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Prudential judgment is also needed in applying moral principles to specific policy choices in areas such as the war in Iraq, housing, health care, immigration, and others. This does not mean that all choices are equally valid, or that our guidance and that of other Church leaders is just another political opinion or policy preference among many others. Rather, we urge Catholics to listen carefully to the Church’s teachers when we apply Catholic social teaching to specific proposals and situations. The judgments and recommendations that we make as bishops on specific issues do not carry the same moral authority as statements of universal moral teachings.

Nevertheless, the Church’s guidance on these matters is an essential resource for Catholics as they determine whether their own moral judgments are consistent with the Gospel and with Catholic teaching.
Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship: A Call to Political Responsibility from the Catholic Bishops of the United States

Regarding the matter of abortion and the Senate Healthcare bill, the following exchanges between contributors to First Things and Vox Nova are instructive.

In the first instance, consider the role of prudential judgment in the context of the war in Iraq:

Aphorisms, Sartre, Bishops, and Prudential Judgment by Richard John Neuhaus (2007)

Neuhaus Annoys Again at Vox Nova (2007)

In the next, see how it plays into the debate surrounding abortion and the Senate Healthcare Bill:

The Captivity Of ‘Catholic’ Witness by Charles J. Chaput

Chaput is Right, Chaput is Wrong at Vox Nova

An important take-away from these types of debates is that there is an important distinction to be drawn between moral judgments and prudential judgments. Equally significant, our Church leaders deserve deference — not just regarding moral judgments, but — when they share their prudential judgment. This is to affirm that their teachings and recommendations are an indispensable resource for the faithful even regarding empirical and practical matters that are essentially strategic and political and not otherwise solely moral in nature.

All of the above considered, then, real questions are left begging by the Archbishop of Denver, Charles J. Chaput, as he writes:

Groups, trade associations and publications describing themselves as “Catholic” or “prolife” that endorse the Senate version – whatever their intentions – are doing a serious disservice to the nation and to the Church, undermining the witness of the Catholic community; and ensuring the failure of genuine, ethical health-care reform.  By their public actions, they create confusion at exactly the moment Catholics need to think clearly about the remaining issues in the health-care debate.  They also provide the illusion of moral cover for an unethical piece of legislation.

How broadly or how narrowly should we conceive this referent: “the witness of the Catholic community”?

Does the phrase “whatever their intentions” refer to empirical findings, practical determinations, strategic considerations, political opinions, legislative rubrics, legal interpretations, technical matters and policy preferences? all which can differ even among those who otherwise agree, in every respect, regarding the moral realities?

In other words, when it comes to the “Senate version,” are the prudential judgments and policy recommendations of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops the sole witness of the Catholic Community?

Why should the USCCB’s prudential judgment not be placed in dialogue with:

1 ) the Editors of Commonweal, who write: In fact, the longer one looks at the Stupak Amendment and the Senate compromise, the less different they seem. Insofar as there is a difference, the Stupak Amendment may be better—it’s certainly clearer and simpler. But the difference is technical, not moral. It should not keep Catholics who are both prolife and pro-reform from supporting this important legislation.

2 ) the Editors of the National Catholic Reporter, who recognize: In any event, what is being debated is not the morality of abortion but the politics of abortion, and there is plenty of room for honest and respectful disagreement among Catholics about politics.

3 ) Fr. Robert Imbelli, who says: It might be of help, then, if all sides were to acknowledge the fallibility of their prudential judgment, and that it is entered upon with a certain salutary “fear and trembling,” since so much is at stake.

4 ) Matthew Boudway, who directs us to Timothy Stoltzfus Jost’s dialogue with the USCCB: Jost’s response is a model of courtesy, scruple, and analytical sobriety. He looks at every feverish speculation advanced by prolife opponents of the Senate bill and heads it off at the pass. He offers the economic and historical context without which it is impossible to understand what’s really at stake. He offers good prolife reasons to support the Senate bill (now the only bill worth talking about).

5 ) NETWORK, A National Catholic Social Justice Lobby, which released the text of a letter to Congress supporting healthcare legislation from organizations and communities representing tens of thousands of Catholic Sisters and asserted that the Senate bill will not provide taxpayer funding for elective abortions.

6 ) the Catholic Health Association of the United States, which emphasizes that the CHA has a major concern on life issues: We said there could not be any federal funding for abortions and there had to be strong funding for maternity care, especially for vulnerable women. The bill now being considered allows people buying insurance through an exchange to use federal dollars in the form of tax credits and their own dollars to buy a policy that covers their health care. If they choose a policy with abortion coverage, then they must write a separate personal check for the cost of that coverage.

7 ) David Gibson, who represents: A close reading of the two bills, however, informed by analyses from a range of experts, reveals that the pro-life claims about the Senate bill and its abortion financing provisions are, in fact, mistaken. Indeed, the Senate bill is in some respects arguably stronger in barring abortion financing and in promoting abortion reduction.

8 ) Retired Bishop John E. McCarthy, who told The Associated Press on Wednesday that he is as opposed to abortion as every other bishop and that the bill before Congress would guard against the use of taxpayer funds to pay for it.

9 ) Fr. Thomas Reese, who points out: The disagreement is not over the morality of abortion or federal funding for abortion. The disagreement is over the meaning of the legislative language dealing with health insurance exchanges and community health clinics in the Senate bill. Catholic social teaching has always acknowledged that on the application of principles, Catholics can disagree even if adherence to the principles must be unbending. The area of disagreement in this case is not over principle but over the interpretation of legal language. Neither the sisters nor the bishops have any special charism when it comes to interpreting legislative language or predicting how legislation will be interpreted by the courts.

10 ) Bishop of Sioux City, R. Walker Nickless, who wrote regarding healthcare:  But how to do this is not self-evident. The decisions that we must collectively make about how to administer health care therefore fall under “prudential judgment.”

When Archbishop Chaput suggests that people who claim to be Catholic and then publicly undercut the teaching and leadership of their bishops spread confusion, cause grave damage to the believing community and give the illusion of moral cover to a version of health care “reform” that is not simply bad, but dangerous …

certainly he does not refer to those who disagree with the bishops’ conference on substantive prudential grounds?

Certainly, he refers only to those who  thoughtlessly disregard or cursorily dismiss the teachings and recommendations of the bishops, or worse, who engage others intemperately or uncivilly or, perhaps saddest of all, who most blatantly undercut their prudential competence, for example, like the late Fr. John Neuhaus, who wrote: While individual bishops may be prudentially gifted or challenged, problems are multiplied when prudential judgments issue from the bureaucratic sausage-grinder of the bishops’ conference.

