The folly of strong drink

 

 The giant, gorg'd with flesh, and wine, and blood,

Lay stretch'd at length, and snoring in his den,

Belching raw gobbets from his maw, o'ercharg'd 

With purple wine and cruddled gore confus'd.

 

-- Joseph Addison

 

Thrice I brought and gave it him, and thrice he drained it in his folly. . . . and reeling fell upon his back, and lay there with his thick neck bent aslant, and sleep, that conquers all, laid hold on him. And from his gullet came forth wine and bits of human flesh, and he vomited in his drunken sleep.

 

-- Homer, Odyssey 9.360, 370

 

Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging: and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise. 

-- Proverbs 20:1

 

What in the world is the heart of Islam coming to?

 First we have MBS shaking hands publicly with the openly homosexual US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and now we get this headline:

Saudi Arabia to lift booze ban at 600 tourist locations ...
 

... Spirits and hard liquor above 20% ABV will remain banned, with no sign of shops, takeaways or home brewing being permitted. ...

O believers! Intoxicants, gambling, idols, and drawing lots for decisions are all evil of Satan’s handiwork. So shun them so you may be successful.

 

-- Qur'an, Sura 5:90 

And ˹remember˺ when Lot scolded ˹the men of˺ his people, ˹saying,˺ “Do you commit a shameful deed that no man has ever done before?

 

You lust after men instead of women! You are certainly transgressors.”

 

But his people’s only response was to say, “Expel them from your land! They are a people who wish to remain chaste!”

 

-- Qur'an, Sura 7:80-82

 

 

My body is a Catholic Church . . .

 . . . full of wine, bread, and guilt.

 

No presence of human blood discovered on consecrated host

 

 Indianapolis Archdiocese probes parish’s alleged Eucharistic miracle

... a “young woman” ... described seeing “drops of blood” on two consecrated hosts. The hosts had apparently fallen on the floor Feb. 21 and were placed in water and kept in the tabernacle to dissolve. A day later, what the woman saw instead, she claimed, “looked like a very very thin piece of skin with blood on it.”

A CUP founder confirmed in an email to OSV News that the same woman, who wished to remain anonymous, took the photos of the apparently blood-stained hosts that were posted on social media. ...

No Eucharistic miracle in Indianapolis, archdiocese confirms after lab tests

... “A biochemical analysis of a host from St. Anthony Catholic Church in Morris, Ind., that was displaying red discoloration revealed the presence of a common bacteria found on all humans,” the statement said. “No presence of human blood was discovered.”

The March 24 statement confirmed that the host had “fallen out of a Mass kit used at the parish, and when it was discovered, red spots were present. ...

Catholics believe that upon their consecration at Mass, bread and wine become Jesus Christ — body, blood, soul and divinity — while still retaining the appearances of bread and wine. ...

 

 

'Tis The Silly Season

 Both ways deceitful is the wine of pow'r;

When new 'tis heady, and when old 'tis sour.

 

-- Walter Harte

The word radical occurs only in the title of this essay about J. D. Vance

 I was expecting a juicy exposé of 2019 Catholic convert J. D. Vance's radicalism in Paul Elie's "J. D. Vance's Radical Religion" for The New Yorker, here, but all you get is disappointment and dark insinuation.

If you are hoping to find out if Vance fasts for Lent, makes pilgrimage to Our Lady of Guadalupe, or goes to daily Latin Mass, you won't.

It's mostly an essay specializing in ideological assumptions and guilt by association, written from the sneering point of view of the illiberal ethos which can't believe there is still a religion in America which is thoroughly pro-life in its commitment to the unborn and the elderly, and committed to the sanctity of marriage between men and women.

For example, Paul Elie insinuates that Vance is a "conservative Catholic" just like Supreme Court justices Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh, and Barrett, but never tells us exactly how. Therefore we should be afraid of a coming "top-down ordering of society . . . enshrined through regime change" if Vance advances to the executive branch and cooperates with this Supreme Court cabal.

We're not told what kind of Catholics are justices Roberts and Gorsuch, either, not to mention Sotomayor, or how the other four form a conspiracy against the American nation.

For Paul Elie, what it seems to come down to is that Vance is too buddy buddy with people like Patrick Deneen, whom he asserts to be anti-democratic without evidence:

In 2023, Vance took part in a discussion at the Catholic University of America with the Notre Dame political scientist Patrick Deneen, an advocate of “post-liberalism,” which, he explains in his books “Why Liberalism Failed” and “Regime Change,” is the view that liberalism has become an “invasive progressive tyranny” and so must be replaced by “a conservatism that conserves.” Vance greeted Deneen with a bear hug; during the discussion, Politico reported, Vance “identified himself as a member of the ‘postliberal right’ and said that he views his role in Congress as ‘explicitly anti-regime.’ ” ...

