St. Benedict’s Blog

Since I no longer have the time to regularly contribute to this blog, I have decided to “freeze” it as is (with the exception of very occasional posts). I have also decided to turn off the facility to post comments to the articles on this blog, since this facility has so far resulted mostly in attracting spam comments! However, if you want to correspond with me concerning one of these articles, you can email me at phillip.engle@comcast.net.

(The comment facility for this article and any future articles that I write will not be available. The comment facility for earlier articles is still available, but the posting of a future comment for all such earlier articles is subject to my administrative approval before it will be allowed to appear.)

Thank you!

Best wishes,

Phillip L. Engle
(phillip.engle@comcast.net)

The purpose of this blog post is to announce the availability of my new (actually more like “re-purposed”) book THE TEN FACTS OF EVOLUTION (TTFOE for short) !

PART 1 of TTFOE is a slightly revised version of PART 2 of my earlier book FAR FROM EQUILIBRIUM, which was published in 2002. PART 2 of TTFOE consists of selected blog posts (”evolutionary essays”) from this very weblog, St. Benedict’s Blog. These “evolutionary essays” serve the purpose of bringing my original 2002 “ten facts of evolution” text up-to-date, as well as providing an opportunity for me to respond to evolutionary research and events that have happened since 2002.

183 pages, 9 illustrations (plus many photographs). Written by Phillip L. Engle. Illustrations, book design, and cover design by Christopher Engle.

You can obtain a free PDF file of TTFOE or purchase a color softcover version of TTFOE by clicking here. You can purchase a black and white softcover version of TTFOE by clicking here.

Enjoy!

A paradox, a paradox,
A most ingenious paradox!
We’ve quips and quibbles heard in flocks,
But none to beat this paradox!

A paradox, a paradox,
A most ingenious paradox.
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha,
This paradox.

— The Pirates of Penzance, Gilbert & Sullivan

The long title of this blog post is the same as that of a short document issued
on July 10, 2007 by U.S. Cardinal William J. Levada, the perfect of the Congregation
for the Doctrine of the Faith, and approved by Pope Benedict XVI for publication.
The document, titled "RESPONSES TO SOME QUESTIONS REGARDING CERTAIN ASPECTS OF THE DOCTRINE ON THE CHURCH", contains five questions and their answers. It’s intent is to clarify the meaning of the Vatican document Dominus Iesus (2000), which, in turn, tried to clarify the ecclesiology of Vatican II as expressed in such Vatican II documents as Lumen gentium, Unitatis redintegratio, and Orientalium Ecclesiarum.

As a background to our discussion, we first need to briefly re-state the difference
between what we have called the Spirit I interpretation of the Spirit
of Vatican II and the Spirit II interpretation of the Spirit
of Vatican II, as expressed in my prior blog post Sanctorum Pontificum:

According to . . . Spirit I, the central purpose of Vatican II was
to further deepen our submission to the will of God the Father and to the
group-subjectivity of the Church as the Body of Christ and to re-state the
perennial, traditional doctrines of the Church in modern form for the contemporary
world. By contrast, according to . . . Spirit II, the central purpose
of Vatican II was revolutionary – namely, a total rejection of the so-called
patriarchal God and traditional Catholicism in favor of "the God within"
as determined by our own putatively radically autonomous human selves interpreting the scriptures for ourselves.

Also as a background to our discussion, we need to summarize the ecclesiology
of the Catholic Church prior to Vatican II. Very briefly, this eccesiology consisted
of clearly asserting that the Church of Christ is the real group personality (the visible body of Christ) that is identical to the Catholic Church. While individual members of Orthodox or Protestant churches could be described as "those who are wafted towards [the Catholic Church], as it were on wings of yearning desire" [Pope Pius XII Orientalis Ecclesiae, cf. Mystici Corporis Christi], prior to Vatican II the Orthodox churches were never said to be "sister Churches" with the Catholic Church, nor were the Protestant churches ever said to contain "ecclesial elements" of the Church of Christ. Here is a typical quote from a pre-conciliar document on ecclesiology and ecumenism, Mortalium Animos by Pope Pius XI:

And here it seems opportune to expound and to refute a certain false opinion,
on which this whole question, as well as that complex movement by which non-Catholics seek to bring about the union of the Christian churches depends. For authors who favor this view are accustomed, times almost without number, to bring forward these words of Christ: "That they all may be one…. And there shall be one fold and one shepherd," with this signification however:
that Christ Jesus merely expressed a desire and prayer, which still lacks
its fulfillment. For they are of the opinion that the unity of faith and government,
which is a note of the one true Church of Christ, has hardly up to the present
time existed, and does not today exist. . . . {A]lthough many non-Catholics
may be found who loudly preach fraternal communion in Christ Jesus, yet you
will find none at all to whom it ever occurs to submit to and obey the Vicar
of Jesus Christ either in His capacity as a teacher or as a governor. . .

. . . Let them therefore return to their common Father, who, forgetting the
insults previously heaped on the Apostolic See, will receive them in the most
loving fashion. For if, as they continually state, they long to be united
with Us and ours, why do they not hasten to enter the [Catholic] Church, "the
Mother and mistress of all Christ’s faithful"? Let them hear Lactantius
crying out: "The Catholic Church is alone in keeping the true worship.
This is the fount of truth, this the house of Faith, this the temple of God:
if any man enter not here, or if any man go forth from it, he is a stranger
to the hope of life and salvation. Let none delude himself with obstinate
wrangling."

During the pre-conciliar period Protestant ecclesiology varied widely,
as might be expected, but one common view was that the Church of Christ is invisible,
penetrating throughout all of the separate Protestant, Orthodox, & Catholic
churches in a manner known only to God.

With this background, let’s consider the first of the five questions dealt
with in "RESPONSES TO SOME QUESTIONS REGARDING CERTAIN ASPECTS OF THE DOCTRINE ON THE CHURCH":

First Question: Did the Second Vatican Council change the Catholic
doctrine on the Church?

Response: The Second Vatican Council neither changed nor intended
to change this doctrine, rather it developed, deepened and more fully explained
it.

This was exactly what John XXIII said at the beginning of the Council.
Paul VI affirmed it and commented in the act of promulgating the Constitution
Lumen gentium: "There is no better comment to make than to say that this
promulgation really changes nothing of the traditional doctrine. What Christ
willed, we also will. What was, still is. What the Church has taught down
through the centuries, we also teach. In simple terms that which was assumed,
is now explicit; that which was uncertain, is now clarified; that which was
meditated upon, discussed and sometimes argued over, is now put together in
one clear formulation". The Bishops repeatedly expressed and fulfilled
this intention.

So far, pre-conciliar ecclesiology, as described in the prior paragraphs, is
simply being affirmed. On to the second question:

Second Question: What is the meaning of the affirmation that the
Church of Christ subsists in the Catholic Church?

Response: Christ "established here on earth" only
one Church and instituted it as a "visible and spiritual community",
that from its beginning and throughout the centuries has always existed and
will always exist, and in which alone are found all the elements that Christ
himself instituted. "This one Church of Christ, which we confess in the
Creed as one, holy, catholic and apostolic. This Church, constituted and organised in this world as a society, subsists in the Catholic Church, governed by the successor of Peter and the Bishops in communion with him".

In number 8 of the Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium "subsistence"
means this perduring, historical continuity and the permanence of all the
elements instituted by Christ in the Catholic Church, in which the Church
of Christ is concretely found on this earth.

It is possible, according to Catholic doctrine, to affirm correctly that
the Church of Christ is present and operative in the churches and ecclesial
Communities not yet fully in communion with the Catholic Church, on account
of the elements of sanctification and truth that are present in them.
Nevertheless, the word "subsists" can only be attributed to the
Catholic Church alone precisely because it refers to the mark of unity that
we profess in the symbols of the faith (I believe… in the "one"
Church); and this "one" Church subsists in the Catholic
Church. [italics mine]

Contrary to the answer to the first question, the italicized part of the response
to the second question clearly diverges significantly from pre-conciliar ecclesiology.
(A bit later on we will see that this document, like all of the post-Conciliar
ecclesiological and ecumenical documents, regards the Orthodox churches as having
so many "elements of sanctification and truth" that they can be called
"sister Churches" with the Catholic Church, while the Protestant churches
are said to not have sufficient "elements of sanctification and
truth" to qualify as "Churches".) The key problem here, as Catholic
traditionalists have often pointed out, is one of simple logic: As
the great Catholic traditionalist book The Great Facade by Christopher
A. Ferrara and Thomas E. Woods, Jr. puts it on page 356: "If the Church
of Christ can be present and operative in the Orthodox churches at the same
time the Orthodox churches lack communion with the Catholic Church,
then how can the Church of Christ and the Catholic Church be one and the same
thing?" (Bear in mind too, that both Orthodox and Protestant churches usually
explicitly state that they are not in union with the Catholic Church,
nor do they want to be!) Let A="the Church of Christ". Let B="the
Catholic Church". Let C="an Orthodox church". If A=B and B<>C
then it is logically impossible that A=(B+C) !

One attempt by the post-conciliar Catholic Church to get around this fundamental
problem of logic is to call post-conciliar ecclesiology a "paradox".
But not every attempt to justify a flat-out logical contradiction as a "paradox"
may be regarded as successful! Perhaps the quickest way to describe the post-conciliar
ecclesiology of the Catholic Church is that it is a "crash meld" between
the pre-conciliar Catholic ecclesiology that the Church of Christ simply is
the real, visible, united Catholic Church and the Protestant idea that the Church
of Christ invisibly permeates all of the Christian denominations in
a mysterious way known only to God. Unfortunately this "crash meld"
satisfies no one. Just as when Dominus Iesus was released in the year 2000, the release of "RESPONSES TO SOME QUESTIONS REGARDING CERTAIN ASPECTS OF THE DOCTRINE ON THE CHURCH" in the year 2007, which purports to "clarify" Dominus Iesus, has provoked howls of protest from the Protestant churches that they are indeed real churches that are just as good as the Orthodox and Catholic Churches! After all, the myriad Catholic devotees of the Spirit II interpretation of the Spirit of Vatican II have been assuring representatives of the Protestant churches throughout all of these years of "ecumenical dialogue" since Vatican II that they are fully co-equal with the Orthodox Churches and the Catholic Church! (On the other hand, needless to say, Catholic traditionalists are none too happy with this post-conciliar "crash meld" ecclesiology either, but for very different reasons.)

