June 2009 Archives

The governor of South Carolina digs himself in deeper. For some odd reason, he's elaborating with the media on his eventful erotic life. Excerpt:

In an interview with The Associated Press at his Statehouse office, Mr. Sanford said that those flirtations had "crossed the line" and that he had let his "guard down" by engaging in some physical contact with women other than his wife, Jenny Sanford. But, he said, with the exception of the sexual relationship he began last year with , María Belén Chapur, the Argentine woman, those flirtations "didn't cross the sex line."

The new disclosures put Mr. Sanford's ability to remain governor back in doubt just when such concerns seemed to have been abating.

Mr. Sanford has admitted taking a special trip to Buenos Aires to visit with Ms. Chapur last year during an official visit to South America. He has promised to repay the costs.

On Tuesday, in disclosing several other assignations with Ms. Chapur in Manhattan and the Hamptons over the last year, Mr. Sanford said he had not spent any other state money on his illicit visits.

"I was very careful," he said. "Everything was paid for in cash."

Classy! But wait, there's more:

He also told The A.P. that he believed Ms. Chapur was his soul mate, but that he was trying to fall back in love with his wife.

"This was a whole lot more than a simple affair; this was a love story," he told The A.P. "A forbidden one, a tragic one, but a love story at the end of the day."

Just stop.

One of my colleagues at the Templeton Cambridge fellowship, Edwin Cartlidge, decided to do his Templeton project on philosophical materialism and its relationship to science. He approached A.C. Grayling and Daniel Dennett, two prominent materialists, and asked for an interview for the project. They both refused, saying that they want nothing to do with anything related to the Templeton Foundation. Richard Dawkins reprints Cartlidge's request, and adds a misleading pejorative remark: that Cartlidge and other journalists (including me) are being "paid" to sit there and attend the conference. All of us won fellowships, which included cash stipends. What Dawkins doesn't tell you is that one of the conditions of the fellowship is the journalist is not supposed to be at his regular job during the two months of his fellowship. I don't know what my colleagues are doing, but in my case, I'm not getting a paycheck from my employer during these two months. I'm living off the Templeton stipend, which allows me to devote my full time to reading and research in my topic area. Same with Ed Cartlidge.

Not that it matters, or should matter, but I spent two weeks with Ed in Cambridge, and it was not my impression that he is a theist of any kind. I could be wrong about that, though. At no point in the application process did Templeton ask any of us what our religious views were. As far as I can tell, Templeton chose Ed because of his experience as a journalist, and because they thought his project proposal was interesting.

I wish to associate myself with the response of Templeton's Gary Rosen, posted to the Dawkins blog:

A.C. Grayling and Daniel Dennett have refused to talk to a serious journalist (Edwin Cartlidge of Physics World) about a serious subject (philosophical materialism) because the journalism fellowship under which he is pursuing this subject is sponsored by the Templeton Foundation. They will have nothing to do with the Templeton Foundation, they say, because our aim is somehow to "muddy the waters" about the relationship between science and religion.

That's not how we see it at all. First-rate, peer-reviewed science is essential to our work at the Foundation and to the progressive vision of the late Sir John Templeton, who was deeply committed to scientific discovery. Many of our largest grants go to pure scientific research (like our support for the Foundational Questions Institute in Physics and Cosmology, the Godel Centenary Research Prize Fellowships, and the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics at Harvard).

But, yes, we do like to include philosophers and theologians in many of our projects. Excellent science is crucial to what we do, but it is not all that we do. We are a "Big Questions" foundation, not a science foundation, and we believe that the world's philosophical and religious traditions have much to contribute to understanding human experience and our place in the universe. For Grayling and Dennett to compare this rich, expansive discussion to a dialogue with astrologers is silly. They know better.

What on earth is wrong with that?

If you go back and read the Dennett and Grayling responses, you'll see that they are unwilling to talk to Ed because they're afraid that somebody, somewhere might, through the work of Templeton, come to believe that religion might have something to contribute to the development of science, or how science is used in our culture. What a ridiculous prejudice. I'm sorry Ed, a reputable science journalist, has to deal with these arrogant knotheads.

