NY's Attorney General pulls out of Irish dinner
Whaddaya know!
Friday, February 28, 2003
Christianity Today writes back
Thanks for clarifying. There was nothing in the article that gave a clue about how the list was arrived at. As I said in my blog, it didn't really bother me much, it was just that the piece triggered a line of thought given that I have encountered the "Are you Catholic or Christian?/I was raised Catholic but now I'm a Christian!" sort of Evangelical parlance countless times in the past 15 years. I'm glad to know CT does not indulge in it. Thanks for writing!
Dear Mark,
I'm the key editor on the survey article. Here's my blogable response to your comments:
You seem to be making the assumption that the CT survey was closed to Catholic workplaces. It wasn't. It was a self-selected survey. As we said in the article, in order to participate in the study, a workplace had to have more than 15 employees, a Christian mission, and an explicitly Christian product or service. No Catholic workplaces applied to participate in it, and we discouraged none from participation.
Sincerely,
Agnieszka Tennant
Associate Editor
Christianity Today magazine
Thanks for clarifying. There was nothing in the article that gave a clue about how the list was arrived at. As I said in my blog, it didn't really bother me much, it was just that the piece triggered a line of thought given that I have encountered the "Are you Catholic or Christian?/I was raised Catholic but now I'm a Christian!" sort of Evangelical parlance countless times in the past 15 years. I'm glad to know CT does not indulge in it. Thanks for writing!
Karen Marie Knapp is in the hospital
Some of you know her blog, the Anchor Hold. She has a skin infection of some sort and the doctors are debating whether
or not to do surgery. Please pray and ask those who know her to pray.
We've seen what God can do in the case of Al Kresta. Our Lord always rewards us with more responsibility (which is one of the reasons prayer to the saints makes so much sense. The purpose of graduating from college is to take up your work in earnest, not goof off forever. The purpose of graduating from life is to live the life of love more fully than ever, not to say "Thank God I don't have to care about those puny mortals any more!")
Some of you know her blog, the Anchor Hold. She has a skin infection of some sort and the doctors are debating whether
or not to do surgery. Please pray and ask those who know her to pray.
We've seen what God can do in the case of Al Kresta. Our Lord always rewards us with more responsibility (which is one of the reasons prayer to the saints makes so much sense. The purpose of graduating from college is to take up your work in earnest, not goof off forever. The purpose of graduating from life is to live the life of love more fully than ever, not to say "Thank God I don't have to care about those puny mortals any more!")
Those wacky Lithuanians
A canned mushroom mogul with an even darker sense of humor than me opens a Soviet theme park called "Stalin World". I am not making this up.
Money quote: “It combines the charms of a Disneyland with the worst of the Soviet gulag prison camp.”
Oh, and this is different from the other Communist theme park.
A canned mushroom mogul with an even darker sense of humor than me opens a Soviet theme park called "Stalin World". I am not making this up.
Money quote: “It combines the charms of a Disneyland with the worst of the Soviet gulag prison camp.”
Oh, and this is different from the other Communist theme park.
The easy prejudices of American Evangelicalism
I like Evangelicals. I really do. They are some of the kindest, prayingest, most heroic believers in the world. But I also have to note that there is a sort of easy prejudice among Evangelicals that sort of reminds me of the Old South. It's not an active, nasty prejudice that goes out of its way to be hateful. It's the sort of prejudice that would motivate an old Southerner to compliment a black person with the phrase, "That's mighty white of you!" It's an unthinking, oblivious prejudice that barely culpable since its so unconscious but still quite real for those of us who don't happen to be part of the Evangelical clique anymore.
What do I mean? Here's Christianity Today on "40 Best Christian Places to Work: The Complete List & A Closer Look at the Top Finalists". Now, call me crazy, but it looks for all the world like a) there are *no* decent Catholic places of employment or b) there are "Christians" (i.e. Evangelicals and other mainstream Protestants) and there are Catholics, who aren't Christian.
Put that baldly, I think the editors of CT would be a bit horrified at what they've said (especially since, last I checked, one of the them was married to a Catholic). But easy prejudices often don't come into focus like that.
Unlike a lot of Catholics I don't mourn and wail and rend my garments over such easy prejudices. They amuse me more than annoy me since I know most Evangelicals are fine folk who, when such prejudices *do* come into focus, are quick to abandon them and recognize Catholics as Christian. I take it in the same chuckling spirit my father-in-law did when, in Texas, he asked a guy if there was any Catholic parish in the neighborhood and was told, in the friendliest tones, "No. I'm really sorry. We're all Christians around here." The sheer guilelessness of that is hard not to enjoy and excuse. I'm confident enough of my faith that I don't need Evangelicals to sign off on it and I think Catholics who waste time cultivating bitterness over such things are fools. But I note for the sake of my Evangelical readers that such easy prejudices are, perhaps, something you should be more sensitive to for your own sake, since they blind you to the reality that "Christian" is a term that is not co-terminous with your rather small sector of the body of Christ.
I like Evangelicals. I really do. They are some of the kindest, prayingest, most heroic believers in the world. But I also have to note that there is a sort of easy prejudice among Evangelicals that sort of reminds me of the Old South. It's not an active, nasty prejudice that goes out of its way to be hateful. It's the sort of prejudice that would motivate an old Southerner to compliment a black person with the phrase, "That's mighty white of you!" It's an unthinking, oblivious prejudice that barely culpable since its so unconscious but still quite real for those of us who don't happen to be part of the Evangelical clique anymore.
What do I mean? Here's Christianity Today on "40 Best Christian Places to Work: The Complete List & A Closer Look at the Top Finalists". Now, call me crazy, but it looks for all the world like a) there are *no* decent Catholic places of employment or b) there are "Christians" (i.e. Evangelicals and other mainstream Protestants) and there are Catholics, who aren't Christian.
Put that baldly, I think the editors of CT would be a bit horrified at what they've said (especially since, last I checked, one of the them was married to a Catholic). But easy prejudices often don't come into focus like that.
Unlike a lot of Catholics I don't mourn and wail and rend my garments over such easy prejudices. They amuse me more than annoy me since I know most Evangelicals are fine folk who, when such prejudices *do* come into focus, are quick to abandon them and recognize Catholics as Christian. I take it in the same chuckling spirit my father-in-law did when, in Texas, he asked a guy if there was any Catholic parish in the neighborhood and was told, in the friendliest tones, "No. I'm really sorry. We're all Christians around here." The sheer guilelessness of that is hard not to enjoy and excuse. I'm confident enough of my faith that I don't need Evangelicals to sign off on it and I think Catholics who waste time cultivating bitterness over such things are fools. But I note for the sake of my Evangelical readers that such easy prejudices are, perhaps, something you should be more sensitive to for your own sake, since they blind you to the reality that "Christian" is a term that is not co-terminous with your rather small sector of the body of Christ.
Greg Krehbiel speaks with his typical common sense
Scroll down to February 27. One of the things that made me a Catholic was that Protestant arguments against the Church typically boiled down to saying "The Early Church was wrong about everything except the stuff we borrow from them." That kind of wore thin after a while.
Scroll down to February 27. One of the things that made me a Catholic was that Protestant arguments against the Church typically boiled down to saying "The Early Church was wrong about everything except the stuff we borrow from them." That kind of wore thin after a while.
Lest we forget...
Vatican II was a valid council of Holy Church. As such, it's teachings constitute the voice of the Holy Spirit in our time, and as Carl Olsen cogently argues, we ignore it at our peril. The weird thing is that the AmChurch drive to ignore the Council is met by Reactionary Dissent which insists that the remedy for this is... to ignore the Council.
Vatican II was a valid council of Holy Church. As such, it's teachings constitute the voice of the Holy Spirit in our time, and as Carl Olsen cogently argues, we ignore it at our peril. The weird thing is that the AmChurch drive to ignore the Council is met by Reactionary Dissent which insists that the remedy for this is... to ignore the Council.
Rod has an interesting piece on Muslim eschatology
You don't have to believe it. But you should be aware that millions of people *do* believe in it and that affects how they behave.
On the other hand, also be aware that Muslims are just as capable as Christians of "believing" we are living in the Last Days with one part of their brain while still making confident plans for the grandchildren's college education with the rest of their brains. Not that a college education is a likelihood for millions of Muslims, but you get my point.
You don't have to believe it. But you should be aware that millions of people *do* believe in it and that affects how they behave.
On the other hand, also be aware that Muslims are just as capable as Christians of "believing" we are living in the Last Days with one part of their brain while still making confident plans for the grandchildren's college education with the rest of their brains. Not that a college education is a likelihood for millions of Muslims, but you get my point.
A friend once remarked of Madonna that...
