Vox Consocio

Vox Cantoris: Bishop Athanasius Schneider--"Communion in the hand must go!"

2012-01-21T09:53:00.000-08:00

Vox Cantoris: Bishop Athanasius Schneider--"Communion in the hand must go!": Cardinal Ratzinger was lied to in 1978. He knows that now. It wasn't a complete lie, but it was a distortion of the truth that amounted to a lie. The early Church *never* used the left hand as a sort of platen, and *never* allowed worshippers to grab the host with the right hand. The early Church placed the host upon the palm of the worshipper's right hand, and the worshipper ate the host right from the palm. There was never any grabbing or holding.

George and the Modernists

2010-12-15T05:54:00.000-08:00

This is a fairy tale about faraway places and clever men. Like all fairy tales, there is a hidden moral. See if you can find it!

This story begins in the mythical land of Malaysia. The leader of the Malaysians is a king, let's call him Mahathir. Mahathir is a Muslim, and is constrained to act in Muslim ways. He is not allowed to amass fortunes. All the money he receives from taxes must return to the people in one way or another. However, from time to time his country experiences a typhoon or famine and Mahathir is forced to borrow money for a short time, in order to feed his people. Mahathir has been working with another man, let's call him George, to obtain these short term loans. George is not a Muslim. George is not constrained by the beliefs of Islam. However, even knowing this, Mahathir has begun to trust George. George has proven himself to be a very capable man. On many occassions, when Mahathir was in a panic due to the sufferings of his people, George was right there with ready infusions of cash to help him through the dark days. Furthermore, George was worldly, and witty. He knew of things far beyond the borders of Malaysia, and Mahathir enjoyed his company.

George tempted Mahathir with stories about new technologies of almost unlimited power. George brought in experts from all over the world to delight Mahathir with clever new designs and cutting edge theories. George could also provide the loans to make it all happen. George's financial powers were far in advance of anything in the Muslim world. He had ways of converting and moving cash, of creating derivatives and leveraging investments, of profiting off taxpayers and foreign investors. George was amazing. Mahathir was a modernist, in that he believed that all men might approach God in their own way. Mahathir thought that George, although he was not a Muslim, might be allowed into heaven as he was a good man and a clever chap.

Mahathir began to commit the tax revenues of the land to George's marvels of engineering. He started off small, but every project was so wildly successful that he was encouraged to get more and more ambitious. Each new enterprise added to the power and influence of his country. Each new proposal opened up a floodgate to an astonishing amount of foreign capital. Malaysia began to become rich. Mahathir did not fully understand George's financial dealings at the beginning of their relationship, and now that the stakes were much higher he understood even less. However, Mahathir trusted George, and expected that George was committed to the welfare of the Malaysian people. George, however, had his own plans.

George was also courting the king of another land, let's call it Britain. This land was away to the West, on the very fringes of civilization. This king, whom we shall call Henry, was a Christian and was constrained by the beliefs of the Catholic faith. He was not allowed to amass a fortune, or profit to the detriment of other Christians. However, Henry was a modernist, in that he was ignorant. Henry did not worry about the future. Henry wanted his poor, forgotten land to become a great power and he was willing to do anything to achieve this. Henry promised George a very liberal return on investment, and George was more than willing.

One busy night, through a series of complex transactions, George converted the entire investment capital of Malaysia into cash and transferred it to the kingdom of Britain. The next morning, Malaysia was impoverished. Mahathir was stunned. He could not have imagined that George's great financial ferris wheel could be shut down and taken away so quickly and quietly. But it was gone. As the people of Malaysia began to starve, Mahathir sent an angry letter off to George demanding some expanation. George responded immediately, explaining that he was now under the protection of the British king and that he was sorry that things worked out the way they did but that after all he was just making a good business decision. Mahathir lay down his head in an attitude of dispair. He had betrayed the trust of the people of Malaysia.

King Henry was in a better mood. George's flood of cash had attracted the same kind of foreign genius that had transformed Malaysia into a great nation. Henry could see that Britain was about to become a world power. Henry could not see that these great loans would eventually impoverish the land of Britain, just as it had broken the economy of Malaysia. Henry could not have predicted that before his lifetime had ended, he will have sold his crown, robbed the Church blind, and turned his own people into paupers.

One thing Henry had not planned for was the enmity of Islam. George had suddenly become a world famous anti-semite, and George was under the protection of the British crown. The world began to draw lines in what was to be a great struggle between the growing powers of Christendom and the sophisticated Muslim world. The kings of Europe and the Middle East began to arm themselves, falling even deeper in debt to George and his friends.

