Questions. . .

Questions. . .

1).  Lots of Catholic bloggers are posting on the Conservative Bible Project.  What say you?

At a glance, I think this is something of a parody, or maybe someone is tweaking fundamentalist translations/interpretations of the Bible.  Since the Bible is neither conservative nor liberal, I don't know that it makes any sense to edit scripture along conservative political lines.  If a Bible edition is obviously ideologically biased (feminist slant, or fundie evangelical slant), then it would be possible to un-slant the slant by returning to the text.   However, the central difficulty of translating any text is the problem American philosopher, W.V.O. Quine identified as the "indeterminacy of translation thesis."  Simply put:  all translations are necessarily interpretations.  Language by its very nature is culturally bound, so a translator cannot simply transpose words/phrases from one language into another without a remainder.  IOW, something of the original meaning is always lost in the translation.  Catholics have understood this from Day One, thus the absolute necessity of a living body to provide authoritative interpretations rooted in tradition.  We call this body the Church.

[N.B.  Regarding Quine's thesis--Quine argues that since no one translation can be right, all translations are wrong.  This seems a bit fatalistic to me.  I often tell my poetry students that though there is no one right interpretation of a poem, there are billions of wrong ones.]

2).  What do you think of Karen Armstrong's work?

An edited version of my combox response:  I've not read an entire book of hers. What little I've read strikes me the same-old, same-old "I used to Catholic but now I'm educated so I don't believe all that stuff anymore; now I believe all this other religously, vaguely Christian stuff that really highly educated people won't be embarrassed to read about" kind of ex-Catholic. Not impressed.  What I mean here is the Armstrong seems to be one of those ex-Catholic writers who depends quite heavily on her former status as a "devout Catholilc" in order to lend credibility to her attacks on the Church.  As far as these writers go, Armstrong seems to be less bigoted than most.  Armstrong makes all the standard moves:  1). since Catholicism is all about being catholic, i.e., universal, then anything goes for a Catholic; 2) attempts to define/limit what counts as legit Catholicism is really just sexist old men trying to hold on to power; 3). real religious freedom is all about not putting God in a box; 4). the best way to Christian is to put God in a left-liberal, revisionist box. . .ad nau.

3).  Alpha males among the Traditionalists?  Comment?

Yea.  I've met a few.  I could go on all day psychoanalyzing this phenomenon, but let it suffice to say that some in the Traddie movement have adopted the same tactic as our more progressive brethren in their fight to define the faith.  Pick a decade in Church history.  Argue that this decade is the only decade among all the decades of history when the Church Got It All Right.  Demand we all accept this premise.  Excommunicate anyone who disagrees.  This sort also comes with two other quirks:  1). an obsession with oddball devotions and 2). an obsession with apocalyptic scenarios described by obscure eastern European seers.  I've often described these folks as those who accost their pastors with type-written tracts demanding that he consecrate the parish with a monthly recitation of the Novena of the Big Toe of St Joseph, or the whole country will be scourged with a blight of athlete's foot.  I am NOT deriding real traditionalism here.  Far from it.  My aim is to goof on those alpha males in the movement who seem to be--like our feminist brethren--perpetually angry and demanding action from Church authorities to calm their imaginary fears of an impending doomsday.  Common to both camps is a lack of faith in Christ's assurance to his disciples:  "The gates of hell will never prevail against the Church."  All will be well, all manner of things will be well.

4).  Harry Potter, Halloween, and the dangers of paganism?

I've written on this theme many times and I am forthrightly unambiguous in my opposition to anything that smacks of neo-paganism being practiced by Catholics.  Having said that, I see no problem with Harry Potter or Halloween so long as parents take charge of both and ensure that impressionable children understand the difference between fantasy and reality.  My experience working with kids is that the quickest way to get them to do something dangerous is to forbid it.  If your child wants to read the Harry Potter book, let them.  But read along with them and discuss the material.  I don't buy the meme that the books are Christian simply because they pit good against evil.  The only Good Catholics need to call on is Christ and his Church.  But it seems to me easy enough to point this out to a child precocious enough to want to read Rowling's heavy tomes.   Same goes for Halloween.  Explain what the holiday is all about and give it a Christian spin.  This is a time-honored Catholic practice for evangelization.   I often wonder if calls for banning books or holidays among Catholics is really a sublimated desire to forgo responsible parenting.  Children are to learn the faith first from their parents.  The government, the schools, the library cannot take on this responsibility without the child's faith being seriously damaged.