Mary Kochan of Catholic Lane reacts to some new stories involving atheists suing over “A Day of Prayer”:

Let’s get this straight. The atheists are suing because they had to turn off the television to avoid the topic of religion or news announcements about the Day of Prayer. They had to alter their conversation to avoid the topic of religion. This made them feel like “outsiders”.

Oh, boo hoo.

You whiny, sniveling, little, pusillanimous cowards. You have the audacity to tell us Christians that we are “weak” and that our religion is a “crutch.” You are supposed to be so “courageous”, venturing forth boldly into the existential mystery of being alone, facing with stoicism the nothingness that awaits you at death, priding yourself on your realism and self-reliance. You are a bunch of feeble fakers.

…You are a pitiful joke. Trembling over the mere mention of God. Running like babies to court because of your brittle feelings. “Oh, but judge, but judge, I saw a cross and I just can’t stand it.” “I heard someone say ‘Merry Christmas’ and it hurt my feelings.” “I just can’t sleep knowing there is a manger scene at the courthouse.” “The sight of the Ten Commandments makes me wet my pants.” Now we see how inadequate and feeble you really are. Rage, therapists say, is the flip side of helplessness. And so we see your rage against religion in the public square for what it is: a product of your own insubstantial internal resources. Go look at yourself in the mirror if you can bear the pathetic, contemptible sight of yourself. Our merest martyr shows you to be a wimp – fourteen-year-old Kizito of Uganda singing hymns while being burned alive. But you, you anemic, lily-livered worms – you quail at pushing the off button on the remote! Hah

One of the qualities of the so-called “new atheist” is their thinness of skin. In my decades of atheism seeing signs of belief in God did not freak me out wanting to file lawsuits or even rant on the topic. Sure I was condescending in attitude towards such belief and I wished for the Lennon utopian “imagine no religion”.  It’s easy to do just as long as you ignore all human history. News of declining church attendance made me happy, but my mission in life was not to remove any kind of religious symbol from city seals.

The social Darwinism of the new atheists is ironically funny as they talk of how the strong survive while also being greatly upset at a Christmas tree on government property or a memorial cross on the same. They respond like vampires when they see a cross and act like it will kill them if they see one on government property.

There has always been the thread of the feeling of intellectual superiority within atheism labeling themselves as “brights” or “free thinkers”. I know I had the feeling of atheist pride living in a society that had not yet been uplifted to living by reason. For the new atheists this is especially prominent, though in many cases this is not evidenced by an erudite use of reason to propose the reasonability of atheism, but attacks on religion as being nothing other than pure poison that never had anything good to recommend it. Yet murderous atheist regimes had nothing to do with an atheist worldview while murderous theist regimes were always culpable because of religious views even as their actions were not in accord with them.

It is always dangerous to lump people together with any label. People are much more complicated than that to fit any into nicely defined groups with exact characteristics. Just like religious believers atheists have many “denominations” and range widely in regards to opposition to religious belief. Since it is difficult to impossible to determine someone’s motives it charitable to assume the best. So for the large majority of atheists I assume they are seeking the truth and have concluded that atheism is the truth.

But I will define a small group of atheist by their actions as the thin-skinned atheists a.k.a the new atheists. The ones who have the attitude like the book burners who want to eradicate all signs that disagree with them. They don’t want to participate in the public square acknowledging that most people are theists and a majority of them Christians. They want any such signs in the culture abolished as if this was the triumph of reason. If atheism was the only possible reasonable conclusion, then reason instead of lawsuits should be their main weapon. Instead we get people like Richard Dawkins who largely avoids debates and instead does things like supporting legal efforts to charge Pope Benedict XVI with crimes against humanity.

Leaving aside the problem that atheism undermines reason in the first place. There is a belief in scientism that science can answer every question even philosophical ones – eventually. The adage that when the only tool in your toolbox is a hammer, everything looks like a nail is especially true for atheist of this stripe. Like the Russian Cosmonaut Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin who said “I don’t see any God up here.” Though maybe he should have called himself a Ramdomnaut as cosmos means “the universe seen as a well-ordered whole”. Or P.Z. Myers who apparently though that desecrating the Eucharist by throwing it in the trash was a scientific experiment to disprove God at some level. The scientific method of mockery. As if Jesus who allowed himself to be mocked, scourged and crucified would do something about this new indignity. Regardless God will not be proven or disproven by experimental science and to think so shows lack of knowledge both regards to the ability of science and even a basic philosophical understanding of the idea of God.