"underneath all that voluptuous flesh is the soul of an accountant." Similarly, underneath the pale, translucent and delicate skin of "morally concerned" Democrats is the soul of an accountant. Pardon me, but financial costs are just not uppermost in my mind. Questions like "Is this the right thing to do?" are. However, a party as cut off from the ability to do moral reasoning and as prostituted to evil as the Democratic party is probably acting sensibly (in a morally retarded way) by simply avoiding the attempt to do what it is now so utterly unfamiliar with. It avoids moral reasoning entirely and sticks to haggling about the bill. The upside to this approach is that it might--entirely by accident--wind up doing the right thing. The downside is that Democrats are willing to finance a Holocaust if it's a bargain price. Hence the arguments for abortion based on the costs of keeping a baby.
"underneath all that voluptuous flesh is the soul of an accountant." Similarly, underneath the pale, translucent and delicate skin of "morally concerned" Democrats is the soul of an accountant. Pardon me, but financial costs are just not uppermost in my mind. Questions like "Is this the right thing to do?" are. However, a party as cut off from the ability to do moral reasoning and as prostituted to evil as the Democratic party is probably acting sensibly (in a morally retarded way) by simply avoiding the attempt to do what it is now so utterly unfamiliar with. It avoids moral reasoning entirely and sticks to haggling about the bill. The upside to this approach is that it might--entirely by accident--wind up doing the right thing. The downside is that Democrats are willing to finance a Holocaust if it's a bargain price. Hence the arguments for abortion based on the costs of keeping a baby.
Billionaire Demands Bush listen to what all those little insignificant people he hasn't been able to kill by abortion think
"Just enough of me, way too many of you" rich guy has temporary spasm of noblesse oblige and then returns to his day job of eliminating all those annoying third worlders and poor people.
"Just enough of me, way too many of you" rich guy has temporary spasm of noblesse oblige and then returns to his day job of eliminating all those annoying third worlders and poor people.
She was probably driving to a "No Blood for Oil!" Rally
"If we can bring a little joy into your humdrum lives, we'll know our efforts ain't been in vain fer nuthin'!" - Lina Lamont, Singin' in the Rain
"If we can bring a little joy into your humdrum lives, we'll know our efforts ain't been in vain fer nuthin'!" - Lina Lamont, Singin' in the Rain
Greeley on the Goldhagenization of the Film Critics
An Orthodox Jewish friend of mine laments the amazing stupidity some secular Jews demonstrate in blaming the exact wrong people for the Holocaust and burying the ties with those Gentiles who tried to do something to stop it. He loathes the Holocaust Museum ("What's it doing on US soil?" he asks) and resents bitterly that, for atheist Jews, the Holocaust has become the central sacred event of a new pseudo-Judaism, celebrating 6 years of Nazi barbarism and ignoring the God of Life that true Jews worship.
An Orthodox Jewish friend of mine laments the amazing stupidity some secular Jews demonstrate in blaming the exact wrong people for the Holocaust and burying the ties with those Gentiles who tried to do something to stop it. He loathes the Holocaust Museum ("What's it doing on US soil?" he asks) and resents bitterly that, for atheist Jews, the Holocaust has become the central sacred event of a new pseudo-Judaism, celebrating 6 years of Nazi barbarism and ignoring the God of Life that true Jews worship.
Thursday, February 27, 2003
Of course, just when my misgivings about the war are strong...
somebody sends me this piece of idiocy:
Can't find the link but it appears to be a letter to some paper. Words fail me in describing how stupid the logic of the writer is. Clues for the clueless: Homosexual acts are objectively disordered. There is no way to perform a homosexual act that is not objectively sinful since all homosexual acts are intrinsically wrong and contrary to nature.
The fact that Archbishop whosit thinks a war is unjust does not render it unjust. Indeed, even the fact a Pope thinks a war unjust does not render it unjust. Such judgements are, in the end, still prudential ones and they could be wrong. People must form their conscience in light of the Tradition and act on it. Which leads to the *stupidest* part of the letter: the idea that a person, acting in obedience to conscience and fighting is acting on "intrinsically disordered savage instinct". Does this maroon even know what "intrinsically disordered" means? The attempt to invoke the Tradition in this ham-fisted Baltimore Catechism authoritarian way is yet another reason why it's so hard to take the Left seriously at all. It's funny. There's hardly anybody more authoritarian, more "Because I said so, that's why!" than a liberal when he's invoking the Church's authority for a pet cause. You're supposed to just shut the hell up, not ask any questions, and be excommunicated if you do--and on matters of prudential judgement. But in matters of actual dogma or constant moral teaching, you are free to do as you please. As though (when the subject matter is congenial to liberal fashion) the Faith is nothing but a double column list of "commanded/forbidden" and Catholics are supposed to navigate by avoiding Getting in Trouble with the Boss. What an imbecile! And, of course, I'll lay odds he rejects the Church's teaching on homosexual practice. But he's such a dunce that he thinks he's constructed a water-tight argument against people who take the Tradition seriously.
I swear, it's the proponents of the anti-war movement who do more to propel me toward war than anyone else. It's a sort of anti-ad populum argument: two million idiots can't be right.
somebody sends me this piece of idiocy:
The Vatican has long demanded that those who minister to gay and lesbian gatherings begin their ministration with an announcement of the church's teaching on the sinfulness of genital activity outside of a valid heterosexual marriage. Last year, the Vatican's Archbishop Renato Martino proclaimed the unjustifiability of a preemptive war. In view of American intent in Iraq, I wonder whether military chaplains should be required to begin Masses with the admonition, "To participate in an unjust war is to act upon an intrinsically disordered savage instinct and is seriously sinful. Participants will be denied Communion until they repent and renounce such sinful activity, and remove themselves from the proximate occasions of such sin."
Can't find the link but it appears to be a letter to some paper. Words fail me in describing how stupid the logic of the writer is. Clues for the clueless: Homosexual acts are objectively disordered. There is no way to perform a homosexual act that is not objectively sinful since all homosexual acts are intrinsically wrong and contrary to nature.
The fact that Archbishop whosit thinks a war is unjust does not render it unjust. Indeed, even the fact a Pope thinks a war unjust does not render it unjust. Such judgements are, in the end, still prudential ones and they could be wrong. People must form their conscience in light of the Tradition and act on it. Which leads to the *stupidest* part of the letter: the idea that a person, acting in obedience to conscience and fighting is acting on "intrinsically disordered savage instinct". Does this maroon even know what "intrinsically disordered" means? The attempt to invoke the Tradition in this ham-fisted Baltimore Catechism authoritarian way is yet another reason why it's so hard to take the Left seriously at all. It's funny. There's hardly anybody more authoritarian, more "Because I said so, that's why!" than a liberal when he's invoking the Church's authority for a pet cause. You're supposed to just shut the hell up, not ask any questions, and be excommunicated if you do--and on matters of prudential judgement. But in matters of actual dogma or constant moral teaching, you are free to do as you please. As though (when the subject matter is congenial to liberal fashion) the Faith is nothing but a double column list of "commanded/forbidden" and Catholics are supposed to navigate by avoiding Getting in Trouble with the Boss. What an imbecile! And, of course, I'll lay odds he rejects the Church's teaching on homosexual practice. But he's such a dunce that he thinks he's constructed a water-tight argument against people who take the Tradition seriously.
I swear, it's the proponents of the anti-war movement who do more to propel me toward war than anyone else. It's a sort of anti-ad populum argument: two million idiots can't be right.
Feel free to argue with me
The thing that bugs me about pro-war arguments is their inability to stay put. Justification for the war seems to waffle between "national security" and then, when it's pointed out that there's no connection between 9/11 and Iraq, it leaps toward what *might* happen if Iraq gets a nuke. When you point out that it's odd to worry about "maybes" when you have "certains" in N.Korea, the subject then changes to "low hanging fruit". When Haiti or Cuba are raised as even lower hanging fruit, the subject again changes to the Suffering Iraqis. When it's pointed out that liberating suffering Iraqis could lead to 4 million dead Iraqis we return to national security arguments and the whole merry-go-round starts over.
I find that very troubling.
The thing that bugs me about pro-war arguments is their inability to stay put. Justification for the war seems to waffle between "national security" and then, when it's pointed out that there's no connection between 9/11 and Iraq, it leaps toward what *might* happen if Iraq gets a nuke. When you point out that it's odd to worry about "maybes" when you have "certains" in N.Korea, the subject then changes to "low hanging fruit". When Haiti or Cuba are raised as even lower hanging fruit, the subject again changes to the Suffering Iraqis. When it's pointed out that liberating suffering Iraqis could lead to 4 million dead Iraqis we return to national security arguments and the whole merry-go-round starts over.
I find that very troubling.
From the "Screw the Silver Lining! Let's Look for Clouds" Dept.
Rome has streamlined the process for getting rid of bad priests and given permission for lay people to serve on the tribunals of priests who do have ecclesiastical trials. Eminently reasonable. But, in a living illustration of how bitterness can impair your vision, SNAP sees only sinister things afoot with this obvious step in the right direction.
