Devotion

(Disclaimer: I attend neither church nor work. I do attend lunch.)

Items of Note

I've been reading quite a few articles online recently about all sorts of good stuff. For your consideration:

Benjamin Franklin: The original city slicker? A fascinating man. I need to read more about him.

How do we handle the new Russia?

The end of science? Tell that to CERN.

On Alexander Solzhenitsyn. I admit I knew nothing about the man aside from his name until his recent death. I regret to say I have not read him - but I plan on doing so.

"In Praise of Melancholy." Not quite sure how I feel about this one. I imagine it would have appealed to me more back when melancholy dominated my life. But there's something to Wilson's deceptively paradoxical point that I do agree with. The highs are never as good without the occasional lows.

Dennett on consciousness, science, and religion. Excellent stuff:

It is seldom remarked (though often observed in private, I daresay) that many, many people who profess belief in God do not really act the way people who believed in God would act; they act the way people would act who believed in believing in God. That is, they manifestly think that believing in God is—would be—a good thing, a state of mind to be encouraged, by example if possible, so they defend belief-in-God with whatever rhetorical and political tools they can muster. They ask for God’s help, but do not risk anything on receiving it, for instance. They thank God for their blessings, but, following the principle that God helps those who help themselves, they proceed with the major decisions of their lives as if they were going it alone.

That pretty much sums it all up, doesn't it?

Atheist Theology

I'm excited about the upcoming release of The Golden Compass, the first installment in a trilogy of films based on Philip Pullman's excellent His Dark Materials series. It's "young adult" fiction only in its accessibility; the themes are serious, mature, and of a deeply philosophical nature.

Evidently there has been a bit of a hue and cry from the Catholic League calling upon members of the Catholic Church to boycott the film for its alleged anti-Christian message. This article in this Sunday's Boston Globe caught my eye this evening. It talks about the condemnation the film has received (even before its release) and does an excellent job of summarizing the story and the true message in Pullman's work.

For anyone who hasn't read it, I highly recommend the trilogy. It's one of the most positive works of religious-themed fiction I've read - written by an atheist.

Mein Kampf vs. The Al Qaeda Reader

Raymond Ibrahim has a fascinating article up at the National Review Online, posted here on VDH's Private Papers. Ibrahim, translator and editor of The Al Qaeda Reader, addresses the similarities and differences between Adolf Hitler's polemical Mein Kampf and the Reader, a collection of documents assembled by al Qaeda founders Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri in order to indoctrinate Muslims to their particular brand of fanatic Islamism.

Ibrahim's article is disturbing, as much for the differences between the two texts as for the similarities. Both texts are expressly anti-democratic, militaristic, expansionist, and pervasively anti-Semitic. The Al Qaeda Reader is even more blatant than Mein Kampf in its unyielding stance on achieving world domination. Negotiation is unacceptable and the "infidel" must submit to Allah or be killed. Both texts appeal to ideals of heroism and self sacrifice while bemoaning the decadence of the West.

It is at first surprising how similar the two texts are according to the excerpts that Ibrahim presents, but it makes sense when one considers that both ideologies - Hitler's eugenic fascism on the one hand and al Qaeda's Islamo-fascism on the other - stem from a perceived victimization at the hands of the world Jewry, allegedly responsible for the moral degradation of the Western democracies.

What is unsettling about the contrast between the two texts is that Hitler's was a secular ideology, and while virulent, destructive, and evil in the extreme, an ideology that was nevertheless soundly defeated by the so-called Arsenal of Democracy in the immediate military sense (with rather a significant part played by the Communists), and that has largely lost credence in the half-century since with the spread of progressive, liberal democratic ideals. Mein Kampf was written by a single man, and from what I understand it is to a large degree a treatise wrapped up in Hitler's personal experience.

The Al Qaeda Reader, however, was not written by one man, nor is it a secular polemic. As Ibrahim says, about half of the Reader comprises quotations, from the Koran, Muhammad himself (hadith), and authoritative Islamic theologians, collected and assembled by bin Laden and al-Zawahiri. The anti-Semitic, illiberal, anti-democratic, expansionist, fascistic version of Islam presented in the Reader isn't a hodgepodge of crackpot extremism cooked up by a couple of nutjobs in an Afghani cave, but rather a worldview fundamental to Islam, firmly supported by the ultimate theological authorities. It is easy to discredit and defeat secular extremism with liberal, rational thought. It is far more difficult to defeat an ideology that has theological tenets entirely antithetical to religious pluralism, democracy, diplomacy, and liberalism.