I just ran across a really smart point by JL Wall, in response to last week's long Eminemmy discussion about the relationship between art, morality and community. Excerpt:

The matter of wondering where the limit should be drawn is nothing new, and it is not new that the question should often appear either unanswerable or the answer utterly arbitrary. Denying that there is a limit at all, however, is frequently more dangerous than misplacing it. Art for art's sake along will not suffice, though the piece may still be beautiful. Art is like anything else - it must exist in the real world, our world: in Wendell Berry's construction, "its real habitat is the household and the community."

Joyce's Ulysses and Pound's Cantos may not be common in the life of most households. But they are a part of my life and mind - exist, that is, in "my household" (though at 21 and in college, there isn't much of one) - and so long as I exist as a part of a community, they are a part of the lives of those communities of which I am also. Art must be consumed by the living, and so must enter life. The only way it can truly be for its own sake is for no human eye to ever behold the finished piece - for it not to be art.

Philip Giraldi observes a sad truth about the US partial withdrawal from Iraq. Excerpt:

Iraq is headed by a strongman who intends to stay in power come what may, not unlike Saddam though representing a different constituency. The country continues to be one of the most corrupt in the world and electricity and water are in short supply, worse even then during Saddam's latter days.

US interests have hardly been served by the six year occupation. Apart from defense contractors and a few oil companies it is hard to imagine that anyone sees any benefits. 4319 Americans and at least 90,000 Iraqis killed violently since 2003. At a cost of maybe as much as $5 trillion when all the bills are paid by our grandchildren. Saddam's secularism has been replaced by a Shi'ite dominated power structure and Iraq's role as an Arab bulwark against Iranian hegemony is just a memory. The Christian minority, protected under Saddam, has more-or-less fled the country. Iran has benefited most from America's takedown of Saddam.

Non-Catholics may not realize that Catholics may receive the Host (= communion wafer) either on the tongue (the traditional way) or in hand (the far more common way today). When I was a Catholic, I received on the tongue normally -- that is, except when I was sick -- as a sign of respect for the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. A few times when I was traveling, I'd find a priest who recoiled at that, but mostly they seemed fine with it, or at least showed no visible sign of objecting. So few American Catholics today receive on the tongue that you couldn't blame a priest for being surprised when one presented himself for communion in that way.

Patricia Snow, a Catholic, writes about this practice, which has been recently discouraged -- explicitly discouraged -- by US bishops as a protection against the spread of swine flu. She is not impressed. Excerpt:

[We] need to ask if an attitude of fastidiousness, a fear of physical contact between priest and communicant, is Catholic. What the priest consecrates--not just with his words, but with his hands--we eat. That physical contact is the point of the sacrament. Furthermore, we almost never receive the Eucharist alone; the Mass is a communal meal, a sharing in the one Cup, or at least the one Bread. The Mass is not a sterile environment.

It is true that recklessness is not holiness, and prudence is a cardinal virtue. But at what point does prudence become false prudence--Joseph Pieper's "anxious senility of a frantic self-preservation?" The Church has reached such a point when her professed belief in the Real Presence makes no concrete difference in the decisions she makes or the ways she behaves. At this point, the Church becomes indistinguishable from the world.

The Church seems in danger of forgetting that the communication of germs is not the only mystery at issue. The infinitely more sublime mystery is the communication of God himself, the source of all life and health. This is our faith. This is what we mean by the doctrine of the Real Presence, the mystery that reception of the Eucharist on the tongue both dramatizes and protects.

I needed to read this, actually, because after three years of being Orthodox, i still struggle a bit to accomodate myself to the Orthodox way of receiving communion: on a spoon, from a common cup. In Orthodoxy (as well, I believe, as in most of the Eastern Rites of the Roman Catholic Church), communion is offered as bread commingled with wine, in a chalice. Communicants have the priest serve them one at a time, from a common spoon. If you are a germophobe of any sort, it'll give you the hives. But you have no choice: if you want to receive communion, you have to deal with it. It was hard for me to get used to this, and sometimes -- like during cold and flu season -- it still is. When I'm really sick, I can't bring myself to receive communion, out of concern that I'm going to pass my sickness to my fellow parishioners. But perhaps my caution is an overreaction, or at least misplaced.

What are your thoughts about communion in the hand, versus on the tongue? Or Orthodox communion from a common cup?