The 25 Random Things Michael Steel and the New GOP Leadership Should Know…

Thank you to Chrys, who frequently offers his insights here. He emailed me this morning an interesting post by Hugh Hweitt over at Townhall.com. While the post, “The 25 Random Things Michael Steel and the New GOP Leadership Should Know,” as Chrys said is “meant to address political concerns, it seems to me that there is a good deal of insight here that would apply to the Church, as well – or at least specific ministries and/or projects within the Church.”

I agree with Chrys and I would invite your own thoughts and comments as well.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

p.s., If anyone else has something you think worth including here, please drop me an email!

+FrG

25 Random Things Michael Steel and the New GOP Leadership Should Know

1. Creating messages that move people to action begins with an understanding of the people you want to move.

2. You cannot control the message. You can only tell your side, and hope to influence the general consensus.

3. Popular culture is, far and away, more powerful than political rhetoric.

4. Popular culture can be created. But only with success by those who understand its nature. And even then, it is equal parts art, science, and chance.

5. People no longer interact with products (or causes) on the basis of top-down information. Communication is omnidirectional, and the world is flat.

6. You can\’t force anyone to listen. You can only work hard to get them to like and trust you. When they do that, they begin to listen, but only on their own terms.

7. They don’t just listen. They talk, too. Which means you must listen, if you want to keep interacting with them.

8. Playing catch-up in the digital world is difficult. And because the digital world changes every minute, it\’s a perpetual process.

9. Naive misuse of social media is exactly the same as ignorant misbehavior in real-life social settings, and it comes with the same consequences.

10. Social media is a real-life social setting.

11. There is no on-line and off-line anymore. It’s all connected. If you don’t understand it all, you don’t understand it at all.

12. Successful creation of an online communications campaign depends more on the creativity of the campaign than the technology. It’s the same as traditional communication. You don’t think “That’s a great billboard,” because of where the billboard is, or how it’s constructed. You think “That’s a great billboard,” because of the idea and execution.

13. Technology is a tool – a delivery mechanism. In the hands of a technologist, it’s an efficient machine. In the hands of an artist, it\’s a powerful canvas. Lots of people understand the internet. Very few people can create a movement on it.

14. People don’t interact with websites or Twitter, or Facebook. People interact with people. They use those things to help them do it.

15. People don’t act on need. People act on want.

16. Public service is noble. But politics is a business. You’re selling a product. The product is an idea or a candidate. Marketed properly, any product will sell. A good product will sell more. A bad product will not see many repeat customers.

17. You need to understand technology. But more than that, you need to understand the market. Because technology has created a vast cultural shift in that market. Just learning the technology won’t teach you the shift.

18. Embracing the wishes of everyone, and crafting a message by consensus, guarantees mediocrity.

19. Before you take a message public, run it by your 16-year-old daughter. Not because she won’t understand, and you might need to dumb it down for the masses — but because she’s smarter and cooler than you, and you might need to listen to her suggestions.

20. Richard Nixon lost to the “first TV President.” But it wasn’t TV that did it. Kennedy presented a better image than Nixon in real life, too. Nixon lost to well-crafted (for its day) pop culture in the form of a candidate. And because he had no understanding of that, he had no real defense.

21. John McCain. See item 20.

22. It is a popularity contest.

23. Item 22 is unfortunate, and shouldn’t be, and everything you’re thinking. But it is what is, and you can’t change that. The only option is to win the popularity contest with someone who also embodies and embraces the ideals we believe in.

24. This list is just the beginning of the things you should know. It, like the communications landscape, will change in about an hour.

25. You should know why this list is written and titled the way it is. If you don’t, ask your 16-year-old daughter.

Unless noted otherwise, everything posted here is © 2009 Gregory R Jensen.

Steelers Opera

Carnegie Mellon School of Music students sing the “Steelers Opera” by associate professor of voice Douglas Ahlstedt. Based on the Toreador song from “Carmen.”

Song can be downloaded for free on iTunes: Steelers Opera.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

Unless noted otherwise, everything posted here is © 2009 Gregory R Jensen.

Eugenics Are Now On the Table

Whatever else may be said in favor of the new administration, the willingness to embrace eugenics is an unspeakable evil. But this is where I think we have come to–we now propose abortion as a means of cutting the budget.

