The Sheepcat

If the Rest of Wilson's Book Is This Good, I Can Hardly Wait

How can we tell that Easter is coming? Because yet another modernist scholar has come out with a radical reinterpretation of the historical roots of Christianity. This time it's from a York University professor, one Barrie Wilson, and it's called How Jesus Became Christian. According to the Publishers Weekly blurb,

Wilson calls his argument the Jesus Cover-Up Thesis and claims that the religion of Paul displaced the teachings of Jesus so that Paul's preaching about a divine gentile Christ covered up the human Jewish Jesus.

Blah blah cover-up yadda yadda, Jesus not really divine, blah blah blah. Boy, those Christians who endured torture rather than deny the divinity of Jesus, they must've been real maroons, the lot of 'em.

And a gentile Christ. Right. I guess that would be why Paul writes, regarding his own kinsmen,

They are Israelites, and to them belong the sonship, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; to them belong the patriarchs, and of their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ. (Romans 9:4-5 RSV, emphases added)

PW goes on, "Wilson's instructive book introduces important questions about early Christianity for those unfamiliar with the debates about the historical Jesus." No kidding. Because for those familiar with the debates about the historical Jesus, such as that B16 fellow, it seems unlikely there's anything terribly new here.

Finally, as a proofreader I know that even well-produced books can still contain embarrassing glitches that somehow no one noticed, but I had to chortle when I was told that p. 16 of the book ends with this line:

Through participation in his life and death through the rituals of the religion, members of this cult were promised immorality.

Books such as this call for one response:

Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world,
    Spare us, O Lord.
Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world,
    Graciously hear us, O Lord.
Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world,
    Have mercy on us.

Elizabeth Lev Responds to Her Critics

I was among many who wrote to Zenit's Elizabeth Lev about her denunciation of the announcement about Dumbledore's infatuation. Now she has responded to her critics.

With respect, I must say I still don't find her explanation terribly satisfying. The force of her criticism of Rowling rests on an attribution of motive that she has failed to establish. Previously she wrote, "the author tries to turn Dumbledore into a poster child for the gay lobby." Now we have this:

Rowling is an artist. She transmitted a captivating vision of an imaginary world through her words and storytelling. To retroactively try to use her art as propaganda is like pop stars discussing politics. [both emphases added]

This comparison is simply mystifying. Pop stars discussing politics may be variously edifying or banal or blasphemous. Who can blame them, though, for using whatever influence they have to try to make the world a better place according to the values they live by (be these socialist or libertarian or pacificist or evangelical Protestant)? This is not, note, a defence on my part of the possible malformation of entertainers' consciences, but an attempt to put the right object under scrutiny.

A better parallel might be schoolteachers who overstep their authority in trying to sway their young charges towards a particular political position, because there we can see a recognized and genuine duty of care. Teachers will properly be very aware of the limits upon what they should say within the classroom. As an artist, though, and specifically an artist who writes for children, has Rowling crossed a line? If she has, I'm not convinced it's the line Lev is pointing at.

If there is deceit on Rowling's part, as Lev insists, where does it lie? We were given a series of stories that, Lev says, "clearly presented good and evil without blurring the lines between the two." So far, so good. But did writing such books constitute a promise from the author that hereafter her moral vision would align with what is objectively good and right and true? Unless the author were known to be an orthodox Christian, it would be idle to imagine so, and even then ...

In Rowling's defence, I'll say it seems to me that she still does respect a sphere of innocence within which children can be spared dealing with adult concerns. At a press conference she held shortly after making her declaration, she explained,

absolutely, a child will see a friendship, and I think a sensitive adult may well understand that it was an infatuation. I knew it was an infatuation.

Other people have certainly used Rowling's declaration as a weapon in the culture wars, as I pointed out earlier in responding to the overblown reaction from gay Canadian author Wayson Choy, which gay journalist Bert Archer ever so helpfully trumpeted in The Globe and Mail. From the press conference, though, I see her not as someone determined to push the political angle of this story but rather as someone who has felt the weight of fictional characters whose personalities bow to no conscious authorial will.

