Scimitar Burns Bible, and ...

To understand this, gentle reader, one needs to engage in studying the model/rival relationship in mimetic theory; what René Girard calls the "problem of the doubles." The rival - in this case, the Scimitar - can barely get the model - in this case, the Christian faith in general and Catholics in particular - even to notice their slight. This in itself it infuriating to the rival. Alas.

Christians don't always follow the high road, but the Holy Spirit makes it an inchoate part of our awareness. What, do you ask, is that? For that, go here.

Understanding Egypt

I have heard some remarkable blather about the protests in Egypt and Tunis from a priest who should know better than to equate what is going on there with the work of our Lord in the days of His flesh.

This article is an important one. So is this. And for further reference, there is Canetti's Crowds and Power. But ultimately pull down your Things Hidden From the Foundation of the World if you would really understand the protests.

Antiquities, Riots & Iconoclasts

It is heartening to see that residents as well as the Egyptian army are attempting to safeguard the Cairo Egyptian Museum, home of the Tutankamun treasures.

Let's not forget the iconoclasm of devout Scimitarists. Pursuant of Chesterton's parable, the reasons for the riots in Egypt are multitudinous. But destruction in the case of some of our greatest artifacts can be, sadly, one and final.

Back to the Swamp

Why, do you suppose, this happened? From a mimetic theory viewpoint, it points to the expulsion of a designated and acceptable sacrificial victim - in this case the Christian faith in general and the Catholic Church in particular. Oddly, the latter alone comprises over a billion human beings, and yet the Gnostic EU overlords (so accurately depicted in C. S. Lewis's prescient book, That Hideous Strength) curiously believe that they can will out of existence belief in Jesus Christ - or, at least out of public discourse - by their hubris-filled chicanery.

It points again not only to human folly and pride; but to the deeply embedded roots of the primitive sacred in our fallen human condition.

Those EU ministers should listen, in my opinion, to a different sort of minister: Rene Girard, an Extraordinary Eucharistic Minister who also happens to be a member of the L'Académie française. His work in mimetic theory not only brings broad understanding to the cultural conflagration upon which the EU is throwing kindling, but is in full submission to the Magisterium of Mother Church.

The more "modern progressives" (sic.) try to out-distance Christian truth, the more their actions show a recrudescence and regression into the pagan swamp that our Lord and His Church succeeded in pulling us out of ... for a time.

In the Name of the Prophet

The bomb that killed at least 21 Egyptian Christians on New Year’s morning was packed with sharpened metal, iron balls and razor wire.

Many of those that the device didn't rip to death will never see, walk or function properly ever again. With terrorist bombs, euphemisms such as "wounded" and "traumatized" are hideously misplaced. These are not, however, the only banalities being tossed around when this latest attack is discussed. Words like "rare," "surprise," and "extremist" seem similarly absurd to those who know anything about the plight of Christians in large chunks of the Muslim world. Remember, more than 50 Iraqi Catholics were murdered in November; on Christmas Day in the southern Philippines on a Muslim-dominated island a church was bombed and parishioners hurt; and in Pakistan just weeks ago a 45year-old Christian mother of five, Asia Bibi, was sentenced to death for "defaming the Prophet." Not bad for a little over a month! Keep reading here.

Realities of Holy War

In light of recent events, far away (and yet not so very) and close to home, it becomes necessary to examine why the Scimitar lends itself in our present-day to extreme violence.

Father James V. Schall, S. J. writes on what is slow to dawn on the non-Scimitar mentality in A Jihadist Conquest.

From a mimetic theory vantage point, it must be noted that the Scimitar carries all the attributes of what René Girard calls "the primitive sacred" - a deity who "on the record" has no problem with the slaughter of the unfaithful, such values that cannot be reformed by anything resembling progressive revelation or newer prophets who speak for a loving, universal Providence like that of the Judeo-Christian God, and promises of paradise to those who do the sacrificing of the unfaithful.

These are the realities of the Scimitar's notion of holy war. As opposed, say, to those of Christian notions of legitimate defense and chivalry.

Contrasts

An interesting and frustrating problem has developed that will not allow - in some instances - links to be embedded in my posts. Therefore, I will simply list the website and trust that you, the reader, will try to use the address as listed. I apologize for the inconvenience.

