What’s Wrong with the World

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Downtown blues

Chico is a university town of about 90K population, an island of "big city" in a sea of farms, ranches, and small rural communities. Like Austin, Ashland, and Kalamazoo. While visiting last night I decided to take a little walk downtown. Downtown Chico is now officially a foreign country. Drugged-up loons and angry, vacant faces haunt every corner, determined to make the place unfit for civilized company. The explosive growth of bodily desecration among young people, in the form of tattoos and body piercings, is worse than I've ever seen or imagined it could be. As if mere indecency were not shocking enough. Seedy tattoo and piercing shops, with their freakish clientele and vulgar advertising, are moving in while legitimate businesses move out. In fact they are almost the only small businesses prospering and multiplying. I wanted to stop by a nice cafe I remembered from a couple of years ago, but found a busy "magic store" in its place full of the tools of the occult. And why do such places always have the same demonic smell? Do they all burn the same incense from hell? We can no longer support a Catholic bookstore in this city, but the "magic store" is booming.

Disappointed, I decided to take refuge in a used bookstore. What I found there only confirmed the trend I have been observing for the last 25 years: quality books are disappearing and being replaced by a deluge of New Age, occult, quasi-pornographic, and vaguely "spiritual" offerings. I stayed a while, browsing the local history section, listening unwillingly to a Cat Stevens album from that awful decade that never ends. The whole depressing experience reminded me of the Waterloo moment I once had in the university bookstore at Stanford: a spontaneous realization the vast majority of published books are trash. Fit for roasting marshmallows, at best, or maybe hot dogs if written by philosophers. They say that the proliferation of wicked and senseless books, and the marginalization of the good and true, is the price we have to pay for a "free" society. But that's too high a price to pay if you ask me. We don't know what freedom is anymore. Freedom is not losing your downtown to an infestation of demons. The joke is on us.

Caution: not for children.

Comments (45)

Somewhere in the phrase "Liberté, égalité, fraternité" there's a parable lurking about how the first two brothers, growing monstrous through over-feeding, joined forces to kill the third.

With that in mind, Happy Bastille Day!

The 1980's weren't prudish and conservative and yet things seem vastly worse 20-30 years later. Things seem much worse than 10 years ago. The white trash piercing & tatooing subculture is everywhere. The ghetto thug culture is everywhere. The girls I went to school with dressed like nuns compared to how the girls dress now. Pornography is ubiquitous. Children are exposed to horrible things at a shockingly young age by their perpetually adolescent parents.

"Blues" doesn't begin to capture what I feel. Hard not to despair.

Jeff, you needed confirmation? Neal Postman stated that reading was not a natural function
but something that required a special commitment of effort from the human. Or as Locke put it, "the body must be made slave to the mind". The effort pays and leads to it's own satisfactions, but in a visual/audio world fewer will make that effort.
There's a connection to mass democratization and education, the equality of mind and learning, no one raised too high and nothing to complex, except for science, our modern paradigm.

Here's a suggestion: Make meaningful anti-pornography laws and enforce them. Just pornography. No further content laws than that. Defy SCOTUS rulings to the contrary, or get Congress to do an Article III and place the issue out of SCOTUS's range, or something like that. Also, enforce other existing vice laws such as anti-prostitution laws.

And, of course, other crime laws--just plain things about robbery and violence--should be enforced without fear or favor.

My guess is that a surprising amount of this stuff is so bound up with pornography, at least, if not also prostitution, that simply cracking down locally on these other crimes would make for a significant amount of clean-up. Frankly, even laws against blocking sidewalks by loitering would probably help.

I think it was Thomas Fleming of Chronicles who once said that most of what he saw in the bookstore was offensive, not because it was pornographic but because it was stupid.

Passing the Crystal Store in town, I saw a notice in the shop window advertising, "Therapeutic Gemstones: Buy Two and Get One Free".

I understand there are agencies from which you can hire a wizard.

I liked the video. It almost seemed like the owners were trying to do her a favor.

Passing the Crystal Store in town, I saw a notice in the shop window advertising, "Therapeutic Gemstones: Buy Two and Get One Free".

What I don't understand is why everyone who might be a prospective customer doesn't simply laugh that off as obviously a scam. The sign might as well say, "Come on in, silly fools!" in large letters.

