The term "literacy," however, is in some sense an imprecise word. True, literacy has to do with the ability to read, and write, and in a larger sense may refer to one's general stock of knowledge - "cultural literacy." Yet there is another step to be made, another level of understanding, for which the term "literacy" does not suffice. "Literacy" in this sense is adulthood, a kind of minimal moral seriousness, sense for proportion and consequences, feeling for truth, appropriateness, responsibility. The ability to use words, and certainly the power to broadcast and publish them, carries with it, or ought to carry with it, a sense of obligation. This sense or feeling of obligation is related to the sense of taste, or perhaps of smell, or perhaps just comes down to a "feeling for life" or  "feeling for what is right." These are moral rather than intellectual qualities. True, they do not figure in any rationalist comprehension of what thinking is about. But these qualities of the soul comprise the basis for cognition. This is the true bottom line, and it is this bottom line which the Philadelphia Inquirer incessantly and unremittingly undermines. That the Philadelphia Inquirer is less intelligent than its readership deserves is a given. But that it is actually a force for social decay and degeneration - this is something many readers would miss, for the signs of it are extremely subtle and go to issues of attitude, selection, disposition, good faith - things hard to pin down precisely. But it is the very sense of uneasiness in these matters which is first of all the clue to something's not quite "feeling right."

I thought that a review of Sunday's paper would be of interest in trying to describe what I mean. There were four or five articles in Sunday's paper which left me with that sense of uneasiness. But first I should report that my five-page letter to Mr. Tom Ferrick, one of these Inquirer editorialists, has so far gone unanswered.[This letter is reproduced in full on my Sword in the Mouth website - see above link.]  The only editorialist who saw fit to respond was Mr. Chris Satullo, who thanked me for writing but did not address any of the substantive issues I raised, and defended Mr. Ferrick.

In Sunday's paper the indefatigible Mr. Ferrick was at it again, renewing his attacks on the Catholic church in his piece, "Real reparation must dig deeper." He begins with sarcasm: "The cardinal is sorry. Only this time he is really, really sorry." Mr. Ferrick believes that the Catholic Church should go along with the District Attorney's recommendation to extend or abolish the statutes of limitation and that it could waive its immunity to civil suits. In other words, lie down and die. My letter to Mr. Ferrick addressed both of these points in a framework of civil and friendly argument. I think it is an act of cowardice on his part not to have responded to my letter.

The chief editorial in the Currents section was "Rule America?" by Jonathan V. Last, an editor of the neoconservative publication the Weekly Standard. That the Philadelphia Inquirer should be allying itself with neoconservatism is perhaps no surprise.   Neoconservatism is the doctrine espoused by a lot of former Trotskyites for world revolution, and it has been espoused by right-wing Jews and bankers who have transferred their allegiance from Communism to hyper-capitalism. Neoconservatism has absolutely nothing to do with conservatism, and in fact the mere use of the word is a key to the deceptive practices of these traitors.  Mr. Last blames liberalism for the cause of the fall of the British Empire, and he warns that the U.S. Empire could meet the same fate. Empire? When did any of us poor American voters get to vote on the question of America being an Empire? I thought we were a republic. Intellectual hubris and dishonesty at this level is an indication of how much the neocons have succeeded in corrupting us. It is not enough for them to have trampled on every American tradition and to have perverted every decent sense of who we are as a people. So true it is, as the Canadian writer Henry Makow puts it, that "Success in the West depends in part on a person's willingness to betray his nation, race, religion, culture, and neighbors." But thus far the Philadelphia Inquirer has not sought to expose the neoconservative betrayal of the United States. Nor has it sought to inform the public of the grave problems in the energy sector, Peak Oil, hyper-indebtedness, loss of productivity in our hollowed-out economy, and the lack of accountability in government. No one is answerable to anybody; so far have we sunk into hyperatomic individualism that we have started to go nuclear on ourselves. I could go on and on. No. The Philadelphia Inquirer only day after day and week after week beats the drum of anti-Catholicism. We know who the true enemy is!