For Deneen, post-liberalism involves elevating “leaders who are part of the elite but see themselves as ‘class traitors’ ready to act as ‘stewards and caretakers of the common good’ ”—and to enact their views on abortion, marriage and divorce, euthanasia, the free exercise of religion, and other issues without the constraints of legal precedent or the democratic process. Evidently, Vance fits the bill. After learning of Trump’s choice of running mate, Deneen, in a statement, called Vance “a man of deep personal faith and integrity, a devoted family man, a generous friend, and a genuine patriot.”

I'm not a fan of the Catholic integralists, nor of the broad influence of Catholicism at the expense of the nation's historic conservative Protestant character either, but I'm not particularly afraid of them, just as I am not afraid of the Christian nationalists.

Mostly they are amusingly grandiose.

These groups represent a reaction to illiberalism, which is what this is really all about. The radicals are the so-called liberals who like to read Paul Elie and subscribe to The New Yorker, who want to suppress speech and suppress religion and its influence and suppress everything about this country's past. This country is about freedom, and freedom is really messy, which is why ideologues of the left and right have so, so much to say against it. 

Freedom really ticks them off.

I'm thoroughly confident that these idealists can blather on all they want and that the American people are still not going to submit to their religious tests for citizenship on the one hand, let alone to their pope on the other. 

The country is just too damn LGBT for that.

 

    

 

Peter Hitchens: What to teach our children?

 

The question of grace before or after meals faded from my life for many atheist and secular years until my wife (raised as an atheist by a Communist father and radical mother) and I were confronted with the problem of what to teach our children. A series of revolutions had come crashing through our lives, previously filled only with ambition, long days of hard work, wanderings in foreign countries and too much wine. At some point in all this, I and then my wife found an insatiable need for what I would now call the authority of God. We weren’t going to face this business alone.

Anyone with any sort of upbringing presumably experiences this moral need in their lives if they become parents.

Birth itself is like a painful war, ending in victory. But your victory has given you a new and demanding kingdom to govern. What powers do you now have? What are the limits on them? To whom are you accountable, and what is good? You are no longer responsible only to yourselves and each other for how you behave. You are observed, and will be remembered after you are dead, in your private moments. You have to stop doing some things, hide some things and start doing others. I will not go into details, but one of the things we felt a strong need to do, quite soon, was to say grace before eating. We groped for what to say.

More.

Eschatological prophets don't leave gospels behind

 

p52, a 2nd century fragment of John from a codex

Jesus trying to keep his miracles quiet is in the news, by Father John Perricone, Ph.D., who alas in "Is Christ a Magician?" can't even get Matthew 16:4 right:

But, to our more serious question above. We should preface these words by God’s: “It is a wicked and perverse generation that asks for signs and wonders” (Matthew 16:4). 

The verse says nothing about wonders, which is a technical term most familiar to us from the Book of Acts, but also from the little apocalypses found in the gospels. The verse in question goes like this:

A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given unto it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas. And he left them, and departed.

The father is right that we observe a Jesus who does occasionally try to keep his miracles quiet. They are "often accompanied by a stern admonition to tell no one". The thing is, not all the time. And the Christian gospels are replete with them nevertheless. 

Mark's Jesus is even more emphatic about this than is Matthew's. Mark's Jesus was unequivocally against signs of any kind, not even the sign of the prophet Jonah, and not just to the Pharisees, but to his entire evil generation.

It's a downright odd thing for someone to say who is supposedly leaving a trail of them in his wake in exorcisms, healings, and nature miracles. The gospels proclaim a miracle worker who wanted the miracles kept quiet? This is akin to the problem known as the Messianic Secret. "I'm the Messiah, but don't tell anyone".

The eschatological context of this sign business is preserved by Mark, although at a distance, as it is by Matthew in like manner in his doublet of the saying (Matthew 16:1ff., 27):

And the Pharisees came forth, and began to question with him, seeking of him a sign [σημεῖον] from heaven, tempting him. And he sighed deeply in his spirit, and saith, Why doth this generation seek after a sign? verily I say unto you, There shall no sign be given unto this generation. ... Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation; of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.

-- Mark 8:11f., 38 (cf. Matthew 12:38f.; Matthew 16:1ff., 27; Luke 11:16, 29f.).

The emphasis of the eschatological Jesus is on his message of repentance, not on his deeds.

Vincent Taylor recognized long ago that the eschatological Mark 8:38 was quite out of place where it is.