My guess is that a surprising amount of this stuff is so bound up with pornography, at least, if not also prostitution

I don't own a tv converter box, so I, effectively, stopped watching broadcast tv two years ago. I happen to be in a bus station on the way to a conference, recently, and I had a chance to watch two sit-coms, one of which was the infamous 2 1/2 Men. I could not even finish watching them, so filled with not even sexual innuendo, but blatant discussion of things that would have gotten one arrested only a few years ago. I wanted to punch someone, so offended was I. At some point, this nation will have to return to some moral stance and maybe even law and order if it is to survive. It became clear, after Roe v. Wade, that the Supreme Court merited neither the appellation of supreme or court, as they had become merely an opinion shop for the prevailing politics. There is a difference between free speech and righteous speech. Free speech guarantees that a man has the right to be wrong once in the public square, but after he is proven to be wrong, free speech does not guarantee him the right to keep spouting the same wrong opinions and contaminating the public forum. That is the mistake that is often made regarding free speech and part of the reason why evil has so contaminated society: it gets to keep repeating its message until it finds a naive audience.

It is beyond a Supreme Court to define pornography, since a higher Court already has. The Supreme Court wanted us to sink to their definition instead of demanding that they uphold our own. Along with pornography comes the natural dulling of conscience which has so affected society. Without massive metanoia on this issue, I don't think America will be able to hold onto its delusion of being a shining light to the world much longer.

The Chicken

Oh, it's not that I hold the Supreme Court in contempt. All authority is instituted by God, but I hold some of their rulings and reasoning in contempt, although it is a dangerous proposition to hold any man in contempt, so I always have to be careful not to let my anger boil over to the man instead of the arguments, as I might have done, above. To the extent that I did, I apologize.

The Chicken

The white trash piercing & tatooing subculture is everywhere.

It has almost entirely overtaken the lower classes...I was required to have a physical exam for my last job (a shipyard), and the woman was amazed I had no tattoos.

The sad thing is that it is even making significant inroads among the middle and upper middle classers like myself. I was shocked both at how many people at Boeing have tattoos and how many allow them to be visible at work.

America is fast becoming unlivable for people with standards.

The sign might as well say, "Come on in, silly fools!" in large letters.

Well, of course, fools rush in etc. The shop seems to be prospering in a street where quite a number have closed down or have been turned into 'charity' businesses, like Oxfam, that sell donated goods for the benefit of the semi-destitute. (This is a sure sign of an ailing local economy.)

Not that long ago only sailors and the unreconstructed navvy would have a tattoo. I am astonished now by the number of young women I see who have allowed their bodies to be mutilated by fashionable piercings and 'decorated' with tattoos. But I shouldn't be surprised by these signs of the times.

Seldom commenting anywhere anymore, I am in aesthetic and moral agreement with most of the points you make here. But Lydia's draconian policy idea about pornography -- maybe it was merely unconsidered outrage -- as administered would never be what she hopes to accomplish, but rather an excuse to clamp down on yours and my speech, representation, and other communication, as "hate speech," another tool for gagging conservatives. There goes the Bible, there goes the history of art, the Theology of the Body. And so on, including granting angry busybodies veto rights on whether my Sunday dress one inch above the knee with stockings makes me dangerous to children. I grew up with all that in full cry, and the whole thing displays a tenor of mind that makes me want to edge nervously to the periphery of the arena, even while joining the exodus from mass culture.

No measures can eliminate illicit erotica, which has always been available, just not so openly. And the massive "Chico" populations rising around us with no apparent motive but distraction and degradation would have another rabble-rousing target. Actually the urge to issue such proclamations seems to be just the kinds of temptations that will further solidify the problem.

It also raises a serious Biblical question I have had for years, never seriously acknowledged in Right-thinking circles. If, in the parable of the wheat and the tares (Mt. 13:24-30) Jesus did not mean, as a spiritually practical matter, staying away from such morality-based clamp-downs on the world at large, what on earth or in heaven *did* he mean?

I'm afraid the only measures available to us are love, rationality, self-strengthening, and true expression, Benedict's "saints and art." Not much, but there are no sayings-of-Jesus contrary to those. God is thought to approve. And He casts the final vote.

Dilys,

From the Catechism of the Catholic Church:


2354 Pornography consists in removing real or simulated sexual acts from the intimacy of the partners, in order to display them deliberately to third parties. It offends against chastity because it perverts the conjugal act, the intimate giving of spouses to each other. It does grave injury to the dignity of its participants (actors, vendors, the public), since each one becomes an object of base pleasure and illicit profit for others. It immerses all who are involved in the illusion of a fantasy world. It is a grave offense. Civil authorities should prevent the production and distribution of pornographic materials.

