Intelligently Believing : The Fifth Gospel by Ian Caldwell

Photo: from KirkusReviews.com (which gave it a good review), at this website.

In America today, we are living through days that juxtapose intelligence versus blind faith. This book shows, as I also believe, that you can have blind faith without sacrificing intelligence. That you can believe and still think, and that you don't have to believe what someone tells you, but should instead read, think and believe for yourself. Having blind faith in someone like Jesus is fine; having blind faith in what someone tells you Jesus said and thought maybe is not. Why not read the Bible, think about it yourself, read about the Bible, think about that, and then read the Bible again? I did that, and still do. I don't know yet what I believe, but whatever it is, I assure you, it's mine, and not anyone else's. You're responsible for your beliefs, so they'd better be your own.

This book, blessedly, says that. Father Alex is a Gospel teacher, but not a blind believer. He's very religious, but doesn't believe everything--and for good reason. He reads and he thinks for himself, and his beliefs are stronger, and more pure, because of it.

A good lesson for us all. In politics, in religion, in everything.

Very well-written, intelligent and character-focused novel about a murder, an exhibit in Rome, and a "fifth gospel" that involves different branches of Christianity and the Shroud of Turin. There's a lot of biblical history here; never is it too much, or too heavy. There's a lot about the daily life of an Eastern Orthodox priest (who can marry and procreate) and his son in Rome. This man's brother, also an important priest, is accused of murder, and he still hasn't recovered from his wife's departure.

Despite the very good, but not over-long or overly-descriptive writing, and despite the biblical history, the Papal history, the Roman history, and the mystery itself, the crux of this book is actually the relationship between father and son. They need to survive together, which is difficult in itself, but also must survive the abandonment a wife, a mother, and, later, of a brother and of friends. All they have, it seems, is each other, and it's going to have to be enough. Yet he wants to teach his son to do what's right, including thinking for yourself amidst much theological noise. He also wants to live an authentic and honest life, and to teach his son to do the same.

We read some really good writing about these characters, about characterizations, about Rome, and a Catholic trial, and a lot of history that never bores or overwhelms. The mystery is not over when you think it is, and the characters ring true, as does the final end of this mystery.

It's told in first-person, present-tense, which is an interesting choice. Normally an author chooses this tense when he wants to keep the writing thrilling, with a you-are-there kind of feel. That's not necessary here, and isn't really accomplished, and it's not a failure. My guess is that Caldwell chose this tense to make the reader like he's walking in Rome, in this mystery, with Alex, the main character, and with his son. This is done as much for the local flavor and sightseeing, like the reader is walking with a travel guide through Rome, through the Sistine Chapel and St. Peter's, through the streets. It's a good choice, though I didn't realize it until the middle of the book and saw its effects.

This book took 10 years for Caldwell to write, and it apparently led to a lot of hardship, as he mentions in his acknowledgements. Ten years is a long time to follow up a monster best-seller (2004's The Rule of Four); this apparently upset his publisher at the time, and they apparently let him know it, probably by taking away an advance, or canceling a contract, or something like that. But he stuck with it, and his agent stuck with him--ironic, as the main theme of this book is faith, strength, integrity and abandonment. Art imitates life.

If you're interested in any of the things described above, read this book. It's not as esoteric as this genre often can be, and there's no judgement, and there's a fair share of intelligence and deep emotion--a hard balance. I didn't like The Rule of Four, but I took a chance on this. I'm glad I did.

The Lost Painting

Photo: The Taking of Christ, from its Wikipedia page

Jonathan Harr's The Lost Painting is a surprisingly fascinating book that chronicles how Caravaggio's The Taking of Christ was "found" in Ireland in 1990. It tackles the story from two ends: research student and assistant Francesca Cappelletti, in Italy, and Sergio Benedetti, a restorer who actually found the physical work in a Jesuit church, in Ireland. Roughly two-thirds is spent watching Cappelletti research Caravaggio and his paintings, from the hugeness of Rome to the tiniest archive in a small mountainside town on the other side of Italy. Her investigation for this missing Caravaggio (there are many others still missing) takes her to Dublin, Ireland, where it deadends at an auction house that had gone out of business--and had not left any paperwork. The last third is spent with Benedetti, who nobody seems to like (including Harr, who sounds maybe a little too opinionated about his nonfiction subjects), and his realization while looking up at a huge painting in a small Jesuit building. He also restores the painting--almost ruining it in the process.

This is a good read for many reasons. Like good Bourne or Bond movies, the locales, buildings, peoples and environments all take center stage. Italy, a very old country, is juxtaposed nicely between present-day and the early 1600s. (The differences aren't as many as you think.) The book also goes into Caravaggio's short and violent life; he was a genius known for his fighting, who put his favorite prostitutes in his paintings. He was very popular and well-paid in his lifetime, even though Church leaders, his best customers, rejected the work they'd paid him for. (They didn't approve of famous Bible characters made earthy, nor of Mary, Jesus's mother, being portrayed by the famous, well-paid prostitutes of his day.)

