nazi ideology and language.</b></div>
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This series hasn't yet addressed a different urgent question: why do Catholics keep falling for authoritarian nationalism?</div>
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And I do say <i>keep</i> falling; it's been a historical trend for a hundred years minimum. Mussolini’s Italy, Franco’s Spain, and, yes, Hitler’s Germany were all obtained with either the popular and general support of Catholics, or without effective resistance from them whether grassroots or institutional. Catholics like to cite the strong Catholic presence in the many resistance movements of Europe and the efforts of Bl Pius XII to mediate a peace; and we remember with well-earned pride Catholic heroes of both spiritual and material resistance like St Edith Stein, St Maximilian Kolbe, Hans and Sophie Scholl, Erich Klausener, Charles de Gaulle, St John Paul II, and Colonel Klaus von Stauffenberg. But that pride of resistance was earned by them, not ourselves; and we must also blush for the criminal short-sightedness of Franz von Papen, the ineffectual self-interest of Ernst von Weisäcker, and, yes, the errors and miscalculations of Bl Pius XII and of Catholic bishops throughout Europe.</div>
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There are several reasons for this vulnerability, and I expect I don't have a handle on all of them. But I believe the following causes contribute:</div>
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<b>1. Catholicism has historically been at odds with political Liberalism.</b> The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had been plagued with wars over religion; taking the Peasants’ Revolt as the first outbreak, and the final defeat of the Catholic Stuart cause in Britain as the last, we could say that wars over which version of Christianity should triumph in Europe lasted, intermittently, from 1524 through 1746: two hundred and twenty-two years. Small wonder that people would want something other than religion to occupy their minds and their passions alike. As Charles Williams caustically remarked: <i>As a virtue toleration does not yet exist, though we once thought it did. Our fathers became bored and miserable and decadent through their incessant killing, and we, the children of that killing, supposed ourselves to be convinced of charity, when, in truth, we only shuddered still at the memory of blood.</i> <span style="font-size: x-small;">[1]</span></div>
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The more tolerant forms of Liberalism took root in America, where pluralism was increasingly the ideal; but in Europe, Liberalism came to be defined principally by the French Revolution, whose Voltairean maxim—<i>Écrasez l’infâme</i>—was aimed at the Church's very existence, or at least her existence as an institution of political, social, and cultural importance. Charles Carroll in the United States, or G. K. Chesterton in Great Britain <span style="font-size: x-small;">[2]</span>, could afford to be tolerant Liberals: the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martyrs_of_Compi%C3%A8gne" target="_blank">martyrs of Compiègne</a> enjoyed no such luxury. Given the European situation of the papacy, it is no surprise that their outlook on Liberalism should have been, at warmest, suspicious and defensive.</div>
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But one of the results of this suspicion has been that many Catholics (especially traditionalists) are, at most, little interested in protecting the structures of any democratic society. The most romantic would like to thoroughly revive the Mediæval order, complete with not only a territorially sovereign Pope but a Holy Roman Emperor in subservience to His Holiness; others, less idealistic but equally convinced that the state should take responsibility for the moral formation of the populace, are content to advocate for a state that is explicitly and officially Catholic, and therefore prepared to abrogate freedoms of the exercise of religion, of speech and the press, and of assembly—not <i>abolishing</i> such things, exactly, but restricting them to religious, political, and ethnic minorities that already exist (and seeing to it that those minorities don’t get any bigger). This would, to their minds, not only effect a far more just and pious society; it would also effect many conversions—and the fact that many of them would be rather insincere conversions would hardly matter, because the sacraments work of their own power rather than through man’s belief in them <span style="font-size: x-small;">[3]</span>, and people have a very great tendency to become what they are pretending to be besides, so that a Catholic state would in fact be an instrument for saving souls. Traditional-minded Catholics are by no means all of this mindset, but it does exist.</div>
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And white nationalism panders to it. Nationalists don’t care about Catholicism, traddie or otherwise, any more than anti-Liberal Catholics care about democracy <span style="font-size: x-small;">[4]</span>, but nationalism offers these Catholics a lot: a way to be visibly patriotic (and thus mainstream rather than ghettoized) without subscribing to Liberal ideas about what the state is; a role in a movement that professes traditional, family-centered values (the race needs children and values mothers); a position as members of one of the seminal institutions of Western culture; even, maybe, a chance to convert an authoritarian nationalist government, and thus realize their dream of an officially Catholic state.</div>
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<b>2. Catholicism and nationalism both recognize the value of culture and heritage.</b> They qualify this recognition, in differing ways: Catholicism does so by subordinating every culture (at least in theory) to divine revelation, while white nationalism does so by first equating culture with race, and then ranking races from best to worst. But they share something that, to be blunt, neither Liberalism nor its godchild the modern Left are very good at recognizing: the beauty and value of the past. A great proportion of Western past, including a lot of our most magnificent and recognized art, is Catholic, which makes Catholic heritage (if not actual Catholic faith) a nice talking point for ethnonationalists who want to coöpt it. Moreover, legitimately Catholic emphases upon tradition and continuity in institutional authority, and upon the legitimate role of culture in how religion is expressed, along with the teaching that states do have a right to preserve their own existence and heritage, are easily manipulated by white nationalist conspiracy theories—especially since Catholics have a long history of troubled relationship with the Jews, often taking the form of blatant anti-Semitism.</div>
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It is certainly true that the past must be considered critically, and that is arguably the special talent of the Left. But nobody <i>likes</i> being criticized, even when their critics are not smugly judgmental about it; and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubc2CRwBGTk" target="_blank">smug judgment is arguably the besetting sin of the Left</a>, as it is frequently the besetting sin of anybody who has good reason to be confident in their convictions. And we are so awash in patriotic myth—accurate and fabricated, innocent and corrupt, subtle and overt—that there are things to critique about America at practically every turn. Which then makes it easy for the contemporary fascist to paint <i>all</i> criticisms of America, or of the West, or of those aspects of Catholicism that are susceptible to an ethnonationalist slant, as nothing more than biased, whiny, ungrateful attacks on our whole culture.</div>
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<b>3. In the last fifty years, the Republican Party has made a strong and largely successful effort to siphon the Catholic vote away from the Democratic Party.</b> This would be insignificant in itself; except that the GOP, as the conservative voice in American politics, was inevitably going to be where racists threw their caps when civil rights reforms went through in the 50s and 60s. <span style="font-size: x-small;">[5]</span> The siphoning happened, of course, due to <i>Roe vs Wade</i> and the subsequent addition of the abortion rights plank to the Democratic platform—since, before then, while abortion had been a topic of political discourse, it hadn’t been a specially <i>partisan</i> issue (much as, say, neither Democrats nor Republicans in our day have taken up a party-wide stance on the independence of Puerto Rico).</div>
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The GOP’s decision to paint itself as the pro-life party was a stroke of cynical brilliance: brilliance, because that alone has kept a large proportion of Catholics loyal to them at any cost due to the Church’s insistence that every human being has the right to life, and despite the fact that Catholics were overwhelmingly Democrats before 1973; and cynical, because, while sincere pro-life politicians really have no option but to coöperate with the Republican cause due to the Democrats’ implacable pro-choice stance, pro-choice Republicans are a commonplace, and they can <i>still</i> win Catholic votes because the GOP is always dangling the carrot of maybe-they’ll-go-pro-life-one-day (or at least, the <a href="https://what-if.xkcd.com/49/" target="_blank">parsnip</a> of they-won’t-introduce-bills-expanding-abortion-rights) in front of them. Cynical, too, because Republicans are reliably opposed to other aspects of a holistically pro-life approach to issues like the death penalty, and because they widely resist laws supporting access to the things that make life <i>possible</i>, like a living wage and universal health care—<a href="http://w2.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_15051891_rerum-novarum.html" target="_blank">causes</a> <a href="http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_01051991_centesimus-annus.html" target="_blank">which</a> the Catholic Church <a href="http://w2.vatican.va/content/pius-xi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_19310515_quadragesimo-anno.html" target="_blank">has also</a> <a href="http://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20051225_deus-caritas-est.html" target="_blank">supported</a> in <a href="http://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20090629_caritas-in-veritate.html" target="_blank">no uncertain terms</a>.</div>
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But all this just sets the stage. The massive shift of Catholics from a staunchly Democratic bloc to one split about evenly with Republicans, means that Catholics of all stripes and especially conservative Catholics have been rubbing shoulders with the racist and ethnonationalist elements that also cling to that party (<i>GOP, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of political clout</i>). Which in turn means that the ethnonationalists have far more opportunity to introduce the Catholics to points 1 and 2 above, as well as point 4 here.</div>
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<b>4. The sidelining of traditionalist Catholics within the Church.</b> I am not here saying whether sidelining traddies is good or bad. But I do think it can be said that it’s a fact. Liturgical and pastoral reforms, such as the decisions of the Second Vatican Council largely consisted in, always have their sincere opponents, and the hierarchy is generally ill-at-ease even with the most moderate and conciliatory of them. The self-styled conservatives of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quartodecimanism" target="_blank">Quartodeciman</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montanism" target="_blank">Montanist</a>, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donatism" target="_blank">Donatist</a> movements all threatened (or were held to threaten) the unity of the Church from the earliest centuries of her existence, and liturgical conflicts contributed not only to the Great Schism of 1054, but to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Believers" target="_blank">several</a> later <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Calendarists" target="_blank">fissures</a> within Orthodoxy, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexis_Toth#Conflict_with_Bishop_John_Ireland" target="_blank">at least one major rift</a> that lead thousands of Eastern Catholics to leave full communion with Rome for the Russian Orthodox Church. It is, therefore, understandable that Catholic bishops of the last fifty years should have been wary of all devotees of the <i>Usus Antiquior</i>, however firm their protestations of Catholic fidelity.</div>
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And the brute fact is, not all of them <i>have</i> protested Catholic fidelity with much firmness. Schismatics like the Society of St Pius X, or <a href="https://www.ncregister.com/blog/jimmy-akin/on-charging-a-pope-with-heresy" target="_blank">the authors of the damagingly misinformed and insolent letter being shopped around by LifeSite accusing His Holiness of being a heretic</a>, are only the tip of the iceberg. There are fanatical Latin Massers who deny that the <i>Novus Ordo</i> is a valid Mass, sedevacantists <span style="font-size: x-small;">[6]</span> who claim that every Pope since Bl Pius XII has been an impostor, and a veritable conclave of traddies who seem determined to <a href="https://www.simchafisher.com/2019/04/30/br-andre-marie-regrets-tone-in-speech-that-called-jews-seed-of-the-devil/?fbclid=IwAR1z0PeMPgENdVLWjnZ1lbM5rfukSk2OhmXnvq8Un5l7Xy5vgiaFBXXstZ4" target="_blank">not only excuse but canonize Catholic anti-Semitism</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feeneyism" target="_blank">the Feeneyite heresy</a>. Keep that sort of company and a lot of people are going to look at you funny.</div>
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If I may make an aside. As an <a href="https://ordinariate.net/" target="_blank">Ordinariate</a> member, I don’t know whether I’m quite eligible to be considered a traddie myself. But for what it’s worth, I certainly prefer the austere beauty of the Tridentine liturgy, even when celebrated poorly, to the typical celebration of the <i>Novus Ordo</i> with sloppy ritual, cartoonish music, and a homily that deserves to be slept through. The point is, I say these things about the traddie element of the Church because I think they need saying, not because I have any pleasure in saying them; and it bothers me that some people enjoy dunking on traddies, who, to do them/us justice, have been much exasperated.</div>
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Anyway, the point here is, many traditionalist Catholics feel shouldered aside by the Church as a whole and especially by the hierarchy. And the feeling of being at once deserted and betrayed is ideal soil for white supremacists to sow their tares. <i>The people who are supposed to be helping you preserve this precious and beautiful thing have let you down. You’re the only ones who see it, the only ones who recognize the crisis. And </i>we’re<i> the ones who are on your side, who value what you care about. They treat you like the enemy because they don’t care what happens to this precious heritage; no, worse, they’re in cahoots with people who want to destroy it. </i>We’re<i> the ones you can trust.</i> It’s the same temptation that practically always lures zealous Catholics, when they perceive the brokenness and corruption of the Church they have so long been confessing to be <i>one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic</i>: the temptation to re-apply the terms of the Creed, instead of believing it. Clarity is always easier to live with than mystery; and <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=ii+thessalonians+2&version=AKJV" target="_blank">iniquity is a perennial mystery</a>.</div>