It is recognized that civil authorities, to promote the common good, have a responsibility to outlaw pornography. Scripture, to begin with, is reserved speech, but secondly, is not pornographic. God can break his own commandments, but knowing our weaknesses, is careful not to lead us astray in the process. Anything God does, he does for good and usually clear reasons. Talk of sex in Scripture is always for edification, never gratification, so it does not conform to the definition of pornography, even if God could do so.

Now, I am not a proponent of absolutely free speech and freedom of expression is nowhere vouchsafed in the Constitution.

The Chicken

I read posts like this with bewilderment. Where has everyone been the last 30 years? It took me 5 years of adult life to come to confirm what I already instinctively knew before I came of age:

1. This whole thing will end badly...justice will not limp.
2. Cultural decline cannot be acknowledged until it bottoms out and has nowhere to go.
3. Culture cannot fixed from the top, only the bottom, but sadly nobody wants to hit base hits, only home runs, and thus wishfully confuse culture with politics (e.g., anti-porn laws).
4. People who lived their formative years in the '60s seem hopelessly blind to how bad things are. Why? My guess is that partly because they can only see the present in the light of their own past, and partly due to wishful memories, and even partly because they don't want to admit their own complicity in the mess.
5. Any effort invested in negotiating or fighting this culture is a waste of time that could be better spent building something away from the mess.
6. We have long past the point when intelligent folk get out by building communities away from the mess.

"Run from places of sin as from the plague." St Climacus

Dilys,

My humble apology. I completely misread you comment. You may ignore mine or it may be added to the general discussion as made by a too hasty Chicken.

The Masked Chicken

But Lydia's draconian policy idea about pornography -- maybe it was merely unconsidered outrage -- as administered would never be what she hopes to accomplish

So, dilys presumably thinks that there should be no laws against pornography? And here I thought of myself as the rampaging right-liberal around here because, instead of supporting outlawing books on magic (as I'm guessing from the main post Jeff C. would recommend), I simply suggested _returning_ to the sorts of laws against pornography that we used to have and actually enforcing them. That's "draconian"? Wow. Amazing. Otherwise, somehow, "pornography" is going to mean "hate speech laws"? Well, y'know, it's amazing, dilys, but somehow people do seem to know that "pornography" doesn't mean "politically incorrect speech on political topics."

People who lived their formative years in the '60s seem hopelessly blind to how bad things are.

MDavid,

Way to paint with a broad brush. Some of us formed during the sixties were not smoking weed and engaging in orgiastic behavior (gasp!). We recognize the horrors, today. Unfortunately, few of us are a position to do anything about it except pray. American culture has never encouraged a conservative point of view, merely tolerated it. American culture has always been independent-minded and when that was a thinking independence, it was fine, but periods of thought require silence and America has seldom been a silent country. Economic depression often silences a country, so here's hoping for a good one, soon. Pornography, etc, went underground or even evaporated during theDepression and WWII. Pornography is a product of luxury.

The Chicken

People who lived their formative years in the '60s seem hopelessly blind to how bad things are.

MDavid,

Way to paint with a broad brush. Some of us formed during the sixties were not smoking weed and engaging in orgiastic behavior (gasp!). We recognize the horrors, today. Unfortunately, few of us are a position to do anything about it except pray. American culture has never encouraged a conservative point of view, merely tolerated it. American culture has always been independent-minded and when that was a thinking independence, it was fine, but periods of thought require silence and America has seldom been a silent country. Economic depression often silences a country, so here's hoping for a good one, soon. Pornography, etc, went underground or even evaporated during theDepression and WWII. Pornography is a product of luxury.

The Chicken

Right now pornography is about two clicks away, no matter where you happen to be, and no community can enforce against it. It would take an intrusive State apparatus with vast snooping and enforcement powers (oh, wait...what do we have now?). dilys is right in this sense.

I think it was Aristotle who first said that laws can uphold standards, but they cannot restore them once they have crumbled. Or words to that effect.

Right now the herd-of-independent-minds is the norm and anyone who is normal is treated as somehow outlandish; I've had similar observations regarding the fact that I have no tattoos, and I've gone on long screeds about it with friends who do (they humor my eccentricities, much as normal people once used to humor the eccentricities of the avant garde).