One of the reasons Christ commands us to forgive is that, if we refuse, we will wind up doing stupid things in opposition to repentant sinners who are advocating a good course of action. If we set our hearts on the proposition that So and So is irredeemably evil and everything he says and does is wrong, then when So and So does something right, we will stubbornly go on advocating the opposite course of action, even if it's dumb. SNAP is now engaging in that peculiar process. Do they *want* molesting priests to remain their collars longer?
Rome has streamlined the process for getting rid of bad priests and given permission for lay people to serve on the tribunals of priests who do have ecclesiastical trials. Eminently reasonable. But, in a living illustration of how bitterness can impair your vision, SNAP sees only sinister things afoot with this obvious step in the right direction.
One of the reasons Christ commands us to forgive is that, if we refuse, we will wind up doing stupid things in opposition to repentant sinners who are advocating a good course of action. If we set our hearts on the proposition that So and So is irredeemably evil and everything he says and does is wrong, then when So and So does something right, we will stubbornly go on advocating the opposite course of action, even if it's dumb. SNAP is now engaging in that peculiar process. Do they *want* molesting priests to remain their collars longer?
Just so you'll know...
Amy's updated her blog to include arguments between Rod and I, as well as fascinating correspondence from other folks.
As an aside, it's refreshing that folks are engaging in serious moral reflection about this and not just hitting the remote button to watch Beavis and Butthead reruns. You guys make me so proud!
Amy's updated her blog to include arguments between Rod and I, as well as fascinating correspondence from other folks.
As an aside, it's refreshing that folks are engaging in serious moral reflection about this and not just hitting the remote button to watch Beavis and Butthead reruns. You guys make me so proud!
A reader writes
I don't think any pro-lifer should be overly happy over the ruling. While the decision is a good thing overall for the parties concerned, I believe most (all?) of the activity they were in trouble for is now covered by a subsequent federal law, the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act of 1994, 18 U.S.C. § 248 .
Another update on Al Kresta
Another day of good news. Praise God! Your prayers are working miracles. Please do not stop now.
Al's condition continues to improve. All his vital signs are stable. Al's official condition is GOOD.
Al was able to receive Holy Communion.
Al is more and more lucid each day.
Visitation will continue to be limited to family only. However you can let Al know you are praying for him and send your well wishes by stopping by www.amcguild.org click on the "Karing for Kresta" link and leave him a message.
Just one week ago we were fearful for Al's life. Today he is in GOOD condition. This dramatic turnaround is attributable to the Mercy of God, your intercessions and Al's fighting spirit.
Al will have a prolonged rehabilitation period. So the challenge is not over, but we are as we prayed for, out of the proverbial "woods".
Thank you for your continued efforts.
Another day of good news. Praise God! Your prayers are working miracles. Please do not stop now.
Al's condition continues to improve. All his vital signs are stable. Al's official condition is GOOD.
Al was able to receive Holy Communion.
Al is more and more lucid each day.
Visitation will continue to be limited to family only. However you can let Al know you are praying for him and send your well wishes by stopping by www.amcguild.org click on the "Karing for Kresta" link and leave him a message.
Just one week ago we were fearful for Al's life. Today he is in GOOD condition. This dramatic turnaround is attributable to the Mercy of God, your intercessions and Al's fighting spirit.
Al will have a prolonged rehabilitation period. So the challenge is not over, but we are as we prayed for, out of the proverbial "woods".
Thank you for your continued efforts.
From our Demented Friends in Germany
A Communist theme park. "Who's the wielder of the club that's made for you and me?"
A Communist theme park. "Who's the wielder of the club that's made for you and me?"
Farewell Mr. Rogers
He was such a fundamentally decent man. So often you don't realize someone's greatness till they die, because they aren't in your face trying to remind you how great they are. I shall mourn his passing. May his soul and all the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.
He was such a fundamentally decent man. So often you don't realize someone's greatness till they die, because they aren't in your face trying to remind you how great they are. I shall mourn his passing. May his soul and all the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.
Sometimes my blog feels like a literary salon
Yesterday I linked to Amy's misgivings about war. Today I give you Justin Katz' reply!
Yesterday I linked to Amy's misgivings about war. Today I give you Justin Katz' reply!
Wednesday, February 26, 2003
Minute Particulars is so consistently good
...and so many atheists are so consistently stuck in their sophomore year in high school.
...and so many atheists are so consistently stuck in their sophomore year in high school.
Amy Welborn is so great!
Once again, the spirit of Flannery O'Connor hovers with benevolent beatitude and a smartly cocked eyebrow over the keyboard of the Wise Woman of Indiana and inspires her to ask some rather common sense questions of the "JPII is an idiot for not blessing our War!" crowd. It will piss off a great many people, which is probably a very healthy thing, since it seems terribly easy for so many pro-war types to snort with derision at JPII's profound misgivings about this war.
Nice work, Amy.
Once again, the spirit of Flannery O'Connor hovers with benevolent beatitude and a smartly cocked eyebrow over the keyboard of the Wise Woman of Indiana and inspires her to ask some rather common sense questions of the "JPII is an idiot for not blessing our War!" crowd. It will piss off a great many people, which is probably a very healthy thing, since it seems terribly easy for so many pro-war types to snort with derision at JPII's profound misgivings about this war.
Nice work, Amy.
Dale Price on the AmChurch Liturgy Gestapo and its determination to Make an Example of Fr. Rob Johansen
We'll miss ya, Fr. Rob.
By the way, congrats to Dale and Heather on their new tyke! "Mark Phillip" is a *really* good name, if you are still in the market for one.
We'll miss ya, Fr. Rob.
By the way, congrats to Dale and Heather on their new tyke! "Mark Phillip" is a *really* good name, if you are still in the market for one.
Here's my latest column for Catholic Parent
What are you waiting for? You should subscribe! Most of HMS Blog is writing for it!
What are you waiting for? You should subscribe! Most of HMS Blog is writing for it!
More Praise and Thanks to God!
Al Kresta's condition is upgraded to FAIR. Al has been moved to the step down unit form surgical intensive care. All blood pressure medication has been removed. Al is beginning to take some food. Praise God for this wonderful step forward towards recovery.
Al Kresta's condition is upgraded to FAIR. Al has been moved to the step down unit form surgical intensive care. All blood pressure medication has been removed. Al is beginning to take some food. Praise God for this wonderful step forward towards recovery.
Thanks be to God!
SCOTUS rules in favor of abortion protestors and against NOW. HMS Blog has the scoop!
SCOTUS rules in favor of abortion protestors and against NOW. HMS Blog has the scoop!
By the way...
...while I'm engaged in my nefarious plan to deceive the nations and lead countless souls into error and damnation, allow me to recommend The Hidden Key to Harry Potter by John Granger. He's an Orthodox (!) writer who argues rather persuasively that Rowling is writing in the Christian tradition of C.S. Lewis and JRR Tolkien, and does a nice job of exegeting the Christian symbolism that pervades the books. If you are not the sort of reader who reflexively says, "I don't *need* to have read Harry Potter or know anything about him to know he's evil" you might want to check the book out.
...while I'm engaged in my nefarious plan to deceive the nations and lead countless souls into error and damnation, allow me to recommend The Hidden Key to Harry Potter by John Granger. He's an Orthodox (!) writer who argues rather persuasively that Rowling is writing in the Christian tradition of C.S. Lewis and JRR Tolkien, and does a nice job of exegeting the Christian symbolism that pervades the books. If you are not the sort of reader who reflexively says, "I don't *need* to have read Harry Potter or know anything about him to know he's evil" you might want to check the book out.
Bush Vows to Destroy United States and Effect Regime Change
"We will no longer tolerate terrorists or the states which harbor terrorists."
"We will no longer tolerate terrorists or the states which harbor terrorists."
From the "Oooooookay" Dept.
I'd forgotten to set the software to notify me of new guest entries at my new address, so I had this big backlog. I was looking over them and found these edifying messages rocketing in out of The Blue from Constance Cumbey, who some of you may remember as the author of a splendidly paranoiac book called The Hidden Dangers of the Rainbow (thesis: New Agers are Tunnelling Under Your House!!!). Anyway Ms. Cumbey writes me with these helpful prophetic diagnoses of just what's the matter with me:
Message 1: "Measure the sanctuary and those that worship therein, but the outer court leave out, for it is given over to the gentiles for a time, times, and half a time." You are clearly part of the outer court, in a very bad disguise, as a CATCHECHISM ON MODERNISM based on Pope Pius X's encyclical would say. May the Lord have mercy on your soul. Woe to him who calls evil good and good evil . . ."
and Message 2 (written in response to my enjoyment of Harry Potter): "EXHIBIT A TO MY PREVIOUS POSTING! DON'T CARE WHAT FR. FLEETWOOD (MAYBE BETTER KNOWN AS FR. ENEMA SAYS ABOUT IT), HARRY POTTER IS NOTHING SHORT OF A MASS INITIATION EXPERIENCE FOR LITTLE CHILDREN. MAYBE BETTER THAT A MILLSTONE BE PUT AROUND ALL OF YOUR NECKS!!!!!!!!!!!"