For a short-course in the difference between the Scimitar (read: a culture still negligent of influence of the biblical Spirit, or in René Girard's terminology, a "primitive sacred" culture) and western culture that is still Christ-haunted (read: still under the influence of the "external mediation" of Jesus Christ) go to the following:

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/246747/beheader-s-veto-david-french/

Escalation to the Extremes

As René Girard recently writes in Battling to the End, when one member of a model/rival warring relationship is settling into a defensive posture (the dominant 'model'), that partner sets the terms of the battle and "escalation to extremes." The lesser partner (the 'rival') is forced to move against its foe-partner in terms dictated by the former's defenses.

The dominant partner may enact a faux ignorance of its rival's actions and even a feigned ignorance of the rivalry altogether. Its rival is, thus, forced to enact any and all measures not only to be noticed, but, in the words of Robert Hamerton-Kelly,

It wishes not only to imitate the other, nor merely to possess itself in the other, but to destroy the other as the place where the self is alienated to itself.

In this quest, the rival will change the terms of discourse (don't forget; the Scimitar was founded on this model/rival template). But the model will act remarkably stupid and seemingly blind to the obvious. Even when the "escalation to extremes" reaches the level of sacrificial denouement.

WILL the escalation continue? Girard is convinced of it, and fears for the world of humanity. And apparently, the dominant model partner is beginning to think so, too.

But under current leadership from the Last Self-Help Administration, it is unlikely that any actions other than functional dhimmitude, academical indifference, and puer-senex tendencies will be seen for the foreseeable future.

Steyn - We're Still Coming For You

Mark Steyn, for the record:

According to one poll, 58 percent of Americans are in favor of waterboarding young Umar Farouk. Well, you should have thought about that before you made a community organizer president of the world’s superpower. The election of Barack Obama was a fundamentally unserious act by the U.S. electorate, and you can’t blame the world’s mischief-makers, from Putin to Ahmadinejad to the many Gitmo recidivists now running around Yemen, from drawing the correct conclusion.

For two weeks, the government of the United States has made itself a global laughingstock. Don’t worry, “the system worked,” said Homeland Security Secretary Janet Incompetano. Don’t worry, he was an “isolated extremist,” said the president. Don’t worry, we’re banning bathroom breaks for the last hour of the flight, said the TSA. Don’t worry, “U.S. border-security officials” told the Los Angeles Times, we knew he was on the plane and we “had decided to question him when he landed.” Don’t worry, Obama’s chief counterterrorism John Brennan assured the Sunday talk shows, sure, we read him his rights and he’s lawyered up but he’ll soon see that “there is advantage to talking to us in terms of plea agreements.” More>>

Must Reads - Rushing to 'Therapy'

Compliments to Arts and Letters Daily for the following compilation of articles: (a) David Brooks' The Rush to Therapy (b) Tunku Varadarajan's Going Muslim (c) Dorothy Rabinowitz's Dr. Phil and the Ft Hood Killer and (d) Ibn Warraq's Denying Reality, or the Heavy Cost of Political Correctness

Good Christian Men, Rejoice

As the attempt to strangle Christian faith, morals, and traditions gathers momentum, from multiculturalism on the ascendancy in the Last Self-Help Administration and left in the United States and the EU on the continent, Christianity in general and the Catholic faith in particular will find itself more and more under siege. The above is the neo-pagan "pincer" confronting Catholic truth, faith, and morals.

"Neo-pagan?" you may ask. "Is it not rather radical secularism in word and deed?"

No, it isn't. Only if one listens to its themes and self-justifying slogans. Observed through a cool, forensic lens of René Girard's mimetic theory, the structural behavior betrays its pagan pomp and ritual, right down to its Molech-like abortuarial cultus.

The other "pincer" attacking the remnants of the Christian West is, of course, the Scimitar. Again, it betrays its claims of "monotheism", let alone being a religion of "peace", by its necessary dependency upon victims for its sacrificial pyres of regeneration.

The two "pincers" are unlikely bedfellows, but both writhe and roil before the revealed faith, morals, and truths of the Church. Both hate (and secretly admire and desire in rivalry's side-long glances) what they can only reject, revile, and seek to destroy. Both are enslaved to this mission of destruction, for both house a collective mind trapped in mimetic rivalry to Catholic truth. As Robert Hamerton-Kelly describes this trapped mind:

“It is a mind enslaved. It desires not only to possess the other, but to consume or destroy. It wishes not only to imitate the other, nor merely to possess itself in the other, but to destroy the other as the place where the self is alien to the self.”