Instead of turning to war, Mahathir turned toward wisdom. It became clear to Mahathir why his religion prohibited the kind of financial trickery that George relied upon to build his fortunes. After doing a little research, Mahathir learned that George, and people like him, had done this same trick to a dozen other nations over a thousand years. First it was Phoenicia, then Babylon, Venice, then Amsterdam... Each country was left more destitute than the last. Never again did Malaysia allow parasites like George to get a foothold within its borders. While the rest of the world shook with futile battles, Malaysia slowly and gradually became a peaceful harbor, free from want and generous to its neighbors.

What would you do if you saw George making deals with your country's leaders?

Holodeck Theology

2010-04-05T11:44:00.000-07:00

This is a Catholic Theology where everything in our world is just a Holodeck computer-created object created to Test us. When you die, the Holodeck snaps off and all you see is what is Real: human souls, angels, and God. Angels are just human souls created before the Holodeck was turned on so they are less confused about the nature of Reality.

Today you may be passing your Tests, but you may fail tomorrow. However, know that no Test is given that is beyond your capability. Another thing: we can never be sure whether the person next to you is a Holodeck construction, or a human soul, a powerful angel, or Jesus Christ Himself standing in, to Test us. You must treat them well in any case.

We spend our lives decorating Holodeck houses, hoarding Holodeck money, and struggling against our neighbors (Real or otherwise). The only thing that really matters is the Real world, that world we only get to see for the first time on that final day when we snap out of our Holodeck dream.

It's a Catholic Theology for the 22nd century and I just made it up.

Historical significance of the Jesus revolution

2008-08-26T11:26:00.000-07:00

The Philosophical Impact of Jesus Christ
(lifted from an email by Ken Freeland)

The Old Testament books are themselves a hodgepodge of many, sometimes very contradictory, beliefs and opinions (not to mention problematic histories). But essentially there is one contradiction that especially concerns Christians: The Old Testament god is of course vindictive, jealous and extraordinarily violent - an all-punishing kind of god. His "chosen people" are steeped in what must be termed exophobia, fear and hatred for all that is different from their own belief system. In the course of time, however, a second tradition springs up alongside of it, which is called the "prophetic" tradition. While this is also a mixed bag, in the fullness of time it develops a kind of cohesion around principles of social justice, equality before God's law, and preaches a causal relationship between the virtue of the Israelite citizenry, and the ultimate success of the state. The ancient belief was that military success was given by Yahweh, and that social welfare followed as a consequence. The prophetic tradition increasingly argued the opposite: that it is precisely the level of social justice manifest by the people that determines the social integrity and therefore ultimate success of the state, the outward manifestation of the people. Still, these two tendencies subsisted side by side in the Judaic tradition, and the social justice mandate itself was limited in its application to the traditional tribe - one's fellow Hebrews. Now Jesus does certainly assert that he, like the John the Baptist before him, stands in succession to the prophetic tradition, but unlike all of the earlier prophets (from some of whom he freely borrows), he is NOT willing to tolerate the opposing school of thought. It is in this light that we best understand his often misunderstood statement that he came "not to bring peace but a sword." These two traditions, in his view, are incompatible, and one must clearly separate them and choose between them, even though this will lead to serious social division. And so he maximizes the social justice ethic of the later prophetic tradition to the point where it alone has ethical value (and in fact a universal, not merely tribal, ethical value) so that exophobia is categorically and explicitly rejected, and exophilia takes its place. The agape of Christianity is exactly that: universal love. All mankind are included in its sweep, and there is no ground left for the old exophobia. Jesus warns that those who continue the old tradition (and he knows many will) must face calamity in the inevitable clash with stronger outsiders, such as the then-dominant Roman empire. And this comes to pass, exactly as Jesus has prophetically predicted, in 70 AD.

Two Gods

2008-08-26T11:25:00.000-07:00

The importance of Christian Heresy
(lifted from an email by Ken Freeland)