I surely do appreciate the prayers, Ms. Cumbey, and will strive to see that the Lord's mercy to me is not in vain.
I'd forgotten to set the software to notify me of new guest entries at my new address, so I had this big backlog. I was looking over them and found these edifying messages rocketing in out of The Blue from Constance Cumbey, who some of you may remember as the author of a splendidly paranoiac book called The Hidden Dangers of the Rainbow (thesis: New Agers are Tunnelling Under Your House!!!). Anyway Ms. Cumbey writes me with these helpful prophetic diagnoses of just what's the matter with me:
Message 1: "Measure the sanctuary and those that worship therein, but the outer court leave out, for it is given over to the gentiles for a time, times, and half a time." You are clearly part of the outer court, in a very bad disguise, as a CATCHECHISM ON MODERNISM based on Pope Pius X's encyclical would say. May the Lord have mercy on your soul. Woe to him who calls evil good and good evil . . ."
and Message 2 (written in response to my enjoyment of Harry Potter): "EXHIBIT A TO MY PREVIOUS POSTING! DON'T CARE WHAT FR. FLEETWOOD (MAYBE BETTER KNOWN AS FR. ENEMA SAYS ABOUT IT), HARRY POTTER IS NOTHING SHORT OF A MASS INITIATION EXPERIENCE FOR LITTLE CHILDREN. MAYBE BETTER THAT A MILLSTONE BE PUT AROUND ALL OF YOUR NECKS!!!!!!!!!!!"
I surely do appreciate the prayers, Ms. Cumbey, and will strive to see that the Lord's mercy to me is not in vain.
Tuesday, February 25, 2003
Well, I'll hold out for Haloscan to get over the hiccups
For now, you'll just have to be dazzled by my mellifluous prose stylings and wait till Haloscan gets back up so you can argue with me and each other in the boxes. :)
For now, you'll just have to be dazzled by my mellifluous prose stylings and wait till Haloscan gets back up so you can argue with me and each other in the boxes. :)
Utterly Surreal
"An organization of Long Island Catholics Tuesday asked a Vatican court to discipline Bishop William Murphy because he will allow the old Latin Mass rite to be celebrated only at a former seminary in Uniondale that is used as a residence for priests accused of sexually abusing children."
My favorite part: Joanne Novarro, a diocesan spokeswoman, said "children who accompany their parents to the Latin Mass at St. Pius X are as safe as it is possible to be in our society as long as they remain in the Chapel with their parents for the Mass.”
Un-freakin'-believable.
In other news, the bishop of the diocese where the Chernobyl Nuclear Reactor is located will only be permitting a Latin Mass at the doomed reactor facility. Diocesan spokemen assured tiresome and annoying parents obsessed with their insignificant children's safety that "the little maggots will be perfectly safe as long as they wear the radiation suits and don't, you know, act like children and wander too close to danger. If they do, then hey! the world might just be rid of a couple more brats. As if we'd notice." The spokesman summarized the diocesan policy as "We don't care. We don't have to."
"An organization of Long Island Catholics Tuesday asked a Vatican court to discipline Bishop William Murphy because he will allow the old Latin Mass rite to be celebrated only at a former seminary in Uniondale that is used as a residence for priests accused of sexually abusing children."
My favorite part: Joanne Novarro, a diocesan spokeswoman, said "children who accompany their parents to the Latin Mass at St. Pius X are as safe as it is possible to be in our society as long as they remain in the Chapel with their parents for the Mass.”
Un-freakin'-believable.
In other news, the bishop of the diocese where the Chernobyl Nuclear Reactor is located will only be permitting a Latin Mass at the doomed reactor facility. Diocesan spokemen assured tiresome and annoying parents obsessed with their insignificant children's safety that "the little maggots will be perfectly safe as long as they wear the radiation suits and don't, you know, act like children and wander too close to danger. If they do, then hey! the world might just be rid of a couple more brats. As if we'd notice." The spokesman summarized the diocesan policy as "We don't care. We don't have to."
Joseph Adamec of the Altoona-Johnstown diocese throws his hat into the ring for the Worst Still-Serving Bishop Award!
It's a tough go, given all the sleaze of the past year, to find bishops who distinguish themselves in corruption, but Bp. Adamec appears to be trying to go for the gold here.
One informative article tells us concerning yet another priest (one of several) guilty of a string of abuses of boys, boys, boys, boys, boys, boys, and boys that:
Saylor did testify. But another story makes clear that Monsignor Saylor's efforts at reform appear not to have been appreciated by Bp. Adamec, who threatened him with excommunication if he didn't keep his trap shut.
Adamec hasn't threatened *everybody* with excommunication though. For instance, you will get a warm welcome in Altoona-Johnstown if you affirm practicing homosexuals in their okayness.
Pay no attention to the man behind the Lavender Curtain.
It's a tough go, given all the sleaze of the past year, to find bishops who distinguish themselves in corruption, but Bp. Adamec appears to be trying to go for the gold here.
One informative article tells us concerning yet another priest (one of several) guilty of a string of abuses of boys, boys, boys, boys, boys, boys, and boys that:
The trial began Jan. 31, 1994.
Three months later, the jury found Luddy guilty of sexual abuse and the diocese negligent for ignoring accusations of sexual abuse.
But the jury and the public didn’t know everything.
Msgr. Phillip P. Saylor did, and that’s why the diocese didn’t want him to testify publicly, diocese attorneys told Carpenter.
During a private session March 18, 1994, in Carpenter’s office, the record shows that the diocese tried to block Saylor’s testimony.
Saylor did testify. But another story makes clear that Monsignor Saylor's efforts at reform appear not to have been appreciated by Bp. Adamec, who threatened him with excommunication if he didn't keep his trap shut.
Adamec hasn't threatened *everybody* with excommunication though. For instance, you will get a warm welcome in Altoona-Johnstown if you affirm practicing homosexuals in their okayness.
Pay no attention to the man behind the Lavender Curtain.
Have I mentioned I'm looking for a replacement for Haloscan? I'm getting tired of the unreliability.
If you know of one, just write it in the... drat!
If you know of one, just write it in the... drat!
Update on Al Kresta
Today Al's Condition remains Critical. He remains in The Surgical Critical Care Unit. However, by the grace of God and through your countless intercessions, AL continues to respond well to treatment. Al has been removed from the ventilator, he is completely breathing on his own. Al is no longer sedated. He remains on heavy pain killers and various other meds. He is more and more lucid. Al has also been removed form the feeding tube. He is beginning to take food.
Al is making great progress. Please do not let up on the prayers. This time of trial is not over and we do not want to give an inch on the spiritual side of this battle. As always, your intercessions on behalf of AL and his family are greatly appreciated.
Today Al's Condition remains Critical. He remains in The Surgical Critical Care Unit. However, by the grace of God and through your countless intercessions, AL continues to respond well to treatment. Al has been removed from the ventilator, he is completely breathing on his own. Al is no longer sedated. He remains on heavy pain killers and various other meds. He is more and more lucid. Al has also been removed form the feeding tube. He is beginning to take food.
Al is making great progress. Please do not let up on the prayers. This time of trial is not over and we do not want to give an inch on the spiritual side of this battle. As always, your intercessions on behalf of AL and his family are greatly appreciated.
Victor Lams has inspired me
Over on his blog he's been putting captions to Homeland Security artwork. So I thought I'd try a hand
Do they *have* to use so much incense at this Mass?
This Way to the "Secrets of Roswell, NM" Display
In case of emergency, extremely thin red arrows will be allowed to escape through the gap between the locked door and the jamb, but fat humans will be left behind and trapped.
In emergency situations, debris is politely requested to fall in a downward direction (see arrows if there are any questions.)
When you need to unwind after an act of horrific terrorism, nothing compares to a Knights Templar [TM] Massage.
Embarrassed by excessive saliva production? Try New Absorba-Cloth! (Warning: Be sure to change the cloth when it comes saturated.)
Okay Hand, let's go over your bit slowly again. Top line, you write "Mene, mene". Middle line you write "Tekel". Bottom line you write, "Upharsin".
I don't care *how* hot you are. This bar does not cater to Raging Infernos and if you try to push through the door I'll call the cops on you.
The Pentecostal Jazzercise class has been cancelled.
Over on his blog he's been putting captions to Homeland Security artwork. So I thought I'd try a hand
Do they *have* to use so much incense at this Mass?
This Way to the "Secrets of Roswell, NM" Display
In case of emergency, extremely thin red arrows will be allowed to escape through the gap between the locked door and the jamb, but fat humans will be left behind and trapped.
In emergency situations, debris is politely requested to fall in a downward direction (see arrows if there are any questions.)
When you need to unwind after an act of horrific terrorism, nothing compares to a Knights Templar [TM] Massage.
