Asymmetric Religion and Philosophy

Story here.

Alberto Cutie joined the Anglican Church today. My question is: Why not one of the Eastern Orthodox Churches? If Cutie knows anything about religion, he knows that the schismatic, as opposed to heretical, Orthodox Churches have valid ordinations and believe as Catholics do on the Eucharist, the dispensing of which is a priest's most important function. The Orthodox Churches allow priests to marry. I recommend Eastern Orthodoxy to friends who have some historical problem with Catholicism.

The Anglican Church started as a political response to the Catholic Church and is now known as a very liberal association. I suspect that politics is why Cutie made his choice.

Update: I find it hard to believe that Cutie gave communion for all of these years and then just didn't believe in it.

This story preoccupied me yesterday, ruined it, really, as much as a news story that doesn't directly involve me can.

Of course, enemies pounce, supporters defend and give perspective. Apologies. I don't know the extent of the abuse and wherever kids are vulnerable, there will be abuse, but the Catholic Church should have a higher standard, much higher. It's fruits should be much more nourishing than its secular counterparts.

A lesson to be learned is that every human institution requires scrutiny, not because an institution needs a dialectic opposite to reach a truth, but because even severe spiritual consequences aren't enough prevent immorality, and the temptation to collude and protect is very strong within all-powerful institutions. Organizations get lazy, comfort and easy power dulls the mind.

Society should, therefore, always allow for alternatives, whether is be in health care, education, or spirituality.

It wouldn't surprise me if many Irishmen take one of those alternatives today.

I've seen this guy. In fact, his book is in my bookcase (my wife's). Nobody was hurt directly by Fr. Cutie's actions, but he damaged the Church. Every time a leader of any organization goes against its tenets, it demoralizes his followers.

Ama De Verdad, Vive De Verdad by Padre Alberto Cutie

The Church has hurt itself greatly through recent scandals. Influential people in the media like LA Times reporter William Lobdell specifically cite the sex abuse scandal as the reason he left the Church. "Crunchy Con Rod Dreher left Catholicism for Orthodoxy, as he recounts in this well-written essay. God knows how many more people have left the Church or have been afraid to approach it because of scandal.

Losing My Religion: How I Lost My Faith Reporting on Religion in America-and Found Unexpected Peace by William Lobdell

Going way back, the scandalous behavior of many in the Renaissance Church inspired Erasmus to write In Praise of Folly and Luther to hammer his 95 Thesis on the Wittenberg Church door, starting the Reformation which has separated Christians in the West for 500 years.

Of course, many artists over the years have commented on the poor behavior of Church officials, even faithful Catholics like Erasmus and Dante.

In Praise of Folly by Desiderius Erasmus

Christian Classics: Works of Martin Luther, in a single file, with active table of contents by Martin Luther

The Divine Comedy (The Inferno, The Purgatorio, and The Paradiso) by Dante Alighieri

The Church's enemies have also exaggerated Church scandals to a great degree, from Fox's Book of Martyrs to the Nazi effort to discredit the Church through show trials of clergy, to Chick comics, to modern media attempts to paint the Church as some sex molestation cult.

Fox's Book of Martyrs by John Foxe

So, how to react to scandal? First, we have to keep things in perspective. Only a small percentage of modern priests have ever hurt children or had mistresses. It should be 0% of course, but with the unique nature of the priesthood, some might be impressed that it's as low as it is (1-6%).

Second, we should push the Church to lessen the chances of abuse. Why not lie detector tests? The Church would give its flock confidence as well as root out those despicable, Hellbound priests who continue to hurt the innocent.

Despite all of its self-inflicted wounds, the Church has persevered. Shortly after the Reformation, the Lady appeared in Mexico and converted a continent.

As to the celibate question: I think the Church should allow priests to marry. My reasons here.

The pope's in Jordan today with the brave Christians who've kept their near 2000-year tradition alive. Some people don't realize that Christianity is older than Islam and that the Middle East and Africa, including Egypt, of course, was a Christian stronghold.

I watched some TV news today and all of them focused on how the pope's angered Muslims or Jews. I understand that news has to have some sort of angle and that controversy is more interesting, but one has to wonder how any leader can make everybody happy all of the time while being committed to the truth.

From here.

Washington D.C., May 6, 2009 / 07:06 am (CNA).- The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Baghdad Jean Benjamin Sleiman will attend the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in Washington on Friday as part of his week-long visit to the United States. He will be joined by over 1,300 attendees including Catholic congressmen and other leaders.

On Sunday Archbishop Sleiman said Mass in an outdoor service for a group of 100 at the St. Thomas More College of Liberal Arts, the Nashua Telegraph reports. He spoke about the persecution of Christians in Iraq, including kidnappings, which he said are underreported and under-investigated.The archbishop asked for special prayers for him and other religious leaders of the Church in Iraq.

