Conflicted

I must admit, I'm torn.

My regular readers know I'm a huge proponent of the war on terror, and could never claim to be a fan of the world's rabid dictators like Saddam Hussein. Many people defend the man simply because George W. Bush regards him as an enemy; I refuse to put myself in that camp. He has ordered the execution of far more than the 148 victims he was formally convicted for. He did have weapons of mass destruction. He was a monster, ranking in the same league as Hitler (even if his body count of innocent victims didn't climb as high).

And yet as I said prayers with my kids tonight, I found myself telling them about this bad, bad man who did terrible things to his people, and we said a prayer for him, that he would come to know the love of Jesus and would cry out for deliverance.

We can be fairly certain he has heard the Good News, as a Vatican envoy visited him in the 11th hour before the invasion of Iraq to ask why he wouldn't comply with UN weapon inspections. In March of 2003, Brendan Miniter of the Opinion Journal wrote:

When Saddam Hussein met with papal emissary Cardinal Roger Etchegaray in Baghdad a few weeks ago, the Iraqi dictator responded to questions about why he wasn't cooperating with United Nations weapons inspectors by drawing a long knife. Holding it for the cardinal to see, he ran his finger along the sharp edge of the blade--it was an obvious gesture at intimidation.

But Mr. Etchegaray wasn't stricken with fear. He simply reached into his pocket and drew out a rosary.

"We Christians have weapons too," the cardinal told the dictator.

This exchange gives me hope for Hussein's soul, for even he can find redemption at the foot of the cross.

I find that tremendously comforting when I consider my own fallen state. I know, in my heart of hearts, that I am capable of any & all sin. Who's to say that if I were transposed into Saddam's place that I wouldn't have turned out the same way? I'm as big a sinner as the next guy, so to know that so obvious an example of human wickedness is not beyond the mercy of God gives me courage in my own struggles.

Let us all offer a prayer for his eternal security.

Anticipation Fulfilled

Christmas is my favorite time of year. I don't mean in a shallow, gift-giving/receiving way, or even in a spending-time-with-loved-ones way.

This may come as a shock to my more frequent readers, but I love Christmas because of what it represents for me as a Christian.

This is the grandest feast of Christianity. God Almighty, Creator of the Universe, lowered himself to our form and took on human flesh. This is what we call "incarnation" - from the Latin for "to make flesh." This never ceases to amaze me - the all-powerful Lord of Creation wanted to be close to us, his creation, so much that he became infinitely vulnerable. That is the key to any intimacy - for love cannot be fully realized if any sort of hesitancy of self-preservation exists.

This is the model of love God has given to us: be fully open, and if and when that intimacy is broken, accept - with yet more openness - the pain and suffering that comes with the risk. I find that in marriage the same model must apply. I must love fully & completely, and when those moments of micro-betrayal come, I must continue to love. This is immensely difficult, yet it is the same cross that Jesus himself bore for us. When he sacramentalized marriage, declaring it to be a sign of God's love for his Church, he drew an indelible link between sexuality and the nature of God (for more on this, read up on the Theology of the Body). This isn't creepy or weird; it's profoundly beautiful and glorious.

At Christmas we celebrate the beginning of this mystery; the long road to Calvary began this day. God became man. Man, hoping for years upon years for the realization of the Messianic promise, had his hope fulfilled this day. We can understand why the angels sang, "Glory to God in the highest! And on earth, peace to those on whom his favour rests!" Indeed, let us praise God for his mighty works of salvation this day, and let us rest in his favour, filled with peace - assured of his love for us, and aware of the door he has opened for us.

Advent Prayer

I'm thinking today of my friends from elementary school. I could even go up in grades to junior high and high school, and even through my year of theology studies at Aldersgate College. But even more, I can think of the many friends I've made over the last few years in Winnipeg. Of this vast pool of people, a few people have been (and fewer still are) very dear friends. The majority remain friendly acquaintances who I may bump into at summer camp or in a mall or in cyberspace. [I'm thinking of you, Dr. Love!]

