Jane Eyre - a musical by John Caird and Paul Gordon

The most brilliant musical of the nineties was Jane Eyre. It was faithful to the novel without being tedious. It was a wholesale assault on modern values. It was romantic, but not libertine. It valued a passionate heart, but was not irrational. The music soared and the book worked with the music. Why won’t someone help bring it back to stage here in Southern California?

MSNBC - Clunky Kerry: “‘There is a question about whether the administration really wants to get to the bottom of why 9/11 happened,’ said one senior Kerry adviser and foreign policy veteran. ‘9/11 shouldn’t have happened. It should have been prevented. Every member of the previous administration has been open and accessible to the commission because it’s not a partisan issue.?D”

No suggestions on how it could have been prevented. Perhaps, psychics could have been employed? The Clinton administration failed to prevent an earlier attack on the World Trade Center. It failed based on poor terrorist planning. What did Clinton do? Go to war? The Clinton administration had years, and several chances, to get Bin Laden and his group. Their efforts were ineffective, though perhaps the country was not ready for more. After eight months in office, why think Bush could have stopped the attacks?

Here is the bottom of why 9/11 happened: evil men spent all their time trying to find a way to kill Americans. Now Bush and company spend all their time finding a way to send those men to Dante’s Circle of the Violent. Kerry and his cohort spend all their time sniping at the President. Bush gets up in the morning thinking of ways to beat Bin Laden. Kerry gets up in the morning thinking of ways to beat Bush. Don’t believe it? Listen to the passion in their speeches. Bush soars when he talks about stopping our foes. Kerry gets worked up when the speaks of stopping Bush.

MSNBC - Top focus before 9/11 wasn’t terrorism: ” — but the focus was largely on missile defense, not terrorism from Islamic radicals.”

We now know Dr. Rice is not psychic. She knew terrorists were a threat. As it turned out, the 9/11 hijackers were here and further along than anyone guessed.

Yet I am glad that this was a focus of the administration. I trust that it still is a focus. The attacks of 9/11 were horrific and brought tragic pain to many. However, they were strategically unimportant and left an enraged America fully capable of dealing death to the groups involved. Dr. Rice picked as a prime worry more deadly attacks. These are attacks that still might come from rogue nations. Such an assault, from a missile for example, could make 9/11 look small indeed.

America can fight two foes at once as World War II proved. A focus on Germany before Pearl Harbor did not mean that Japan was not viewed as a threat. I think Roosevelt was right to view Nazi Germany as a bigger threat to peace, as he did after Pearl Harbor. Japan was weaker and though evil, marginally less wicked than the National Socialists. As a result, even after Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt focused on defeating Germany first.

Terrorism will not be beaten until the rogue states are gone. Rogue states keep terrorists going. They can provide powerful weapons and logistical aide. Dr. Rice was right to begin to go after such states. In may, in fact, in be more important in the War on Terror to rid of the world of these rogue states, capable of such much harm, than going after the smaller groups that view 9/11 as a high point.

Iraq, Iran, North Korea and other rogue states are the Germany of this war: capable of much more harm and the mother of the smaller groups. Al Queda and other groups are the Japan. They provoked us with an immediate hit, but will never be defeated as long as the rogue states continue.

Liberty or Equality? The modern Democrat party is the party of equality. Homosexuality defies nature. It has many disadvantages as a result. No fear, the modern Democrat will use the law to make normal sexuality and homosexuality equal. In a free market society, some people prosper. Like all parents, these people often leave a legacy to their children. The modern Democrat party thinks this unfair. They want to tax the rich and keep parents from blessing their children. They worship equality.

Of course, equality has a place. As the Declaration of Independence points out, God has given us all rights that cannot be taken from us. The state did not give them and the state cannot take them away. The “under God” statement in the Pledge of Allegiance reinforces this point. The state is not all there is, was, or ever will be. Equality before the law based on our common humanity is also important.

However, in a Republic the temptation is always to press for more. This “more” begins to destroy the liberty that makes life interesting and change possible. Soon the risk becomes great that the tyranny of the mediocre, of the Procedure Men, will overwhelm the nation. The majority will tell the minority what to do or some well connected minority will manipulate the majority into acting in its interests. In either case, government will begin to act unjustly, though democratically. Hence the wisdom of our Founders in finding a way to produce a government that allowed for both liberty, by limiting the powers of the majority, and necessary equality.

Has the culture slipped so far toward equality that tyranny must result? That is my fear with the homosexual rights movement as the ultimate test case.

