Posse Incitatus

Benedict's resignation: Goldman gets it, Mead misses the point

The resignation of Pope Benedict XVI comes at a critical time for the Roman Catholic Church.  All Western institutions are being shaken to the core by economic, demographic and cultural forces and the Church is no exception.

 

His decision to resign is a sound one.  Gone are the days when monarchs and popes could drift into the dotage under a regency council while the ship of state wandered aimlessly until a new and energetic successor could emerge.

Benedict releases that the Church is more important than the Curia; that the bureaucracy (largely insular and Italian) are incapable of keeping the ship on course without vigorous supervision.

 

Of course, Benedict will keenly recall the decline of his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, whose praiseworthy efforts in the 80s were followed by a long, painful decline.  That the pederasty scandals broke during his convalescence inflicted even more damage to the faith and its institutions as functionaries ran for cover and obfuscated rather than came clean.

 

It is for that reason that I was interested to read Walter Russell Mead’s take on the current state of the Church.  As a fan of erudite style and the seriousness with which he approaches questions of religion, I looked forward to digesting his thoughts.  Having read them, I am profoundly disappointed.

 

Instead of analyzing the challenges confronting the Church, he falls back on the all-to-familiar boilerplate that Rome is just too old-fashioned for these thoroughly modern times.  He even uses the infamous crutch of a journalist who has an opinion but prefers not to state it in order to appear impartial – the “many”:

Via Meadia is not inclined to deliver ex cathedra judgements on points of Catholic doctrine so we take no stand on the theological validity of the case against the ordination of women to the Catholic priesthood, but the Catholic Church’s belief in an exalted spiritual and political role for its all-male clergy puts it at odds with what many in the West have come to see as a vital moral principle of gender equality. This not only creates resistance to Church teaching on a key issue among many members and potential members, it legitimates anti-clericalism among many advocates of women’s rights in the West. The Catholic Church, with its ‘retrograde’ and ‘medieval’ outlook on women’s rights, many feel, must in the name of justice be pushed aside from social and political power wherever possible.

The commitment to an all-male clergy also taints Catholic moral stands on issues like abortion and homosexuality for many people. [Emphasis added]

 

Who are these “many?”  And why should the Church care?  Near the end of the passage, Mead gives the game away:

The Church’s opponents have an easy time characterizing Catholic beliefs about sexuality as a form of misogyny and backwardness, and can point in indignation and derision to the sight of an all-male College of Cardinals convening once again to elect yet another male pope. 

 

Oh, so the people who don’t like the Church anyway will criticize it? I'm sorry, I almost had a heart attack from that total lack of surprise.  I imagine that the enemies of the Church will have bad things to say no matter what the doctrine is or who is ordained.  All the more reason for the Church to adhere to its ancient and eternal beliefs instead of catering the popular whims of the moment.

 

This in fact was Benedict’s message and one he delivered well.

 

However, Mead’s critique is even weaker when we consider that Protestant churches have essentially embraced the kind of changes the Church’s opponents demands:  women ministers, gay clergy, and support for both birth control and abortion.

 

The Church of England and its American affiliate have ordained women and invested practicing homosexuals, yet their communion is riven with dissention and their church attendance is collapsing.  They are not alone – the United Methodists, Presbyterians and other mainline Protestant organizations are all losing worshipers at alarming rates.

 

To turn Mead on his head, many believe that the short-sighted decisions of these denominations to dump their core beliefes in an attempt to curry popular favor have utterly undermined their moral standing.

 

We already have several flavors of “Catholic Lite” and none of them are doing well.  Indeed,  I defy Mead to produce someone who would be a Catholic if only they made a woman pope and let gay priests marry each other.  (Note:  Andrew Sullivan does not count.)

 

Yet if Mead has completely missed the point of Benedict's ministry, David P. Goldman, who channels Spengler for Asia Times, understands it completely.

