To support a candidate not for what he is, but for what he might be, or what you wish he were

On Converting for the Wrong Reasons

by NICHOLAS SENZ


The last few weeks have seen the ranks of the #NeverTrump crowd dwindling somewhat as several once-staunch opponents of The Donald have concluded that, despite their myriad objections to Trump’s positions and personality, he would still be preferable to Hilary Clinton as president. Now, the dominance of the two-party system in the United States has resulted in many a voter casting his ballot less in support of one candidate than in opposition to another candidate over our nation’s electoral history—this would be nothing new. The difference, and the interest, lies in the apologia that some of these Trump converts make for their position: we are told by a number of new Trumpers that a President Trump is certain to be more friendly to traditional Republican interests, that his antics are only intended to rile up a key portion of the electorate to sweep him into the White House, and that post-inauguration we can trust him to appoint originalist Supreme Court justices, deal effectively with Congress, and charmingly engage our foreign allies. “He can change!” they plead.

Take radio host Hugh Hewitt. After pushing for changes to convention rules to thwart Trump’s nomination, Hewitt recently made an about-face and wrote an op-ed in theWashington Post backing Trump against Hilary Clinton—not because he supports Mr. Trump’s positions, mind you, but because “the prospect of another President Clinton, especially a Clinton who is so mired in scandal, compromised on national security and is the author of so many foreign-policy meltdowns, has a way of concentrating the mind.” While voicing his support for Trump as the only viable choice to prevent Secretary Clinton from being elected, Hewitt also signals what he expects, or would like, Trump to do going forward in his campaign: “Trump’s task now is clear: It’s time to abandon his off-the-cuff remarks, disengage from his battles with the media and methodically prosecute the case that throughout her career, [Hillary] Clinton has consistently displayed a disqualifying lack of judgment. He needs to develop this argument, detail it and drive it home.”

Any priest worth his collar would respond to an affianced person making such a plea about their intended by encouraging them to think carefully about their situation and seriously consider whether this was a proper match for them. A marriage that begins with the requirement that one party eventually change and the expectation that they will is not starting out on the best footing. (And here we mean significant changes—not so much “stop leaving your dirty socks in the living room” as “stop abusing alcohol and get a job.”) Choosing a marriage partner is a much more momentous and lasting choice than selecting a candidate to support in a given election, but the comparison holds in the crucial aspect: when we choose someone while hoping they’ll change, then what is it that we’re choosing?

My point here is not to focus on Trump himself, but to use the situation his presumptive nomination has created as an analogy for a certain type of convert to the Catholic faith. (The analogy limps, as all analogies do, but let’s take it as far as it can go.) I take as my exemplar former British prime minister Tony Blair, who converted to Catholicismshortly after leaving office in 2007. Mr. Blair’s wife and children were already Catholics, and he frequently attended Mass, so the news was not particularly surprising to many. Blair said of his conversion, “As time went on, I had been going to Mass for a long time … it’s difficult to find the right words. I felt this was right for me. There was something, not just about the doctrine of the Church, but of the universal nature of the Catholic Church.”

However, not long after being received into the Church, Mr. Blair began to openly criticize the Church for its teachings on several aspects of sexual morality. An article inNewsweek informed us that “Though a devout believer, he stands in opposition to his pope on issues like abortion, embryonic-stem-cell research and the rights of gay people to adopt children and form civil unions. ‘I guess there’s probably not many people of any religious faith who fully agree with every aspect of the teaching of the leaders of their faith,’ he says.” In an interview, Blair said, “Actually, we need an attitude of mind where rethinking and the concept of evolving attitudes becomes part of the discipline with which you approach your religious faith,” attributing the Church’s consistent teaching on these matters to a mere “generation gap.”

Is not such an attitude puzzling, event troubling? Just how did Mr. Blair feel “at home” in the Church if he considers it bigoted, benighted, and befuddled, like a grandparent who “was just raised that way”? The Church considers its teachings to be an integral whole, one inseparable from the other and all interwoven with one another. Does Mr. Blair accept that the Church is divinely guided in its teachings on the divinity of Christ and the grace of the sacraments but not in certain areas of morality? How could that be? The answer may come in that Mr. Blair is by trade a politician; I fear he, like too many others, views the teachings of the Church as though they were the planks of a political party platform—how often are they called “positions” in the media?—to be debated or negotiated at will.