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Like I said, this is not an exhaustive list. I’m sure there are other important factors at work here. But I dare say this is quite enough to be going on with.</div>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>[1]</b></span> <i style="font-size: small;">The Descent of the Dove</i><span style="font-size: x-small;">, p. 182.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>[2]</b></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"> At any rate as of 1829, when Catholics obtained political emancipation in Britain. And though the Tudors (obviously excepting Mary) martyred a great many Catholics, the Stuarts generally preferred to live and let live outside of directly political affairs, as did the Hanovers, so that Catholics were in less danger of losing much by the hands of Liberalism than they otherwise might have done. Moreover, since the established church in England was, well, the Church of England, it was as much in the interest of Catholics as of any other religious minority to support Liberal policies, even if only cynically.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>[3]</b></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"> This is actually an extremely ill-formed grasp of how sacraments work, but we can’t stop for a full catechesis in mysteriology right this second. For now, we must be content with this: in six of the sacraments (all but the Eucharist), the disposition of the recipient is one of the determining factors in whether it works: e.g., a person who goes to confession merely to look like a practicing member of the faith, but has no serious belief in Catholic moral or sacramental teaching, may have the words of absolution pronounced over him, but nothing objectively happens.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>[4]</b></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"> That is, nationalists as such. There are certainly individual nationalists who care very deeply about Catholicism.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>[5]</b></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"> I.e., I am not arguing, and don’t believe, that there’s any intrinsic connection between conservatism (whether as a philosophy or as a habit) and racism, but, in a society with a racist history like ours, people who want to push racist ideology and policy will certain use conservatism to do so. In a society with little or no racist history, people who wanted to push racist ideology and policy would most likely claim to be very modern and fashionable—whatever gets the job done, the job being mainstreaming racism.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>[6]</b></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"> From the Latin <i>sedes vacans</i> or ‘empty seat,’ referring to the Holy See. (Incidentally, <i>sedes</i> is also where English gets the ecclesiastical term <i>see</i> for an episcopal seat.)</span></div>
Gabriel Blanchardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17607504369762849930noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5766538007498037282.post-80142122596647282902019-04-29T13:41:00.000-07:002019-04-29T13:41:41.035-07:00Five Quick Takes<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
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<span style="color: white;">I have an announcement: Mudblood Catholic is moving! I was recently picked up by a blogging platform, and I’ll be relocating accordingly. I’m not sure yet of the exact date, but I believe it should be some time next month. I’ll keep you informed about the details!</span></div>
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<span style="color: white;">Speaking of movement, I’ve been drifting away from anarchism lately. Less for practical reasons—I always knew anarchism was impractical (even if it isn’t nearly as impractical as people suppose)—than because it’s hard to maintain simultaneously that men should govern themselves, and also that the state, i.e. the structure which most men at most times and in most places have recognized as a legitimate governing power, is intrinsically illegitimate. How can their political choices be genuine, with the sole exception of that one? The system may be salvageable: I don’t rule out a possible return to my anarchist convictions. But even in anarchism, I accepted that there would have to be some sort of compromise with the state, since it clearly isn’t going anywhere right this second.</span></div>
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<span style="color: white;">So yeah, after my first time voting for a President eleven years ago, I’m probably gonna vote for the second time in 2020. Feels a little odd.</span></div>
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<span style="color: white;">I’ve been feeling the bite of singleness a lot more in 2019 than in previous years. Singleness, not loneliness; I’ve often felt that, and if anything it’s troubled me somewhat less this year than before. But that’s only one of the trials of being single. The workload of just being alive is hard to handle by yourself. A couple, or a commune, can divide among themselves the responsibilities of earning a living, cleaning, cooking, budgeting, making social arrangements, and the like. When you’re single, either you do those things for yourself or they do not get done.</span></div>
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<span style="color: white;">This is one of the principal things that many straight Christians who take a traditional view of sexual ethics forget, or neglect. I rather suspect it’s also one of the things that tends to move many Christians to progressivist views on sexuality; a subconscious conviction that God wouldn’t impose a burden like that on people (and indeed, it is not he but our society’s determination to identify intimacy with sexuality that imposed this burden).</span></div>
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<span style="color: white;">I am open to dating: I don’t consider a relationship as such in the least contrary to my beliefs, because finding an <i>intimate</i> relationship through dating doesn’t have to be <i>sexual</i> (though I certainly make no claim to be a good boy whether dating or not). But, I’m not dating anyone now. And I’m a little stumped; as so often.</span></div>
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<span style="color: white;">My antifa posts are really taking the energy out of me, so don’t expect them to get any more regular. There’s only so much white supremacism I can stand to wade through in a given month.</span></div>
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<span style="color: white;">I’ve been reflecting a little of late on social media. It’s commonly accepted that it’s an echo chamber, that it gives anger and hatred a place to flourish, that it aids the spread of misinformation, that people are crueller online than they’d ever be in real life, and so forth. All of that’s true, and I don’t know that I have a good solution to any of it.</span></div>
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<span style="color: white;">All the same, and while I do have to be thoughtful and restrain my desire to reply a lot of the time, when I think about Facebook or Twitter, I have to say: they’re delightful! Not 100% of the time, but by and large. I know so many sweet, smart, funny, caring, devout people that I’d never have heard of except thanks to Twitter. The number of brilliant jokes and adorable animals in my Facebook feed far outweighs the impact of most of the online nastiness I come across, and it’s nearly all stuff I’d never have come across except thanks to social media. We spend a lot of time lamenting the divisiveness and ragesturbation of American media, and well we should; but one of the ways we can counteract that darkness is by seeing the good that’s there and enjoying it.</span></div>
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<span style="color: white;">And if that makes me basic, consider: perhaps <a href="https://dappledthings.org/4266/will-beauty-save-the-world/" target="_blank">basic will save the world</a>. It’d fit right in with meek and poor in spirit.</span></div>
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Gabriel Blanchardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17607504369762849930noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5766538007498037282.post-56048333144801415982019-04-24T22:54:00.000-07:002019-04-24T23:31:42.808-07:00Antifascism 102: A Primer on White Nationist Ideologies<blockquote class="tr_bq">
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<i>Not every German who bought a copy of </i>Mein Kampf<i> necessarily read it. I have heard many a Nazi stalwart complain that it was hard going and not a few admit—in private—that they were never able to get to the end of its 782 turgid pages. But it might be argued that had more non-Nazi Germans read it before 1933 and had the foreign statesmen of the world perused it carefully while there was still time, both Germany and the world might have been saved from catastrophe. For whatever other accusations can be made against Adolf Hitler, no one can accuse him of not putting down in writing exactly the kind of Germany he intended to make if he ever came to power and the kind of world he meant to create by armed German conquest.</i></div>
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<i style="font-style: italic;">—William Shirer</i><i>, </i>The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich</div>
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<b>CW: White ethnonationalist/neo-Nazi ideology and language.</b></div>
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Why am I pestering you <a href="http://mudbloodcatholic.blogspot.com/2019/03/antifascism-101-beginners-guide-to-dog.html" target="_blank">to understand dog-whistles</a>, though? Is white nationalism really a threat to human lives and American society? Isn’t it mostly just a bunch of manchildren raised on Call of Duty and high-fructose corn syrup, manchildren who’ve now moved on to acting out <i>Fight Club</i> fantasies, getting tattoos to be edgy, and trolling libtards (who, let’s be honest, kinda deserve a little trolling) with Pepe the Frog memes?</div>
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Well … no. That is, yes, there are plenty of young men in white nationalist movements who are exactly like that; and while damagingly misguided, at heart they may be as comparatively harmless as the heteroflexible stoner dude who has tortured internal monologues about whether his veganism culturally appropriates Japanese Buddhism <span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>[1]</b></span> and considers <i>Donnie Darko</i> the most tragically neglected masterpiece of the whole of cinema. The salient difference between the latter and his white nationalist counterpart is, stoner dude is unlikely to hurt anybody.</div>
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But I digress. Yes, there are relatively innocent young men who’ve been taken in by this stuff, and whose primary problems are immaturity and a lack of good information. Whether they form a majority of white nationalists, I don’t know, and really it doesn’t matter. The destruction wrought by this ideology is going to be governed by the movement’s leaders and the ideology they enact—not by the individual guilt or innocence of its foot soldiers. And those leaders, and that ideology, are horrifying.</div>
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A key element of this ideology is the ideal of ‘ethnic replacement,’ or (in less sanitized language) ‘white genocide.’ This rests on the idea that white people of European descent do or should constitute a single ethnic group <span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>[1]</b></span> or united racial or cultural identity <span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>[1]</b></span>, and that immigration from majority non-white regions like South America to majority white regions like the US or Western Europe poses a threat to that ethnic group. This is less out of a fear of immediate violence from brown people, though there’s fearmongering on that front as well, than out of the additional premise that non-white people will outbreed whites and dilute white ethnicity through intermarriage, and in the long run will oppress, exclude, or even expel white people and white culture—not only from political and social ascendancy in these ‘indigenously’ white homelands, but even from living there. In the words of Alex Kurtagić, who wrote a dishonest and disgusting essay titled <i>The Great Erasure</i> for the white supremacist National Policy Institute (headed by the infamous Richard Spencer):</div>
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Much of the debate on the decline of Whites in their traditional homelands centers on “immigration,” and specifically the continuing arrival in the West of large numbers of colored “immigrants” from the poorest regions of the world. Some critics of “immigration” feel the term is euphemistic and prefer to label the phenomenon “invasion.” Guillaume Faye [a French alt-right journalist] calls it “colonization.” … The term is not entirely inadequate, for modern “immigration” in the West involves exogenous strangers colonizing Western polities. … </blockquote>
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Critics of “immigration” in the West have noticed its unprecedented scale, its permanent character, and the non-assimilation/non-assimilability of Third World “immigrants.” Among the characteristics of settler colonialism is that settlers come to stay and do not appeal to the established indigenous sovereignty, but rather deny it and seek to remove it in order to replace it with a reproduction of their own society. … The process of doing so is non-violent, following a legal sequence comprising: appeal to the indigenous authority (for recognition and admission as permanent minorities, and eventually citizens; co-option of indigenous structures (lobbying for concessions, multiculturalism); subversion from without (lobbying for anti-racist legislation); and indigenization (becoming legislators, subversion from within). At the same time, the process coexists with violence, whereby the indigenous are physically attacked or subject to predations (typically muggings, robberies, racially motivated beatings, and rape), or else morally attacked (typically accusations of prejudice and “racism,” and/or “racism” hoaxes).</blockquote>
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Yeah, nothing says “minority accusations of racism are just a hoax” like “immigrants are plotting to take over our country, and having someone who’s not a white people hold public office is part of their scheme.” Note that South Americans descended from Spanish and Portuguese colonizers for some reason don’t qualify as “White,” despite being about as European as Americans and Canadians are both culturally and historically. Note, too, that “White people” are not only treated as though they constituted a more or less unified ethnicity, which isn’t true at all, but explicitly as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pre-Columbian_cultures" target="_blank">the <i>indigenous inhabitants</i> of the United States</a>. I won’t inflict any more of Kurtagić’s repulsive drivel on you; and I’m also not linking to NPI’s website, because I am <i>not</i> giving neo-Nazis web traffic, but I have screenshots from the essay if anyone wants my receipts (or if they take they essay down at some later point for PR reasons).</div>
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This theory—that white (sorry, “White”) people not only form a coherent ethno-cultural group <span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>[1]</b></span> which is being colonized by brown people who are going to do to us what we did to the <i>indigenous</i> inhabitants of North America—comes with the political program of establishing a ‘white homeland,’ an ethnostate to protect whites from being overrun or diluted by other ethnicities. <span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>[2]</b></span> This conspiracy against whites is typically attributed to Marxists, Jews, and Marxist Jews, though the anti-Semitism is optional in some versions of white nationalism, which … yay? With or without the anti-Marxist and anti-Semitic tie-ins, though, the political program boils down to one fairly simple goal, approached through incremental and indirect means: ethnic cleansing.</div>