Gary Graham in a recent post on Big Hollywood has this to say:

Nancy Pelosi tells us yesterday that ‘family planning’ is now a fiscal responsibility to ‘reduce costs.’ Her defenders will say that NO, she’s talking about condoms and sex education. But anyone with a mind who’s been around for a while knows that ‘family planning’ is code for abortion. She is asking for 200 million dollars for Family Planning Services to ‘expand the economy.’ These are taxpayer dollars, dontcha know. Your money. She says states are in terrible fiscal crisis and it’s ‘part of what we do for childrens’ health and education’…” I’m trying to figure out how ripping an unborn child from it’s womb is aiding in it’s health or education, but maybe I’m missing something here.

How have we found ourselve here?

Speaking about his own youth and support of liberal abortion laws, Graham says that “I was only concerned about my selfish convenience of the day. But I didn’t want to know, I didn’t want to think about it. It was inconvenient to think about it.”

He concludes by observing the irony “that the ‘Love’ Generation should spawn such a culturally accepted abomination as abortion.”

Compare this with the words of His Beatitude Metropolitan at the recent Life for March in Washington, DC:

To read more of Graham’s thoughts on abortion, click here: Flashpoint! A Woman’s Right To Choose.

May God have mercy on us for what we have done.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

Unless noted otherwise, everything posted here is © 2009 Gregory R Jensen.

RT: News : Russia welcomes Kirill as new head of Orthodox Church

Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad has been elected the new head of the Russian Orthodox Church. The Council, which comprised clergymen, monks and laymen, announced on Tuesday the results of the voting for the post of Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia.

Kirill has been temporarily in charge of the church since the death in December of Aleksy the Second.

Kirill had previously been head of the external church relations department. He also hosted a TV programme popular among Russian believers and viewed on one of Russia’s main television channels.

Kirill was an active supporter of the reunification between the two branches of the Russian Orthodox Church, which was completed in May 2007.

Metropolitan Kirill was born in St. Petersburg and is believed to be on friendly terms with many of Russia’s top officials. He has, himself, become a prominent personality throughout the country.

Originally, three Metropolitans – Kirill, Kliment and Filaret – had been short-listed by the Archbishop Council as potential successors to Aleksy II, who died last month. They were elected by secret ballot on Sunday from 145 potential candidates. Filaret later withdrew from the race in favour of Kirill.

For the first time, international candidates were eligible to stand. Patriarchs from Ukraine, Moldova and Germany were in the Russian capital for the voting.

Unless noted otherwise, everything posted here is © 2009 Gregory R Jensen.

On the Cross

Where can the weak find a place of firm security and peace, except in the wounds of the Savior? Indeed, the more secure is my place there the more he can do to help me. The world rages, the flesh is heavy, and the devil lays his snares, but I do not fall, for my feet are planted on firm rock. I may have sinned gravely. My conscience would be distressed, but it would not be in turmoil, for I would recall the wounds of the the Lord: He was wounded for our iniquities. What sin is there so deadly that it cannot be pardoned by the death of Christ? And so if I bear in mind this strong, effective remedy, I can never again be terrified by the malignancy of sin.

Surely the man who said: My sin is too great to merit pardon, was wrong. He was speaking as though he were not a member of Christ and had no share in his merits, so that he could claim them as his own, as a member of the body can claim what belongs to the head. As for me, what can I appropriate that I lack from the heart of the Lord who abounds in mercy? They pierced his hands and feet and opened his side with a spear. Through the openings of these wounds I may drink honey from the rock and oil from the hardest stone: that is, I may taste and see that the Lord is sweet.

He was thinking thoughts of peace, and I did not know it, for who knows the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor? But the piercing nail has become a key to unlock the door, that I may see the good will of the Lord. And what can I see as I look through the hole? Both the nail and the wound cry out that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself. The sword pierced his soul and came close to his heart, so that he might be able to feel compassion for me in my weaknesses.

Through these sacred wounds we can see the secret of his heart, the great mystery of love, the sincerity of his mercy with which he visited us from on high. Where have your love, your mercy, your compassion shone out more luminously that in your wounds, sweet, gentle Lord of mercy? More mercy than this no one has than that he lay down his life for those who are doomed to death.

My merit comes from his mercy; for I do not lack merit so long as he does not lack pity. And if the Lord\’s mercies are many, then I am rich in merits. For even if I am aware of many sins, what does it matter? Where sin abounded grace has overflowed. And if the Lord\’s mercies are from all ages for ever, I too will sing of the mercies of the Lord for ever. Will I not sing of my own righteousness? No, Lord, I shall be mindful only of your justice. Yet that too is my own; for God has made you my righteousness.

Saint Bernard, Sermons on the Canticle

h/t: TS Broken Alabaster

Unless noted otherwise, everything posted here is © 2009 Gregory R Jensen.

The Pop Rocks Steelers Song

Go Steelers!