To be clear, not every person who struggles with an aspect of Church teaching falls under this criticism. It is one thing to approach the Church and say, “I would like to enter the Church, but the Church’s teaching on X, Y, and Z is very different from the way I am used to thinking; I am still working that out, but I trust Our Lord when he said that the Spirit would lead the apostles into all truth, and I will be docile and listen.” It is another thing to say, “I would like to enter the Church, but the Church is in error on X, Y, and Z, and I trust that the Church will bow to the spirit of the times, and I will be vocal and intractable.” The former shows humility; the latter, stubbornness at best, arrogance at worst.

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Read more: www.crisismagazine.com

After taking the measure of our desperation, it is clear that the way forward is the way back

Desperate America


by TIMOTHY D. LUSCH


“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” True in Thoreau’s age, perhaps, not so much in ours. It seems the decibels of desperation have increased since Henry David’s days near Walden Pond. And not decibels only, but desperation. Nowadays we take our desperation at alarmingly acceptable rates. How often we merely “consume” media coverage of a mass killing, a sadistic murder, or the latest teenage suicide. And that is if we bother to get beyond the headlines. Often, I’ve heard it called The New Normal. I have no idea what this means. I take it to mean, of course, that we are both desensitized and accustomed to the screaming desperation in our country. It is at once an acknowledgement of, and a gloss upon, the point.

The point has gotten sharper.

Young Nones leave sacred places for safe spaces. Catastrophizing the need for the latter, while ignoring the former, exposes the desperation woven into the very name for the religiously unaffiliated.

Beyond the scourge of illegal drugs, the veneer of acceptability persists in the abuse of prescribed narcotics. The U.S. is less than 5 percent of the world’s population, but consumes 80 percent of the global opioid painkillers and 99 percent of the global supply of hydrocodone, the active ingredient in Vicodin.

More troubling still, the National Center for Health Statistics recently reported that suicides in America have reached a 30-year high. The report shows increases in every age group except older adults. Significantly, the suicide rate of young girls aged 10-14 tripled. There was a particularly steep increase for women overall and a substantial uptick for those in middle age.

These are branches of the same dying vine. They are also desperate answers to questions facing desperate people. By themselves, though, they do not answer the question.

Why are we so desperate?

When I bring this up in conversation, some people respond with Keep Calm and Carry On. Most go long on history because they are short on interest. Bad stuff, they say, has been going on since the beginning of time. No time is worse than any another. But this does not suffice when one takes a close, sustained look at the phenomenon of desperation in our country. Why? Because each elides the point. We are simply trying to avoid it altogether. Yet the point remains.

Desperation defined is clear enough. Desperation displayed isn’t always so. We can all agree that an increased suicide rate is a symptom of widening desperation. Likewise, the excessive use and abuse of prescription drugs. There is likely to be more disagreement over the extent to which a surfeit of stupidity signals desperation. Any number of reality shows and YouTube videos, in my view, are disgusting and disturbing evidence of desperation. Here, I concede, the waters muddy a bit. It may be easier to apply Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s well-worn description of pornography to the phenomenon of desperation in its modern iteration. We know it when we see it. All the same, these are but signs and symptoms. If we are to have any hope in redeeming the country and the culture, we must, as they say in Alcoholics Anonymous, get down to causes and conditions. Perhaps we should look to Captain MacWhirr’s advice to young Jukes in Joseph Conrad’s Typhoon, “Facing it—always facing it—that’s the way to get through.” True as that is, the storm of desperation is of our own making. And we have yet to face it.

Meantime, technology allows for a diffusion of desperation at breakneck pace. Cisco reports that by 2020, three-fourths of the world’s mobile data traffic will be video. Much of this no doubt is due to the ubiquity of Facebook, YouTube, and Snapchat. What it says about us, significantly though not exclusively, is that we are desperate to be seen, heard, and entertained. And not in any authentically meaningful way. We are desperate to broaden our “profile” or “brand” but not our humanity. Desperation is the progeny of despair, and we are desperate for distraction from our despair. Despair, as Kierkegaard has it, in all its dimensions, is the sickness unto death.