I don't think, however, that these things are merely the side-effect of rampant pornography and the spread of pornographic culture. Rather that is itself a side-effect of the "induced licentiousness" that followed the counterculture's long march through the institutions. And it's having exactly the effect that those intellectuals (Frankfurt School, Marcuse, Lukacs, Gramsci et al) wanted it to have.

Just pushing for legal sanctions against pornography will get you nowhere at this point. It's going to take a cultural revolution of our own to overturn the progressive's cultural revolution against normalcy. Until then, arguing that government should have expanded powers to enforce civic norms will be akin to asking them to sic the lions on you, because until the current dominant establishment is gone (either uprooted or collapses of it's own iniquities or is otherwise swept away), they'll only use whatever power they are given against people like yourselves - never against those they frankly identify with and see as their kind of people.

Lydia,

I don't think Dilys means to say that she disagrees with you. I misread her that way the first time, too. I take her to mean that in today's climate, while laws against pornography are to be commended, they run the risk of being used to promote a paradoxical conclusion of broadening the definition of hate speech. That has been the universes consequence of other, on the face of it, rational laws, recently.

Perhaps, Dilys can clarify what she meant.

The Chicken

Lydia, I think dilys isn't against such laws in principle, and may even favor them, but I interpreted dilys as making the same point I reinforced in my comment (just above).

Even with the internet, a porn ban can be enforced. A ban is enforced right now with respect to e.g. child porn. Why would regular porn be any different?

It is true that porn can never be eliminated...but it doesn't have to be. Child porn still exists, but is pushed so far underground that no normal person could ever run into it by accident.

While I agree with J.R.'s comment regarding the cultural Left's portion of the responsibility for this mess, we should not ignore the role that consumerism has played here. The notion that the market somehow works outside of or above the morality of a culture must be abandoned. A decadent culture will result in a warped market. If there's one thing that late capitalism has learned it is that sex sells. Mad Ave. will therefore push trash, causing people to want trash, and of course there will be no shortage of other people willing and able to sell it to them.

Getting and spending we have indeed laid waste our powers, and more than that, it seems.

Matt makes a good point and I'm not going to argue against Marmot's point (he's too nice for that); but I think the pitfall still applies. As long as the governing elite is what it is, the idea that they're going to enforce civic norms against "their kind of people" and not against your kind of people is not credible.

Ok I will make one half-hearted argument regarding Marmot's point, even though he is nice: we've had a commercial culture for a long time. In the late 20s/early 30s movies started to get a bit, er, risque. But a code was created which was (mostly) observed, the Hays Code. The difference was the dominant governing elite had not become as corrupt as it is now. Despite the already-evident flaws of this earlier stage, they didn't have the same sort of category errors that became prevalent with the rise of the New Left. Market commerce does not inevitably lead to a decadent culture (a warped market, sure - but warped by what and by whom? We might disagree about who is doing the warping, though no doubt there would be some areas of overlap; We'd probably both condemn "conservative" media titan Rupert Murdoch for doing so much to spread trash culture). So, yeah, ultimately I'm not aiming at arguing too much against Marmot's point, but just raising a caveat: I do think it's true that you can't have both a consumer-"warped market" combined with a countercultural governing class without it producing trash and degradation.

But if things were otherwise, you could uphold standards through the sorts of means Lydia favors; even in a proper (non or not-so-warped) market system. It was done in the past.

By no means. Dilys was absolutely clear. Can't imagine why y'all think there is anything ambiguous here. Oh, and Jesus' parable of the tares and the wheat means that a "morality-based clampdown"--within which she classifies my allegedly "draconian" recommendation that there be laws against pornography and that they be enforced (perhaps, you know, in the town of Chico to help clean up the downtown area Jeff just visited)--is misguided! Wow.

Oh it's true that the current ruling elite is corrupt and has no more interest in enforcing porn laws than they do in enforcing immigration laws.

How did we get from the occult to pornography?

Personally, I don't quite understand orthodox opposition to theurgic forms of magic. Such practices are ostensibly performed through the power of God, often explicitly understood as the Christian God, and can be viewed as ritualized prayers - a sort of incredibly complex rosary. Even Goetic invocations, such as in the Lesser Key of Solomon, purportedly rely on divine power to coerce the demons. None of this to say that these rituals work; it is only to say that their proposed mechanism of operation seems acceptable enough.

