Scott Richert has continued the discussion about Richard Dawkins’ recent attack on the Catholic Church for its outreach to disaffected Anglicans.  Of particular importance is Scott’s second piece, which argues that Dawkins’ target is Aristotle as well as Christ.  For those who are interested, Scott’s first piece may be found here and his second piece may be found here.

In response to Richard, I did not mean to suggest that England’s Anglican past makes the English particularly susceptible to atheism.  I meant to suggest that such English atheists as Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Philip Pullman exhibit more hostility to Catholicism than they do to other faiths in part because of their English background.  This greater hostility is palpable, and is clearly shown by Dawkins’ latest outburst, which both condemns “Pope Ratzinger” and claims that the “Archbishop of Canterbury” exhibits a “saintly quality,” “a benignity of countenance,” and a “well-meaing sincerity.”

I also think that the rise of men like Dawkins is in part responsible for the decline of Britain, and I make that argument at length in the October 2009 issue of Chronicles.  The reason I make that argument is not Anglophobia, but because “We Americans, who owe so much to Britain and are more like the British than any other people in Europe, ignore at our peril the problems Britain is encountering from effectively abandoning Christianity and the rest of her heritage.”

Yes, Dawkins is not a buffoon as a scientist, but he seems to be doing little science these days, preferring instead to sound like Lord George Gordon on the eve of London’s No Popery Riot.  An analogue is Linus Pauling, a brilliant scientist who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, but who was also a moral and political cretin and a pro-Soviet agitator.  National Review properly treated Pauling with disdain, because of his moral and political idiocy.  As for me, I intend to give Dawkins the same level of respect he accords Pope Benedict XVI.

In a letter to one of his sons,  J.R. R. Tolkien, a convert to Catholicism, wrote, “hatred of Our Church is after all the only real foundation of the C[hurch] of E[ngland]—so deep laid that it remains when all the superstructure seems removed.”  So deep laid is the hatred detected by Tolkien that it remains even after all shreds of Anglican belief have vanished, as shown by the atheist Richard Dawkins’ anti-Catholic tirade occasioned by the recent effort by the Roman Catholic Church to create a structure within Catholicism for Anglicans disaffected by their church’s increasing liberalism.  Dawkins also reveals himself to be a very pedestrian leftist in his thinking, railing against the Catholic Church and the disaffected Anglicans for their “misogyny” and “homophobic bigotry.”  It tells you all you need to know about contemporary Britain, the land of soccer hooliganism and public drunkenness, of Sir Mick Jagger and Sir Elton John, that Dawkins is considered its leading thinker.

UPDATE:  I have heard from an Anglican reader, who objected to my use of the Tolkien quote in the context of Dawkins who, after all, is no longer an Anglican.  Upon reflection, I think it is a fair point.  I would also note my own high regard for many Anglicans, including C S Lewis and John Mason Neale, who translated into English several of my favorite hymns.  Indeed, the structure for disaffected Anglicans that Dawkins is objecting to recognizes the value in the Anglican tradition, since it envisions a liturgy based on Anglican tradition.  Still, I find it striking that so many of the new atheists are both English and palpably more hostile to Catholicism than to other religions.  Something atavistic is at work there, and Dawkins’ anti-Catholic tirade which both damns Pope Benedict XVI (“Pope Ratzinger” to Dawkins) and praises the Archbishop of Canterbury is a prime example of it.

Steve Sailer has a trenchant critique of the latest nonsense from the biggest peddler of conventional “wisdom” at the New York Times, Tom Friedman, who has long argued that education can prevent Americans from being harmed by globalization.  Except Friedman now tells us that education alone is not enough, since even well-educated Americans are being harmed economically by globalization.  In addition to traditonal academic skills, all of us also need to learn how to sell ourselves, to be “rainmakers” in law firm parlance.  Sailer’s entire takedown of Friedman is well worth reading, but here is the heart of Sailer’s critique:

Okay, so our schools have to not only teach the times tables, they have to teach salesmanship and entrepreneurship. Hmmhmm, my impression from watching The Wire was that our public schools were already turning out more than enough crack salesmen but not enough kids who were good at arithmetic.