You'll learn things about the Italy of Shakespeare's day (1590s-early 1600s) that you didn't know you wanted to know. You'll learn about how masterpieces are bought, sold and evaluated. You'll learn about how paintings are restored, and about how easy it is to ruin or to lose a masterpiece worth tens of millions of dollars. Most importantly, you'll learn a lot about Caravaggio, his paintings, his life, his Italy. Whether I make it sound like it or not, this is very fascinating stuff that will leave you wanting to know more.

At a time when seven Ty Cobb T206s, with the super-rare Ty Cobb backs, were found together in a crumpled paper bag about to be thrown away, you will believe that a $30 million Caravaggio was found in a small, neglected ancient church in Ireland. And this book makes you think: What other rare treasures are out there, waiting to be found? And why can't I be the one to find it?

Kim Davis and Issuing Marriage Licenses

A few thoughts about Kim Davis:

1. She's being called a martyr by some, but I'm not so sure she is.  Why?  Well, she's obviously enjoying herself here, proud of her self-righteousness and her popularity.  I guarantee you that the second nobody cares about her situation anymore, she'll say okay and get out of there.

And, oh yeah--Martyrs don't typically enjoy their punishment as much as she clearly is.  Getting crucified, stoned to death, or hanged upside-down on a cross are not enjoyable experiences.

2. This is not about her religious beliefs.  It's about her.  In a narcissistic way.

3. And it's about her power.  Her mother issued marriage licenses for 37 years, and she was her deputy clerk for 27 of those years.  She's been issuing licenses herself for who knows how long, and her son has been her deputy clerk for years.  I'll bet she's thinking, Nobody...Nobody, not even a federal judge, can tell me who I have to marry.  In this way, it's not at all about religion.  It's about power.

4. Speaking of power, it's also about the power of judges--in the Supreme Court, and in other courts who have ruled on this--who don't like it when someone stands in front of them and tells them she is not going to follow their law.  No Supreme Court, or Superior Court, or any other type of judge will appreciate this.

5. Anyone notice that she looks like Carrie White's mother, minus the blonde hair?  Look at her eyes.

6. Someone find me the New Testament passage where Jesus says that marriage is only between a man and a woman.  What was Jesus's stance on this?  I don't know.  I guarantee you, Kim Davis doesn't, either.  Apparently, she's blipped on the passage where He says to do unto others as you would have them do unto you.  After all, she has been married four times.  And what about those who are without sin casting the first stone?

7. Speaking of that, I like how her husband has been taking her side on this from the comfort of his own home.  He's behind her, all right--way behind her.

8. It's very disconcerting to see almost every Republican candidate for President publicly siding with her on this.  I didn't expect them to suddenly be for the gay community, but I'm surprised they are all so openly and blissfully unaware of the democratic dictum of Separation of Church and State.

9. I would not vote for anyone who so clearly did not understand the importance of separating Church and State.  Our Founding Fathers--who were very, very religious men--still put democracy over their religion.  They did this for a reason: Because when Religion rules the State, history has shown us that we'd have something really, really bad.  Look at many news stories today in some parts of the world.

10. Her lawyer is clearly not giving her quality legal advice, and may be purposely throwing fuel on the fire, which lawyers are not supposed to do.  His law firm is a Christian firm, and only has Christian clients with Christian issues.  He's clearly espousing his own agenda here, and not giving his client good legal advice.  This is the man who compared this woman's jail stay to that of Martin Luther King's.

11. Some politicians, judges and lawyers are saying that she should be excluded from issuing these licenses because of her religious beliefs.  They are trying to pass legislation that would exempt someone from doing any part of their job that they say violates their religious beliefs.

This is, of course, impossible, and ridiculous, for many reasons.

a) You can't decide what part of a job you will do and won't do.  In this case, her public is her employer, and she therefore has to follow the law that governs her public.  As one of the men seeking a license said, he was a taxpayer who was paying her to oppress him.  That is obviously a violation of his    civil rights, and is obviously unconstitutional.

b) Can I say that every single aspect of my job violates my religious beliefs, and therefore I will not do them?  Can I say that the parts I mostly don't like violates my religious beliefs? Cuz if so, I'm doin' it.  And still getting my paycheck.

c) Where is the line for the term religious beliefs?  Can Creationists flat-out refuse to teach evolution at all, not even mentioning it as a theory?  What would atheists say?  How about people who don't want to work with--or serve--divorced people?

12. Does the phrase, "...the right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness" mean anything to anyone?  I mean, really, can anyone tell people that they can't get married?

13. Marriage comes with some good tax breaks, insurance benefits, and ability to inherit money and land from a loved one.  It is not constitutional to prohibit marriage to someone for this reason alone.

14. Beware of someone whose life revolves around one person or thing.  Her religion is not that one thing.  Her beliefs are.  It's important to understand this distinction.  Because of this, her happiness predominates, to the point that she does not consider the happiness of others relevant.