The sentiment here seems to come in five categories:

1. Try this and that form of legislation.

2. Don't do anything political because the state will turn new laws against us.

3. Don't do anything political because it's hopeless and we're already doomed.

4. Don't do anything political because it's a spiritual problem.

5. Nothing can be done until there is total collapse.

Personally, I have been known to express all five views at various points during the same conversation. The longer I've been away from the mess, the more sanguine I am about fixing things, no matter how many times I've declared in the past that the jig is up and the best thing to do is prepare for collapse. Optimism dies hard.

Lydia writes:

My guess is that a surprising amount of this stuff is so bound up with pornography, at least, if not also prostitution, that simply cracking down locally on these other crimes would make for a significant amount of clean-up. Frankly, even laws against blocking sidewalks by loitering would probably help.

Yes, laws against pornography would definitely help, and I'm all for 'em. (Laws against loitering are another matter. I like to loiter. Downtown sidewalks are made for loitering. It's the kind of loitering ... no, the kind of person loitering, that's the problem. My political philosophy is simple: freedom and favor for the good, restraint and repression for the bad.)

But at this point pornography seems like so much water under the bridge. Pornography was part of the "harmless" cast of characters knocking at the door decades ago, but now everyone is inside, and the Beast is no longer afraid to show himself. Forgive me for making this too explicit, but let's be clear about what is happening: the Church finds herself, quite suddenly, unable to keep up with demands for exorcism worldwide. One can literally feel the piercing hatred in the presence of certain persons and groups, without saying a word, without having been in their presence for 30 seconds. Read the comments online to any mainstream news story about the Church, and especially about the Holy Father, and you will find this hatred expressed with shocking new cruelty, boldness, and irrational zeal. How did we get here so quickly? This happened exactly as Belloc described it would:

"We sit by and watch the Barbarian, we tolerate him; in the long stretches of peace we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence, his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creeds refreshes us; we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond: and on these faces there is no smile."

Those large and awful faces are no longer "beyond": they are here. I have nothing against band-aids, because band-aids are necessary, but fighting pornography is a band-aid. The real enemy is a serpent, and if our civilization is going to survive in any worthwhile form, we must make war and cut off the head. Although I agree that this war is primarily spiritual and a matter of prayer and holiness, Christians in positions of influence cannot neglect their responsibility to lawfully effect temporal change.

For now, I cling to the Old Republic. It's not perfect, but it's all I know, and it's the only way Americans know how to do politics. And if the Republic can't be saved, then maybe little pockets of sanity here and there can be saved. We should be fighting this battle locally harder than ever. I want to see a city or a county take a stand, just once. Instead of officials resigning let them stay and fight. Let a dozen local school boards resist the atrocity signed by Governor Brown this afternoon, and let the state Attorney General bring it on. Maybe their stand will embolden the rest. Resistance will cost money and support and prestige and livelihoods; good citizens may be fined and even jailed. But isn't it better that resistance happen now, when the price to be paid is still comparatively mild, and while there's still a functional infrastructure left to save?

Meanwhile, commentator John H. seems to be under the strange impression that "the occult" to which Jeff is referring is all about invoking the aid of the true God to battle evil--as though exorcists and those they try to help are really on the same side. Say, what??

Personally, I don't quite understand orthodox opposition to theurgic forms of magic.

From the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

Divination and magic

2115 God can reveal the future to his prophets or to other saints. Still, a sound Christian attitude consists in putting oneself confidently into the hands of Providence for whatever concerns the future, and giving up all unhealthy curiosity about it. Improvidence, however, can constitute a lack of responsibility.

2116 All forms of divination are to be rejected: recourse to Satan or demons, conjuring up the dead or other practices falsely supposed to "unveil" the future.48 Consulting horoscopes, astrology, palm reading, interpretation of omens and lots, the phenomena of clairvoyance, and recourse to mediums all conceal a desire for power over time, history, and, in the last analysis, other human beings, as well as a wish to conciliate hidden powers. They contradict the honor, respect, and loving fear that we owe to God alone.

2117 All practices of magic or sorcery, by which one attempts to tame occult powers, so as to place them at one's service and have a supernatural power over others - even if this were for the sake of restoring their health - are gravely contrary to the virtue of religion. These practices are even more to be condemned when accompanied by the intention of harming someone, or when they have recourse to the intervention of demons. Wearing charms is also reprehensible. Spiritism often implies divination or magical practices; the Church for her part warns the faithful against it. Recourse to so-called traditional cures does not justify either the invocation of evil powers or the exploitation of another's credulity.

