Archive for Articles
Sacred Music is for Everyone
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Jeffrey Tucker, head of Laissez Faire Books, has been quite active in the Catholic music tradition for some time. In June, Tucker will be presenting a paper at the Sacra Liturgia 2013 conference in Rome entitled “The Liturgical Apostolate and the Internet.”
The presentation will cover how traditional chants in the Catholic church became marginalized after the music became copyrighted and enforced, but has experienced a new popularity after becoming part of common domains.
Tucker said to the Catholic News Agency: “You went through essentially 1900 years of Christianity with the chant being an open source framework, an open source form of music that flourished in the first millennium through the oral tradition of copying, imitation, and free use.”
However, in the 20th century chant became dominated by one controlling institution, and by the 1960s the average churchgoer perceived chant as “owned” and desired more authentic worship music. Today, however, the situation has become reversed, in part thanks to individuals such as Tucker working to make chant freely available online.
Do you think there might be a similar phenomena in traditional protestant music? For a long time now, it has been the music more easily available that frequently dominates most contemporary churches – the kind of praise music traditionalists sometimes criticize (even I am sometimes amongst them). Perhaps it is the unwillingness to make things completely open that is part of the problem?
I am very thankful for groups like The Paperless Hymnal that are making music ever more accessible and affordable for everyone. But what do you think? How can these things be done better?
Read more at the Catholic News Agency.
Tags: church, churhc history, copyright, hymns, intellectual property, music
The Iraq War is a War on Christians
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Almost two years ago, I reported that there are no more churches in Afghanistan, according to the U.S. State Department. Now, Andrew Doran at AmCon Mag tells the story of how the Iraq War became a war on Christians. Hopefully, the U.S. will not repeat the mistake for a third time in Syria.
Did you know that prior to the invasion of Iraq, Pope John Paul II sent Cardinal Pio Laghi, who was also a Vatican diplomat, to see President George W. Bush in order to convince him not to attack? The Vatican had the wisdom to see what many in the world could not: that an invasion would result in a protracted war with tens of thousands of deaths and an increased hostility to Christians in the region.
Obviously, Bush and Co. didn’t listen.
Tags: Afghanistan, Christianity, iraq, middle east, Syria, war, war on terror
Is it Okay to Kill?
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Is it okay to kill? I don’t mean a bug in your house, a snake in your garage, or a deer in the woods. Deer tastes good; you may not know if that snake in your garage is poisonous; and bugs are home invaders.
I mean is it okay to kill a man, a human being, a person? Again, I don’t mean someone trying to kill you, rob your business, rape your wife, harm your children, or break into your house. Killing someone might be perfectly justified in those circumstances if it involves defense against aggression.
Specifically, is it okay to kill someone who has not threatened or committed violence or aggression against you, your family, your friends, your neighborhood, anyone you know, or any American you don’t know? Read More→
Tags: aggression, ethics, freedom, militarism, military, self-defense, violence, war
Thoughts on Censorship
Posted by: |By Rev. Edmund Opitz, author of The Libertarian Theology of Freedom and Religion and Capitalism: Allies, Not Enemies. This essay was originally published in the June 1966 issue of The Freeman. Read more in the Edmund Opitz Archive.
The effort to prevent people from obtaining certain kinds of reading matter on the grounds that its perusal may inflict damage on the minds exposed to it, springs from a “father knows best” psychology. Men of this persuasion assume that they know what is bad for people — even if the people themselves do not—and, further, that they are called upon to invoke statutory safeguards to prevent these latter from injuring themselves unawares. Paternalism is not limited to a concern for the purity of literature, however; the “father knows best” attitude is rampant in every sector of our society, and it is the key to the “liberal” mentality.
The liberal draws a clear distinction between himself and the average man. The average man, in his ignorance and innocence, is at the mercy of his employer; he is gulled by the hucksters of the advertising profession; he is regarded as fair game by the patent medicine men, food faddists, hidden persuaders, and other such extremists. The liberal, therefore, attempts to regulate industry, fix wages, control profits, enforce social security, and otherwise protect the consumer against the wily agents of Madison Avenue and the obscene lure of tail fins.
Tags: censorship, Edmund Opitz, freedom of speech, government, morality, self-control
Breitbart reports that the Pentagon recently released a statement that soldiers who share their faith (I presume Christian or otherwise):
This regulation would severely limit expressions of faith in the military, even on a one-to-one basis between close friends. It could also effectively abolish the position of chaplain in the military, as it would not allow chaplains (or any service members, for that matter), to say anything about their faith that others say led them to think they were being encouraged to make faith part of their life. It’s difficult to imagine how a member of the clergy could give spiritual counseling without saying anything that might be perceived in that fashion.
And thus it becomes ever more difficult – if it were ever even possible – to live out the commandments of and serve Christ while also in “service” of the State.
Tags: Christianity, government, militarism, military, The State
Norman Horn is the creator and primary writer for LCC. Learn a little bit about him in the 