When you argue against a secular ideology you are merely in disagreement with a man; when you argue against an ideology grounded in theology you are, ipso facto, an infidel.

And that's a tough obstacle to overcome.

Submit - or else?

Raymond Ibrahim has a nice article up at VDH's Private Papers. It's important for us to understand exactly who and what we are facing in this so-called War on Terror, and comprehending the nuances of language as Ibrahim discusses is one step along a very long and difficult path.

For all its legions of moderate practitioners, there is no avoiding the fact that Islam has as its essential tenet - the very name of the religion itself! - worldwide submission to Allah by will or by force.

This poses an intractable problem for any truly effective dialogue between the liberal, religiously plural West and the unyielding, dogmatic "Abode of Islam."

Fisherman's Feast

For the last 97 years, the members of the Fisherman's Club of Boston's North End have celebrated Madonna del Soccorso di Sciacca (Our Lady of Help of Sciacca, Sicily) with a big four-day festival. On Thursday evening the Madonna is taken from her home inside the Fisherman's Club, paraded around the streets, and then set in a chapel for the remainder of the feast. The next few days and nights see the streets filled with people listening to musical performances, eating all sorts of food from the vendors - fried calamari, rice balls, sausages - and enjoying other festivities.

The Feast culminates on Sunday night with the spectacular Flight of the Angel, in which a young girl is hoisted on a rope strung up between two buildings, and "flies" out and down to deliver an offering to the Madonna. I have the good fortune to live in the center of the action, in the corner building right across from the Fisherman's Club. Here is my gallery from this year's Feast. Enjoy!

... See my Tabblo>

Baghdad College

I went to dinner last night with my Mom, aunt and cousin, and we got to talking about Father Michael McCarthy (what does one call the first cousin of his grandfather?). My Mom mentioned that a lot of the players in the reconstruction of Iraq actually attended Baghdad College back in the 1950's. Here's a good NYT article on the subject. It's interesting because at the time, the Jesuits received a lot of flak from back home for not converting any of their students - they never prosyletized over there, but rather just made it their goal to instill academic discipline in their charges. There's something about this that really appeals to me. Also, it seems highly likely that Father Michael taught the likes of Allawi, Chalabi and others back in the day!

A great page here about the founding and history of the College. I love this quotation, which perfectly captures both the frustrating idiocy and hilarity of religious absolutism and intolerance, as well the potential that religious pluralism can exist peacefully:

I was one of many Jesuits who, from 1932 to 1969, taught and learned from 7,000 young Iraqis. That the latter appreciated the Jesuits is best illustrated by the two Muslims who once told me: "We like the fadheria very much, but you won't be with us in paradise because you are infidels." Both took it in stride when I informed them that when I was their age, I was told that they were the infidels, so we seemed to be involved in a tie ball game.

Also, another nice article at The New Republic (you need a subscription but there's a free trial option). I particularly like this quotation toward the end by Father Alfred Hicks:

"The liberal arts humanize people. That's why you teach them. Iraq has been dehumanized for thirty years." And perhaps that's all the Jesuits and their former students can hope for: that a renewed Baghdad College High School will help Iraq recover a bit of its lost soul.

Primary Source Document

Recently my Mom was going through some stuff in what is referred to in my family as "Upstairs" - the top floor of the house in which my Nana currently lives. This is where my great-uncle and two of my great-aunts used to live; when my brother and my cousins and I were younger we would always go up to visit "the Upstairses." Sugarless hard candy and tiny powdered donuts were the standard fare in a place where the air was thick with stale cigarette smoke. They have all passed now; my aunt is now living in the renovated Upstairs and my Mom has been going through a vast number of old photos recently and scanning them into her computer. She put together a slideshow for my aunt for her 50th birthday and she's now working on one for my Nana.