The Chicken

J.R., I think you're right generally speaking, although it should be noted that various conservative critics from the 20s through the 40s often expressed concern about what today we would call consumerism or commercialism and its relationship to slackening public morals. A prominent example is Richard Weaver's chapter in Ideas Have Consequences called "The Great Stereopticon." There was also a fair amount of criticism of the then-new methods of mass advertising.

Jeff,

I think my idea was to come up with something that could serve as a fulcrum for local defiance of the kind you're seeking. In some ways, it's the _fact_ of local defiance more than the _scope_ of it that will ultimately prove important, and for a local community to take its stand on something that I think a lot of people at some level do not have much sympathy for is probably a good idea. There's also the fact that, IIRC, pornography precedents at the Supreme Court level _supposedly_ leave space for "the values of the community," though in practice this has not really been allowed to amount to much. But it would be a place for a community to start to push the envelope.

Of course I completely agree with you that local school boards should defy the new mandates for curriculum in California.

Yes, by all means we need to have local jurisdictions and local boards pushing right order, and to keep on pushing (appeals, for example) when they lose in one court or another. Like the local library: if you check, you probably will find out that they refuse to prohibit pornography, and they refuse to prevent kids from getting such materials. They probably have adopted the national library association standards, which say that it is an offense against privacy for the library to decide what a person can access based on their age, it isn't their job to police kids' material - that's for parents to do. But then they have the effrontery to say out the other side of their mouths that they cannot release a child's library book history to another party, even to a parent, that violates subscriber confidentiality. !!! So get your library to repudiate the national organization and adopt the standards of some small outfit of Christian libraries, instead - if possible.

In some cases, creating a precedent that goes up to a high court and then loses the issue for conservatism is viewed as potentially more harmful than leaving the issue at a quieter level. But I don't think that works well across the board: cultural momentum already has good morals on the run, we cannot expect to keep what we have, much less restore things we have lost, regarding sound culture, without going on the offensive, as it were. If we have to "keep quiet" and "keep a low profile" to avoid having an appeals court decide to take away the right to spank, or the right to ring church bells, then we give up part of the right already. All that ensures is that we will CERTAINLY lose the war, though it may take a little longer.

In the long run, we need offensive operations on MANY fronts, not just one. For example, we need to shut down some of the worst law schools, and open up some brand new ones totally committed to justice as understood by Christianity, and committed to the natural law. That won't happen just by local boards ignoring stupid and evil state standards.

Chicken, I get that's what the Catechism says, I just don't think it makes a great deal of sense. Science and medicine, after all, reflect a desire for power over time, history and, in the end, human beings (medicine *is* control over human beings).

The vast majority of Christians know nothing about the history of occultism; I do not see why they should be so confident in their opinions of it.

I don't believe in doing nothing. I agree wholeheartedly with Jeff here:

"if our civilization is going to survive in any worthwhile form, we must make war and cut off the head."

What I don't believe in is dissipating our efforts on side issues, which are futile. I hate to be terse about it, but if the last 40 years have shown us anything, it's that this method is futile and only provides the reigning class with it's target to flog (there's a great R. L. Dabney quote to this effect and, without endorsing everything the Reverend stood for - in the least - he's quite pithy on this point).

I hesitated to say what Jeff C. out of deference to hosts here who want to avoid anything that might be considered revolt against authority, and thus spoke of the current establishment collapsing or being "swept away," but really that is what one has to do: you have to play large-ball, not small-ball. Only then will you really be able to tackle these other issues.

To attempt otherwise in the aftermath of Lawrence v. Texas et al well, is a waste of limited energies. This does not mean to give up, it just means the problem is so large now it can *only* be tackled with a more ambitious program than working for pornography bans.

John H, unlike with science, the Church is, in fact, the leading authority on the topic of how God wants us to ask for His help and properly dispose ourselves for His aid. If He has revealed to us, through the prophets, through the patriarchs, and through Jesus Christ that occultism is not the right way to go about it, then it doesn't take a close examination of some "science" of occult practices to draw conclusions about it.

If you want to suggest that theurgic is fundamentally different from the occult, then you have argue against a common understanding of it, like this opinion from La Wiki:

“Theurgy is a type of magic. It consists of a set of magical practices performed to evoke beneficent spirits in order to see them or know them or in order to influence them, for instance by forcing them to animate a statue, to inhabit a human being (such as a medium), or to disclose mysteries."

