Scott Bradford: Off on a Tangent

Immaculate Mary, Your Praises We Sing

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Today, the Church celebrates the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary. This is another of those inexplicable pinch-points between Catholics and Protestants, so let’s take a look at what we are really celebrating today and why.

The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception is one of those things that is very much misunderstood by many non-Catholics (and even by many Catholics). It is not the belief that Jesus was conceived in Mary’s virginal womb—that’s the doctrine of the Virgin Birth of Jesus Christ (it’s true, but it’s a different dogma). It’s also not some belief that Mary was conceived virginally like Jesus was; I’m not sure where that explanation comes from, but it’s completely false and yet depressingly common.

Mary was a human being—nothing more, nothing less. She had a mother and father who were married, had marital relations, and conceived her in the traditional way. Extra-Biblical writings from the early Church identify her parents as Anne and Joachim. The only thing that made Mary different was a grace (gift) from God: from the moment of her conception, she was protected from the stain of original sin. She was a pure vessel, spotless enough to carry God Himself in her womb.

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The Real Saint Nicholas

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As much fun as it is to imagine Santa Claus as a jolly old man at the north pole with a toy-building shop, we should try to keep in mind the real man—Saint Nicholas—who inspired much of the Santa Claus tradition. Today is the Feast of Saint Nicholas in most Catholic and Orthodox traditions (some celebrate it on the 19th of December instead), and thus today is a wonderful time to meditate on the real ‘Jolly Old Saint Nick.’

Nicholas is among the early Christian saints, those who lived and worked in a unified Christian church during its first millennium. He lived from AD 270 until AD 346—more than 500 years before the great schism between east and west and well-over 1,000 years before the Protestant reformation. As such, he is recognized (to varying degrees) by pretty much all extant Christian denominations that still believe in the ‘communion of saints’ as professed in the Apostles’ and Nicene creeds.

His full titles are “Bishop of Myra, Defender of Orthodoxy, Wonderworker, [and] Holy Hierarch,” and his patronage is of bakers and pawnbrokers (oddly enough). He was a Greek who rose to the rank of Bishop in the then-Greek city of Myra, which is now known as Kale or Demre and is part of Turkey. He would often secretly leave gifts of coins or goods for people to find, and there are many tales of his generosity. Among these are stories of his paying three womens’ dowries so that they might be permitted to marry, saving prisoners who had been condemned to death, and more. Apparently he wished to remain anonymous in his gift giving; he did not seek fame or thanks, but just wished to serve God by doing good for people in need.

These and other stories of Saint Nicholas’s deep faith and generosity evolved into the Dutch folk legend of a gift-giving ‘Sint Nikolaas’ or ‘Sinterklaas,’ which then evolved into the western myth of Santa Claus. Of course, the Santa story mysteriously moves the saint from Greece to the north pole, changes him from an early Christian saint into a timeless fairy-tale character, and tries to make him into some kind of secular giver instead of the devout servant of God that he really was. Go figure.

I hope you will take some time to meditate today on the real man, the Bishop of Myra, Defender of Orthodoxy, Wonderworker, and Holy Hierarch . . . not the folk hero, drained of all spiritual meaning, that Santa Claus has become.

“O God, who adorned the blessed Nicholas thy priest with innumerable miracles, grant to us, we beseech, that by his favors and prayers we be freed from the fires of hell. Through our Lord Jesus Christ thy Son, who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, O God, world without end. Amen.” – Sixteenth Century Prayer to Saint Nicholas

Speaking of Censorship . . .

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Well, speaking of censorship, I just have to comment on the ongoing Wikileaks bruhaha. In case you haven’t been following, Wikileaks—a well known media organization that seeks to obtain and disseminate secret information from governments, companies, etc.—obtained and published a large number of secret cables from the U.S. Department of State. This followed hot on the heels of other releases related to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Obviously this is a huge embarrassment for the U.S. government, and now, since releasing the files, Wikileaks has been on the receiving end of a concerted effort to shut the site down. It has been attacked with ‘denial of service’ attacks (possibly initiated by our government), it has been exiled from various hosting providers and DNS services (particularly those based in the U.S.), and many of our Congressmen are clamoring to ‘throw the book’ at Wikileaks and its founder, Julian Assange. Some are even calling for him to be charged with treason—a charge that could possibly result in the death penalty.

