Faith and Reason and Forced Conversions<\/a> Tina Brown; Our Lady of the Air Kiss<\/a> FAITH AND REASON AND FORCED CONVERSIONS<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cWas not Nagasaki the chosen victim, the lamb without blemish, slain as a whole burnt offering on an altar of sacrifice, atoning for the sins of all nations during World War II?<\/em>\u201d <\/strong>\u2013 Dr. Takashi Nagai 1908-1951, on Martyrdom, from All Saints<\/em> by Robert Ellsberg<\/p>\n It is the rarest of days when I disagree with my favorite blogfather Ed Morrissey, but after mulling over this post of his<\/a> as well as others, and after thinking quite a lot about the forced conversion of Fox News\u2019 Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig while under the guns and knives of their Islamofascist captors, I find that I do disagree with him.<\/p>\n Ed wrote: I, for one, am happy that Centanni and Wiig had the wits and the luck to get out of Gaza alive. That to me is a victory.<\/em><\/p>\n He is not alone in thinking this way. Indeed, I would bet he is among a fair majority (including an engineer friend) who are perhaps overthinking the thing.<\/p>\n Faith and Reason<\/a> share a kinship, and within that kinship the natural and supernatural wave back and forth, like wind-stirred wheat in a field, but only to an point. The gift of faith is itself supernatural, but let\u2019s call it a small-s-supernatural, one in which reason may be easily ascertained. I think once circumstances have led one \u2013 willingly or unwillingly \u2013 to confront capital-S-Supernatural, the waters become very deep, and reason must necessarily hang back near the shore.<\/p>\n The demand to \u201cconvert or die\u201d is not a thinking<\/em> demand, it is not born of reason. It is culled forth from a dark heart given over to something larger than a human sense or sensibility. It is an unnatural requirement; it is Supernatural. As such, it can only be properly answered through Supernatural means, through a heart that is not dark but which is equally given over to something larger than our rational and reductive imaginings. Can you reduce the response to a forced conversion into whether one \u201cmeant it\u201d or not? Yes, you can, but in doing so you have taken your eyes off of something hugely in play but easy to miss \u2013 that the greatest feats of heroism written in the annals of human history have come about through a combination of faith and reason, but with reason bringing up the rear.<\/p>\n Firefighters on 9\/11 asked a blessing from Fr. Mychal Judge before they headed into the burning towers of the World Trade Center. Reason cautioned that running into such a hellish conflagration was foolhardy \u2013 faith whispered something else, and it won.<\/p>\n Reason told Casper ten Boom and his spinster daughters Corrie and Betsy that it was risky-unto-madness to try to hide Jews in a bedroom wall<\/a> while Nazis occupied their village \u2013 faith shrugged, \u201chow can you not take the risk?\u201d<\/p>\n Reason told the 16 Carmelites of Compiegne<\/a> that renunciation would save their lives; after all, anyone would know they<\/em> didn\u2019t really mean it. Faith said, \u201ctrust in the Lord at all times,\u201d and they went to the guillotine singing psalms and offering their necks for the defeat of \u201cThe Terror,\u201d which, it must be said, came to an end some ten days later.<\/p>\n It has been mentioned that we are battling an enemy that \u201cloves death more than life.\u201d Certainly we have seen that they are willing to die for their beliefs. An enemy who does not care if he dies as long as he can kill you, too, is an enemy who cannot be reasoned with. This is an enemy thoroughly appreciative of the power of martyrdom, its ability to inspire, to convince and even to claim victory. We seem to have forgotten that martyrdom \u2013 a foolish waste, to Reason\u2019s sensibility \u2013 is often the key componant toward changing social perceptions and even morals. The virgin martyrs, much derided in our \u201cenlightened\u201d era, were the first women to declare themselves set apart, meant to be more than chattel, able to declare themselves as belonging to no man or house, to \u201cno one but Christ.\u201d An unheard of concept!<\/p>\n To my knowledge, the pre-kidnapping religious beliefs of Centanni and Wiig are unknown. Some say that if the men had no particular faith to start with, their going along with a forced conversion was a reasonable tactic, and perhaps it was. If faith is meaningless to you, then a forced conversion will be too. Frankly, if you held me at gunpoint and told me to confess myself a Democrat, or even a Boston Red Sox fan, I\u2019d do it in a heartbeat. Hollywood aside, political parties and baseball teams, with very few exceptions, are not the concerns of angels, who fight more pressing battles.