Fr. Neuhaus, in First Things, continued:

And, of course, the sex abuse crisis that broke open in January 2002 took its toll on the bishops’ credibility and self-confidence in issuing pronunciamentos on subjects beyond their self-evident competence. Catholics and others adopted a large and understandable measure of skepticism about what bishops had to say. If they had so gravely bungled the tasks that are unquestionably theirs—to teach, sanctify, and govern—why should people pay attention to what they say about matters beyond their ostensible competence? This is not to question but, on the contrary, to underscore episcopal competence on matters of faith and morals.

On most questions of domestic and foreign policy, it only compounds the problem to declare that they are “moral questions” and are therefore encompassed within episcopal charism and competence. Such overreach only invites critics to claim, putting it bluntly, that the bishops don’t know what they are talking about, or at least don’t know any more than is known by the well-informed citizen. Archbishop Dolan noted that, in recent years, the bishops in the conference have learned this lesson and have been focusing their attention ad intra rather than ad extra, concentrating on matters clearly within their competence and authority as teachers of the Church.

When all the political dust settles and rhetorical heat cools, there will be plenty of opportunity to conduct a post mortem on who was undercut by whom and how and who was ineffective because of self-defeating tactics.

The witness of the Catholic Community, broadly conceived, will remain vibrant and effective. Sure, there will often be those isolated individuals who do disservice to nation and Church, but the overall tone and tenor and substance of our Catholic Community’s contributions to the latest healthcare deliberations, which are evidenced in the points and counterpoints below and the discussions referenced hereinabove, in my view, are a reality worth celebrating. I am grateful to our bishops’ conference and to our various pro-life Catholic groups, trade associations and publications for their contributions in the public square.

POINT

USCCB Health Care Reform website

U.S. Bishops Provide Resources Explaining Flaws in Senate Health Care Bill

Bishops to House of Representatives: Fix Flaws or Vote No on Health Reform Bill

United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Letter to House Members on Health Care legislation

Health Care Reform and the Pro-Life Agenda, by Richard Doerflinger

Health Care Reform and the Pro-Life Agenda 2, by Richard Doerflinger

Issues of Life and Conscience in Health Care Reform: A Comparison of the House and Senate Bills

COUNTERPOINT

Nuns: Vote for health bill would be ‘life-affirming’

Prolife, Yes, & Pro-reform a Commonweal Editorial

Editorial: National Catholic Reporter backs health bill

Timothy Stoltzfus Jost of Washington and Lee law school

The House Health Reform Bill: An Abortion Funding Ban And Other Late Changes

WHAT’S WRONG WITH THE SENATE HEALTH CARE BILL ON ABORTION? A response to Professor Jost from the USCCB

Timothy Stoltzfus Jost of Washington and Lee law school – Response to Bishops

Two Catholic, pro-life supporters back Senate bill

The Senate Bill Funds Abortions? Nope, and It’s More Pro-Life Than the House Version by David Gibson

Abortion Language in Health Bill Pits Catholic Against Catholic By  David Gibson

Pro-life Rep. Perriello Says Abortion Concerns Eased, May Back Health Bill By  David Gibson

Bishops Oppose Health Bill, Still Claiming It Could Fund Abortions By  David Gibson

The Devil in the Details by Robert P. Imbelli

“Crying Wolf” by Mollie Wilson O’Reilly

Jost answers the USCCB’s prolife office by Matthew Boudway

Pro-life Rep. Tom Perriello backs Senate bill’s abortion safeguards by David Gibson

The USCCB’s ‘worst case scenarioism’ by Grant Gallicho

The problem with last-minute legislation by Matthew Boudway

Fear, Trembling, and Trepidation by Robert P. Imbelli

“False claims” by Mollie Wilson O’Reilly

Catholic Nuns Support House Passage of HCR by Eduardo Peñalver

Catholic Health Association Prez: ‘The Time Is Now for Health Reform.’ by Grant Gallicho

Does the Senate bill fund abortion? by Matthew Boudway

Below is my response to The Captivity Of ‘Catholic’ Witness by Charles J. Chaput:

Some here have already drawn the relevant distinction between moral and prudential judgments. And while the prudential judgments and recommendations of a bishops’ conference do not carry the same moral authority as their statements of universal moral teachings, still, as a Catholic, I very seriously consider those judgments and recommendations in my own deliberations. That is to say that I believe that the teachings and recommendations of our bishops are an indispensable resource for the faithful, even regarding empirical and practical matters that are essentially strategic and political and not otherwise solely moral in nature. Furthermore, our bishops deserve respect and deference, even on such prudential matters, and should not be undercut by incivility and intemperate speech.

I have to agree with Archbishop Chaput that attack-ads against Congressman Bart Stupack and E. J. Dionne’s hypothetical sanctioning of moral opprobrium against the bishops are examples of the worst side of Catholic witness. Some might recall the following lament regarding certain alleged past failures of the bishops to distinguish between moral and practical matters, a conflation once described here on FT as overreach: “While individual bishops may be prudentially gifted or challenged, problems are multiplied when prudential judgments issue from the bureaucratic sausage-grinder of the bishops’ conference.” That rhetorical heat, from the late Fr. John Neuhaus, was another sad example of the worst side of Catholic witness as he, too, publicly undercut the teaching and leadership of the bishops on prudential matters. In the same vein, other forms of ad hominems and innuendo (including the overuse of ‘apostrophes’ and italics and quotations – e.g. ‘Catholics’ – to characterize others as so-called or quasi and any overuse of the word alibi in characterizing others’ motives in one’s writings) also contribute to the worst side of Catholic witness. Who hasn’t thus lapsed? On the other hand, such lapses become defining moments if followed by enough reinforcing moments as isolated excusable events become unacceptable patterns.

All that said, ad hominems and tu quoques aside, I don’t consider polite public disagreement with the bishops on prudential matters to be an undercutting of their teachings and recommendations. I’m sure Archibishop Chaput is not suggesting THAT!

Accordingly, I respectfully disagree with the bishops’ conference regarding their empirical and practical assessment of the Senate healthcare bill vis a vis abortion funding. Timothy Stoltzfus Jost, a host of historically pro-life House & Senate members, Retired Bishop John E. McCarthy, the Catholic Health Association and many others, in my view, make a much more compelling case regarding the pertinent facts and interpretations of the proposed legislation than Richard Doerflinger, just for example. No need to rehash them here.