Apart from the problem of logic, another significant problem with Catholic
post-conciliar ecclesiology that is much-less remarked on (but that is especially
relevant to this blog) is that, in effect, post-conciliar ecclesiology turns
the group personality of the Church of Christ into an abstract fiction
because it now includes Orthodox Churches and elements of Protestant churches
that, in the real world, explicitly reject union with the Catholic Church
and, furthermore, often have significantly different beliefs than the Catholic
Church. Some day, we are told, the Church of Christ might become a
reality, but probably only after years (or centuries) of "ecumenical dialogue".
(See Pope Pius XI’s complaint about the ecumenists of his day in the quotation
from Mortalium Animos above that "they are of the opinion that the unity of faith
and government, which is a note of the one true Church of Christ, has hardly
up to the present time existed, and does not today exist ".) In other blog
posts we have traced this Roman Catholic susceptibilty to the fiction
theory of group personality all the way back to the Roman empire, though of
course the fiction theory has become especially pervasive since the so-called
Enlightenment.

Here is the third question that "RESPONSES
TO SOME QUESTIONS REGARDING CERTAIN ASPECTS OF THE DOCTRINE ON THE CHURCH" attempts to answer:

Third Question: Why was the expression "subsists in" adopted
instead of the simple word "is"?

Response: The use of this expression, which indicates the
full identity of the Church of Christ with the Catholic Church, does not change
the doctrine on the Church. Rather, it comes from and brings out more clearly
the fact that there are "numerous elements of sanctification and of truth"
which are found outside her structure, but which "as gifts properly belonging
to the Church of Christ, impel towards Catholic Unity".

"It follows that these separated churches and Communities, though we
believe they suffer from defects, are deprived neither of significance nor
importance in the mystery of salvation. In fact the Spirit of Christ has not
refrained from using them as instruments of salvation, whose value derives
from that fullness of grace and of truth which has been entrusted to the Catholic
Church".

In response, I can do no better than quote Bishop Bernard Fellay, Superior
General of the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) in an interview in the Remnant
Newspaper titled Bishop Fellay on Summorum Pontificum: “a very significant historical event”:

[The question is] “Why use the expression “subsistit in”
and not “est”? You read the answer and you conclude nothing.

They say it is “est” and that there is an identity [of the] Church
of Christ with the Catholic Church; and there is no change of doctrine. And
then the next phrase is precisely a change in doctrine. So… It is a
contradiction.

In his sermon in Ecône, Bishop Williamson said that in Rome they say
something like two plus two makes four, but maybe it also makes five. And here
you have a perfect illustration of that.

Furthermore, it is of course quite possible to acknowledge the "numerous
elements of sanctification and of truth" in Orthodox and Protestant churches
(just as there are "elements of sanctification and truth" in Judaism,
Buddhism, Islam, and other non-Christian religions) without going on to claim
that Orthodox and Protestant churches are (imperfectly) an actual part
of the Church of Christ. For that matter, since Judaism, Buddhism,
and so-on also contain "elements of sanctification and truth", are
Jews, Buddhists, etc. also (imperfectly) an actual part of
the Church of Christ? Many Spirit II Catholics would, absurdly, say
"yes"! (See, for example, Karl Rahner’s popular view that more-or-less
everyone is really an "anonymous Christian", whether they know it
or not or like it or not!)

On to the fourth question:

Fourth Question: Why does the Second Vatican Council use the term "Church"
in reference to the oriental Churches separated from full communion with the
Catholic Church?

Response: The Council wanted to adopt the traditional use
of the term. "Because these Churches, although separated, have true sacraments
and ‘above all because of the apostolic succession’ the priesthood and the
Eucharist, by means of which they remain linked to us by very close bonds",
they merit the title of "particular or local Churches", and are
called sister Churches of the particular Catholic Churches.

"It is through the celebration of the Eucharist of the Lord in each of
these Churches that the Church of God is built up and grows in stature".
However, since communion with the Catholic Church, the visible head of which
is the Bishop of Rome and the Successor of Peter, is not some external complement to a particular Church but rather one of its internal constitutive principles, these venerable Christian communities lack something in their condition as particular churches.

On the other hand, because of the division between Christians, the fullness
of universality, which is proper to the Church governed by the Successor of
Peter and the Bishops in communion with him, is not fully realised in history.

The pre-conciliar Catholic Church taught otherwise. For example, here is Pope
Leo XIII, writing in the encyclical Satis Cognitum:

From this it must be clearly understood that Bishops are deprived of the right
and power of ruling, if they deliberately secede from Peter and his successors;
because, by this secession, they are separated from the foundation on which
the whole edifice must rest. They are therefore outside the edifice itself;
and for this very reason they are separated from the fold, whose leader is the
Chief Pastor; they are exiled from the Kingdom, the keys of which were given
by Christ to Peter alone.

As Ferrara and Woods put it on pages 359-60 of The Great Facade:

There is an urgent need for the [post-conciliar Catholic] Church to explain,
in a definitive and binding pronouncement, how churches that lack all jursidiction,
are separated from the very foundation of the the Church, are outside the
edifice of the Church, not within the fold, exiled from the Kingdom, and not
yet in the port of everlasting salvation, can be "true particular churches"
or "authentic local churches." . . .

Furthermore, one must ask: Of which Church are the Orthodox churches
said to be "true particular churches"? Are they true particular
churches of the Catholic Church? This is obviously untenable. Are they, then,
true particular churches of the posited Church of Christ, which Dominus
Iesus says is "present and operative" in Orthodox churches despite
their lack of communion with the Catholic Church? In that case, the Church
of Christ would have to be regarded as an entity capable of being present
and operative without the Catholic Church also being present an operative
– meaning, once again, that the Church of Christ and the Catholic Church
are distinct from each other, a conclusion whose harmony with [traditional]
Catholic teaching is not apparent.

And, finally, here is the fifth question dealt with by "RESPONSES
TO SOME QUESTIONS REGARDING CERTAIN ASPECTS OF THE DOCTRINE ON THE CHURCH":

Fifth Question: Why do the texts of the Council and those of the Magisterium
since the Council not use the title of "Church" with regard to those
Christian Communities born out of the Reformation of the sixteenth century?

Response: According to Catholic doctrine, these Communities
do not enjoy apostolic succession in the sacrament of Orders, and are, therefore,
deprived of a constitutive element of the Church. These ecclesial Communities
which, specifically because of the absence of the sacramental priesthood,
have not preserved the genuine and integral substance of the Eucharistic Mystery
cannot [therefore], according to Catholic doctrine, be called "Churches"
in the proper sense.

This answer the the fifth question is, of course, in agreement with pre-conciliar
ecclesiology.

Since we started this blog post with some pirate silliness, we might as well
end it in the same way: Here is Captain Jack Sparrow, played by Johnny Depp,
in the film Pirates of the Carribean: The Curse of the Black Pearl:
"Well! I’m actually feeling rather good about this. I think we’ve all arrived
at a very special place, eh? Spiritually? Ecumenically? Grammatically?"
Indeed, I should hope so!

On July 7, 2007 Pope Benedict XVI published an Apostolic Letter in the form
of "Motu Proprio" titled Summorum Pontificum. This Apostolic Letter provides for a much wider use of the traditional Latin mass in the form of the liturgical books published in 1962 by Pope John XXIII.

Why even discuss Roman Catholic liturgy in a blog subject-area called "Group
Subjectivity and Ethics"? First, as we shall see, one’s attitude towards
liturgy is strongly affected by one’s attitude towards group subjectivity (aka
corporate personality), and second, as Pope Benedict XVI put it in his book
The Spirit of the Liturgy, "[L]aw and ethics do not hold together
when they are not anchored in the liturgical center and inspired by it." [p. 20]

As a background to our discussion of Summorum
Pontificum we need to summarize two very different versions of the
so-called Spirit of Vatican II. According to the first version, which
we’ll call Spirit I, the central purpose of Vatican II was to further
deepen our submission to the will of God the Father and to the group-subjectivity
of the Church as the Body of Christ and to re-state the perennial, traditional
doctrines of the Church in modern form for the contemporary world. By contrast,
according to the second version of the Spirit of Vatican II, which
we’ll call Spirit II, the central purpose of Vatican II was revolutionary
– namely, a total rejection of the so-called patriarchal God and traditional
Catholicism in favor of "the God within" as determined by our own
putatively radically autonomous human selves interpreting the scriptures for
ourselves. It is this latter individualistic interpretation, Spirit
II, which is of course hugely dominant in both American and European Catholic
theology. (Even so-called "conservative" American and European bishops
who publicly espouse Spirit I almost always follow Spirit II
in practice.)

Now, one very interesting thing about the new Catholic mass (the Novus
Ordo mass promulgated in 1970 by Pope Paul VI) is that it is sufficiently
ambiguous to be consistent with either Spirit I or Spirit II.
In other words, both those who worship God the Father and regard the spirit
of radical individualism to be Satanic, and those who on the contrary regard
the worship of God the Father to be either illusory or Satanic, and who instead
worship "the God within" the "community" of radically autonomous
individuals, can both comfortably enjoy the very same Novus Ordo
mass by mentally "blocking out" those portions of the Novus Ordo
mass that they don’t happen to agree with. The same thing cannot be said, however,
about the traditional Latin mass of 1962, which is solely consistent with the
Spirit I interpretation of the Spirit of Vatican II.