Q: [unintelligible] political ramifications of Dumbledore coming out. Can you see that on a world wide scale, [unintelligible] for other countries not a tolerant to a gay lifestyle?

JKR: Ummm... I can't really answer that at the moment, you know, it's something that I said recently. I can't really answer that. It is what it is. He is my character and as my character, I have the right to know what I know about him and say what I say about him. There you go.

Now, certainly she's got her point of view, which evidently affirms coming out into a gay identity. (Read the whole transcript.) Do I consider this wise? Not in the least. Am I shocked that a writer so sensitively attuned to our culture, and so widely acclaimed, should turn out to actually believe some of our culture's insidious lies about sexuality? Hardly. That's like expecting James Cameron of Titanic fame to consider fornication the terrible sin that it is.

I'm not denigrating Lev's concern. I share her desire to protect children from age-inappropriate material. I'm just surprised that she could ever have trusted Rowling enough to now feel terribly betrayed.

Open Letter to Elizabeth Lev, Re: Dumbledore

Dear Elizabeth Lev,
I write as a former gay activist who by the grace of God has repudiated homosexual acts and been received into the shelter of Holy Mother Church.

I have read a few of the early Harry Potter books and seen, if I recall correctly, one of the films. I found them mildly entertaining even as I wrestled with the question of whether their magic might be dangerous. Suffice it to say that I have not been in any hurry to read the whole series.

You declare that readers have been betrayed.

Now, with her books sold and millions of children committed, the author tries to turn Dumbledore into a poster child for the gay lobby. Rowling's wilful deception and wrongful manipulation of young people is worthy of her own Death Eaters.

How are we now to understand those hours between Harry and Dumbledore, spent in the privacy of the latter's closed office? How are we to understand their friendship that seemed so noble, so pure and so uplifting?

I am really not convinced that Rowling has done what you have accused her of. All that we have to go on is her extratextual declaration that Dumbledore was once in love with a man. I think Rowling's speculation about the character she wrote introduces an unnecessary and unwelcome note into the interpretation of this wildly popular piece of children's literature; but I am disconcerted by the sense of alarm you express about what this might imply about Dumbledore's relationship with Harry. While I agree that any sexual impropriety on the part of Dumbledore towards Harry would be utterly disastrous, we have no evidence whatsoever that any such thing occurred, and if the pure and uplifting character of the friendship that I am told was apparent in the books had in fact been maintained in the face of temptation, then surely this would increase the virtue exhibited.

I quite agree with Mark Shea and Cacciaguida here.
http://markshea.blogspot.com/2007_10_01_archive.html#6298683021981653532

So: our new poster-boy for "gay rights" is a man whose one known experience with gay "smitten"-ness was a moral catastrophe; who practiced celibacy ever after (so far as the canon shows, and nothing else counts), and who exercised extreme, even excessive, caution with regard to the only other boy he may be said to have, in some sense, "loved."

Doesn't sound like "gay rights" to me; sounds like Courage.

I hope you will clarify just what the problem is.

Wayson, Get a Grip

J.K. Rowling has said that Dumbledore was in love with another man. Wayson Choy, described in The Globe and Mail as having "quietly assumed the unofficial position as Canada's premier gay novelist" since the demise of Timothy Findley, says, "She's taking a major leap in bringing human history up to date." Puh-leeze.

It means that she has the courage to suggest that even in children's books, the real world, with its adult intrigues, can be respected by children. I think her revealing this is why her characters have some kind of third dimension that we don't know about entirely, but is always there, that makes them more vivid than cartoon characters.

It's been a long, long time since I studied Greek mythology in Grade 7, but I thought the unexpurgated versions of some of those stories involved some homosexual affairs. In any case, with all due respect to Mr Choy, who is a charming fellow and, I am told, a talented writer, this is just silly.