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10 historical developments propelling Emerging Christianity

Excerpted from 14 | THE TABLET | 6 February 2010 :

The emerging Christianity movement – Richard Rohr

∙  recovery of  contemplative tradition (Thomas Merton)

∙ critical biblical scholarship on a broad ecumenical level

∙ new global sense of Christianity

∙ new ability to distinguish the essentials from the incidentals in church practice & teaching

∙ broad awareness that Jesus was teaching  peacemaking, simplicity, love of Creation

∙ concerned with healing and transformation of persons & society on earth as it is to be in heaven

∙ charismatic movement, experiential Christianity & a more Trinitarian theology

∙ developing spirituality & theology of non-violence

∙ new structures of community and solidarity

∙ non-dualistic thinking: a non-oppositional, contemplative mind and heart

Join our conversation at Cathlimergent !

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Why Brian McLaren’s Greco-Roman Narrative is NOT a caricature of modernistic aspects of our religious traditions:

St. Bernard described a developmental trajectory for our relationship with God: 1) love of self for sake of self 2) love of God for sake of self 3) love of God for sake of God and 4) love of self for sake of God.

Thomas Merton described a similar trajectory in our stages of humanization, socialization and transformation. Humanization and socialization help form what he called our False Self. Transformation forms our True Self.

Richard Rohr draws a distinction between our problem-solving, dualistic mindsets and our nondual, contemplative stance toward reality.

Such distinctions describe the faith journeys of all of our great traditions with their various exoteric and esoteric aspects.

The exoteric dimension engages reality in a more propositional way. That is to suggest that it engages reality with empirical, rational, moral and practical methods. It establishes and defends boundaries. When it encounters paradox, it makes an attempt to resolve, dissolve or evade it. It provides answers to many of our most fundamental questions.

The esoteric dimension engages reality in a more participatory and imaginative way. That is to suggest that it engages reality from a more personal, relational perspective. It negotiates and transcends boundaries. When it encounters the paradox in life’s deepest mysteries, as they impact our most profound values, most cherished longings, most insistent urges and most ultimate concerns, it exploits this paradox by nurturing its creative tensions. It abides in trust and ponders life’s ultimate questions with awe, reverence and love.

One might say that the more exoteric aspects of our traditions provide us with the answers to the question of why we should love God, which is to say, for the sake of self. These answers form in us an enlightened self-interest. Early on our journey, our faith is thus more clear but tentative.

The more esoteric aspects of our traditions provide us with the answer to the question of why God loves us, which is to say, because we are fashioned in His image and likeness. This answer transforms us and puts us in touch with our True Self. Later on our journey, our faith is thus more obscure but certain.

The later stages of Bernardian love do not negate the earlier. Our True Self does not annihilate our False Self. Our nondual, contemplative stance goes beyond but not without our problem-solving dualistic mindset. The earlier stages of our journey are necessary but simply not sufficient. They are especially insufficient when our goal is a growth in relationship, in intimacy, whether with people or with God.

Our Greco-Roman Narrative, in very many ways, has everything to do with our love of self for sake of self and love of God for sake of self. It is all about our humanization and socialization. It very much engages our problem-solving, dualistic mindsets with their empirical, rational, moral and practical methods. It very clearly establishes and steadfastly defends all sorts of boundaries. When it encounters paradox, it makes every attempt to resolve, dissolve or evade it. More than anything, this narrative makes an attempt to provide answers toward the end of comprehensively describing and exhaustively norming our engagements with reality. This narrative largely comprises the grand storyline of modern science, philosophy and classical liberal politics. This is a storyline with a great many successes but no too few failures. Some of these failures were of epic proportion and were well chronicled in the writings of Walker Percy, who keenly diagnosed our postmodern malaise.

I have already drawn parallels to McLaren and Percy. See, for example:
Everything That’s Old is New Again – this (McLaren’s “New” Christianity) is truly an old time religion and also the more fleshed-out, tongue-partly-in-cheek version: A New Kind of Christianity? McLaren didn’t make this up. It’s worse than that!.

The parallel I wish to offer here is that McLaren’s invitation simply mirrors that of St. Bernard, Thomas Merton, Richard Rohr, Walker Percy and many others in our Christian tradition and, indeed, that of the mystics of all of the Great Traditions. This is an invitation to engage not only the more exoteric but also the more esoteric dimensions of our tradition. And this will have everything to do with our love of God for sake of God and love of self for sake of God! It is all about our transformation and True Self! It will very much engage our nondual, contemplative stance toward reality with its robustly personal and deeply relational approach! When it encounters the paradox in life’s deepest mysteries, it nurtures its creative tensions in abiding trust. With an open mind it negotiates all sorts of boundaries, with an open heart transcends them and with open arms welcomes the marginalized! This is the storyline of creation, liberation and reconciliation. THIS is our story! THIS is our song!

Now, clearly, McLaren’s Greco-Roman Narrative does not describe the best our tradition has had to offer when its exoteric and esoteric dimensions have been properly integrated. Clearly, this integration has indeed been preserved in varying degrees and transmitted to varying extents by manifold and diverse elements of our tradition. To deny this would indeed be a caricaturization. But this is not what I see McLaren doing. Instead, what I take away from his critique is the same lament that’s been heralded in our prophetic tradition since the days of old: God is offering us SO much more! But way too many of us are settling for so much less! That is to say that we need to go deeper and to better integrate the exoteric and esoteric dimensions of our religion.

The challenge, as I discern it, is for our institutional structures and non-institutional vehicles to better foster ongoing intellectual, affective, moral, sociopolitical and religious development and conversion (cf. Lonergan & Donald Gelpi). As created co-creators, our work is to foster True Self-realization and authentic transformation of individuals and society, liberating and reconciling all.

Yes, progress has been made.

But, if anyone imagines that the critiques of modernistic religion by such as Thomas Merton and Walker Percy, now Richard Rohr and Brain McLaren, are mere caricatures, where MOST religious practitioners are concerned, they are incredibly naive. (Keep in mind, no one is judging the disposition of anyone’s soul; this is a conversation regarding developmental stages of the journey.) Are we robustly engaging our esoteric dimensions? Rather, do we bog down in the exoteric and render our religion, then, moralistic, legalistic, ritualistic, rationalistic? Take a look around. Listen to the rhetoric – not just in the pews, but – from our pulpits! What are we mostly talking about? What best describes our predominant way of engaging our God?

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See my story: Christian Nonduality – Postmodern Conservative Catholic Pentecostal

John Sobert Sylvest will not be tweeting, blogging or FB peeping this Lent but will be checking e-mail infrequently. Have a holy time ✝ See you at Sonrise ☼

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Emerson said that God arrives when the half-gods depart. Dennett has spent recent years tilting at the windmills of half-gods and imagines himself as Don Quixote. The fact of the matter is that I am largely in agreement with Dennett in that ALL of the gods he’s been dispatching are not worthy of anyone’s belief.

To some extent, it is a matter of two ships passing in the night. We all inhabit elaborate tautologies wherein our syllogistic conclusions are often hidden in the very terms we employ in our premises. So, the first problem will always be the proper disambiguation of terms.