Those who conspired against Jesus and brought about his execution, the Pharisees in particular, gained de facto political control of Judaism after the destruction of the Temple, which destroyed the power base of their rivals, the Saducees and their sacrficial cult. The new Judaism was based on the oral traditions, the same ones Jesus had remonstrated against because they were used to supplant the Law of God, and these were eventually formulated in the Talmud, which is now the principal scriptural authority of Judaism. Its essence is exophobic, and it represents the survival of that branch or tradition of Judaism which Jesus categorically rejected, and which in turn, necessarily, rejected Him. It harks back to a god of ethnocentrism and malevolence towards all who are not part of their biblical "tribe." The same god that tells them to love their friends and hate their enemies, and not only hate them but exterminate them root and branch. That Jesus explicitly repudiated this posturing tells us that Marcion was not far off the mark - the same god that tells his people to exterminate all their heretical neighbors cannot be the same Father of Jesus who commanded us to love our enemies. There is just no way to reasonably reconcile these two gods. It is remarked in the Gospels that the people hearkened to Jesus because he did NOT teach as the scribes and Pharisees (i.e., by citing unchallengable precedent), but "as one having authority," in other words, as one whose teachings were independent of that entire legal tradition. This is the moral revolution wrought by Jesus for everyone who had eyes to see and ears to hear. But of course, insofar as he moved people AWAY from the desire for the violent conquest of power, he was, in the view of the traditionalist leaders, an "anti-messiah." Because they were seeking a military hero/leader, one who would vanquish the Romans and the rest of the gentile powers. And Jesus had not the slightest interest in that (as he tried to convey to Pilate). In any case, we must see that both of these traditions, the late prophetic tradition revolutionized and universalized by Jesus of Nazareth, and the contrary exophobic tradition amplified by the Pharisees and their allies, continue today in the form of radical Christianity on the one hand, and Talmudic Judaism on the other. These two make OPPOSING claims to the nature of God and to the moral obligations of man, that form the real "clash of civilizations" in today's world. It is, at base, less of a political struggle (though its poltical ramifications are real enough) than it is a moral struggle between two diametrically opposed world views which are, as Jesus was the first to argue, totally incompatible. The universal ethic of Christianity, however much breached in practice, can never be reconciled with the exclusivist, particularist mania that permeates the Talmud. And while it is certainly important to examine contradictions that may be located within Christian doxology, they pale by comparison with this far more important OPPOSITION that must never be lost sight of. It is a foundational truth of Christianity, and is still playing itself out in the contemporary world.

To Be Against Race

2008-08-20T23:42:00.000-07:00

What does it mean, to be against race?

First, we must define race. Let's check the wiki:

The term race or racial group usually refers to the concept of dividing humans into populations or groups on the basis of various sets of characteristics.[1] The most widely used human racial categories are based on visible traits (especially skin color, cranial or facial features and hair texture), and self-identification.[1][2]

Conceptions of race, as well as specific ways of grouping races, vary by culture and over time, and are often controversial for scientific as well as social and political reasons. The controversy ultimately revolves around whether or not races are natural types or socially constructed, and the degree to which perceived differences in ability and achievement, categorized on the basis of race, are a product of inherited (i.e. genetic) traits or environmental, social and cultural factors.

Some argue that although race is a valid taxonomic concept in other species, it cannot be applied to humans.[3] Many scientists have argued that race definitions are imprecise, arbitrary, derived from custom, have many exceptions, have many gradations, and that the numbers of races delineated vary according to the culture making the racial distinctions; thus they reject the notion that any definition of race pertaining to humans can have taxonomic rigour and validity.[4] Today most scientists study human genotypic and phenotypic variation using concepts such as "population" and "clinal gradation". Many contend that while racial categorizations may be marked by phenotypic or genotypic traits, the idea of race itself, and actual divisions of persons into races, are social constructs.

That's right, I agree with the wiki. Race is bullshit. I am against it.

So what is racism? Let's check wiki again:

Racism, by its simplest definition, is the belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.

Yes, but it's simpler, and bigger than that. A racist is someone who believes in race. Someone who believes that race is "a valid taxonomic concept" for humans. You see, race is founded on bullshit pseudoscience. If you were taught to be a racist, you will think like a racist. We all were taught to be racist, and today it is still being reinforced via government programs and the media.

The origins of race can be found in the bible: "Shem, Ham and Japheth, the three sons of Noah, producing distinct Semitic (Asian), Hamitic (African), and Japhetic (European) peoples."

To deny race is to deny the racial sciences of the 19th century, and the eugenics of the 20th.
To deny race is to deny the racism of the ancient Hebrews and their modern cousins.

Do Brahmins believe they are a different race than the Dalits? No. They believe they have been assigned a cultural role from birth by God, and they are determined to play that role out. Every group has rules they follow, that's what sets them apart - nothing there about race science, skin color, hair analysis, bumps on the head, etc. You begin your role when you are born, but that is a long way from attempting to forge a heritage in the way the Hebrews did in the bible.

As far as I know, there is only one religion left that is based on the notion that they are a race apart, a "chosen people." It is not a major religion; in fact, it is quite a small cult. However, they are in possession of fabulous wealth, enormous political power, and an unknown number of nuclear weapons. They sit atop the holy land and have now walled themselves in. The name we speak in whispers. Opposition to the behavior of this group will be instantly placed onto a racial platform, where the crimes of the 20th century are replayed for their emotional impact.

Race is their primary weapon; an imaginary weapon, but no less dangerous. A mere accusation will shut up the most stubborn opponent. I would like to defuse this weapon. It is a method of censorship, like calling your opposition "evildoers". It means nothing, but it could cost you your job, your social network, your life.