St. John Chrysostom: HOMILIES ON THE GOSPEL OF JOHN: “Besides, even if any should be so poor, it is in their power, by means of the continual reading of the holy Scriptures which takes place here, to be ignorant of nothing contained in them. “

This should give lie to the notion that the Fathers somehow wanted to keep Scripture from the people. However, having noted this, what shall we do about it? Are we reading the Bible? Are we soaking ourselves in it and being formed by it as Saint John Chrysostom suggests?

God forbid that “devotional reading” or religious books substitute for a super-saturation in God’s Holy Word. How shocked Saint John would be if his own works became for our misguided age a substitute for the Gospel itself. I have never known a man who read the Bible too much, but I have known many who read it too little while preaching about its wonder. I know this for I have been one of them. As I have begun, by God’s grace, to saturate myself in the perfect and true Word of God it is changing me. There is far to go, but let us heed the teachings Saint John of the Golden Mouth, and eagerly press into God’s Word.

I wonder if we should trust a pastor or teacher who does not spend large amounts of time actually reading or studying God’s Word?

Kerry: ‘I’m Fascinated by Rap and Hip-Hop’: “Likely Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry claimed Tuesday night that he’s a big fan of rap and hip-hop music. “

Kerry is a happening dude. Free Huey! Power to the People! Groovy.

What I like about Kerry is his authenticity. I bet he really means this.

I am voyaging into Purgatory with two of the finest groups of students I have ever known. Several questions drive us forward. What can be done with the two eagles? How can church and state exist together? How can we see the things as the really are?

For Dante, fundamentally the answer must be love. But that is trite, almost no answer. Yet. Yet. A simple word like love sends us questing in one direction. How different our journey if we believed that the fundamental answers were found in fear! The harmony of church and state will come in love: love of mother church and the fatherland. This is so old fashioned, but it still resonates. Men are meant to live in families. Perhaps the image of the mother and father is best.

But the East, Byzantium, has but one eagle. One eagle with two heads. Is this solution better? It did not seem so to Dante, who had learned to despise the East. Florence had not know the Empire at her best. However, a two headed eagle seems a monster to me. The image of a family seems better than one body with two heads.

On the other hand, no Holy Roman Emporer was ever half the legend as the eternal Constantine Palaiologos defending the great city, the last Christian against the Turkish hordes. No Western Kaiser died with his family nearly so well as the last Orthodox tsar, Nicholas II. Does the Western image produce better cities, but less noble men and rulers? These are hard questions for which Dante is the best guide. We shall have to wait until Paradise (hopefully the book and not the place itself) for the answers.

Two Is Enough - Why large families don’t deserve tax breaks. By Dalton�Conley

This is my pick for the silliest article of the year to date. The West is failing demographically. The anti-natal league still thinks their perfect boutique baby is going to be able to sustain economic growth. Good luck.

FOXNews.com - Politics - Bush: 9/11 Panel Should Get ‘Complete Picture’

The Democrats don’t care about precedent. They will destroy the Republic in order to “save it” by regaining power. If two hundred years of political theory must be lost, then so be it. The President should have stuck to his guns, but politically could not.

Now Rice will destroy the Commission, just Oliver North did long ago. I will rejoice for the short term gain, but mourn the long term loss. Gay marriage. Destroy marriage to make a point. The Pledge. Destroy the Pledge in order to make a political point. Raise taxes on the rich. Destroy the economy to make a point.

John Kerry: the tall man with a short term vision. He will do anything for power.

I enjoyed being with Frank Pastore, who looks great in pink by the way. Just ask his wife Gina. A caller reports that Frank looks good in flag colors.

How should we feel about beauty? Beauty is not in the eye of the beholder. In music, architecture, and even clothing, God has opinons about what is beautiful, just as He does about what is moral. God calls somethings “beautiful” like His law and He hates other things. These opinions are true. . . not just feelings on His part. We live in an age where everyone wants to sanctify their taste. The fact that they like a thing means that it is “good.” God wants us to begin to conform our tastes to His. There is liberty for us in the expansive realm of the Beautiful, but no Christian should want to surround himself with ugliness.

What Frank wants to wear is less interesting than what he should wear. Now that would be an interesting discussion.

Welcome to those who have found this blog from his great show.

Check out the truly horrid article on women deacons in the March Word and the even worse letters to the editor.

My spoof of liberal Christianity www.revdaleowen.org has a more amusing take on the issue.