 

Goldman distilled this concept as "I have a mustard seed, and I'm not afraid to use it."  Rather than fall back on tired liberal theological tropes, Goldman actually read what His Holiness has to say.  He quotes this brilliant passage from one of Benedict's works:

We might have to part with the notion of a popular Church. It is possible that we are on the verge of a new era in the history of the Church, under circumstances very different from those we have faced in the past, when Christianity will resemble the mustard seed [Matthew 13:31-32], that is, will continue only in the form of small and seemingly insignificant groups, which yet will oppose evil with all their strength and bring Good into this world.

It is, as Goldman says, a stunning assertion.

 

It also perfectly refutes Mead’s concerns.  Better that the Church endure persecution and privation than that it surrender its sacred doctrine.  Holding to eternal truth is not a popularity contest.

 

How can Mead be unaware of this?

 

As I've said, Walter Russell Mead has a great deal of insight, but his knowledge of the Catholic Church seems to be an area where he needs to do more research.

Inside the Wolverine bunker

The Detroit News has been publishing excerpts of “Three and Out: Rich Rodriguez and the Michigan Wolverines in the Crucible of College Football,” by a fellow with the unlikely (but flavorful) name of John U. Bacon.

Normally I cannot be bothered to venture into the demented world that is Skunk Bear fandom, but I found the excerpts illuminating.

They proved that I was correct in assuming that the chaos in finding Lloyd Carr’s replacement as football head coach was the result of two factors:  Michigan’s inflated self-image and sabotage by Carr himself.

This is one of those telling quotes authors love:

"If I had to put my finger on anything," said longtime faculty representative Percy Bates, "it's this notion that, 'This is Michigan. Once the job is open, they're going to be banging my door down, and I'm going to pick and choose among all these great candidates. The only question is, which of these great coaches will I invite to accept the honor of coaching at Michigan?'

Yep, that pretty much sums up the Wolverine mindset.  They figured that once the position was open, applicants would be knocking down their door.

The problem is that anyone worth having already has a decent coaching job and would therefore be unlikely to jeopardize that by applying for work elsewhere.  Sooner or later the news would get out, and then their own players and assistants would wonder.

Essentially the fools in the Michigan Athletic Department figured that top-shelf candidates would willingly risk their own careers for the mere chance of coaching in the Big House.  It’s clinically deluded behavior.

The cruel truth was that U-M had been in a skid for years.  Even its best year in the last 40 – the hallowed1997 season – only brought half of the national title (point this out the next time a Skunk Bear fan argues that MSU’s Big Ten Title is somehow less of an achievement because it is shared).

By 2007, that high point had faded into obscurity to everyone except those wearing Wolverine-pattern do-rags on their mullet and swigging Bo Wine by the case.

Phil Fulmer won an outright national title for Tennessee – and they fired him when the program went down hill.  Fans were angry with Carr’s unimaginative coaching style, ossified play-calling and consistent failure to beat Ohio State.  He knew his days were numbered and the unprecedented loss to Appalachian State only made things worse.  He had to leave before he was kicked out.

Carr’s problem was that none of his assistants were ready to take over.  That was what he really wanted.  How else to explain his erratic behavior after he retired?

LSU’s Les Miles definitely wanted the job, and Carr wanted anyone but him.  Apparently Carr suggested RichRod, and then immediately undercut him by offering to sign transfer waivers for anyone who wanted to leave.  This latter development was the origin of the “bare cupboard” excuse.

It seems to me that either Carr was setting up RichRod to fail because none of his people had a shot, or he was simply irrational.  Either way, the result was the same: the Skunk Bears, who were already shaky, got to experience their own version of the John L. Smith era.

If anything, the excerpts show how important it is for hiring decisions to be made in a far-sighted and deliberate manner.  Like MSU, the Wolverines were in a panic and utterly unprepared to find a replacement.  The outgoing athletic director, Bill Martin, was utterly clueless.  This successor, Dave Brandon, is better but still made questionable decisions.

For one:  Why not fire RichRod for the NCAA violations and avoid the buyout clause in his contract?  Why wait until after the bowl game – a game everyone knew U-M would lose – to drop the axe?