For neoconservative ideology,  the Catholic Church is a perpetual reproach. And there are, sadly, a few Catholic neoconservatives, like George Weigel, Michael Novak, and R.J. Neuhaus -- men who have conveniently ignored the Pope's warnings against the Iraq War and the Pope's warnings about the dangers of hyper-capitalism. But it is not on that level that the war against Catholicism is being carried on in the pages of the Philadelphia Inquirer.  Better to enlist the services of embittered Catholics like Tom Ferrick. Or better yet, feature the syrupy sincerity of the Quaker-turned-Catholic Richard K. Taylor, who, as reported in "Faith Life" -- "A plan to empower lay Catholics" --has written a book called "Love in Action" to challenge Church authority. What none of these people gets is that it is only that church authority which has preserved the faith for the faithful through the centuries. It is only that church authority which has prevented the Faith from dissolving into a schismatic free-for-all. Jews, Protestants and neocons literally cannot stand that church authority and they will do everything they can possibly do to destroy it. For it is actually that same church authority which upholds the rights and dignity of the common man. The principle of true authority preserves the idea of liberty and the participatory life of mankind. The principle of authority, when it is no longer upheld by the truth that limits it, soon degenerates into  Might makes Right. This has already happened in our nation, and the neocons plan to take the same campaign to the world at large.

The principle of Might equals Right is now the de facto governing principle of the American Empire, and the repercussions of this governing principle have infected all areas of our life, particularly that of science.  The principle of science used to be thought and experiment; now it is technique --  if we can do something, we will do it. This principle has been enshrined in the "Body Worlds" exhibit, also reported on in Sunday's Inquirer, "Insides Out." Now, because we have the technique to preserve corpses, we will not only preserve them, we will idolize them in the name of Science and Learning. The "Body Worlds" exhibit, the reporter writes, "peers beneath the skin in an act of voyeurism so severe it makes Calvin Klein underwear models seem formally dressed by comparison."

For idolatry is to have no "within," and idolatry is what the Franklin Institute has stooped to in an effort to boost attendance. In this insult to Benjamin Franklin,  "About 25 whole bodies are on display, placed in action poses...Sometimes, while walking through the exhibition's five main rooms, it is easy to forget that these are real people, real specimens, and the fascination of it all, the pure love of science, takes over. There is no smell...,,Still, there are moments when the reality hits... A light table holds a thin cross-section of an infant, horizontal from head to toe. Lit through from below, the specimen looks like a piece of glowing amber. But it's not a specimen. It's a person. A small person who presumably had a name. It's not clear to me what otherwise unavailable educational value was gained by his or her inclusion."

Is this writer alluding to the fact that this infant could not have given the permission for his or her body to be displayed in this Frankensteinian exhibition of the grotesque? This writer, Peter Dobrin, certainly has a roundabout way of expressing even the mildest of reservations. Let us not offend our sponsors, Moloch and Mammon!   The reporter noted that so far no pickets have appeared "to provide images for TV that would do the paradoxical thing that protests tend to do -- boost attendance."

This is the Philadelphia Inquirer. I hope this newspaper goes out of business. The stench of its trivializations rises to heaven. I recall an old Hebrew scripture  which said that God breathed life into man's nostrils, because the nose was the one sense-organ that would never deceive us. But nowadays not even the cadavers in "Body Worlds" carry a smell. Make no mistake, folks. This is the way of the New World Order, whose masters wish to deprive us of even the human dignity of recognizing a bad smell. So take away the smell and everything's cool! So alienated have we become from ourselves and the good, we are unable to respond with even minimal moral sensibility to the pervasive, odorless evil that has overtaken us -- whether in the Frankenstein Museum or the Philadelphia Inquirer.