<\/p>\n But whether Centanni and Wiig were men of faith, or not, their \u201cconversions\u201d were a sort of victory for our enemies. They displayed to the world what the West \u201cholds dear.\u201d I am not saying the newsmen were cowards, not at all. I\u2019m only saying that in a clash of civilizations, their pronouncements about Allah and Mohammed, and their confession of new, Islamic names, was a real-time demonstration to the Islamofascists in our midst that \u201cstaying alive,\u201d means the world to us. It can be translated as \u201clook at these callow Western dogs, so in love with life, so beholden to nothing that they will say anything, do anything, even allow us to rename them, to cling to life\u2026while we will give up everything\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n The re-naming of these two Western men is particularly telling. While it may mean nothing at all to a secularist, it means quite a lot to the Islamists watching the world over, and to the Christians and the Jews, as well, because they too understand it. Abraham, Noah, Jacob, Sarah, even the apostle Peter were all given new names by God, the new names had to do with relationship and covenant. \u201cI shall give you a new name,\u201d is one of God\u2019s promises. To give up one\u2019s name is to give up one\u2019s self. To allow someone else to name you is to count yourself the lesser. It might all seem pretty innocuous to Reason. To Faith, however, this is fraught with meaning \u2013 this is all about surrender and the handing over of power. By proclaiming their new Islamic names Centanni and Wiig \u2013 probably quite unwittingly \u2013 were declaring themselves new men in Allah. They were also living metaphors for the surrender of \u201cthe lesser\u201d West.<\/p>\n I wonder, in war, can any innocent captive live or die only to themselves? I don\u2019t think so, not when our enemy is so fluent in the language of symbolism and imagery.<\/p>\n I am wondering whether these Islamofascists have ever considered that by forcing a conversion, by forcing someone to speak the names of Allah and Muhammed with lying hearts,<\/em> they (the Islamofascists) themselves are precipitating a most sinful blasphemy, by their own lights. But that\u2019s perhaps a topic for another column.<\/p>\n Martyrdom is not about justice \u2013 it is not about reasonable death. It is about exactly the opposite \u2013 it is about facing down what is completely unreasonable and unjust and offering oneself to the cause of what is just \u2013 is reasonable. And yes, there is victory in it \u2013 but belonging, as it does, to the realm of the Supernatural, that victory is not always obvious and clear. But we all know that simply because a thing is not obvious does not mean it is untrue. The Carmelites of Compiegne and Takashi Nagai knew that.<\/p>\n Am I urging the West toward martyrdom, here? No, I am not urging<\/em> it. But I am suggesting throughout history, martyrs have spilled blood and it has made a difference. I am suggesting that down the line some may well be called to martyrdom, and we might be wise to anticipate it and understand its use. I am suggesting that when one is caught in a fight between darkness and light \u2013 a fight that is more super than natural \u2013 such blood might well be required. It always has been, before.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n TINA BROWN; OUR LADY OF THE AIR KISS<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n I don\u2019t know when I have read a snottier, snobbier, more relentlessly superficial, arrogant and bigoted piece of dreck than Tina Brown\u2019s latest column in the Washington Post, Reverence Gone Up In Smoke<\/a>.<\/p>\n Sigh\u2026what a disappointment for Tina and her pals. Amid all of that glorious color and pomp of a papal funeral and a conclave, the solemn beauty of the chant \u2013 the whole mystical and mysterious sense of Other \u2013 they\u2019d become attracted<\/em>, mildly so, but attracted,<\/em> nevertheless, to the whole \u201creligion thing\u201d. They\u2019d admired the surface of the Lake of Faith, but, sniff<\/em>, they\u2019re much, much too smart to actually partake of the water<\/em> without the right sort of lifeguard<\/em>, darling, you know, one who looks good and tells us we are all holy and lovely and fine and let\u2019s us go on our merry way<\/em>. A lifeguard who will perhaps even join us at all those luncheons and dinner parties, darling, all those too-too tony gatherings, all the witty repartee, all the sweet and haughty laughter we may indulge in as we ridicule those who do not understand or appreciate our lovely educations, our lovely clothing, our lovely hairstyles, our lovely \u2013 so very lovely \u2013 things<\/em>.