Pullman Verus Lewis: Lewis Wins

Via Mixolydian Mode ... Michael Nelson writing in The Chronicle of Higher Education:

In articles, interviews, and speeches, [Phillip] Pullman has described The Chronicles not just as "propaganda in the cause of the religion [Lewis] believed in," but also as guilty of advancing views such as, "Death is better than life; boys are better than girls; light-colored people are better than dark-colored people; and so on." And those are just Pullman's G-rated charges. He also has blasted The Chronicles in public forums as "one of the most ugly and poisonous things I've ever read," "propaganda in the service of a life-hating ideology," "blatantly racist," "monumentally disparaging of girls and women," and marked by a "sadomasochistic relish for violence."

The article goes on to dismiss most of Pullman's charges against Lewis' work, pointing out that, "For Pullman, it seems, Lewis's offense was merely to love what Pullman hates. Certainly there is nothing remotely as tendentious in The Chronicles as Pullman's attacks in His Dark Materials against Christianity. 'For all its history,' a benevolent witch tells Lyra Belacqua and Will Parry, the young protagonists of the series, the Church 'has tried to suppress and control every natural impulse. ... That's what the Church does, and every church is the same: control, destroy, obliterate every good feeling.'"

Laughing Jesus?

Thinking about the Wedding at Cana - and not just because of my fondness for wine ... It also comes up regularly as a Luminous Mystery of the Rosary. I've turned over in my mind many times the chilly answer Jesus gives his mother when she tells him the wedding's run out of wine, and I've never really felt satisfied by what I ended up with. Until now, maybe.

Jesus says, "Woman, how does your concern affect me? My time has not yet come."

And then Mary says to the servers, "Do whatever he tells you."

She doesn't have any doubt that he's going to do something, nor did she doubt that he would be able to solve the problem (which makes one wonder, tangentially, how she knows that this is the moment he's chosen to perform his first miracle and begin his public ministry?).

So yesterday it pops into my head, what if he's kidding when he answers her? Sometimes I'll put on a show of being falsely ornery when people ask me to do something, but usually only if we're close, as close as husband and wife, brother and sister, mother and son. Kris, for example, might say, "honey, while you're up, could you pour me a glass of that wine you're drinking." And I might say, in a really over-the-top-sort-of-huffy-pompous voice, "What, am I your servant, suddenly? I would not get you a drink if the bottle were in my hand and ..." Blah, blah, blah, and meanwhile of course, I'm pouring Kris a glass of wine and bringing it to her with all haste. And it's funny, because we both know I'm kidding and would really mean the opposite.

There are other times when I see this core script played out when someone timidly poses the question, "could I ask a favor?" and the respondent replies with a comic psuedo rebuff to illustrate how silly it is that the person should even have to ask... Question: "Can I ask a favor?" Answer: "Absolutely not." Understood meaning: "Of course, silly, I would do anything for you. All you have to do is ask me."

So what do you think? Possible Jesus is jesting here? His actions indicate that he means the opposite of what he says, that Mary's concern over the wine does mean something to him, and also that his time has come. If so, it would remind me of the way Gibson portrayed him joking with Mary during the flashback scenes in The Passion. Can anyone think of other times when Jesus expresses his sense of humor?

Adios Limbo

Vatican theologians are about to recommend getting rid of the hypothesis of limbo. The theory (not ever a dogma) was that perhaps anabaptized babies spend eternity in a state of natural happiness but not in the presence of God (heaven). I never subscribed, and say good riddance. As does our pope. According to Catholic News Service, "In the 1985 book-length interview, 'The Ratzinger Report,' the future Pope Benedict said, 'Limbo was never a defined truth of faith. Personally -- and here I am speaking more as a theologian and not as prefect of the congregation -- I would abandon it, since it was only a theological hypothesis.'"

Keeping the ... errr .. Christmas in Christmas

Via The Revealer, Jeff Jacoby in the Boston Globe writes:
"Sometimes the secularizing impulse goes to laughable extremes, as when the elementary school play is titled 'How the Grinch Stole the Holidays' or when red poinsettias (but not white ones) are banned from city hall. Sometimes it springs from clanging ignorance, as with the New York City policy that prohibited the display of Christian nativity scenes on public school grounds, while expressly allowing such 'secular holiday symbol decorations' as Jewish menorahs and the Muslim star and crescent. And some of it is fueled by anti-Christian bigotry or sheer misanthropic bile."

Jacoby is a practicing Jew, but doesn't feel offended by Christian symbols at Christmas. He writes, "It makes me feel grateful -- to live in a land where freedom of religion shelters the Hanukkah menorah in my window no less than the Christmas tree in my neighbor's."

His sentiment seems to sum up pluralism at its best, instead of the opposite reaction, which is relativism at its worst.