SCRIPTURE . . . Leviticus 19 — "You shall not bear hatred for your brother in your heart. . . . . Take no revenge and cherish no grudge against your fellow countrymen. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD" — is expanded by Luke 10 <http://www.usccb.org/nab/bible/luke/luke10.htm#v29> to include everyone, not just your landsman.
Jews were to be loving and forgiving at least to their own — as a starter, you might say. It’s a habit that’s hard to learn, and for that matter sometimes it’s hardest when it’s your own family you have to love and forgive. "You always hurt the one you love," went the old song <http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=1&url=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FYou_Always_Hurt_the_One_You_Love&ei=uxC7R>.
Now, thanks to Jesus, compliments of Luke, we are to love and forgive every Tom, Dick and Harry we run into. Such a goal.
Then there’s Jesus telling his followers <http://www.usccb.org/nab/bible/matthew/matthew25.htm#v31> that at Judgement Day it’s how we treat the least among us — see losers of a week ago <http://www.blithe-spirit.com/> — that will separate the sheep and goats, because that’s him we are treating. Hmmm. It didn’t look like him, say the goats on the Last Day.
PURE POLITICS . . . Rush Limbaugh says Sen. Obama says nothing better than anybody else has in a long time. As Richard J. Daley once said of someone else, he rises to higher and higher platitudes. He’s Chauncey the gardener, from the Peter Sellers film "Being There," <http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=1&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.imdb.com%2Ftitle%2Ftt0078841%2F&ei=s529R9eoDIauiAG_6v2_Cg&usg=A> who with no real-world experience could put Hallmark to shame with his every gnomic utterance. So it is with Our Man O., on his fast track to becoming leader of the free world.
Elsewhere in or re: Dem-land, C. Krauthammer says super delegates won’t ignore vote from their districts, in John Lewis’s case two to one for Our Man O.; so Our Girl H. (as in "Go, girl") won’t ride a wave of super-d enthusiasm to take the Dem nomination. Ah, but non-office-holding super-d’s outnumber the office-holders, 434 to 317, for what it’s worth, which means they have no immediate constituency from which to take their cue, only party powers that be. They could yet be swayed by the people, but not as certainly as every-two-year vote-seekers.
Conservatives argument vs. McCain is that a lib republican in White House takes party down primrose path. The four-year victory won’t be worth it.
However, say McCain supporters, alternative is very bad. Obama, for instance, is extreme left-wing, with advisors to turn your hair on end. For now he’s the Wizard of O[bama]; in due time he will be exposed, and we will find empty suit, ready to be filled either way, with first choice the left turn. Other than that, he’s teflon, bringing us together as Congressional majorities dictate, which means Republicans, get out of the way, here comes the juggernaut.
LITERARY MATTERS . . . In her memoirs, A Backward Glance <In her memoirs, A Backward Glance, 22>, Edith Wharton speaks of a "blind dread of innovation" among merchant-class New Yorkers of 1820. Their fathers and grandfathers had been bold, but they were consolidating gains.
As a child, W. read a lot early and mused on what she read, as in deciding that "adultery" was expensive when she saw a ferry boat sign, "Adults 50 cents, Children 25 cents."
Myself, reading in the Trib of "rape," I looked it up in the best table dictionary I could find. It meant "seize," I read. So why all the fuss, I wondered.
MORE SCRIPTURE . . . Today’s Scripture <http://www.usccb.org/nab/021208.shtml> — 2/12/08, Tuesday, 1st week of Lent, A-cycle — is about words. Isaiah 55 hits us with the word as possessing concrete reality that goes beyond our symbolic notions — the Semitic concept of "dabar," I learned in theology. God says through Isaiah that his word "shall not return to me void, but shall do my will, achieving the end for which I sent it."
This is word as agent, which makes Western sense metaphorically, in that words are powerful. That "dabar" idea backs up our symbolism.
What then of praying as Jesus tells us to pray? "This is how you are to pray: Our Father who art in heaven . . ." Matthew reports. Do it this way, he says, and we do. Little kids learn the Lord’s prayer, as ours did in their religious-ed classes 20 years ago in a liberal parish. But not the Angelic Salutation, "Hail, Mary, full of grace . . ."
Asked about these and other omissions that occurred to parents from Catholic schooling of 40s and 50s, the religious-ed (RE, once CCD) teacher acknowledged the problem. Some do want more of "Catholic culture," she said, treating it as a question of taste.
Oh my. It was a time of reaction against form, and our kids were getting a sort of raw Christianity — with much good emphasis on liberal virtues of tolerance and the like. I hope that nowadays the pendulum swung back a little, and little kids are being told also how to pray with the Lord and his church.
THE WORLD OF NEWSPAPERS . . . Northwestern U.-Medill journalism dean John Lavine — on the hot seat for using blind quotes in a promotional piece <http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-northwestern-dean_14feb14,0,7274825.story> — gave an underwhelming talk to the Midwest Writers Assn. <http://midwestwriters.com/> meeting in Glenview 10/19/06, pulling an old unprepared-speaker trick by asking us what we wanted to hear from him — before saying a word of his own. (He might have discussed it with the program chair.)
We were professional free-lancers. He chose to deal with us as he would a class of undergraduates, asking for raising of hands, possible answers to questions he raised, etc. — a contrast to the many editors we had heard who were happy to tell what they were buying, etc. Came across as cocky.