A lot of things seem loosely connected together in Mark, not just this. Just read the form critics.

In Mark's unskilled hands, signs likewise aren't yet quite exactly the same thing as miracles either. Miracle in Mark is instead typically referred to, when it is referred to at all, as the palpable expression of divine authority [ἐξουσία] (Mark 1:27; 2:10; 3:15; 6:7), or of divine power [δύναμις] (Mark 5:30; 6:2, 5, 14; 9:39).

And from the start, Mark presents Jesus as more than willing to demonstrate to the Scribes his divine authority to forgive sins by performing a miracle to prove it (this despite later noteworthy teaching requiring mutual forgiveness between men if there is to be forgiveness of men by God, in Mark 11:26, which is rather different; is that blasphemy, too?):

But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, (he saith to the sick of the palsy,) I say unto thee, Arise, and take up thy bed, and go thy way into thine house. And immediately he arose, took up the bed, and went forth before them all; insomuch that they were all amazed, and glorified God, saying, We never saw it on this fashion.  

-- Mark 2:10ff., Matthew 9:6ff., Luke 5:24ff. (similarly John 10:37f., 14:11).

We go back again the other way, though, in Mark 11:27-33, where Mark presents a Jesus who will NOT condescend to the chief priests, the Scribes, and the elders to demonstrate by what authority he had cast out of the temple the buyers and the sellers, the money-changers, and specifically the sellers of doves:

And Jesus answering saith unto them, Neither do I tell you by what authority I do these things.

So which is it?

 

In the same willy-nilly fashion, Mark has Jesus do an exorcism, a resurrection, and a healing of a deaf/dumb man in Galilee, one which Jesus wants declaimed, but the others which Jesus wants kept quiet:

Howbeit Jesus suffered him not [to follow him], but saith unto him, Go home to thy friends, and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee, and hath had compassion on thee. And he departed, and began to publish in Decapolis how great things Jesus had done for him: and all men did marvel. 

-- Mark 5:19f.

And he charged them straitly that no man should know it; and commanded that something should be given her to eat. 

-- Mark 5:43

And he charged them that they should tell no man: but the more he charged them, so much the more a great deal they published it; 

-- Mark 7:36.

So which is it?

  

Eventually Mark inexplicably makes Jesus actually respond positively and at great length to the question from Peter, James, John, and Andrew "what shall be the sign" of the coming of the destruction of the temple, in Mark 13:4, the beginning of the infamous Apocalyptic Discourse.

But why would Jesus do that, all of a sudden, and condescend to a question about signs  if "no sign shall be given"?

Obviously the Apocalyptic Discourse is post-resurrection re-interpretation of Jesus' original eschatological message that judgment was imminent. The warning had been the man and the message, but he got himself crucified, and with the man now gone they are in a new situation which is under pressure to explain itself. Like the supplied endings to Mark, the Apocalyptic Discourse bears all the marks of another time and other hands. But that is another matter.

As quickly, however, as Jesus deigns to entertain such talk of the sign of the end, Jesus warns in 13:22 that it is false Christs and false prophets who will come and do "signs and wonders, to seduce, if it were possible, even the elect".

And with that we're right back to negativity about signs, which shows just how much that view was the original, dominant view going back to the historical Jesus and persisting beyond him in their memory.

So no sign it is.

(The positive embrace of miraculous signs in the supplied long ending in Mark 16:17, 20 may be dismissed as unoriginal to Mark on stylistic grounds, and not in the least because it conforms to the later ideas expressed for example by Luke in Acts).

 

This picture painted by Mark shows overall that he is confused and indecisive about what exactly to present as the actual content of Jesus' message, which Matthew and then Luke in their turn attempt to smooth over and remedy. It is one reason why Mark was not that popular in early Christianity. The relative paucity of witnesses to Mark, and the missing ending, if it really is missing, after 16:8 as late as Codex Vaticanus is . . . kind of a sign.

In the case of Mark 8, Matthew and Luke retain the harsh, negative evaluation of sign-seeking, but they augment the unequivocal "no sign shall be given" with "except the sign of Jonah", i.e. that the resurrection of Jesus after three days in the belly of the earth is the ultimate sign to this generation.

So the miracle of the resurrection is THE ONE legitimate sign, but none of the other miracles are signs? What are they then? Or were there no other such signs? Matthew and Luke haven't really thought this through. But of their post-resurrection re-interpretation of the original saying Mark knew absolutely nothing.

This is yet more evidence that the tradition is not solid, to put it mildly, and that the evangelists are willing, shall we say, to tamper with the word of God for theological reasons.