Embarrassed by excessive saliva production? Try New Absorba-Cloth! (Warning: Be sure to change the cloth when it comes saturated.)
Okay Hand, let's go over your bit slowly again. Top line, you write "Mene, mene". Middle line you write "Tekel". Bottom line you write, "Upharsin".
I don't care *how* hot you are. This bar does not cater to Raging Infernos and if you try to push through the door I'll call the cops on you.
The Pentecostal Jazzercise class has been cancelled.
A reader weighs in on SNAP's Stockholm Syndrome
Just so. To think that the Situation is not overwhelmingly rooted in sin and therefore in spiritual realities is to be stone blind to any hope of either resolving it or preventing it from happening again. Yes, pietism is not a replacement for action. But neither is a shallow activist mentality a replacement for rootedness in prayer and the Apostolic Tradition. It is the essence of catastrophically bad thinking (AKA "heresy") to insist on choosing one or the other. In fact, prayer and action are necessary--and prayer is the top priority.
I found an interesting quote in a Boston Globe article about Bishop Lennon's planned time of prayer and penance for priests over the scandal:
''There is certainly a role for the spiritual in getting out of this crisis, but it is only a limited role,'' said Ann Hagan Webb, New England co-coordinator of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests. ''What has happened is not spiritual; it is criminal and immoral. Prayer isn't going to fix it. Action is going to fix it. Real changes are going to fix it.''
First of all, excuse me, but what happened is sin, and sin is spiritual, so what happened is spiritual. Second, if you don't think prayer can fix it, then you obviously don't believe in God, in which case you really have no business commenting on the situation.
This quote just goes to show that SNAP has no regard for approaching the situation from a perspective of faith.
Just so. To think that the Situation is not overwhelmingly rooted in sin and therefore in spiritual realities is to be stone blind to any hope of either resolving it or preventing it from happening again. Yes, pietism is not a replacement for action. But neither is a shallow activist mentality a replacement for rootedness in prayer and the Apostolic Tradition. It is the essence of catastrophically bad thinking (AKA "heresy") to insist on choosing one or the other. In fact, prayer and action are necessary--and prayer is the top priority.
"As far as I'm concerned, war always means failure." - Jacques Chirac
Uh, you might want to rephrase that, Monsieur Chirac.
More jokes about the French here.
By the way, just an observation. It is curious that a nation as *intensely* hypersensitive and phobic about ethnic humor as the United States has this complete open season on the French. Replace "French" with, say, "Poles", "African-Americans" or "Women" and people would be having cows about such jokes.
That sense of freedom to say whatever rude thing you like about the French is not, by the way, something "caused" by the present tension with France. We've heard these jokes for years. What causes it is a) America's English cultural heritage (which has always reveled in sneering at the French) and b) a kind of liberal racism which down deep believes that Western Europeans are "big enough to take it" while other groups are so incredibly fragile and juvenilized that they should be indulged when somebody freaks out over use of the word "niggardly" in a sentence.
I wonder if there will be a backlash from some Victims of French-American Humor group?
What a strange country I live in.
Uh, you might want to rephrase that, Monsieur Chirac.
More jokes about the French here.
By the way, just an observation. It is curious that a nation as *intensely* hypersensitive and phobic about ethnic humor as the United States has this complete open season on the French. Replace "French" with, say, "Poles", "African-Americans" or "Women" and people would be having cows about such jokes.
That sense of freedom to say whatever rude thing you like about the French is not, by the way, something "caused" by the present tension with France. We've heard these jokes for years. What causes it is a) America's English cultural heritage (which has always reveled in sneering at the French) and b) a kind of liberal racism which down deep believes that Western Europeans are "big enough to take it" while other groups are so incredibly fragile and juvenilized that they should be indulged when somebody freaks out over use of the word "niggardly" in a sentence.
I wonder if there will be a backlash from some Victims of French-American Humor group?
What a strange country I live in.
Why didn't Jesus abolish slavery?
One of my readers asks that. In reply I would point out that Christianity is not and never was a "social reform movement" as popularly conceived. It *spawned* zillions of social reform movements (including the abolition of slavery--which not only was but *is* a common feature of the non-Christian world). But it was never primarily about the reform of social conditions. Rather it was and is about the transformation and divinization of the human person in the midst of our fallen circumstances. Rather than reform the institution of slavery, Jesus "emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."
The man who wrote those words, St. Paul, suffered personally from other societal ills. He was brutalized by the cops, hated by racists, eventually he was killed by an oppressive state. He did not regard his mission as being about a "reform movement" against such things. He saw his work as embracing the cross of Christ through them.
Ultimately, the question "Why didn't Jesus abolish slavery?" is simply a variation on the question "Why does God permit evil?" This faces us with a mystery. But it is not an unanswerable mystery so much as a mystery that has been answered in an even more mysterious way--by the Christ crucified like a slave. That's not something I understand. It is something I accept and believe. It is one of the weird paradoxes of the gospel that this alone was ultimately capable of doing what we, for thousands of years of our own history, could not do. And I am morally certain that if the Church loses its influence in the West we will return (as we have already returned with the unborn and the aged) to an absolutely utilitarian view of the human person that will be powerless to resist the slide back toward slavery.
One of my readers asks that. In reply I would point out that Christianity is not and never was a "social reform movement" as popularly conceived. It *spawned* zillions of social reform movements (including the abolition of slavery--which not only was but *is* a common feature of the non-Christian world). But it was never primarily about the reform of social conditions. Rather it was and is about the transformation and divinization of the human person in the midst of our fallen circumstances. Rather than reform the institution of slavery, Jesus "emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."
The man who wrote those words, St. Paul, suffered personally from other societal ills. He was brutalized by the cops, hated by racists, eventually he was killed by an oppressive state. He did not regard his mission as being about a "reform movement" against such things. He saw his work as embracing the cross of Christ through them.
Ultimately, the question "Why didn't Jesus abolish slavery?" is simply a variation on the question "Why does God permit evil?" This faces us with a mystery. But it is not an unanswerable mystery so much as a mystery that has been answered in an even more mysterious way--by the Christ crucified like a slave. That's not something I understand. It is something I accept and believe. It is one of the weird paradoxes of the gospel that this alone was ultimately capable of doing what we, for thousands of years of our own history, could not do. And I am morally certain that if the Church loses its influence in the West we will return (as we have already returned with the unborn and the aged) to an absolutely utilitarian view of the human person that will be powerless to resist the slide back toward slavery.
Fasting and Praying for Saddam Hussein
This, like fasting and praying for peace, soitanly couldn't hoit.
This, like fasting and praying for peace, soitanly couldn't hoit.
Monday, February 24, 2003
Steve Ray reports on Al Kresta:
It is Sunday evening and Janet and I were able to visit Al and Sally the last two days. Things remain critical but with continued hopeful signs of encouragement. First, Al's anesthesia is being reduced. He continues to recognize us and squeezes our hand acknowledging his awareness of our presence. He did not need kidney dialysis and continues to respond to medication. His leg was originally amputated below the knee and is now being amputated at mid-thigh. I understand it was a two-step process. Again, please remember I am not a doctor and only sharing my own observations and piecing together bits and pieces. Pray that his oxygen tube can be removed soon since it is very uncomfortable but necessary until fluids are reduced in his body tissue.
His wife Sally was rushed into emergency surgery on Friday with the strep A bacteria infecting her leg. I was 20 minutes from giving a talk to a group of many people in Houston and this news kicked the wind right out of me -- I was trembling. I opened the talk in tears asking everyone to pray -- I couldn't, but they did. The doctors determined it was a less virulent strain of Strep and were able to control it with antibiotics. Whew! She is doing well and in no danger. She will be released from the hospital in a day or two. The children and a close friend are on antibiotics since this bacterial infection is contagious.
The outpouring of love and prayer for the Kresta family has been truly a blessing to everyone. Masses, vigils, novenas, rosaries, private prayers have been rising like a tidal wave to heaven. One of the silver linings to this dark cloud is the lively and blessed love expressed as brothers and sisters in Christ come together as the family to pray for a beloved brother and sister. The outpouring of love is not undeserved as the Kresta family has been pioneers in evangelism and loving sacrifice for the people of God. They are deeply loved and that love is being expressed in a very profound and moving way during these dark days.
Please continue to pray for this fight is not over yet and when Al wakes up he will still have to deal with the discovery that his leg has been amputated. Pray that God provide grace at that moment.
Starting tomorrow (Tuesday) there should be daily updates provided at www.avemariaradio.net. After this point I will cease sending out e-mail updates.
If you want to read about the bacteria that attacked him, you can read about it here.
I disagree, Rod
Our Lord, knowing that there was no other way than his death for the redemption of the world *still* prayed three times that, if it were possible, the cup should pass from him. I think those of us who think war necessary should be praying our hearts out for peace. Not for any old peace but for a just peace. God still works wonders in our day and we should still hope that it would not come to war to get Saddam outta there. I can see no harm in doing as the Pope asks.
