Chateau Lloyd

I'm continuing to enjoy listening to the Lord of Spirits podcast, though as the show has progressed I've noticed a few missteps regarding Catholicism that strike me as unfortunate.

That being said, Eastern Orthodox and the Catholic Church are farm more similar than different - and many of the differences are a function of culture rather than doctrine.

For example, the treatment of the Bible is essentially the same.  Like the Catholic Church, our Orthodox brothers do not believe that it can be taken out of context or interpreted on an individual basis.  This approach has led to schism and confusion.

Recently they did an episode specifically about this topic.  I should note that most of the podcast goes through how not to read the Bible, and various "Bible scholars" receive (well-deserved) criticism.

The core issue is people who do not understand the way in which the Bible was written, lack historical context and also an understanding of how the Church Fathers interpreted it.  One of the things that attracted me to Catholicism was the fact that all of the 'big questions' had already been answered centuries ago.  I find it terribly annoying when someone comes up with what they think is a hot new idea when in fact they've stumbled on something people figured out hundreds of years ago.

You get a lot of that in what we now call "Bible study," and it bugs me to no end.  I love that I live in a country where people have the freedom to read a simplified translation, come up with their own take and start their very own special church dedicated to what they think it says.

I don't love all the spiritual confusion this creates.

One of the Christian virtues is humility and I wish more of the people who styled themselves authorities in this area were willing to consider that the countless people who came before them were not ignorant or unintelligent and given the same problem set, likely figured out an answer well in advance of this particular generation.

The Bible has effectively been analyzed by a massive multi-century crowdsourced distributed computer system, yet some people think their single brain can compete (and even surpass) the collected knowledge of centuries because we possess an internet search engine.  That's pretty arrogant.

Anyhow, it's a good listen and as usual my only quibble is the stray derogatory remark (often based on a shocking degree of ignorance) about Catholic doctrine and practices.

While I've been listening to shows sponsored by an Eastern Orthodox web site, I have to admit I wasn't really keeping tabs on what our sister church is up to.

When I saw Pope Francis ask for a day of prayer over the situation in the Ukraine, I figured that the Orthodox were surely doing the same, since a clash between Russia and Ukraine would be spiritual fratricide pitting Orthodox against Orthodox (okay, Western Ukraine has some Catholics in it, but my point stands).

I was shocked to see that the political dispute is also a religious one.  The Patriarch of Moscow is fuming at the decision of other Patriarchs (Constantinople and Alexandria, specifically) to recognize the independence of the Kiev Archbishopric.

I spent a whole evening trying to untangle all of this, and I'm still not sure who did what to whom when, but our eastern brethren are currently going through all manner of schisms.

The lesson here is not that the Eastern Orthodox are better or worse than the Catholic Church but rather that all institutions, even churches, are prone to error.

At the same time, there are always new churches being created who brag about their purity and lack of scandal.  To this one can only say:  "Just wait, you'll get one."

I know some disgruntled Catholics have serious problems with Pope Francis, and some speak of leaving the Church because of it.  The problem is where to go?  If one truly believes that the Eucharist is the body and blood of Christ, then there aren't a lot of options.  Eastern Orthodox is about it, and as we've just seen, their hierarchy isn't praying for peace so much as pronouncing anathemas on each other.

No one is perfect.

I've discovered another ancientfaith.com podcast that I enjoy: Bad Books of the Bible.

This series is dedicated to going through The Apocrypha - those writings not generally found in Protestant Bibles.  Throughout the series they go over how this division took place and I won't get into that discussion here.

Instead, I will note that their first 'season,' which was about Tobit, was entertaining but moved rather slow.  The hosts took a lesson from that, I believe, and their discussion of 1 Maccabees is much more enjoyable.

The exclusion of 1 and 2 Maccabees from the Protestant Canon is unfortunate, because as my wife (who was raised Baptist) noted, they provide a crucial connection between the Old Testament and the time of Christ.

They also deeply undercut the notion of Christian pacifism, because it is explicitly spelled out that allowing God's temples to be desecrated and His people killed cannot possibly be pleasing to Him.  Rather than meekly submit to idol worshipers, they will draw the sword in defense of the Covenant.

For those who don't know, the Maccabees were Jewish rebels who rose up against the Seleucid Empire in the 2nd Century BC.  The Seleucid Empire was a successor state to Alexander the Great's empire, and its king, Antiochus, decided that his Jewish subjects' faith was an affront to his notion of imperium.  The therefore offered the Jews a choice - assimilate into Hellenistic culture or die.