Jesus turned water into wine and the new atheist turns whine into lawsuits. Persuasion by being a jerk is not the most effective of the persuasive arts. The new atheist complains that he thinks theists don’t think he can be a good person as an atheist while not being able to define what an objective good is other than in selfish terms. Jesus asked “Why do you call me good” to elicit a response of faith while the new atheist asks “Why don’t you call me good” to elicit a faith in the moral goodness of atheism. They demand to be called good when acting like a jerk and demanding societal compliance with his atheism. The jerk atheist or jerkiest such as P.Z. Myers and his blog can be picked up by National Geographic only shows they must not really want to spread the “good news” of atheism. Though people acting like jerks and wanting to be seen as good is not confined to atheists.

Mark Shea also responds to the referenced article and writes:

Dearest atheists, consider taking some free advice from somebody who bats for the opposite team. You know who you guys could take a cue from? Christian martyrs. Roast ‘em, mash ‘em, stick ‘em in a stew, they take a licking and keep on ticking. Gouge out their eyes and they laugh and turn it into a fun feast day. (Happy Feast Day to my grand-daughter, the Cuteness). Barbecue them and they say, “You can turn me over. I’m done on this side.” Heck, Perpetua was so badass that she actually helped the unnerved executioner in the arena by holding the tip of the sword to her throat so his trembling hands could deal the coup de grace. So New Atheists: Next time, pay attention to all those Christians you butcher by the millions and see if you can pick up some tips about how to cowboy up and deal with a little suffering. Those were men and women who could take it. Atheists who screech like little girls at the sight of a world not to their liking are not going to be very effective Vanguards for the Revolution because, you know, sheesh! What a bunch of sorry pantywaists!

His description of the new atheist “getting the vapors” when confronted by the idea of there being theists is rather apt.  The lawsuit-filing ones might get the attention in the news, but how many see them as heroes to be applauded?  When failing to remove the nativity they demand a public display for non-belief, which I guess would be  a Negativity Display.  In the meantime I will maintain the best way of annoying an atheist – by praying for them and loving them as my neighbor.

I don’t post much on the so-called “War on Christmas”, not because I don’t think it exists – but that its existence is to be expected.  In this toxic culture.

If the world hates you, realize that it hated me first.  If you belonged to the world, the world would love its own; but because you do not belong to the world, and I have chosen you out of the world, the world hates you. Remember the word I spoke to you,  ‘No slave is greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours. And they will do all these things to you on account of my name, because they do not know the one who sent me. John 15:18

I totally expect that the culture will do everything it can to hijack Christmas so as to not admit that we needed a savior from our sin.  Though it is not only the secular culture that does this but also the Judases within. Via Mark Steyn.

One sympathizes, up to a point. As America degenerates from a land of laws to a land of legalisms, much of life is devoted to forestalling litigation. What’s less understandable is the faintheartedness of explicitly Christian institutions. Last year I chanced to see the email exchanges between college administrators over the choice of that season’s Christmas card. I will spare their blushes, and identify the academy only as a Catholic college in New England. The thread began by asking the distribution list for “thoughts” on the proposed design. No baby, no manger, no star over Bethlehem, but a line drawing of a dove. Underneath the image was the following:

“What is Christmas?

It is tenderness for the past, courage for the present, hope for the future.

It is a fervent wish that every cup may overflow with blessings rich and eternal,

and that every path may lead to peace.

Agnes M Pharo.”

The Agnes M Pharo? A writer of such eminence that even the otherwise open-to-all-comers Wikipedia has no entry for her. Still, as a purveyor of vacuous pap to America’s credentialed class for all-purpose cultural cringe, she’s hard to beat. One unfortunate soul on the distribution list wandered deplorably off message and enquired whether the text “is problematic because the answer to the question ‘What is Christmas?’ from a Catholic perspective is that it is the celebration of the birth of Christ.” Her colleague patiently responded that, not to worry, all this religious-type meaning was covered by the word “blessings.” No need to use any insufficiently inclusive language about births of Saviors and whatnot; we all get the cut of Agnes’ jib from the artfully amorphous “blessings.”

When an explicitly Catholic institution thinks that the meaning of Christmas is “tenderness for the past, vapid generalities for the present, evasive abstractions for the future,” it’s pretty much over.

Than there is the Auckland Anglican Church which seems to specialize in Christmas shock billboards year after year. This time it is one with the Blessed Virgin Mary looking upset at the results of a pregnancy test kit. I guess no “My soul rejoices” for them as they have turned the Annunciation into a renunciation.

