Cash-for-amendments?

According to the Times, four Labour peers have been caught in an undercover operation offering to amend legislation in return for cash. This is of course highly disturbing and if these allegations are true I hope all four of them are expelled from the House at the very least. I'm not sure under what heading they might be guilty of a criminal offence; nobody was convicted the last time this happened, though both MPs involved retired in disgrace. I hope there's something, because I don't see what else you can do to a Lord other than kick him out. You can't even confiscate his pay, because he doesn't get any.

Also, one has to wonder about the names of those involved. The mental health of a Defence procurement minister called Moonie must be in question ('a dangerous and secretive cult', equally applicable to the Unification Church or the defence lobbyists' association). On the other hand, how can one not feel sorry for a Whip named Snape? His children must give him a terribly hard time.

"No, We Can't!"

I recently came across an article in the New York Times that surprised me - in the best of ways - by managing to combine a culture piece on "evangelicals," that curious and exotic breed, with some specific discussion of doctrine. Pastor Mark Driscoll and his "New Calvinists" may not be to everyone's taste, but they do depart radically from both mainstream happy-clappy evangelism and smells-and-bells High Church formality. The punks and rockers that make up Mark Driscoll's ministry embrace pre-destination, not the most palatable of doctrines to modern sensibilities, even as they scorn so much of the "feminized" over-the-top clean-living standards that characterizes the watchdog groups and Christian-rock concerts that make up what has become the religious right.

I'm not sure what I think of Driscoll. I'm instinctively put off by predestination, but it does make some philosophical sense, and for all my affinity for "smells and bells" it is nice to see a church that can combine populism with strict adherence to some form of doctrine - one cannot accuse the New Calvinists, at least, of hypocrisy.

But what I'm most curious about is not Driscoll himself, but his context. The article discusses a resurgence of Calvinism among American Christians. But it fails to answer the perhaps unanswerable: why? Why now? It seems like a conscious rejection of the human power of the will - that "can-do" attitude that makes up so much of American culture. Is it a discomfort with the Pelagian uber-humanism of American culture contrasted with the recession, where the American dreams of opportunity and self-improvement are dashed against the tragic inevitability of the system-at-large?

Perhaps, in recognizing the limits of human capacity, the New Calvinists are challenging 2008's optimistic mantra "Yes, we can."

No, they reply. "No we can't." At least not without grace.

Uni-Lateran Decisions?

We're back from the Christmas and New Year's holidays, having missed a great deal of affairs of international importance, and looking forward to all 2009 brings.

Something worrisome, however, has popped up in the Italian news section of the BBC. The Vatican has done something quite interesting and reversed the statutes of the Lateran Treaties - from now on, the Vatican - as a nation - will no longer automatically pass Italian law. What I find disturbing is not the Vatican's actions, however, but the sheer lack of coverage this is getting in the mainstream media (I myself only found it when specifically searching for Italian news.)

The implications of this are momentous. This is not only a subtle dig at the inefficiency of the Italian bureaucratic system, nor is this a sheer act of reactionary defensiveness against the possibility of Italy legalizing gay marriage or euthanasia, which the Vatican state would have been required to do as well under the old accords. Rather, this is the Vatican - the sovereign state, as opposed to the Church - asserting its political as well as ideological independence from Italy at large.

Does this herald the return of the Borgias or Medicis of powerful popes using their office for political purposes? Most unfortunately for aspiring Michelangelos and Raphaels, it does not. But it is a powerful act - one that asserts that the Vatican is more than the Church, it is a sovereign state in its own right, and one that is unafraid to challenge the status quo if need be. It requires discussion, debate. Sadly enough, the coverage of this story has been meager at best, and seems to be limited to a summary judgement that "the Church wants to prevent gay marriage."

This is so much more than that.