What Would Walker Percy Think?

Anyone who's followed this blog for awhile knows I love to read. I'm pretty eclectic in my choices. My book club is reading Ratzinger's
Spirit of the Liturgy and will move from there to Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors. Thinking about the liturgy got me to pick up the Ottaviani Intervention and I also just finished re-reading Walker Percy's The Thanatos Syndrome which is fascinating, especially in view of the "thanatos culture" we live in.

After reading Percy's fiction, I picked up a book of his essays which contains an interview with Zoltan Abady-Nagy conducted shortly after Percy celebrated his 70th birthday, a milestone I reached myself a few months ago. One thing really struck me in the interview. Addressing the question of whether literature is more "cognitive" or "morally judgmental" Percy said this:

History as Judge?? Castro's Real Fate

Fidel Castro hand in hand

with Russian communist

Barack Obama, gave this public statement upon the recent death of communist dictator, Fidel Castro: 

“We know that this moment fills Cubans - in Cuba and in the United States - with powerful emotions, recalling the countless ways in which Fidel Castro altered the course of individual lives, families, and of the Cuban nation.  History will record and judge the enormous impact of this singular figure on the people and world around him.”

Should We Respect These Elders?

Have you heard of "the Elders?" They are a group of international big names who have been selected for their self-proclaimed "collective wisdom." Among them are former Secretary General of the U.N. Kofi Annon, former president Jimmy Carter, former Irish president Mary Robinson, Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu and a handful of others. According to their website they were convened in 2007 by Nelson Mandela to "offer their experience and support for peace building and collaborative approaches to addressing major causes of human suffering."

How do they work? "The Elders are committed to listening to the views of all groups and individuals – and especially women and young people....The Elders amplify the voices of those who work hard to be heard, challenge injustice, stimulate dialogue and debate and help others to work for positive change in their societies."

In their website video Kofi Annon says of the elders (including himself), "They do not have careers to build, elections to wins, constituents to please. They can talk to anyone they please and are free to follow any paths they deem right." The elders then, are being promoted as an independent group of wise leaders able to advise the global village to solve the problems of mankind. Religion has little role in this enterprise. In fact, the elders see it as a primary oppressor of women and a source of many of mankind's problems.

This is particularly evident in the discussion of one of the main issues listed on the website, "equality of women and girls." The page addressing the issue specifically targets religion as a source of discrimination. Jimmy Carter, writing in his role as an elder, elaborated on this recently when he quit the Southern Baptist Convention because of their position against ordaining women as deacons and pastors. In a commentary article in The Age, an Australian Newspaper, he made it clear that religions that will not ordain women are antiquated and discriminatory. "The carefully selected verses found in the Holy Scriptures to justify the superiority of men," Carter wrote, "owe more to time and place - and the determination of male leaders to hold onto their influence - than eternal truths." This was clearly a swipe at all faiths, including the Catholic Church, that do not ordain women. It is the same language adopted by feminist groups advocating women priests.

Carter also used not so coded language to attack the Church for its opposition to abortion. "The belief that women must be subjugated to the wishes of men excuses slavery, violence, forced prostitution, genital mutilation and national laws that omit rape as a crime. But it also costs many millions of girls and women control over their own bodies and lives." While the Elders' website carries nothing about abortion, the language that fills U.N. documents about women "controlling their bodies" and women's reproductive rights should concern anyone about the ultimate goals of this group, especially since many are well known for their abortion advocacy. Jimmy Carter, Mary Robinson, Kofi Annon, Desmond Tutu, and Nelson Mandela all have extreme pro-abortion backgrounds.

In fact, the Elders looks like one more group of elitist ideologues who believe that human effort can bring about Utopia. Their cumulutive record of pro-abortion and pro-population control politics makes it questionable whether they really have the interests of individual people at heart. As Screwtape, C.S. Lewis' senior devil, always advised his nephew Wormwood, keep man's attention on humanity as a whole and he'll overlook the hungry man next door.

For more on The Elders:

Jimmy Carter, Kofi Annan, and Other Global Council of Elders Slam Christian Churches for Not Ordaining Women

Nelson Mandela's Group of Global "Elders" a Who's Who of Pro-Abortion, Pro-Population Control Movement

The Elders a group of eminent global leaders say Religious and traditional practices discriminate against women and girls

Russell Kirk: Ten Conservative Principles Part 2 -- The Lilies of the Field

Kirk's next three principles also correspond well to Catholic thought.

4. Fourth, conservatives are guided by their principle of prudence. So are Catholics. In his book, The Four Cardinal Virtues, Joseph Pieper quotes Church teaching that prudence is the "mother" of the cardinal virtues (prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance). "In other words," says Pieper, "none but the prudent man can be just, brave, and temperate, and the good man is good in so far as he is prudent." Kirk and Pieper both look to Plato because the ancient philosophers also saw prudence as the first and head of the other virtues. It is not a novel idea. Kirk explains it saying, "As John Randolph put it, Providence moves slowly, but the devil always hurries.... The conservative...acts only after sufficient reflection, having weighed the consequences. Sudden and slashing reforms are as perilous as sudden and slashing surgery." The Catholic too is encouraged to "discern" before making decisions. That means taking the time to pray, study, and consult the wise before making a decision. So again, Kirk's fourth principle corresponds to Catholic action.

5. Fifth, conservatives pay attention to the principle of variety. This is probably my favorite principle because it recognizes the good sense of multiplicity and how it reflects the abundance and generosity of God. Think of the lilies of the field and the birds of the air. Variety illustrates the beauty and wonder of God who made every individual unique. The true conservative isn't interested in creating a society where man is a cog in a machine or in producing the stripped bauhaus architecture of utility. He also is a realist who recognizes, like Kirk points out, that, "For the preservation of a healthy diversity in any civilization, there must survive orders and classes, differences in material condition, and many sorts of inequality. The only true forms of equality are equality at the Last Judgment and equality before a just court of law; all other attempts at levelling must lead, at best, to social stagnation." Kirk isn't recommending subjugating the masses here; rather he recognizes that men have different capacities and talents and that a healthy society recognizes it. Catholic teaching says the same. "There are different gifts, but the same spirit gives them," says St. Paul. The head is not called to be the foot. In the body of Christ, all the parts are valuable in their diversity. Kirk hits the nail on the head again.

6. Sixth, conservatives are chastened by their principle of imperfectibility. Men are not angels; we are inflicted by the reality of original sin. This understanding is implicit in Kirk's point. "Man, being imperfect, no perfect social order ever can be created....All that we reasonably can expect is a tolerably ordered, just, and free society, in which some evils, maladjustments, and suffering will continue to lurk....The ideologues who promise the perfection of man and society have converted a great part of the twentieth-century world into a terrestrial hell." Amen! Look at the Enlightenment with its adulation of reason and the false promises of Communism and its less violent sister, Socialism, for the reality of Kirk's thought. As Obama imposes his liberal revolution on the United States, we have a birdseye view of the "terrestrial hell" Kirk mentions. This principle sounds very much like what Cardinal Stafford said recently when he warned, "For the next few years, Gethsemane will not be marginal. We will know that garden." The Utopia promised by liberal politicians and their cohorts like Planned Parenthood looks more like Huxley's Brave New World than the Garden of Eden before the fall. We embrace their false promise of a new world order at the risk of getting another hell-hole of history.

To be continued...