Children's literature is capable of getting alone just fine without homosexual back-stories. This news is at least a change from prurient speculations about Frodo and Sam by people who imagine any intense bond between male characters to necessarily involve some element of homosexual desire. But characters' depth can lie in other dimensions that are frankly more interesting than frustrated (or, for that matter, consummated) homosexual passions--titillating though the latter be to the modern mind.

God is infinite and creative; that which is of God evokes and shares in the endless depth of his love, while that which is contrary to God can ultimately offer only sterile mimicry. Which is not to say that homosexuality cannot figure in powerful literature--it can. Interestingly one of the best recent examples is Sophia House by Michael O'Brien, who vehemently criticizes the Harry Potter series and has in turn been labelled intemperate by Christian defenders of Rowling's books.

What this all means, well, who's to say, but I call it narcissism to see Rowling's declaration as somehow a great step forward for humankind.

Fr Dwight's Gargoyles

Standing on My Head has a terrific series, The Gargoyle Code, modelled after C.S. Lewis's classic Screwtape Letters. Do I smell a book in the making?

Gashwin Gomes on Wilde in the Vatican

Gashwin Gomes says pretty much what I would want to point out about the recent wave of stories about the new book of Oscar Wilde aphorisms compiled by a priest in the Papal household. I particularly recommend the Catholic Education Resource Center's piece "The Long Conversion of Oscar Wilde," to which he links.

A Very Light Read

From Sweden: a reviewer slams a book that was never written. He has since been fired, though the newspaper might still commission him to write "creative pieces." I'll bet.

Thomas Howard on Lord of the Rings as a Catholic Masterpiece

Just came across this interview with Thomas Howard, author of Evangelical is not Enough, talking about The Lord of the Rings.

“Vicarious” suffering is also, of course, central to the saga, as it is for Catholicism: the Company of the Ring endure what they endure for the sake of the salvation of the world, so to speak. This bespeaks what is central to our own story, namely Our Lord’s suffering, and that of the saints, on behalf of fallen humanity. One caveat: Tolkien disliked allegory most sedulously (he thought Lewis’s Narnia was too allegorical), so there is, in fact, the danger of “baptizing” the whole thing too eagerly. Frodo is not Christ, nor is Aragorn (the unknown, but legitimate, returning king). Galadriel is not an allegory for Our Lady, pure and lovely though she may be. But, at the end of the day, we may, with Tolkien’s approval, speak of the saga as a Catholic masterpiece. A postscript to this might be the observation that no Protestant could conceivably have written this saga, since it is profoundly “sacramental.” That is, redemption is achieved wholly via physical means–cf The Incarnation, Golgotha, the Resurrection, and the Ascension–and the tale is sprinkled with “sacramentals,” such as lembas, athelas, Galadriel’s phial of light, mithril, etc.…

[O]ne of the baffling aspects of our story is “the silence of God.” The Ring Company (like the saints in our story) have to muddle along, doing the best they can with their resources, without the luxury of some ready hocus-pocus that will dissolve Dark Riders or send orcs packing. Our story, often, seems to us mortals to be like this. Where is God? And Tolkien’s characters are not “religious.” No one says his prayers (there is one instance where Faramir and company pause before they eat, but this is, I think, as close as we get to prayer, unless the cry “O Elbereth! Gilthoniel!” may be thus understood). Readers may think the following observation somewhat capricious, but, as a latecomer to Catholicism myself, I recognize in this inarticulateness as to “faith” on the part of the characters a very Catholic quality. Catholics don’t chat about the Faith ordinarily. Protestants, especially evangelical Protestants, are stumped by this muteness. Catholics must not be believers, they think, if they can’t croak out at least some “testimony” to their faith. But Tolkien, as a cradle Catholic, would not, nay could not, have his characters forever nattering about God, any more than he (Tolkien himself) could have any part of a testimony meeting. The fugitive references to the West, and the spectacle of the elves “passing, passing, passing” to the West, tincture the whole narrative with the tincture of glory. Not here, not here, the word seems to be, is your ultimate home. Beautiful and appealing as the Shire, Rivendell, or Lothlorien may be, even they are not the final locale of felicity. All must go West. Here again, Tolkien has made the very fabric of his story virtually indistinguishable from the fabric of ours, and hence has gained a seriousness otherwise impossible.