That is why perhaps the most extraordinary thing about Summorum
Pontificum (as has been pointed out by Fr. Richard John Neuhous) is
that therein Pope Benedict XVI declares that the 1970 Novus Ordo mass
and the 1962 Latin mass are two forms of the very same mass, the former
being the ordinary form of the Latin rite and the latter being the
extraordinary form of the Latin rite!. In effect, this means that the
Pope in Summorum Pontificum is decisively rejecting the Spirit II version of
the Spirit of Vatican II and is equally decisively affirming the Spirit
I version! This is a strong rebuke to Catholic "conservatives"
at the practical level and (of course) to Catholic "liberals" at both
the practical and theoretical levels. By contrast, it is a strong affirmation
of many of the positions taken by Catholic "traditionalists". Just
to take one example: Summorum Pontificum specifically states that "the Roman Missal
promulgated by Blessed John XXIII in 1962" was "never abrogated".
On the contrary, Catholic "conservatives" (like Catholic "liberals")
have always insisted that Pope Paul VI "banned" the old Latin mass
when he issued the Novus Ordo mass, except in cases of special permission
or "Indult" for older Catholics and priests who had trouble adjusting
to the new mass. (Even Monsignor Klaus Gamber in his great book The Reform
of the Roman Liturgy regarded the old Latin mass and the Novus Ordo
to be two separate rites [p. 114].)

Thus Summorum Pontificum primarily needs to be seen in the context of the overriding
theme of Pope Benedict XVI’s papacy – opposition to the "dictatorship"
of relativism and multiculturalism within the Church – rather than as
a sop to a few putatively schismatic Lefebvrists.

A side issue which has arisen is whether or not the Good Friday liturgy in
the old 1962 missal contains any "anti-Semitic" prayers. (This is
not an issue with respect to private 1962 masses said by priests in
accordance with Summorum Pontificum, since it explicitly prohibits the private saying of the
1962 mass during the Sacred Triduum. However, the use of the 1962 Good Friday
liturgy is apparently not prohibited for public masses during the Sacred
Triduum.)

As the Bishops’ Committee on the Liturgy (BCL) has noted, "The 1962 Missale
Romanum already reflected Blessed John XXIII’s revision of liturgical language
often construed as anti-Semitic." Nevertheless, the 1962 missal does
contain prayers for the conversion of the Jews that are much stronger than the
corresponding prayers in the 1970 Novus Ordo mass. Here are the prayers
in the 1962 missal:

For the conversion of the Jews. Let us pray also for the Jews that the Lord
our God may take the veil from their hearts and that they also may acknowledge
our Lord Jesus Christ.

Let us pray: Almighty and everlasting God, You do not refuse Your mercy even
to the Jews; hear the prayers which we offer for the blindness of that people
so that they may acknowledge the light of Your truth, which is Christ, and be
delivered from their darkness.

And here are the corresponding prayers in the 1970 Novus Ordo missal:

Let us pray for the Jewish people, the first to hear the word of God, that
they may continue to grow in the love of his name and in faithfulness to his
covenant.

Almighty and eternal God, long ago you gave your promise to Abraham and his
posterity. Listen to your Church as we pray that the people you first made your
own may arrive at the fullness of redemption. We ask this through Christ our
Lord. Amen.

The 1962 prayers explicitly pray that the Jews may be converted to Christianity,
while the 1970 prayers just pray that the Jews "may arrive at the fullness
of redemption", quite possibly without any conversion to Christianity being
necessary.

Now, of course, from the point of view of Spirit II, any attempt to
convert anyone from one religion to another is flat-out wrong and is a clear
proof of hate-filled bigotry. (That’s because Spirit II falsely regards
relativism & tolerance to be synonomous and non-relativism & hate-filled
bigotry to be correspondingly synonomous, whereas in fact the question of whether
one is tolerant or bigoted is completely orthogonal to the question of whether
one is a relativist or a non-relativist.) Accepting this Spirit II
view (which, as we’ve noted, is dominant within American and European Catholicism)
would lead us to the absurd conclusion that two of the worst hate-filled bigots
in history were St. Peter and St. Paul ! (Yet, sadly, in spite of this, the
Spirit II view continues to pervade most attempts at "ecumenical
dialog".)

So, the 1962 Good Friday prayers for the Jews present problems only for Spirit
II, not for Spirit I, which is consistent with our position that
opposition to the dictatorship of relativism is the key, implicit, underlying
theme of Summorum Pontificum. (As Pat Buchanan has written: "Indeed, if one believes,
as devout Caholics do, that Christ and his Church hold the keys to the Kingdom
of Heaven, it would be anti-Semitic not to pray for the conversion
of the Jews.)

Now, as we’ve noted, Summorum Pontificum implicitly challenges many of the core assumptions not only of Catholic "liberals" but also, at the practical level, of Catholic
"conservatives" as well. Not to put too fine a point on it, what are
they going to do to retard or stop its effects? I predict that the following
strategies will be adopted:

1. Imply that the old 1962 Latin mass will be of interest only
to a few borderline schismatic traditionalists, and furthermore argue that the
1970 Novus Ordo mass is superior to it in every way.

For example, in the letter from the Bishops’ Committee on the Liturgy (BCL),
which we have been hyperlinking to in our references to Summorum
Pontificum, a comparison between the 1962 missal and the Novus
Ordo missal begins with the old canard that in celebrating the old Latin
mass the priest supposedly turns his "back to the people". In fact,
as Monsignor Klaus Gamber has demonstrated in his book The Reform of the
Roman Liturgy, during only the Eucharist itself (not during the
Liturgy of the Word) the tradition was for the priest and the people to
face together towards the East – the direction from which Christ
is expected to come at the end of time. This often meant, only incidentally,
that during the Eucharist the priest’s back was towards the people,
but it sometimes meant (depending on the layout of the church) that the people’s
backs were instead turned towards the priest! (In any case, it is the focus on a deity
outside of the people themselves that Spirit II finds so offensive,
which is why Spirit II strongly prefers the versus populum
idea that the priest should always "face the people", thus "closing
the circle" and enabling the worshippers to focus on "the God within".)

Next the BCL presents a comparison chart between the 1962 missal and the Novus
Ordo missal that favors the Novus Ordo in every way (e.g., the
1962 missal includes only 1% of the Old Testament, while the Novus Ordo
missal includes 14%, the 1962 missal includes only 17% of the Old Testament,
while the Novus Ordo missal includes 71%, etc.) What is not
mentioned in this comparison is that the Novus Ordo mass allows for
an interpretation according to which the "being formerly known as Satan"
(i.e., the being who encourages us to follow the dictates of our putatively
radically autonomous wills) is the real God, while the "being formerly
known as God" (i.e., the traditional patriarchal God) is either non-existent
or is the real Satan. By contrast the 1962 mass allows no room for such an interpretation.
For some people, at least, this fact gives the 1962 mass an overwhelming advantage
over the Novus Ordo mass, regardless of what other arguments can be
made for the Novus Ordo. (Again we encounter the theme of the radical
difference between the Spirit I interpretation of the Spirit of
Vatican II and the Spirit II interpretation.)

2. Exclude any priest who does not subscribe to the Spirit II interpretation
of the Spirit of Vatican II from saying the 1962 mass.

The BCL letter points out that, unlike in the previous Indult documents of
John Paul II, in Pope Benedict XVI’s Summorum Pontificum "there is no requirement for a determination of acceptance of the current Roman Missal by those seeking to celebrate the extraordinary form [of the Latin Rite], although this appears to be presumed [italics
mine]". Also, in his letter to the bishops accompanying Summorum Pontificum, Pope Benedict XVI writes:

Needless to say, in order to experience full communion, the priests of the
communities adhering to the former usage cannot, as a matter of principle, exclude celebrating according to the new books. The total exclusion of the new rite would not in fact be consistent with the recognition of its value and holiness.

So, while there is no longer any explicit requirement that priests
who wish to celebrate the 1962 Latin mass formally agree to accept
the full validity of the Novus Ordo mass (and, more particularly, the
Spirit II interpretation of the Novus Ordo mass), in practice
any detected disloyalty to the Spirit II interpretation of the Spirit
of Vatican II may very well become grounds for a bishop to refuse permission
for a priest to celebrate the 1962 mass.

3. Require stringent tests and exams for any priest who wishes
to celebrate the 1962 Latin mass, with A+ being the only passing grade.

Summorum Pontificum itself states that "Priests using the Missal of
Blessed John XXIII must be worthy and not impeded by law", which the BCL
over-interprets to mean that "In order to celebrate the extraordinary form,
a Priest must be suitably qualified for and not prohibited by any impediments
to the celebration of the Mass according to the 1962 Missale Romanum.
This means he must have the minimum knowledge and ability required for a
legitimate use of the extraordinary form. [italics mine]." And in
his letter to the bishops accompanying Summorum Pontificum Pope Benedict XVI states in another context that "The use of the old Missal presupposes a certain degree of liturgical formation and some knowledge of the Latin language; neither of these is found very often."

It seems to me that the above quotations provide plenty of hints that will
enable the bishops to try to portray the celebration of the 1962 missal as "rocket
science" that is far beyond the abilities of most priests. This will enable
them to establish rigorous tests and exams for any priest who wishes to celebrate
the 1962 mass even in private.

Lest you think I am being excessively pessimistic, consider the
statement which Bishop Donald Trautman, the current chairman of the BCL, has
already issued for his own diocese (together with some appropriate embedded
comments!).