Yet even this select few dear friendships are subject to change, and if God ever calls us or them to new venues, the intensity of these friendships will inevitably diminish.

But there is a group of people who always remain in my life - my family. I'm referring especially to my extended family. Every few years I go to a massive family reunion (around 100 people this year) which is named after the patron & patroness of my mom's side, three generations above me. They passed on more than 20 years ago, yet the family that they spawned continues, and with increasing vigor.

To think that the loving actions of those two founders could produce such a lasting legacy! I'm hesitant to start the math required to calculate the exact number of descendants, but to have seeded humanity with 100 people willing enough to enter into Christmas fellowship every three years is a remarkable accomplishment - especially considering how hard it is to form the character of so many people.

So as I wait out these final days of Advent, I'm surrounded with the familial love which resounds from the love of that first Holy Family, and I thank God for that blessing. I especially pray for those people whose families have been shattered and don't know that love - may God break them out of that cycle and introduce them to the fullness of his plan.

Waiting

I issue a stern rebuke to my readers who have become impatient waiting for my next post. Does it occur to anybody that I may be away for the holidays, or busy with gift-wrapping and baking, or still working on clearing out the blight-monsters from the mystical island of Morrowind?

Ok, so it's a mix of those. Just don't ask me for a pie chart detailing which amount of time has gone into what. :)

"That's Dr. Ed To You, Chum"

When medical science fails, thank goodness for clumsy horses.

Infamy Vs. Tragedy

Think about history for a second. Think about big events from years gone by.

Finish this quote from CBC Radio's The Current, Wed, Dec. 6, 2006 (link to podcast):

This is a day of infamy. It was on this day X years ago that...

If you guessed "the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan," you'd be wrong. No, that iconic event in world history is sidelined, and the famous commentary from President Franklin Roosevelt is ripped from its context to describe another event.

To continue the quote:

...a man carrying several weapons walked into Montreal's Ecole Polytechnique. In one lecture hall he separated the men and the women, and shot the women. He kept going, and all fourteen women were killed.

This was seventeen years ago.

No question, what happened in Montreal was a tragedy, and indeed the day carries horrible memories for the survivors and those who lost loved ones. By no means do I oppose marking this anniversary.

But I must object to the misuse of FDR's famous "infamy" quote in this context. There must be a distinction held between the offenses of a single crazed individual and the offenses of a massive, crazed military. Historically and sociologically, there is no comparison.

Really, I think this was just a cheap trick by The Current's writers to tap into the proximity of the anniversaries, and that's very amateurish in my opinion.

Judas

So the story that never was, still isn't.

That is to say, the big to-do earlier this year about Judas Iscariot being a misunderstood zealot, based on the gnostic Gospel of Judas, wasn't all that accurate. The experts who got together and translated the text are now starting to question the accuracy of their translation.

Whoda thunkit?

Well, the Catholic Church, for one.

Turns out, the text was written by a sect called the Cainites sometime in the 2nd century. Says Monsignor Walter Brandmüller of the Vatican's Pontifical Committee for Historical Sciences:

The Gnostic sect of the Cainites attributed a positive value to all the negative figures of the Jewish and Christian Scriptures, such as the tempter serpent, Cain - hence their name - Esau and Judas.

So way back then the Church had enemies too, and they were organized enough to publish anti-Christian documents. There is a reason the Church rejected such works when the Canon of Sacred Scripture was sealed.

Welcome Back

I've been inundated with email (ok, maybe that's stetching it a bit) asking where the heck I got off to.

Truth is, I've been in Morrowind. Never heard of it? It's an ancient land, filled with elves and sorcerers and dragons, and I'm a Khajit named Brunos who is exploring it at the Emperor's request.

Gotta love that green armor & weaponry, eh? (It's enchanted glass!) I started out with an iron dagger and an old shirt & pants. Look at me now!

As my parents (hi Mom) and my wife (sorry dear) can attest, I tend to get a bit carried away when my imagination is allowed to run wild with computer games, especially such immersive ones as this one.