Unless noted otherwise, everything posted here is © 2009 Gregory R Jensen.

A New Catholic/Evangelical Site of Note

A new web site, Moralaccountability.com has been started. In their own words, the mission of the site is as follows:

In the course of the 2008 presidential campaign, a small group of Catholic and Evangelical Protestant intellectuals and activists, while saying that they personally support legal protection for the unborn and oppose the redefinition of marriage, promoted the candidacy of Barack Obama, who made no secret of his intention to wipe out the entire range of laws restricting or discouraging abortion and embryo-destructive research, or of his opposition to all state and federal initiatives (such as California Proposition 8 and the federal Defense of Marriage Act) to preserve marriage as the union of a man and a woman. These men and women assured their fellow Christians and other social conservatives that Obama’s economic policies would reduce the incidence of abortion, and they promised that Obama was being honest when he said that he was opposed to “same-sex marriage.”

To the list of Catholic and Evangelical supporters of Mr Obama, we must add any number of Orthodox Christians who expressed their support for his election bid. While I do not doubt they sincerity of those who supported then candidate Obama, I am grieved at the outcome of their support.

While as a citizen and a social scientist I have my doubts about President Obama‘s economic policies, those are prudential matter over which we can disagree. They are also matters that are (strictly speaking) outside my area of responsibility as a priest since they do not touch directly on the moral teaching of the Church.

But public policy that favors abortion and same-sex marriage run contrary not only to the Gospel but also natural law and human nature and on this matter the Orthodox Christians and the Church as a whole cannot remain silent. It is my hope that those in the Church who supported Mr Obama would use some of the good will that support earned them to encourage policies more in keeping with the moral law.

You can read the rest of the letter by Robert P. George here: Moral Accountability: An Open Letter.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

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Unless noted otherwise, everything posted here is © 2009 Gregory R Jensen.

New Podcast on Ancient Faith Radio

My friend Steve Robinson has begun a 10- 15 minute weekly solo podcast on Ancient Faith Radio.  (Together with Bill Gould, Steve is the co-host of “Our Life in Christ,” also on Ancient Faith Radio) The first two programs are available now at “Steve the Builder: A layman’s view of living the Orthodox Christian Faith.”  New podcasts will be posted every Friday morning. Why not surf over and have a listen?

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

Unless noted otherwise, everything posted here is © 2009 Gregory R Jensen.

Forgiveness and our Civil Life

As I asked in my last post, how do we move beyond a life of civil engagement informed by resentment? The recently Archpastoral Message of His Beatitude, Metropolitan Jonah for Sanctity of Life Sunday offers us the beginning of an answer. His Beatitude writes:

Our life as human beings is not given to us to live autonomously and independently. This, however, is the great temptation: to deny our personhood, by the depersonalization of those around us, seeing them only as objects that are useful and give us pleasure, or are obstacles to be removed or overcome. This is the essence of our fallenness, our brokenness. With this comes the denial of God, and loss of spiritual consciousness. It has resulted in profound alienation and loneliness, a society plummeting into the abyss of nihilism and despair. There can be no sanctity of life when nothing is sacred, nothing is holy. Nor can there be any respect for persons in a society that accepts only autonomous individualism: there can be no love, only selfish gratification. This, of course, is delusion. We are mutually interdependent.

Rooted as it is in pride and self-aggrandizement, is a symptom of my fallenness, of my futile and self-defeating attempts to live a life of radical autonomy and independence (what Robert Bellah somewhat more precisely calls “ontological individualism”). When I reduce my neighbor to the harm he has done me I also reduce myself to the harm that I have suffered. Resentment is a false ontology by which I only disallow my neighbor to be anything other than my enemy and myself to be anything other than a victim.

Resentment, as with “All the sins against humanity, abortion, euthanasia, war, violence, and victimization of all kinds, are the results of depersonalization” Metropolitan Jonah argues. His Beatitude continues,

Whether it is “the unwanted pregnancy”, or worse, “the fetus” rather than “my son” or “my daughter;” whether it is “the enemy” rather than Joe or Harry (maybe Ahmed or Mohammed), the same depersonalization allows us to fulfill our own selfishness against the obstacle to my will. How many of our elderly, our parents and grandparents, live forgotten in isolation and loneliness? How many Afghan, Iraqi, Palestinian and American youths will we sacrifice to agonizing injuries and deaths for the sake of our political will? They are called “soldiers,” or “enemy combatants” or “civilian casualties” or any variety of other euphemisms to deny their personhood. But ask their parents or children! Pro-war is NOT pro-life! God weeps for our callousness.

