10 Reasons Why Modernist Christianity Must Die

Fr. Dwight Longenecker has a fine post listing 1o reasons why modernist Christianity (both Roman Catholic and Protestant) must eventually die out. The process take a long time (mostly because of endowment money that artificially prolongs the life of dead liberal churches) but it is inevitable.

I especially found #1, 2, 5 and 9 to be true in my experience. Modernism or Liberalism is really individualist and anti-supernaturalist in nature and it lacks joy. The good news is that liberals are contracepting and aborting themselves out of existence; apparently only seriously religious people find good reasons to have children in large enough numbers to replace the population.

Modernist Christianity is a very boring, scolding, joyless moralism that wears you down after a while. Listening to sermon after sermon about how "You must do A" "You must do B" "Saving the world depends on you doing X" just drains people. There is no grace, no good news, no joy, no wonder at what God has done and is doing. The Gospel is all about what God has done for me that I could never have done for myself, which is liberating, inspiring and motivating.

Much of Evangelical Christianist has bought into modernism as well as the dying formerly mainline Protestant churches. We need to recover the Gospel, not imitate the liberals in acting as if doing social work and fighting for equal rights were all there was to Christianity.

Royal Ontario Museum Makes It Big!

The addition to the Royal Ontario Museum, that ugly white pimple on the face of one of the most dignified buildings in our fair city, as I once described it, has now made a list of the Ten Ugliest Buildings in the World. It sits at #8, which suggests to me that it can't even be the best at what it is good at - namely, at being ugly.

Now that is what I call putting Toronto on the map. Ouch.

Virtual Tourist has pictures of the (shudder) whole list here. The picture from this website is bad enough, but the picture accompanying the Toronto Star article on it has the whole ROM leaning dangerously to the right like some sort of drunken sailor. Well, if I were a stately and dignified old building like the ROM and someone attached that monstrosity to my north side, I'd likely be looking for the bottle too.

The only question I have is why the Robarts Library of the University of Toronto, which is just down the street and around the corner from the ROM, is not on the list too? It looks like a Stalin-era, "subsidized apartments for the new Soviet man," concrete slab of human cubicles with no symmetry, form or balance. It looks like someone ordered a certain sized load of concrete and then they just stuck things on until the supply ran out and called it finished.

Why does a city like Toronto have so many inhumane and nerve-wracking buildings and why do all the human-friendly and nourishing structures date from the era of the "oppression" by Christian forces prior to World War II? It's just one of the little mysteries of life, I guess.

Sarah Palin versus Barack Obama: Two American Originals

Rex Murphy lives up to his reputation of being someone who refuses to let the herd tell him what to think. He always has an interesting and contrarian perspective that is free of cant and politically correct mush. Here is his take on the Sarah Palin.

"There are two great political speakers in the America today. Sarah Palin is the other one. Barack Obama's speaking skills are his signature talent. He's a platform performer, a speechmaker in the great tradition, a kind of teleprompter Cicero. The campaign to become President owed more to Mr. Obama's oratorical mastery than to any other element. His speech on race in America, necessitated by revelations of the ugly thoughts and sentiments of his hometown preacher, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, was the most important event of his campaign. If it had failed, his candidacy would have been doomed. Under pressure – the great test of the real speechmaker – he delivered.

The other great speech of the U.S. campaign season was Sarah Palin's on receiving the vice-presidential slot on the McCain ticket. This was a speech delivered under even greater pressures than that of Mr. Obama. John McCain's choice of Ms. Palin had been early and widely criticized, and in some quarters ferociously reviled. She had never really been under the national spotlight before. The entire media were focused on her with an intensity almost unseen in the annals of vice-presidential politics. If she'd been just “okay,” or messed up, John McCain's campaign was over. It was the highest of high-stakes gambles.

Did she deliver? She soared. She was the very acme of self-confidence and ease. She mixed a natural charm with a mischievous edge of sarcasm toward her opponents – even daring the unthinkable by pinging The One himself. It was her “first serve” on the national stage and she delivered an ace. The backwoods hick knocked it out of the hall that night – not only did she not sink the McCain campaign, she gave it the only real vitality and spark that gloomy, tight, fussy little campaign had from start to finish.

Her speech, in fact, was the rhetorical equivalent of Mr. Obama's crucial one. They do not as speakers, it is obvious, share the same idiom. Mr. Obama is utterly composed, deliberate down to gesture and word, very conscious that he is a “figure” on a stage. Mr. Obama “bestows” himself on an audience. Ms. Palin has none of that. She will never speak in front of faux Greek columns. She walks on the stage much the same way she'd go into a gas station. But she's shrewd in her choice of themes, has a marvellous feel for her audience, and a confidence that will never be confused with arrogance."

Murphy goes on to explain that all the incredible venom spewed out against Palin actually demonstrates how much liberals fear her.