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Because really, you can’t have an ‘ethnostate’ except by conducting a purge first. Even in the ancient world, whose means of communication and transport were so much slower and more limited than our own: every society dealt with ethnic and cultural minorities in one way or another, because ethnic and cultural minorities exist <i>in every society</i> and the idea that there ever was a polity where they didn’t is utter fantasy. Classical Athens had its metics, Rome was a famous melting pot, the Mar Thoma Christians of India were there centuries before the Jesuits, the Holy Family were refugees in Egypt, and the Torah itself makes extensive provision for migrants and resident aliens, all derived from a single principle:</div>
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For the L<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>ORD</b></span> your God is God of gods, and Lord of lords, a great God, a mighty, and a terrible, which regardeth not persons, nor taketh reward: he doth execute the judgment of the fatherless and widow, and loveth the stranger, in giving him food and raiment. Love ye therefore the stranger: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt. —Deuteronomy 10.17-19</blockquote>
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Nor (not to say that any migrant needs to prove their ‘usefulness’ to enjoy human dignity and rights) did the Israelites start out as very profitable strangers, when they first immigrated to Egypt. They were brought in at the behest of a gifted relative, who was himself originally taken to Egypt by human traffickers, and who had since ascended to a prestigious public office. </div>
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The only way to achieve the goal of a white ethnostate is through ethnic cleansing; something white nationalists like Spencer are vague about in public statements, except to say that they advocate a ‘peaceful’ version of it. And I’m prepared to acknowledge that it may be <i>less</i> horrifically evil to forcibly uproot and expel a person from their home for the crime of being brown, than it is to judicially enslave or murder them for the crime of being brown. But I am not prepared to be impressed by the moral difference. I oppose the mere ‘peaceful’ ethnic cleansing advocate with the same conviction as I oppose the white nationalist terrorist and butcher. And these ideologies, these movements, are not harmless juvenility, however harmlessly juvenile many of the people who’ve been taken in by them may be. They are a nightmare in the making.</div>
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<span style="color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "im fell english" , serif; font-size: 7.2pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;">[1]</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "im fell english" , serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hint: no.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "im fell english" , serif; font-size: 7.2pt; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;">[2]</span><span style="font-family: "im fell english" , serif; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">‘Fun’ fact: the state of Oregon was admitted to the Union as a free state rather than a slave state … and also had a ‘whites only’ clause in its original constitution forbidding black people to live there and expelling all blacks who already did, so that the whole slavery-vs-abolition thing could be consistently ignored. Opposition to slavery and opposition to racism were two different things in the nineteenth century, and still are—something that makes a little more sense out of the historical trajectory of the Republican Party, and something that, if all goes well for fascism (God spare us!), we may be confronted with on a more immediate level once again in the future.</span></div>
Gabriel Blanchardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17607504369762849930noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5766538007498037282.post-28925751922244530272019-04-13T16:47:00.000-07:002019-04-13T21:19:50.447-07:00Meditations for Holy Week 2019<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
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<span style="color: white;">At my first communion I went up to the communion rail at the <i>Sanctus</i> bell instead of the <i>Domine, non sum dignus</i>, and had to kneel there all alone through the consecration, through the <i>Pater Noster</i>, through the <i>Agnus Dei</i>—and I had thought I knew the Mass so well!</span></div>
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<span style="color: white;">I loved the Church for Christ made visible. Not for itself, because it was so often a scandal to me. Romano Guardini said the Church is the Cross on which Christ was crucified; one could not separate Christ from his Cross, and one must live in a state of permanent dissatisfaction with the Church.</span></div>
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<span style="color: white;">—Venerable Dorothy Day, <i>The Long Loneliness</i></span></div>
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<span style="color: white;">What then of all the great tradition, the freeing of slaves at the Exodus, the determination of the prophets, the long effort against the monstrous impiety of Cain? The answer is obvious; all that is assumed as a mere preliminary. The rich, while they remain rich, are practically incapable of salvation, at which all the Apostles were exceedingly astonished. But if riches are not supposed to be confined to money, the astonishment becomes more general. There are many who feel that while God might damn Rothschild he could hardly damn Rembrandt. Are the riches of Catullus and Carnegie so unequal, though so different? Sooner or later, nearly everyone is surprised at some kind of rich man being damned. The Divine Thing, for once, was tender to us; he restored a faint hope: ‘with God all things are possible.’ But the preliminary step is always assumed: ‘sell all that thou hast and give to the poor’—and then we will talk. Then we will talk of that other thing without which even giving to the poor is useless, the thing for which at another time the precious ointment was reserved from the poor, the thing that is necessary to correct and qualify even good deeds. Even love is not enough unless it is love of a particular kind. Long afterwards St Paul caught up the dreadful cry: ‘though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.’ It is not surprising that Messias saw the possibility of an infinitely greater knowledge of evil existing through him than had been before: ‘blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended at me.’</span></div>
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<span style="color: white;">—Charles Williams, <i>He Came Down From Heaven</i></span></div>
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<span style="color: white;">The priest said, ‘Those laws were made for man. The Church doesn’t expect … if you can’t fast, you must eat, that’s all.’ The old woman prattled on and on, while the penitents stirred restlessly in the next stall and the horse whinnied, prattled of days of abstinence broken, of evening prayers curtailed. Suddenly, without warning, with an odd sense of homesickness, he thought of the hostages in the prison yard, waiting at the water-tap, not looking at him—the suffering and the endurance which went on everywhere the other side of the mountains. He interrupted the woman savagely, ‘Why don’t you confess properly to me? I’m not interested in your fish supply or in how sleepy you are at night … remember your real sins.’</span></div>
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<span style="color: white;">‘But I’m a good woman, father,’ she squeaked at him with astonishment.</span></div>
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<span style="color: white;">‘Then what are you doing here, keeping away the bad people?’ He said, ‘Have you any love for anyone but yourself?’</span></div>
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<span style="color: white;">‘I love God, father,’ she said haughtily. He took a quick look at her in the light of the candle burning on the floor—the hard old raisin eyes under the black shawl—another of the pious—like himself.</span></div>
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<span style="color: white;">‘How do you know? Loving God isn’t any different from loving a man—or a child. It’s wanting to be with Him, to be near Him.’ He made a hopeless gesture with his hands. ‘It’s wanting to protect Him from yourself.’</span></div>
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<span style="color: white;">—Graham Greene, <i>The Power and the Glory</i></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white; font-size: x-small;">(Matthew 26.6-16, Luke 22.1-6)</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Once, if I remember well, my life was a feast where all hearts opened and all wines flowed.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">One evening I seated Beauty on my knees. And I found her bitter. And I cursed her.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">I fled. O Witches, O Misery, O Hate, to you has my treasure been entrusted!</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">I contrived to purge my mind of all human hope. On all joy, to strangle it, I pounced with the stealth of a wild beast.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">—Arthur Rimbaud, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A Season in Hell</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (trans. Louise Varèse)</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 18pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;"> ✠ ✠ ✠</span></span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-right: -18pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Maundy Thursday</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white; font-size: x-small;">(Luke 22.7-34, John 13.1-35)</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: white;">What is belief really? It is a human way of taking up a stand in the totality of reality, a way that cannot be reduced to knowledge and is incommensurable with knowledge; it is the bestowal of meaning without which the totality of man would remain homeless, on which man’s calculations and actions are based, and without which in the last resort he could not calculate and act, because he can only do this in the context of a meaning that bears him up. For in fact man does not live on the bread of practicability alone; he lives as <i>man</i> and, precisely in the intrinsically human part of his being, on the word, on love, on meaning. Without the word, without meaning, without love, he falls into the situation of no longer being able to live, even when earthly comfort is present in abundance.</span></div>
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<span style="color: white;">… Christian faith is more than the option in favor of a spiritual ground to the world; its central formula is not ‘I believe in something,’ but ‘I believe in you.’ It is the encounter with the man Jesus, and in this encounter it experiences the meaning of the world as a person. In Jesus’ life from the Father, in the immediacy and intensity of his converse with him in prayer, and, indeed, face to face, he is God’s witness, through whom the intangible has become tangible, the distant has drawn near. He is the presence of the eternal itself in this world. Christian faith lives on the discover that not only is there such a thing as objective meaning but that this meaning knows me and loves me.</span></div>
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<span style="color: white;">—Pope Benedict XVI, <i>Introduction to Christianity</i></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 18pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;"> ✠ ✠ ✠</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Good Friday</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">(Mark 14.32-15.41, John 18.1-19.37)</span></span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-right: -18pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Sonne of God heare us, and since thou</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">By taking our blood, owest it us againe,</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Gaine to thy self, or us allow;</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">And let not both us and thy selfe be slaine;</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">O Lambe of God, which took’st our sinne</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Which could not stick to thee,</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">O let it not return to us againe,</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">But Patient and Physition being free,</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">As sinne is nothing, let it no where be.</span></span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-right: -18pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">—John Donne, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Litanie</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 18pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;"> ✠ ✠ ✠</span></span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-right: -18pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Holy Saturday</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">(Matthew 27.57-66)</span></span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-right: -18pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">The end of love is that the heart is still</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">As the rose no wind distresses, still as light</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">On the unmoved grass, or as the hummingbird</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Poised the pure moment by an act of will.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Death may be like this, but here before night</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Sends us to sleep murmuring a drowsy word</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Of prayer, affection, or the idle flight</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Of fancy, let us praise the rose and light.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">—Dunstan Thompson, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Moment of the Rose</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 18pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;"> ✠ ✠ ✠</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Easter Sunday</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white; font-size: x-small;">(Luke 24.1-43, John 20.1-23)</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: white;">Here we had a man of Divine character walking and talking among us—and what did we find to do with him? The common people, indeed, ‘heard Him gladly,’ but our leading authorities in Church and State considered that He talked too much and uttered too many disconcerting truths. So we bribed one of His friends to hand Him over quietly to the police, and we tried Him on a rather vague charge of creating a disturbance, and had Him publicly flogged and hanged on the common gallows, ‘thanking God we were rid of a knave.’ All this was not very creditable to us, even if He was (as many people thought and think) only a harmless crazy preacher. But if the Church is right about Him, it was more discreditable still; for the man we hanged was God Almighty.</span></div>