He may have tried to make it look like he wasn’t trying to railroad RichRod, but it should have been clear that RichRod deserved the sack simply through his own ineptitude.  He was a terrible hire and a lousy coach.  He lied about his previous contract with West Virginia and U-M had to pay for most of his buyout.  Consecutive losing seasons despite a velvety-soft schedule built around a preponderance of home games should have told anyone that the Skunk Bears had an awful coach.

As I noted yesterday, U-M is structurally set up to win a minimum of eight games every year simply by showing up.  It takes extra effort to lose to teams like Toledo, yet RichRod managed to pull it off.

This track record is why I remain skeptical of Brady Hoke.  So far, he hasn’t done anything noteworthy.  The offense is the same and while the defense in improved, it took consistent, tireless effort to make it stink as badly as it did under RichRod.  Short of feeding the students valium in the pre-game meal, I don’t see how it could have gotten worse.

Given Michigan’s fan base, financial resources and recruiting pool - a lot of kids in the Midwest dream of playing there because of its reputation and don’t care who is coaching – the U-M football team was never going to be as hapless as the men’s basketball team.  The alumni would not allow it to happen.

The sportswriters are insisting that Hoke won’t let the team melt down, but I’ll believe it when I see it.  It wasn’t that long ago that the Skunk Bear faithful were wearing “May the Forcier Be With You” T-shirts, hailing him as a Heisman prospect.  Where is Tate Forcier now?  He’s a Spartan – no, not that kind – he’s at San Jose State University.

Forcier’s fate exemplified everything that was wrong about how RichRod ran his team. 

Hoke is doing better, but that’s a pretty low bar.

I’m not about to go buy the book, but the excerpts were illuminating.  As they say, read the whole thing.

 

 

Book review: Victory of the West

Over the past couple of weeks I've had the pleasure to finally read "Victory of the West," by
Niccolo Camponi.

It's an interesting read, and I learned a great deal not only about the events leading up to the Battle of Lepanto, but also naval warfare during that period.

Despite the title, the author takes great pains not to paint either side as better than the other.  However, there is simply no nice way to describe Janissaries - they are without a Christian equivalent and they pretty much give the lie to the whole notion that "jihad" really means "personal struggle" - unless getting to use enslaved children forcibly converted to your faith is a more accepted form of self-improvement than I thought.

Something the author stresses - and something that is worth pointing out to contemporary readers - is that both the Christians and the Muslims adhered to a code of honor.  Yes, they were locked in a holy war, but there were some things you just didn't do.

Indeed, to break one's work to the enemy was not only certain to earn their ire, it would also earn the contempt of your own side.  It makes a startling contrast with modern militant Islam, which basically can't be trusted to abide by any rules at all.  No act is too depraved for the modern Islamic terrorist - something that would have horrified the Sultan and his generals.

Looking back, it does give more credence to the notion that perhaps Mark Steyn is wrong; perhaps radical Islam is the "weaker horse" and only Western intellectual and civilizational cowardice is holding it up.  Certainly the Islam embodied by the Ottoman Empire in the 1500s was far more tolerant, self-confident and, for lack of a better term, civilized.

Anyhow, it's a worthwhile read, and loaded with period flavor.  Buy it!

I hate Elvish appeasement

Long-time readers of the Posse know that I’m a big fan of J.R.R. Tolkien.  I’ve recently finished Children of Hurin and when I saw that Mark Steyn had linked to an article that evoked comparisons between Middle Earth and our current world situation, well I had to go there.

Unfortunately, James Pinkerton’s article is a disaster – not only because it hugely misreads what Tolkien was trying to say, but because it is essentially incoherent.

If I could distill Pinkerton’s biggest mistake it would be this passage:

But Tolkien once confided, “The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision.” That is, Catholic in the sense that reality and history are complicated, that the world is rich in majesty and mystery, that human nature is but a poor vessel. In his world, the Shire is Christendom, and Christendom is the Shire.

No, it isn’t.  Pinkerton has this exactly backwards.  In fact, Tolkien was quite explicit in warning against what we might call “Shire-ism” – isolationism by another name.  Tolkien found the Hobbits praiseworthy because they just wanted to be left alone, it is true.  But they also had the wisdom and the inner greatness to step forward and save a larger world when the time came.