"Ms. Palin is in the hurricane's eye again with the publication of Going Rogue. The Associated Press assigned no fewer than 11 reporters to “fact check” Ms. Palin's memoir, a concentration of scrutiny AP would never presume to exert over the man who's actually in the White House. Elements of the press mock and scorn her with a fury that is near inexplicable. Rather fewer extol her gifts. But pro or con, the media cannot get enough of her.

A truly dumb and witless person would not have the demure columnist David Brooks hissing dismissively, angrily in fact, on a Sunday morning talk show that Sarah Palin “is a joke.” Poor Mr. Brooks gets intellectual hives just thinking about her. Empty vessels do not inspire such venom and fury. . . . Those who call her a joke are expressing an anxious hope not offering a rational description."

Before Ronald Reagan became president he was attacked and mocked mercilessly by the liberal media. But by the end of his presidency he was regarded as one of the greatest presidents of the century. He was polarizing before he became a symbol of unity. And he had the same ability that Sarah Palin has to "connect" with the average American, which gave him the power to go "over the heads" of the media.

I think the fear and loathing (and desperation to bring her down) on the part of the liberal establishment arises from this same quality. They sense that she has the ability to disrupt business as usual and speak directly to the grass roots in such a way as to disrupt the script written by big government, big business and the media elite who do their bidding. So she is dangerous; which is to say that she is dangerous in every way that any populist is dangerous, except more so, because of her ability to speak over the heads of the media. Populist movements can be controlled, manipulated, distorted and hidden in plain view. But a leader and speaker who can personally embody populism is a different matter.

I think the Republican Party establishment is as afraid of her as is the Democratic Party. There is no telling what she will do. Support conservative candidates of both parties? Form a third party? Take over the Republican Party? Who knows? She is not a conventional politican who owes her importance to the Washington chattering class or the party bosses. Look at the simpering senators now being systmatically bought by Harry Reid to support his health care takeover with its stealth abortion expansion provisions (100 million was the price for the senator from Lousiana). They owe their souls to the money the Democratic Party establishment will gladly provide them with if only they vote as good little robots no matter what the polls back home say. Sarah Palin's popularity and power wasn't given by Washington and it can't be taken away by Washington, nor by Hollywood, nor by Wall Street.

No wonder she reduces the party hacks to whining, whimpering, slobbering attack dogs. Regardless of what happens to Sarah Palin, it's actually nice to see them sweat it out.

Mark Steyn on Obama's Bipartisanship

Sorry for the slow blogging this past week. I've been marking papers and that puts me in a certain kind of mood - let's just say the kind of mood that the public should never be allowed to see! Seriously, I've been snowed under, but stuff has been happening in the world that I want to comment on so stay tuned. Meanwhile: a little humour.

Mark Steyn's writing is funny enough that I could imagine even lefties secretly chuckling at some of his one-liners. Here is Steyn's description of Obama's bipartisanship:

"But Obama’s much vaunted “bipartisanship,” to which so many “moderate”
conservatives were partial a year ago, seems to have dwindled down to an
impressive ability to take one side of an issue in his rhetoric and another in
his actions."

Itwouldn't be so funny if it wasn't so true.

European Parliament Hears Warning of "Demographic Winter"

Zenit new agency reports that the Institue for Family Policies has presented an alarming report on Europe's future to the European Parliament. Here is a snippet:

"The data shows how the indicators of population, birthrate, marriages, family and home breakups have worsened over the last 28 years.

People who are older than 65 already outnumber by more than 6.5 million children under age 14, and every year fewer children are born.

Moreover, according to the IFP, there is "a collapse of marriages, with
increasingly fewer marriages and more broken ones -- one million divorces a year -- and with homes being emptied; two out of every three European homes have
no children.""

So-called private morality issues - sexual promiscuity, abortion, divorce etc. - turn out to have widespread social, political and economic implications:

"The president of the IFP affirmed that this "is causing evident effects, both in the economic as well as the social dimension."

He explained: "In the economic dimension, there is an increase in public spending because of the aging population, with an increase in investments dedicated to pensions and health expenses. Expenses that, added to the effects caused by the fall in public earnings due to the deficit of the birthrate can end by causing the reduction/elimination of social loans and, in the end, the bankruptcy of the welfare state.""

No matter how committed one is to the welfare state, one would nonetheless think that its looming bankruptcy would be a cause for concern.

"If the tendency is not halted, by 2050 the European population will have lost 27.3 million people, one out of every three persons will be older than 65 and only one out of every eight persons will be younger than 15, while the average age will be 46.7.

In regard to abortion, the IFP spoke of an "explosion" -- 28 million abortions in the EU since 1990, making it the first cause of mortality in Europe."

This is a picture of the culture of death in action. The most depressing thought that occurs to me reading this data is that the solution that will undoubtedly be brought forward is - you guessed it - more killing. Euthanasia for the lonely elderly who have no one to speak up for them will lengthen out the time it will take for the economy to crash and staving off the inevitable is apparently all the contemporary European mind is capable of engaging with any more.

Read it all here.