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<span style="color: white;">So that is the outline of the official story—the tale of the time when God was the underdog and got beaten, when He submitted to the conditions He had laid down and became a man like the men He had made, and the men He had made broke Him and killed Him. This is the dogma we find so dull—this terrifying drama of God is the victim and the hero.</span></div>
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<span style="color: white;">The people who hanged Christ never, to do them justice, accused Him of being a bore; on the contrary, they thought Him too dynamic to be safe. He insulted respectable clergymen by calling them hypocrites; He went to parties in disreputable company and was looked upon as ‘a gluttonous man and a wine-bibber’; He cured diseases by any means that came handy, with a shocking casualness in the matter of other people’s pigs and property; when confronted with neat dialectical traps, He displayed a paradoxical humor that affronted serious-minded people, and He retorted by asking disagreeably searching questions that could not be answered by rule of thumb. He was emphatically not a dull man in His human lifetime, and if He was God, there can be nothing dull about God either.</span></div>
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<span style="color: white;"><i>‘And the third day He rose again’</i>: what are we to make of that? One thing is certain: if He was God and nothing else, His immortality means nothing to us; if He was man and no more, His death is no more important than yours or mine. But if He really was both God and man, then when the man Jesus died, God died too; and when the God Jesus rose from the dead, man rose too, because they were one and the same person. In any case, those who saw the risen Christ remained persuaded that life was worth living and death a triviality.</span></div>
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<span style="color: white;">That God should play the tyrant over man is a dismal story of unrelieved oppression; that man should play the tyrant over man is the usual dreary record of human futility; but that man should play the tyrant over God and find Him a better man than himself is an astonishing drama indeed. Any journalist, hearing it for the first time, would recognize it as News; those who did hear it for the first time actually called it News, and good news at that; though we are apt to forget that the word <i>Gospel</i> ever meant anything so sensational.</span></div>
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<span style="color: white;">—Dorothy L. Sayers, <i>The Greatest Drama Ever Staged</i></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text" , serif; font-size: 18pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">✠ ✠ ✠</span></span></div>
Gabriel Blanchardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17607504369762849930noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5766538007498037282.post-79195466021707405252019-03-30T17:37:00.001-07:002019-03-30T19:53:22.222-07:00Antifascism 101: A Beginner's Guide to Dog-Whistles<blockquote class="tr_bq">
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<i>The dominant sense of any word lies uppermost in our minds. Wherever we meet the word, our natural impulse will be to give it that sense. When this operation results in nonsense, of course, we see our mistake and try over again. But if it makes tolerable sense our tendency is to go merrily on. I call such senses dangerous senses because they lure us into misreadings. </i></div>
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<i>—C. S. Lewis, </i>Studies In Words</div>
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<b><b>Content Warning: Hate symbols and hate speech. Note that I will probably be engaging in some pretty dark humor to keep my spirits up because this stuff is fucking depressing.</b></b></div>
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What are dog-whistles, and why am I bothering you about them? Basically, dog-whistles are coded signals that will destroy our civilization, like everything else will; and I’m bothering you about them because I have no idea whether my fan base <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sx4BVGPkdzk" target="_blank">and Natalie Wynn’s</a> have a lot of overlap, or whether it’s mostly just me, Ganymede, Basil Fitzgerald, and my sister.</div>
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Dog-whistles are key terms, phrases, and symbols (ranging from icons to gestures to memes) that members of a group can use to signal to each other that they’re part of the group, without revealing it to outsiders. The name comes from the literal dog-whistle: it sounds at a pitch too high for human ears to perceive, but dogs hear it just fine. To work, dog-whistles have to have another meaning in mainstream discourse; if they don’t, they may be private signals but they are not dog-whistles, because they identify the user as part of something unusual even if the general reader may not know what specifically.</div>
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Of course, dog-whistles are not necessarily a bad thing. Fan communities use dog-whistles (among other signals) all the time, for the pleasure of discovering each other in contexts that aren’t fan-specific the way chat boards and conventions are. A lot of early Christian symbolism consisted in dog-whistles: St Clement of Alexandria counseled Christians who needed symbols for signet rings (an important way of authenticating documents) recommended symbols susceptible to Christians interpretations like doves, harps, ships, and fish, as an alternative to depictions of gods or instruments of violence, during a period when the blatant depiction of a cross would have exposed its user instantly. Christians living under persecution have adopted the same means of survival in later ages. The Buddhist-Shinto figure of Kannon in Japan was often used by Japanese Catholics in the seventeenth and eighteenth century as a coded emblem of the Virgin—especially since she was a patroness of mothers and was often depicted holding a child. Dog-whistles can be a necessary way to communicate while maintaining secrecy, and secrecy can save lives.</div>
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But in the early twenty-first century, they have been put to sinister use by white supremacists. Overtly racist ideologies have been unacceptable in mainstream American political discourse for almost two generations now, as have most forms of totalitarianism, especially fascism and Communism. <span style="font-size: x-small;">[1]</span> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njXZUH5hv0w" target="_blank">But this doesn’t mean those things have gone away</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORp3q1Oaezw" target="_blank">nor that they are restricted to blatantly racist gangs like the Aryan Nation or the Klan</a>. Every group—including fringe groups like Scientologists, flat-earthers, anarchists, and guys who still think Jamba Juice is good for you <span style="font-size: x-small;">[2]</span>—includes smart, cunning members who know perfectly well that they and their beliefs will be rejected if they’re revealed outright, and are prepared to strategize accordingly.</div>
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The ideal white supremacist dog-whistle is one that allows its user (<a href="https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2018/darkness" target="_blank">let us call him Pye D. Piper</a>) to say something perfectly innocuous, even something that any reasonable person would probably agree with, while simultaneously sending a different, coded message to fellow white supremacists so that they know the lay of the land. This has the double benefit of encouraging the white supremacist community, and also of deceiving ordinary people into supporting Mr Piper, or at least into considering him reasonable and harmless, when really he is playing a long game to advance white supremacist goals and ideology.</div>
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For people who <i>aren’t</i> white supremacists planning to fuck me over—when my crime is merely that of being a degenerate old queen with left-wing internationalist ideas, ‘whose religion involves allegiance to a foreign power,’ <span style="font-size: x-small;">[3]</span> and who opposes fascism, racism, classism, capitalism, the military-industrial complex, and Brett Ratner’s continued liberty to direct films—a word of caution is in order. One of the dangerous and frustrating things about dog-whistles is that they are, in themselves, innocuous. For instance, you may have heard about the OK sign attracting criticism as a racist code-signal: it got attention during the Kavanaugh hearings, for instance. Obviously the OK hand gesture is <i>not</i> an intrinsically racist symbol; no symbol is; it was not originally cooked up by racists, nor does it have a typically racist history behind it. It was adopted by white supremacists precisely because it was both recognizable and innocuous, and thus, for dog-whistling purposes, absolutely perfect. (That’s how the swastika itself started out. And even today, there are contexts like Jain and Buddhist iconography in which the swastika is just itself, a shape, without the hideous meaning we associate it with here in the West.) So the mere fact that someone uses certain dog-whistles doesn’t automatically mean they’re a crypto-facist. They could be an ordinary centrist or a good-faith conservative <a href="https://www.cracked.com/personal-experiences-1420-8-terrifying-life-lessons-from-former-terrorist.html" target="_blank">who’s been listening to Pye D. Piper</a> and is humming the same tune in consequence.</div>
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And due to what makes dog-whistles work, the better-known a dog-whistle is, the less likely it is to represent a real white supremacist as opposed to someone who ran across it in perfect innocence and happened to repeat or reuse it for whatever reason. The list below may easily be obsolete within months, if it isn’t already. So, yeah, be aware that <a href="https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GoMadFromTheRevelation" target="_blank">this could make you a little paranoid</a>, and be careful not to tar and feather people too readily.</div>
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Here follows a non-exhaustive list of dog-whistles. I’ve arranged them into symbols, terms and slogans, and gestures; I’ve also given a brief run-down on the basic description, the origin of the thing (if I know anything about it), and how it’s used today (as far as I’m aware, and with the proviso that these uses can and will change as soon as outsiders start to recognize the dog-whistles for what they are).</div>
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<b>Shit gets gross after this. Please be aware.</b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson text"; line-height: 28.8px; white-space: pre-wrap;">✠ ✠ ✠</span></div>
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<u><a href="https://www.lifeafterhate.org/" target="_blank">The Swastika</a></u></div>
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<a href="https://www.lifeafterhate.org/" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="422" data-original-width="422" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinq4tdgCkGWUPgRf8UQMJ5h-hynZTemxbc7XrEDOq52tyMyQa0vU0iZeziq-ZFEl1Kuf3jY7YUNx7R0x81Z_cXLRhfm3z1qP_JY3BwKnloBZ3PPTBTKNhi4jLyG1eOSi_-dhYbrwCz2sU/s200/Screen+Shot+2019-03-30+at+6.57.49+PM.png" width="200" /></a></div>
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Description: A cross shape with equal-length arms that are each bent at a right angle, all the bends pointing in the same direction.</div>
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Origin: A common device in art throughout Eurasia for tens of thousands of years; in some cultures it represents the sun. Formerly called the <i>gammadion</i> or the <i>fylfot</i> in English.</div>
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Use: Expired. The Nazi use of the swastika is so generally known that it doesn’t keep anything secret. Variations on the swastika and similar symbols may still see some usage, like the Thunder Cross and the Hands of Svarog (shown below), which some neopagans use.</div>
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<u><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSH5EY-W5oM" target="_blank">The Black Sun</a></u><br />
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Description: A set of concentric circles with twelve <i>Sig</i> runes radiating from the center.</div>
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Origin: Though drawing on older symbols (including the swastika), the black sun shown here is first recorded as a design element in the 1936-1942 remodeling of Wewelsburg castle. Heinrich Himmler had purchased the castle in 1933 to serve as an SS center.</div>
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Use: Current. As a relatively simple geometric pattern, it’s easy to spot when you’re looking for it and easy to miss when you’re not. Its use has been complicated slightly by the fact that the Church of Satan has also employed the black sun; so, uh, give them the benefit of the doubt that they might just be Satanists, I guess.</div>
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<u><a href="https://www.rainbowrailroad.com/" target="_blank">The Wheel Cross</a></u></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiV7ueUex-iOGyEJLCQtNhhyWUePR0QdZOP0sROtBg4Q74fQnCZ5tDy-ynOJGkCIsA8q6CrJjKrZlNUnlFTsynMxSwAf2OHL7b1BOx4yMg9bhW2Tp5wAljJszzRvs9s6rIsc4FyW05p9I0/s1600/Screen+Shot+2019-03-30+at+7.08.18+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="222" data-original-width="220" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiV7ueUex-iOGyEJLCQtNhhyWUePR0QdZOP0sROtBg4Q74fQnCZ5tDy-ynOJGkCIsA8q6CrJjKrZlNUnlFTsynMxSwAf2OHL7b1BOx4yMg9bhW2Tp5wAljJszzRvs9s6rIsc4FyW05p9I0/s200/Screen+Shot+2019-03-30+at+7.08.18+PM.png" width="198" /></a></div>
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Description: A cross (usually with all four arms equal in length) with a halo or ring around the center; the arms may or may not extend past the ring.</div>
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Origin: Ringed crosses are a fairly obvious shape, but their best-known use is as symbols of Celtic Christianity, in which haloed crosses were extremely popular. Wheel crosses also resemble the usual guiding lines for firearm sights; the Zodiac killer used a form of the wheel cross as his personal sigil.</div>
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Use: Current. Thankfully, <i>genuine</i> Celtic stuff employs more specific forms like bell-flared cross arms, and elaborate decoration like trefoil knots.</div>
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<u><a href="https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/07/reform-white-supremacists-shane-johnson-life-after-hate/" target="_blank">The Iron Cross</a></u></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQqyL5dlNcQE34rj5T440VnkiJoRGAE7on7hWV4ps1LTpi2zFd86WWuu9ayfHhDSku1EEGPzmqCxof0AMJcSwxcu09EtLIqWMzyzdRY6JQkRjXSHYn7qhMHhLJ1cWXJac7LuJKd-vMAHU/s1600/Screen+Shot+2019-03-30+at+7.11.16+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="572" data-original-width="573" height="199" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQqyL5dlNcQE34rj5T440VnkiJoRGAE7on7hWV4ps1LTpi2zFd86WWuu9ayfHhDSku1EEGPzmqCxof0AMJcSwxcu09EtLIqWMzyzdRY6JQkRjXSHYn7qhMHhLJ1cWXJac7LuJKd-vMAHU/s200/Screen+Shot+2019-03-30+at+7.11.16+PM.png" width="200" /></a></div>
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Description: A cross (typically black) with equal-length, curve-flared arms, usually with an outlining band around its edge.</div>
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Origin: One of many heraldic forms of the Christian cross; the iron cross is a particular variant of the <i>croix pattée</i>, which always has equal-length, flared arms, but the flaring can take different forms (e.g. the Templars’ cross had small, angular flares at the end of each arm). The iron cross is a traditional military decoration, going back through Germany’s history and into the Kingdom of Prussia.</div>