I don’t much like Assange, and I don’t have any particular affinity for Wikileaks as an organization either. I’m all for transparency in government but, having said that, there is a legitimate interest in keeping some things secret for national security reasons. I think that media outlets should use some discretion. But we must put blame where blame is due: Wikileaks is a media outlet, and the United States has a long and storied tradition of free press. Media outlets are protected under U.S. law from prosecution for publishing leaked information. In other words, Wikileaks may have done something immoral, but it has not done anything illegal. Even if it had, it is hosted in Switzerland and is therefore not subject to U.S. law anyway!

Crimes were committed here. The people who stole secret information and gave it to Wikileaks have mishandled classified information; that is a crime, and the culprits should be charged and prosecuted. There might even be an argument for charging the leakers with treason, although I think that’s probably overkill. But Wikileaks, like other outlets that published information from these leaks (like, say, the New York Times), is immune from prosecution under our well-established First Amendment media protections.

One final point: Internet providers like Amazon.com that have exiled Wikileaks from their servers have every right to do so, but the government has no right to coerce them to—which I am sure is what’s really going on behind the scenes. Bear in mind that over the last several months our government has engaged in unprecedented domain name seizures and web site shutdowns (under the flimsy guise of copyright enforcement). Amazon.com and others know that the government can pull the plug on them in a heart-beat without any kind of due process these days (‘change’ indeed). It is therefore unlikely that these providers will stand firm if/when a government agency, ahem, encourages them to kick something like Wikileaks off their server.

The views expressed in this entry are mine and mine alone. They do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer, Web.com.

Art, Offense, and Censorship

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It is shaping up to be a strange week. Yesterday, I praised President Barack Obama (D) for his proposal to freeze pay for federal workers. Today, I am going to criticize a group of conservative Catholics.

A video called ‘A Fire in My Belly’ by David Wojnarowicz was on display at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery as part of an installation featuring 105 works of American art and culture from over the last century. This video, about four minutes long, includes a sequence of ants crawling on a crucifix and other seemingly anti-religious images—potentially offensive, yes, but nothing outside of the modern-art mainstream. Watch it for yourself.

When William Donahue of the Catholic League found out about Wojnarowicz’s piece being on display at the National Portrait Gallery, he and the organization issued a breathless press release in protest. In response to the following criticism, the Smithsonian Institution removed the piece from its exhibit and now some members of Congress are calling for an investigation and/or removing federal support for the Smithsonian.

Speaking as a conservative Catholic myself, I can say that this is absolute absurdity. Wojnarowicz’s work was not created with federal funding, and it appeared in a museum that also displays plenty of religious art (including Catholic art). The ‘ants on a crucifix’ scene formed less than 5 percent of Wojnarowicz’s video, and the video made up less than 1 percent of the exhibit. I don’t have the numbers to back it up, but I’m reasonably certain that Catholic art makes up a higher percentage of the National Portrait Gallery’s collection than this tiny bit of supposed anti-Catholicism.

Yeah, sure, the ants on the crucifix were probably unnecessary, but I didn’t exactly feel attacked by it. The video didn’t really say . . . anything. It’s your standard, mediocre crap masquerading as high art. I found it more pretentious and meaningless than offensive.

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Federal Worker Pay-Freeze

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Lest I be accused of an anti-Obama bias . . . I applaud President Barack Obama’s (D) proposal to freeze federal workers’ salaries for the next two years.

Most private-sector workers in the United States have gone without pay raises for the last two years without any serious reduction in their tax burden, so it stands to reason that federal workers should also have to survive without raises. I don’t say this because I hate federal workers—heck, my sister and many of my closest friends are employed by the U.S. federal government—I simply don’t think federal workers should get raises when almost everybody else in the country has to do without. I don’t think Obama’s proposal goes far enough, however, to resolve the serious problems with the federal workforce that have gone unresolved through many Republican and Democratic presidential administrations.

I spent eight years of my life as a federal contractor (three years part-time and five full-time) with the Department of Treasury and civilian offices in the Department of Defense. I saw both extremes of the federal workforce. In my anecdotal experience, about 30 percent of federal workers are awesome, dedicated people who take their jobs very seriously and work very hard. They understand that they have taken on a public trust, and give their absolute best efforts in service of the taxpayers. The remaining 70 percent, however, ranged from mediocre to the worst ‘do-nothing’ stereotypes with-which federal workers are so often condemned. It was constantly disappointing to me as a contractor how pervasive poor performance was in the government workforce, and how poor performers were constantly auto-promoted into positions of more and more responsibility that they simply did not deserve.

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Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.