Read the whole thing, especially the remarks about the film's omission of Tom Bombadil.

Link via Jimmy Akin's combox. The post was on Rick Santorum's LOTR analogy as parodied by Stephen Colbert.

Blog Roundup

Good news to see that David Morrison of Sed Contra is back at the keyboard following some time away after his father passed away. Good posts on chastity and the misrepresentation of the Courage Apostolate by a dissident group claiming to be Catholic while rejecting the Church's teachings on homosexuality.

I recently came across Muttering in Manitoba, which blogger Mutt-Man bills as "Politics, religion, humour and other dangerous topics, by conservative Western Canadians." I like his self-deprecating sense of humour. Perhaps modesty prevents him from mentioning that he's also got some terrific photography.

Speaking of photography, daily dose of imagery has been my favourite photoblog since some time before I started blogging, but I realized lately that I've rarely if ever linked to it in the body of this blog. A few recent highlights, according my own taste. But check out Sam's archives to see the full range of his work, all arranged by category or date.

Fellow Canadian Marcia Laycock has graceful words to share from time to time at Spurts. Marcia explains,

The title of this blog, like the title of my book, The Spur of the Moment, is taken from Hebrews 10:24 - "Let us consider how to spur one another on toward love and good deeds."

More active of late is her other blog, Writer-lee. She won the 2006 Best New Canadian Christian Author Award for her forthcoming novel, One Smooth Stone. Here's how she explains the genesis of the story.

It was born one Sunday after a woman from a local crisis pregnancy centre gave a talk at our church. I chatted with her afterwards (I had worked on the hotline for her organization) and we got talking about abortion. She said, "Can you imagine what it would be like for someone to discover his mother had tried to abort him?" I could and did and now it's going to be a book.

And journalist/author Deborah Gyapong, who interviewed me last year about that priest in Montreal who is so unwilling to accept Church teaching on homosexuality, has lots of good material. Here's her own contribution to the safe-versus-good thread from Relapsed Catholic that I posted on just the other day. First, responding to a review complaining that her newly published novel, The Defilers, was disturbing, she writes:

Well--if a novel that deals with issues of child pornography, and demonic oppression is not disquieting, then I have failed as an artist. Readers who want to lull themselves to sleep with sanitized entertainment can read another book. There is lots of product out there for them. I hope people will be disturbed. I hope that the novel will make them think about how their own heart is a battleground between good and evil and that ultimately they will choose the good, but not without their eyes wide open.

Then in a follow-up:

I think the Left Behind series is bad art and consequently bad religion, though perhaps many people find they're prompted to say the Sinner's Prayer after reading one of these books about the End Times. And maybe some of those people are genuinely repenting. God can even make a donkey speak if He has to in order to reach someone, but that doesn't make the donkey anything other than a donkey.

I love it! Deb also links to this provocative essay, Why Evangelicals Can't Write, by one Peter Leithart:

Here is a thesis, which I offer in a gleeful fit of reductionism: Modern Protestants can't write because we have no sacramental theology. Protestants will learn to write when we have reckoned with the tragic results of Marburg, and have exorcised the ghost of Zwingli from our poetics.

The Defilers is a very good read, by the way, with well-drawn characters and a compelling plot. Check it out.

Sistine Chapel Ceiling in Cross-stitch

Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel Ceiling in Cross-stitch, a new self-published book by Joanna Lopianowski-Roberts, shows the fruit of the author's 10-year project to replicate the images of the ceiling. Lopianowski-Roberts has assembled a whole set of the patterns she created for other stitchers (who have formed a Yahoo group) to follow. More background here and a few pics here.

Link thanks to Jeff's Space and Time, who has compiled quite a dossier on Lulu, the print-on-demand outfit (from the same guy who brought us Red Hat Linux) the author used.

I see that Boing Boing spotted the book months ago, but it's time for St Blogs to see this!