Your Humble Servant is confronted by serious questions...

...or, Another fabulous blogger babe becomes entangled in my web of idiocy, hoodoo, and general flapdoodle.


I left a comment on Madame Butterfly's blog.

01/06/06: TheChurchMilitant has left a new comment on your post "Overpopulation ":

I tend to see most things in the context of a battle between Love and Power. God is obviously Love. All forms of babykilling (such as "educating" the Third World with condoms) are exercises in Power.

Thanks for the kind words about my idiot blog. My infantile response is here:http://thechurchmilitant.blogspot.com/2006/01/i-get-sex-is-death-mail.html

I will proudly place a permanent link to yours on mine. You are off to an impressive start.

Silly me. I should have known she was not one with whom one should trifle. She wrote me thusly:

Fyodor [if that is in fact your name],

I'm sure you've read Augustine on the two cities built around two great loves - amor sui and amor Dei. He's quite informative there, as in so many other subjects.

Your interpretation is interesting. I am trying to sort out love, and the ideas behind it [sacrificial love, charity, etc]. It is especially interesting to me to examine such modern political theorists as Locke and Hobbes who destroy the idea of love in the political society, where Aristotle asserts that the polis is built on friendship, which I see as a form of love. Anyways, as I said I am still sorting this magnanimous idea of love out, so my ideas are still in the formative stages. Would you describe your understanding of that love that battles against Power as agape, that Greek word that only came into use in the New Testament?

Thank you for your high praise.

God bless you.

In Christ,
Madame Butterfly


Yeah, I know. Out of my depth in an instant. But according to the Code of Bloggerdom, I had to reply. (BTW, I still have hope that her use of the word "interesting" at the beginning of her second paragraph is more significant than "That monkey in the cage sure is interesting".

Dear Madame,
You are my third worst nightmare: someone asking serious questions about my silliness. (Speaking of which, thanks for not taking offense at the marriage proposals. Idiot is my idiom. Huh? Look here.) I will do my best to explain myself here but I won't guarantee it will be as serious when I post a copy in my little corner of bloggerdom.

No, Fyodor Garibaldi is not my name. I pretentiously like to refer to it as my nom de guerre. But you get no bonus points for cleverness. "My Photo" consisting of Dostoyevsky and Guiseppe Garibaldi is a dead giveaway.

In my blog, I try to paint with a broad, angry, and cynical brush while trying to maintain some sense of moral and intellectual honesty. I do not do such a good job, even by today's diminished standards. I would rather not go into my reasons for blogging. Let's just say it has something to do with world domination and leave it at that. (Sorry. Time for seriousness.)

When I type "Love", I mean God. The Father. The First Person of the Trinity. The Creator ex nihilo.

When I type "Power" I mean everything else other than Him. Earthly power. Money. War. Yes, even Sex. Any thing that can be misused as an alternate object of worship.

Since I am a Catholic and not a Puritan, I know all things from God are good. It is only the defective wills of sinful men that make God's creation seem evil. (One note on earthly power: Even it cannot be inherently evil since it too is a gift from God. It just seems that way.)

As for man's relations with his fellows ("politics" properly understood), I would like to think organizing civil society in a Catholic manner is possible, but I am not going to hold my breath. Even Holy Mother Church is not immune to the seductive corrupting influence of worldly power, as history has shown us.

Several times in my blog I have half-jokingly referred to The Reality Party, a fantasy political party of mine consisting of good Catholics, observant Jews, sane Moslems, and politically friendly Protestants that will return us to some semblance of sanity. I am not holding my breath on this one either.

There is a group of Catholics trying to build a Catholic community near Scranton, PA.* (I think. I'll look it up.) Not only religious, but lay Catholics too. Catholic bankers, Catholic lawyers, Catholic plumbers, et cetera. I have thought of moving...

Enough for now. It does not read as badly as I had feared. If you can make any sense of it, or if you just want to mock my feeble old brain (I'm into that, too.) please write back.

As for St. Augustine, it has been a few years and I should read him again. On the other hand, I am preparing to read St.Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica. I have been afraid of attempting it for years, but I think now is the time. Wish me luck.

You are most welcome for my kind words. Just don't let them go to your head.

Yours,
Fyodor Garibaldi


Impressive, no? Almost completely serious. I even resisted the temptation to change nom de guerre to nom de vida guerra.

Anyway, thank you Madame Butterfly for making me think.

* I found it, but I also discovered they aren't really Catholic after all. (Look here and here. Thanks to Carrie Tomko for the heads up.) Pity. It seems like such a good idea, too. Once again, kiddies, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. Perhaps some orthodox Catholics could give the idea of Catholic towns a try.