saw the acronym LGBTA today, on a job board for freelancers. An “LGBTA” magazine is hiring writers. Thought I: What’s the A for? I had seen Q; but what was this new A in the alphabet soup of queer? I did the sensible thing and looked it up. It stands for asexual.
I can not keep up. I am quick to understand, but insanity outpaces all sense and defies all reason. Where is the reason in thinking of oneself as a species of starfish or sponge? And why leave out the Q’s? Do they have no place in this magazine? Shouldn’t it now be “LGBTQA?” I’m not sure the Q’s should be sent to the back of the bus or told to drink from a different fountain.
Or what about the other letters? Why is the magazine anti-S? What is wrong with H? It is time to stamp out inequality in alphabetical personhood. I have had enough of the Z-ophobes. We should welcome all the sexual perversion that can be embraced by twenty-six letters.
II.
With a sanity rare and to be praised, Pat Archbold at the National Catholic Register tells us what was really wrong with the Super Bowl Coke commercial.
You should read the article because Mr. Archbold does a great job in cutting through the insanity of the debate between those who say the commercial was great because it celebrates our diversity, and those who say the commercial was awful because it was pro-gay. In fact, the gay couple did not much shock him. But he was saddened—not by the diversity per se but by the fact that it was the wrong kind of diversity.
Here is a taste:
It seems to me that what we mean by diversity has changed during my lifetime. We used to pride ourselves on how fast we could become Americans. Now we pride ourselves on how long we can resist it. We are no longer the melting pot, we are the crayon box. Each color and type in its assigned place and properly labeled.
So when I hear America the beautiful being sung in different languages, I don’t get angry, I get a little sad. We used to pride ourselves on unity, not diversity. Our diversity influenced the overall color, but we remained one.
III.
Yesterday the Jewish Press reported that a Jewish woman was caught reading the Jewish Press at JFK. The Jew was detained, questioned, and released when it was found that the Jew was carrying nothing more dangerous than a bottle of water and a copy of the Jewish Press.
If you are scratching your head, you may be part of the problem. You see, those dangerous Jews are always reading Jewish things, like the Jewish Press and the Jewish novels of that Jewish author Bernard Malamud. The next thing you know, those Jews will be reading that Jewish Old Testament and killing the fatted Jewish calf right there in the airport. So the Jew must be rounded up and questioned, wherever we find the Jew.
IV.
Speaking of odd things found on job boards, here is the first sentence of an ad for a personal assistant: “Qualified applicant must be an honest, cheerful person whose consciousness and imagination are not enslaved by any epistemological dogma.”
Those poor epistemological dogmas. They are always being treated like they are no better than the Jew. You have to have some epistemological dogmas that you cling to, otherwise you could not function. What if everything is an illusion and the PA job doesn’t really exist? I would want to know.
V.
Two stories this week merit serious thought. The first is humorous, in an odd and sad way; the second, less so. If we fully absorb their lesson, I’m not sure we could do else but weep for Jerusalem.
According to the first story, the Vatican had to tell the United Nations this week that boys and girls are different. The United Nations does not know this, it seems; it must be told.
That is how far gone we are in our madness. It is what happens when we reduce our humanity to a letter. In our mad desire to be as God and define our sexual identity for ourselves, as though it were malleable silly putty, we have forgotten such basic things. That boys and girls are different comes as a shock to us.
Fr. Z had the second story. The vile (and lost) women of FEMEN are up to their antics again, this time attacking the archbishop of Madrid as he got out of his car to say Mass. They threw bloody panties at him and sported the slogan “Abortion is sacred” across their bare breasts. The blood on the panties is supposed to have been blood obtained during illegal abortions.
Each one of them has been made in the image of God, but they have become a running and raving defilement. Pray for them.
But there is a serious question to be asked: At what point does the insane become demonic? There has to be a real fine line there, and the culture is beginning to cross it. And it is not the fault of the Beatles.
St. Bruno, pray for us.
VI.
Earlier this week, for a series I am writing on Catholic social teaching, I was reading Pope Leo XIII’s 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum. Forty years later, his successor Pope Pius XI wrote Quadragesimo Anno, in which he penned these very telling words:
Those who would seem to hold in little esteem this papal encyclical and its commemoration either blaspheme what they do not know, or understand nothing of what they are superficially acquainted with, or if they do understand convict themselves formally of injustice and ingratitude. Certain doubts have arisen concerning either the correct meaning of some parts of Leo’s encyclical or conclusions to be deduced therefrom, which doubts in turn have even among Catholics given rise to controversies that are not always peaceful
Dear Traditionalists: We are still the same Church we were before Vatican II. No worries.
VII.
Elizabeth Scalia gives all Catholic and conservative bloggers an opportunity to examine their conscience. The occasion of her post was that Sarah Palin was bitchy to Peggy Noonan for being too late (in Ms. Palin’s view) to wake up about President Obama. Where were you in 2008? Ms. Palin ranted, addressing her remarks to “Peggy and [her] ilk.”
(Incidentally, what does one have to do to acquire an ilk? According to Kevin Tierney in the combox of one of my earlier posts, I have a “base.” But I’ve been blogging for over a year now; it’s high time I acquired an ilk too. Fr. Z has an ilk; Mark Shea definitely has an ilk. Where’s my ilk?)
Anyway, Ms. Scalia goes on in her article, which you should read, to talk about the courtesy we owe to others, even when we disagree and argue passionately:
Fight for America, by all means. Engage, passionately, every day, if you like—observe, critique, organize, and even snark a bit, now and then. But don’t give up your humanity for her, because nations only last for as long as they last, and then they are gone. If, while fighting for this one, you become incapable of seeing the human person before you (who is equally beloved of the creator) you will have gained the world and lost your soul in the process.
Please read the whole article. It is well worth reflecting upon. Thank you, Ms. Scalia.
Read more of this week’s quick takes at Conversion Diary.
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