Any practice that seeks to constrain a spirit into an act that is not simply God's will (but your will) is a form of magic. (Every proper prayer of petition for a Christian includes the implicit qualifier "if it be God's Will.") If you are asking a spirit to aid you in only to the extent that is in conformity with God's will, then why would you avoid the forms of prayer of petition that God has revealed through Christ and the Church? That makes no sense. Underlying the idea of theurgy is the heresy beloved of the Gnostics, that the path to perfection lies in a kind of higher knowledge, rather than in conforming your will to God's will in grace given freely by God. God (and good angels) do not respond to prayer because you have managed to discover just the right formula of words and ritual motions - that's not a Christian model of prayer.

Tony, your definition of magic excludes the understanding of magic which numerous magicians have - namely, that they are acting through divinely granted authority. Theurgic ceremonial magic does not work if one goes through the motions of the ritual; it only works if one has gone through the requisite preparations. The Sacred Magic of Abramerlin, for instance, puts a heavy emphasis on penance and purification before performing the Abramerlin rite - quite contrary to Gnosticism. The purpose of some magic rituals just is preparation - the rituals are meant to be instructive in holiness, just as the rituals of the liturgy. Other elements of magic rituals are to create a usable working space for contacting a spirit. You consecrate a circle and a triangle because its helpful to see well-defined boundaries when dealing with a spirit.

I do not believe Mary revealed the Rosary or Jesus the Chaplet of Divine Mercies; there's just no good evidence for that whatever.

Other elements of magic rituals are to create a usable working space for contacting a spirit. You consecrate a circle and a triangle because its helpful to see well-defined boundaries when dealing with a spirit.

A notion that spirits are obliged to respect you more on account of special triangles and circles has a good deal LESS evidence than that Jesus revealed the Divine Mercy prayers. There is, in fact, every reason to believe that "creating working space for contacting a spirit" is precisely the sort of thinking and acting that God reproved in the Israelites for and for which the Mosaic law punishment was death.

We understand by "spirit" either an angel or a demon: the angels are already inclined to aid us in every way that God's will permits, we don't need to create special earthly arrangements to get them to take our requests seriously. Being spirits, circles and triangles are pointless in their respect. The main reason God intends for us to pray prayers of petition is because, being human, our minds and wills require focus on particulars, and we learn humility and patience by subjecting our wills to formally approaching God desiring only what He wills for us.

Demons are perfectly willing to go along with spiritualistic practices if by doing so they can dupe a person into nonsense that has nothing to do with God. Demons hate us, but are not adverse to doing the will of a petitioner if that will lead to his destruction down the road. That does not mean that demons are actually BOUND by the circles and triangles that people use, nor even "space" that is prepared. Generally they can do all the things asked for without such stuff and nonsense, but only to the extent God permits. People who go around calling on undifferentiated "spirits," without noting that a spirit must of necessity either be an angel standing before the face of God or a demon, generally are asking God, in effect, to reduce His protection of us from demonic powers. Not such a good idea.

The thing (or one thing) that's so great about you, Tony, is that you talk such good sense in clear, no-nonsense, Anglo-Saxon words. And I'm a Protestant. :-)

Tony, you acknowledge that a priest can bless holy water, bestowing it, in some sense, divine power? If so, why can't a holy man do the same with a circle or triangle on the ground?

Your statement about angels is without warrant. I am not suggesting that angels need to be controlled - no Christian magician, to the extent that they are still around, try to evoke (control) angels. Rather, they are invoked (petitioned) - much like the prayer to St. Michael invokes Micheal the Archangel. Triangles are only used, or at least ought only be used, to constrain demons. Skilled magicians do not call upon undifferentiated spirits; that's simply a strawman.

Your statement about prayers of petition seems to me utterly remarkable. Of course there is spiritual value in the lessons taught by them - much as there is to a good, Christian magical ritual - but there is further a real effect of such prayer. To deny that is to deny one of the core tenets of Christianity *about* prayer. Earthly arrangements are indeed relevant; that is why praying a Novena is more effective, in general, than praying a single Our Father.

As far as evidence, the only evidence we have that God revealed the Rosary is one legendary account about St. Dominic and perhaps a few dubious Marian apparitions. I'm not suggesting there is evidence that magic works that is accessible to you, but of course there is evidence available to a practicing magician. They see it every time a spirit appears.

