Anger for Anger’s sake.

For some time now, I’ve been plagued by a number of e-mail chain letters coming from a social group I’ve flirted with in the past. The sole person e-mailing me has been passing urban legends, among other things, from what could be called a “religious right” point of view.

This has ranged over anger at modified statues, panicked rhetoric that claims we are on the road to communism, to so-called news stories that the “liberal mainstream media” won’t print, to even actual belief in the “birther” movement.

The latest one is a desperate attmept to invoke the “Christian” nation element, because he and those who have passed the e-mail along are angry at the United States postal service. Apparently, the USPS has invooked their anger for having the audacity to produce a stamp with Islamic symbols to celebrate the holiday Eid ul-Fitr or Eid al-Adha.

I really don’t see a problem.

The same class of stamps also includes religious imagery ranging from menorahs, to Kwanza, to the Madonna and Child, to a generic Happy Holidays. What’s the harm of making a Muslim holiday stamp?

The chain letter goes on to point out all of the Muslim based terrorist attacks and thus they are EVILLL. Never mind the whole problem of homegrown terrorists like, oh, I-don’t-know, Timothy McVeigh?

Terrorism knows no creed. It knows no nationality. It can happen in any civilized or lack thereof society. People go crazy, it happens.

The Gold Standard

One of the things I find beautifully ironic, is that the over obsesses type of patriot who only wear red, white and blue, or love to shout that the United States is the best country in the world, etc, etc, are often the first ones who rally against upholding that those standards when it becomes inconvenient.

Let me explain.

(For the record, I try and avoid using the moniker “America” any more, because that really shows arrogance against the rest of the North and South American nations.)

There has been much brouhaha over the current administration’s attempt to bring suspected 9/11 masterminds from Gitmo and try them in American civilian courts. The arguments against bringing them include an irrational fear that it’ll make wherever they try the accused a target for a terrorist attack and/or jailbreak.

Need I remind the people of the United States that this is the same jail system that held the likes of Charles Manson, Timothy McVeigh and other types like them for a number of years without incident?

The other main argument consists of an outright statement that these people do not deserve the same provided rights that United States citizens enjoy under the court system.

Bullshit. They do, regardless of any crime they may have or have not committed..

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) has been in play for over sixty years, ladies and gentlemen. More than a half-century.

Article Seven of the UDHR states,“All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law.”

In short, regardless of citizenship, birthplace, or any other demographic feature; each and every human being is equal under the law. So holding prisoners in Gitmo without any recourse to a writ of Habeas Corpus, much less any of the other standard legal procedures is a violation of basic human rights.

Whether the naysayers like it or not, those men down at Gitmo have just as much human dignity as any United States Citizen, and deserve to be treated far better than the U.S. Government has treated them.

So I really don’t understand this “Enemy Combatant” shit. They’re human beings, and that’s all that should matter, and our government holding them is a further violation of the UDHR.

Article Eleven states “Everyone charged with a penal offense has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilt according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defense.”

Instead, the United States government has been content, until Obama took office, to instead deny these men any sort of public trial, and who knows how much legal aid they really give them for their defense. Because when you’re in front of a military tribunal, innocent until proven guilty does not apply. It’s the reverse.

So I challenge those who are campaigning to keep Gitmo open as it is, and hold these men indefinitely, without any of the expected recourses of law; tell me again, if we’re supposed to be this beacon of hope and human rights to the rest of the world, how can we treat other people this way?

Doesn’t sound very much like the United States we should be.

Theology Musings: “Liberal” vs. “Conservative”

You know, there’s a lot of baggage with the terms of “Conservative” and “Liberal.”
Ultimately, they are political terms, but they some how fall out on the rest of society as well, and this includes the realm of theology.

I’ve heard some interesting things from both within the academic sphere as well as outside of it with regards to the concepts of “Liberal” and “Conservative” theology. I’ve also been asked where I fall on this Liberal-Moderate-Conservative scale. Within the last year or so, I’ve been telling people “Moderate.”

I hate to say it, but I’m just dodging the question whenever some asks me that; I really don’t think these ultimately political terms should apply to the theological realm, and contrary to most theological topics, I’d rather not get dragged into a discussion or a debate on it. I’ve also heard some people feel the same way, but they would rather see the identifiers Orthodox or Heretical be applied. Likewise with very loaded term “Progressive.”