Our Lord, knowing that there was no other way than his death for the redemption of the world *still* prayed three times that, if it were possible, the cup should pass from him. I think those of us who think war necessary should be praying our hearts out for peace. Not for any old peace but for a just peace. God still works wonders in our day and we should still hope that it would not come to war to get Saddam outta there. I can see no harm in doing as the Pope asks.
Ohio Parents! Is that Punk Kid of Yours Too Intelligent?
Send them to Miami University in Oxford, Ohio and their highly paid team of professionals will eradicate every last vestige of common sense from their young, moldable minds. They'll return dumb as rocks and easy to manipulate.
American Higher Education: Making your kids stupid and ready for tyranny!
Send them to Miami University in Oxford, Ohio and their highly paid team of professionals will eradicate every last vestige of common sense from their young, moldable minds. They'll return dumb as rocks and easy to manipulate.
American Higher Education: Making your kids stupid and ready for tyranny!
Pope and Blair Meet
It turns out the Pope still is under this weird otherworldly impression--totally out of touch with history--that a powerful regime founded on blood and iron can be brought down without a shot being fired if we trust in the power of God. I have no idea where he could get such notions.
It turns out the Pope still is under this weird otherworldly impression--totally out of touch with history--that a powerful regime founded on blood and iron can be brought down without a shot being fired if we trust in the power of God. I have no idea where he could get such notions.
The Seattle G. K. Chesterton Society Presents:
"The Undiscovered Chesterton"
A Lecture by Dale Ahlquist, President, The American Chesterton Society
Fireside Room
Student Union Building
Seattle Pacific University
Wednesday, February 26, 7:30 PM
This event is co-sponsored by the Discovery Institute
All attendees are invited to enjoy refreshments (pizza and pop) after the talk and discussion.
Check out the Chesterton Society website for up-to-date information about Chesterton meetings.
In the words of Samuel Goldwyn, "Don't miss it if you can!"
"The Undiscovered Chesterton"
A Lecture by Dale Ahlquist, President, The American Chesterton Society
Fireside Room
Student Union Building
Seattle Pacific University
Wednesday, February 26, 7:30 PM
This event is co-sponsored by the Discovery Institute
All attendees are invited to enjoy refreshments (pizza and pop) after the talk and discussion.
Check out the Chesterton Society website for up-to-date information about Chesterton meetings.
In the words of Samuel Goldwyn, "Don't miss it if you can!"
That's funny. David Brooks uses the phrase "Buchananite Right" to describe a particular sort of conservative who is hostile to Jews
Odd how other people have the same impression I do of that crowd. Must be a Zionist conspiracy.
Odd how other people have the same impression I do of that crowd. Must be a Zionist conspiracy.
Several readers are writing to complain that Milwaukee is offering RENEW 2000
Dunno much about it myself. My wife and I did a RENEW thingie at our old parish when I first entered the Church. Seemed innocuous enough to me at the time. Mostly an excuse for small group sharing with some low intensity chit chat. What mainly irritated me about it was that it went for X number of weeks and then stopped--screeeech--and then there was no follow up. It was an incredibly *inept* attempt at building small communities. I don't know anything about the 2000 version. My suggestion to people who are sweating about it is that you *join* and bring some content (and correction) if you think RENEW 2000 is twaddle.
UPDATE: Mike Dubruiel says Renew 2000 is quite good.
Dunno much about it myself. My wife and I did a RENEW thingie at our old parish when I first entered the Church. Seemed innocuous enough to me at the time. Mostly an excuse for small group sharing with some low intensity chit chat. What mainly irritated me about it was that it went for X number of weeks and then stopped--screeeech--and then there was no follow up. It was an incredibly *inept* attempt at building small communities. I don't know anything about the 2000 version. My suggestion to people who are sweating about it is that you *join* and bring some content (and correction) if you think RENEW 2000 is twaddle.
UPDATE: Mike Dubruiel says Renew 2000 is quite good.
After Abortion links an interesting WaPo piece about the high rate of Russian infertility
Abortion: the gift that keeps on taking.
Abortion: the gift that keeps on taking.
A few years back...
A bus system in England was suffering from lack of punctuality. They were constantly late picking up passengers so a directive from on high was issued: Punctuality was Goal #1. The bus drivers complied. They raced from stop to stop and kept on schedule by not stopping to pick up passengers. A classic example of "Man was made for the law, not the law for man" thinking.
Here's another example: prosecutors saying that clearly innocent people should be executed if their appeals run out. The only difference is: the bus drivers didn't kill anybody whereas these prosecutors want to kill innocent people. In my country, that's called "murder". But in the Land of the Lawyers of the Culture of Death it's called "Legal".
Another fun challenge for you Culture of Death Penalty folks to try to justify.
A bus system in England was suffering from lack of punctuality. They were constantly late picking up passengers so a directive from on high was issued: Punctuality was Goal #1. The bus drivers complied. They raced from stop to stop and kept on schedule by not stopping to pick up passengers. A classic example of "Man was made for the law, not the law for man" thinking.
Here's another example: prosecutors saying that clearly innocent people should be executed if their appeals run out. The only difference is: the bus drivers didn't kill anybody whereas these prosecutors want to kill innocent people. In my country, that's called "murder". But in the Land of the Lawyers of the Culture of Death it's called "Legal".
Another fun challenge for you Culture of Death Penalty folks to try to justify.
Dimwits for Peace (requires registration)
Some antiwar types in LA decided to support the French peace position, not by laying out their nude perfect California bodies to spell out words, but by laying out croissants to spell out the words of support. They spelled out "Viva la pain" which means "Long live bread" instead of "Viva la paix" (long live Peace).
Or maybe they just wanted to advertise baked goods.
Some antiwar types in LA decided to support the French peace position, not by laying out their nude perfect California bodies to spell out words, but by laying out croissants to spell out the words of support. They spelled out "Viva la pain" which means "Long live bread" instead of "Viva la paix" (long live Peace).
Or maybe they just wanted to advertise baked goods.
I see that nothing disinfects like daylight
Fr. Gera goes to his sudden and well-deserved retirement (thanks to the ministrations of Roman Catholic Faithful, Drudge and the Smoking Gun) and a reader writes:
I would agree. A *healthy* magisterial faith (and Catholic faith is virtually unique in this regard in that it is magisterial: most religious traditions are not) can be a huge help. But of course, there's always a danger that the *mechanism* of the institution can be corrupted to protect the sin rather than to stop it. But on the whole, I find the Church to be enormously helpful, particularly in the sacrament of penance. We have a huge capacity for self-deception. I find it is usually the young who say things like "Why do I need confession? I can just go in my prayer closet and confess to God and I don't need to talk about my sins with a man. Living for a while tends to blunt one's confidence about our ability to avoid gross self-deception.
Fr. Gera goes to his sudden and well-deserved retirement (thanks to the ministrations of Roman Catholic Faithful, Drudge and the Smoking Gun) and a reader writes:
I was thinking about Fr. Francis T. Gera and his meretricious habits, and something occurred to me. It seems to me that each act of sinning incrementally dulls the ability of an individual to see the sinfulness of the act. After a while, that which would horrify a repentant man is seen as not so bad, perhaps even good. In that respect, it is a bit like night vision - after a while the eyes get used to the darkness and that which was nearly black can seem quite light. Conversely, this could explain why the saint is so humble. His life of humility, repentance, and grace fills his life with so much light that even the slightest inclination toward sin can seem like the darkest of things.
I suppose that this is one reason such things as loving, fraternal correction and a magisterial faith are so important. It short-circuits the natural tendency of the sinner to minimize or relativize his misdeeds and thus aids the individual in correctly assessing the state of his soul, bringing him to a point of repentance and grace.
Any thoughts?
I would agree. A *healthy* magisterial faith (and Catholic faith is virtually unique in this regard in that it is magisterial: most religious traditions are not) can be a huge help. But of course, there's always a danger that the *mechanism* of the institution can be corrupted to protect the sin rather than to stop it. But on the whole, I find the Church to be enormously helpful, particularly in the sacrament of penance. We have a huge capacity for self-deception. I find it is usually the young who say things like "Why do I need confession? I can just go in my prayer closet and confess to God and I don't need to talk about my sins with a man. Living for a while tends to blunt one's confidence about our ability to avoid gross self-deception.
A friend who is a reservist writes:
I've no particular arguments I want to offer, just gratitude that there are men like you in the world. What staggers me at the moment is the stark contrast between this man I am honored to call a friend and the sheer putrid littleness, the unbelievably cramped mind and soul of the pathetic creature who infested my comments box this weekend. It is creatures such as him that my friend is willing to lay his life on the line to defend. It's a picture for me of the mystery of the cross. Thanks for your courage, guy!