If we do employ the same terms, then I think believers must concede that science, philosophy and culture, without religion, can realize truth, beauty and goodness in abundance, even. (At least this is a fundamental premise of anyone who holds a radically incarnational view. Life is good. Living a good and moral life is transparent to human reason.) So, it is not like religion even introduces a new horizon of concern vis a vis values. Values are already in place. Science, then, is descriptive. Philosophy is normative. Culture is evaluative.

Religion introduces a question re: truth, beauty and goodness. Even abundance. That question is: Might there be more? Might there be superabundance? Then, in an effort to augment these values, it amplifies the epistemic and existential risks we have already taken (such as in our falsifiable science, provisional closures in philosophy) by venturing forth to further wager with faith, hope and love. We then cash out the pragmatic value of these wagers by seeing if we have indeed fostered human growth: intellectually, affectively, morally, socio-politically and religiously.

There is no question that the life of religious faith, hope and love is riskier. That’s why it is called FAITH and HOPE. No one is being intellectually dishonest, here. No one is claiming that the Object of our worship can be empirically measured, logically demonstrated or practically proved. We are not saying that our cosmology of descriptive science, normative philosophy or evaluative culture differs one iota from Dennett’s such that WHAT we see when we engage reality is going to be any different. (If someone put a gun to my head, I’d say consciousness is an emergent phenomenon vis a vis a nonreductive physicalism. But I wouldn’t lose a wink of sleep if it were wholly reductive. My bets are on a physicalist account of the soul but, if it ended up being a radically Cartesian dualism, it wouldn’t bother me a bit.)

We do say that HOW we see this cosmology through an axiology, or via our religious interpretive axis, does differ when we imagine that reality has more in store than meets the eye and when we participate together with others in this imaginative vision. While we don’t adjudicate our claims, finally, evidentially, it doesn’t mean there is no evidence. While we do not demonstrate them conclusively, rationally, it doesn’t mean that we have no good reasons.

Dennett will point out that all of this behavior has adaptive significance. Who would not disagree with this rather trivial grasp of the obvious?

His tautology quits processing reality at this point. No problem.

Ours does not.

He might invoke Occam’s Razor. But one can only wield that weapon when one has already achieved explanatory adequacy and is choosing between two equally good explanations. Last time I checked, we have no Theory of Everything and, furthermore, it has just recently dawned on Hawking what others of us have known for decades, which is that Godel-like constraints (incompleteness theorems) will apply to any and all closed formal symbol systems aspiring to a TOE. It is, ergo, a stalemate.

The only enduring question where the 4 Horsemen are concerned is whether or not they are familiar with the work of Judith Martin?!?

There is a fundamental misunderstanding if anyone thinks people like Phil, Jack Haught, Joe Bracken et al are making religion look scientific or are conflating the autonomous methodologies of science and theology. What they are doing is what is called a Theology of Nature which begins within the faith. It is very much akin to St. Francis’ hymns to nature and to the parables of nature found in scripture even though it is employing analogies and metaphors that are derived from the theory of evolution, speculative cosmology and the heuristic of emergence, for example. In this regard, they are not only not doing science, they are not even doing philosophy or what might be considered a natural theology.

When these gentlemen do begin within philosophy, a natural philosophy or natural theology, their excursion is brief and for the purpose of disambiguating concepts, clarifying categories, formulating arguments or, in other words, framing up valid questions, which we might consider to be reality’s “limit questions.” They do not then aspire to answer these questions such as through formal syllogistic reasoning as if there could be proofs for God’s existence or final explanations for reality. All a philosophy of nature demonstrates is the reasonableness of our limit questions, questions which cohere with our ultimate concerns.

Contrastingly, this is precisely where Dennett et al go astray in that they do claim to have answered such limit questions and to have eliminated the ultimate as a matter of concern. In doing so, it is Dennett who has conflated the otherwise autonomous methods of science and philosophy in what is known as a scientism, a label Dawkins apparently accepts but which Dennett claims is but a caricature of his naturalism, which is not philosophical but, rather, methodological (or so he protested to Jack Haught, when they last debated). This leaves a question left begging, however, for Dennett, which is that – if he is truly a methodological naturalist, then, – doesn’t that mean that, vis a vis reality’s limit questions, he must either remain, in principle, agnostic or otherwise transparently admit that his position, at bottom, is essentially one of faith, which is what Phil would also admit?

The only thing that Dennett will typically counter is that he goes no further than his empirical science and rationalist philosophy warrant, which he manifestly has!

What he must admit is that his is a type of faith, too, and that it is warranted. He might also claim that his position has more warrant than that of a believer in God. And our counter might be that our stance, epistemically, is indeed riskier, but that, existentially, this amplification of risks has huge rewards in terms of augmented human values; this value-augmentation is, itself, truth-indicative. And we must reassert, here, that our stance does not refer to the caricatures of belief that Dennett habitually engages as strawgods.

And thus would commence a whole other debate regarding the nature of justification and warrant.

But I doubt seriously Dennett can escape the tautology he’s trapped in, which ironically, is the same mindset that snares his fundamentalist counterparts. By conflating philosophy and science, both the religious fundamentalists and Enlightenment fundamentalists are committing HUGE category errors and, ergo, represent the obverse sides of the same epistemic coin — fideism and scientism — neither which has a purchase on reality.

Most of all, I really feel sorry for their poor horses …

Their riders are giving horse manure a bad name.

Below is a relevant Tweet Archive:

pdclayton7

Okay, so a New Atheist and a Christian Theologian walk into a bar… thoughts on the Tues. debate with Dan Dennett at http://ow.ly/17mNf 8:49 PM Feb 14th

@pdclayton7 Dennett told Jack Haught he’s NOT scientistic but a methodological naturalist. He’s agnostic, not atheistic, re: cosmic origins? 10:31 PM Feb 12th from web in reply to pdclayton7

@pdclayton7 Wim Drees’ critique http://bit.ly/9vy00P keeps gods out of gaps, which is fine; but doesn’t it validate our limit questions? 11:28 PM Feb 12th from web in reply to pdclayton7

@pdclayton7 Does Dennett lose sleep b/c Popperian falsification & solipsism are not falsifiable or b/c logical positivism is incoherent? 11:32 PM Feb 12th from web in reply to pdclayton7

@pdclayton7 re: God, world’s BRIGHTest philosophers tender Scottish verdict = unproven & not dis/proved. Do Dan’s peers think he’s bright? 11:36 PM Feb 12th from web in reply to pdclayton7

@Cathlimergent — Thanks for the great suggestions — I’ll keep you posted! — Philip

Below is a bibliography I put together the first time I lost interest in Dan Dennett’s work. Click below to continue >>>

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This is an abridged review.