"Without shepherds, the sheep become scattered," he said. "We have to take care of our people. We are weak. We have fear in difficult situations. We have to be able to deliver our flock from fear."

Archbishop Sleiman plans to attend Friday’s National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in Washington and meet with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, members of the State Department and congressional leaders, according to the Nashua Telegraph.

Sounds like a valuable skill to have.

A running Asymmetric belief is that individuals have a certain amount of love, hate, moral indignation, piety, work, outrage, leisure, among other things, within their soul and that the trick for people is to aim those emotions at the appropriate targets.

Earth Day is harmful in that it drinks from the same soul pool reserved for God. My son and daughter excitedly came up to me today and asked me to turn the lights off for a minute to "celebrate" ED. This is a meaningless gesture (I assume that you already know that turning the lights off and on uses up more energy than leaving them on) that mimics what people do in a "moment of silence" or any number of other religious rituals. This pseudo-religious gesture is designed, obviously, to tap into our God-given need to worship. Since it's inappropriate, however, to worship the earth, ED, therefore, wastes people's piety. I'd rather my kids pray for a minute.

Going nuts over the environment, as many kids do because of public school catechism (see the results of this study- a third of kids think that the world is going to end by the time they're grown because of environmental degradation. Good work, wackos!)- leads to expensive, dumb policies like everything that comes out of Al Gore's mouth. It also uses up the anxiety that kids should maybe feel for more real threats like the national debt by the time they're grown or, in the case of my oldest son, what I'd do to him if he doesn't clean up the garage this weekend.

On the other hand, we shouldn't let the extremists mess up legitimate concern for the environment. California is a much better place to live since the catalytic converter allowed us to use unleaded gasoline. I'm glad we've cleaned up the water. I like bald eagles. National parks are great.

When I was growing up, the Guirado house probably had the smallest carbon footprint in East Los Angeles. My own super-conservative dad would go around the house turning the lights off. He recycled before it was cool. He hardly bought me anything (he would get my brother stuff). Star Wars toys? Ha! I might as well have asked for Faberge eggs. My brother would break those toys that my dad did buy for me before I ever played with them. Only Tom Daschle liked to drive less: My dad never took us to the movies- I think we went to see Superman II when it came out in the dollar theaters, while Superman IV was playing in the real theaters- and I didn't get any clothes until I was 12, when my dad bought me a hat so that I could look out the window, and...whoa, sorry; using up a little of my resentment reserves.

Anyways, papi didn't do this because he feared Natural retribution; he was just a frugal man. In the same spirit of practicality, my oldest son came home with a box full of energy-saving things- deadly mercury-filled fluorescent light bulbs (much more dangerous than trace levels of arsenic or Alar, and that we wouldn't need if we built more nuclear power plants), water-saving shower heads (California would have much more water if it didn't let its water go into the ocean to protect a dart fish or something).

I helped him set up the experiments, installed stuff. It's good to save energy, not for its own sake, but because its smart. I also like having the choice and would like the freedom to splurge and buy an incandescent bulb every once in a while.

My advice to environmentalists would be to "cool it" if you don't want something like an anti-environmental Martin Luther nailing a 95 thesis to Al Gore's mansion to protest modern indulgences (carbon credits).

Meditation

The Crucifixion, by Matthias Grunewald c. 1510-1515

Some lovely reflections by the Church fathers here.

As it pertains to the use of condoms in combating AIDS in Africa, the Pope is correct dogmatically, of course, but also from a social scientific perspective.

In short, condoms are useful in individual contacts, but can't replace the Christian message of chastity at a societal level.

Critics on Facebook would point out that the pope has an ulterior motive (it can't be called a "hidden agenda" as the intent is clear). They'd be right. The Church might still be against condoms even if they were effective in preventing AIDS on a mass scale.

But the pope isn't the only one with an agenda and the Catholic Church isn't the only institution to prioritize dogma. The other popular Western religious movement, environmentalism, has placed bird eggs above African babies for close to forty years by discouraging the use of DDT. They're efforts, usually by tying money to the non-use of DDT, have constituted a de facto ban on DDT that has resulted in millions of deaths (there is a time when environmentalists care quite a bit about malaria: when it spoons with another agenda, global warming).

Victim of environmentalists

To summarize the environmentalist mindset:

Global warming: little evidence, ambiguous impact (it may be positive), efforts to control it will be super-expensive (trillions upon trillions) and may not even have any effect- "Let's go for it!"

Malaria reduction through DDT: Cheap, guaranteed to save millions of lives- "no way!"

Mainstream evidence here, here, here, here, here, and here.