| Eve Tushnet

I thought that if you had an acoustic guitar

Then it meant that you were a protest blogwatch.

Oh I can smile about it now, but at the time it was terrible…

Dappled Things: “…It is impossible to conceive of the old Israel apart from the fundaments of the Twelve Tribes; it’s impossible to conceive of the new Israel apart from the fundaments of the Twelve Apostles. The following of Christ is more than buying into a philosophical proposition and moral code, as one might do when following Socrates. Christ establishes something that is larger than the individual: that something is the Church, which mediates His presence to the world, and which He places upon the pillars of twelve concrete human beings.

“If we bother to think about it, we run into the Twelve and their enduring role in the Church all over the place. …To be Christian necessarily involves us with the Apostles.

“…Through their communion with Peter’s Successor, the Bishop of Rome, unity is maintained among them, and the oneness of the Church is preserved. This is one of the reasons why bishops are so important. Add to that the fact that they possess the fullness of Holy Orders and are our guarantee of valid Sacraments, and that they are (and always have been) the principle governors of the Church’s affairs on the local level, and we see that they are indispensable.

“…All around us we find plenty to criticize in the things that certains bishops do. Open any newspaper, and there it is. And everybody wants good, holy, and vigorous bishops who go out and work hard and do all the things they’re supposed to do. And when particular bishops fail in that, we often end up (depending upon our personalities) either criticizing or complaining or getting depressed. Perhaps it’s sometimes useful. I’ve never found it to do any good for me, though.

“There’s another way to consider the bishops, though, and it has less to do with what they do than it does with what they are. …But we need to remember that there is no such thing as the office unless a person fills it. Perhaps office isn’t the best term, either. There is a sacramental, apostolic reality that is ‘incarnate’ in the flesh and blood of a particular human being, regardless of how well or how poorly he exercises his duties. In a way, it’s analogous to a Sacrament’s validity being ex opere operato, and not from the worthiness of the minister.”

Eddix: 50 top law blogs. Via How Appealing. Includes Overlawyered!

Mark Shea, except it isn’t actually him blogging: “…All of us have woken up with a lipstick stain on our collar and, throughout our whole lives, we want to know who this mysterious lover is, or was. The first step is to realize that we left the Lover of our souls, even as He embraced us.”

Oxblog: Kabul correspondent argues against a strong central government in Afghanistan. Plus: “General bitterness against the foreign sponsors of the Taliban is intense, especially among Afghans who have traveled enough to know that Pakistanis and Arabs do not live by similarly restrictive creeds. One of my Afghan friends lived in the Emirates for a while, and recalled attending a festival where a group of young Arab men changed into Western clothes and began enthusiastically to dance to a Michael Jackson pop tune. His response was incredulity: ‘They send us mullahs to teach us Qur’an, and they teach themselves break-dancing?'”