The Maccabee family (it's not a true surname, but means "hammer") lead the ultimately successful rebellion against Greeks.

I'm still going through it as I listen to the podcast, but it is - like 1 Enoch, a remarkable "metal" book of the Bible.

Time was, people put yards signs up for three reasons: the house was for sale, an election was about to happen, or they wanted you to know who re-paved their driveway.

But over the last few years I've noticed a different category of yard signs - they don't tell you to vote for anyone or even advocate a specific policy, they are simply there to let you know the property owner's beliefs.

Some of them even provide a secular credo cribbed from bumper stickers that used to appear on the rusting exteriors of college-town Volvos.

I'm not the first person to notice that much of what animates the modern American left is a secularized form of Calvinism.  Thomas Sowell beat me to it decades ago, but the traditional Elect were a bit more subtle in advertising their self-righteousness (okay, the "In the case of the Rapture, this car will be empty" bumper stickers were a bit much).

Calvinism is a frequent target of the Lord of Spirits podcast, and justly so.  John Calvin took the Lutheran concept sola fides to its irrational extreme and modern secularists have run with it.  If faith alone can provide salvation, then simply announcing one's virtuous beliefs demonstrates moral superiority in the secular realm.

One of my favorite signs is one that reads:  "Wherever you are from, you're welcome to be our neighbor," which appears in English, Spanish and (presumably) Arabic.  I like it because I see them in the yards of houses that cost $300,000 or more.  Clueless irony is the best irony.

Another point of amusement (which is only possible if you live in the same neighborhood for a while) is when these houses are put up for sale, the virtue-signalling signs disappear.  The contractor ones can stay ("see, we just repaved the driveway"), but the owner is willing to mute their self-righteousness to recoup their investment.

I mean, the sign already proved their virtue.  Now they're just trying to sell the house.

Since for Catholics like me, the Christmas liturgical season is just getting started, I have no need to modify my Christmas wishes to all of you by adding "belated."  I can simply wish you a "Merry Christmas" like normal, since there are almost two weeks of Christmas left to go.

This may seem like a strange time to bring up paganism, but I can't think of a more appropriate circumstance given the state of the world today.

Christmas itself has been warped into a retail holiday, something even irreligious people observe by taking time away from work, gathering with friends and family, and of course exchanging gifts.

There was a time within my memory that people who were not Christian (or were part of one of the more obscure heretical sects) pointedly did not celebrate Christmas, and that was why "Christmas Concerts" became "Winter Concerts" or "Holiday Concerts."  But I digress.

Driving home from the early Mass yesterday, a new thought occurred to me.  For many years I believed that pagans were just superstitious and that when they offered sacrifices, cut upon animals to gaze upon the entrails and approached oracles, it was one giant con by the elites against the rubes.  Thanks to The Lord of Spirits Podcast, I now understand that those 'gods' were real insofar as they could influence events and offer advice.

This is why ancient Israel was constantly tempted to break their covenant with God and participate in pagan rituals - they actually worked!

Of course another reason was that the pagan code of ethics was generally more permissive of sin - in fact it regarded some sins as virtues.  Some of the pagan philosophers advocated humility, but in practice the bigger the ego, the bigger your following.  Yes, they saw a relationship between hubris and nemesis, but so long as you kept sacrificing to the gods, nemesis could be kept at bay.

At least that was the thinking.

In any event, my revelation was this: growing up, I wondered why people would truly become Wiccan in light of the fact that it was mostly made-up and the practitioners I knew didn't seen happy or well off - the two traditional signs of divine favor across almost all cultures.

And then it hit me: their prayers were in fact being answered, and in exactly the way they wanted.

The Wiccans I knew seemed to want three things from their faith.  First, they wanted to get back at their traditional (often Dutch Reformed) parents.  Wicca was about as bad as they could be.

Second, they wanted absolute sexual license, and this they got.  The Goddess (or whoever) absolutely blessed them with frequent and (in theory) very intense erotic encounters. 

Finally, they wanted a moral framework that absolved them of guilt while placing their will and desires at the center of what is great and good.  This may seem like a repetition of the second point, but every Wiccan I've known (even the "incel losers" for you modern cool kids) was into the 'pansexual' component of their faith.

What these people did not get were stable, wholesome relationships, or inner peace, or a sense of true salvation or prosperity, or any of the markers that I would seek.  They got drama, and lots of it and they seemed to feed off of it.  I'm not sure how they turned out, though I know a few who 'grew out of it' and returned to Christ.