Another journalistic speaker, another audience: Chi Trib’s David Mendell did not help his career at the Trib with his Obama book <http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=2&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FObama-Promise-Power-David-Mendell%2Fdp%2F006085820>, he told Society of Midland Authors 11/13/07, whereas at Wash Post and elsewhere, he would have been applauded for it. This is Chi Trib culture, I think, playing it very close to vest.
It’s a stiff culture, but it has been upright (they go together sometimes). So one may ask if new-owner Zell effect is in play in its recently giving top op-ed space to Rep. Jesse Jr. <http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-oped0212delegatefeb12,0,4373892.story> and Mayor D <http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-oped0213daleyfeb13,0,4892131.story> . on consecutive days, to toot their horns. (And misstate the situation, as Reader writer Ben Joravsky says Daley did <http://blogs.chicagoreader.com/politics/2008/02/13/truth-and-taxes/>in the matter of property taxes.)
Have Daley et al. found their soul partner in bottom-liner Zell? He’s apparently a Philistine, as we may judge from his trashing, or at least storing out of sight, of the newspaper mural <http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=4&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.blackenterprise.com%2Fyb%2Fprintarticleyb.asp%3Fsection%3Dybaa%>on the concourse ceiling of the once Daily News Building, 400 W. Madison St., now the concourse entrance to the Metra tracks. The mural was ripped down and stored somewhere.
Meanwhile, Chi Trib has copy-editing issues, as in the free-lanced story on Old St. Mary’s church <http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-relig_oldstmaryfeb15,0,6744791.story>. Carefully equipped with "street" and "avenue," beyond what man on street requires, the story says the church was once at "Madison Avenue and Wabash Street," neatly mixing things up. Attn. copy desk: Madison Avenue is in Manhattan, a borough of New York City. It’s famous for its ad agencies. Chicago has Madison Street, famous once for its Skid Row. Pass it on.
And there’s a sort of live-action copy editing missing on radio and TV, where people keep telling me I know something when I don’t. They sprinkle their commentary with a note of presumed self-assurance — "you know" — which is rather a cry for help from the diffident seeking affirmation. Can’t help you, poor soul, I mutter, between whispers that I don’t know and sometimes out-loud pleas to stop telling me I do. Now and then this "you know" is OK, but a panicked sprinkling in every sentence? It’s, you know, irritating.
THE WORLD OF BOOKS . . . In hand is Faith, Reason, and the War Against Jihadism <http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=1&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FFaith-Reason-War-Against-Jihadism%2Fdp%2F038552378>(Doubleday), by the prolific George Weigel. Among preliminary reviewer-conclusions is that he tends to scold the reader, as in telling us (p. 13) that certain "glib . . . usages must stop," because they constitute "an impediment to clear thinking." It should suffice to point out such glibness.
In addition, W. depends heavily on authors such as Bernard Lewis <http://books.google.com/books?as_auth=Bernard+W+Lewis&sa=X&oi=print&ct=title&cad=author-navigational&hl=en>, dipping into them frequently. Excellent sources, but the sense of being taken along for a ride through W’s reading is strong, as opposed to the synthesizing process that demonstrates mind at work, as opposed to note-taker.
Also, W. demonstrates what I call a busy mind. He’s something of a head-tripper, and one lacking crystal clarity at that. The busy mind would explain the lack: it’s too busy to work for or achieve crystal clarity.
Finally, there’s something unrelenting about him. He’s too firm a believer, I firmly believe, in the importance of being earnest.
That said, his findings are important. He’s in the business of demonstrating the dangers to the world of Muslim religion as such, as it has taken hold of millions of believers around the world.
He opposes "genteel secularity" as our "analytic default position" or accepted starting point in facing up to the Muslim threat. Think religion. If we fail to do so, to think in terms of God and Satan, we fail to understand our enemies.
Nor should we allow ecumenical wishful thinking to blind us to crucial differences between Christianity and Islam. The Jesus of the latter, for instance, "Jesus-Issa," is not the Christian Jesus. Nor is Islam the fulfillment of Judaeo-Christianity, as it claims — "one of the three Abrahamic faiths."
Nor do the three faiths view one another in comparable terms. Christians recognize divine revelation in Judaism, for instance, but Islam recognizes it in neither Judaism nor Christianity. Rather, Islam claims to supersede Christianity. This Islamic "supersessionism" is a main distinguishing feature of Islam. Sobieski’s Poles coming to the rescue of Vienna in 1683 were "the people of hell." (As are we of the U.S. today.)
Being a religion of the book does not mean the same thing either. The Quran is a book, but with God as direct author, dictating word for word, as opposed to the Bible, which has men as inspired authors. You don’t "wrestle" with the meaning of the Quran: Paul counsels a woman about wearing a veil during prayer, but Allah commands it directly. There is no mediation.
There is no fatherhood in the God of the Quran, who has no feeling and (apparently) is not a person at all but a force. The Quran’s God is "only Majesty, never Emmanuel" ("God with us"). His unitarianism allows for no intimacy or even association of any kind with creatures, unlike Christian trinitarianism, which has "with" as part of the definition of God.
As for governance, dictatorship is the Islamic ideal. There is no church-state separation, nor church as separate entity. The non-king (the pope) humbled the king (the emperor) at Canossa in 1076, establishing separation definitively.
— More more more on Weigel and Islam as religious enemy —
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