In summary, Summorum Pontificum is a excellent "first step", but we still have
"a long row to hoe"!

Recently Mel Gibson’s film Apocalypto was released on DVD. Just as
violent as its predecessor The Passion of the Christ, it may be regarded
(from a Girardian point of view) as being a kind of "prequel" to The
Passion of the Christ, since it’s essential subject is pagan human sacrifice
and the myth-making that surrounds human sacrifice. Apocalypto depicts
Mayan civilization (actually more of a confluence of the Mayan and Aztec civilizations)
and the efforts of a captured native named Jaguar Paw to escape being captured
and killed by that civilization. Jaguar Paw is not exactly a "Christ figure",
since he violently (and ultimately successfully) resists being captured, instead
of "turning the other cheek" like Christ did. Nevertheless Jaguar
Paw is a "pre-Christ" figure whose closest analogy in the Bible is
the persecuted man of the Psalms, concerning whom Rene Girard writes:

Particularly in the penitential Psalms we see the word shift from the persecutors
to the victims, from those who are making history to those who are subjected
to it. The victims not only raise their voices but are also vociferous even
in the midst of their persecution. Their enemies surround them and prepare to
strike them. Sometimes the latter retain the monstrous, animal appearance they
had in mythology; these are the packs of dogs or herds of bulls, “strong
beasts of Bashaan.”. . .

The victim who speaks in the Psalms seems not in the least “moral,”
not evangelic enough for the good apostles of modern times. The sensibilities
of our humanists are shocked. Usually, the unfortunate victim turns to hate
those who hate him. The display of violence and resentment “so characteristic
of the Old Testament” is deplored, and is seen as a particularly clear
indication of the famous malice of the God of Israel. Ever since Nietzsche people
have seen in the Psalms the invention of all the bad feeling infecting us, humiliation, and resentment. We are offered in contrast to the venomous Psalms the beautiful serenity of mythologies, particularly Greek and German. Strong in their righteousness, and convinced that their victim is truly guilty, persecutors have no reason to be troubled.

The victim of the Psalms is disturbing, it is true, and even annoying compared
with an Oedipus who has the good taste to join in the wonderful classical
harmony. See with what art and delicacy, at the given moment, [Oedipus] denounces himself. [The Scapegoat, p. 104]

Why did Mel Gibson use the Greek term apocalypto as the title of his
film, and what relevance does all of this have for us today? Again, Rene Girard:

There is apocalypse in our future. And what does apocalypse mean? It means
revelation: apocalypto means to open up and to show the truth. But it also means absolute violence, so the apocalypse is a violent revelation and a revelation of violence and immediately you see the relevance of this.

The religious dimension pushes all mimetic paradoxes to their logical extremes.
Most people believe that the apocalyptic dimension of Christianity was just
some kind of mad effervescence. But today you can see that this is not true.
In societies where the sacrificial protections are gone, certain forms of
knowledge become possible, technical knowledge, the world is emptied of magical powers and can be tampered with in a way that was not possible earlier. Therefore the world is under a threat coming from man, which is a total threat, and
humanism does not measure up to that threat, has nothing to say about it,
is forced to deal with it by using concepts coming from a rationalism for
which what we are talking about is unthinkable. And suddenly these concepts
that appear completely crazy, like for instance apocalypse, make complete
sense in that context. They are in a way the most economical concepts because
they show you that the revelation of violence and the nuclear threat are one
and the same thing. . . . When you include religion in the game, far from
losing internal coherence, you gain more because you have concepts, like the
apocalyptic, which suddenly demonstrate their rationality. We can also show
that, far from being a mad fantasy, Satan makes sense if you view him as the
mimetic paradox which is on the one hand disorder and violence and on the
other hand the scapegoat mechanism and thus the return to order. The Satan
of order used to expel the disorderly Satan but cannot do [that] any more.
He is unleashed. There again, far from displaying insanity, you have
a hold of reality which we did not have before.
[Interview with Rene Girard]

What kinds of criticisms have been leveled at Gibson’s Apocalypto?
For the most part the criticisms have been a) carping and b) exculpatory (indirectly
trying to excuse the kind of violent human sacrifice practiced by the Mayans
and Aztecs). Here are some examples:

• Gibson said in an interview that the Greek word apocalypto means
  "a new beginning", whereas it really means "revelation" [carping]
• The Mayans never really practiced human sacrifice on the scale depicted
  in the film, though some critics reluctantly admit that, during certain periods,
  the Aztecs did practice human sacrifice on the scale depicted. [exculpatory]
• The film is said to portray the invading Spaniards, who are briefly depicted
  at the end of the film, as the "good guys" whose conquest of the
  Mayans ("the bad guys") gives the Mayans "exactly what they
  deserve", whereas, in fact the Christian Spaniards were far worse than
  the pagan Mayans ever were. [At the end of the film Jaguar Paw, with whom
  we have been encouraged to identify, rejects the idea of making common cause
  with the Spaniards and instead goes back into the forest with his family "to
  seek a new beginning" – a clear case of "a plague on both
  your houses" with respect to powerful empires, be they Mayan or Spanish.]
• The violence in Apocalypto, as in The Passion of the Christ,
  is said to be "pornographic". [This says everything about
  the proclivities of the critics, who praise to the skies the films of Quentin
  Tarantino and other Hollywood films that actually glorify violence for pleasure,
  but it says nothing about Mel Gibson or his films.]

Rene Girard has frequently noted the tendency of modern humanist scholars to
excuse and overlook the violent scapegoating sacrifices practiced by pagan cultures
in the past, while correspondingly exaggerating the historical violence practiced
by Christians. For example, here is what Rene Girard said in another interview:

I would make an even stronger charge against the social sciences. The issue
there is not simply one of neglect but of concealment. If you talk to a sociologist,
he would tell you that violence is endemic throughout the world, and yet sociology
will never talk about it as the structuring force of culture. The same holds
for psychology and anthropology. Today anthropologists have a way of talking
about violence that is pure sensationalism: they will loudly decry the violence
of the West as horrendous, but they pass over the violence of other cultures
in silence.

I was amazed when I went to a museum of Native American culture in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It is extremely good except for one thing: there was not one word about religion as it was in those cultures–about the violence of religion–about war, or about the implements of war. I understand the same thing is happening in Mexican museums dedicated to Aztec culture. To say that only the West is responsible for violence is untrue. These museums, like some contemporary scholarship, are engaging in censorship. It is true that the West has been more guilty of violence because it has the true theory of nonviolence. But in absolute terms, the charge that the West is uniquely violent is untrue. Violence is universally human.
[Beyond scapegoating: a conversation with Rene Girard and Ewert Cousins.]

And here is what Girard says in his great book The Scapegoat:

[With respect to pagan societies] ethnologists eagerly describe the enviable
lot of these victims. In the time preceding their sacrifice they enjoy extraordinary
privileges so that they go to their death serenely, perhaps even joyously. Jacques
Soustelle, among others, warns his readers not to interpret this religious butchery
in the light of our current concepts. The terrible sin of ethnocentrism is lying
in wait for us and, no matter what exotic societies do, we must guard against
the slightest negative judgment.

However laudable is the desire to "rehabilitate" unappreciated nations,
some discernment should be used. The current excesses are as ridiculous as
the former arrogant exaggerations, but in reverse. It is the same condescension
in the end. . . . We either know nothing about the Aztecs and never will;
or our sources have value, and honesty demands that we recognize that the
Aztec religion has not yet taken its rightful place in our planet’s museum
of human horror. Anti-ethnocentric zeal errs in justifying bloody orgies by
accepting the obviously misleading self-image these people present. [The
Scapegoat, p. 65]

In some small way, perhaps the film Apocalypto has hastened
the day when both Aztec and Mayan human sacrifices will take their rightful
place "in our planet’s museum of human horror".

Many critics have noted the quote from Will Durant that is displayed at the
beginning of Apocalypto: "A great civilization is not conquered
from without until it has destroyed itself from within." But, so far as
I know, hardly anyone has recognized that, during the ending credits, the film
is dedicated to "Abel". Abel, of course, is the first human victim
in the Bible, killed by Cain in the book of Genesis, chapter 4. Abel is therefore
the archetype of all of the human victims who have been killed everywhere throughout
history. In other words, Gibson is dedicating Apocalypto to all of these victims of human violence, from Abel himself to "Zechariah the son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the alter" [Matthew 23:35, RSV], to the victims of the ancient Mayan and Aztec sacrifices, to the thousands of Jewish victims of Christian persecution during the Middle Ages, to the millions of victims (Jewish and otherwise) of the Nazi Holocaust, and to the victims of the estimated 40 million abortions of both the unborn
and the partially born within the United States today.

Recently, on June 26, 2007, one article and one essay appeared in The New
York Times on the "new" science of evo-devo ("the combined study of evolution and development"). The article is titled "From a Few Genes, Life’s Myriad Shapes" by Carol Kaesuk Yoon. The essay is titled "Darwin Still Rules, but Some Biologists Dream of a Paradigm Shift" by Douglas H. Erwin. In this blog post we’ll refer to the article as Yoon.

Let’s begin with a a few quotes from Yoon:

For starters, evo-devo researchers are finding that the evolution of complex
new forms, rather than requiring many new mutations or many new genes as had
long been thought, can instead be accomplished by a much simpler process requiring no more than tweaks to already existing genes and developmental plans. Stranger still, researchers are finding that the genes that can be tweaked to create new shapes and body parts are surprisingly few. The same DNA sequences are turning out to be the spark inciting one evolutionary flowering after another. . . .