Italy Rebels Against Secularist Totalitarianism

The Catholic News Agency has a real "Man Bites Dog" story as ordinary Italians rebel against the top-down, totalitarian, secularism that the European Court of Human Rights is attempting to shove down their throats:

"A number of Italian officials have responded to the ruling by the European
Human Rights Court that ordered schools in Italy to remove crucifixes from the
classrooms by taking unprecedented measures to preserve the Christian symbol.

According to the Italian daily “Avvenire,” the mayor of Sezzadio, Pier
Luigi Arnera, has leveled a fine of 500 euros against anyone who removes a
crucifix from a public place.

Arnera explained that the displaying of the crucifix in “places other
than churches does not affect the dignity of anyone, because it is one of our
cultural references.” Likewise in the cities of Sassuolo and Trapani, officials have acquired dozens more crucifixes to display them in public schools.

In Montegrotto Terme, digital billboards that normally are used to inform
the public are now displaying the crucifix with the phrase, “We will not take it
down.”

It is about time. Doesn't a court have more pressing issues to deal with than attempting to eradicate every trace of Christian influence on European culture? Well, actually, for a certain kind of militant secularist there is no more important issue. Honor killings, trampling of free speech - trivial issues. But cleansing the public square of all traces of Christian culture: now there is a pressing issue.

Remember: they can only this to you if you choose to let them and if you let them they will strip away your culture, your past, your memory and your religion. They only want consumers with no culture and nothing that makes you able to resist manipulation through advertising and the media. They do not want Italians or Croats or Poles - only Europeans: one-dimensional material men, actually, last men.

The Economist on Falling Fertility

The influential British magazine, The Economist, has an interesting story on "Falling Fertility" in the latest issue. It is gratifying to (finally) see the mainstream media admit (after 50 years of saying the opposite) that there is no such thing as the population bomb, the world is not dangerously over-populated and the population explosion is a myth. So the story informs us (without a hint of irony or embarassment for doing a U-turn) that:

"Fertility is falling and families are shrinking in places— such as Brazil, Indonesia, and even parts of India—that people think of as teeming with children. As our briefing shows, the fertility rate of half the world is now 2.1 or less—the magic number that is consistent with a stable population and is usually called “the replacement rate of fertility”. Sometime between 2020 and 2050 the world’s fertility rate will fall below the global replacement rate."

Now the absolutely astonishing thing here is that The Economist has just stated that world population is about to start falling and it follows this frightening scenario with a yawn! It seems that it has yet to dawn on The Economist that this fact implies shrinking economies, scarcity of resources, fewer workers to support growing populations of seniors, and probably a collapse of the world economy. What kinds of social chaos will follow shrinking population and the shrinking economic growth that always accompanies drops in population? The Economist is oblivious and seems not to be concerned. Every country or empire in history that has seen its population decline has fallen. Then again, every empire that has fallen in to sensuality, decadence and luxury like our's has also fallen. So I guess we just eat, drink and be merry until we run out of food.

The complacency about falling population rates seems to go hand in hand with the fanatical obsession with global warming. For the same article goes on to say:

"Nonsense, say Malthus’s heirs. All this misses the point: there are too many
people for the Earth’s fragile ecosystems. It is time to stop—and ideally
reverse—the population increase. To celebrate falling fertility is like
congratulating the captain of the Titanic on heading towards the iceberg more
slowly.

The Malthusians are right that the world’s population is still increasing and can do a lot more environmental damage before it peaks at just over 9 billion in 2050. That will certainly be the case if poor, fast-growing countries follow the economic trajectories of those in the rich world. The poorest Africans and Asians produce 0.1 tonnes of CO2 each a year, compared with 20 tonnes for each American. Growth is helping hundreds of millions to escape grinding poverty. But if the poor copy the pattern of wealth creation that made Europe and America rich, they will eat up as many resources as the Americans do, with grim consequences for the planet. What’s more, the parts of the world where populations are growing fastest are also those most vulnerable to climate change, and a rising population will exacerbate the consequences of global warming—water shortages, mass migration, declining food yields."

The Economist seems to be living in La La land on this issue. If anyone thinks that an irreversible fall in population is going to be a net benefit to the human race and to planet earth they are simply not able to walk and chew gum at the same time. Sure we need to think about climate change, but if we forget to think about the economy at the same time we will simply replace the cyanide with rat poison, we will simply exchange one global catastrophe for another. Pick your poison.

The world needs a stable population and a growing economy to support that population. We must remember that demographics (like climate) never stands still. Even if the population levels off it will still change for a few more generations as the percentage of seniors increases. The great danger is that the current trends will result, not in a stable population, but in a declining population coupled with a aging population and that is a recipe for economic disaster. We may get the population reduction so many of Malthus's pessimistic heirs long for all right - through mass starvation. If that is what the "Green" movement wants, then the "Green" movement is the enemy of mankind.

The population disaster won't wait until the climate change issue is resolved before it bites us. If we can't focus on two things at once we will inevitably leave one until it is too late. The Economist would do well to learn how to walk and chew gum at the same time - and quickly.