Maureen Mullarkey with a touching story of disappointed desire–and grace, all around.  Do you want a charitable culture, one of true toleration?  It looks like this:

All that was left was to decide on the phrase from a sheet of suggested lines. My heart set on a passage from the Book of Ruth that reads in full:

Ruth said: “Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee; for whither thou goest I will go, where thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy people shall be my people and thy God my God.

Only the central portion (“wither thou goest . . .”) could fit around the ring but the entire antiphon is implicit in the fragment. Ruth’s pledge to Naomi is the purest and most stirring statement of friendship I have ever known. I ached to claim it for myself and wear it for the rest of my life.

Was one of us Jewish? The jeweler wanted to know. Was either of us leaving another religion to become Jewish? No, we were not. Well then, he was sorry but he would not give us that particular quotation. The point was non-negotiable.

The rebuff was a sore let-down but we did not press. We deferred to his prohibition because, in some unspoken way, we understood. The story of Ruth is one of conversion that affirms the Jewish nation. It testifies to peoplehood. The intensity of this man’s concern to honor the sacred core of the text moved us. Here was a man who had suffered the unspeakable for no other reason than he was part of the people Ruth pledged herself to.

(source: RFRA & My Wedding Ring | Maureen Mullarkey | First Things)

Because all this bigotry and counter-bigotry, folks, just won’t do.

It won’t do at all.

Robert George has a trenchant call for the unity of reasonable people in the face of the torch-and-pitchfork crowd’s endless and irrational animus:

The lynch mob came for the brilliant mild-mannered techie Brendan Eich.
The lynch mob came for the elderly florist Barronelle Stutzman.
The lynch mob came for Eastern Michigan University counseling student Julea Ward.
The lynch mob came for the African-American Fire Chief of once segregated Atlanta Kelvin Cochran.
The lynch mob came for the owners of a local pizza shop the O’Connor family.
[…]
[W]ho if anyone will courageously stand up to the mob? Who will resist? Who will speak truth to its raw and frightening power? Who will refuse to be bullied into submission or intimidated into silence?

(source: Who Will Stand? | Robert P. George | First Things–links added, PGE)

Of course, George knows that shouting futilely at the darkness is not half as effective as shaming the mob.  Nonetheless, it is important to remember that one of the basic features of mob action, of hateful incitement, is the disinhibiting effect–the intoxication–of being one of the crowd, of yielding to passions without restraint or consideration.  This is most intense among mindless people caught up in a stampede of violence, but it is easier when the disinhibiting effect of pleasing the herd is multiplied by the disinhibiting effect of pseudo-anonymous online interaction.

It is also important to understand that nothing about the way the torch-and-pitchfork crowd operates—at every level–suggests any limiting principle to their lawlessness; its only consistent principle is opportunistic nihilism.  As George says:   Continue reading →

Palate cleanser before we get down to business?

Katherine Timpf is exactly right:

Don’t get me wrong — I agree that our culture is experiencing a terrifying shift towards censorship. People have become so easily offended that it’s almost impossible to say anything without someone getting upset about it; and concepts like trigger warnings, safe spaces, and microaggressions are threatening free speech.

But none of this changes the fact that Phil Robertson is an ignorant buffoon, and that many of his comments — despite the fact that he does have every right to make them — are not ones that anyone should ever want to be associated with.

(source: Stop Defending Phil Robertson — You’re Embarrassing Yourself)

Some people just realize that if they play to the hustings, go for the belly-laughs from the cheap seats every time, they will keep getting asked back by the sort of people who measure success by the decibel level of the response from the imbeciles who hoot and holler.  After all, showing up to CPAC doesn’t mean they don’t have pretty much exactly the same acculturation as people who find Jon Stewart funny or cheer on the execrable Bill Maher.

It will not do to encourage them.  It is a true saying, worthy of acceptance, that “Bad money drives out good.” Continue reading →

Torches and pitchforks, people.  Torches and pitchforks, indeed.

Torches and pitchforks.

(Incidentally,

Continue reading →

I cannot tolerate […] that the […] people’s authority should be menaced from any quarter:  and that holds good above all for the Churches!  So long as these confine their activities to religious affairs, the State will not molest them.  But if they arrogate to themselves, through acts, decrees or Encyclicals, rights which are not theirs at all, we shall drive them back into their spiritual domains.

(source: New Light…)

Sounds familiar, no?