In a humorous twist on a serious problem, we may do well to remember Douglas Horton’s view that “desperation is like stealing from the Mafia: you stand a good chance of attracting the wrong attention.” Indeed. And not merely from a world eager for distraction, but from an Evil One eager for souls. Lust, wrath, avarice and the rest ravage body and soul until we are given over to despair. The demon of acedia arrives in our despair, surreptitiously shutting the door behind the demonic horde.

It is here that acedia makes its home.


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Read more: www.crisismagazine.com

The displacement of history by “social studies” in schools has been a disaster for historical understanding.

A CINEMATIC LESSON IN HOPE


by George Weigel



At a moment like this when there doesn’t seem to be a lot going right—ascendant authoritarianisms throughout the world; lethal violence by ideological fanatics; feckless responses to both from the democracies—it’s good to be reminded that things can be different, and in fact were different, not so very long ago.

Recapturing those days and summoning memories of a time when the good folks won, cleanly and against all the odds, is the singular accomplishment of a splendid new documentary, Liberating a Continent: John Paul II and the Fall of Communism, which should be on everyone’s summer must-watch list.

It took me nineteen years of research and three books (The Final Revolution,Witness to Hope, and The End and the Beginning) to do what executive producer Carl Anderson and writer/director David Naglieri have done in ninety-three minutes of gripping videography and marvelous graphics: explain how and why John Paul played a pivotal, indeed indispensable, role in the greatest drama of the last quarter of the twentieth century, the collapse of European communism. In doing so, they make us think hard, again, about how this miraculous liberation took place—something no one expected on October 16, 1978, when a little-known Polish cardinal, who styled himself the pope “from a far country,” was presented on the central loggia of St. Peter’s as the new Bishop of Rome.

Central and eastern Europe weren’t liberated by conceding that the communists had a point, even if they were rather brutal and inefficient in making that point socially, economically, and politically. Nor were the countries of the Warsaw Pact liberated by churchmen and western diplomats cosseting the dictators that ran those party-states. What we used to call the “captive nations” were liberated because “good” and “evil” were “called by their right names,” as the Solidarity martyr, Blessed Jerzy Popieliuszko, used to put it.

Central and eastern Europe didn’t break free of the shackles of totalitarianism without trying, failing, and then trying again: It took a critical mass of people, determined to “live in the truth” no matter how difficult, to implode the communist culture of the lie and give a new birth of freedom to the lands Stalin claimed as his prize for helping beat Hitler.

And the countries of central and eastern Europe didn’t regain their liberties by adopting the usual twentieth-century method of social change, mass violence. Understanding that people who begin by storming Bastilles usually end up building their own (as one Polish dissident said), the new freedom fighters inspired by John Paul II deployed weapons that communist brutality could not match: truth, national memory, tenacious organizing, and personal resilience.

For those whose memories of St. John Paul reach back only as far as his last years,Liberating a Continent is also a powerful reminder of what a handsome, charismatic, and utterly compelling man John Paul II was at the height of his physical powers. He radiated confidence, moral strength, and the courage of a happy warrior. And because of that, those whose lives he touched felt empowered in return.

The displacement of history by “social studies” in U.S. elementary and secondary schools has been a disaster for historical understanding.

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Read more: www.firstthings.com

Revealing negative information about a stigmatized minority does not justify leaving children without support

The Data on Children in Same-Sex Households Get More Depressing

by Mark Regnerus

A new study examines the risk of depression and other negative outcomes among adolescents and young adults raised by same-sex couples.

A new study released earlier this month in the journal Depression Research and Treatment contributes to mounting evidence against the “no differences” thesis about the children of same-sex households, mere months after media sourcesprematurely—and mistakenly—proclaimed the science settled.

One of the most compelling aspects of this new study is that it is longitudinal, evaluating the same people over a long period of time. Indeed, its data source—the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health—is one of the most impressive, thorough, and expensive survey research efforts still ongoing. This study is not the first to make use of the “Add Health” data to test the “no differences” thesis. But it’s the first to come to different conclusions, for several reasons. One of those is its longitudinal aspect. Some problems only emerge over time.