My point is that while they didn't explicitly articulate those goals, those were their goals and their prayers for those goals were in fact answered.  Whether you choose to believe it was through behavioral choices or the offices of a Fallen Angel masquerading as "The Goddess" (or a combination of both, which is my belief), that's fine, but the outcome is unmistakable.

This was yesterday morning.  Yesterday evening I got word that one of my relatives had renounced Christianity and become pagan.  Right over the holidays!  How splendid.

The reason was she placed a premium on approving sexual license.  The homosexual and transsexual agendas are very important to her (she is neither, btw), and she felt that Christianity was wrong to condemn these behaviors.  Instead, she came up with a theory of reincarnation where people are reborn into the wrong bodies and struggle to reconcile the difference.

I give her points for not doing the Anglican thing and just ignoring the Biblical texts that contradict her views.  She's at least being honest in that respect.

But I think one can see what else is going on - that when faced with a conflict between current societal views (which are less than 25 years old) and ancient laws of faith, she throws the faith away.

This is how the Israelites consistently strayed - they wanted to fit in.  There was no logic to their actions, just as there is no logic in play here.  It's a religion made up on the fly and molded to justify whatever social pressures arise.

This malleability of faith features prominently in the writings of G.K. Chesterton, Evelyn Waugh and (in a more veiled form) those of J.R.R. Tolkien.  (It's interesting that the great villains of Middle Earth are Fallen Angels - Sauron, Saruman, and the Balrogs.)

Needless to say, we will pray for her and hope to bring her back to Christ.  I think many people have to stray and take a hard look at the alternatives to the Church before they appreciate what she has to offer.  Certainly I did.

I've been going through one of my dated history books, and one passage in particular struck me as emblematic of everything that is wrong with religious (and therefore Bible) scholars.

The book is titled The Encyclopedia of Ancient Civilizations, edited by Arthur Cotterell.  It consists of a selection of essays by various experts on Sumer, Egypt, Babylon, etc.  At first I just hopped through it here and there, but now I'm reading it sequentially, but with no great urgency.  It's a back-up time-killer that informs and amuses.

In the article on Babylonia, A.K. Grayson writes: 

One of the interesting types of historiographical works was that of prophecy.  This was a literary text which described past events in prophetic terms as though the author had predicted these before they happened.  Having thereby established his credibility, he proceeded to make real prophecies which had a variety of forms according to the particular purpose he wished to achieve.  The Babylonian prophecy was a forerunner of apocalyptic literature, a genre to which the Book of Revelations belongs.

I think this is pretty much the perfect distillation of what most religious scholars still think today, and this is particularly true of the secular Bible scholars.  They love to dissect, analyze, and conjecture about how the various pieces came together and the one thing they all seem to agree on is that none of it can possibly be divinely inspired. 

All recorded prophesy was patched together after the fact to give religious leaders legitimacy by which they could control the masses.  An alternative view is that ancient people were simply stupid compared to modern man, and since they had no idea of science, attributed everything to invisible spirits. 

This view inevitably leads to scientism, which is the cruelest faith of them all. 

Put simply, the evidentiary standard they want to see is all but impossible to achieve.  Most writings of the ancient world are difficult to date, and books in particular have had to be copied and re-copied in order for their texts to survive to our age.  This opens up myriad possibilities for editorial changes - something not lost on scholars.

Their gold standard of evidence would be a positively dated writing that can be clearly placed before a given event.  By its very nature, that's an almost impossible standard to meet because prophesy is often extremely close to a specific event.  The warnings typically come when the gods are just about done with the offending nation/city/people and the lightning bolts are practically already on the way.

How would one track that?  In a newspaper?  Magazine story?  Ancient wire report?

In fact, even modern works would likely fail this test.  Consider Winston Churchill's history of World War II.  The first book of the first volume of The Second World War, The Gathering Storm, painstakingly documents Churchill's attempt to stop German rearmament and subsequent aggression.

The thing is, it was published after the fact.  Let us say that centuries from now, our only record of British politics from that era is Churchill's mammoth work.  Using Grayson's logic, Churchill's claims would have to be regarded with the deepest suspicion.

Whenever one considers an ancient text, the first thing one has to consider is why it even survived.  This is especially true in fragile media like books and scrolls.  Someone had to think what was in there was very important and therefore reliable.  Yes, there were official versions of history and that complicates things, but the default assumption has to be that whatever we have is true, not the other way around.