The development of an organism — how one end gets designated as the
head or the tail, how feet are enticed to grow at the end of a leg rather
than at the wrist — is controlled by a hierarchy of genes, with master
genes at the top controlling a next tier of genes, controlling a next and
so on. But the real interest for evolutionary biologists is that these hierarchies
not only favor the evolution of certain forms but also disallow the growth
of others, determining what can and cannot arise not only in the course of
the growth of an embryo, but also over the history of life itself.
[italics mine] . . .

[T]he advent of molecular biology reinvigorated the study of development in
the 1980s, and evo-devo quickly got scientists’ attention when early breakthroughs revealed that the same master genes were laying out fundamental body plans and parts across the animal kingdom. For example, researchers discovered that genes in the Pax6 family could switch on the development of eyes in animals as different as flies and people. More recent work has begun looking beyond the body’s basic building blocks to reveal how changes in development have resulted in some of the world’s most celebrated of evolutionary events.

These findings of the "new" science of evo-devo are, of course, exactly
what is predicted by the late Robert F. DeHaan’s theory of evolution, macrodevelopment
(according to which the entire biosphere has evolved and developed in a manner
analogous to the development of the individual embryo), and run completely counter
to the dominant theory of evolution, neo-Darwinism (according to which
the evolution of the biosphere is the result of random mutation and
natural selection — in other words, exactly the same mechanisms that govern the change in populations of varieties within species).

In particular, note that the theory of macrodevelopment suggests that
the favoring of certain biological forms and the disallowing of others (mentioned
in the second of the three quotations above) involves a process of increasing
specialization over the course of the history of the biosphere, just as
happens during the history of the development of the individual embryo.

Evo-devo is also being invoked today in order to explain the puzzling fact
of "parallel evolution". Again, Yoon:

Evo-devo has also begun to shine a light on a phenomenon with which evolutionary biologists have long been familiar, the way in which different species will come up with sometimes jaw-droppingly similar solutions when confronted with the same challenges.

Among the placental mammals of the Americas and the marsupials of Australia,
for example, have evolved the same sorts of animals independently: beasts that
burrowed, loping critters that grazed, creatures that had long snouts for eating
ants, and versions of wolf.

In the same way, the cichlids have evolved pairs of matching species, arising
independently in separate lakes in Africa. In Lake Malawi, for example, there
is a long and flat-headed species with a deep underbite that looks remarkably
like an unrelated species that lives a similar lifestyle in Lake Tanganyika.
There is another cichlid with a bulging brow and frowning lips in Lake Malawi
with, again, an unrelated but otherwise extremely similar-looking cichlid
in Lake Tanganyika. The same jaws, heads, and ways of living can be seen to
evolve again and again. . . .

Evo-devo has even begun to give biologists new insight into one of the most
beautiful examples of recurring forms: the evolution of mimicry.

It has long been a source of amazement how some species seem so able to evolve near-perfect mimicry of another. Poisonous species often evolve bright warning colors, which have been reproduced by nonpoisonous species or by other, similarly poisonous species, hoping to fend off curious predators.

Now in a new study of Heliconius butterflies, Dr. Mathieu Joron, an evolutionary
biologist at the University of Edinburgh, and colleagues, found evidence that
the mimics may be using some of the same genes to produce their copycat warning colors and patterns.

The researchers studied several species of tropical Heliconius butterflies,
all of which are nasty-tasting to birds and which mimic one another’s
color patterns. Dr. Joron and colleagues found that some of the main elements
of the patterns — a yellow band in Heliconius melpomene and Heliconius
erato and a complex tiger-stripe pattern in Heliconius numata — are
controlled by a single region of DNA, a tightly linked set of genes known
as a supergene.

On pages 417 through 419 of my book FAR FROM EQUILIBRIUM I discuss "parallel evolution" (along with metamorphosis) as the 9th "fact of evolution" that strongly favors the theory of macrodevelopment over the theory of neo-Darwinism. There I
quote from pages 180 through 182 of Gordon Rattray Taylor’s great book The
Great Evolution Mystery, where he suggests that cases of "parallel
evolution" are the result of the selective masking and unmasking
of genes, and not the result of identical, lengthy, impossibly improbable
sequences of random mutation and natural selection, such as neo-Darwinism requires.
I then make the following observation:

Taylor’s theory of masking and unmasking of genes
can be brought into alignment with the fact of chromosomal rearrangement,
multiplication, and/or reduction during true typological speciation . . .
by noting that all such chromosomal rearrangements, multiplications, and/or
reductions are inevitably associated with changes in gene expression,
rather than changes in gene content: Chromosomal rearrangements
would be expected to change the holistic pattern of histones and methylation
that epigenetically regulate gene expression (leaving the actual DNA genes
themselves unchanged), while changes in ploidy (i.e., chromosomal
multiplications or reductions) have also been shown to regulate gene expression
(while leaving actual gene content unchanged) by processes that are not entirely
understood. [pp. 418-419]

Even more remarkable, the recent findings of evo-devo have provided evidence
of what I have called "the ‘possible fact’ of pre-adaptation",
which is the 10th "fact of evolution" in my book FAR FROM EQUILIBRIUM [pp. 419-421]. Again, Yoon:

One of evo-devo’s greatest strengths is its cross-disciplinary nature,
bridging not only evolutionary and developmental studies but gaps as broad as
those between fossil-hunting paleontologists and molecular biologists. One researcher whose approach epitomizes the power of such synthesis is Dr. Neil Shubin, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago and the Field Museum.

Last year, Dr. Shubin and colleagues reported the discovery of a fossil fish
on Ellesmere Island in northern Canada. They had found Tiktaalik, as they named
the fish, after searching for six years. They persisted for so long because
they were certain that they had found the right age and kind of rock where a
fossil of a fish trying to make the transition to life on land was likely to
be found. And Tiktaalik appeared to be just such a fish, but it also had a few
surprises for the researchers.

“Tiktaalik is special,” Dr. Shubin said. “It has a flat head
with eyes on top. It has gills and lungs. It’s an animal that’s
exploring the interface between water and land.”

But Tiktaalik was a truly stunning discovery because this water-loving fish
bore wrists, an attribute thought to have been an innovation confined strictly
to animals that had already made the transition to land.

“This was telling us that a piece of the toolkit, to make arms, legs,
hand and feet, could very well be present in fish limbs,” Dr. Shubin said.
In other words, the genetic tools or toolkit genes for making limbs to walk
on land might well have been present long before fish made that critical leap.
But as fascinating as Tiktaalik was, it was also rock hard and provided no DNA
that might shed light on the presence or absence of any particular gene.

So Dr. Shubin did what more and more evo-devo researchers are learning to do:
take off one hat (paleontologist) and don another (molecular biologist). Dr.
Shubin oversees one of what he says is a small but growing number of laboratories where old-fashioned rock-pounding takes place alongside high-tech molecular DNA studies.

He and colleagues began a study of the living but ancient fish known as the
paddlefish. What they found, reported last month in the journal Nature, was
that these thoroughly fishy fish were turning on control genes known as Hox
genes, in a manner characteristic of the four-limbed, land-loving beasts known
as tetrapods.

Tetrapods include cows, people, birds, rodents and so on. In other words, the
potential for making fingers, hands and feet, crucial innovations used in emerging
from the water to a life of walking and crawling on land, appears to have been
present in fish, long before they began flip-flopping their way out of the muck.
“The genetic tools to build fingers and toes were in place for a long
time,” Dr. Shubin wrote in an e-mail message. “Lacking were the
environmental conditions where these structures would be useful.” He added,
“Fingers arose when the right environments arose.”

This is clear evidence of species being pre-adapted to environments
which their descendents would encounter only in the future!
Here is what I said about pre-adaptation on pages 420-421 of FAR
FROM EQUILIBRIUM:

If true pre-adaptation did in fact occur during the history
of evolution, then neo-Darwinism is powerless to explain it, since (according
to neo-Darwinism) evolution is a linear process in which small, minute
changes in genotypes must first arise at the microscopic level by
pure chance, with the resulting macroscopic phenotypes being afterwards
“naturally selected” in a quasi-deterministic fashion for current
survival value only: Such a neo-Darwinian process would make impossible (or,
at least extremely unlikely) the appearance of any fully-formed macroscopic
phenotype having only future usefulness in the “struggle for
survival”.

By contrast, instances of true pre-adaptation in evolutionary history
would present no problem for the theory of macrodevelopment, since that theory
regards the evolution of the biosphere (like the development of the biological
individual) to be a tychistic nonlinear process, and tychistic nonlinear
processes commonly are characterized by both external and internal
conditional equifinality, such that the “decisions” and “purposes”
associated with earlier events and features of the system often make
sense only in the light of later events and features of that same
nonlinear system. (For example, the emergence of arms and legs in the individual
human embryo is obviously a true “pre-adaptation” within individual
development, since such arms and legs are evidently of little or no use to
the embryo itself within its watery, confined environment.)

And here is what Gordon Rattray Taylor says about pre-adaptation:
"If this really happens, it completely explodes the theory of natural selection
and we need no further evidence to undermine it. What we would need is a new
theory." [The Great Evolution Mystery, p. 135]

How are scientists reacting to these "new" findings of evo-devo?
(I have been putting the word "new" in quotes because there are plenty
precursors to the insights of evo-devo, going back even to the time of Darwin
himself.) As far as the neo-Darwinists are concerned, the reaction of Dr. Jerry
Coyne, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago, is fairly typical:
"’I urge caution,’ Dr. Coyne said. ‘We just don’t know.’" [Yoon]
(Caution indeed! I would urge caution too, when faced with findings that totally
explode my dogmatically held theory!) Other neo-Darwinists are either trying
to ignore evo-devo, or are using it to attack the theory of Intelligent Design
(which, admittedly, is also undermined as a scientific theory by evo-devo).