Professor Paul Sullins, the study’s author, found that during adolescence the children of same-sex parents reported marginally less depression than the children of opposite-sex parents. But by the time the survey was in its fourth wave—when the kids had become young adults between the ages of 24 and 32—their experiences had reversed. Indeed, dramatically so: over half of the young-adult children of same-sex parents report ongoing depression, a surge of 33 percentage points (from 18 to 51 percent of the total). Meanwhile, depression among the young-adult children of opposite-sex parents had declined from 22 percent of them down to just under 20 percent.

A few other findings are worth mentioning as well. Obesity surged among both groups, but the differences became significant over time, with 31 percent obesity among young-adult children of opposite-sex parents, well below the 72 percent of those from same-sex households. While fewer young-adult children of same-sex parents felt “distant from one or both parents” as young adults than they did as teens, the levels are still sky-high at 73 percent (down from 93 percent during adolescence). Feelings of distance among the young-adult children of opposite-sex parents actually increased, but they started at a lower level (from 36 percent in adolescence to 44 percent in young adulthood).

To be fair, life in mom-and-pop households is not simply harmonious bydefinition. It is, however, a recognition that it is not just stability that matters (though it most certainly does). It’s also about biology, love, sexual difference, and modeling.

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Read more: www.thepublicdiscourse.com

For decades, the Sexual Revolution was supposed to be about freedom. Today, it is about coercion.

OBERGEFELL AND THE NEW GNOSTICISM

by Sherif Girgis

For decades, the Sexual Revolution was supposed to be about freedom. Today, it is about coercion. Once, it sought to free our sexual choices from restrictive laws and unwanted consequences. Now, it seeks to free our sexual choices from other people's disapproval.

That’s a sharp turn—but it was inevitable. The ideals of the Sexual Revolution call for it: That is one lesson of the year that has passed since the Supreme Court imposed same-sex marriage in Obergefell v. Hodges. Most of Obergefell’s lay supporters were simply moved by concern for our LGBT neighbors—a worthy and urgent concern that the Church must be the first to heed, as Wesley Hill hasbeautifully reminded us. But the Court’s ruling itself depended on a broader sexual progressivism; and its cultural fallout has made clearer that sexual progressivism is illiberal. Absorb its vision of the human person wholesale, and you will soon conclude that social justice requires getting others to subscribe to that vision.

In short, the ideas that Obergefell imposed on our government could hardly stop there; as with an evangelical creed, the legal system could not embrace them without feeling bound to spread them. Obergefell is thus best seen as a religious bull from our national Magisterium, the Supreme Court, by the pen of its high priest, Justice Kennedy. With all the solemnity of a Chalcedon or Trent, it formalized new doctrines for our nation’s civil religion—Gnostic ideas about the human person. Ideas that, by their very nature, create an obligation to recruit new adherents. (And ideas that—unlike true religion—could serve their purpose whether or not they were accepted freely.)

Obergefell has thus inspired fidelity and stigmatized heresy, on pain of the (civic) mortal sins of bigotry and injustice. One year later, we can take the measure of its consequences—and prepare for future ones—only if we spell out the ideas it embraced, and why they demand to be enforced.

To hold that same-sex marriage is part of the fundamental right to marry, or necessary for giving LGBT people the equal protection of the laws, the Court implicitly made a number of other assumptions: that one-flesh union has no distinct value in itself, only the feelings fostered by any kind of consensual sex; that there is nothing special about knowing the love of the two people whose union gave you life, whose bodies gave you yours, so long as you have two sources of care and support; that what children need is parenting in some disembodied sense, and not mothering and fathering. It effectively had to treat contrary views as irrational.

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Read more: www.firstthings.com

“Occidente”, prima di essere uno spazio geografico, è il nome di una civiltà.