Moving from the spiritual life to our life of civic engagement, I think it is important to understand that the absence of resentment, our own personal struggles against the evils of ontological individualism and the depersonalization of self and others are not policy decisions. They are rather a precondition for our virtuous involvement in the civil realm.

Let me go further, whether we are taking political leadership or a leadership role in the home, the work place, or the Church, all demand from me that I first confront my own bitterness and resentment. Only then are we able to find “forgiveness for those who have hurt us,” and live “free from the rage that binds us in despair.”Whether we are engaging the social world around us as a citizen, a worker, a parent or a minister of the Gospel of Christ, as Christians we know that our work must begin in repentance. “Repentance is not about beating ourselves up for our errors and feeling guilty; that is a sin in and of itself!” as Metropolitan Jonah remind us. Such an approach only engenders guilt and that “keeps us entombed in self-pity. All sin is some form of self-centeredness, selfishness.” Real repentance “is the transformation of our minds and hearts as we turn away from our sin, and turn to God, and to one another.”

Repentance means to forgive. Forgiveness does not mean to justify someone’s sin against us. When we resent and hold a grudge, we objectify the person who hurt us according to their action, and erect a barrier between us and them. And, we continue to beat ourselves up with their sin. To forgive means to overcome that barrier, and see that there is a person who, just like us, is hurt and broken, and to overlook the sin and embrace him or her in love. When we live in a state of repentance and reconciliation, we live in a communion of love, and overcome all the barriers that prevented us from fulfilling our own personhood.

Reflecting on what I’ve read these last few days about the new presidential administration I worry that whether or not people agree with the policy of the new president, there seems to be a noticeable absence of forgiveness. Both from the political left and right, even when I hear things that agree with the Gospel, I hear an echo of resentment, of old grudges and remembrances of past injustices committed against the speaker or his or her own cause.

While matters of public policy are important, they are secondary. I need to look first to my own heart and only then, in the measure of my own repentance and willingness to forgive those who have harmed me, proceed in the civil realm.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

Unless noted otherwise, everything posted here is © 2009 Gregory R Jensen.

Resentment and our Civic Life

Needless to say, the inauguration of Barak Obama as the 44^th president of the United States has generated a good amount of interest in both in the US and overseas. Some of what has been said or written about President Obama has been laudatory, other things less so.

Reading through the different viewpoints about our new president, it is difficult for me to escape the sense that—whatever else people think about the new administration—much of what is said is fueled by a sense of resentment.

In the spiritual life, and our civic life as well, resentment is a dangerous emotion to which to give in. This is especially the case when there is some justice, some truth, to our resentment.

The danger of resentment is that it parodies repentance, of the sober self-examination that is at the heart of the spiritual life. When I give in to resentment I see the fault as wholly in you, but not in myself. Resentment is a subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) form of self-aggrandizement. Or, in a word, pride.

St Maximos the Confessor, whose memory the Orthodox Church celebrates today, warns us that whatever we might think, resentment reflects not my neighbor’s failure, but my own. My neighbor’s fault, he says, is what I use “to justify the evil hatred” that has taken hold of me. The saint continues and tells his monastic readers:

even if you are held by resentment, persist in your praises, and then you will easily return to the same salutary love. Do not, because of your hidden resentment, adulterate your usual praise of your brother in your conversations with the other brethren, surreptitiously intermingling your words with [references to his] shortcomings and condemnation. Instead, make use of unmixed praise and genuinely pray for him, as if you were praying for yourself, and thus you will quickly be delivered from this destructive hatred.

In the context of his own work, Maximos is dealing with gossip and back biting in a monastic community not the life of a citizen in a democracy, much less the increasingly complex world of national and international affairs. Taking his different context into consideration, however, I think that the psychology that underlies St Maximos’s teaching is nevertheless applicable not only our spiritual lives, but also the civic realm as well.

Let me explain.

At its core, resentment is not the pain of caused by injustice. Rather, resentment is the unwillingness on my part to see you EXCEPT in terms of how you’ve hurt me. Not only that, whether the harm is great or small, real or imagined, resentment is also the unwillingness on my part to see myself in any terms other than in the lose I’ve suffered. The defining characteristic of resent then is the reduction of self and other to the harm done by a moral failure.

None of this is to say that the harm done me is (necessarily) insignificant or unreal. Nor do I mean to imply that the harm should simply be ignored or minimized. But to my resentful heart, the harm becomes if not the whole of the story, the one, indisputable and undeniable fact of my relation with my neighbor, with God and my self.

So what then shall we do? I will attempt an answer in my next post.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

Unless noted otherwise, everything posted here is © 2009 Gregory R Jensen.