Paleontologists and paleobiologists, such as Douglas H. Erwin, are much more
open to the findings of evo-devo, but are extremely wary of attacking neo-Darwinism
head-on, still fearing the charges of being "accidental creationists"
that have been hurled at them by orthodox neo-Darwinists, such as Richard Dawkins.
Typical is Erwin’s essay titled "Darwin Still Rules, but Some Biologists Dream of a Paradigm Shift", which I mentioned at the start of this blog post. Following is a typical passage from
that essay. (Erwin refers to what we have been calling "neo-Darwinism"
as "the modern synthesis".)

The last major challenge to the modern synthesis came in the 1970s and 1980s
as my paleontological colleagues, including the late Stephen Jay Gould, argued
for a hierarchical view of evolution, with selection occurring at many levels,
including between species.

Transitions between species documented by the fossil record seemed to be abrupt, perhaps too abrupt to be explained by the modern synthesis. If this were generally true, it could render irrelevant much of natural selection occurring within
species, because just as mutations are produced randomly with respect to the
needs of a species, with selection shaping these into new adaptations, new species might evolve randomly with species selection shaping them into evolutionary trends. This challenge was greeted with less than fulsome praise by evolutionary biologists studying changes within species. The resulting hubbub has yet to fully die down. But the newer work cuts closer to the core of the modern synthesis, and is potentially more revolutionary, because it addresses the fundamental question of how really new things happen in the history of life.

As a final note, I believe that it is important to question evo-devo’s residual
neo-Darwinist assumption that pre-adapted features actually become expressed
only when the animal or plant comes face-to-face with the appropriate selectionist
"challenge" from the environment. While I was open to this possiblity
in my book FAR FROM EQUILIBRIUM, I have become increasingly convinced by the arguments of Robert F. DeHaan and John A. Davison that the macrodevelopment of the biosphere has been almost-entirely internally driven. (After all, the only "adaptation"
that the individual embryo does in response to its environment is to
try to "get back on track" in unfolding its internal "plan".)

Recently Monsignor Klaus Gamber’s great work The Reform of the Roman Liturgy
has become available once again in English, published by Roman
Catholic Books (Fort Collins CO) for a price of $25. (Previously, used copies
of this book were going for $100 or more on the internet.)

Although Monsignor Gamber sees a number of causes for what he calls "the
debacle of modern liturgy", it is clear that he views the preeminent cause
to be the notion of the putatively radically autonomous human individual, as
promoted by the Enlightenment (or, as I prefer to call it, the Endarkenment):

We can conclude with certainty: the preeminent root cause of today’s liturgical
distress is to be found in the Age of Enlightenment. Many of the ideas of
that period did not come to maturity until today, when we are living through
a new period of the Enlightenment. [p.20]

Again, Monsignor Gamber:

There was no lack of liturgical experimentation then [i.e., during the Age
of the Enlightenment], especially when it came to the administration of the
Sacraments. Yet, these reforms did not survive very long. They are, however,
disturbingly similar to today’s experiments, and they, too, were very much
concerned with man and his (social) problems. Thus, Vitus Anton Winter, one
of the reformers of the Age of Enlightenment, demanded that all prayers be
removed "which place man’s hope in God and thus do not sufficiently encourage
man’s self-reliance." He also declared that, in his view, all prayers
making use of oriental-biblical language should be done away with. [p. 19]

The views of Vitus Anton Winter echo the views of Bishop Donald Trautman of
Erie PA, who is the current chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on the Liturgy
and one of the main architects of the English translations done immediately
after the Second Vatican Council. Bishop Trautman recently expressed his concern
that "John and Mary Catholic" are simply incapable of understanding
the high-falutin language being used in the English translations of the liturgy
that are based on the criteria expressed in the recent Vatican instruction Authentic
Liturgy. George Weigel explains:

Bishop Trautman worries that the new translations are just, well, too darn
much for “John and Mary Catholic,” whose participation in Sunday
Mass will, he suggests, be impaired by a translation of the Creed that describes
the Son as “consubstantial with the Father” and “incarnate
of the Virgin Mary.” But that’s hardly the end of it. Will “John
and Mary Catholic,” Bishop Trautman asks, “understand these words
from the various new Collects: ‘sullied,’ ‘unfeigned,’
‘ineffable,’ ‘gibbet,’ ‘wrought,’ ‘thwart’?”
What will “John and Mary Catholic” make of the Collect for June
27, which hails St. Cyril of Alexandria as “an unvanquished champion
of the divine motherhood”? Can they grasp the depiction of St. John
of God on March 8 as “suffused…with the spirit of mercy”? ["We
are not morons" by George Weigel]

Weigel goes on to suggest that "John and Mary Catholic", as "among
the best-educated Catholics in history" will "do just fine".

While the core of this overall controversy has to do with the question of whether
our "ultimate concern" should be our own putatively "radically
autonomous" selves as opposed to the "so-called" transcendent,
patriarchal God, on a secondary level taking our "radically autonomous"
selves to be our "ultimate concern" is, in effect, also to be opposed
to all ideas of group subjectivity. And this (as I suggested in my
blog post The Synod on the Eucharist) is one of the main reasons that faith that the Eucharist
truly unites us into the body and person of Jesus Christ (and through Him unites
us with the saints, the angels, and our fellow Christians as well) has become
so attenuated and subdued in the Western Church as opposed to the Eastern Church.
In this connection, Monsignor Gamber refers to the Western Church’s "forms
of worship designed to celebrate the holy mysteries only to the degree absolutely
necessary for validity. Thus, in the Western Church, the rites were no more
than "carried out," rarely "celebrated." [p. 12] (In my post The Synod on the Eucharist
I trace this undermining of the idea of real group
subjectivity in the West all the way back to Roman times, when the Western Church
accepted Savigny’s fiction theory of group personality.)

Now, it might be objected that the current Novus Ordo mass (as opposed
to the traditional Latin-rite mass) actually encourages "community"
by having the "presider" face the the people, by treating the Eucharist
as being primarily just a communal meal, and by means of the new greeting of peace.
But "community" in this sense carries no actual connotations of real
group subjectivity, but rather only the feeling of community: The individuals
within this "community" are believed in actual fact to remain "radically
autonomous". (That’s why, outside the context of the Eucharist, they would
be expected to govern the Church by means of mechanical majority-rule voting,
and so on.)

In any case, the renewed availability of Monsignor Gamber’s The Reform
of the Roman Liturgy is to be welcomed, and will help to provide a context
for Pope Benedict XVI’s forthcoming Motu Proprio (expected on July
7th) purportedly expanding the availability of the traditional Latin-rite mass
within the Western Church.

Recently former Vice President Al Gore wrote a best-seller about the threat
of global warming titled An Inconvenient Truth. Here is "an even
more inconvenient truth": The earth and its climate constitute a highly
complex nonlinear system that cannot be predicted or controlled
by linear means. The following is some very abbreviated (but relevant) history:

• In 1972 the Club of Rome, based on complex linear computer models,
  concluded that, without question, virtually all materials needed for an industrial
  society would soon be depleted to nothingness, unless immediate steps were
  taken to curtail man’s commercial activities back to pre-industrial levels.
• In 1975 it was argued that complex linear computer models conclusively
  proved that global cooling, resulting from man’s activity, would
  soon result in an ecological disaster (a new ice age), and that therefore
  man’s commercial activities therefore must urgently be curtailed
  back to pre-industrial levels.
• Today it is argued that complex linear computer models conclusively
  prove that global warming, resulting from man’s activity, will soon
  result in complete ecological disaster, and that therefore man’s commercial
  activities must urgently be curtailed back to pre-industrial levels.

What interests me about this abbreviated history is that the conclusion is
always the same: Man’s commercial activities must urgently be curtailed
back to pre-industrial levels. However, the premises for this conclusion are
simply changed when they prove to be false. It is also interesting that the
advocates for all of these arguments tend to be liberals who have an interest
in undercutting the power base of conservatives (commercial industrial corporations).

To summarize: the "even more inconvenient truth" is that we can neither
predict nor control the climate because of its essentially nonlinear
nature. (Half the time the weather prediction for two days from now is wrong!)
It also may be the case that the premonition of imminent ecological catastrophes
serves the same psychological purposes in the liberal worldview as religious
apocalypses do in the conservative worldview.

In July of 2005 Christoph Cardinal Schonborn’s short essay "Finding Design
in Nature" was published in the New York Times. (Cardinal Schonborn
is the editor of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.) As Cardinal
Schonborn puts it: "The reaction [to this short essay] has been overwhelming,
and not overwhelmingly positive." Here is part of Cardinal Schonborn’s
summary of his short essay "Finding Design in Nature" in an important
article of his titled "The Designs of Science" ["The Designs of Science", First
Things (Jan 2006, Number 159), pp. 34-38.]:

In “Finding Design in Nature,” I said:

• The Church “proclaims that by the light of reason the human
intellect can readily and clearly discern purpose and design in the natural
world, including the world of living things.”

• “Any system of thought that denies or seeks to explain away
the overwhelming evidence for design in biology is ideology, not science.”

• Quoting our late Holy Father John Paul II: “The evolution of
living beings, of which science seeks to determine the stages and to discern
the mechanism, presents an internal finality which arouses admiration. This
finality, which directs beings in a direction for which they are not responsible
or in charge, obliges one to suppose a Mind which is its inventor, its creator.”

• Again quoting John Paul II: “To all these indications of the
existence of God the Creator, some oppose the power of chance or of the proper
mechanisms of matter. To speak of chance for a universe which presents such
a complex organization in its elements and such marvelous finality in its
life would be equivalent to giving up the search for an explanation of the
world as it appears to us. In fact, this would be equivalent to admitting
effects without a cause. It would be to abdicate human intelligence, which
would thus refuse to think and to seek a solution for its problems.”