La Brexit e il destino dell’Occidente

di Roberto de Mattei

Il referendum inglese del 23 giugno (Brexit) sancisce il crollo definitivo di un mito: il sogno di una “Europa senza frontiere”, costruita sulle rovine degli Stati nazionali. Il progetto europeista, lanciato con il Trattato di Maastricht del 1992, aveva in sé stesso i germi della sua auto-dissoluzione. Era del tutto illusorio pretendere di realizzare un’unione economica e monetaria prima di un’unione politica.

O, peggio ancora, immaginare di servirsi dell’integrazione monetaria per attuare l’unificazione politica. Ma altrettanto e ancor più illusorio era il progetto di pervenire ad un’unità politica, estirpando quelle radici spirituali che vincolano gli uomini a un comune destino. La Carta dei diritti fondamentali dell’Unione Europea approvata dal Consiglio Europeo a Nizza nel dicembre 2000, non solo espunge ogni riferimento alle radici religiose dell’Europa, ma ha in sé una viscerale negazione dell’ordine naturale cristiano.

Il suo articolo 21, introducendo il divieto di qualsiasi discriminazione relativa alle “tendenze sessuali”, contiene, in nuce, la legalizzazione del reato di omofobia e dello pseudo matrimonio omosessuale. Il progetto di “Costituzione”, al quale lavorò una Convenzione sul futuro dell’Europa tra il 2002 e il 2003, fu bocciato da due referendum popolari, in Francia, il 29 maggio 2005 e in Olanda, il 1 giugno dello stesso anno, ma gli eurocrati non si arresero.

Dopo due anni di “riflessione”, il 13 dicembre 2007, fu approvato dai capi di Stato e di Governo dell’UE il Trattato di Lisbona che avrebbe dovuto essere ratificato esclusivamente per via parlamentare. L’unico paese chiamato ad esprimersi per via di referendum, l’Irlanda, bocciò il Trattato il 13 giugno 2008, ma essendo necessaria l’unanimità degli Stati firmatari, fu imposto agli irlandesi un nuovo referendum, che grazie alle fortissime pressioni economiche e mediatiche, diede finalmente esito positivo.

Nella sua breve vita, l’Unione Europea, incapace di definire una politica estera e di sicurezza comune, si è trasformata in una tribuna ideologica, che sforna risoluzioni e direttive per spingere i Governi nazionali a liberarsi dei valori familiari e tradizionali. All’interno dell’UE, la Gran Bretagna, ha premuto il freno, per rallentare il disegno franco-tedesco di un “superStato europeo”, ma ha invece premuto l’acceleratore per diffondere su scala europea, le proprie “conquiste civili”, dall’aborto all’eutanasia, dalle adozioni omosessuali alle manipolazioni genetiche.

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“Occidente”, prima di essere uno spazio geografico, è il nome di una civiltà. Questa civiltà è la Civiltà cristiana, erede della cultura classica greco-romana che dall’Europa si è estesa alle Americhe e alle propaggini lontane dell’Asia e dell’Africa. Essa ebbe il suo battesimo la notte del sogno di san Paolo, quando Dio diede l’ordine all’apostolo di voltare le spalle all’Asia per «passare in Macedonia», ad annunciare la buona novella (Atti, XVI, 6-10).

Roma fu il luogo del martirio dei santi Pietro e Paolo e il centro della civiltà che nasceva. Spengler, convinto dell’inesorabile declino dell’Occidente, ricorda una frase di Seneca: Ducunt volentem fata, nolentem trahunt («Il destino guida chi vuole lasciarsi guidare e trascina chi non vuole»). Ma alla visione relativista e determinista di Spengler noi opponiamo quella di sant’Agostino che, mentre i barbari assediavano Ippona, annunciava la vittoria della Città di Dio nella storia, sempre guidata dalla Divina Provvidenza. L’uomo è artefice del proprio destino e con l’aiuto di Dio il tramonto di una civiltà può trasformarsi nell’alba di una resurrezione. Le nazioni sono mortali, ma Dio non muore e la Chiesa non tramonta.

Leggi tutto: www.corrispondenzaromana.it

Dans certains cercles, on est pour l'UE ou on est pour l'UE. Un point c'est tout.