Like I said, Narcissism.

Did Jesus Exist? by Bart Ehrman

Remarkably easy-to-read and interesting account of the accumulated (by Ehrman and many others, but mostly by Ehrman, who self-refers almost to the point of annoyance) evidence of the actual, historical existence of Jesus of Nazareth. This stuff is usually very dense, very academic, and a real snooze if written badly.  But Ehrman--an intelligent person, versified in ancient Aramaic, Hebrew, Greek, and an acknowledged (and, truth be told, self-acknowledged) expert in ancient Christianity and Judaism, and a distinguished, award-winning professor, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Department of Religious Studies--is also a gifted writer.  He has written over twenty-five books, including five NYT bestsellers.  His gift is that his prose sounds like he's talking right to you, or leaning on a lectern, facing his students.  He's right there in front of you, talking with you, not to you, and not down to you.  His writing is conversational, not pompous.

And it's thorough.  Exhaustively so.  Unlike a lot of writers of this stuff, he backs up every single assertion, all the time.  And he has the obvious knowledge to back it all up, too.  I've read a lot of this kind of thing--lots of Ehrman, but also Vermes, Eisenman, Theiring (who can get a bit hysterical and unsubstantiated), many of the Dead Sea Scrolls guys, etc.--but Ehrman is by far the most lucid, the most investigative, the most historical, the most thorough--and the easiest to read.  No small feat, that.

And he says things you can (usually) look up on your own.  Some of the things he points out have been rocking around my noggin for some time, and yet other things--sometimes head-slappingly simple--were brought to my attention here, and I feel the fool for not thinking of them myself.
Like what?  Well, among the many things:

--Did Mark, Luke, John and Matthew really write the Gospels with their names on them?  I've thought "No," for a very long time, and I've had good reasons, all of them via literary analysis (all backed up by Ehrman).  But he also throws in a little common sense, such as:

* The four Gospels were written by different people who were not followers of Jesus, scattered throughout the lands, forty to sixty years after Jesus died.

* According to the Gospels themselves, Mark was the secretary of Peter, and Luke, a physician, travelled with Paul.  So what they give us is second-hand information, at best.  They were written independently, though the later ones definitely had the earlier ones (including a few--Q, L and M--that have not survived) around, and borrowed heavily from them, sometimes verbatim.

* Most Gospel manuscripts that have survived were copied about one thousand years after the original copies.  And they are written in highly-educated, upper-class Greek.  Jesus and his disciples did not speak Greek.  His disciples certainly could not write in Greek.

* In fact, they may not have been able to read and write at all.  As Ehrman points out, many studies have shown that literacy in the ancient Middle East was about 10%, max.  And in Palestine it may have been as low as 3%.  And who would that 3% be?  The nobility.  The rich.  The people who had the money and the time to be educated.  And who were the disciples?  Fisherman.  Jesus himself was a laborer, a tekton--one who works with his hands.  (This could also mean a blacksmith or a stonemason, but the general consensus is that he was a carpenter.)  As such a person, he would've not built wooden cabinets or buildings, but simpler things for a poverty-stricken town like Nazareth--yokes for oxen, or gates.  At any rate, there would not have been much time or money for any of the disciples to read or write.  Jesus may--and only may--have been able to read a bit because he clearly knew his Old Testament, since he often quoted it verbatim.

* The Gospels are often contradictory of each other, and are often historically inaccurate.  For example, was Jesus born in Bethlehem, or Nazareth?  Constantly Jesus is referred to as "Jesus of Nazareth," or, more simply, "the Nazarene."  But according to Luke--and only Luke--Caesar Augustus imposed a tax on "all the world", and so everyone in the Roman Empire had to take part in a census so they'd be registered to pay this tax.  And so Joseph, a direct descendant of the ancient King David, and Mary had to trek to Bethlehem, and that's where Jesus was born.  In a manger, visited by the three Magi.  You know the story.  But, turns out, there is no record (and the ancient Romans kept lots of records) of Augustus imposing a tax.  Luke claims the census happened "when Quirinius was the governor of Syria," and while, of course, Herod was king.  But, turns out, Quirinius did not become governor until ten years after Herod died.  And, for all that, how logical is it that everybody in the Roman Empire had to stop what they were doing, and trek perhaps hundreds or thousands of miles to go to a place where their ancient ancestors were born over a thousand years ago?  That doesn't make any sense at all, does it?  But Luke, and only Luke, says it did.  Why?  Micah, an Old Testament prophet, said the messiah would be born in Bethlehem, and Jesus wasn't.  This bothered Luke, and so he fixed it.  There's a lot of that kind of thing here.

* The Gospels have obviously been altered by the many hundreds of scribes who have copied them.  One clear example is the story of the woman being stoned to death by the crowd.  Jesus tells them to knock it off, "lest he who is without sin cast the first stone."  This is one of my favorite Gospel stories, but there's a problem.  Out of all the thousands of Gospel manuscripts and fragments throughout history, it is only found in John--and only from about the Middle Ages to today.  Older manuscripts of John's Gospel do not have the story.