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Use: Current.</div>
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<u><a href="https://www.lifeafterhate.org/" target="_blank">The <i>Odal</i> Rune</a></u></div>
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Description: A diamond shape with its two lower sides extended into crossed arms.</div>
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Origin: One of the letters of the Elder Futhark, the earliest rune alphabet. (The Younger Futhark of Scandinavia and the Anglo-Saxon Futhorc are both descended from the Elder Futhark.) The Odal or Othala rune represented the <i>o</i> sound, and was named from the Common Germanic term <i>ōþala</i>, which could mean ‘lineage, descent’ or ‘inheritance, property, estate.’ Cf. <i>Blood and Soil</i> below.</div>
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Use: Current. Not many people outside certain fan communities and scholarly fields recognize any Germanic runes, and are likelier to assume that they’re references to <i>Lord of the Rings</i> than neo-fascist cosplay. Neopagans, especially those who follow Odinism or Asatru, also use this rune and many others as an inheritance from pre-Christian Germanic culture.</div>
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<u><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSH5EY-W5oM" target="_blank">The <i>Sig</i> Rune</a></u></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga8SSbnyxlH5sPnneSl91GdrALXhVsSTH9jQeh2wrJ1S7_awPqIdNux1QIys1xzLDe0XFTgH2Jr43s765YOQmin4Qz3AWqzPKjOrMjKGSFgbHNWv60Vt5qeON_tu-fh-2yxrD6pLp1p2A/s1600/Screen+Shot+2019-03-30+at+7.18.09+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="99" data-original-width="68" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga8SSbnyxlH5sPnneSl91GdrALXhVsSTH9jQeh2wrJ1S7_awPqIdNux1QIys1xzLDe0XFTgH2Jr43s765YOQmin4Qz3AWqzPKjOrMjKGSFgbHNWv60Vt5qeON_tu-fh-2yxrD6pLp1p2A/s1600/Screen+Shot+2019-03-30+at+7.18.09+PM.png" /></a></div>
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Description: Similar to a backwards, capital N with the vertical bars extended (thus resembling a stylized lightning bolt).</div>
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Origin: Another rune, but unlike the Othala rune, this one is derived from the Armanen runes of Austrian occultist Guido von List. An apostate from Catholicism who devoted himself to neo-pagan mysticism and racism—‘Ariosophy’ was his name for it—he claimed to have received a new formulary of the runic system in a vision (sure), expounding eighteen reformed runes, of which the eleventh was <i>Sig</i>. A pair of <i>Sig</i> runes was one of the insignia of the Nazi SS, partly because they looked like an angularized pair of <i>s</i>’s, and partly because the Nazis associated the rune’s name with the word <i>Sieg</i>, ‘victory.’</div>
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Use: Somewhat current, both independently and as an element in the black sun above. However, it is recognizable enough in doubled form as an element in a Nazi flag that it’s not likely to be used as often.</div>
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<u><a href="https://www.adl.org/" target="_blank">The <i>Man</i> Rune</a></u></div>
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Description: Similar to a capital Y with a third branch extending straight up.</div>
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Origin: Why hello again, totally unhistorical Armanen runes! Derived from the <i>Algiz</i> rune of the Elder Futhark, with the same shape but a different phonetic value. Often known as the ‘life rune,’ as far as I can tell on the basis of ‘literally no gorram reason whatsoever.’</div>
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Use: Current. This one is particularly insidious due to its similarity to a wide variety of totally innocent symbols. The <i>Yr</i> rune, which is the inverted form, is also used occasionally, and is, you guessed it, often known as the ‘death rune.’</div>
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Guys, if you need a hug you can just say so.</div>
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<u><a href="https://www.lifeafterhate.org/" target="_blank">14</a></u></div>
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Origin: A reference to the Fourteen Words, a slogan concocted by white supremacist David Lane: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.” A more forthcoming alternate is “Because the beauty of the White Aryan woman must not perish from the earth” and my God you people, chill the fuck out. Nobody’s trying to make white women stop existing. As you so creepily demonstrate, white women are popular.</div>
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Use: Current. Making numbers look harmless is super easy. May be combined with 88, explained below.</div>
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<u><u><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSH5EY-W5oM" target="_blank">18</a></u></u></div>
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Origin: Alphanumeric code for AH, i.e. Adolf Hitler; likely also an allusion to the 18 Armanen runes.</div>
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Use: Current.</div>
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<u><u><a href="https://www.adl.org/" target="_blank">88</a></u></u></div>
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Origin: An allusion to David Lane’s <i>88 Precepts</i>, a white nationalist manifesto; also alphanumeric code for HH, i.e. Heil Hitler.</div>
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Use: Current. Frequently combined with 14 as 1488, 8814, or 14/88; Lane claimed that the number 1488 was a key element in his (SIGH) <i>Pyramid Prophecy</i>, which apparently espouses literally every conspiracy theory: Aryans built the pyramids, the King James Bible is a Hermetic code text foretelling Lane’s own birth and work, and Francis Bacon was secretly Shakespeare.</div>
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<u><u><a href="https://www.lifeafterhate.org/" target="_blank">“Blood and Soil”</a></u></u></div>
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Origin: An ethnonationalist catchphrase cooked up by the Nazi party (German: <i>Blut und Boden</i>). Used to express the idealized, racially ‘pure’ and geographically rooted ethnostate.</div>
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Use: Expired, as it’s a giveaway to anyone with more than a slight acquaintance with Nazi history. The rioters at Charlottesville in 2017 chanted it, along with “White Lives Matter” and “You will not replace us.”</div>
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<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwZhFUZFGGE" target="_blank">Fine people on both sides.</a></div>
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<u><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSH5EY-W5oM" target="_blank">“Ethnic Replacement”</a></u></div>
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Origin: A newer alternative to “white genocide,” coined when that phrase started to seem too <i>dramatic</i>. Basically this denotes a key concept in white supremacist ideology: that majority-white countries are being taken over by immigrants (optional extra: BECAUSE OF JEWS), who will hog all our resources and/or intermarry with whites, thus diluting and ultimately eliminating “the white race.”</div>
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Use: Somewhat current. It’s getting recognizable enough to act as a regular whistle instead of a dog-whistle, and is likely to expire soon accordingly.</div>
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<u><u><a href="https://www.lifeafterhate.org/exitusa" target="_blank">“Race Realism”</a></u></u></div>
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Origin: Sounded better than “I’m really racist.” The phrase denotes a belief in (ugh) so-called “scientific racism,” the notion that there are empirical grounds for (i) classifying people into biologically different races that are (ii) typically ranked by intelligence, and considered superior or inferior accordingly. There’s also “sex realism,” which sounds better than “raving misogyny.”</div>
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Use: Nearly expired, I think. It is pretty transparent. The concept is often reached without the catchphrase, usually by starting with an ostensibly positive, widely-held stereotype about a non-white ethnicity (“Look, you’d agree that Asians tend to have higher IQs, right?”) and then … well, I was going to say ‘deteriorates,’ but it ain’t exactly starting fresh.</div>
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<u><u><a href="https://www.rainbowrailroad.com/" target="_blank">“Western culture”</a></u></u></div>
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Origin: White nationalists love to think of themselves as defending Western civilization against the incursion of foreigners, especially brown and/or Muslim foreigners. (The fact that a lot of the brown foreigners, namely Latino immigrants, are as Western as anybody in the US and more Western than some, gets lost in here—I can’t think why.) More importantly, Western culture has in fact accomplished great things in addition to horrible things, so it’s an easy way to lure centrists, good-faith conservatives, and many liberals. If the white nationalist in question is a Christian, expect the Jewishness of Christianity to be downplayed or (in extreme cases) outright denied—though support for Israel as an (ethno-)state probably won’t be; if the white nationalist in question is an atheist or a neopagan, expect the Jewishness of Christianity to be played up as a reason to object to it, along with its deeply-rooted rejection of racial hatreds and its encouragement of “slave morality.”</div>
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Use: Current as hell, and it pisses me off, since I treasure Western culture even while I recognize its many flaws and sins. This one is a <i>great</i> dog-whistle for white racists, because as long as Western culture doesn’t become irreclaimably identified with white nationalism, there will always be an innocuous way to interpret “defenses” of it.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhegvSk6fgo0EuEWpYvl2LZkeayyfhTKZMmejnJG8_NDSj1LLft6SxS_14-uscy9TEjvstqTHnvY20yqkYPsKrKNifXEw_QOtD0a1Y1LhpyJYYS5Qm7O-g7NwHDUYPEVwdv-meHm0qrorM/s1600/Screen+Shot+2019-03-30+at+7.29.40+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="381" data-original-width="285" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhegvSk6fgo0EuEWpYvl2LZkeayyfhTKZMmejnJG8_NDSj1LLft6SxS_14-uscy9TEjvstqTHnvY20yqkYPsKrKNifXEw_QOtD0a1Y1LhpyJYYS5Qm7O-g7NwHDUYPEVwdv-meHm0qrorM/s200/Screen+Shot+2019-03-30+at+7.29.40+PM.png" width="149" /></a></div>
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<u><a href="https://www.adl.org/" target="_blank">“Identitarian”</a></u></div>
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Origin: Sounded better than “I’m really, really racist.” The name comes from the French group <i>Bloc Identitaire</i>, a nationalist movement with a patchwork of right-wing ideologies (though generally united by their hostility to Islam). A number of white nationalist organizations, such as the American Identity Movement (formerly Identity Evropa) and the National Policy Institute (hi, Richard Spencer!). Racists of all kinds do tend to be preoccupied with ethnic identity, pretty much by definition, and white supremacists are no exception.</div>
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Use: Current—I think. It’s hard to tell.</div>
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<u><a href="https://www.lifeafterhate.org/" target="_blank">The Roman Salute</a></u></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUYQNbSRy1RF8Bmk2MuTnMsedxzFH3DaHL_XNZ_bbeUYAloGBOmB47cWrqK9-BFafeelAcAldXOve4RxQdkjmHA0GRnqZapeWsOmsak-m9-Y9tUm4lPEz249M4tkgJvwJ6Tkpc0vgwIts/s1600/AugustLandmesser.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="531" data-original-width="650" height="260" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUYQNbSRy1RF8Bmk2MuTnMsedxzFH3DaHL_XNZ_bbeUYAloGBOmB47cWrqK9-BFafeelAcAldXOve4RxQdkjmHA0GRnqZapeWsOmsak-m9-Y9tUm4lPEz249M4tkgJvwJ6Tkpc0vgwIts/s320/AugustLandmesser.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Description: One hand is raised, usually at an angle and from the shoulder, with the palm facing down and the fingers together.</div>
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Origin: The Roman salute actually does go back to ancient Rome; even white supremacists don’t get every historical detail wrong (just most of them.) Mussolini adopted it for the <i>Fascisti</i>, and Hitler liked it enough to import it for the Nazis.</div>
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Use: Expired—kind of? It is immediately recognizable, and therefore much of its use as a private code signal is gone. Yet, for some reason, it remains easier to claim that using the Roman salute is “just being edgy and ironic” than it is to claim that bandying a swastika around is “just being edgy and ironic.”</div>
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<u><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSH5EY-W5oM" target="_blank">The Volksfront Gesture</a></u></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEie1X5GwBBsBUwdQfn-4ZRODQeNv2s3bTbNy06EZBfu_tr737z3fnfUpQC7IcXJTMvCOtGuej5GTjWwEz9a_V02EgY0vY8G5gHZeeoXs36MqcAY03ViOicgVF8p0LZAqA4UjpeAivrVIi0/s1600/Screen+Shot+2019-03-30+at+7.35.28+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="150" data-original-width="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEie1X5GwBBsBUwdQfn-4ZRODQeNv2s3bTbNy06EZBfu_tr737z3fnfUpQC7IcXJTMvCOtGuej5GTjWwEz9a_V02EgY0vY8G5gHZeeoXs36MqcAY03ViOicgVF8p0LZAqA4UjpeAivrVIi0/s1600/Screen+Shot+2019-03-30+at+7.35.28+PM.png" /></a><br />
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Description: A V-shaped hand sign, along the lines of the Vulcan salutation but without the thumb, often held over the heart.</div>
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Origin: Basically a gang sign, invented by the white supremacist group Volksfront. Volk is the German word for ‘people, nation,’ and since these are or should be the same thing as ‘ethnicity’ in white nationalist ideology, the word’s a popular one.</div>
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Use: Current, possibly; I don’t claim to have picked up on it. But of course it’s like the black sun symbol: plain as day if you’re looking for it, inconspicuous if you’re not.</div>
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<u><a href="https://www.cracked.com/personal-experiences-1446-5-things-i-learned-as-neo-nazi.html" target="_blank">The OK Sign</a></u><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilRea_0srqTQUpKtTk7oW0nxMo9NNMYhlCGaoK-PY4MQss8PhdyitOgiCle3QGlFTkEr9u9uvDvNWLguTrq2mHAkLpAZWNa-O3EACCkPNcnLxoOzcB1yKTul3tzqx5JUmbGo_hmPs3stk/s1600/Screen+Shot+2019-03-30+at+7.37.33+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="322" data-original-width="201" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilRea_0srqTQUpKtTk7oW0nxMo9NNMYhlCGaoK-PY4MQss8PhdyitOgiCle3QGlFTkEr9u9uvDvNWLguTrq2mHAkLpAZWNa-O3EACCkPNcnLxoOzcB1yKTul3tzqx5JUmbGo_hmPs3stk/s200/Screen+Shot+2019-03-30+at+7.37.33+PM.png" width="124" /></a></div>
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Description: Thumb and forefinger together in a circle, with the other three fingers extended.</div>
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Origin: As a gesture, this one’s obviously much older than its appropriation by ethnonationalists; it’s also a perfect example of the bottomlessly ambiguous atmosphere that crypto-fascists use to both communicate with each other, and at the same time gaslight the people who suspect them. Its association with neo-Nazis and the like is obviously arbitrary, which makes it easy to dismiss as just an example of left-wing paranoia. Moreover, it is, or seems to be, recent—as recent as 2017. It’s unclear whether the gesture became associated with white supremacism by their own design, through a 4chan prank, or by their own design which they then covered up through a 4chan prank. The Christchurch mosque shooter has famously flashed the OK sign in court, I guess because shooting a bunch of innocent Muslims, praising Trump for inspiring white nationalists worldwide, and donating hundreds of Euros to an Austrian neo-fascist didn’t sufficiently establish his racist street cred.</div>