If you want to know what is called for in this struggle for the survival of truth in the face of the above "twin pincers," I strongly recommend C. S. Lewis's Prince Caspian, and belonging to a worthy organization of Marian chivalry like Corpus Christianum. Only close proximity to the Blessed Sacrament, fixing oneself to the Barque of Peter, and fortitude born of fealty to the Once and Future King (of whom Arthur is a pale parody) will hold us in Truth, Goodness, and Beauty.

Truth .. Into Great Silence

The hive has been greatly disturbed. The MSM is busily filling the air with droning reports. The blogosphere is humming with this pet theory and that (and that and that and that). Youtube video clips hum and fly before your eyes. Bzzzzzzzzz!

Simply the best and quite nearly only interpretive voice to bring coherence to the carnage at Fort Hood spoke several months prior to it occurring:

We are witnessing a new stage in the escalation to extremes. Terrorists have conveyed the message that they are ready to wait, that their notion of time is not ours. This is a clear sign of the return to the archaic, a return to the seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries, which is significant in itself. But who is paying attention to this significance? Who is taking its measure? Is that the job of the ministry of foreign affairs? We have to expect a lot of unexpected things in the future. We are going to witness things that will certainly be worse. Yet people will remain deaf.

On September 11, people were shaken, but they quickly calmed down. There was a flash of awareness, which lasted a few fractions of a second. People could feel that something was happening. Then a blanket of silence covered up the crack in our certainty of safety. Western rationalism operates like a myth: We always work harder to avoid seeing the catastrophe. (emphasis added) We neither can nor want to see violence as it is. The only way we will be able to meet the terrorist challenge is by radically changing the way we think. Yet, the clearer it is what is happening, the stronger our refusal to acknowledge it. This historical configuration is so new that we do not know how to deal with it. It is precisely a modality of what Pascal saw: the war between violence and truth. Think about the inadequacy of our recent avant-gardes who preached the nonexistence of the real...

The work to be done is immense. Personally, I have the impression that this religion has used the Bible as a support to rebuild an archaic religion that is more powerful than all the others. It threatens to become an apocalyptic tool, the new face of the escalation to extremes. Even though there are no longer any archaic religions, it is as if a new one had arisen built on the back of the Bible, a slightly transformed Bible. It would be an archaic religion strengthened by aspects of the Bible and Christianity. Archaic religion collapsed in the face of Judeo-Christian revelation, but Islam resists. While Christianity eliminates sacrifice wherever it gains a foothold, Islam seems in many respects to situate itself prior to that rejection (emphases added)..MORE>>

Girard's mimetic theory is the hermeneutic for understanding human violence par excellence. It is a shame that it is cast into the "blanket of silence" of Western rationalism where men walk on it and do not know what treasure they unwittingly reject.

And while there are few - a very few - who seem to comprehend Girard's work without straying into using mimetic theory to bolster their own agendas, it sure makes living in these troubled, sinful times more tolerable for me.

Which in turn makes it easier to engage in the vital work of Marian chivalry.

The Scimitar - Primitive Sacred

An aspect of René Girard's concept of the primitive sacred involves the acquisition of certifiable sacrificial victims. The sacred needs victims to re-stoke the flames of what Robert Hamerton-Kelly calls the "Generative Mimetic Scapegoating Mechanism" at its heart.

Therefore, the primitive sacred needs trip-wires so as to alert its religionists that "they've got one!" like this.

The gods of the primitive sacred - regardless of all talk of "monotheism" - reflect a similar and recurring need: the need for victims. Girard's three primary characteristics of the sacred carry essential tasks to keep the victimary cult at the center of such conventional culture strong and able to maintain social and psychological cohesion. These three characteristics are ritual, myth, and prohibition.

Ritual re-enacts the founding slaying of the deity-troublemaker who "rescued" the people when they were engaged in the "war of all against all" (Hobbs). By his death, they became a people. To keep the chaos and tumult from returning, a priesthood establish a ritual that replays this victimary origin of culture.

