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Tuesday,
April 19, 2005
Habemus Papem. In interregnum in effect, at his age,
while the forces of liberalism, reform, change, destruction, and
preservation reconsider. Benedict XVI will carry on the work of his old
friend and predecessor, but as John Paul II's "enforcer" hs is not likely to
change his spots, so to speak, and make any changes in doctrine; or in
procedure for that matter. Nor to shift any major issues from doctrine to
tradition and procedure. That is: doctrine is fundamental,
part of The Faith Once Received, and cannot be changed. Procedure and
tradition are means of implementing and enforcing doctrines. Some highly
controversial matters are procedural: celibacy being one of them. St. Paul
says clearly that a bishop should be the husband of one wife. The Roman
practice is to have a celibate clergy, although the Eastern Rites clergy can
be married (but married can't become bishops). Literalists say that the
bishops must be married at appointment, and can only have been married once;
ultra literalists say that if a bishop's wife dies he has to give up the
post of bishop. I don't intend to settle any of this: I merely point out
that the issue is not an essential one to the Faith Once Received.
Abortion is a different matter. There is still the possibility of
interpretation: the Church once had the notion of "quickening," the point at
which an unborn becomes human (the concept still exists in many legal
systems: prior to a certain stage of development killing a pregnant woman
results in a charge of one murder, not two). However, the whole view of
"life" vs. "choice" has shifted, and while an absolute ban on abortion is
likely to remain as doctrine, it wasn't always. There is a similar situation
regarding contraception. While the ban on contraception is doctrine now, it
is conceivable (no pun intended) that it will become doctrinal in future.
None of this will happen in the reign of this pope. There may even be a
tightening of rules regarding homosexuals in seminaries. (There is no
doctrine against homosexual priests: celibacy is celibacy, and success in
resisting temptation is more important than the exact nature of the
temptation.) But given the recent scandals, there may be changes in rules.
There will also be new Cardinals. For the most part, though, we may expect a
few years (no more, the office is a killer) of continuation.
I say this, but of course I have no great power of insight, and predicting
the actions of the Holy See is a risky business. ========
Trade, Trade Deficits, Debtor vs. Creditor, and other
matters of Empire There is a lot of mail on trade
deficits. Note that trade deficits and moving from being a creditor to a
debtor nation are closely related concepts but they are not identical. For
example, my foreign royalties, while clearly bringing in foreign currency
for an American produced product, are not counted in figuring the balance of
trade, but monies owed me by foreign publishers are counted in the net
creditor/debtor calculations. At least so I have been told: it makes no
sense to me, but the concept of whether we, as a nation, are a creditor or a
debtor nation, seems both clear and important. Also, if we
don't make things, and we continue to consume things, we have to import
them; the imports have to be paid for; and if we aren't exporting enough
products (goods and services) we have to sell off assets (capital and
resources) or go into debt (give obligations against future goods, services,
or capital). The US won't go bankrupt and have a foreign government come in
and collect tariffs at the ports to pay off our foreign debts (as the US did
with some hemispheric nations: the Monroe Doctrine said other Great Powers
could not do that in our hemisphere, the Great Powers said "we want our
money", and logic took over, which is how the Navy and Marines came to be
the government of, for instance, the Dominican Republic). The
issue has brought in a lot of mail, and I'll be putting that up: I intend to
collect it into one section, rather than scatter it everywhere, so do watch
the Highlights at the top of the mail page. I will begin with
a link to yesterday's mail which
started the discussion of free trade. =================
And of course there's lots of interesting mail on other subjects. For those
new to this place, mail and comments are a big part of what we do...
And on the Mac scene, Tracy the Mac Expert sends this: As for
Apple, I don't know if you've seen this yet, but here's a list of the 200
new features included in Tiger, available the 29th:
http://www.apple.com/macosx/newfeatures/over200.html
=======
Essay: The Calvinist
Manifesto
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/13/books/review/013FUKUYA.html
By FRANCIS FUKUYAMA
THIS year is the 100th anniversary of the most
famous sociological tract ever written, ''The Protestant Ethic and the
Spirit of Capitalism,'' by Max Weber. It was a book that stood Karl Marx on
his head. Religion, according to Weber, was not an ideology produced by
economic interests (the ''opiate of the masses,'' as Marx had put it);
rather, it was what had made the modern capitalist world possible. In the
present decade, when cultures seem to be clashing and religion is frequently
blamed for the failures of modernization and democracy in the Muslim world,
Weber's book and ideas deserve a fresh look.
Weber's argument centered on ascetic
Protestantism. He said that the Calvinist doctrine of predestination led
believers to seek to demonstrate their elect status, which they did by
engaging in commerce and worldly accumulation. In this way, Protestantism
created a work ethic -- that is, the valuing of work for its own sake rather
than for its results -- and demolished the older Aristotelian-Roman Catholic
doctrine that one should acquire only as much wealth as one needed to live
well. In addition, Protestantism admonished its believers to behave morally
outside the boundaries of the family, which was crucial in creating a system
of social trust. <snip>
There's more. Worth reading. I recall my first discovery of
Max Weber, when I was an undergraduate at the University of Iowa -- the old
Iowa University that required a liberal arts background as well as a major;
where I had Philosophy of Science from Gustav Bergmann, Semantics from
Wendell Johnson and Sam Hayakawa, undergraduate physics from Van Allen,
history from George Mosse. A wonderful
institution. The old Core Course curriculum is now long gone; I was
fortunate to get there at just the right time, and not to need bonehead
English and math so I could go directly into the real course work in
literature and algebra. But that's another story. If you have
not read Max Weber's little book, do so. And I find there is
a
whole web page devoted to Weber, although I am not familiar with it. But
do read The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of
Capitalism.
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