And there's hundreds of more examples.  But does any of that prove that Jesus didn't really exist?  Nope.  Of course not.  If I mess up a fact about JFK's life, does that mean JFK didn't exist?  The point is, though, that Ehrman argues for the historical existence of Jesus, since there's apparently a growing legion of people who do not believe Jesus ever existed--the so-called "Mythicists."  (That Jesus was just a myth, get it?)  I also believe that Jesus existed, just not in the incantation presently popular in America, especially in the South.  What I call "Joel Osteen's Jesus."  (You can look that reference up.  When you do, ask yourself, Could that be what Jesus really wanted?)

Ehrman is an agnostic, as am I, sometimes.  I think.  I sort of vary back and forth between believing and being an agnostic.  I'm never an atheist.  Anyway, this is fascinating reading.  It's set up as an argument against the Mythicists, but the real meat of the book is in his evidence of Jesus's existence, and the vast, incredible number of ways--99 % of it via literary analysis and his knowledge of ancient manuscripts and ancient Judaism and Christianity, and 1% sheer common sense--in which he proves it.

Considering our current political / educational / religious American society (and how did it get to be that our laws and our education are tied into an uneasy, un-Constitutional hybrid of these three?), this is a work that deserves--and desperately needs--to be read.

Jesus, Mary and Joseph (and Pantera)

Photo: from Pantera's Wikipedia page at this link. "Tiberius Julius Abdes Pantera (c. 22 BC – AD 40) was a Roman soldier whose tombstone was found in Bingerbrück, Germany, in 1859."

Despite the title, the beginning of this blog is about the book The Lost Testament, by James Becker.

A really really really badly written book I read because of the premise and because I'm researching bestselling thriller authors.  But this was truly bad:

"Excellent," the emperor purred.  "Now summon help." (5)

"This is a private matter," he said.  "Kindly leave us."  (2)

That's Emperor Constantine, perhaps from the 60s Batman show.  But that dialogue is terrible.

Characters are always "suddenly realizing" things.  And I love this one:

"Instantly both figures froze into immobility beside the wall." (7)

If you freeze, of course you're also immobile.  And when a reader sees "instantly," he expects to see some kind of action, not a lack of action.

(And, yes, I realize I've quoted from just the first seven pages.  I did read the whole thing, and I'm tired and lazy, and it's 1:07 a.m.)

The lost testament of the title is shown only a few times in the book, and for some reason nobody seems in a hurry to translate it.  People associated with it are dying all over the place, and the flaps tell us the real document it's based on, yet we're not told what the document in the book says until the very last few pages.  I'll ruin it for you: It says what the flaps say the real thing says.  Ugh.

There's an ex-husband and ex-wife team, but they don't seem excited or scared about anything, and neither's smart enough to be another Robert Langdon.  Chris Bronson (not Charles Bronson) is an ex-cop, but he doesn't seem to know the laws of anything.  It's unclear if he's on vacation, on sabbatical, or on suspension.  He doesn't seem to know where he is much of the time.  Angela Lewis is a historian, but she hates dating things, especially old jars, and she doesn't seem terribly interested in the document, which could blow the lid off the Church and make blowhard politicians in the American South rather unhappy.  (This is actually hinted at in the book.)  The author and characters seem to be British, but you only know that because British towns are frequently mentioned, and words like "tram" and "lift" are used.  Yawn.

Though most of this book takes place in and near Vatican City and Cairo, none of that is described.  The Vatican isn't described.  Neither is Rome, or any city in Egypt, or the document itself.  Later the book takes place in Portugal and Spain, but you only know that because the characters say so.  Bleh.

The document in question, for real, is much more interesting than this book ever hopes to be. It's a document of a trial, supposedly written by a lawyer-ish guy. The trial is of a Roman soldier, a certain Panthera (or Pantera) who has raped a local woman, and impregnated her.  Raping your captives during times of military occupation or war was a crime then like it is now (though it happens all the time now, and I'm sure it also did then.)  Anyway, Panthera is on trial for this rape, and the document insinuates that he's clearly guilty, and witnesses are produced to prove it.  This would often lead to the rapist's death, as the military, then and now, wants to show it's in charge of its own soldiers. However, then as now, such things are hushed up.  In this case, he was found not guilty.

Photo: from Pantera's Wikipedia page at this link. "Tiberius Julius Abdes Pantera (c. 22 BC – AD 40) was a Roman soldier whose tombstone was found in Bingerbrück, Germany, in 1859."