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Use: Expired? Current? Honestly this one could be anywhere on the map, it’s so muddied.</div>
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<span style="font-family: "crimson text"; line-height: 28.8px; white-space: pre-wrap;">✠ ✠ ✠</span></div>
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<b><a href="https://www.lifeafterhate.org/exitusa" target="_blank">If you are involved in a hate group,</a> <a href="https://www.wikihow.com/Leave-a-Cult" target="_blank">you need to get out now.</a> <a href="https://www.lifeafterhate.org/" target="_blank">These two sentences</a> <a href="https://www.thehotline.org/" target="_blank">are composed entirely of links</a> <a href="https://www.rainbowrailroad.com/gethelp" target="_blank">to various groups</a> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1nwGRYWIb4" target="_blank">that can help you escape.</a></b></div>
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Like I said above, this list is not exhaustive, nor could it be since dog-whistles are constantly in flux. But I sort of feel like vomiting, so I’m done for now.</div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">[1]</span> Yes, I'm aware that there are non-totalitarian, non-Stalinist, non-statist versions of Communism. No, I haven't yet read Horkheimer, Bakunin, Goldman, Zetkin, Gramsci, Grindelwald, Sluterevski, and OH MY GOD GET OFF MY LAWN. <span style="font-size: x-small;">[2]</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">[2]</span> If you caught the dog-whistles, congratulations, and all hail Party Monster and Dark Mother.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">[3]</span> Thanks for <i>that</i> gem, Locke.</span></div>
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Gabriel Blanchardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17607504369762849930noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5766538007498037282.post-23977481328832922902019-03-20T19:53:00.000-07:002019-03-20T19:53:00.115-07:00Review: "Velvet Buzzsaw"<blockquote class="tr_bq">
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<i>‘But why … you’ve said Lestat shouldn't have made you </i>start<i> with people … Did you mean … Do you mean for you it was an æsthetic choice, not a moral one?’</i></div>
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<i>‘Had you asked me then, I would have told you it was æsthetic, that I wished to understand death in stages. [...] But it was moral. Because all æsthetic decisions are moral, really.’ </i></div>
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<i>—Anne Rice, </i>Interview With the Vampire</div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: 'Crimson Text'; font-size: 18pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">✠ ✠ ✠</span></span></div>
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A couple weeks ago, partly on a whim and partly because of its star-studded cast—including Jake Gyllenhaal, Rene Russo, John Malkovich, and Toni Collette (who in my opinion can do no wrong even in bad stuff)—I gave <i>Velvet Buzzsaw</i> a try. And I gotta say, while uneven in its execution, it is a delightful, clever, seriously weird-ass movie.</div>
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The premise and plot are straightforward enough. It is set in the elite art world of Los Angeles, where inter-gallery rivalries, reviewers that can canonize or damn at will, and above all, whatever is the hot new thing, act as god-emperors. Josephina, a Haze Gallery employee, discovers that a recluse named Vetril Dease who lived in an apartment neighboring hers has died, and left behind him a massive trove of paintings—his own work. She quietly steals them and shows them to her gallery’s owner, Rhodora, and a professional art critic and new flame, Morf Vandewalt. Both immediately declare Dease a master, and the Haze Gallery begins to sell the paintings for tens of thousands of dollars, while carefully controlling the number of paintings available in order to inflate their market value.</div>
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But as Dease’s work is traded, and as a network of shallow, faithless, and constantly changing relationships swirls around the characters’ successes, some people begin to notice strange things: one man insists that the painted figures slowly move, Vandewalt discovers Dease’s horror-stricken past, and a scientist discovers that part of the paintings’ curious appearance comes from Dease mixing his own blood and flesh with the paint. And then, one by one, the people who have profited from selling Dease’s work begin to die in mysterious, theatrical ways …</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtxdx6C1o8xIFYIdtPwYj7LeNCm7UK_wXt3I-kRFX4fBff1_WKR9H9BTcBITulgsBS1UZ7qz8A86sqftB92uGpaRjC6saRy_quqCh9Vn_jJmicV8oWq6P0tlX5oUF3TwL9XRl3D4Lp_M0/s1600/critiqueissolimitingandemotionallydraining.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="356" data-original-width="631" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtxdx6C1o8xIFYIdtPwYj7LeNCm7UK_wXt3I-kRFX4fBff1_WKR9H9BTcBITulgsBS1UZ7qz8A86sqftB92uGpaRjC6saRy_quqCh9Vn_jJmicV8oWq6P0tlX5oUF3TwL9XRl3D4Lp_M0/s320/critiqueissolimitingandemotionallydraining.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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Some minor perks: it was nice to see a little bisexual representation in this, with Gyllenhaal playing a bisexual man for the second time (yes Jack Twist in <i>Brokeback Mountain</i> is bi, I will fight you on this). Also, the names in this are a preposterous delight. Vetril Dease? Morf Vandewalt? Rhodora Haze? Jon Dondon? HA! There may be significance in some of the names: <i>Morf</i> and <i>Haze</i> suggest a certain surreality, and <i>Vetril Dease</i> is an anagram of 'devil satire,' though apparently Gilroy found that name in a census record.</div>
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Hereafter Be Film Criticism/Spoilers</div>
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(skip to the closing paragraph if you hate either)</div>
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Dease’s spirit is the culprit; or, if you prefer, the paintings are, imbued through his flesh and blood with his own determination that they should be destroyed, and murdering those who work to thwart this purpose along the way. Dondon, a gallery owner, is throttled with his own scarf by a hand emerging from a display; Gretchen, a gossipy, manipulative curator, loses an arm in a malfunctioning interactive sculpture and bleeds to death, and is mistaken the next morning for a part of the piece; Josephina is lured into a mysterious display of graffiti-style paintings whose colors leak out of their frames and consume her, trapping her as a streetside mural; Morf, increasingly guilty over his harsh reviews and recognizing the peril of Dease’s work too late, is trapped by an animated sculpture and killed. Dan Gilroy, the creator and director of the film, embraces the campiness of his narrative machine, citing films like <i>The Ring</i> and <i>Final Destination</i> as inspirations. And the silliness of the violence (and occasionally of the special effects, as with Gretchen’s dismemberment) forms a counterpoint to the frivolity of the victims’ effete, insincere world.</div>
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Like many horror films, <i>Velvet Buzzsaw</i> is a pronouncedly moralistic film. Six deaths are shown in total. Two—Josephina, who made the initial discovery and enacted the initial theft, and Gretchen, a greedy Machiavellian of gallery politics—are both represented as having effectively become works of art, and these two are the victims least invested in actually appreciating art for its own sake: on finding out that her lover is abandoning the Haze Gallery to return to his lower-class art collective, Josephina tells him icily, and unwittingly mere minutes before her death, ‘What’s the point of art if no one sees it?’</div>
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Josephina’s decline in character is interestingly marked out toward its beginning, by her chance encounter with a man from Parlack (the company that owns the building, he explains); the name evokes the ‘person from Porlock’ who ruined Coleridge’s attempt to recollect his dreamt poem <i>Kubla Khan</i>. In this case, the disturbance is superficially opposite, since it is thanks to the man from Parlack that Josephina finds Dease’s work, yet Parlack and Porlock effect the same thing at a deeper level, namely the separation of their ‘targets’ from immersion in art; for it is, paradoxically, the discovery of Dease that seals Josephina’s fate as a woman who can no longer see art as something to be made for the mere pleasure of creation, and appreciated in those terms, but only as something to be profited from, whether the profit be in money or in prestige.</div>
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A slightly different Æsop is represented in the deaths of Morf and Rhodora. Morf, always a rather cruel, flippant critic, consents to Josephina’s request (while the two are romantically involved) to give a bad review to an artist that he actually does like. Rhodora is revealed early on in the film to have been one half of an anarchistic punk band, the eponymous Velvet Buzzsaw, in her younger days; yet when we meet her she is the queen of LA’s most snobbish elite. Both, Morf especially, get some handle on what is going on as the bodies and bizarre occurrences pile up; Morf is genre savvy enough not only to notice that his own haunting by Dease began from the point where he corrupted his integrity as an art critic to satisfy his lover, but to try to deal with the problem by locking away his own pieces by Dease and begging Rhodora to do the same with all the remaining collection. Too little, too late: the sculpture that kills him is one he had given a withering review to at the beginning of the film (before Dease’s work had been discovered by anybody), which he had criticized not for being poor in technique or a fundamentally bad idea, but basically for being something he had seen done before.</div>
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Rhodora seems to be within inches of escape. She has every piece of art, by Dease and everyone else, removed from her home and securely stored. But there are two pieces of art that she cannot divest herself of, a pair of tattoos. One is seen briefly on her arm, early in the film, and reads ‘No Death No Art’; but her downfall is the other, which is appropriately on the back of her shoulder, just out of sight. It is her band name, surrounded by a buzzsaw, and when she accidentally recreates a Dease composition, her tattoo becomes animated and tears her apart.</div>
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Three characters who are intimately involved with the Dease plot do escape with their lives: Coco (played by Natalia Dyer of <i>Stranger Things</i> fame), Piers, and Damrish. Coco is a young office assistant who is trying to learn the game of rivalry and manipulation that helped make the other characters successful—in practice, angling to be the next Gretchen. But, after being taken on as a personal assistant by three of the victims and finding each of them dead the next morning, she releases a perfectly timed scream of ‘FUCK ME!’ and gives up on LA entirely. The only thing of Dease’s that she takes with her, perhaps unwittingly, is his cat, and as far as we know from the film she is spared: not profiting from his art directly at any point, and generous enough to care for his cat, we might even read it as Dease’s ghost driving her away out of kindness.</div>
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Piers and Damrish, two professional artists, escape Dease’s wrath in a different way. They admire his art as art, and in fact it helps inspire Damrish to reject the elite art world and return to the salt-of-the-earth collective that he had been part of before. Piers, who is presented through most of the film as feeling that he’s lost his creativity after getting sober, is captivated by Dease’s paintings, and works hard to rediscover his own artistic passion; and the credits play over Piers on the beach, alone, drawing sweeping curves and loops and shapes with a piece of driftwood, once again creating simply to create and not for some ostensible profit.</div>
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The flaw that makes <i>Velvet Buzzsaw</i> good rather than great is closely linked to one of its finest virtues. The script, acting, and cinematography are all exquisite; but because the film is attempting a certain campiness in its horror, it leaves the viewer with a bizarre clash of tones. Ideally the craftsmanship should have contributed to the atmosphere of the striking, yet essentially superficial art world. But the expert execution makes these characters and their concerns feel more profound than they have any right to, and in consequence, the deaths come of as an uneasy mixture of tragic with tragicomic. I think the correct solution here would have been to make the more apparently dignified characters (e.g. Josephina and Gretchen) just a little more over-the-top than they are, to draw the film into the campiness that was Gilroy’s stated aim. The unevenness of tone in the movie as it stands is a serious problem—it either gives the audience whiplash or, more likely, produces a vague sense of distaste that can’t be definitely pinned on any one thing (unless it were the truly goofy special effects used for Gretchen’s dismemberment).</div>
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Should You Watch It?</div>
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I give <i>Velvet Buzzsaw</i> a firm B+, and it would’ve scraped an A if it had fixed its tone problem. So I’d say that if you have a particular taste for satire, horror, or modern art, you’ll likely enjoy this film. If you’re neutral toward those things, I wouldn’t avoid this movie by any means, but I wouldn’t make a point of seeing it. And finally, if you dislike any of the three but you’re trying to be open-minded, this is not the film by which to give them a second chance: go with a horror-satire like <i>Tucker and Dale vs Evil</i> or a genuine horror classic like <i>The Babadook</i> instead.</div>