You see, most predictions aren't carved in stone, particularly if they were made only a few months or weeks (or even days) in advance.

However, once they are proven true, suddenly its the talk of the town.  For example, it is now well known that James Woods observed the 9/11 hijackers on a training flight, noticed their strange behavior and reported it to the FBI (who of course did nothing).

How much media play did his observation get?  Lots, but it came only after the attacks had been carried out.

It is not a stretch to imagine future accounts of what Woods saw would survive but the FBI's corroborating reports would not. 

The same is true in ancient times.  Some nobody on a corner says "Doom is upon us!" and everyone ignores them.  If nothing happens, nothing will be written.

But if something does happen, it will be a major event and recorded.  Even if the earliest records date from decades after the original event, there is still a link through living memory to what happened. 

In fact, it is typical for historical accounts to be written not immediately after the fact, but at least a generation later.  This is because there is no point in writing about something everyone still alive clearly remembers.  It is only when that generation begins to fade and a new one rises to maturity that there is a necessity to write things down.

This is why many of the accounts of the American Civil War only emerged decades after the conflict. 

One will also find examples of how subsequent events will change how previous ones are interpreted.  Thus histories of the First World War written before 1939 will have a very different sensibility than those written after 1945 even though the passage of years was relatively short.

I would therefore say that Grayson has it exactly backwards - the only reason someone would write down a new prophesy was that the old one was correct.

I've had to do a bunch of driving over the last couple of weeks and I returned to my faithful companion on the road, the Lord of Spirits podcast.  I like to download these to an MP3 player and listen to them all at once.  I had several episodes to work through, which was great.

Even if one isn't Eastern Orthodox, it makes a lot of great points and (for the most part) aligns with Catholic theology, so I find it very educational.

One item the presenters stress is that there is actually zero conflict between the Christian conception of God and its pagan rivals.  They are in complete agreement on the fundamental structure, they merely differ in the details.

Thank about it.  All of the other pantheons - Babylonian, Assyrian, Canaanite, Greek, Egyptian, Roman, etc. - may conceive of a singular Creator, but actual day-to-day operations are pretty rigidly divided between various deities.

In fact, they often work at cross-purposes to one another, using humans as pawns for their endless intrigues. 

This dovetails perfectly with the Old Testament's statements regarding God dividing the world into various "dominions" under the protection of angels.  As the name suggests, these "dominions" had set limits, either physical boundaries or a specific element (storms, crafts, love) that they could call their own.

These angels rebelled against God when they accepted worship, something that they knew was wrong.  The degree of their fall varied, and that's why some of the pagan gods seems reasonably decent while others are downright depraved.  They warred on each other because - having set themselves against God, they also destroyed any bonds of trust between themselves.

Also of note is the fact that none of the 'reigning' (that is current) pagan gods made the world or people.  That came from some older, far more powerful Creator who was subsequently deposed.

At least that's their story.  The guys on Lord of Spirits seem to take a particular joy in smashing Baal's pretensions to ruling the skies.

To put it another way, the myths of their followers assert their greatness and dominance, but the fact remains that all of them - even the mighty Zeus - have serious constraints on their power.  They are (as they themselves acknowledged) sometimes thwarted by trickery or a coalition of their rivals.

And of course they are fickle.  You screw up a tiny bit of the sacrificial procedure and they might just strike you dead.  Not nice people, not at all.

Now I'm sure some Christians (particularly Protestants) will claim that either none of these "gods" exist or that they are creatures of the Devil.   All I can say is that the former argument can also be used against their faith and the latter one isn't much different from the one I'm making.

J.R.R. Tolkien essentially took this concept and ran with it.  Morgoth and Sauron were angelic creatures who abandoned the Divine Council and set themselves up as gods.   The Balrogs were likewise spirits of fire who turned against Eru, The One.

Saruman was sent to stop them, and he too, fell.  Fans of Unfinished Tales know that Gandalf was actually one of five "wizards" sent as messengers and ended up being the only one to remain true to his mission.  Radagast the Brown was distracted by animals and the two "Blue Wizards" were rumored to have set up cults of their own.

It's interesting to note that in some of the few direct references to worship in Lord of the Rings, it is in fact Eru, not Manwe, who is so honored.  The Elves' songs about Elbereth are pleas for her intercession, a prefigurement of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Tolkien wasn't a theologian but he certainly knew his theology.  What he is describing is exactly the same arrangement - the angels entrusted to watch over the world instead covet it.