Brexit : le splendide isolement des élites

Par Eléonore de Vulpillières

Source: FIGAROVOX/ENTRETIEN

Les réactions de contestation du Brexit s'apparentent à la «révolte des élites» théorisée par Christopher Lasch, vivant dans leur isolement du reste du peuple, estime le professeur Jacques de Saint Victor, historien du droit et professeur des Universités (Paris XIII/CNAM). Ses derniers ouvrages parus sont Via Appia (Les Equateurs, 2016) etBlasphème. Brève histoire d'un crime imaginaire (Gallimard, prix du livre d'histoire du Sénat, 2016).


LE FIGARO. - A l'issue du référendum sur le Brexit, les partisans du camp du maintien ont réagi de diverses façons, allant de l'abattement à la combativité marquant leur attachement à l'Union européenne. Une pétition - comportant plusieurs centaines de fausses signatures - a atteint les 3 millions de signataires. Certains réclament l'indépendance de Londres membre de l'UE d'un Royaume-Uni hors UE. Comment analysez-vous ces réactions?

Jacques de SAINT VICTOR. - On peut penser dans un premier temps qu'il s'agit juste d'une réaction de mauvais perdants ou de désespoir d'une partie de l'élite urbaine, souvent jeune, qui se sent trahie par les campagnes, les vieux et les gens modestes. Il y a dans ce rejet de la démocratie une sorte d'illustration de ce que le grand penseur anglais, Christopher Lasch, appelait la «révolte des élites» (par opposition à la «révolte des masses» d'Ortega y Gasset). Dans ce livre très visionnaire, publié en 1995, Lasch notait que ce sont aujourd'hui les élites, et non plus les masses, qui vivent dans un splendide isolement, satisfaites d'elles-mêmes, rejetant tout ce qui échappe à leur bien-être personnel, coupées des réalités du monde commun qui les entoure. C'est la solidarité des surclasses globales qui, de Londres à Singapour ou Paris, sont indifférentes au sort de leurs voisins locaux. Elles ont développé une sorte d'irresponsabilité et d'immaturité qui les prive de toute forme de «sensibilité pour les grands devoirs historiques», disait déjà Lasch. Lorsqu'elles sont confrontées à un retour brutal du réel, comme le résultat d'une consultation démocratique, elles n'hésitent pas à se déclarer contre la démocratie. Lasch soulignait d'ailleurs ce déclin du discours démocratique chez des «élites qui ne font que se parler à elles-mêmes».

Peut-on y voir la marque d'un refus du jeu démocratique? La «construction européenne» est-elle, pour certains, supérieure à l'expression de la volonté populaire?

C'est vrai et c'est un élément, parmi d'autres, dans cette réaction anti-démocratique. L'Europe a échappé au discours historique. C'est une sorte de nouvelle religion laïque qui n'est plus fondée sur un socle réel mais sur un système de croyance. Etre eurosceptique relève pour certains d'un crime de lèse-majesté. Cela échappe au débat démocratique. Dans certains cercles, on est pour l'UE ou on est pour l'UE. Un point c'est tout. «Bruxelles a toujours raison». Cet unanimisme antidémocratique est aux origines mêmes des dérives du processus. Dès 1992, on l'a oublié, mais les Danois avaient dans un premier temps voté contre Maastricht à 50,7% (alors que les sondages prévoyaient 59% de oui). Bruxelles leur rappela sèchement qu'un petit peuple ne pouvait pas se permettre d'entraver le «rêve» de tout un continent. On les traita à part et avec hauteur. Il faut relire les déclarations de certains grands dirigeants à l'époque qui se demandèrent si les Danois étaient vraiment dignes de la démocratie. Montrés du doigt, ils furent contraints de revoter en 1993 et, à 56% cette fois-ci, ils firent le choix de Maastricht. On peut s'interroger si les profondes traditions anglaises se laisseront prendre à une telle mascarade de second vote. C'est peu probable car, en outre, l'Europe de Bruxelles n'est plus aussi attrayante qu'en 1992. Quand on a vu la façon dont MM Juncker ou Schäuble s'adressaient à la Grèce, le visage de Bruxelles a changé, même pour de nombreux europhiles de la première heure.

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Lire la suite ici: www.lefigaro.fr