Myth is the subterfuge that lends the once violent mob a self-justifying, self-congratulatory story that keeps them from seeing the actual, structural innocence of their original victim - as well as their on-going ritualized victims' innocence. We "had to" sacrifice him (her, them); it was our "sacred duty."

Prohibitions provide the "trip-wires" that show us who has "trammeled" upon the deity's will and, thus, provide us with a necessary cache of victims, should a dissolution of our cultural cohesion call for a sacrifice to surcharge it.

The point is, the Scimitar has all the ingredients of the primitive sacred in a viral and quite active way in the world today. And regardless of its claims of "monotheism", its structure is at-one with all pagan "primitive sacred" religions.

Vengeful God vs. the Crucified and Risen

This should be enough to indicate that for the Scimitar, appeasing a wrathful god puts their religion at-one with René Girard's "primitive sacred." All conventional religions, from an anthropological point of view, do not share the biblical mandate to "LOVE the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength" (Mk 12,28-31). Indeed, conventional religions love their deity rarely at all.

Rather, the rituals, prohibitions, and myths of conventional religions seek to keep their deities at arm's length, or secure in his or her temple, or as far from human contact as possible (hence the awe-full fear of the sacred and profane meeting).

But beginning with the covenant-making, covenant-keeping God of the Jews comes the slow and awakening understanding of a God Who loves first and invites humanity into a community of steadfast love rather than fear and dread.

The New Testament understands that nature of God the Father is fully vindicated in the death of God the Son at the hands of angry men, and His resurrection. If ever there was a clearer way of advertising the true nature of God, I don't know of it - and neither does the Teaching Office of the Catholic Church.

When the Veil of the Temple was rent from top to bottom (Lk 23,45), the Christian faith says the power of the old primitive sacred fears and dread of the Sacred meeting of the profane was undone. God had come among us. Died for us. Rose to new Life for us. The bogey man of the gods and goddesses was destroyed. Jesus' Crucifixion and Resurrection was the true "twilight of the gods." The Sacred had "become flesh" and "dwelt among us, full of grace and truth" (Jn 1,14).

"I no longer call you servants," Jesus says, "I call you friends" (Jn 15,14-15). "Glory and trumpets!" as Sam Gamgee would say!

But this fear and dread dies hard where the truth of the Gospel still goes unacknowledged. Or is rejected by a Western culture that should know better.

Will the Scimitar ever pull away from its misunderstanding of God's true nature? I do not know. But until it does, we can be certain that it will continue to use any means - any means - to try to appease the angry, vengeful will of Allah. Wouldn't you, if you thought it was God's will?

Will the West regain its whole-hearted belief and Easter hope? Again, I do not know. But until it does, we can be certain that the neo-pagan recrudescence will proceed apace; even with its gussied-up, expensive-suited, Ivy League versions, replete with infant sacrifice. Its god is Moloch wearing a Mammon face.

I admire the Scimitar's misunderstanding of God's nature more than the Christ-rejecting neo-paganism of the West. Which, I wonder, will be easier to (re-)evangelize?

A Postcard, A Retreat, and Nietzsche's Man

I am back now from my all-too brief retreat at Holy Cross Abbey. Brief, but not without great benefit: Sacrament of Reconciliation, the Holy Eucharist on Saturday with Lauds, thirty minutes of Adoration before the Tabernacle (a plenary indulgence), and lots of silence, walking, and reading.

A book I am finding truly insightful for our times of tumult is Lucy Bennett's A Postcard from the Volcano – A Novel of Pre-War Germany. Historical fiction, yes, but historical fiction that shines a bright light on themes and structures of our own tectonic cultural fractures and violence.

Here is a choice tidbit from the protagonist's, Max's, grandfather: "It is good to be young, and capable of understanding that it's the hopes that need changing" (emphases added). Yeah, right.

An intuition from the Abbey Guesthouse: Nietzsche gave the West a double-barrel dose of his ennervating madness: (a) he described and affirmed a kind of man who accepted the 'eternal return' of the Dionysiac - vain, shame-based, vengeful, proud, bestial - while rejecting the Crucified One's way of forgiveness, mercy, long-suffering, and charity; and (b) that man whom he told Europe to imitate has strode menacingly and violently in the flesh onto Europe's stage in the flesh and in great numbers: the Scimitar's exemplar.