The Catholics have had the misfortune to have had their sins and shortcomings broadcast from dawn to dusk, and no doubt Ms. Amanda Bennett, the Editor in Chief, found the Catholic Scandal a good source of revenue. I think she has plans for the Philadelphia Inquirer along these lines in the future. It's called pointing the finger at the sins of others, or sitting in the Judgment Seat. Ms. Bennett, who received a copy of my letter but did not respond to it, expressed sorrow that hewing the bottom line necessitated firing such a goodly portion of her staff. But I doubt that hewing came so close that it would draw off any portion of her salary.

I say again, I hope this whole newspaper bites the dust. May I further chagrin these Yankees with a lament for my hometown newspaper, The Birmingham News, which was written by grown-ups, and which had an excellent Sunday editorial section, with articles and op-eds from people with a true diversity of viewpoints.  As for the Inquirer, with the exception of Trudy Rubin, who seems to have a sense for reporter's responsibility, there is not a single writer on this paper who  seems to heed the first principle of responsible humanity: first, be truthful with yourself. And maybe, just maybe, if you are truthful with yourself, you can begin to do the journalist's job of reporting what happens and digging down to the question of who really benefits from what is said to be the "news."

Later today:  Mr. Last  blames liberalism for the cause of the decline of the British Empire. True, many Englishmen converted to pacifism after the slaughter of World War I. But England was a model law-abiding nation until the 1960's. Since that time, the ideology of hedonism and self-satisfaction has seized hold of the elites of both Britain and America. This self-satisfied attitude, which Ortega y Gasset analyzed incisively in 1930 as the primary characteristic of "mass man," has become characteristic of our government, intellectual class, and elites of both Left and Right.. Theodore Dalyrymple, the English doctor, writes of this ideology that "it is only necessary to believe that it is economically feasible to behave in... an irresponsible and egotistical fashion... but also to believe that it is morally permissible to do so. And this idea has been peddled by the intellectual elite in Britain for many years, more assiduously than anywhere else, to the extent that it is now taken for granted." The Anglo-American elite believes that civilzation will last forever and that no special development, thought, or virtues are necessary to preserve it. Hence the attacks on the Catholic Church, hence the incessant attacks on moral standards -- whether they are neoconservative attacks against rules of international law and treatment of prisoners, or liberal attacks on marriage and the family. Underlying and underwriting this hedonistic mentality is the cheap oil fiesta, which Jim Kunstler rightly says has led us into the land of make-believe: that is, believing that we can run a cheap oil economy without cheap oil. The particular blame of the media is that it has abdicated independent thought, and merely jumps on one side of the pendulum or the other as convenient -- those sides being either self-satisfaction or self-righteousness. This is why I think the Philadelphia Inquirer has failed its obligations to the public and why I think most of its writers and columnists are a mediocre and  self-satisfied lot.

But who thinks about obligations any more? The very absence of any thought of obligations is highly characteristic of the self-satisfied men and women who fill our media, government, think tanks, and newspapers.  The Left cries for "Rights" and the Right cries for Power, but no one with any real public influence stands up to say what it is we ought to do or what it might be best to refrain from doing.  Truly, egotism is destroying us. Western society has been reduced to moral infantilism,  we have become caricatures of our ancestors, careless and cruel in our own self-regard. 

See: Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses, 1930.

Theodore Dalyrymple, "The Frivolity of Evil," City Journal, Autumn 2004.

Sidney Blumenthal, Fall of the Rovean Empire? Drunk on power, the Republican oligarchs overreached. Now their entire project could be doomed. Salon.com, Oct 7, 2005.

Excellent posting Oct. 9 in the Los Angeles Times: American Debacle, by Zbigniew Brzezinski. Why can't the Philadelphia Inquirer publish an excellent piece like this? Article may be referenced on www.TCRNews.com.

