Tag: culture

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions. If you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

1. The Catholic Church is fac­ing a tremen­dous cri­sis, one poten­tial­ly far big­ger than any I have seen in my life­time. There’s been a lot of ink spilled about it. Here are some pieces I found illu­mi­nat­ing.
   • Protes­tants Should Care Deeply about the Catholic Cat­a­stro­phe (David French, Nation­al Review): “The Church is like a navy, a col­lec­tion of ships unit­ed in pur­pose and in des­ti­na­tion. Each denom­i­na­tion is like a dif­fer­ent ship in that navy, and while each crew is pri­mar­i­ly tasked with the health and well-being of its own ves­sel, it’s also deeply invest­ed in the strength of the fleet. Each ves­sel is more vul­ner­a­ble as the fleet weak­ens. Each ves­sel is stronger sur­round­ed by its pro­tec­tive arma­da. If the anal­o­gy holds, then one of the might­i­est bat­tle­ships in the fleet, the Catholic Church, is tak­ing tor­pe­does left and right.”
   • A Catholic Civ­il War? (Matthew Schmitz, New York Times): “…the Catholic Church has been plunged into all-out civ­il war. On one side are the tra­di­tion­al­ists, who insist that abuse can be pre­vent­ed only by tighter adher­ence to church doc­trine. On the oth­er side are the lib­er­als, who demand that the church cease con­demn­ing homo­sex­u­al acts and allow gay priests to step out of the clos­et.” This may sound like hyper­bole, but I believe it is accu­rate.
   • Catholics Face A Painful Ques­tion: Is It True? (Eliz­a­beth Bru­enig, Wash­ing­ton Post): “In his state­ments on Viganò’s tes­ti­mo­ny last Sun­day, Fran­cis invit­ed jour­nal­ists to use their skills and capac­i­ties to draw con­clu­sions about the mat­ter. And so, on Mon­day morn­ing, I began to try.” This is sad. It seems the only per­son doing actu­al jour­nal­ism on this for a major news­pa­per is… an opin­ion colum­nist. It stinks to high heav­en that the major papers aren’t fero­cious­ly pur­su­ing this.
   • What Did Pope Fran­cis Know? (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “this doesn’t mean that the pope should resign — not even if Viganò is ful­ly vin­di­cat­ed. One papal res­ig­na­tion per mil­len­ni­um is more than enough. That cop-out should not be eas­i­ly avail­able to pon­tif­fs con­front­ed with scan­dals, includ­ing scan­dals of their own mak­ing, any more than it should be avail­able to fathers.”
   • Answer­ing Vigano’s Crit­ics (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “Again: if the alle­ga­tions are false, you say, ‘They’re false.’ But that’s not what the Pope said. At all. If the Pope thinks he can ignore Vigano as he has ignored the dubia car­di­nals, he is grave­ly mis­tak­en.”
   • Sto­ry of bomb­shell charges against Pope more sur­re­al by the minute (John L. Allen, Jr., Crux): “If there’s one thing any­one who’s cov­ered the Vat­i­can for a long time ought to have learned by now, it’s nev­er to say a par­tic­u­lar sto­ry just can’t get any­more sur­re­al, because trust me — it always can.”
2. The School Shoot­ings That Weren’t (Anya Kamenetz, Alex­is Arnold, and Emi­ly Car­di­nali, NPR): Dif­fi­cult to excerpt the key data, so here’s the sum­ma­ry: schools report­ed 240 shoot­ings in the 2015–2016 school year, but NPR fol­lowed up and was only able to ver­i­fy 11. How did this hap­pen? “the law of real­ly, real­ly big num­bers. Temkin notes that ‘240 schools is less than half of 1 per­cent,’ of the schools in the sur­vey. ‘It’s in the mar­gin of error.’ ”
3. There was a reveal­ing ker­fluffle at Brown Uni­ver­si­ty.
   • Rapid-onset gen­der dys­pho­ria in ado­les­cents and young adults: A study of parental reports (Lisa Littman, PLOS ONE): “The ele­vat­ed num­ber of friends per friend­ship group who became trans­gen­der-iden­ti­fied, the pat­tern of clus­ter out­breaks of trans­gen­der-iden­ti­fi­ca­tion in these friend­ship groups, the sub­stan­tial per­cent­age of friend­ship groups where the major­i­ty of the mem­bers became trans­gen­der-iden­ti­fied, and the peer group dynam­ics observed all serve to sup­port the plau­si­bil­i­ty of social and peer con­ta­gion for ROGD [Rapid Onset Gen­der Dys­pho­ria]. The wors­en­ing of men­tal well-being and par­ent-child rela­tion­ships and behav­iors that iso­late teens from their par­ents, fam­i­lies, non-trans­gen­der friends and main­stream sources of infor­ma­tion are par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cern­ing. More research is need­ed to bet­ter under­stand rapid-onset gen­der dys­pho­ria, its impli­ca­tions, and scope.” The research paper in ques­tion.
   • Jour­nal Look­ing Into Study on ‘Rapid-Onset Gen­der Dys­pho­ria’ (Colleen Fla­her­ty, Inside High­er Ed): “Brown Uni­ver­si­ty and PLOS ONE have dis­tanced them­selves from a con­tro­ver­sial, peer-reviewed pub­lished study on ‘rapid-onset gen­der dys­pho­ria,’ or gen­der iden­ti­ty issues that present not ear­ly and over a life­time but quick­ly, in teenagers and young adults.” This is the neu­tral take.