You know, this is almost enough to make you wonder if globalization isn’t all that Tom Friedman has cracked it up to be.

I kind of have the impression that quite a few Americans, like, maybe, two or three hundred million of them, don’t possess either the IQs or the personalities to be rainmakers. Are they permanently obsolete in the world that Friedman has been such an energetic cheerleader for?

Since Steve Sailer has had two recent pieces at Takimag focusing on football, I feel emboldened to write on the topic as well.  As of now, Notre Dame quarterback Jimmy Clausen should be the frontrunner for the Heisman Trophy.  He is certainly the best college quarterback in the country right now.  These are his cumulative statistics:  124 completions out of 191 pass attempts, with 14 touchdown passes and only 2 interceptions, with a passer efficiency rating of 166.4 and an average of 300.7 passing yards per game.  And since the second quarter of the Michigan State game, he has been doing this with turf toe, which has noticeably hobbled him at times and caused him to sit out for over a quarter against Purdue.

This past weekend, Clausen went up against USC’s pass defense, the best in the country, which had not given up a passing touchdown before playing Clausen.  As you may have heard, USC won, 34-27.  But Clausen threw for two TD passes and ran for one more, and would have had a third if his intended receiver hadn’t slipped on the final play of the game.  And one of these passes was just extraordinary, a 55 yard pass into double coverage that could not have been more on target.  You can see that pass here, at 2:42 minutes in.  (You can also see the catch on the final drive that I thought was a touchdown, even though the refs disagreed, at 5:28 minutes in).  USC never intercepted Clausen, who didn’t throw a pass the Trojans had a shot of picking off all day.  In fact, Clausen has become an excellent decisionmaker this season, rarely throwing a bad pass.  And how have some of Clausen’s Heisman competitors fared against top defenses?  Tim Tebow’s Florida Gators scored only 13 points against LSU and Colt McCoy’s Texas Longhorns put up just 16 points against Oklahoma, with Tebow and McCoy each having one touchdown and one interception.  Florida and LSU won those games because their defenses are better than Notre Dame’s, not because their quarterbacks are better.

Of course, it’s possible that Clausen’s performance will fall off, and Barack Obama is likely to win the Heisman anyway.  But if the Heisman were handed out today, Clausen should win it.

In February, I wrote about the impending canonization of Father Damien of Molokai, one of Hawaii’s two representatives in Statuary Hall.  Father Damien’s canonization will take place Sunday in St. Peter’s piazza, and will be televised live, beginning at 4:00 AM EDT, by EWTN.  For those who are interested, a good way to prepare might be to read Robert Louis Stevenson’s brilliant defense of the Flemish missionary, and to watch the royal welcome Damien received when his remains were returned to Antwerp in 1936. 

Comes news this morning that our beloved President has at last won the Nobel Peace Prize.  We can all be glad that the Nobel committee overcame the stark racism that denied Obama the Nobel Prize for Literature for Dreams from My Father and The Audacity of Hope.  I suspect that racism has also been behind the denial of the Nobel Prizes for Economics, Physics, Chemistry, and Medicine to Obama, whose accomplishments in those fields very nearly equal what he has accomplished so far in the Presidency.  We can only hope that we make contact with extraterrestrials before Obama leaves the White House, so that other worlds will be able to join ours in giving Obama the honors he so obviously deserves.

It is hard to tell which part of Christopher Lyons’ ode to Odin is more preposterous, the assertion that Christianity is the cause of Western malaise or the hope that the return of sacred holly groves and a belief in wood sprites will reverse the decline.  The multicultural mania that has gripped much of the West is not the result of Christianity but of modernity.  Indeed, this mania did not arise until belief in Christianity had waned, and it has its historical origin in the Enlightenment.  One of the weapons French philosophes used in their attack on Christianity was praise for the manners and morals of non-Christian cultures, the same sort of praise today’s multiculturalists use as a weapon in their attack on the heritage of the West, including Christianity.