Our hero, Nietzsche's man! How can we, liberal, progressive, multi-culturalist, enlightened peoples, not accept him with arms outspread?

Europe and the West in agreeing with Nietzsche, yet possessed by the unacknowledged Spirit of Christ's concern for the victim and non-violence, quail before this swarthy, proud, "natural man." Would Nietzsche be pleased, I wonder?

The only - the only - hope for Europe and the West is not some finely nuanced revivification of sacramentality (that may come later on); rather, it is a sweeping and wholehearted return to belief God and in Jesus Christ as the true Son of God, the Word made flesh (Jn 1,14), rejection of Dionysus, and metanoiac affirmation of Our Lord's Church here on earth.

Anyone willing to give me odds on that likelihood?

Girard - First Things

If you have not done so, read Girard's essential On War and Apocalypse. It will make inimitable sense of recent "trend toward extremes" at Town Hall meetings and concomitant Last Self-Help Administration strong-arm tactics. But not only that. If there is a clearer, honest, and heads-up examination of terrorism and Islamism and the mythological thinking of western rationalism, I don't know of it.

Now the Green Blade Riseth (?)

Does anyone truly understand what is happening in post-presidential election Iran? Does this explain anything?

I think perhaps it does. What I see, on the one hand, is a huge public disappointment with the religious leaders who they believe - rightly or wrongly - abused the trust of the people, allowing an unfair, rigged election to occur. On the other hand, I see a plaintive effort to say to those religious leaders, "Play fair! Be the religious leaders we believed, we hoped you were and you can still be!"

C. S. Lewis posited for inspection his personal findings of versions of The Golden Rule in nearly all the writings of human civilization - Treat others they way you want to be treated. (Cf. The Abolition of Man)

In this way, it may be said, the Holy Spirit is not without witness in all the world, a blessed and holy seed of the Gospel that - sometimes - is only released in the fierce heat of a forest fire of tumult.

Now is such a time in Iran. Who could have foreseen it? Is President I Won right to assume a largely laissez fair attitude? Yes, I think so, bipartisan sniping and deconstruction aside. He sees what is happening; he is a politician. Grandstanding and waving the flag of democracy is cartoon-esque.

Let's see if the Holy Spirit will fan different flames than those of mere crowd contagion in Iran.

Going Merrily in the Dark

I am beginning to think that this sort of event is clear evidence that the Scimitar is as hell-bent on self-destruction as, say, the destruction of Israel. From a mimetic theory point of view, the sacrificial containment system under the Scimitar is dilapidating as its denizens deconstruct their own sacred system picking up stones - and bombs to make - and hurling them at any and all within striking distance.

These are dangerous times. We are mortal. We needed, and still need, a Savior. Thankfully, we received One in Jesus Christ. And He did not leave us bereft; rather, He established the Catholic Church imbued and endowed with sacramental grace with which to see his followers safely all the way to Heaven.

Follow the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20) and the Beatitudes (Matthew 5). Receive the sacraments, especially the Holy Eucharist. Love, and do as you will.

But the men signed with the Cross of Christ
Go (merrily) in the dark ...
I tell you naught for your comfort,
Yea, naught for your desire,
Save that the sky grows darker yet
And the sea rises higher.
Night shall be thrice night over you,
And heaven an iron cope.
Do you have joy without a cause,
Yea, faith without a hope?

Thus speaks the Blessed Virgin to King Alfred in Chesterton's Ballad of the White Horse. "...the men signed with the Cross of Christ Go (merrily) in the dark ..." With faith. And hope. And love.

Pantheon - Solemn High Mass

Recently a Solemn High Mass was celebrated in the Pantheon of Rome recently to celebrate the 1400th anniversary of its consecration as a Catholic Church. That consecration happened in 609, when the Byzantine emperor Phocas gave the building to Pope Boniface IV, who converted it into a Christian church and consecrated it to Santa Maria ad Martyres.

This was 13 years before Muhammad's hijra to Medina. In other words, the Christian faith was already a half a millenium and change old before the Scimitar was swung for the first time... [ht: American Papist]

Collective Violence - a new study

Collective religious rituals, not religious devotion, spur support for suicide attacks. So says a new study in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

For students of René Girard's mimetic theory, this is not a surprise rather a corroboration.