   • New paper ignites storm over whether teens expe­ri­ence ‘rapid onset’ of trans­gen­der iden­ti­ty (Mered­ith Wad­man, Sci­ence): “The actions by the jour­nal and the uni­ver­si­ty have infu­ri­at­ed some researchers who say the moves tram­ple aca­d­e­m­ic free­dom, although the paper remains freely avail­able. ‘This is a sad day for @BrownUniversity, and an indict­ment of the integri­ty of their aca­d­e­m­ic and admin­is­tra­tive lead­er­ship,’ Jef­frey Fli­er, a for­mer dean of Har­vard Med­ical School in Boston and a pro­fes­sor of med­i­cine there, tweet­ed on Mon­day.” This is a slight­ly more feisty take.
   • Ryan T. Ander­son on Twit­ter: “If this is the sort of cen­sor­ship that takes place out in the open, just image what’s tak­ing place behind closed doors. All because this research reached polit­i­cal­ly incor­rect con­clu­sion. But when lives are at stake, it’s more impor­tant to be cor­rect than polit­i­cal­ly cor­rect.” A feisty and I sus­pect very accu­rate take.
4. The French, Com­ing Apart (Christo­pher Cald­well, City Jour­nal): “Since Toc­queville, we have under­stood that our demo­c­ra­t­ic soci­eties are emu­la­tive. Nobody wants to be thought a big­ot if the mem­ber­ship board of the coun­try club takes pride in its mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism. But as the prospect of ris­ing in the world is ham­pered or extin­guished, the induce­ments to ide­o­log­i­cal con­formism weak­en. Dis­sent appears. Polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness grows more dra­con­ian. Final­ly the rul­ing class reach­es a dan­ger­ous stage, in which it begins to lose not only its legit­i­ma­cy but also a sense of what its legit­i­ma­cy rest­ed on in the first place.” This is a fas­ci­nat­ing arti­cle that’s sort of about France, sort of about Amer­i­ca, and most­ly about West­ern moder­ni­ty.
5. Chi­na Is Treat­ing Islam Like A Men­tal Ill­ness (Sigal Samuel, The Atlantic): “The med­ical anal­o­gy is one way the gov­ern­ment tries to jus­ti­fy its pol­i­cy of large-scale intern­ment: After all, attempt­ing to inoc­u­late a whole pop­u­la­tion against, say, the flu, requires giv­ing flu shots not just to the already-afflict­ed few, but to a crit­i­cal mass of peo­ple. In fact, using this rhetoric, Chi­na has tried to defend a sys­tem of arrest quo­tas for Uighurs. Police offi­cers con­firmed to Radio Free Asia that they are under orders to meet spe­cif­ic pop­u­la­tion tar­gets when round­ing up peo­ple for intern­ment. In one town­ship, police offi­cials said they were being ordered to send 40 per­cent of the local pop­u­la­tion to the camps.” I’ve men­tioned this before, but it tru­ly is one of the scan­dals of the mod­ern world.
6. With Flow­ers In Their Hair (Andrew Fer­gu­son, The Week­ly Stan­dard): “The seeds of the destruc­tion of the Haight exper­i­ment could be found in its own antin­o­mi­an­ism, in its orig­i­nal inspi­ra­tion. Maybe the whole­sale rejec­tion of time-hon­ored and time-test­ed val­ues — monogamy, mod­er­a­tion, good man­ners, self-denial, self-con­trol, the sanc­ti­ty of pri­vate prop­er­ty, per­son­al account­abil­i­ty to high­er author­i­ties, both mate­r­i­al and spir­i­tu­al — leads to squalor and mis­ery. Maybe the project they’re cel­e­brat­ing in San Fran­cis­co this sum­mer was doomed from the start.” Long and good.
7. Amer­i­ca Soured on My Mul­tira­cial Fam­i­ly (David French, The Atlantic): “There are three fun­da­men­tal, com­pli­cat­ing truths about adop­tion. First, every sin­gle adop­tion begins with pro­found loss. Through death, aban­don­ment, or even lov­ing sur­ren­der, a child suf­fers the loss of his or her moth­er and father. Sec­ond, the demo­graph­ics of those in need of lov­ing homes do not pre­cise­ly match the demo­graph­ics of those seek­ing a new child. Adop­tive par­ents are dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly white. Adopt­ed chil­dren are not. Thus, mul­tira­cial fam­i­lies are a nat­ur­al and inevitable con­se­quence of the adop­tion process. Third, Amer­i­can cul­ture has long been obsessed with ques­tions of race and iden­ti­ty.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

• Local Catholic Start­ing To Think Church Needs Ref­or­ma­tion (Baby­lon Bee)
• Dog Heav­en (imgur)
• A pret­ty great prank (imgur)
• Magi­cian Chris­t­ian Eng­blom does a card trick with a clever twist (Penn & Teller Fool Us, YouTube)

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have The world will only get weird­er (Steven Coast, per­son­al blog): “We fixed all the main rea­sons air­craft crash a long time ago. Some­times a long, long time ago. So, we are left with the less and less prob­a­ble events.” The piece is a few years old so the exam­ples are dat­ed, but it remains very intrigu­ing. (first shared in vol­ume 67)

Why Do You Send This Email?

In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world. I pray this email gives you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar.

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it). And to the extent you can dis­cern my opin­ions, please under­stand that they are my own and not those of any orga­ni­za­tion I work for or rep­re­sent.

Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it.

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