Indeed, as a practical matter, there is a strong correlation between worshipping the God-Man Lyons dismisses as a “pauper” and conservatism, while those most devoted to advancing multiculturalism tend to be contemptuous of Christianity.  What is more, those attracted to drumming circles and dressing as druids and other contemporary manifestations of neo-paganism tend to be the dopiest leftists there are.  It is true that many Christian clergy seem to confuse liberalism with the Gospel, but liberalism is as fatal to Christianity as it is to anything else:  liberal congregations are dying and more conservative ones are thriving.  It is also hard to see why someone who wants a “spirited and life-affirming” faith is attracted to paganism.  What the pagan opponents of Christianity have in common, from Julian the Apostate to Charlemagne’s foes, is this:  they were defeated by Christianity.  I doubt that Lyons would argue that defeat is “spirited and life-affirming.”

Nor is there any contradiction between a belief in “an afterlife, universal charity, and turning the other cheek” and the sort of medieval Christianity that Lyons seems at least willing to tolerate.  Francis of Assisi—who renounced all his possessions, married Lady Poverty, and welcomed Sister Death—was one of the towering figures of the Middle Ages, revered by nobles and peasants alike. 

The central point remains the one made by Hilaire Belloc:  The Faith is Europe and Europe is the Faith.  The truth of these words is more apparent now than when Belloc wrote them, since we have all around us evidence of what decline in Christian belief brings, not civilizational vitality but decadence, decay, and self-doubt.

A related point:  as someone who has been writing about the War against Christmas since 2001, I was particularly taken aback to see Lyons’ mouthing the multiculturalist talking point that the celebration of Christmas is really a pagan celebration.  It is not.  There is good reason to believe that the date for Christmas was chosen because the early Christians believed Christ was crucified on March 25, and they also accepted the Jewish belief that great prophets died on the date they were conceived.  Hence Christmas on December 25.  But even if December 25 was chosen as the date for Christmas to supplant now defunct pagan celebrations, that does not mean that Christmas is a pagan celebration, as anyone who has ever listened to Christmas carols or seen a creche should be able to discern. 

On this date, 438 years ago, the fleet of the Holy League, led by Don John of Austria, crushed the Turks at Lepanto, an event marked on the calendar of the Catholic Church as the Feast of Our Lady of the Holy Rosary.  (Don John had a rosary distributed to each man in his fleet before the battle, and Pius V was praying the rosary during the battle.)  Lepanto was also commemorated by G. K. Chesterton, who wrote a poem inspired by the battle while he was still an Anglican.  It is one of many signs of the impoverishment of our culture that we no longer seem capable of producing poetry like this.  Chesterton’s great tribute to the valor of Christian men at arms may be found here.  Enjoy.

Two very different newspaper pieces caught my eye yesterday.  One, in the New York Times, told the story of Simmons, the mattress manufacturer that is about to file for bankruptcy, after years of being saddled with debt and drained of cash by its private equity firm owners, who have walked away from their disastrous mismanagement of Simmons with millions of dollars for themselves.  The financial sector used to assist the manufacturing sector in this country.  Now, it seems to assist only itself.

The other was an op-ed in the Washington Times, and detailed absurd federal prosecutions of people who had committed acts that have become criminal only because of the expansion of federal criminal law, which now guards us against such dangers as failing to fill out all the forms for importing orchids or failing to put a federally mandated sticker on a UPS package.  A Congress intent on helping the country would spend more time repealing laws than enacting them.

The connection between the stories is this:  in many ways, we have become a society that rewards people who don’t deserve to be rewarded and punishes people who don’t deserve to be punished.