I'm still wrapping my head around the concept, but its a fascinating thing to think about.

When I began my religious instruction on the teachings of the Catholic Church, I admit that I was a little leery of the veneration accorded Mary, the mother of Our Lord.

Part of it was the residual Protestantism that still pervades American society, but there was also a profound misunderstanding of the difference between veneration, worship and intercession.  My instructor broke it down in the simplest terms: if you want a guy to do you a favor, it sure helps if his mother is also asking him to do it as well.

In many ways, I'm a very simple man, and that explanation was really all I needed to say the "Hail Mary" with confidence.  I knew that there was much more in terms of sacred scripture and Church tradition, but that merely served as fodder for me to debate unbelievers - personally I was already sold.

Oddly, there are a number of Protestants who have serious problems with this.  Some even fancy themselves Bible scholars.  I've taken a few pot shots at these charlatans before, but Brant Pitre has provided me with an arsenal of theological thermonuclear warheads.

He has written a short, informative book on the topic: Jesus and the Jewish Roots of Mary.  It is a quick read, and somewhat repetitive, but it is set up that way to ensure that even the most casual reader can understand his point.

What he does is take the usual arguments against Mary's significance and not only nuke them, but make the rubble bounce before making their shadows glow.  It is a methodical clearing operation, and by the time he's done, there's nowhere for the "Mary skeptics" to stand.

For those who aren't fanatically opposed to Catholic teachings, Pitre could probably have just written a long essay, but he's actually trying to reach non-believers, which is laudable.

His tone is generally mild, but he does get in some jabs when they are absolutely necessary.

And to be honest, they are.  For 1,500 years the Catholic and Orthodox Churches venerated the Holy Virgin, and then one day an angry Augustinian monk decided he knew better.

I see in this a precursor to the current plague of presentism, which is the idea that everyone who came before the current enlightened generation was really, really stupid.  It is a particularly corrosive form of pride.

When the intellectual battlefield shows Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Athanasius and countless other intellectual giants on one side vs someone with a King James translation, I think the struggle is pretty uneven.

And indeed, Pitre reminds us that Mary's critics generally don't know what they don't know.  They disdain "non-canonical" works as if they have nothing to teach, when they are in fact essential to understanding Church history.  A well-versed student of the topic should not just consult what Protestants consider the Apocrypha, but also Roman and Greek historians as well.

Pitre does this, and in a couple hundred pages creates an unassailable document that should reassure the faithful and give heretics some pause.

This week I was looking for something to listen to and - as is my wont - I tried the folks over at ancientfaith.com.

They did not disappoint - or at least they have so far.

I'm currently listening to "Bad" Books of the Bible, which is about the Apocrypha.  These are the books that Martin Luther separated from the Western Canon and subsequent Protestant publishers deleted entirely.  The decision to flag them was an interesting one, given that one of Luther's core tenets was the primacy of scripture. 

Anyhow, the hosts are Orthodox converts (Ancient Faith is an Eastern Orthodox site, if you didn't know), and so they approach the topic from the perspective of Protestants who found something hidden.  It's a good listen (I'm on the second episode) so I'll see where it goes.

Based on my enjoyment of the Lord of Spirits, I thought for sure I'd love Father Andrew Stephen Damick's Tolkien-centric Amon Sul podcast.

Not so much.

I think I'm fairly near the upper end of the Tolkien fandom spectrum.  No, I don't speak Elvish, but I used to read Lord of the Rings every year, have most everything J.R.R. wrote and can accurately recite some of the songs and poems.

Maybe that's my problem: I seem to know more about the books than the host, which is really irritating.

Father Andrew also makes some pretty significant mistakes, conflating battles, names, events and this combined with his (freely admitted) "fangirl" behavior to really turn me against the show. 

I think the final straw was his refusal to completely and unconditionally condemn the Peter Jackson movies.  These are terrible, both as adaptations and as standalone movies.  I wish to emphasize that second point, because people will sometimes argue that Jackson can't be blamed for having to make a few concessions to the necessities of putting the story on film.

If you take the movies as they are, they are completely incoherent.  The plot is completely incoherent.

I've already linked to my trashing of the film, and so I won't repeat (or add to) my previous invective.  Suffice to say that Father Andrew's unwillingness to put those atrocities in their place - either because he's too nice or simply doesn't see the problems - is a deal-breaker.

I tried, but I can't take it anymore.  I'll stick with Lord of Spirits and leave it at that.