• Quoting the Catechism: “Human intelligence is surely already
capable of finding a response to the question of origins. The existence of
God the Creator can be known with certainty through his works, by the light
of human reason. . . . We believe that God created the world according to
his wisdom. It is not the product of any necessity whatever, nor of blind
fate or chance.”

Cardinal Schonborn went on in his short essay to quesion neo-Darwinism’s claim
to completely explain the evolution of the biosphere. Needless to say, this
brought an outcry from the many (usually liberal) Chrisians who believe that
there is "no contradiction" between Christianity’s contention that
the biosphere was designed and created by God and neo-Darwinism’s contention
that the evolution of the biosphere can be completely accounted for by "blind"
random mutation and natural selection ("survival of the fittest").
I cannot rehearse all of the ramifications of this argument here, but I will
instead quote a few passages from Cardinal Schonborn’s First Things
article "The Designs of Science" and comment on them.

It is often claimed in the literature of neo-Darwinism that neo-Darwinist theory
does not attribute the evolution of the biosphere entirely to chance.
Rather, random mutation provides the chance element, while natural
selection is said to provide the non-chance (deterministic) element.
However, Cardinal Schonborn makes the cogent point that, insofar as any possible
physical analog to the evident teleological aspects of the biosphere
is concerned, natural selection is of no help and is, in effect, just as much
of a a "chance" element as random mutation:

The variation through genetic mutation is random. And natural selection
is also random [italics mine]: The properties of the ever-changing environment
that drive evolution through natural selection are also not correlated to
anything, according to the Darwinists. Yet out of all that unconstrained,
unintelligible mess emerges, deus ex machina, the precisely ordered
and extraordinarily intelligible world of living organisms. And this is the
heart of the neo-Darwinian science of biology. [p. 36]

Cardinal Schonborn goes on to point out that the "clearly teleological
nature of evolution" (implied by the obvious, ubiquitous existence of immanent
purposes and goals with the biosphere today) strongly suggests that there is
some non-chance physical aspect of the biosphere that is not accounted for by
either random mutation or natural selection:

If [the neo-Darwinist] takes a very narrow view of the supposedly random variation
that meets his gaze, it may well be impossible to correlate it to anything interesting, and thus variation remains simply unintelligible. He then summarizes his ignorance of any pattern in variation by means of the rather respectable term “random.” But if he steps back and looks at the sweep of life, he sees an obvious, indeed, an overwhelming pattern. The variation that actually occurred in the history
of life was exactly the sort needed to bring about the complete set of plants
and animals that exist today. In particular, it was exactly the variation
needed to give rise to an upward sweep of evolution resulting in human beings.
If that is not a powerful and relevant correlation, then I don’t know
what could count as evidence against actual randomness in the mind of an observer.

Some may object: This is a pure tautology, not scientific knowledge. I have
assumed the conclusion, “rigged the game,” and so forth. But that
is not true. I have simply related two indisputable facts: Evolution happened
(or so we will presume, for purposes of this analysis), and our present biosphere
is the result. The two sets of facts correlate perfectly. Facts are not tautologies
simply because they are indisputably true. If the modern biologist
chooses to ignore this indubitable correlation, I have no objection. He is free
to define his special science on terms as narrow as he finds useful for gaining
a certain kind of knowledge. But he may not then turn around and demand that
the rest of us, unrestricted by his methodological self-limitation, ignore obvious
truths about reality, such as the clearly teleological nature of evolution
[italics mine]. [pp.36-37]

This brings up what I have elsewhere called the "elephant in the room"
that is unacknowledged by both neo-Darwinism and Intelligent
Design, namely immanent teleology– the fact that biological organisms obviously act in accordance with their own purposes and goals and that, furthermore, most
people intuitively sense that the evolution of the biosphere as-a-whole is characterized
by some kind of overall immanent teleology as well: While it may very
well be appropriate to "bracket out" such purposes, goals, and immanent
teleology in order to restrict scientific causality to material and efficient
causes (as opposed to formal and final causes), surely there must be some
kind of physical analog to this evident, immanent teleology within
the biosphere! And yet random mutation & natural selection suggest that
no such physical analog exists! This would seem to lead us to the absurd conclusion
that our everyday, common-sense belief in immanent teleology within
the biosphere can only be based on transcendent faith and theology!
Again, Cardinal Schonborn:

What so many Catholics seem to be saying is that, so far as we can determine
with our unaided human intellects, according to even the “metaphysically
modest” version of neo-Darwinism, there is no real plan, purpose, or
design in living things, and absolutely no directionality to evolution; yet
we know those things to be true by faith. In other words, a “metaphysically
modest” neo-Darwinism is not so modest after all. It means a Darwinism
that does not conflict with knowledge about reality known through faith alone.
In the debate about design in nature, sola fides takes on an entirely
new meaning. [p. 37]

As I have indicated in my book Far From Equilibrium, the way out of
this conundrum is to recognize that the biosphere and its components are not
linear machines, as envisioned by both neo-Darwinism and Intelligent
Design, but rather are highly-complex far-from-equilibrium nonlinear
systems (often loosely analogous to the thermodynamic dissipative structures
discovered by Ilya Prigogine and his co-workers). This recognition provides
the physical analog to the immanent teleology of the biosphere that
is missing from both neo-Darwinism and Intelligent Design, and leads ultimately
to the correct theory of evolution, namely Robert F. DeHaan’s theory of macrodevelopment
(according to which the evolution of the biosphere is analogous to the development
of the biological individual within the womb).

A few final observations:

While Cardinal Schonborn is correct that the presence of purposes, goals, and
teleology within the biosphere is obvious to "common-sense", he is
not correct in asserting that the idea that the biosphere is designed
is also obvious to "common-sense". What is the evidence that a biosphere
that is filled with purposes, goals, and teleology might not be designed?

• Purposes and goals within the biosphere conflict: The obvious example is
  that the goal of the predator is to catch his prey, while the goal of the
  prey is to escape the predator. One of them will fail.
• The presence of so much suffering, death , and waste with the biosphere.
• And so on.

This brings up the serious question of theodicy. There have been many
profound theological attempts to answer the question of theodicy. (In other
words, the presence of cross-purposes, suffering, death, and waste within the
biosphere is not an immediate "slam-dunk" for atheism.) However,
the question of theodicy is a philosophical and theological
question, not a scientific question, or even a philosophy-of-science
question.

Finally, it is interesting that in his First Things article "The
Designs of Science" Cardinal Schonborn admits that his original short essay
in the New York Times, "Finding Design in Nature", was something
of a "trick": He pretended to write an essay on science,
since if he had admitted that he was writing an essay on philosophy,
no one would have paid any attention to him! Now that Cardinal Schonborn has
"let the cat out of the bag", both the neo-Darwinists and the Intelligent
Designers can presumably go back to their "dogmatic slumber".

Welcome to the “new” St. Benedict’s Blog!

Actually, this blog is a merger of three previous blogs, namely, Evolution & Nonlinear Science, Group Subjectivity & Ethics, and Scapegoat Theology and the Problem of Violence. You will notice that these latter three blog titles have instead become the titles of categories within this “new” St. Benedict’s Blog. I realized that I couldn’t find the time to post regularly to three blogs. Perhaps I can find the time to post at least once-a-week to one blog!

St. Benedict’s Blog is the blog associated with the website of the Fellowship of St. Benedict. Of course, I am not claiming that this blog is actually written by St. Benedict, only that it is dedicated to St. Benedict! Instead, this blog is mostly written by Phillip L. Engle, though I will consider posts from others if you email them to me at phillip.engle@comcast.net.

In addition, anyone may comment on a post in this blog, provided only that you register your email address. However, the first time that you comment you might have to wait as much as a week to see it. (The reason is that every first comment must be approved by myself as moderator, due to problems with aggressive spammers.)

I also hope to completely revise the appearance of the website of the Fellowship of St. Benedict in the near future, and add new content as well!

Polls continue to show that huge segments of the American public (nearly 50% or more) reject Darwinism and even reject the fact of evolution itself (the latter because the scientific establishment insists on bundling acceptance of Darwinism and acceptance of the fact of evolution together inseperably as a “package deal”). This in spite of the intense efforts by the scientific, educational, and media establishments to convince the public of the contrary.

Why is this so? The consensus among the educational elites seems to be that the great unwashed masses have been duped by religion. Hence their strenuous efforts to convince the general public that there is “no contradiction” between the Darwinian idea that “biological evolution postulates an unpredictable and unguided natural process that has no discernible direction or goal” and the religious idea that the universe and man were created by God for a purpose. Now, while the unwashed masses may not be intellectually brilliant, they are not idiots either, so they don’t buy this “no contradiction” assertion of the elites. And, given the choice, they will choose meaning and purpose over meaninglessness and purposelessness any day of the week.

But let’s leave transcendent teleology (”G-o-d”) aside and consider instead immanent teleology (”D-o-g”): Let’s consider my dog Ransom. For even before we get to religion, the general public is puzzled by the secular elites’ apparent rejection of immanent teleology. When Ransom sees his bowl of food, turns, runs towards it, and begins eating from it, has he made a “decision” to do so? Was getting to his bowl of food his “goal”? Ever since Descartes, the secular scientific elites have denied that this is so. Ransom, they would say, is “nothing but” a machine and his seemingly purposeful behavior is only an illusion. (Whether the same is true of human beings is a matter of some controversy among these same elites, but here too they would tend to say that human beings are “nothing but” machines, perhaps with a smattering of chance thrown into the gears.)

On this score too the general public is puzzled by the scientific elites’ lack of “common sense”: The public will go along with the rejection of the idea of “primitive peoples” that there are such things as “sky gods” and “tree gods”. But entirely banning immanent teleology from the biosphere and even from humanity itself they (rightly) see as nonsense.