In a New Kind of Christianity, there is a thread in Brian McLaren’s overall thrust that might escape the notice of the casual reader. That thread combines linguistic and semiotic approaches that can get very technical and which are very highly nuanced. I cannot even begin to unpack this observation in the space provided here. But think in terms of subjects and predicates, verbs and tenses, literal and figurative, icons and symbols, intentions and meanings, literary genres and parts of speech. And think about such as the senses of Scripture, literary criticism and historical-critical exegesis.

While McLaren well describes the impact of the history of philosophy as it informs (forms, deforms & misinforms) our religious beliefs and practices, also embedded in both the history of philosophy and the history of Christianity are prominent linguistic and semiotic themes that ask probing questions about “how it is that we know what we know when we say we know something” and “what it is that we mean when we say something now this way or now that to this audience or that.”

To that extent, McLaren is squarely in the middle of what I like to call Christianity’s semiotic tradition. I will not aspire to explicate that case here but I would suggest, for any interested in this angle, that one might explore, for example, whether casually via wikipedia or more depthfully via books, the thoughts of the Kabbalah (Jewish) and Plotinus (Neoplatonist), Origen and Pseudo-Dionysius and John Scottus Eriugena, John Duns Scotus and John of St. Thomas (Poinsot), Charles Sanders Peirce and Walker Percy. I flesh this thesis out here: http://bit.ly/aQV2mS

McLaren is clearly not suggesting that we abandon our creeds, rituals, laws and communities! In so many words, rather, what I hear him saying is: If we have articulated truth in creed, we take care not to let our dogma devolve into dogmatism. If we have cultivated beauty in the celebration of cult and liturgy, we dare not let it decay into ritualism. If we have preserved goodness in code and discipline and law, we eschew their degeneration into legalism. If we have enjoyed fellowship in community, we avoid at all costs any decadent institutionalism.

In my words, not McLaren’s, his survey of philosophy and theology is an inventory of different types of extremism. His critique is not aimed at our core beliefs but targets, instead, some peripheral tangents. Some really tangential extremes that go too far via idle speculation, on one hand, or too far with affective or emotional expressivism, on the other. And, he tends to the balance that needs to be struck between our positive, metaphorical affirmations about God (kataphatic, via positiva) and that language which increases the accuracy of our God descriptions – ahem, or should I say, rather, God references – through negation (apophatic, via negativa).

What McLaren retrieves, revives and renews is a balance that has always been maintained at the center of our tradition. That is to say, then, again in my words, that there has never been anything inherent in our Christian religion that would, in principle, necessarily lend itself to such extremes as rationalism (an overemphasis on the speculative and kataphatic), encratism (an overemphasis on the speculative and apophatic), quietism (an overemphasis on the affective and apophatic) or pietism, including an insufficiently nuanced fideism (an overemphasis on the affective and kataphatic). Again, McLaren is square in the middle of our tradition, along with such apophatic influences in Christianity that drew – not only from Gospel and Pauline narratives, but – from Jewish and neoplatonic influences, then continuing through our early church fathers through Pseudo-Dionysius and medievals like Meister Eckhart and Duns Scotus, all the way down to one of McLaren’s favorite novelists, Walker Percy.

Finally, McLaren’s theory of Incarnation, in my view, sits squarely in the middle of the Franciscan tradition of Duns Scotus, which may be what one would consider a “minority report” in my own Roman Catholicism, but is clearly nothing that would be considered, oh my, heterodox. McLaren’s so-called “New” Christianity is going to be new in the sense that, where most modernists are concerned, it is novel vis a vis the extreme rationalism and fundamentalism “gifted” us by modernity and which pervades our approach to ultimate reality. But, in another sense (see how this works?), there has been a long-established, even if somewhat esoteric, tradition in Christianity that has always served as a corrective and saving remnant. McLaren’s approach is, in that regard, Olde Time Religion, which is, as they say, good enough for me!

Below are some of my redacted comments in response to various Amazon reviewers.

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The continuity lies in a shared epistemology, which has anthropological implications. One can share another’s seamless garment of life ethos, even share the exact same epistemic justifications, ontological grounding and deontological conclusions while rejecting the other’s practical approaches and political strategies.

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JPD, you missed my point. I can’t even recall what McLaren’s specific views are re: the complex moral reality of abortion. My point was that whatever those views are vis a vis Percy’s own views they are not dispositive of the larger issue, which was that there is a continuity in their pericean-derived epistemology, which is a constructive postmodern approach. This is an approach I consider superior to either a modernist rationalism or a radical deconstructionism, which has everything to do with McLaren’s critique of the misapplication of the Greco-Roman narrative. PERIOD. Any extrapolations beyond that are your strawmen, not mine.

In other words, your logic is flawed if you think you can always reason backwards from one’s practical approach to an issue, or from one’s political strategy regarding an issue, to what one’s moral stance must necessarily be regarding that issue, much less what one’s metaphysical stance or even epistemology of choice would be. This is to say, to make it plainer for you, that McLaren and Percy don’t have to agree on everything else in order to share an epistemic outlook. Using that line of logic, I’m surprised you didn’t offer an even more trivial graps of the obvious, which is that Percy was a Catholic, while McLaren is not (although that is apparently a point of contention for many of his fundamentalistic detractors, and, perhaps, they are not entirely offbase).

There is much too facile an application of concepts in this thread for there to be any meaningful discourse, e.g. liberal and postmodernist. Your unnuanced use of the word “postmodernists” as if it were a blanket pejorative falls into the same category of offense (tarring too many people w/the same brush) of which you accused McLaren re: neoconservatives.

Tu quoque.

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RE: Brian McLaren has put his finger on a problem–the ontotheological critique of western Christendom by Nietzsche and others–but unfortunately he doesn’t have either the chops or the perspective to address it even adequately, let alone cogently.

Yes, Brian sees problems with metaphysics. And this particular response reveals some of those problems. One can still hold to metaphysical and moral realisms while, at the same time, recognizing that they are fallible, falsifiable hypotheses. One practical upshot of this is that our deontologies should be considered at least as tentative as our ontologies are speculative. A modernistic rationalism, then, “gifts” people with a wholly unwarranted apodictic certainty that results in an untenable epistemic hubris. It is this type of approach to reality that gets all worked up over the notions offered in a nietzschean nihilism, a sophistic solipsism or humean critiques of induction and common sense notions of causality. Human knowledge doesn’t advance solely through formal syllogistic reasoning and abstractions. We do away with such silliness through an informal reductio ad absurdum, which is to say that we evade such stupidity by ignoring it, for all practical purposes, and not, rather, by formal refutation (or building another castle in the air a la Kant). At any rate, there are constructive postmodern approaches that are superior to both the classical foundational epistemologies with their naive realism and the radically deconstructive forms of postmodernism. One that comes to mind is the semiotic realism of Charles Sanders Peirce, whose work largely influenced the great Catholic novelist, Walker Percy, who, in turn, has had a profound influence on Brian McLaren. The above-critique of McLaren was facile and too cursorily dismissive. His peircean-derived perspective is most adequate to the task and affirms both metaphysical and moral realisms, which is to say, does not at all correspond to the caricature other commentators have made of McLaren’s epistemic stance by equating it with a vulgar postmodernism. This ain’t high octane. It’s high vitriol.