You appeal to Israel's policies, and could appeal to Paul's prohibitions, but these do not prohibit all magical practices. Further, the three wise men who visited the baby Jesus were "magi", meaning magicians. I have not seen a NT scholar doubt this.

Tony, you acknowledge that a priest can bless holy water, bestowing it, in some sense, divine power? If so, why can't a holy man do the same with a circle or triangle on the ground?

No. That's not in the least what the priest is doing. Not even remotely. You have completely confused notions about Christianity. The priest is doing something totally different that what you are ascribing to him: he is sanctifying the object, such as holy water, so that it becomes something "set aside" for holy purposes. The object retains its own nature and has no divine power of any sort whatsoever. Those Christians who mistakenly think that any special power is in the object itself have, unfortunately, imbibed superstitious nonsense. The "power" these objects have is the power to remind us to consider things unseen when we touch and see these things that are present physically.

Your statement about angels is without warrant. I am not suggesting that angels need to be controlled - no Christian magician, to the extent that they are still around, try to evoke (control) angels. Rather, they are invoked (petitioned) - much like the prayer to St. Michael invokes Micheal the Archangel. Triangles are only used, or at least ought only be used, to constrain demons. Skilled magicians do not call upon undifferentiated spirits; that's simply a strawman.

I was not setting up a straw-man on purpose, I assure you. I assumed that you would not admit to magic being instances of magicians intentionally calling on demons (and still claim that it is OK to do this). Now that you HAVE accepted that characterization, I withdraw the notion of their being undifferentiated.

But of course, you have made your position wholly untenable: Demons hate God, angels, and humans (and each other), and only desire our destruction. There are few natural limits to their capacity to damage us in this world, it is that God himself restrains their power so that they cannot harm us generally, other than by temptation (which, again, God permits only to some extent). There is no "natural" way of using the earthly creation to constrain a demon within certain boundaries. Demons are of a higher order than humans, and are not naturally limited the way humans are in manipulating worldly things. In no sense do triangles and circles have any capacity to restrain them but by reason of some HIGHER power, and humans are not that higher power: if a demon is constrained it is by the supernatural power of God. Therefore, if a magician manages to order demons around, it is because either the demons don't want to disabuse the magician of his incredibly grave stupidity about who actually does the restraining, or that God continues to restrain the demons in spite of the magician's stupidity.

Any action that could be requested of a demon (other than to cease and desist his temptations and other evils), could also be requested of an angel. If you don't want an angel to do it, then the reason is that you want the "it" disassociated from God's will. Not good. Stick to working with angels.

You appeal to Israel's policies, and could appeal to Paul's prohibitions, but these do not prohibit all magical practices.

I suppose that I could also say that nothing in Exodus, Leviticus, the Gospels, or Epistles have specifically prohibited fornication in St. Louis, MO, so they don't prohibit ALL fornication.

Again, you fail to understand the Christian magician's point of view. A circle and triangle do not constrain demons in virtue of their natural features, nor the magician's own power - it is understood to be God's power which does the restraining.

You suggest that I misunderstand holy water, but of course there is more to holy water than what you describe. That is why holy water is used in exorcisms with some effect. It is not merely "put aside"; it has powers that unsanctified water does not.

Sounds like you really ought to just stay home.

Thus says the Lord of hosts: I have reckoned up all that Amalec has done to Israel: how he opposed them in the way when they came up out of Egypt. 3 Now therefore go, and smite Amalec, and utterly destroy all that he has: spare him not, nor covet anything that is his: but slay both man and woman, child and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass… And the word of the Lord came to Samuel: 11 It repents me that I have made Saul king; for he has forsaken me, and has not executed my commandments…. And Samuel said: What means then this bleating of the flocks, which sounds in my ears, and the lowing of the herds, which I hear? 15 And Saul said: They have brought them from Amalec: for the people spared the best of the sheep and of the herds, that they might be sacrificed to the Lord your God, but the rest we have slain…. And Samuel said: Does the Lord desire holocausts and victims, and not rather that the voice of the Lord should be obeyed? For obedience is better than sacrifices: and to hearken rather than to offer the fat or rams. 23 Because it is like the sin of witchcraft, to rebel: and like the crime of idolatry, to refuse to obey….

It is not God who helps a magician force demons to "do his bidding", not when God repudiates this like he repudiates disobedience and idolatry.

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