All of this refers to the Pantera Rape, which if you don't know, [if you're a severely religious Christian, you might want to bow out here] is the story that Mary was not impregnated by the Almighty, but (as alleged by a man named Jerod of Cana) by a Roman guard named Tiberius Iulius Abdes Pantera (or Panthera), who rapes her.  (Or it's consensual, as was the belief at the time, for those who believed this to begin with.  Scholars have complained for years how the many Marys of the Bible seem to be confused with each other--not good, if one is the mother and the other a reformed prostitute.)  At any rate, a Yusef bar Heli (Joseph) of around Tzippori (a town in Israel attacked by the Romans in 4 BCE; notice the similarity to Moses's wife, Zipporah) is upset with her (and not the Roman archer, per se) because she's pregnant, (and no longer a virgin, nor a woman first taken by her husband). And so, as she's now considered defiled, he turns her out, and she gives birth to Jesus in the middle of nowhere.  She would've been barely in her teens at this point, perhaps 11 or 12.

This is actually not a new story, as this book and my research point out.  It may even pre-date many of the Gospels.  An ancient writer / philosopher, named Celsus, was the first to fully write of this, but a great many others did soon thereafter.  Celsus and the others say this story was widely known during their day, and during the days of the Disciples.  Celsus's work, titled The True Word [or Account, Doctrine or Discourse] is lost, but much of it is quoted by Origen, about a hundred years later, so he can refute it in a book of his own, which is called Against Celsus [Contra Celsum].

Whether you accept this or not, this is already more interesting than a book written by a guy who's watched too many bad 50s beefcake gladiator epics and bad 90s cop shows, right?

A few points:

--Celsus (who was clearly biased and anti-Christian), in about 177 A.D. (when the Christians were being persecuted in Rome, and long after Jesus and Paul and the others had died), said, in defense of his belief, that the original Christians were maybe a little confused. He gave examples:

--If Jesus is born as an infinite God, why would an angel warn Joseph and Mary and Jesus to hit the road before Herod kills Him?  Furthermore, wouldn't God, His Father, be able to protect Him from Herod, a finite human?

--How can an immortal man die, on the cross or otherwise?  If you're resurrected, you've died first, by definition. Literally, not figuratively. Like how Lazarus had to die first, by definition.

--It's said that Joseph and Jesus were carpenters.  But Jesus is also said to have taught at a synagogue.  Would the Jewish leaders let a carpenter from a tiny backwater teach at the synagogue?

--If not, then the word in this document attributed to Jesus and Joseph being carpenters (vulgar Latin "naggar") could mean its other connotation: "craftsman." As in, a "craftsman of words," perhaps.  Like I would be a wordsmith, but not a blacksmith, today.  But, either way, a "craftsman."

--Why didn't His disciples fear Him as a God?  Instead, one betrays Him, one doubts Him, and another perjures Him.

--And why didn't they cease these actions, if they thought of Him as a God?

--And if they didn't think of Him as an infinite God, who else ever would?

--Celsus mentioned it was commonly known in his own time (and that of the previous 80-100 years of the NT) that the Bible had been "corrupted from its original integrity" and "remodeled" to try to explain discrepancies or paradoxes in the text.  I'll provide an example from the OT: "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" and "Thou shalt not kill."  Can't be both, right?

--If Jesus is descended "from the first man, and from the kings of the Jews" then why are Joseph, Mary and Jesus seemingly unaware of their "illustrious descent?"  If I'm descended from Adam or from King David, I'm always going to know it, and I'm going to let it be known.  Several times.

--"After so long a period of time, then, did God now bethink himself of making men live righteous lives, but neglect to do so before?"  I've pointed this out before: Since the first man walked, why would just one Savior appear only at that one time in human history?  Why not also at any other time thousands of years before--or about 2000 years since?  The OT is at least 3,000 years old, and the NT is about 2,000 years old.  A novel-in-progress of mine now is about a small group of people who attempt to write their own Bible.  "It's overdue," one of them says.  "It's time," says another.

--Celsus is amongst the first to point out that the Bible uses the word "day" before the heavens, the sun and the Earth are fully created.  Without all three in existence already, there is no "day."

--As I've also mentioned: Why does God need to rest?  "After this...He is weary...who stands in need of rest to refresh himself..."

Lastly, one of my preferred beliefs: "One ought to first follow reason as a guide before accepting any belief, since anyone who believes without first testing a doctrine is certain to be deceived."

Indeed--How strong is an untested belief?

Anyway, whether you're with him or not, it's more interesting to research the Pantera / Mary document than it is to read this book.  So read the Bible, and read Celsus, and Origen, and ponder all this stuff, and don't waste your time reading Becker's book.

In fact, the book didn't make me want to know more about this stuff. Dan Brown's books (not masterpieces, either) do make me want to know more about the Vatican, or the Louvre, or D.C., or Da Vinci or Michelangelo and The Last Supper, and---Yeah, I had to supply the interest with this one.

The only kudos here to Becker is that he brings up the document to begin with.

Same Parents, Second Faith Healing Death

 
Photo: Herbert and Catherine Schiable

The entire (very short) article, by MaryClaire Dale, reporting for the Associated Press, at this website:

A Pennsylvania couple who believe in faith-healing face 20 years or more in prison in the death of a second child who died without seeing a doctor.