Had they simply stayed within their borders, they would certainly have been conquered and enslaved.

The whole point of the Lord of the Rings was that one couldn’t just save the Shire – you had to save everyone and everything – or nothing.

Tolkien didn’t castigate the West for trying to spread freedom and liberty as Pinkerton tries to do, but for failing to spread them enough.  That’s why he refers to it as a “Catholic” – that means “universal” - tale.

The character of Gandalf (Tolkien’s voice in much of his works) brings this point up repeatedly.

One of the consistent themes of the book is that the isolation of the Shire cannot be maintained.  Sooner or later the wide world will barge in.

Another theme is that inaction in the face of evil only increases danger.  In the Last Debate (Book V), Gandalf makes this explicit, saying:

[Sauron] has not built up his power until waiting until his enemies are secure, as we have done.

Gandalf is talking about how the West is always reacting, rather than acting – dare I say it, preemptively - against Sauron’s growing power.

In the years before Lord of the Rings takes place, we learn that the White Council – the body Pinkerton apparently seeks to emulate – patently refused to take action against Sauron until it was almost too late.  Of course that was partly because Saruman, the council’s leader, was planning to betray them.

When Tolkien said “Catholic,” he meant it.  Gandalf isn’t there just to save the Shire, or the West, but all of Middle Earth.  He made this explicit when speaking to Denethor in Book V:

"You think, as is your wont, my lord, of Gondor only," said Gandalf.  "Yet there are other men and other lives, and time still to be.  And for me, I pity even his slaves."

Far from urging the West to keep to its own affairs, Gandalf was urging universal action – the kind Pinkerton disparages when he describes the war in Iraq as ‘Uncle Sam forcing people to be free.’

At this point, one has to wonder if Pinkerton has even read the books.

Want an even bigger example?

Late in the essay, Pinkerton says this:

“To keep the peace, we must separate our civilizations. We must start with a political principle, that the West shall stay the West, while the East can do as it wishes on its side of the frontier, and only on its side.”

Gosh, this is exactly what Mordor asks for in a parley with Gandalf and Aragorn before the Black Gate at the climax of Lord of the Rings.  These are the terms that Sauron’s messenger offers:

"These are the terms," said the Messenger, and smiled as he eyed them one by one.  "The rabble of Gondor and its deluded allies shall withdraw at once beyond the Anduin, first taking oaths never again to assail Sauron the Great in arms, open or secret.  All lands east of the Anduin shall be Sauron's forever, solely.  West of the Anduin as far as the Misty Mountains shall be tributary to Mordor, and men there shall bear no weapons, but shall have leave to govern their own affairs." [...]

Looking at the Messenger's eyes they read his thought.  He was to be that lieutenant, and gather all that remained of the West under his sway; he would be their tyrant and they his slaves.

Gandalf rightly rejected this surrender, but - apart from the boundaries - it is little different from what Pinkerton hopes for.  Here’s his culiminating passage:

Having agreed that Israel must survive, within the protective ambit of Christendom, the council could engage Muslims—who are, themselves, in the process of restoring the Caliphate—in a grand summit. Only then, when West meets East, in diplomatic twain, might a chance exist for an enduring settlement.

So in Pinkerton’s vision of heroic valor, the “Knights of the West” will draw forth their ancestral blades, polish their armor, and then constitute a second United Nations to negotiate their gradual surrender.

I don’t know Pinkerton well, but this essay is stunningly weak.  He talks the good game about war, invokes everyone from Leonidas to Charles Martel, but in the end doesn’t really advocate doing anything other than having a Thomas Friedman-esque Arab-Israeli summit.

Like that’s not been tried before.

That’s why I say he is incoherent.  If you are going to issue the call to arms, at least go all the way.  If you believe there is an inevitable clash of civilizations and that sooner or later the Cross or the Crescent will fly in triumph over Mecca, Jerusalem and Rome, fine.  But don’t give us the St. Crispin’s Day speech (or worse still, Peter Jackson’s bastardized version of it) and then follow it up with the peace conference agenda.