Speaking of First Things, I am pleased to see its sponsorship of a postmodern conservatism. As for McLaren’s discussion of the neoconservative approach, it seems to me that he was critiquing it as a political philosophy, which is to say, as a matter of practical judgment, which is methodologically distinct from our moral calculus and religious beliefs. Some people mistake political ideology and religion (and most certainly not readers of FT).

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This whole notion of Brian’s reinventing Christianity as if what he’s proposing is wholly new or even heterodox is being WAY overblown! His theory of Incarnation very much resonates with that of Duns Scotus and the Franciscans, who believed that Jesus’ coming was not occasioned by any human felix culpa (oh, happy fault!) in response to a need for a grand cosmic repair job for some ontological rupture located in some vividly-imagined past. Rather, the Incarnation was in the divine cards from the cosmic get-go as a teleological striving oriented toward the future and we are active participants as created co-creators. This also resonates with the teilhardian and whiteheadian perspectives of process theology. These would be considered “minority views” of atonement even in Catholicism but they are clearly not heterodox, except, perhaps, to fundamentalistic Biblical inerrantists, who consider a penal, substitutionary atonement as the only acceptable narrative.

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Bravo, Michael. And, let’s hear it for Scripture AND Tradition AND Reason AND Experience! Enough of this fundamentalistic sola scriptura and solum magisterium and away with the modernistic rationalism and vulgar postmodern deconstructionism. McLaren offers a robustly constructive postmodern critique and not this strawman caricature-bogeyman of epistemic and moral relativism at which so many continue to take cheap rhetorical shots. Thankfully, at least they know not to be fooled by relativism. Sadly, they too cursorily dismiss McLaren’s stance because they miss the nuance and mistake it for something it is not.

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I will cut to the chase, folks. I’ve read most everything Brian McLaren’s written. Most recently, A New Kind of Christianity. And, while I don’t go looking for them, it’s hard to ignore McLaren’s detractors, whose chief complaint has been that, when it comes to Christianity, he’s not just coloring outside the lines, he’s actually making stuff up!

Now, being very familiar with his body of work and having slowly discerned just what this so-called heretic has been up to, I’m afraid the problem with McLaren is really worse than one might first imagine. It seems that few of his critics are even remotely aware of a rather disturbing pattern in his writings, speeches and blogging, a pattern that most egregiously rises to the surface in his answering of the Ten Questions that are Transforming the Faith, which is the subtitle of A New Kind of Christianity.

The not so plain fact of the matter is that Brian McLaren manifestly ain’t making all this stuff up. I say “not so plain” because, even when I tell you what’s really going on, I’m going to have to rather carefully make my case below. The plain deal is, gentle reader, that McLaren ain’t fabricating a danged thang. He stole all this stuff!

You heard me right. This ain’t McLaren’s work.

Now, I can already imagine what you Emergent loyalists are thinking and can even empathize with how you must feel. I’ve been there before. My Sweet Lord! It was 1976. No, this ain’t no exclamation invoking God in vain. I’m talking, rather, about the first solo Beatles single to hit number one. George Harrison wrote My Sweet Lord in December 1969. A US District Court judge in New York ruled in 1976 that Harrison had subconsciously infringed on the copyright of The Chiffons, who had recorded He’s So Fine. So, that’s all I’m saying about McLaren. While he didn’t manufacture his version of Christianity out of thin air, as his detractors claim, it is quite possible that he lifted a good bit of his material, some mindfully, some inadvertently, straight out of the Judaeo-Christian tradition. Fortunately, for McLaren, no royalties are due because the Holy Spirit doesn’t go around charging folks with copyright infringements. If no one picked up on this before, well, that’s likely due to the fact that much of the material that McLaren has, shall we say, re-articulated, is found in the more esoteric (not to be confused with heterodox) aspects of the tradition.

Further below, I commence a rather rigorous and technical analysis of the McLaren case. Before I do that, let me direct you to some materials that are much more accessible and intended for a general audience. Click on the link, below, to access 20 Good Online Resources to Help You Understand Brian McLaren’s new book: A New Kind of Christianity —>

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Discovering What You Already Know but maybe didn’t realize you knew it

1 ) What about hell?

It’s a necessary theoretical construct. But it should only be used to console people who find a relationship with God positively repugnant. We need to comfort them with the notion that God would not coerce anyone into a relationship with Her. Otherwise, for all practical purposes, forget about it.

2 ) What about religion? Is it necessary?

A religion is an axis of interpretation, an interpretive stance or axiology, around which our cosmology spins. Our cosmology is necessary to realize truth, beauty and goodness and, in that regard, it is also sufficient. Religion, then, is not necessary. One can live an abundant life without it. One can realize truth, beauty and goodness without religion. For example, many say they are spiritual but not religious; they are not being disingenuous.

3 ) What do you mean by “our” cosmology? I thought there were as many cosmologies as there were religions?

Cosmology represents the relationship between science, culture and philosophy. Science is a descriptive method that asks: What is that? Culture, an evaluative stance, asks: What is that to us? Philosophy is a normative method that asks: How do we best acquire or avoid that?

Now, humankind celebrates this cosmological reality in many diverse and beautiful ways. But this story of the cosmos and our place in it is not really up for grabs. It’s Everybody’s Story. We are stardust. We are golden. But we’re not necessarily making our way back to the garden (although that’s a rather popular interpretive stance). Our cosmological knowledge has advanced slowly but it does advance inexorably. It includes both cosmic and biological evolution, for example, and the paradigm of emergence.

4 ) How does religion fit in? If there’s no hell (for all practical purposes) and an abundant life of truth, beauty and goodness already available to us, what’s left for religion to do?

Religion looks at cosmological reality and asks: How does all of this tie-back together or re-ligate? Put more simply, it looks at life’s truth, beauty and goodness and asks: Is there, perhaps, more?