Herbert and Catherine Schaible are being sentenced Wednesday in the death last year of their 8-month-old son, Brandon. At the time, they were under court orders to seek medical care for their children after their 2-year-old son, Kent, died of untreated pneumonia in 2009.

The Schaibles are third-generation members of a small Pentecostal community, the First Century Gospel Church in northeast Philadelphia.

A lawyer for Catherine Schaible, 44, plans to explore their religious beliefs at the sentencing. Her 45-year-old husband's lawyer argues that no malice was involved.

The Schaibles have pleaded no contest to third-degree murder in Brandon's death. They have seven surviving children.

"We believe in divine healing, that Jesus shed blood for our healing and that he died on the cross to break the devil's power," Herbert Schaible said in a 2013 police statement. Medicine, he said, "is against our religious beliefs."

A jury had convicted both parents of involuntary manslaughter in Kent's death, and they were put on 10 years of probation that included orders to seek medical care if any other child got sick.

After Brandon's death, an irate judge found they had violated parole.

Prosecutors have described the boys' symptoms as "eerily similar," and said they included labored breathing and a refusal to eat. Catherine Schaible's lawyer, though, said her client tried to feed Brandon during his illness and applied baby powder to keep him comfortable.

Their pastor, Nelson Clark, has said the Schaibles lost their sons because of a "spiritual lack" in their lives and insisted they would not seek medical care even if another child appeared near death.
 __________

Now, just a few things from me:

--While the lawyer for Catherine Schiable can investigate whether she has the right to believe as she does, someone has to tell these two that the important person in this whole case isn't one of the parents, and so therefore their religious beliefs, while obviously important, isn't the #1 thing to take into consideration.  The most important person is the dead 8-month old son, Brandon.  So how about someone spend a little time investigating his rights, starting with his right to stay alive?

--Am I reading this right?  Did the courts give the Schiables 10 years' probation after they were convicted of manslaughter for the death of their first son?  They've done this before.  And we're shocked that such people would do it again?  Did the first judge really think that such people would change their religious beliefs simply because a judge told them to?

--Note to the Pennsylvania courts: They have seven surviving children.  Key word there is "surviving."  Which in this case translates to: "Their parents haven't killed them yet."  They've done this twice now.  They will do it again, even if you tell them not to.

--No one from the courts was going to the house to check on the eight remaining kids until Brandon died?  Someone will say that there isn't enough people to check on everyone, but I'll bet someone was checking on the kids of the parents who were poor, or amongst a minority--but who hadn't already been convicted of killing one of their kids.

--Yet another example of the continued battle between scientific facts and religious beliefs in this country: pneumonia isn't the Devil.  It's an infection caused by a virus or by bacteria.  You can believe that Jesus can win a battle with the Devil.  That's fine.  But antibiotics can win a battle with pneumonia.

--Beliefs are not facts.  If they were, they'd be called "facts" and not "beliefs."  You can believe whatever you want.  When it crosses the line in your psyche into "fact" land, you'd better have what scientists call "proof" or "provable evidence."  If you don't, you have to understand that when you say something is against your beliefs, than it's just that--a belief.  Not a fact.

--Note to faith-healing believers: If They exist, God and Jesus want you to save your kids.  They really do.

--Did you see at the bottom of the article that their pastor says they'll do this again?  Don't you think that the pastor--or even one of the Schiables--said the same thing after Kent died?

--Speaking of this pastor, can the PA law go after him now?  Now that the parents themselves are in jail, how about charging this guy with being an accessory?  He is wielding a gun, an obvious weapon, except it's verbal and not physical.  I know it's a touchy thing because now we're talking about religious beliefs again, but--legally speaking--if Person X tells Person Y to jump off the bridge because Jesus wants him to, and then Person Y jumps off the bridge, isn't Person X culpable at all?  Religion is being used like a drug here, like Ecstasy (the literalism is intentional).  It is against the law to control someone using an actual drug, and then have them commit crimes for you.  I mean, didn't Charles Manson do exactly that?  Like this pastor, he never lifted a finger to do any of the killings himself.  And I have to think that the Schiables told their pastor they were taking a wait-and-see approach with their son's pneumonia, so isn't he also culpable for that reason? So why not charge the pastor?  Can someone with legal training please explain this to me?

--There's a twisted version of Munchausen Syndrome going on here.  I mean this literally.  Notice that the parents very clearly believe that this case is about their religious beliefs, and not really about Brandon at all.  It's like this is their way of having all of the attention, of preaching about their religion.  Their their their.  In interviews, they keep saying "my," or "our," as in: "Medicine is against our religious beliefs."  It's narcissism.  Once parents like this are convicted of killing one of their kids because of their beliefs--whatever they are--can't we then at least put them in a mental health facility?  Narcissism and Munchausen's can be very dangerous personality disorders--as we see here--so if there are legal issues because of religion, can we not go this route?  Again, someone with legal training needs to explain this to me.