The solution of Matthew and Luke does little, either, to alleviate the wider problem involved, which is the failure of this evil generation to have faced the final judgment of the coming Son of Man predicted by Jesus.

But it is evidence of a trajectory of re-interpretation we see running through the Synoptics culminating in John, where we come to the explicit development of the completely different, positive understanding of sign as miracle.

And whereas the Synoptic witness is full of miracles by other names, and against signs more than not, miracles are now routinely called signs in the Fourth Gospel:

Turning water into wine at Cana of Galilee (John 2:11);

Destroying the "temple" "of his body" and rebuilding it in three days (John 2:18f);

Nondescript miracles which Jesus did in Jerusalem (John 2:23) which impressed Nicodemus (John 3:2); 

Healing a boy who was near death (John 4:48), Jesus' second miracle in Galilee (John 4:54);

Healing many who were sick (John 6:2);

Feeding the five thousand with five barley loaves and two fish (John 6:14, 26, 30);

Jesus' miracles generally (John 7:31);

Healing the man born blind (John 9:16);

John the Baptist performed no miracles but was right about Jesus (John 10:41);

The Pharisees are beside themselves what to do with Jesus, who does so many miracles, after Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead (John 11:47);

Some of the people hailed Jesus (triumphal entry into Jerusalem) as if he were king because of the miracle of raising Lazarus from the dead, as did also some of the authorities (John 12:18, 37); 

The appearance of Jesus in his crucified body to doubting Thomas was one of many miracles Jesus did after his resurrection (John 20:30). 

This last example in John rings the composition with the 2:18 allusion to Jesus' resurrection and echoes the re-interpretation of Mark 8 observed in both Matthew and Luke, who feel compelled to supplement Mark's "no sign, period" with "no sign but the sign of the prophet Jonah . . . who was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale" (Matthew 12:39f.; cf. Luke 11:29f.), which they put forward as a type of the resurrection.

The resurrection itself has now become a tool for proof of the truth of a different gospel, whereas Jesus as eschatological prophet had nothing to prove. Jesus insisted on the imminent end for this, his evil generation because "the kingdom of God is at hand" (Mark 1:15).

"Repent ye and believe the gospel".

That Jesus, the historical Jesus, was not interested in vindication by miracles and heavenly portents, but in actual demonstrations of repentance by his hearers, so that a few at least would be saved from that imminent judgment. Without those demonstrations there isn't any belief, and no salvation.

The new Jesus emphasizes the believing, which many can now get indefinitely into the future, even from a book:

And many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book: But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name. 

-- John 20:30f.

The miracles are now constitutive of the message, so much so that John's Jesus can say:

. . . though ye believe not me, believe the works: that ye may know, and believe, that the Father is in me, and I in him. 

-- John 10:38.

Whereas one may aver that to the final eschatological prophet who followed John the Baptist, the palsied fruit of repentance was a good thing (Matthew 3:8), not something to be healed from:

And if thy foot offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter halt into life, than having two feet to be cast into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched:

-- Mark 9:45.

You've heard of true love

 True sorrow's like to wine,

That which is good does never need a sign.

-- John Suckling (1609-1642)

Late stage civilization

 

Odysseus gets Polyphemus drunk, mosaic, Villa Romana del Casale, Piazza Armerina, Italy

 

 Prosperity begins to mellow,

And drops into the rotten mouth of death.

-- William Shakespeare, Richard III, Act 4, Scene 4

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine's veto of a bill banning transgender surgeries for children has been overridden by the Ohio House

 The vote was an overwhelming override: 65-28.

The Ohio Senate takes up the matter next.

Story here.

America's Amish willingly got the coronavirus at church by taking the common cup at Holy Communion

After a short shutdown last year, the Amish chose a unique path that led to Covid-19 tearing through at warp speed. It began with an important religious holiday in May.

Lapp: When they take communion, they dump their wine into a cup and they take turns to drink out of that cup. So, you go the whole way down the line, and everybody drinks out of that cup, if one person has coronavirus, the rest of church is going to get coronavirus. The first time they went back to church, everybody got coronavirus.

Lapp says they weren’t denying coronavirus, they were facing it head on.

More.

They are the enemies of the cross of Christ whose god is their belly and whose glory is in their shame

 

 

 

 Had the upper part, to the middle, been of human shape, and all below swine, had it been murder to destroy it?

-- John Locke

Either way, the new wine's not so hot

No man also having drunk old wine straightway desireth new: for he saith, The old is better.

-- Luke 5:39 (KJV)

And no one after drinking old wine desires new; for he says, The old is good.