Oddly there are no letters to the editor on the web version of April’s Word.
Here is my letter to “Word”:

To the Editor:

I was greatly distressed to read Deacons, Apostles, and the Place of Women in the Church. Combined with the letters to the editor, it presented a distressing picture of a Church about to succumb to the siren song of dialogue with feminism. As a secularly trained philosopher who once was a feminist, I can assure the Orthodox reader that a Church with a patriarchate is incompatible with any modern form of feminism, radical or otherwise. While the Church has always taught that women are equal in being and fully human, one is hard pressed to find more than token cases of equality of function. Both the Bible and the Holy Tradition were formed in the context of patriarchy and must be understood as taking that system of dealing with men and women almost for granted. Male leadership in the home is just one example of a deep and abiding tradition that no form of feminism can long tolerate.

Readers from outside the academy should not be fooled by the scholarship referenced by those suggesting discussion. It is the sort of advocacy scholarship not taken seriously in mainstream academic disciplines, but tolerated on the fringes of the academy if it serves a politically correct purpose. The article hunts for pull quotes to support a position, but leaves aside cultural context. Readers who doubt this should reference the views of Saint John Chrysostom on Saint Junia for themselves. They will discover that whatever else he was Saint John was no feminist. He assumes patriarchy and male headship at every turn. Scholarship that pulls his reference to the apostle Junia out of this context is not scholarship at all. Of course, if the Church restores a female deaconate to the functions for which it was originally intended, there would be no harm. However, restrictions of the sort traditional to female deacons are incompatible with feminist ideology (of any stripe.) Soon more demands will be made. If we are not about to open a dialogue with those modern scholars and theologians who want to re-imagine God or deny his omniscience (as some are now doing), we should not dialogue with feminism. It is fruitless to claim that long term demands will not be made for women priests as the letters to the editor demonstrate. Schism will be the long term result of such a conversation as modernist and feminist scholars leave the Church of the Apostles.

The book Death of Christian Britain demonstrates that feminism, once embraced, will help empty our churches. One is hard pressed to name a single church that has embraced dialogue on this topic and become dynamic and growing. Is this really the correct age, sex saturated and confused as it is, to begin such a discussion? Are we not apt to compromise the faith in our eagerness to fit in? The time has come for the Church to restore the moral dignity of full time motherhood as the common vocation for women. Otherwise, the extinction of the culture of death spreading through Western Europe and the United States, with its plunging birth rate and redefined marriages, will soon be ours. My daughters and winsome wife delight in attending a Church where they are not forced into male roles, but can enjoy the traditional roles given to them by the Holy Tradition. Since we are not looking for equality, but for liberty to be what God has made us to be, this is not difficult for any of us.

Orthodox wishing to repeat the error of dialogue with the feminist heresy should examine other churches. Sanguine predictions that we are different are not comforting. They are rather like confident assertions that the Titanic was unsinkable. Of course, the Church of Christ has survived worse than a twentieth-century obsession with sexuality, but those of us with children do not want to live through the chaos of social change. Make no mistake, demands for feminist readings of Scripture and Tradition will soon lead to demands for tolerance of homosexuality. The same sort of selective and revisionist scholarship will be used to justify this change. It will be hotly denied now, but it happens every time. Not all change after all is for the better, even in secular society. It seems probable that progress in the perfect Holy and Catholic Apostolic Church is most likely going bad.

Oscar Winner Sir Peter Ustinov Dies at 82

A great actor from the old stage actor to movies school. . . sad to see him go, sadder that movies of the sort he starred in are no longer made.

The New Breed of Islam Bashers: “Although I completely respect freedom of speech, I must ask what is the point of all of this? Do these Muslim bashers want us all to convert out of Islam? Do they want the whole world to hate Islam? The answer in my view is that they want Muslims and the rest of humanity to renounce the religion and in their delusion hope to extinguish the light of Islam from the world. “

Yes. I hope that Islam vanishes. Islam is false, Christianity is true. I would be happy to provide any Islamic scholar a forum to debate this issue.

Resist urge, gays told: “Walk away from homosexuality”: “‘I found a freedom I’ve never felt before. You don’t have to feel like there’s a weight on you all the time, the way I always did,’ Walter said.
Such comments are upsetting to 18-year-old Ellery Bates, who decided to attend the event after a member of the church offered to pay his admission. Bates, wearing a wig and a dress, had been protesting outside.
‘I came with an open mind, but it’s just really sad to see all these people like this, oppressing their feelings,’ said Bates who is visiting Tucson from New York City. ‘This is teaching people that diversity is wrong.’ “

Don’t oppress your feelings? Marriage, of any sort, is impossible if that is the rule. Civilization is about supressing your feelings.

Libertine behavior leads to tyranny. So says Plato and so says Paul. Further thoughts, on the side bar under “Phone Call in the Night.”