--If these parents were to say that the family dog told them to withhold medicine for Kent, wouldn't they have been in a jail or in a facility after that?  I don't mean to offend by comparing Jesus to the family dog--that's not what I'm doing--but if these parents were to have said that anything else at all (the family pet, the Devil, their dishwasher, whatever) told them to withhold medicine for their children, wouldn't they already have been whisked away?  Haven't scores of people done exactly this, and been carted away?  Why then is this any different, from a legal perspective?  These people are hearing voices just like all of the others who've said "The dog told me to..." or "The Devil told me to..." and yet they're less culpable because they say that it's Jesus speaking to them?  Yet again, someone with legal training, please comment or send me an email.

Because none of this makes any sense to me at all.

Thank Yous and Odds and Ends

 
Photo: Rick, with a customer, from Pawn Stars, on History.com.

--Just read a poem by a Goodreads friend.  At the end of the poem, the bomb-diffuser unfortunately sets off the bomb, and the poem ends with a thrice-repeated "silence."  (It's a good poem, so read it here.)  Anyway, the question I raised was: Would the bomb expert even hear the explosion before he died, since he's leaning right over the thing?  My comment was this:

"Only caveat is the blast at the end, followed by the silence. Since I'm expecting the blast--cuz my glass is always half empty, and damn that glass anyway--I'm not as surprised when it comes. (Of course there'd be silence, both existential and literal, afterwards.) I'd have been more surprised if the blast had not come, and there'd been just the thrice-repeated silence. In fact, that repetitive silence would be open for even more interpretation. After all, would the bomb-diffuser with the pliers even hear the explosion if there was one, as he'd die immediately since he's leaning right over it? Seems to me that he'd get all silence, either way."

I suppose this is a tree falling in the forest question, but I'm still interested in my readers' responses to this.  Read the poem and comment here, should the feeling strike you.

--Thanks, everyone, for giving this blog over 12,000 pageviews in about a year and a half.  For a blog with just one picture and some text, that's not bad at all.  Quite a mystery, in fact.  Even more mysterious is how my Redroom blog (link in the header) has had over 25,000 pageviews in just under a year, with pretty much the same material.  That one's been getting about 200 pageviews a day lately.  So I thank you all for making this writer feel like he's being read.

--Hello, The Monica.  And my 29 other Followers.  I appreciate you all stopping by.

--Speaking of glasses being half-empty, I recently explained the definition of the word "morbid" like this: "You know how negative people think the glass is always half-empty?  Well, a morbid person has a dark, negative attitude about the existence of the glass itself."  This was met with nods of understanding.

--The new book in the Jesse Stone series, Fool Me Twice, is a good, quick read, as I read it in just a few hours.  Having said that, I can't say much more positive about it, since the plot is a rehash of Parker's Looking for Rachel Wallace (with somewhat the same result for the characters), and the dialogue is almost stolen from Parker's style cabinet, but without the wit and flair.  I read it like I put on last year's professional wardrobe.  Quickly, without effort, appreciating the comfort, but still wondering why I'm still wearing it.

--What do I have at Fenway that the Red Sox don't?  A winning record for this season.

--I've never eagerly anticipated a manager's dismissal before this year.

--It's been getting cooler and the leaves are turning red, for those of you in New England who haven't noticed.  I'm closing the pool this weekend.

--And you have to order Octoberfest instead of Summer Ale around here.  Every year, this is the real change of the seasons for me.  And I don't remember a turnover as soon as this.  Usually they wait until the 20th or so of September.  Not this year.  When the Sox suck, it's not summer anymore, so the vendors say bye-bye to the Summer Ale.  This is an actual philosophy of mine.  Had the Sox made the playoffs, I'd still be seeing Summer Ale around here.  I swear.

--Since recovering from an illness that had nothing to do with my sinuses, I'm breathing better and sleeping like a normal person.  Odd.

--My hammock and I have become good friends.  Brand new.  Tightly-woven rope.  Yard sale, twenty bucks.

--Fall is Brandi Carlile weather.  Hearing her voice is like seeing rock walls and falling leaves.  Listening to her now.  Her latest CD is nowhere near as good as her previous stuff, but it's growing on me.  I don't care if listening to a female folk singer makes me sound like a wussy man.

--I've been in the habit lately of leaving my clothes in the dryer so long that they get very wrinkly, and so I have to throw them back in and put it on wrinkle guard.  And then I let it all sit again.  You get tired.

--Recently I've wondered: If Jesus is God, Eternal and Omniscient, how could Judas have betrayed him?  How can an all-knowing being be betrayed, by definition?  I learned recently that the original text uses a word that probably means "brought to" or "turned over" instead of "betrayed."  I'm just sayin'.  Consider.  I wish I could read Aramaic, Hebrew and Greek.  It's not that I don't trust anyone or anything--it's just that I don't trust anyone, or anything.