My Mom's father, who died before I was born, had a cousin, Father Michael, who was one of the Jesuit priests assigned to Baghdad College, back when Iraq was pro-Western, ruled by King Faisal II - before the rise of the Soviet-friendly Baath party, before Saddam, before our wars with Iraq. My Mom said he would come home to visit every couple years with stories of the Middle East - exotic fare for a young girl raised in a poor Irish-Catholic New England family.

She recently found a letter from Father Michael Upstairs, scanned it and emailed it out to the family. It's essentially just a quick note home, but it's from half a century ago. I thought it was a cool piece of history, from a time when we were threatened by a very different enemy, but from a place that is all too familiar to us today.


(Click to enlarge)

There's also an interesting Globe article from 2000 about the Jesuits who were over there below:

[The Boston Globe Online][Boston.com]

Alumni reminisce on Jesuits' role in Iraq

By Charles A. Radin, Globe Staff, 8/5/2000

They are old men now, these Jesuit
priests; their legs weak, their
hair thin and white. But their eyes still
flash with the intense commitment that
propelled them to Iraq a half-century ago.
They still glow with the sense of purpose
that won respect from generations of
schoolboys at Baghdad College.

Starting in 1931, New England's branch of
the Society of Jesus dispatched a stream of
teachers to the Tigris River campus, a high
school akin to Boston College High. They
taught boys math and science, and, more
importantly, how to think.

In a testimony to the bonds they forged,
600 former students - surgeons, engineers,
and executives from around the world - have
gathered in Framingham this weekend,
renewing ties with one another and with
their old teachers. The reunion comes 32
years after the Jesuits were forced to flee
Iraq, expelled by the Baathist regime that
gave rise to Saddam Hussein.

''Want to see a miracle?'' asks the Rev.
Tony Paquet, 72, the youngest of four Roman
Catholic priests reminiscing at the Jesuit
health center in Weston about Baghdad
College days. A man of French Canadian
ancestry and Dorchester nativity, with a
talent for leavening gravitas with humor,
he stands up from his wheelchair, steps
forward to greet a visitor, and sits down
again. ''That's a miracle!''

Then, with tears punctuating their laughter
and nostalgia, Paquet and the other priests
talk about the joys of teaching in Iraq,
the emotional wounds inflicted by the
expulsion, and what they consider the
immorality of US-backed sanctions that, a
decade after they were laid on Iraq for its
invasion of Kuwait, are estimated by the
United Nations to be killing 5,000 children
a month.

''The American press beats up on Saddam
Hussein,'' Paquet says, ''but they don't
tell you about all the little kids in the
streets selling Chiclets by the one.''

Baghdad College grew out of a petition from
Iraq's Christian community to Pope Pius XI
for a school, according to the Rev. Robert
J. Sullivan, 88. ''The Holy Father went to
the general [of the Society of Jesus], the
general told the New England province
`You!' and that was it,'' Sullivan said.

Actually, there was a bit more to it than
that. New England became a free-standing
Jesuit province in 1926, and was burgeoning
with young people entering religious
orders, when the opening came in Iraq,
according to Brother Jim McDavitt, a
reunion organizer and the director of the
Jesuit seminary in the South End.

McDavitt became aware of Baghdad College
long before he knew much about Iraq or
considered entering a religious order.
While he was growing up in Worcester, his
aunt was active in the Iraqi Club, through
which mothers, sisters, and other
supporters of the Jesuits organized school
fund-raisers.

The priests were gung-ho as well, as was
reflected in an introduction by one
founder, the Rev. Edward F. Madaras, to a
1936 complilation of articles from the
mission newsletter.

The newsletter ''treated the Baghdad
venture, not as a lark, to be sure, but as
a gay adventure for the King of Kings,''
Madaras wrote. ''The fathers were knights
setting out on a jousting match to defend
the honor of their Liege Lord, and although
they felt they were going to get many a
hard knock and be unhorsed more than once,
they looked forward to the contest with a
glint in their eye, a smile on their lips,
and a song in their hearts.''

Their jousting ground was an oasis amid the
dusty streets and yellow brick of Baghdad.
The school's site was large and removed
from the city center, fronting the historic
Tigris, which watered the school's gardens
and playing fields, and the orchards around
them.

''It was very green,'' says Laith Kubba, a
longtime opponent of Hussein's who now is
senior program officer for the Middle East
at the congressionally funded National
Endowment for Democracy. ''The moment you
entered the school you entered a different
world. Everything inside was American.''