<\/p>\n There is a lot going on in Brown\u2019s column \u2013 an admission that for the folks on the left the papal election meant nothing more than yet another political defeat. Just as they had deluded themselves on election day (a day on which Kerry\u2019s own pollster predicted a loss by 3% points) to believe that a man who had never actually led the presidential race, who had offered neither real ideas or real military documentation, was definitely going to win the White House back for them, this time they had decided to believe that somehow the \u201cwinner\u201d of the papal elections would be \u201csome youthful cardinal we hadn\u2019t even heard of yet, some charismatic dark horse whom the joyful crowds, so many of them young, would immediately recognize as their own.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Well\u2026actually\u2026NEWSFLASH, TINA<\/em>\u2026the man who emerged from the balcony was <\/em>recognised, quite joyously, by the very youthful crowd in St. Peter\u2019s Square, as \u201cone of their own.\u201d Those young adults, after boisterous cheering, began their first elated chant: Ben-e-dict-o, Ben-e-dict-o<\/em>.<\/p>\n They get it, the young Catholics. And you and your friends, who seem not to understand what was truly taking place in the Sistine Chapel, or what the papacy means \u2013 or what, for that matter, Christianity means \u2013 do not. To you, it\u2019s all a great big Church of NO <\/em>that won\u2019t let you just do what you want and pet you and say, \u201cwhy, how clever and wonderful you are, dear, here, have a cookie! But not two! Mustn\u2019t get fat now, because otherwise no one will ever love you or think you are a good person\u2026be like the Italians! They<\/em> are not fat!\u201d<\/p>\n I am a little puzzled as to why, exactly, you and your friends feel this poisonous need to go rather overboard in your bigoted nose-wrinkling. I mean, yes, I DO understand to a point. You and your whole generation have had a difficult time moving from childhood of \u201cgimmee what I want\u2026\u201d to the adulthood of \u201ctake what you need\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n How you must have truly hated to hear Cardinal Ratzinger, a day before he became Benedict XVI utter those terribly divisive <\/em>words: We should not remain infants in faith, in a state of minority. And what does it mean to be an infant in faith? Saint Paul answers: it means \u201ctossed by waves and swept along by every wind of teaching arising from human trickery\u201d (Eph 4, 14)<\/em><\/p>\n No. You could not have liked hearing that, beholden as you are to the age in all of its furious fashion and requirement to conformity. So, I DO understand, to a point, why you need to do the \u201csniff and giggle, mock those unsophisticated Christians\u201d thing. It\u2019s hard to break those habits from high school.<\/p>\n But, you know, you do have your own church, so I don\u2019t really know why you have to be so concerned about anyone else\u2019s. You have what Flip Wilson used to call \u201cThe Church of What\u2019s Happening NOW.\u201d The Church of Me First. The Church of Cackling Condescension, The Church of Blithe Nobility: I wrote a check, darling, to each of the \u201cright\u201d causes. You don\u2019t expect me to actually go down into that smelly soup kitchen and dish out hash to those people, do you? <\/em><\/p>\n Not all of your friends are like that of course. Some of them do fund raising for charities and the arts, and hospitals and museums, which is very nice \u2013 although very often the fund-raisers net very little after expenses, still it\u2019s something. And some of your friends do make a point of only flying in private jets which are already heading their way, to \u2013 you know \u2013 conserve energy<\/em>. And some of them step into limos only after they\u2019ve pressed a buck into someone\u2019s hand and congratulated them for keeping it real<\/em>. Sometimes, they even make a \u201cblack power\u201d fist after they do it, even if the bum they\u2019ve treated to coffee is not black.<\/p>\n It\u2019s part of the liturgy of your church, I believe. All those gestures. All that pretty ritual.<\/p>\n What I do think is so funny is that you spend so much time huffing and puffing about how the Christians are trying so hard to suppress, and to close down. And you do not see for a second that you, and all of your co-religionists are the leading proponents of silencing others (I don\u2019t remember it being the religious folk who came after Larry Summers or Jada Pinkett Smith<\/a> because they dared to speak at Harvard Temple in the vernacular<\/em> of plain speech, rather than in the exalted language of political correctness. I don\u2019t recall the religious folk attempting to get the medical records of actors or artists who dealt with addiction to pain killers, or more.)<\/p>\n
\nOriginally posted September 5, 2006<\/em><\/p>\n
\nOriginally published April 22, 2005<\/em><\/p>\n