Protesters upset about the billboard have now vandalized the poster by ripping off the portion with the birth control kit on it. Though I think they miss the point because the part that is blasphemous is not the birth control kit, but the showing of Mary in shock with her hand covering her face in disbelief. I use the word blasphemous in the way Fr. Hardon in part defines it:

Serious contemptuous ridicule of the saints, sacred objects, or of persons consecrated to God is also blasphemous because God is indirectly attacked.

While we are on the subject of Christians and Mary I saw a funny takedown of the song “Mary, Did You Know” as a dialogue between Mary  and the prosecution.  Here is a small example:

The Prosecution

Did you know that your baby boy will save our sons and daughters?

Mary

Yes, I did. The Lord told our prophets, “Say to those whose hearts are frightened: be strong, fear not! Here is your God, He comes with vindication; With divine recompense He comes to save you.” (Is 35:4)

The Prosecution

Did you know that your baby boy has come to make you new… that this child that you’ve delivered will soon deliver you?

Mary

Yes I did. The angel Gabriel greeted me saying, “Hail, full of grace (kecharitomene – Lk 1:28),” so I knew I’d already been delivered, actually. I then told my cousin Elizabeth that, “My spirit rejoices in God, my savior.” (Lk 1:47)

This was written by Mark M. of A Dei in the Life, but the post is at Roma locuta est.

This song does not annoy me as much as it once did as it is mainly a series of rhetorical questions.  In fact much of the song could have been improved by a chorus of Mary saying “Yes”.  Though of course some of the questions posed would have been of specific historical events that had yet to come.  The problems with the lyrics are some ambivalences as to how Mary was saved and the implied ignorance of the Blessed Virgin.  As a pop song it is fine if you make the necessary theological distinctions, as music for the liturgy that is another story.  I once heard it at Midnight Mass from a Protestant singer the Church had hired.  Considering the treasury of sacred music for Christmas, picking this rather banal song was a serious mistake.

Darwin Catholic also posts on this and links to a semi-defence of the song by Melanie Bettinelli:

The rhetorical questions don’t really imply that Mary didn’t know the answers. Sure, on a literal level they are directed to Mary; but I think the listener isn’t so much meant to linger on the state of Mary’s knowledge so much as be drawn toward contemplation of the mystery of Incarnation. It reminds me of the list of rhetorical questions in Pink Floyd’s “Mother”. The “mother” character isn’t really the point of the song, we’re not meant to think about who the mother is or what she will think or how she will answer; she’s just a rhetorical device.

The song moves the listener away from the iconic scene of the Mother and child in the stable and toward the rest of the Gospel story. In a post-Christian culture where most people never move beyond the Christmas card picture to think about Who that little baby is, this song tries to get them to do that.

I don’t think the song needs rebuttal because it isn’t really making the claims you say it’s making about Mary. The one detail that I agree is off is the line about “the child you’ve delivered would soon deliver you” and yet I can forgive the bad theology. First, because it’s a pop song and not a hymn. Second, because the focus of the line is a play on the word “deliver” not on the “soon”. And last but not least, Christ’s sacrifice on the cross did happen in time, a specific moment that fell after the moment of Mary’s conception, obviously. The grace of that act saved Mary outside of time. I think it is well within the bounds of poetic license to juxtapose the moments and is a bit tendentious to impose rigorous theological language and categories upon a song.

She states very well why I don’t hate the song with a passion any more (unless sung at Mass).

As for what Mary knew “Mary kept in mind all these things as she pondered them in her heart.” and I desire to know at the level she did.

At least three gay and lesbian clergy members were disinvited from participating in Advent services at Most Holy Redeemer Catholic Church in the Castro, the Bay Area Reporter has learned.

The call for the gay clergy not to attend came from the Archdiocese of San Francisco, sources said.

George Wesolek, spokesman for the archdiocese, confirmed that Archbishop George Niederauer made the decision.

“The basic reason is that Archbishop Niederauer felt the themes for vespers should better reflect the themes of Advent,” Wesolek told the B.A.R.

Wesolek said the decision came shortly before November 27, the first Sunday of Advent. [Source]

Well that is good news, though I certainly wish the statement would have been less politically correct and more specific. Though of course the real problem is not with the speakers themselves, but the fact that the parish would invite them in the first place. Dis-inviting them does nothing to solve the real problem of this infamous parish.