If the adventure was a jousting match, the
manner of scoring remained obscure.

The school for Christians that was
envisioned in the petition to the pope did
nurture Christian youths, offering low-cost
education to boys whose families otherwise
could not have afforded it. But Muslims,
Jews, and members of smaller ethnic groups
knocked at the doors of Baghdad College and
were accepted, and, Paquet says, ''in all
my years in Baghdad, I never baptized
anyone.''

In the 1960s, ''Baghdad College was
overwhelmingly Muslim, which I am,'' says
Kanan Makiya, author of a bestseller on
Iraq titled ''Republic of Fear'' and
director of the Iraq Research and
Documentation Project at Harvard
University. ''They never proselytized in
our faces at all. They did set an example,
and one admired them, for their
capabilities as teachers and for their
personal characteristics.''

When folks back in New England heard that
the Jesuits were not making converts to
Christianity, Paquet recalls, they often
would ask: ''What do you go there for? Why
pour yourself down the drain in Iraq?''

The fathers wrestled with that question.
The answer, he decided, was that ''we
established a visible and admirable
presence of Christ in this land that was no
more than 5 percent Christian, and provided
a shot in the arm to Iraqi Christians, gave
them something to look up to.''

When the Baath Party swept into power in
1968, the days of the Jesuit school were
numbered.

Waves of anti-American sentiment swept the
Mideast after the US-backed Israelis
humiliated their Arab neighbors in the 1967
Six-Day War. Iraq's new secular leaders
also saw a threat in the nation's Shiite
Islamic movement as well as a US-linked
establishment, says Dahfir Nona, an alumnus
who is now a Detroit-based engineer.

The new rulers ''really wanted to close the
Shi'a schools,'' Nona said, ''and they
couldn't close Muslim schools without
closing the Christian schools, too.''

Whether they are apolitical or fiercely
opposed to the regime, all agree the
sanctions imposed on Iraq - technically by
the United Nations but primarily due to US
policy - are ineffective against Hussein
and are depriving innocents of basic
nutrition and medical care.

''Millions of people are in misery,'' Kubba
says. ''They are losing their dignity, and
the physical effect on them is horrifying.
The reason many of us have opposed Saddam
all these years is because he harmed
people. Now this policy is also harming
people, and I feel an equal moral
obligation to oppose it.''

The priests and their former students sent
their own mission last December to
investigate.

''What the Jesuits really taught us was how
to think,'' says Kubba, ''how we break a
problem apart in our minds, how we seek an
answer. It is a formula I use even today.''

This story ran on page A01 of the Boston
Globe on 8/5/2000.
© Copyright 2000 Globe Newspaper Company.

Easter

My brother and I had a brief discussion before heading over to my Nana's house for Easter dinner Sunday afternoon. He was complaining, saying that Easter was a B-side holiday ("Nothing to do but watch the Masters"). I countered with, "It's basically the same as Thanksgiving. You go eat a big dinner and hang out." He countered with, "No, you're an idiot, Thanksgiving is the Ultimate Man's Holiday - huge amount of great food and football all day."

Point, Beebe.

Still, considering that Turkey Day football has only a small chance of being entertaining or important considering the traditional teams (I hate watching Detroit. At all. Every year.) I stand by my comment that they are just two big meals with the mixed bag of hanging out with the extended family for a few hours. Beebe also made the point that Thanksgiving lacks any religious obligations - true enough, I suppose, but a laughable consideration for yours truly.

(For those of you concerned about my soul: yes, I might be dabbling with eternal damnation if such a thing existed; as it is I have enough people praying for me to hedge my bets in the extremely unlikely circumstance that I am wrong in my theological beliefs - which are, to be honest, nonexistent.)

My Mom drove me and my roommates back from Easter dinner (The roast beef was heavenly. I was working on my extended 2nd helping while the dessert and coffee were being placed in front of me. I, unlike so many others, like to take time to enjoy the finer things in life. Good food is one of those things. Must we scarf down our nutrients as if scavengers will set upon us and derive us of our food? Methinks not. Take a breath between bites, sit back, and chew your food slowly fer fahk's sake.) and we watched The Sopranos and Entourage.

And I will comment on those in another post. Maybe.