Religion, then, is our pursuit of superabundance. To the extent that life is a journey, we aspire to travel even more swiftly and with less hindrance toward truth, beauty and goodness. Religion seeks to augment these value-realizations by amplifying the risks we have  already taken in science, culture and philosophy. Religion amplifies these risks through faith, hope and love and realizes these augmented values in creed, cult and code. In creed, we articulate truth in doctrine and dogma. In cult, we cultivate beauty in liturgy, ritual and practices. In code, we preserve goodness in law and disciplines. And this new law, by the way, is love. And its justice is known as mercy. And its methods are not coercive; they’re nonviolent. (Where nonviolence is concerned, I often think of Polanyi’s tacit dimension or of how in semiotic science and Baldwinian evolution there can be a downward causation without any violation of physical causal closure. Such forms of non-energetic or formal causation can be ineluctably unobtrusive while, at the same time, utterly efficacious. This provides a great analog for the gentle, yet powerful, influence of the Spirit on all of creation, always coaxing but never coercive. If it’s any consolation to our human passions, Jesus suggests that our nonviolent responses are experienced by our detractors like the heaping of burning coals upon their heads. ) Above all, we enjoy our unitive fellowship in community. A community (koinonia) of peace or grand shalom, where we find – not perfection – but wholeness.

5 ) If everyone is, so to speak, saved vis a vis any conception of hell and all religions are about the task of aspiring to superabundance, then why all the fuss about, for example, an insidious indifferentism, a facile syncretism or false irenicism regarding different religions?

Well, we are not indifferent in that we want to give God the greatest possible glory, ad majorem Dei gloriam. So, while it is one great image to conceive of us all there together in Eternity, lighting up the firmament to our fullest capacity, fired up by the very glory of God, it might otherwise be a somewhat sobering thought to also imagine that many of us will have escaped as through a fire with our little 40 watt bulbs while folks like Mother Teresa shine forth as a blazing helios. We can believe, in my view, that every trace of human goodness, every beginning of a smile, will be eternalized. Each moment of our lives is ripe for eternalization or will be burned off as ever to be forgotten chaff.

But, far more than any fanciful contemplation of our eternal state, we are not indifferent because not all are equally able to enjoy and realize life’s truth, beauty and goodness, life’s intrinsically good and potentially abundant nature. And, yes, I affirm life’s beauty and goodness and abundance, unconditionally, very much aware of some rather significant cosmic irony, not indifferent to the immensity of human pain, the enormity of human suffering. And, while I haven’t ignored some of those French existentialists (Camus and Sartre), I have paid more attention to their Russian counterparts (Dostoevsky).

I do believe that it is when we awaken to our solidarity that compassion will ensue. So, it seems like we would want to aspire to practice such a religion as would best foster human development and growth: intellectual, affective, moral, sociopolitical and religious. We want to get religion as right as we can in order to help as many as possible to run life’s race more swiftly and with less hindrance, sharing and enjoying life’s abundance. We seek enlightenment for ourselves, even, out of compassion for our fellow wo/men who would otherwise have to suffer our unenlightened selves.

It may be too early on humankind’s journey to successfully discern which religions are best fostering such growth and conversion, but these are criteria about which we should care very deeply. We need to dialogue deeply and with great humility. I will say this: Religions that get away from Everybody’s Story and tinker wily nilly with cosmology are indeed out to lunch. Cosmology is not something one can just make up; it’s comprised of autonomous methodologies, like science and philosophy.

6 ) Where, then, does the Incarnation fit in?

Well, it is about at-ONE-ment but not, in my view (or that of Scotus and the Franciscans), a penal, substitutionary atonement. In other words, it was not occasioned by some felix culpa (happy fault) as if in response to some grand ontological rupture located in the past. Rather, it was in the divine cards from the cosmic get-go, this, God-is-with-us, Emmanuel. It has more to do with a Teilhardian-like teleological striving oriented toward the future. Most concretely, it’s all about a profound intimacy with a deeply caring Lover. It’s a dance, perichoresis.

7 ) What, then, about soteriology and eschatology?

Well, I’m with all the existentialists in recognizing that we are in a predicament of sorts. But I’m also with those who affirm a radically incarnational view, which sees us as co-creators in an unfinished universe, hence the moaning and groaning in this grand act of giving birth. I suppose I could join the theodicists and suggests that, surely, there must’ve been a better way! But I’ve finally quit beating my head against that wall just because it felt good when I stopped and have decided to just put my shoulder to the plow and plant a few seeds for the Kingdom.

Eternity is not something that happens before or after time. It is an atemporal and thoroughly NOW thing! As has been said, it’s heaven all the way to heaven, hell all the way to hell. Heavenly thoughts that are of no earthly significance will not be realized in eternity because by not being now here they’ll end up being no-where. The truth of religion is found in a soteriology that measures its success in terms of how well we are fostering an eschatological realism grounded in conversion (Lonergan’s) and compassion (leading to diakonia, service), NOW.

8 ) What about God-talk, metaphysics and such?

There is a type of God-talk that begins with cosmology. We could call that philosophical or natural theology. I am a metaphysical realist, even regarding God-concepts. Here we clarify categories, disambiguate vague concepts, frame up questions and formulate arguments. Here we affirm the reasonableness of our questions. This is not unimportant. But it is woefully insufficient for a number of reasons, like the excess of meaning we are dealing with, for example and to say the least. With Peirce, however, after forming the argument and asking the question, we then stop! We don’t pretend to have answered the questions and we don’t proceed with God-proofs via syllogistic argumentation, which Peirce considered a fetish (and I agree).

There is another type of God-talk that proceeds from within the faith. We call that a theology of nature.  Here we wax metaphorical with our analogical imaginations. All metaphors eventually collapse of course, but it is my belief that those drawn in fidelity to our cosmology are going to be the most resilient because our analogs will be better, our tautologies more taut.

Of course, there are other descriptors for God-talk, such as kataphatic and apophatic, both aspiring to increase our descriptive accuracy of God, the former through positive affirmations and the latter through negations. These categories apply to both natural theology and a theology of nature. Most God-talk is going to come from our theology of nature. We can exhaust what can be known from the perspective of natural theology in a single afternoon’s parlor sitting. The currency of natural theology is the affirmation: Good question! This does not mean, however, that the lingua franca of a theology of nature is going to therefore be: Good answer! A theology of nature traffics, instead, in iconography. It brings us to value-realizations via a more nondual, contemplative stance toward reality. The chief caveat emptor where icons are concerned is their elevation into idols. In this regard, our 21st Century religion could use a huge therapeutic  dose of ancient apophatic mysticism to ensure that our icons do not become idols.