I have to say I’m really surprised by this essay.  I’ve seen Tolkien used to argue many things, and Pinkerton isn’t the first to equate militant Islam with the power of Mordor.  However he is the first to suggest that the West should reach an accommodation with Sauron rather than strive for his defeat.

Look, I’m not sold on the need for a Holy War between East and West.  I think one is possible, but my last hope of averting it is based on events in Iraq. 

If there is a Frodo in all of this, it is George W. Bush who is doing what everyone else says cannot be done – creating an Arab democracy and spreading freedom in a part of the world that knows only extremism and hate.

The odds are long, the price is heavy and all the Wise say it will never work, but such is the challenge of our time.

Pinkerton may have missed this, but we aren’t “forcing” freedom on the Iraqis.  They are fighting along with our brave troops – they DO want their freedom and are dying for it every day.  The Iraqi Army’s losses are well in excess of ours and yet they keep getting stronger.

Look, these people have endured decades of dictatorship, war and starvation.  They are now pitted in a brutal war against a merciless enemy that will stop at nothing to destroy them.  It defies logic to argue that they’d have conquered Al Qaeda, defanged Iran and blockaded Syria, and put Saudi Arabia in its place, if they only wanted it badly enough – and they’d do it in FOUR YEARS.

Could the “realists” get less realistic?

I don’t know if we will ultimately succeed in Iraq.

What I do know is that you can’t make a change unless you try, and the message I took away from Lord of the Rings is that hope – even a fool’s hope – can succeed. 

If a hobbit and his servant can enter into the stronghold of Mordor and destroy the One Ring under Sauron’s very Eye, maybe we can help Iraq become a better place.

There are times when the little people shake the counsels of the Wise and Great.  It is entirely possible that common Iraqis and America’s best will unite and create what everyone said was impossible – and that the shock waves of that success will topple thrones from Tripoli to Riyadh. 

Maybe that is what is meant to be – and it is a far more encouraging thought.

Book Review: The Truth about Mohammed

As we were confined to our sickbed anyway last week, the Posse took the opportunity to catch up on our reading.

First up was Robert Spencer's excellent The Truth about Mohammed.  A somewhat slender tome, we found it easy going despite (critics might say because of) the stupendous amounts of drugs that were coursing through our system.

People who haven't read Spencer may assume that he's a sensationalist hack trying to turn a quick buck off of controversy.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

Spencer is nothing if not methodical.  He is at core a thorough research and this slender volume amply hammers home the point that Mohammad was not a very peaceful guy.

Indeed, unless you were one of his converts and a male, you wouldn't have a lot of nice things to say about him.  His treatment of women was horrible and there was this amazing tendency for Allah to give him a special dispensation exactly when he was about to break a rule (amazing how self-proclaimed prophets get to do this).

This is an essential piece of reference for anyone who wants to serious debate Islam and its role in modern society.  What is more, it does not abuse, denigrate or criticise (except in the mildest ways) its subject.  (One such mild criticism is Spencer's noting that when one of Mohammed's wives is accused of impropriety, Mohammed needs a divine reveleation to come to her defense, rather than doing so reflexively at a matter of love or trust).

Our only complaint is that the book is too short.  We would love to see a more extended examination of Mohammed's life and it is clear that Spencer knows a lot more than he is sharing.

One thing that is not in question is that Islam needs to make an honest reckoning with the West.  When its apologists claim it is a "religion of peace" they need to be called out for the liars that they are.  When we are told of Islam's tolerance, we need to reply by asking what the penalty is for leaving Islam (hint: you don't live to tell about it).

People should be free to differ and we favor freedom of religion.  But honest debates require honesty.

More and more, the debate about Islam resembles that about gun control: you have a minority of self-appointed experts who lie unabashedly to get their point across and support their policy.  Any encounters with facts are brushed aside or ignored - or the source of the truth is smeared as a bigot and/or racist.

Instead of "gun nuts," people who question Islam are "Islamophobes."  Fine.  Count us in.  We think fearing a religion that has its own word for relgious war, whose very founder promised paradise to those that died in battle spreading it - we call that a bit scary.