-- Luke 5:39 (RSV)

 

 

And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.  ... Others mocking said, These men are full of new wine. 

-- Acts 2:4, 13

A psychology of the children of light . . .

. . . or why you became a religious fanatic, a band groupie, the Chicago Cubs' Number One Fan, a fill-in-the-blank junkie/obsessive-compulsive, a political radical, an activist, a racist, or maybe a workaholic, drug addict or alcoholic, got a tattoo or covered yourself in them, cut your ears, and maybe your tongue, nose, nipples or genitals, replete with jewelry, questioned your sexuality or gender, added or subtracted breasts, got a chopadickoffofme or an addadicktome, keep changing your hair color, or are otherwise consumed by your "identity".

Because you ain't heavy.

 

 

 

 

 

 Are Twitter trolls mentally ill? :

"diagnoses of the various kinds of personality disorder are very fuzzy — often people are in several categories, or don’t fit neatly into any of them." ...

"neurotypical people ... are heavy, it takes a lot to move you. So when something quite nice happens to a neurotypical person, it makes them slightly happier: the wind only moves them a little bit. When something quite unpleasant happens, it makes them slightly sadder. ... if you are cognitively light, then the same events will move you much further. ... think of it as someone being light, rather than heavy: being blown on the wind of events. [Light] people ... feel emotions much more strongly. But they also have difficulty forming a strong self-image, and often take on very visible identities, such as being a Goth or a fan of a particular band, dyeing their hair or getting tattoos, in order to give themselves something solid to cling to." ...

"we all grow more emotionally stable over the course of our lives (as children, we are very emotionally volatile, and settle down with age) and by middle age, most people ... are leading healthy and happy lives. One study followed up patients 27 years after diagnosis and found that 92% of them no longer met the diagnostic criteria." /end

The easy malleability of the human personality, its "light" nature, its instability, particularly of the child, is both a feature and a bug according to the New Testament.

Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall in no wise enter therein.

-- Luke 18:17

The wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know whence it comes or whither it goes; so it is with every one who is born of the Spirit.

-- John 3:8

While ye have light, believe in the light, that ye may be the children of light.

-- John 12:36

Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness. ... But let us, who are of the day, be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love; and for an helmet, the hope of salvation.  

-- I Thessalonians 5:5,8

That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive; 

-- Ephesians 4:14

For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light:

-- Ephesians 5:8

Creepy connubial Christ talk at First Things and the Book of Revelation

Loving with Mary :

Mary, the Shulammite, turns around to Jesus. In his voice and face, she recognizes her husband, her Lord. Jesus is the groom; we ourselves are Mary, the Shulammite. Her grief is our grief, her tears our tears, and her despair our despair. ...

We, his bride, hold on to him, united to him in faith. Every Eighth Day, he comes to us in the preaching of the gospel; every Sunday morning in the breaking of the bread.

When we walk into church and the doors close behind us, we enter into heaven. Eastertide begins; time and space are reconfigured. It is the Eighth Day; we are in Paradise. Eve, the Shulammite, Mary Magdalene—we all join Jesus at the altar. Bread and wine show up. It’s a marriage supper. Our groom, our Lord, unites himself to us, his bride.

Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns.

Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory,

for the marriage of the Lamb has come,

and his Bride has made herself ready;

it was granted her to be clothed

with fine linen, bright and pure—

for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints (Rev. 19:6–8)

And you thought gender confusion was so . . . fringe.

Homer, Martin Luther, and the wisdom of beer

Just kidding.

Answer: Tight

Jesus believed only a few in Israel would be saved, Paul believed all Israel would be, along with many Gentiles

For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in. And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob: For this is my covenant unto them, when I shall take away their sins. ... For God hath concluded them all in unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all.

-- Romans 11:25ff., 32

Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you. ... Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat:  Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it. 

-- Matthew 7:6, 13f.

These twelve Jesus sent forth, and commanded them, saying, Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not: But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. ... And ye shall be brought before governors and kings for my sake, for a testimony against them and the Gentiles. ... But when they persecute you in this city, flee ye into another: for verily I say unto you, Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel, till the Son of man be come.

-- Matthew 10:5f., 18, 23

But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel. ... But he answered and said, It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs.

-- Matthew 15:24, 26

So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen.

-- Matthew 20:16

For many are called, but few are chosen.

-- Matthew 22:14

Both things cannot be true.

St. John Henry Newman rationalized Catholic adoption of paganism from time immemorial as sanctifying and transmuting it, same as bread and wine are transformed into holy body and blood by priests

Canonized a week ago, Newman was originally an evangelical Anglican.