October 12, 2005
Further Reflections On the Same Theme

I must say that doing a little digging at the news behind the news uncovers a few facts that the people who report the news would rather not remember. On Sunday, May 8, 2005, the Philadelphia Inquirer published a generous endorsement of the candidacy of Seth Williams, who was competing with Lynne Abraham for the position of Philadelphia District Attorney. "Abraham has been the district attorney longer than anyone in 80 years," the paper reports. 'I've seen what happens when people stay too long,' she says. She should look in the mirror." The paper goes on to talk about Abraham as "America's Deadliest D.A." because of her fondness for imposing the death penalty, and the fact that "evidence also piles up that Abraham has lost her edge administratively," and that "Critics suggest that the best and brightest don't seek to work in her office anymore." The paper says that Seth Williams -- who happens to be black and Catholic, although the paper did not mention this -- "arrives right on time."

So much for a newspaper endorsement that failed to win Mr. Williams a victory over the City's pro-Abraham Democratic Party machine "that long ago lost its ethical compass." Now figure, with Abraham once again in the District Attorney's office, what better to boost the sagging morale of the disaffected of this city than to attack the Catholic Church? Pro-abortion liberals can always count on the Catholic Church as a convenient target. After all, why fight the corruption of City Hall when you can fight the corruption in the Catholic Church - and, in the bargain, help to destroy its moral legitimacy?

I do not deny that there was corruption in the Catholic Church. But I think the way the D.A. went about its investigation of it was an unconscionable invasion of the State on the freedom of religion. Since the Grand Jury Report did not render any indictments of priests, the headlines in the Philadelphia Inquirer could have legitimately read: "D.A. finds no evidence of indictable sexual abuse in the Philadelphia Archdiocese." Would this headline have been any less true to the facts than what actually happened?

And what did happen? The Philadelphia Inquirer, only too eager to carry on the District Attorney's venomous anti-Catholic crusade to the public, jumped on the bandwagon with all the resources at its disposal.  Pictures and names of offending priests have been posted to its website,  columnists have weighed in day after day with their condemnations of the Church, and Catholics everywhere in this city have been subjected to something resembling a public whipping. It was mentioned early in the publicizing of these events that the tone of the  District Attorney's Grand Jury Report was one of "thinly-disguised anger" -- or words to that effect. Is it the job of the District Attorney to convey by tone and mood what she does not deliver by facts? Is the manipulation of public emotion the rightful job of a District Attorney? Could not that same job have been effected with a few cautionary words, such as the fact that the percentage of offending priests over the 50-year-period was actually very small, and that sexual abuse is a widespread problem in society - see, alas, it has even penetrated into the Catholic Church? Would expressions of good faith and good will in this matter have essentially altered the picture of the findings?

Would not some comparable figures of sexual abuse from other professions - say, government, education, social science, not to mention other religious groups, have been of relevance to this Report?

What about the white slave trade or the sodomizing of Palestianian youths in the refugee camps - about which there have been sworn witnesses? Should I mention figures of prominence in Israeli society who have been thus witnessed "with their pants down," so to speak?

What about who controls the pornography industry in the U.S., which Rabbi Daniel Lapin says that most gentiles are too tactful to bring up? What about the stories of women like Linda Boreman, the star of Deep Throat, who testified that for filmings she was terrorized, tortured, kicked, and beaten, as well as being held in bondage as a prostitute? Boreham's testimony before the Meese Commision failed to win the sympathy of the prominent feminist Betty Friedan, who mobilized the masturbation-and-abortion lobby against the Meese Commision and proudly claimed that "suppressing pornography is extremely dangerous to women."

What about the Kinsey Report? Many of its facts and findings were obtained through sexual acts performed on minors. Does the fact that the Rockefeller Foundation supported this research exonerate Kinsey's sex-ideology from being the slimiest and most vile incitement to the the sexual corruption of American life?