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Gabriel Blanchardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17607504369762849930noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5766538007498037282.post-9384061790928002122019-03-04T18:21:00.000-08:002019-03-05T06:38:34.969-08:00"Stop Crying."<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 18pt; margin-right: 18pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "im fell english"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">His feet among the tulips, his hands brush the roses and the lilies.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 18pt; margin-right: 18pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "im fell english"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">‘This is love,’ he says, laying his fingers on my throat,</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 18pt; margin-right: 18pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "im fell english"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Forcing me down to bow.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 18pt; margin-right: 18pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "im fell english"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">‘I know it hurts, I know it’s harsh,</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 18pt; margin-right: 18pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "im fell english"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">I know it feels nothing like any loves you know,</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 18pt; margin-right: 18pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "im fell english"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">But you have to trust me,’</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 18pt; margin-right: 18pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "im fell english"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">As I writhe and gasp and my eyes blur:</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 18pt; margin-right: 18pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "im fell english"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">‘This is what real love is.’</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 18pt; margin-right: 18pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "im fell english"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">The thorns scrape on my skin</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 18pt; margin-right: 18pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "im fell english"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">And I cannot feel my knees or my wrists.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text"; font-size: 18pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-c35af993-7fff-6d97-5a36-5d811e87455d"></span></span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 18pt; margin-right: 18pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "im fell english"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">‘This is love. Stop crying.’</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL8UJnUBgDciiXGkCzlbBV2LMF4NoUOqIbfNc5_Xdo3qPAt8uLjy3til8rUMFbbRIOCPaWYMQ8GtcSL1iEK_pP-CIwnZkqAlzpbPZdVmbjQWNg7VE4uqKM8BxnWO7MKykgTXoHJKM1ebM/s1600/orvieto.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: white;"><img border="0" data-original-height="219" data-original-width="241" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL8UJnUBgDciiXGkCzlbBV2LMF4NoUOqIbfNc5_Xdo3qPAt8uLjy3til8rUMFbbRIOCPaWYMQ8GtcSL1iEK_pP-CIwnZkqAlzpbPZdVmbjQWNg7VE4uqKM8BxnWO7MKykgTXoHJKM1ebM/s200/orvieto.png" width="200" /></span></a></div>
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The <i>New York Times</i> ran <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/17/us/it-is-not-a-closet-it-is-a-cage-gay-catholic-priests-speak-out.html?fbclid=IwAR3o-vm50IVsyB4GDJNP_gCa84qtWeHr7Znvdip7r2FCw7Igge5bPSUHcS8">a profile of gay priests</a> recently, with the tagline: ‘It is not a closet. It is a cage.’ The response to it from a number of spokesmen for Catholicism, via blogs and social media has been, shall we say, cool. Jennifer Fitz (of whom I had not heard before, but I gather that she is a generally and justly respected blogger in conservative Catholic circles) <a href="https://www.patheos.com/blogs/jenniferfitz/2019/02/dear-gay-catholic-priests/">wrote a reply that has been shared a good deal</a>.</div>
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<i>I’ve been reading about your plight in the </i>New York Times<i>. So let’s go ahead and clear something up right now: Most Catholics don’t give a rip who it is you’re not having sex with. We know that abstinence is hard. Those of us practicing NFP probably don’t have a ton of sympathy for you, because at least you aren’t obliged to spend all night lying in bed next to the person you’re not having sex with, but when we can get over ourselves, sure, we get it. … Also, when you took your vows, the whole ‘celibacy’ thing wasn’t exactly foisted on you by surprise. … Those of us doing the Catholic thing know very well what it’s like to wrestle with temptation. Honestly we don’t give a crap about your tormented coming-out story, because we know it’s a distraction. Satan wants to keep you constantly looking inward, gazing at your story of shame and pity … You don’t have to be part of the angst-obsessed intelligentsia who show off how erudite they are by daring say in the NYT words that make 6th grade boys snicker. You could just be a Catholic. … I know it’s a struggle. I know this because everyone struggles with their vocations. That’s how life is. Come struggle with us.</i></blockquote>
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In a similar vein, Fr Thomas Petri OP of the Dominican House of Studies down in DC, which I’ve had the pleasure of visiting more than once, <a href="https://twitter.com/PetriOP/status/1097295843210772480">had the following to say on Twitter</a>:</div>
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<i>I have no patience for priests who ‘come out’ as gay and insist that the priesthood is some sort of cage. Nobody forced you to become a priest. The faithful don’t need to deal with your issues, pal. They don’t deserve to deal with any of our issues. We serve them. Period. … The last thing the faithful need are priests who make their sexuality their primary identity. ‘Being gay’ and ‘coming out’ may seem to you, Father, as being true to your authentic self, but that’s contrary to your ordination, which makes your authentic self a person in persona Christi in the service of the people of God. If you can’t live that way, if you can’t give yourself freely, without making your sexuality ‘a thing’ in this equation, then be a man, be noble, and as our Holy Father Pope Francis says: leave the priesthood. … A Father cannot help his children if he’s a broken distracted mess of a man requiring them to pick him up and set him aright.</i></blockquote>
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Let’s take a second look at those responses, in the context of the aforementioned <i>New York Times</i> piece. The <i>NYT</i>:</div>
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<i>Gregory Greiten was 17 years old when the priests organized the game. … Leaders asked each boy what he would rather be: burned over 90 percent of his body, paraplgeic, or gay. Each chose to be scorched or paralyzed. Not one uttered the word ‘gay.’ They called the game the Game of Life. The lesson stuck. Seven years later, he climbed up into his seminary dorm window and dangled one leg over the edge. ‘I really am gay,’ Father Greiten, now a priest near Milwaukee, remembered telling himself for the first time. ‘It was like a death sentence.’ … Many priests have held the most painful stories among themselves for decades: The seminarian who died by suicide, and the matches from a gay bar found afterward in his room. The priest friends who died of AIDS. The feeling of coming home to an empty rectory every night.<br />… Father Greiten decided it was time to end his silence. At Sunday Mass, during Advent, he told his suburban parish he was gay, and celibate. They leapt to their feet in applause. … His archbishop, Jerome E. Listecki of Milwaukee, issued a statement saying that he wished Father Greiten had not gone public. Letters poured in calling him ‘satanic,’ ‘gay filth,’ and a ‘monster’ who sodomized children.</i></blockquote>
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And Mrs Fitz:</div>
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<i>Most Catholics don’t give a rip … We know that abstinence is hard. Those of us practicing NFP probably don’t have a ton of sympathy for you, because at least you aren’t obliged to spend all night lying in bed next to the person you’re not having sex with … But same-sex attraction? Yawn. … We don’t give a crap about your tormented coming-out story …</i></blockquote>
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Concluding with the valediction:</div>
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<i>Your Real Catholic Friends</i></blockquote>
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Returning to half a dozen selections from the <i>NYT</i>:</div>
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<i>Father Bob Bussen … was outed about 12 years ago after he held Mass for the LGBTQ community. ‘Life in the closet is worse than scapegoating,’ he said. ‘It is not a closet. It is a cage.’<br />Today, training for the priesthood in the United States usually starts in or after college. But until about 1980, the Church often recruited boys to start in ninth grade—teenagers still in the throes of puberty.<br />‘My family does not know that I struggle with this. I’ve never told them. I believe the Church’s teaching on marriage, sexuality—just trying to understand what it means for me. It may sound kind of strange. I feel like, what I struggle with, I hope I can help other Catholics not lose their faith.’ [From a gay priest who asked not to be identified]<br />‘This is not the whole story of who I am. But if you don’t want to know this about me, do you really want to know me? It’s a question I’d invite the people of God to ponder.’ — Father Steve Wolf<br />All priests must wrestle with their vows of celibacy, and the few priests who are publicly out make clear they are chaste.<br />‘Why stay? It is an amazing life. I am fascinated with the depth and sincerity of parishioners, the immense generosity. The negativity out there doesn’t match what is in my daily life, when I see the goodness of people. I tune into that, because it sustains me.’ — Father Michael Shanahan</i></blockquote>
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And returning to Fr Petri:</div>
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<i>I have no patience for priests who … insist that the priesthood is some sort of cage. Nobody forced you to become a priest. The faithful don’t need to deal with your issues, pal. They don’t deserve to deal with any of our issues. … ‘Being gay’ and ‘coming out’ may seem to you, Father, as being true to your authentic self, but that’s contrary to your ordination … If you can’t give yourself freely, without making your sexuality ‘a thing’ in this equation, then be a man … : leave the priesthood.</i></blockquote>
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I would have hoped no thoughtful Catholic could write anything so callous. My cold comfort is that maybe people like Mrs Fitz and Fr Petri who are making these unfeeling remarks didn’t actually read the article with any serious attention; their scorn, ignorance, and cruelty may be far less deliberately malicious than they appear. And it does afford some small encouragement to think that there may be less deliberate malice in the world than a glance would suggest.</div>
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But let’s analyze the outlook these reactions represent.</div>
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First, Mrs Fitz and Fr Petri both display a startling inattention to what this <i>New York Times</i> article was actually <i>about</i>. It wasn’t about gay sex. Yes, the article does deal frankly with the fact that not all priests observe the vow of celibacy that they made; but—as intrinsically important and wrong as that infidelity is—it isn’t the point. Nor does any one of the priests in question, named or anonymous, make any complaint whatever about celibacy. That isn’t what they’re focusing on, still less what they’re objecting to. They say in so many words that it is being forced to keep <i>silent</i> about their orientation that is painful, isolating, and (in some cases at least) deeply damaging. The cultural demand of secrecy, not the canonical demand of celibacy, is what they are talking about.</div>
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Second, the confident assurances Mrs Fitz gives that married lay Catholics like herself entirely understand the difficulties of celibate gay priests. These assurances are so astonishingly off-base that, for me (and I dare say for many other gay people), they completely wreck her credibility. Comparing the temporary difficulty of being unable to have sex with your spouse, with a hopeless dread of one’s own sexuality that’s so severe it leads some men to <i>consider suicide</i>, is worse than insensitive; it is revolting. Speaking for my own adolescence—and I was spared more than many gay teens—there were mornings when I woke up, and the first thing I felt was bitter disappointment that God hadn’t killed me in my sleep. Because then I wouldn’t have to face another day of being gay, and dealing with the ceaseless torment of being caught between my deepest desires and my deepest convictions. And Mrs Fitz has the gall to answer <i>that</i>, not only with a yawn, but with the statement that she and those like her, who say in so many words that they care nothing about these years of agony, are our real friends.</div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>[I'd usually put a picture here for spacing, but suicide pictures are creepy as fuck, so no.]</b></span></div>
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More exactly, it probably never occurred to her that these years of agony exist. How should it? Straight people don’t usually have to deal with the doubt, self-hatred, and anxiety that gay people do. And she’s already said she neither intends nor wants to listen to us about those things: she’s already decided what is and isn’t important in our lives. What <i>we</i> feel, think, or say doesn’t matter.</div>
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I take this to be the fruit of a deeper and equally misguided idea: that, because we each have a cross to bear, therefore everyone’s cross is equally heavy, or at least that my neighbor’s cross is as heavy for him as mine is for me. What this would amount to in practice, would be that nobody really suffers more than anybody else, at least not proportionately. And somehow, a theoretical equality of suffering always seems to open the sluice-gates for those who want to tell others to stop complaining: if I’m enduring my suffering, and yours can’t really be worse than mine, then I don’t have to be any more compassionate to you than I feel like the world in general is to me. That's not the truth. Our crosses are tailor-made and, therefore, undemocratic in the highest degree; so that pity, courtesy, humility, generosity, solidarity, and gratitude would have a place to flourish.</div>
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Nor do Mrs Fitz or Fr Petri once touch on the fact that so much of the pain of being gay in the Catholic Church comes not from inside us, but from outside. Christian culture in America frequently treats us as legitimate targets for everything from tasteless jokes to scapegoating for terrorist attacks. And <a href="https://www.patheos.com/blogs/steelmagnificat/2019/02/patrick-madrid-accidentally-explains-the-sex-abuse-crisis/">Catholic subculture is not an exception</a>. No matter how emphatically or how often Catholics talk about intrinsic human dignity and the importance of avoiding bigotry and being mindful of the difference between a person and their actions, we’ve seen you talk on Facebook about how agents of the gay agenda are trying to corrupt schoolchildren. We’ve heard your chuckling remarks about faggots when you thought no outsiders were listening. Look at the example the <i>NYT</i> article opened with. What do you think it does to a person, to be told that everyone you know would rather be paralyzed than simply happen to be gay? To be told that just feeling attraction to other boys instead of girls is as bad as, worse than, being tortured with fire over your entire body?</div>
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Maybe they think that rehearsing the point that ‘You are more than your sexuality’ is what’s called for here. I would like to assure them that LGBTQ people are in fact very well aware of this. We did not need well-meaning heterosexuals to obtain this information. Like Fr Wolf said in the article, of course this doesn’t exhaust who we are; but when fellow believers can’t stand to hear about it at all, when the mere mention prompts lectures and even rebukes, that sends a message too.</div>