Another good distinction between natural theology and a theology of nature is that the former is philosophical and engages our problem-solving dualistic mindset while the latter is robustly relational and nondual. Even some of the best theologies of nature, like Jack Haught’s aesthetic teleology and Joe Bracken’s divine matrix, with all of their sophisticated references to the biological and cosmological sciences, are poetic ventures, metaphorical adventures, much more akin to St. Francis’ hymns to nature than, for example, Gödel’s modal ontological argument.

9 ) What do you make of institutional religion and such approaches as involve clerical and hierarchical models?

Well, for starters, we shouldn’t confuse means and ends. And, once we’ve identified the means, we shouldn’t so quickly insist that they are the only means. The Spirit, it seems, is well capable of work-arounds?

Even the hierarchical structures I’m familiar with are conceived in a way that gives primacy to bottom-up dynamics. In other words, in theory, the top-down dynamic is a dissemination of what’s been received from below, not a de novo fabrication emanating from above. When a hierarchy, on occasion, loses this integral relationship or integrity, it is in a state of ex-communication, a reality that travels a two-way street.

10 ) What about interreligious dialogue?

We have made progress in moving from our exclusivistic ecclesiocentrisms to a more inclusivistic Christocentrism. I think our next good step is a pneumatological inclusivism, which needn’t bracket our Christology but should lead, at least, with the Spirit.

Those of us with a radically incarnational view of reality can affirm the Spirit at work in science, philosophy and culture and can recognize the truth, beauty and goodness realized on the human journey, which is pervasively graced. And we can recognize the value-realizations that have been augmented by our great religious traditions, affirming the efficacies and recognizing the inefficacies in their attempts to foster intellectual, affective, moral, sociopolitical and religious growth, development and conversion. We need to dialogue regarding what we’re getting right and what we’re getting wrong — not preoccupied with heavenly destinations, but — in order to give God the greatest possible glory and in order to compassionately console and help others to travel more swiftly and with less hindrance on life’s journey, realizing life’s deepest values and greatest goods.

Footnote: Walker Percy spoke of Kierkegaard’s On the Difference Between a Genius and an Apostle:

Like the readings that mean most to you, what it did was confirm something I suspected but that it took Søren Kierkegaard to put into words: that what the greatest geniuses in science, literature, art and philosophy utter are sentences which convey truths sub specie aeternitatis, that is to say, sentences which can be confirmed by appropriate methods and by anyone, anywhere, any time. But only the apostle can utter sentences which can be accepted on the authority of the apostle, that is , his credentials, sobriety, trustworthiness as a newsbearer. These sentences convey not knowledge sub specie aeternitatis but news.

The Art of Fiction XCVII: Walker Percy by Zoltan Abadi-Nagi/1986.

This reiterates the distinction between our cosmology as knowledge sub specie aeternitatis and our axiology as Good News.

Click on the Questions symbol above to meet Bill & Jacki Dahl, whom I “met” via Ron Cole!

Bill & Jacki Dahl

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Thomas Merton in Disputed Questions writes of the thirteenth century Carmelite hermits that they “initiated something quite original and unique: a loose-knit community of hermits with an informal, occasional apostolate … their life was left free and informal so that they could do anything that conformed to their ideal of solitude and free submission to the Holy Spirit.”

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It’s not WHAT you see of life when you come to N’awlins; it’s HOW you see life!

I was born here. I still live here. And I don’t leave often. Why the hell should I? Anybody with common sense and a half a heart wishes they lived here, too, especially after watching us on TV the past few weeks!

Lemme ‘xplain how we see life.

We ain’t pollyannas, mind ya, but … we’re easy like a Sunday …

Take that statue in the Cathedral. Look on dat lady-saint’s face and stare into it but good. Now, you told me whether that’s pain you see dere or some type o’ really good pleasure. Ya can’t do it, no? One moment it’s as if she’s in dem dere – what dey call ‘em? never seen it for myself, oh, yeah – trows of orgasmic ecstasy, poo-yie-yie!  But in the very next instant, just tilt you little head to da side a bit and, mon cher, you could swear she was at the Rock ‘n Bowl on South Carrollton and had just dropped a bowling ball on her used-to-be-good foot.

Yep. One day it’s Mardi Gras. The next day it’s Lent. Dat’s N’awlins. Jes sayin’.

No one can tell us here in N’awlins ’bout famine & feast, agony & ecstasy or tragedy & comedy. Just read some of that highfalutin fiction by our own Walker Percy ’bout how we hold it all together, both predicament & sacrament.

Ain’t nobody here gonna quote you Job. Ain’t nobody gonna take the blame on hisself. And, fer sure, dere ain’t no fool preacher blaming life’s crap on the devil. We got our own wisdom tradition that’s hard to trace ‘xactly but our indians, blacks and creoles pretty much got it figured out dat Joc-a-mo has got something to do with it. Now, ‘gain, Joc-amo ain’t the devil and he ain’t even necessarily your enemy. He’s just a jester is all, not one to be figured out, just one to be dealt with. We reckon that, if God’s got plans, dem designs are kinda whatcha might call loose or easy. God, the Really Big Easy, makes a move. We make a move. Joc-a-mo makes a move. Some moves work out, like when Elvis gets the girl. And some, like dem world class biotches, Betsy and Katrina? What can I say? Sometimes, it’s like dropping bowling balls on both yo’ feet, which is to say, it don’t work out too well, n’est pas?

But here in N’awlins, there ain’t no bitching and moaning.

We just sing, instead. Through the yellow fever and malaria, fire and flood, the Battle of New Orleans, first we ask Our Lady to pray with us for prompt succoring and next we sing:

Talkin ’bout
Hey now, Hey now
Iko Iko ah-nay
Joc-a-mo-fee-no-ah-nah-nay
Joc-a-mo-fee-nah-nay
enòn enòn
Aìku Aìku nde
Jacouman Fi na ida – n – de
Jacouman Fi na dè

And that roughly translates into:
God is watching
Jacouman causes it; we will be emancipated
Jacouman urges it; we will wait

And sometimes we wait a very long time.

It’s called patience. Look it up. It’s a virtue.

And it doesn’t mean we sit on our asses. We keep working hard.

And when our backs are against the Superdome wall, whether for Katrina or the NFL Playoffs, still we sing:

Good for your bod-y
And it’s good for your soul
I said hey, hey hey hey
Hey pocky-a-way
I said hey, hey hey hey
Tuway pakyway
T’ouwais bas q’ouwais
Hou tendais

And that roughly translates into:
I’ll kill you if you don’t get out the way!

And the proper response to N’awlins would be:
Entendez!

And that roughly translates into:
I hear ya!

Now, don’t get us wrong. We mean kill ya metaphorically, which is to say, in a nice kinda way!

With red beans & rice, creole gumbo and our boys, the Saints.  Bless You, Boys!

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