--A friend of mine watches Hoarders because she says it makes her feel better about her life.  I can kind of see this, but whenever I watch it, I want to sob openly, or vomit.  These people aren't slobs or clutterbugs--they're mentally ill.  I have papers all over my office, but I'm not pooping and peeing on my stereo speakers.

--Not that I'm so old or uncool that I even have stereo speakers.

--Almost time again for Boardwalk Empire and The Walking Dead.  A friend of mine had a great point about the latter: Whenever a character has to go, bring on a deus ex machina zombie.

--Watching Pawn Stars is like watching American Pickers, except that you see even more awesome historical stuff on Pawn Stars.  But they're both sad, in a way.  People in Pickers are often old, and/or dying, or sad, lonely guys who amass a ton of garbage because they're without female companionship (a chicken and egg question there).  People in Pawn Stars have to pawn off awesome things because they're so broke, they have no choice.  Rick pays great prices to people we see on camera, but you know he's severely underpaying many others.  The whole point of a pawnshop is that you're so desperate for cash that you know you're going to get fleeced--and you don't care because you need the money that badly.  They're wisely editing out the gambling addicts, who need to sell off anything at all so they can gamble away their mortgage payments and kids' college tuitions (they're on the Vegas Strip, after all); they're also wise to edit out the junkies who come in to pawn off their mother's jewelry or their kids for their next quick fix.

--(Kind of a glass is half empty sort of day, apparently.)

Weekends at Bellevue--Julie Holland, M.D.

photo: Book cover, from Goodreads

Fascinating book about a woman who had been in charge of deciding who does, and does not, get admitted to a stay at Bellevue.  She did this for nine years.  Obviously the book is about many of the patients, but the coolest thing about the book is the sheer number of other things it's also very much about: admitting you're crisped at your job; branching out; moving on with life; the different forms of mental illness; how we're all mentally ill, in varying degrees.  Having the courage to switch gears in life.  Changing as a person.  Letting down your often necessary defenses--and then realizing that doing so makes you incapable of doing the job you needed the defenses for to begin with.  I saw a lot of myself in here, and a couple of family members and friends--and a few ex-friends.  It helped me to understand all of them better in small, but important, ways.

It's a quick read.  You may grit your teeth at the oddly sudden and thorough instances of her sexual interludes, as I did, though I understood they were meant to underscore her adrenaline addiction.  All of the psychopathy stories are quick snippets, from the unknown patients, to Spalding Gray and the aftereffects of 9/11 on NYC.  She doesn't linger too long on any one person or event, but mentions the big ones long enough to sustain the shock and horror they instilled in her and everyone else.  Many of her patients, for example, saw dozens of professionally attired men jump out of the WTC to their deaths.  She says that, more than any other facet of the attacks, it was this that mostly traumatized and PTSDed her patients--watching the bodies fall.  And land.  Her narrative voice skims and occasionally probes, while at the same time staying far enough away from the patients so the reader doesn't feel like a morbid voyeur, rubber-necking at the psychopathic miseries of others.

I read this because I thought such a character had a place in one of my novels--where else, perhaps, would a possibly real, re-visiting Jesus or Lazarus be sent, after all, but to a place like Bellevue?  I don't know that such a plan would work now, but I liked the experience of reading this to find out.  It took two days to read.  Highly recommended.

11/11/11

Photo: Nigel Tufnel, This Is Spinal Tap.  From http://movies.yahoo.com/blogs/movie-talk/11-11-11-nigel-tufnel-day-185526454.html.  Amp it to 11, people. 
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So, okay, the alignment of numbers like this won't happen again, of course, until February 2, 2022--only about 11 years away, I hesitatingly add--though that sounds like a sci-fi date if I ever heard one.  But before you schedule a wedding for that date, as tons of people have because of today's date, I remind everyone that today's date really isn't today's date--somewhere in the 1300s or so, maybe 1400s, I don't remember, we suddenly gained 14 years between one day and the next, because we followed a new calendar.  And Day One was based on Jesus's birth, which is still under debate.  The most recent evidence suggests Jesus was born in the year 3 BC, or, three years before our calendar said he was born; this realization caused historians and scholars to create the designation BCE--Before the Common Era--to displace the now erroneous BC, which is their way of saying that, the whole time, we'd been three years off the date we thought we kept time with, which itself was wrong to begin with. And no one really kept day or time a few thousand years ago, except for the astrologers, and about that time there wasn't complete agreement about what a "day" even was.  Or a "year," as the sun was thought to revolve around the earth, and not vice-versa.  Plus, no one really cared.  And time as we measure it is only a man-made construct, anyway, and doesn't really even exist outside of the space-time continuum, which is in of itself used mainly for measuring huge distances, not for scheduling appointments or programming DVRs.  Our concept of time is  just our minor and flawed attempt to create order out of chaos, to stave off nothingness for a little while.

Don't mean to be Debbie Downer here, but let's have a dose of reality, okay?  Mankind is sooooo homocentric.  (That is, the belief that everything revolves around human beings, before you hate on me.)

You think frogs care exactly what day it is?

I'm just sayin'.