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Think for a moment, straight reader. Maybe you don’t think of yourself as bringing up your sexuality all that often. Maybe you aren’t dating anybody currently; maybe you prefer to be private about your personal life. But if you did want to talk about an ex, would you hesitate to do so because of how others might react? Would you try to think of neutral language you could use to disguise your former partner’s gender? Would you be ashamed or scared to comment, just conversationally, that a member of the opposite sex is attractive? Would you feel the need to disguise your natural, spontaneous sympathy with art or entertainment that depicts heterosexual relationships? Would you be frightened to tell your coworkers, your friends, your own family that you had a crush on somebody?</div>
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It’s this that starts to reveal why so many of us find the closet suffocating. ‘Coming out’ and ‘not coming out’ aren’t the options presented to LGBTQ people, priests or otherwise: the options we’re presented with are ‘coming out’ and ‘staying in.’ And staying in is quite a different thing: it is actively concealing, avoiding, minimizing, and distorting all discussion of our thoughts, feelings, and experiences. How can anyone be expected to develop a healthy sense of self or normal, mature relationships while at the same time gagging one whole side of their character? Some people do manage to thrive even under those conditions, thank God; but I do not believe that we should be imposing those conditions, even as cultural standards. And maybe sexual orientation shouldn’t be that important, considered in a vacuum. But human beings don’t live in a vacuum. We can’t.</div>
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If Catholics truly want to support us in our lives of faith, they need to be prepared to hear about the actual content of those lives. The solidarity that Mrs Fitz and Catholics like her seem prepared to offer, will have nothing to do with that uncomfortable, unattractive, alien content; it will not be challenged to consider the privileges it enjoys which some do not, nor be called upon to make a deliberate effort to imaginatively empathize. That kind of ‘real friendship’ is worthless.</div>
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Fr Petri’s categorical objection to priests sharing their trials with parishioners was disquieting as well. Priests devote themselves to the service of God and the laity, yes; but priests are not supermen, and <i>every</i> Christian needs the support of other Christians, including those whose state in life is unlike his own. Would any Catholic seriously propose that a priest cannot learn from the holiness of the stay-at-home mother of six, the teenage girl with untreatable leukemia, the grandfather who just hit his seventeenth anniversary of sobriety? This desire to segregate the clergy from the laity is, precisely, clericalism: a snobbishness that sees in the laity only children to tend, and not brothers and sisters who may far outstrip their fathers, and who, in any case, have their own gifts from the Holy Ghost which were given to them for the good of the Body—including the good of priests. (St Catherine of Siena, a Dominican sister, remonstrated with the Apostolic See until it returned to the apostolic city.) Holiness does not only move ‘downward’ through the ecclesiastical hierarchy. Nor should priests who serve a God conceived in the womb of an unwedded peasant girl, living in a backwater of an unimportant province of a long-dead empire, expect it to.</div>
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Not that any of the priests in the <i>NYT</i> article actually <i>said</i> that the laity needed to be available as a support network for priests. Unless the mere mention that a priest is gay places such a colossal emotional burden on the laity, that it implicitly constitutes a priest abdicating his pastoral responsibility. Personally, I don’t think gay people are quite that defined by our sexuality; I think many laymen get it, and are willing to struggle alongside us, like real Catholic friends.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOkHe1S2W4pCuBukQ5xempeLjdcnKYCgEbSOiTudvO-JLP9buUU1Odk0fbl9IGWWb8hHwhBgzUJIUk6_eh7974iHmzgsHCFREWdPXTJ8IEB7Au-RI408FnR1vvqmrROkCazC9x6YtbwW4/s1600/blake_jacobsladder.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="708" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOkHe1S2W4pCuBukQ5xempeLjdcnKYCgEbSOiTudvO-JLP9buUU1Odk0fbl9IGWWb8hHwhBgzUJIUk6_eh7974iHmzgsHCFREWdPXTJ8IEB7Au-RI408FnR1vvqmrROkCazC9x6YtbwW4/s320/blake_jacobsladder.jpg" width="249" /></a></div>
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But this caste-like idea of superiority aside, such hostility to priests sharing their struggles (or their peace) is still misguided. Priests who seem unapproachable will not be approached; priests who seem inimitable will not be imitated. Catholics can rattle on all we like about needing people to model chastity, but without concrete examples of, for instance, <i>gay</i> chastity, the idea won’t land. Without the context that makes the model inspiring, it won’t inspire. How are young Catholics who begin to recognize their own attraction to the same sex supposed to recognize also that they could have a future, if the only people that they know have that same desire are people who have abandoned the Catholic faith?</div>
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I venture to add that, for some people, a veneer of perfection can be repellent rather than attractive: in the naïve it can provoke despair (‘How could I ever be like that?’), while in the cynical, it prompts suspicion (‘What’s he hiding?’). An authentic person is far more attractive, allowing the former to overcome his shyness and the latter to give trust a chance.</div>
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<a href="https://universityideas.wordpress.com/2019/02/24/clerical-transparency-vs-coming-out/">Chris Damian confronted another problem with this approach</a>, one that is equal parts moral and practical.</div>
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<i>Any priest who asserts that we both need greater transparency in the Church and also condemns those opening up about their particular experiences of sexual integration, is speaking out of both sides of his mouth. … This creates the present situation of hierarchical schizophrenia in responding to the Church’s crises. How can we expect the clergy to be honest about what is happening in their parishes when we expect them to dance carefully around what is happening within themselves?</i></blockquote>
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This doesn’t mean that every gay priest must come out, which Damian acknowledges. It is certainly a personal decision. But it does mean that automatic rebuke for coming out is nonsensical. He goes on:</div>
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<i>The laity want more honesty and transparency from priests. But over the last several decades, many in Church leadership have actively worked against this. … Father Petri is participating in the very practices that have perpetuated our crises: he is a priest in authority ridiculing other priests for being honest. Rather than resolving the problem, he is perpetuating it. I suspect that Father Petri means no ill will, but malice is not required to create harm. … The fact that Father Petri misses that the article is directed toward those like him and, instead, claims that the article makes demands on the laity demonstrates the manipulative blindness of a bureaucrat.</i></blockquote>
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One thing the Church needs as a prerequisite to the reform she so badly requires today is unflinching honesty. And you cannot simultaneously encourage and punish the same quality. If you reward dissimulation, secrecy, and bald-faced lies about same-sex attraction, which isn't even a sin, how on earth is anyone supposed to find the courage to be sincere, forthcoming, and accurate about sins and crimes?</div>
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The toxicity of the closet, and of the priestly culture of hush that it’s interwoven with, is something I don’t believe most Catholics have faced, not because they’re completely heartless, but because they don’t want to; and I suspect they don’t want to because they are afraid that if they think about the closet simply in terms of what LGBTQ people want and need, it will threaten their faith. And not many Catholics are ever in the mood to have their faith threatened, especially right now, when threats to the credibility of the whole hierarchy are daily features of the news. But that’s not good enough. Not facing problems doesn’t make them go away. And castigating gay people—even when we go out of our way to affirm our orthodoxy and our chastity—for asking to be known and loved as we are, does less than nothing to confront the sins, or heal the wounds, of deceitfulness and corruption that the Church is in the throes of.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWfxdOIVgd8GSaEaFEx4boxHSdsjbcROeucZ16Fk5jNHoE7p81DMhDzzRoyex6MbcPB4KjpbsSlKbrhv9mWkVISUS566BjGhmEBCgoQozshvUEUE36AB1hAJ-fXps2u-1hFuKys-Js7vQ/s1600/scaleofperfection.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="578" data-original-width="440" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWfxdOIVgd8GSaEaFEx4boxHSdsjbcROeucZ16Fk5jNHoE7p81DMhDzzRoyex6MbcPB4KjpbsSlKbrhv9mWkVISUS566BjGhmEBCgoQozshvUEUE36AB1hAJ-fXps2u-1hFuKys-Js7vQ/s320/scaleofperfection.jpg" width="241" /></a></div>
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Do you want to show us genuine friendship, Catholic? Genuine love, support, and affection, of the kind that every person (gay or straight) needs to thrive as a Christian, as a human?</div>
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Then listen to us. Talk with us. Pray with us. Laugh with us, eat with us, weep with us. Go to art galleries with us, invite us to your eight-year-old’s birthday party, watch cheesy fifties sci-fi movies with us, have us over for poker night. Do the normal stuff that life consists in, and include us in it; and let us tell you what’s on our hearts when that’s what we need. Because, now and again, every one of us needs that.</div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "crimson text"; font-size: 18pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">✠ ✠ ✠</span></span></div>
Gabriel Blanchardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17607504369762849930noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5766538007498037282.post-5241530155191485242019-02-20T09:30:00.000-08:002019-02-20T09:30:35.471-08:00Judgment (A Poem)<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: 'IM Fell English SC'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b><span style="color: white;">Judgment</span></b></span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-737f13ef-7fff-e6ae-0e3e-a040be772539" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: white;"><br /></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: 'IM Fell English'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">When the Son of Man shall come in glory, and all his angels with him,</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: 'IM Fell English'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory:</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: 'IM Fell English'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">And before him shall be gathered all nations:</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: 'IM Fell English'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">And he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: 'IM Fell English'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">And he shall set the sheep on his right hand,</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: 'IM Fell English'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">But the goats on the left, because of the smell.</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: white;"><br /></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: 'IM Fell English'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand,</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: 'IM Fell English'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">‘Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: 'IM Fell English'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">From the foundation of the world:</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: 'IM Fell English'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">For I was an hungred, and ye spake to me of fasting:</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: 'IM Fell English'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">I was thirsty, and ye gave me ascetical lectures:</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: 'IM Fell English'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">I was a stranger, and ye told me how to get home:</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: 'IM Fell English'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Naked, and ye reminded me of the sanctity of property:</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: 'IM Fell English'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">I was sick, and ye forbad me to be a tedium to my neighbor:</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: 'IM Fell English'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">I was in prison, and ye were just judges and noble juries.’</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: 'IM Fell English'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Then the righteous shall answer him, saying,</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: 'IM Fell English'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">‘Yea, Lord, all this and more we know,</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: 'IM Fell English'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">For verily, inasmuch as we have done unto the least of these thy brethren,</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: 'IM Fell English'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">We have stored up our love only for thee.’</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: white;"><br /></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: 'IM Fell English'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand,</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: 'IM Fell English'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">‘Depart from me, into the Consuming Fire prepared for you:</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: 'IM Fell English'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">For I was an hungred, and ye spoiled me:</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: 'IM Fell English'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">I was thirsty, and ye plied me with wine:</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: 'IM Fell English'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">I was a stranger, and ye took no heed to your state in life:</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: 'IM Fell English'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Naked, and ye coddled me:</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: 'IM Fell English'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Sick, and in prison, and ye rewarded my errors.’</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: 'IM Fell English'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Then shall they also answer him, saying,</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: 'IM Fell English'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">‘I knew thee, that thou art a hard man.’</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: white;"><br /></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: 'IM Fell English'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">And these shall go away into the Consuming Fire:</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'IM Fell English'; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 1.2; white-space: pre-wrap;">But the righteous into all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'IM Fell English'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"><br /></span></div>
Gabriel Blanchardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17607504369762849930noreply@blogger.com0