Benedict on a Ball

The ultra-right political views of the Lefebvrists were not unknown to church leaders who offered to lift the excommunication. Lefebvre had spoken despairingly of how the Allied liberation of France from the Nazis represented "the victory of Freemasonry against the Catholic order of [Vichy leader Marshal] Petain," and his movement had given sanctuary to the fugitive French collaborator Paul Touvier, who was arrested in the society's priory in Nice in 1989. Touvier was charged and convicted of ordering the assassination of seven Jews in Lyon in 1944 as well as other crimes against humanity. A priest of the order sat beside him during his trial as his spiritual advisor. Lefebvre supported the Front National Party of Jean-Marie Le Pen, claiming the support was based on Le Pen's opposition to abortion.

Ratzi, Ratzi, Ratzi...

Facebook is evil

So Benedict says. Because denying the Holocaust and raping deaf-mute children is not.

Celebrate the Birth of Your Debt Free Life

Enough said.

(Aunque yo pensaba que todos los seres humanos estaban en perpetua deuda con Cristo por dar su vida en la cruz. Igual me equivoco. Hmm...)

Evangelicalism grows a pair

Driscoll found his way into this tradition largely on his own. He recently earned a master’s degree through an independent-study program he arranged at a seminary in Portland, Ore. Years ago, paperback reprints of old Puritan treatises in the corner of a local bookstore piqued his interest in Reformation theology. He came to admire Martin Luther, the vulgar, beer-swilling theological rebel who sparked the Reformation. “I found him to be something of a mentor,” Driscoll says. “I didn’t have all the baggage he did. But you can see him with a quill in one hand and a drink in the other. He married a brewer and renegade nun. His story is kind of indie rock.”

Driscoll disdains the prohibitions of traditional evangelical Christianity. Taboos on alcohol, smoking, swearing and violent movies have done much to shape American Protestant culture — a culture that he has called the domain of “chicks and some chickified dudes with limp wrists.” Moreover, the Bible tells him that to seek salvation by self-righteous clean living is to behave like a Pharisee. Unlike fundamentalists who isolate themselves, creating “a separate culture where you live in a Christian cul-de-sac,” as one spiky-haired member named Andrew Pack puts it, Mars Hillians pride themselves on friendships with non-Christians. They tend to be cultural activists who play in rock bands and care about the arts, living out a long Reformed tradition that asserts Christ’s mandate over every corner of creation.

And so this blog starts 2009, full of Neocalvinist testosterone.