But the game is nearing its climax, and I'm starting to miss my legions of fans, so I figured I'd say hi to everybody.

So, hi!

Root Causes

Over and over, in this War on Terror, we hear the glib lefties reprimand the civilized world for ignoring the root causes of terrorism. This, they tell us, exacerbates the problem and makes terrorism harder to fight.

They propose that poverty and oppression are what cause people to strap explosive vests to themselves and get on public buses in Jerusalem. It's the inability of these poor and oppressed to have an effective political voice, so the experts say, that pushes them to extremes.

Douglas Rushkoff opines the same message in the Dec. '06 edition of Discover magazine (p.72). He describes the modern media environment (spanning everything from the mainstream media through the opined rantings of bloggers) as cybernetic, meaning it has the ability to share feedback much more rapidly than before. It is similar to what biologists observe in living systems with massive surface areas like coral reefs or slime molds, which can respond instantly to a need in one isolated sector of the entity. This ability, he suggests, isn't causing anything in and of itself, but is rather showing us new insights into what the origins of certain effects are.

If I understand his point correctly, he is saying that when the blogosphere erupts with outrage over something like tampered photos and exposes the fraud worldwide (to the embarrassment of the mainstream newspapers who had relied on the photos to justify their editorial slants), we witness a wondrous effect of society's core dissatisfaction with the same old biased messages. That dissatisfaction has been around for a long time, and the internet has given many of us the ability finally to speak to it. Take, for example, Kate at smalldeadanimals.com. When asked why she blogs, she writes:

Until this moment I have been forced to listen while media and politicians alike have told me "what Canadians think". In all that time they never once asked. This is just the voice of an ordinary Canadian yelling back at the radio - "You don't speak for me."

Rushkoff then goes on to suggest what I feel is a bit of a stretch: what we call terrorism is the uncivilized world's dynamic response to what they feel is an injustice. So while Westerners blog to vocalize their opposition to the status quo, the Third World blows up buses for the same reason. Different acts, but same causes.

Never in the history of warfare have we striven to explain the actions of our enemies like we are doing today. Imagine the outcry if some historian tried to explain Hitler's obsession with the Jews. The Nazis, after all, did feel like victims. Karl Stern was a German Jewish psychiatrist who endured the opening years of the Third Reich in Munich. In his book The Pillar of Fire (Image Books, 1951), he relates this tale of a walk he took with his father through the town square during his first visit back to his Bavarian home town, well into Hitler's reign:

[There] was a big showcase, brightly lit, and above it a sign: "The Jews are our misfortune." I knew those showcases. They displayed a weekly paper which was entirely devoted to enlightening the population on the Jewish question. There were detailed stories of, let us say, a Jewish lawyer of Magdeburg who assaulted his non-Jewish secretary; or an orthodox congregation who kept German girls in the cellar of their synagogue for the purpose of commercial prostitution; statistics of the part played by the Jews in the Russian revolution and in the organization of "Wall Street."

If somebody today tried to make this point, he or she would be decried as a bigot and receive condemnations from Jewish organizations around the world. [Don't believe for a second that I am trying to make that point myself!] And rightly so, for even if such a claim were true, it could never justify the actions taken against the Jews in the 1930's and 1940's.

The same principle applies today: even if terrorism is a response to legitimate grievances against the "Great Satan" (and I would suggest that it is more hate-driven than frustration-driven), the responses are completely inappropriate.

Root causes, schmoot schmauses. Terrorism, like firing up the gas chamber, is an unacceptable coping mechanism. That's why we're fighting it.

I Like What I'm Hearing

Prime Minister Stephen Harper is turning out to be better than even I had hoped.

His recent snub against the Chinese for their human rights abuses, at the possible expense of trade partnerships? How very Catholic of him.

His motion in the House of Commons recognizing Quebec as a nation within a unified Canada? Brilliant, accurate, and well-timed. Take that Gilles Duceppe!

And the announcement today of planning on aggressively paying down Canada's foreign debt? Makes sense to me, speaking from the perspective of a guy doing the same thing with his credit cards.

Keep it up, dude.