As one who could get whisked away to locations at home and abroad to take part in Iraq-related military efforts, I thought you might be interested in my take on all of this. I see the Iraq issue as one that contains a primary and a secondary component. The primary component is that Hussein has chemical and biological weapons, is sponsoring within Iraq's borders training camps in the use of these weapons (and is supplying the weapons) for terrorist organizations such as Al Qaeda, has displayed the willingness and the means to use them on his internal and external enemies, and will certainly participate in or otherwise sponsor attacks on US targets -- overseas or on US shores -- if left unchecked.
I know that my assertions are not proven in the open-source press, but I'm convinced that all of this is nonetheless true. I therefore am convinced that in order to thwart -- or at least severely minimize -- any such attacks on us by Iraqi-supplied or trained terrorists, Saddam and his ruling Baath party simply have to go. This is certainly not to say that eliminating Saddam by definition removes any terrorist threat. I'm not naïve enough to think that. If by removing the Baaths we do remove terrorist threats/attacks to our people, I will be greatly surprised and relieved. I think other terrorist cells may try to pick up where Saddam and Co. leaves off. We'll obviously have to deal with those future scenarios as we learn about them.
The secondary component is the issue of Saddam himself: the brutal repression of his people by himself, his own family, and other members of the ruling Baath party. If left unchecked, he'll absolutely continue his practices of executing opposition and the opposition's family members. He'll pay no regard for age (young or old, all dissenters and their families are wiped out), for severity of the dissent (e.g. one nine year old during the Iran-Iraq War, after asking why Iran was so bad, was murdered with her family), or anything else that he sees as posing a threat to his own power base. While I'm acutely sympathetic to the arguments against an Iraqi invasion -- innocents may be killed (or slaughtered by Saddam and his loyal followers themselves at the time the invasion happens) -- I know that innocent slaughter will continue unabated in that land if Saddam does stay in power.
Don't misunderstand, I'm not calling this 'secondary' because I somehow am not concerned about the plight of the Iraqi people. I'm bothered by this sort of thing where ever it occurs in the world. It would be great to do a thorough housecleaning of all such regimes. I know, however, that such an effort would require enormous sacrifices in our own blood, our national financial resources, and is probably at such a scale that for these and many more reasons we couldn't do it. Since all such efforts inevitably require some occupying force to either maintain or assist in the transition to a better form of government, I'm not willing to sign myself or others on for such a commitment. I also don't relish the thought of being known as the latest in a line of history's imperial nations regardless of our good intentions.
The reason I consider this component to be 'secondary' is because, while the liberation of Iraq's people will be a huge benefit in the long run for itself and its neighbors and will be extraordinarily great to see, the primary reason as I said above is to protect ourselves.
As far as the Vatican's negotiation efforts go, as a Catholic I really do wish there was some way that these efforts could succeed -- success being that Saddam and the Baaths are out, the Iraqis have their country back, and the terrorist-sponsorship of training camps and related activities cease. Sadly, since Saddam doesn't appear at this point to be agreeable to success on these terms (i.e. over his cold, dead body will he ever relinquish the reigns of power), I can't see any possible way that the various papal delegates could pull something like this off.
Since we cannot fathom the depths of God's workings, He may well have a phenomenal way to make this very thing happen that none of us will have forseen/expected. I like everyone else on both sides (or some point in between) of this issue pray regularly for it to be resolved properly.
If the shooting does start, for the part of the US and Coalition forces involved, prayer is EXACTLY what is needed to do this most unpleasant task properly -- remove Saddam and save as many of the people there who have so languised under his heavy burden for far too long. From my time over there during Desert Shield/Storm the last time, I've seen first-hand the destruction we wrought and some of the Iraqi (war) dead we produced. I was convinced then as now that we did the right thing, but I didn't enjoy having to be part of it if another way to resolve it existed.
I'm sure many places exist to poke this full of holes, but as I've thought through this, I believe that I can stand before God at my own particular judgement confident that I've reached a right position in this issue.
I've no particular arguments I want to offer, just gratitude that there are men like you in the world. What staggers me at the moment is the stark contrast between this man I am honored to call a friend and the sheer putrid littleness, the unbelievably cramped mind and soul of the pathetic creature who infested my comments box this weekend. It is creatures such as him that my friend is willing to lay his life on the line to defend. It's a picture for me of the mystery of the cross. Thanks for your courage, guy!
Sorry about the Attack of the High School Sophomore
Yesterday being the Sabbath, I wasn't paying attention to the comments boxes. All the grafitti is now gone.
One of the curious things about high school sophomores is how deeply they believe in their right to spray paint other people's property and that any attempt by the owner to say "That's my property." is "censorship."
By the way, thanks to readers who alerted me to the problem. If Junior returns with the spray paint can, drop me a line so I can get out the bug spray again, okay? Thanks!
Yesterday being the Sabbath, I wasn't paying attention to the comments boxes. All the grafitti is now gone.
One of the curious things about high school sophomores is how deeply they believe in their right to spray paint other people's property and that any attempt by the owner to say "That's my property." is "censorship."
By the way, thanks to readers who alerted me to the problem. If Junior returns with the spray paint can, drop me a line so I can get out the bug spray again, okay? Thanks!
Saturday, February 22, 2003
I'm outta here for the weekend. Here's my latest on Catholic Exchange
For more detail, read Bonhoeffer's The Cost of Discipleship.
For more detail, read Bonhoeffer's The Cost of Discipleship.
Friday, February 21, 2003
As a matter of fact, Caesar *is* quite capable of overreaching
If there's anything the 20th Century should have taught us, it's that. This is why reform of the Church is so vital. Given half a chance, Caesar will stamp out the one serious challenge to his ancient claim to be God. The Church cannot afford to be weak against such a danger. But she cannot use his methods (deceit and raw exercises of power) either. As Jesus says in John 17, the Church's unity is rooted in truth only, not in bureaucracy, deception, power plays, good old boy networks or coverups. Lord Jesus, heal your Church, we pray. Grant us repentance and holiness!
If there's anything the 20th Century should have taught us, it's that. This is why reform of the Church is so vital. Given half a chance, Caesar will stamp out the one serious challenge to his ancient claim to be God. The Church cannot afford to be weak against such a danger. But she cannot use his methods (deceit and raw exercises of power) either. As Jesus says in John 17, the Church's unity is rooted in truth only, not in bureaucracy, deception, power plays, good old boy networks or coverups. Lord Jesus, heal your Church, we pray. Grant us repentance and holiness!
Another attack on the Seal of the Confessional
Thanks to Peony Moss for the heads up. She blogs on this too.
Thanks to Peony Moss for the heads up. She blogs on this too.
Chris Johnson at Midwest Conservative Journal writes to say:
"Houston, we have antichrist!
So much for Roman Catholic eschatology."
"Houston, we have antichrist!
So much for Roman Catholic eschatology."
Note to Catholics: Here's How a Significant Portion of Bush's Political Base (and, Who Knows, Perhaps Bush) is Reading Current Events
I don't buy this End Time Prognosticating myself, any more than I buy Jewish attempts to reconsecrate the Temple or Find the Perfect Red Heifer or whatever. However, lots of people *do* buy these ideas and that affects how they act, perhaps disastrously. Catholics should therefore pay attention to such matters. A good place to start is by reading Paul Thigpen's thoroughly terrific book The Rapture Trap, which not only does a nice job of showing the problems with this theological fad, but also discusses some of the kookiness to which Catholic fall prey, *and* talks about a healthy approach to matter of eschatology.
I don't buy this End Time Prognosticating myself, any more than I buy Jewish attempts to reconsecrate the Temple or Find the Perfect Red Heifer or whatever. However, lots of people *do* buy these ideas and that affects how they act, perhaps disastrously. Catholics should therefore pay attention to such matters. A good place to start is by reading Paul Thigpen's thoroughly terrific book The Rapture Trap, which not only does a nice job of showing the problems with this theological fad, but also discusses some of the kookiness to which Catholic fall prey, *and* talks about a healthy approach to matter of eschatology.
Thursday, February 20, 2003
"A safer, more dignified way to kill themselves"
A *safer* way to kill yourself? Is that like a bright white shade of pitch black? An extremely noisy silence? A truly brilliant victim of brain death? A cram-packed total vacuum?
Mass media: draining language of meaning while U wait.
A *safer* way to kill yourself? Is that like a bright white shade of pitch black? An extremely noisy silence? A truly brilliant victim of brain death? A cram-packed total vacuum?
Mass media: draining language of meaning while U wait.
Vampirism as Church Reform
Now I'm seeing the suggestion that if we Americans are too screwed up to put forward good candidates for bishop, we should just demand that candidates from elsewhere be imported to the States by Rome.
Um, why are we so special that we get to rob other countries of good bishops just because we can't get our act together? Why should other countries give up their life's blood simply because we are so messed up? If I were some Nigerian with a great bishop, I don't think I'd take it too well if they yanked him and sent him to the Archdiocese of Rembertland because all the Americans could offer Rome for ordination was three ciphers and a cover boy for Leather Monthly. I'd suggest that the Americans solve their own damn problems and stop robbing me of my shepherds.