I’m not really sure what identifiers should be applied to the theological realm, if at all. I’d rather see individual theologies be judged on their own merits than have such blanket terms applied.

But that’s not why I really started this essay.
Why I started it was a heated conversation I had with a member of my old parish, while discussing the value of Catholic colleges. This person saw value in what she called Conservative colleges, but the second I brought up the good academic reputation of Jesuit run colleges (like both my College and High School), the first words out of this person’s mouth was “No, they’re too Liberal!” And they said Liberal like a derogatory slur; the kind of slur that everybody knows but people do not say in polite public conversation.

I was incensed, almost immediately. I could not THINK straight; this person had just suggested that the Theological studies I had devoted my college career to; the studies that had opened up my mind a hundred times over from the start of college to something more, to an intellectual assent to faith, dismissed as nothing more than the ramblings of madmen.

Had my mother not been listening to the conversation and physically blocked my path, I probably would have taken off the polite gloves and asked this person what their theological credentials were, And when they couldn’t provide a college level education in theology, I probably would have dismissed their knowledge as nothing to their face, just as cruelly as they had done mine.

But, as the saying goes, you catch more flies with honey than vinegar. Doing so would have ruined any credibility I had left in the conversation, and lessened the person’s opinion of not only myself, but the school I was attending and Jesuit schools in general.

Truth be told, if we’re going to use Liberal and Conservative to describe theology, both types are needed. Conservative theology gives us an understanding of where we are coming from, and an understanding of the theology and theologians past. However, practicing conservative theology alone leads to stagnation; and as new problems and concerns develop in the world, will keep us from developing a human approach to said problems and concerns. (Galileo, anyone?)
Liberal theology alone is likewise dangerous; it can spin out of control and lead us to shaky theology ground that has little backing in trusted and established norms and methods. (Catholics for a Free Choice, for example, a group that is not based in Catholic teachings)

However, without Liberal theology, people would still be using Christianity to justify slavery, and not to mention denying women any sort of power, and input in the theological process. It was Liberal Theology (Deism, practiced by most of the Founding Fathers in the 1700s) that proposed the radical idea that all people, regardless of belief or status in society have equal consideration under the law, and equal rights.

The Puritans of New England in this era didn’t like this ideal, thinking that only members of their society, and those who had encountered Christ (but with unclear standards of what that meant) deserved any civil and sometimes even human rights. And because they could not accept the terms of the fledgling United States, they either changed their view or died out.

The Folly of Limbaugh

[Reprinted from my Facebook account]

Earlier this week you may have noticed that I responded to Rush Limbaugh’s comments regarding the Haitian disaster.
My only regret about my statement is that in my emotional state, I wished for Rush Limbaugh’s death. I realize wishing for that blowhard to keel over is technically wrong by Catholic moral teaching; no matter how much he may deserve it.

Personally I would prefer if Rush Limbaugh lost his career, but even then I doubt that would happen.

In the days since his controversial comments, Limbaugh has since posted both him stating that he never discouraged donations and, if I’ve read his website correctly, he had a caller the other day who was filled with the same basic righteous anger I was at his asinine statements, how Limbaugh subsequently mocked not only in their argument, but also calling them a “blockhead” as well.

Classy. Nothing like a little Ad Homenim attacks to show what kind of a character Limbaugh can be, while he engages in revisionist history.

My issue with Limbaugh is that regardless of his intended statements or any sort of context, the fact of the matter is, his sort of commentator invokes a very distributing subset of audience. This sort of audience more or less holds Rush Limbaugh at his every word, suspending their common sense and intellect to accept whatever position he puts out almost without question.

As a result, I have no doubt that there are people out there who have no intention of donating to the relief effort, purely because Mr. Limbaugh said so, even if Limbaugh was attacking the Obama Administration. How big this group is is hard to say, but if we’re really talking about people who take Limbaugh at this every word, I’m betting it’s the type of “Sovereign Citizen” that the Southern Poverty Law Center has been tracking the last several years or so.

I digress. My point is that because of Limbaugh’s irresponsibility, there will be some quotient of aid funding that does not come for the Haitian people; and that is why the man has no compassion.