When pressed on exactly why the seeming presence of immanent purpose within the biosphere is an illusion — in other words, when asked how the trick is done — the Darwinists say the cyberneticists have the answer to this question, while the cyberneticists will refer you to the Darwinists. But, as James Barham has pointed out, neither the Darwinists nor the cyberneticists can supply the answer.

And here’s the kicker: After mocking the “great awashed” for believing in any kind of teleology, transcendent or immanent, the Darwinists then proceed to describe the science of biology (especially at the biochemical level) in language that is literally dripping with teleology: “intelligent genes”, “selfish genes”, “memes”, the “purpose” of this-or-that organ or biochemical structure, and even the “design” of biological structures! The noted atheist Australian philosopher David Stove even wrote an entire book, Darwinian Fairytales , that hilariously exposes the implicit, deep reliance of Darwinists on the very teleological assumptions that they explicitly mock!

The continued reliance of biologists on teleological language in their explication of biological concepts strongly indicates to me that a truly scientific (i.e., “bracket out the subject”) language to describe physical entities having the complexity of biological entities does not yet exist. Such a language would, at a minimum, have to acknowledge that biological entities are fundamentally nonlinear, far-from-equilibirium structures, not the linear, machine-like structures implicitly presumed by Darwinism and cybernetics.

So far as I know (and my knowledge here is admittedly limited), the only people who have worked to actually construct such a scientific language, by seeking actual nonlinear, far-from-equilibrium physical analogs to immanent teleological ideas, are myself in my book Far From Equilibrium and James Barham in his articles and papers.

James Barham is an atheist (though, since he believes in the fact of evolution but not in the theory Darwinism, he would be regarded by Judge Jones of Kitzmiller fame to be legally a fundamentalist Christian young-earth creationist). Not too many of Barham’s works are available for free on the internet, but one which is his brilliant paper “Thoughts on Thinking Matter”. For further info on James Barham and his publications, see his website.

I am beginning to realize that, of all of the hypotheses concerning evolution that are out there , only the hypothesis of macrodevelopment, proposed by Robert F. DeHaan and myself, takes really seriously the analogies between the evolution of the biosphere and the development of the individual embryo (though John A. Davison’s Prescribed Evolutionary Hypothesis comes close), and therefore only the hypothesis of macrodevelopment is likely to be correct.

Basic to the development of the individual embryo is a movement from assemblages of more-generic cells to assemblages of more-specific cells. (Of course, stem cells can be found in developed individuals, but only in tiny numbers which can be ignored for purposes of this discussion.) Analogously, the evolution of the biosphere is a movement of assemblages (taxons) of more-generic animals to assemblages (taxons) of more-specific animals: Each more-generic taxon lives on primarily as traits within the more-specific taxons that derive from it, not in general as particular individuals of that more-generic taxon. (There are probably a few exceptions, just as there are a small number of stem cells that continue to exist in the developed individual.) The statements in this paragraph are simply facts that were, in effect, demonstrated over twenty years ago in Michael Denton’s book Evolution: A Theory in Crisis using taxonomic comparisons at the level of biomolecules. Furthermore, any evolutionary interpretation of the currently accepted classification method of cladistics must necessarily arrive at the same conclusion. Because of these facts, biological taxons are (again, in general, at least for animals) neatly and cleanly nested within one another in monophyletic fashion.

Unlike the hypothesis of macrodevelopment, every other hypothesis of how evolution occurs tacitly assumes that new taxons “split off” from old taxons, leaving the old taxons to pretty much continue as they were. In traditional Darwinism these “split-offs” occur frequently via point mutations. By contrast, in the punctuated equilibrium hypothesis of Stephen Jay Gould & Niles Eldredge, in the hypothesis of macromutation (”hopeful monster”) of Richard Goldschmidt, and in the prescribed evolutionary hypothesis (PEH) of John A. Davison, these “split-offs” would occur much less frequently and (except for punctuated equilibrium) would be associated with major chromosomal rearrangements rather than point-mutations. But, in any case, to the extent that “splitting-off” would occur, it would result in either a smooth continuum of traits between modern animals or at least a blurring of traits such that no clearly-defined, nested structure of taxons would exist in the modern world. Since a clearly-defined, nested structure of taxons does exist in the modern world (at least for animals), all hypotheses of evolution except for the hypothesis of macrodevelopment must be false. End of story! Note too that every other hypothesis as to how evolution occurred is indifferent as to whether new taxons are any more specific than old taxons: In contrast to the hypothesis of macrodevelopment, all other hypotheses have essentially nothing to say about the important facts of genericity and specificity in evolution! (John A. Davison’s PEH hypothesis may be an exception.)

Of course, it is possible to invoke the molecular clock hypothesis to apparently solve this problem. According to the molecular clock hypothesis, homologous proteins change at a constant, gradual rate that differs for each pairing of a given homologous protein with a given taxon in just such a way that a cleanly nested monophyletic taxonomic hierarchy results, where a blurred or nonexistent taxonomic hierarchy would otherwise be expected. Analogously, it would be possible to preserve Ptolemaic astronomy (according to which the earth and not the sun is the center of the solar system) by postulating the existence of complex, nested planetary epicycles which could be specified quite precisely as needed. But why would a scientist want to support either of these hypotheses (molecular clocks or planetary epicycles) unless he was desperate to save his pet theory?

What the above facts mean at the biomolecular level is expressed in my law of macrodevelopmental symmetry. (I believe that I am the first to state this law in this amount of detail):

Any given instance of evolutionary macrodevelopmental bifurcation must have either:

a. Changed exactly the same amino-acid sites on a given homologous protein on each side of the split (i.e., the homologous protein for each of the two “descendent” taxa must have been changed at exactly the same amino-acid sites), or

b. If the bifurcation also changed additional amino-acid sites on one side of the split, then subsequent bifurcations on the other side of the split tended to correct this imbalance by modifying those additional sites as well. (These subsequent bifurcations could also have modified any previously modified amino-acid sites, but could never have modified sites which were left untouched on both sides of previous bifurcations.)

It is important to note too that these changes to the homologous proteins would have to have occurred on a taxon-wide basis, rather than in one single “hopeful monster” individual. Incredible? Yes, but (analogously) in the morphogenesis of the individual whole groups of cells change from the generic to the specific, probably due to symmetry-breaking along chemical gradients. (And as Sherlock Holmes once said, “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth!”)

Much further research needs to be done, especially at the biochemical level, but in my opinion only research that assumes that the basic hypothesis of macrodevelopment is true will be fruitful.

(For further info, see my article Symmetry in Evolution and pp. 348 -374 of my book Far From Equilibrium.)

From the title of this post it is clear that I could have placed it on any of the three main categories associated with the Fellowship of St. Benedict website, for its basic intent is to manifest a connection between Rene Girard’s theory of mimetic crisis, the nonlinear scientific theory of chaos, and the ethical theory of group subjectivity, thus justifiying (in part) the joining of these three seemingly disparate topics into one website.

To this end, I am simply going to list a series of “bullet points” that hopefully flow into one another and establish this connection:

• The terrifically strong tendency of humans to imitate one another’s ideas and behavior is of the essence of what it means to be human, contrary to the basic postulate of the Enlightenment that human individuals are essentially “radically autonomous “. (See my post on this weblog titled Children See, Children Do.)
• During a Girardian mimetic crisis human individuals imitate one another’s destructive thoughts, actions, and (especially) desires in a recursive fashion, so that they become hated obstacles to one another: That is, I (imperfectly) imitate you, then you take my imitation and (again, imperfectly) imitate my reflection of your thoughts, actions, and desires, and so on.
• The result of this horizontal, recursive, skewed, uncontrolled reproduction of destructive human thoughts, behaviors, and desires is nonlinear chaos within the social order.
• In such a situation, people no longer take a leader (such as a king or a father) as a unifying model to imitate, nor do they identify themselves with the group subjects of which they are (or, rather, were) a part. As a result, they become terrified and literally do not know who they are.
• The crisis may be resolved if the group suddenly is able to focus its hostility on a single victim, killing that victim jointly and thus re-establishing a deep sense of the corporate personality of the group.
• Through rituals involving communal scapegoating sacrifices that recall the killing of the victim, and through rules and prohibitions concerning what it is permissible for individuals with certain social statuses to desire and do, the social order and the layered personality associated with each individual’s personal identification with the nested set of group persons of which he is a part become re-established.
• A mimetic crisis is generally avoided in modern times for two very different reasons: First, Christianity continues to increasingly expose “the lie about the victim” that is at the heart of the sacrificial process. And, secondly, modern consumer society teaches human individuals to primarily desire material goods that can be mass-produced, thus minimizing conflicting objects of desire.

In November 2005, at the meeting of the US Catholic bishops, the bishops overwhelmingly (with only a few dissenting votes) passed the statement “A Culture of Life and the Penalty of Death”, which strongly opposes the use of the death penalty by any modern state. In the short term, this was not a new or remarkable statement: The statement itself simply endorsed the “Catholic Campaign to End the Use of the Death Penalty”, which was launched in March of 2005 by the US Catholic bishops. (See especially the bishops’ brochure on this subject.) And as long ago as 1980, the US Catholic bishops had issued a statement against the death penalty.

Pope John Paul II’s 1995 encyclical Evangelium vitae (”The Gospel of Life”) gave strong support for this anti-death-penalty stance in the passage where the Pope states:

It is clear that, for these [permissible purposes of penal justice] to be achieved, the nature and extent of the punishment must be carefully evaluated and decided upon, and ought not go to the extreme of executing the offender except in cases of absolute necessity: in other words, when it would not be possible otherwise to defend society. Today, however, as a result of steady improvements in the organization of the penal system, such cases are very rare, if not practically nonexistent.