No. Instead of opening up the whole question of the effects of the sexual liberation movement on American life, the Philadelphia Inquirer has slavishly followed the leadings of this venomous Prosecutor, about whose tenure it had already expressed strong reservations, into  anti-Catholic hysteria. This newspaper has turned its back on the city which stood for liberty and brotherly love, the original capital of this country. In its relentless finger-pointing against the Catholic Church it has shown its real face. The Philadelphia Inquirer has cast its vote for Empire --  which is the politically organized lust to control every competing source of moral authority other than the State.

This is why I defend the Catholic Church. For who, my friends, will defend us from the State and its Ministry of Propaganda, the Philadelphia Inquirer?

October 13

Notes: "... The essence of a republic is devotion to the common good. The essence of empire is power, the power not of the people, but of one faction over another. Just as the republic needs virtue in order to function, the empire runs on lust.  Empire is politically organized appetite. Each faction uses the power of the state to gratify its own desires. ... He who understands [this] understands why pornography and sex education and abortion and government funding of contraceptives are all non-negotiable conditions of the current regime..." E. Michael Jones, Libido Dominandi:Sexual Liberation and Political Control  It is a truly diabolic coup that the Grand Jury Report ostensibly detailing sexual abuse in the Catholic Church should be in reality the blow of Empire. This situation illustrates how far the double-mind, the deception, the forked tongue, has actually become our politics. Our burden today is a pervasive and insidious untruthfulness, and those who see it are condemned to defend what seems to others indefensible. But all I can say is, that modern life, and perhaps human life in general, presents us with situations in which good and bad are not clearly opposed, but the greater good is opposed by the lesser. This is why we need thinking and discrimination, and it was the absence of these qualities in the Philadelphia Inquirer's reportage of the Catholic Scandal that so raised my alarm.

I write and I write, it feels to me that I spill my blood in writing. Maybe it is a protection, in the long run, that a kind of inertia and indifference reigns over human life in the end. But to be caught up in the devil's drama is no fun, I assure you.

October 17, 2005 - NEW SITE, "CONVERSION" -- See link at left. Reflections of my journey to Rome. Today's entry -- "Invasion of the Ultra-Subtle." Related material: two reviews of Russell Kirk's "ghostly tales," reprinted from The St. Croix Review and the Journal for Anthroposophy and reproduced on "The Sword of the Mouth" website, link at left.

October 20, 2005
No New Knowledge

"We absolutely do not need any more new knowledge. We need to learn how to do things differently." Paul C. Johnston. I can't remember if these were my brother's exact words as we talked on the phone yesterday, but they are close enough. And I believe they are worthy of taking to heart.  Our conversation converged on this point because of two seemingly unrelated parallel conversational streams: my conversion to Catholicism on the one hand, and Paul's sense that reading and thinking and writing articles -- such as his essay "Urbino," published on one of my websites, see link at left -- "gets you nowhere."  He thinks well of my turn to the Catholic faith -- "you will find a 'we,' " -- that is, become part of a tribe. And in a way this lack of a tribe is a very part of the futility of intellectual life that he has experienced. You have to have a 'tribe' - a group, a sector, a community - to receive new ideas and impulses and do something with them. Paul's problem and mine to a great extent has been our fierce intellectual independence. But this independence can lead to one's speaking in the void - that no one listens. So it comes down to either being consigned to intellectual futility or be a part of an academic tribe where writing and publishing are merely ways to advance one's career. In the former case the intellectual life has no roots; in the latter it has no air. In both cases ideas are disparaged, treated as of little importance, and the act of thinking is not valued, nor is the considerable inner and outer discipline it takes to become capable of thinking at all respected. This devaluation of the thinking life  leads to stagnation and tyranny in the end. It is the tool par excellence of the status quo.Ironically all of Western society has indeed made itself over into the image of 'Athens' and 'Jerusalem' these days. But it is not the Athens of Plato and the Jerusalem of Jesus, but the Athens that made Socrates drink the hemlock and the Jerusalem that cried 'Crucify him!' Everybody who boasts about Western culture needs to remember the other sides of it.