What makes us the bright center of the Church that we can just expect other countries to fork over their good shepherds because we are too spiritually screwed up to produce our own? Oh, I forgot. We're American. We're just Special.
Now I'm seeing the suggestion that if we Americans are too screwed up to put forward good candidates for bishop, we should just demand that candidates from elsewhere be imported to the States by Rome.
Um, why are we so special that we get to rob other countries of good bishops just because we can't get our act together? Why should other countries give up their life's blood simply because we are so messed up? If I were some Nigerian with a great bishop, I don't think I'd take it too well if they yanked him and sent him to the Archdiocese of Rembertland because all the Americans could offer Rome for ordination was three ciphers and a cover boy for Leather Monthly. I'd suggest that the Americans solve their own damn problems and stop robbing me of my shepherds.
What makes us the bright center of the Church that we can just expect other countries to fork over their good shepherds because we are too spiritually screwed up to produce our own? Oh, I forgot. We're American. We're just Special.
Today's update on Al Kresta
Just got this:
Just got this:
Al suffered from Necrotizing Fasciitis. This is a strep Group A Bacteria. It is very aggressive. It attacks the soft tissue. It can infect as much as an inch an hour.
Amputation is the common reaction to this bacteria.
We do not know specifically the source of the bacteria, however a run down immune system makes one more susceptible.
Al continues to respond to treatment. He remains sedated.
The doctors report that the next 72 hours are crucial. Al is still "Critical" and it can go either way at anytime. Each hour that passes is good. Is blood pressure and other vital signs are being managed at this point.
Please continue to pray. I know that this is not much of a change since yesterday. But in this case no news is good news. Time is on our side. Each minute, each hour brings Al closer to recovery.
The University of Oklahoma's Society of the Gospel is on the air!
Another hopeful sign of Spring from the youth of the Church.
By the way, to all moaners and groaners and proclaimers that the Springtime of Evangelization is a failure: Are you aware that there are 200,000 converts to the Church every year in the US alone? The untold story of the Church's Long Lent is how negligible the impact has been on people's decisions to become Catholic. I seriously doubt it would have stopped me either. I entered the Church in the Archdiocese of Seattle in the mid-80s, arguably the most publicly screwed-up archdiocese in the world at that time (it would appear the Archdiocese of Boston was the winner for the most privately screwed up archdiocese at that time). I did not enter the church with the thought: "Gee! Look at the cool archbishop of ours. Check out that awesome co-adjutor. That's why *I* want to be Catholic! Wow If *those guys* ever sinned or failed, my faith in Christ would be in ruins!" On the contrary, one of the things that somehow helped me was the realization that the Church was what it has always been: fully divine and fully human, a real place with real people that had room for deeply screwed up and sinful people like me. Perhaps it's my non-denom background and the enormous pressure I felt there to belong to the Pure Small Refined and Reallio-Trulio Remnant that made this so appealing. At any rate, I appreciated and still appreciate the fact that the motto of the Catholic Church is "We'll take 'em all". It's the teaching of the parable of the net too. So, though appalled by episcopal eunuchs and sins of clergy and all the rest, I've never been shocked. And I've never hinged my faith on the sanctity of clerics. Not even (and this may surprise my readers), the Pope. I think the Pope a great man. But I did not become Catholic because I said to myself, "John Paul II! Wow! That's why I want to be Catholic!" If it is shown that JPII has sinned grievously, it would sadden me greatly, but not constitute an assault on the Faith itself. I'm too aware of the history of the papacy. I did have to say, "Alexander VI. Hmmmm...." and decide whether I would choose to marry into this family (so to speak). There are, as we all know, skeletons in the closet and you have to realize that, in becoming Catholic, you are willing to shoulder the burden of being called a friend of tax collectors, prostitutes, inquisitors, anti-semites, pedophiles and all the other junk the Church has in the attic. But I even more had to ask whether I was worthy of such a family, given our immense patrimony of saints and giants, whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. As it happens, I'm not worthy. But Christ, in his grace, has let me join the party anyway, for which I'm grateful.
Another hopeful sign of Spring from the youth of the Church.
By the way, to all moaners and groaners and proclaimers that the Springtime of Evangelization is a failure: Are you aware that there are 200,000 converts to the Church every year in the US alone? The untold story of the Church's Long Lent is how negligible the impact has been on people's decisions to become Catholic. I seriously doubt it would have stopped me either. I entered the Church in the Archdiocese of Seattle in the mid-80s, arguably the most publicly screwed-up archdiocese in the world at that time (it would appear the Archdiocese of Boston was the winner for the most privately screwed up archdiocese at that time). I did not enter the church with the thought: "Gee! Look at the cool archbishop of ours. Check out that awesome co-adjutor. That's why *I* want to be Catholic! Wow If *those guys* ever sinned or failed, my faith in Christ would be in ruins!" On the contrary, one of the things that somehow helped me was the realization that the Church was what it has always been: fully divine and fully human, a real place with real people that had room for deeply screwed up and sinful people like me. Perhaps it's my non-denom background and the enormous pressure I felt there to belong to the Pure Small Refined and Reallio-Trulio Remnant that made this so appealing. At any rate, I appreciated and still appreciate the fact that the motto of the Catholic Church is "We'll take 'em all". It's the teaching of the parable of the net too. So, though appalled by episcopal eunuchs and sins of clergy and all the rest, I've never been shocked. And I've never hinged my faith on the sanctity of clerics. Not even (and this may surprise my readers), the Pope. I think the Pope a great man. But I did not become Catholic because I said to myself, "John Paul II! Wow! That's why I want to be Catholic!" If it is shown that JPII has sinned grievously, it would sadden me greatly, but not constitute an assault on the Faith itself. I'm too aware of the history of the papacy. I did have to say, "Alexander VI. Hmmmm...." and decide whether I would choose to marry into this family (so to speak). There are, as we all know, skeletons in the closet and you have to realize that, in becoming Catholic, you are willing to shoulder the burden of being called a friend of tax collectors, prostitutes, inquisitors, anti-semites, pedophiles and all the other junk the Church has in the attic. But I even more had to ask whether I was worthy of such a family, given our immense patrimony of saints and giants, whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. As it happens, I'm not worthy. But Christ, in his grace, has let me join the party anyway, for which I'm grateful.
Okay, it's true. My mind makes odd connections
I passed on an oral tradition to my kids today.
Great big gobs of greasy grimy gopher guts,
Mangled up in monkey meat,
Little piggies dirty feet!
French-fried eyeballs rollin' in a bowl of soup!
And me without a spoon!
(I've got a strawwwwwww!)
One of the things that made me a Catholic was the realization that a huge amount of life is not received in written form. Incautious Catholics often speak of "oral tradition" as one of the ways that the Faith is handed down and they are right as far as it goes. But I think the phrase far too restrictive. I much prefer the term "unwritten tradition" because so much of life is not passed to us in words at all. One priest has pointed out that if Peter were to walk into a modern Church, he would not know the language (except perhaps the Kyrie eleison) and the architecture would be completely unknown to him. But he would recognize one thing: the *gesture* of taking bread, breaking it, and offering it. That's incredibly close to the heart of our Faith and it is a thing passed on as a physical act, not a preachment.
I passed on an oral tradition to my kids today.
Great big gobs of greasy grimy gopher guts,
Mangled up in monkey meat,
Little piggies dirty feet!
French-fried eyeballs rollin' in a bowl of soup!
And me without a spoon!
(I've got a strawwwwwww!)
One of the things that made me a Catholic was the realization that a huge amount of life is not received in written form. Incautious Catholics often speak of "oral tradition" as one of the ways that the Faith is handed down and they are right as far as it goes. But I think the phrase far too restrictive. I much prefer the term "unwritten tradition" because so much of life is not passed to us in words at all. One priest has pointed out that if Peter were to walk into a modern Church, he would not know the language (except perhaps the Kyrie eleison) and the architecture would be completely unknown to him. But he would recognize one thing: the *gesture* of taking bread, breaking it, and offering it. That's incredibly close to the heart of our Faith and it is a thing passed on as a physical act, not a preachment.
Wind Storm
One of the great things about living in Seattle is that we get these delicious wind storms. I live in a place that is basically built on a long sloping hillside (hills begin about fifty feet from the shore of Puget Sound and continue getting higher until you've reached Stevens Pass in the Cascades). When these storms hit, the wind just *howls* around our house. My wife and I are both partial to leaving the window open just a crack so the wind will moan.
We're having one of those storms right now. Just a little gift to celebrate.
One of the great things about living in Seattle is that we get these delicious wind storms. I live in a place that is basically built on a long sloping hillside (hills begin about fifty feet from the shore of Puget Sound and continue getting higher until you've reached Stevens Pass in the Cascades). When these storms hit, the wind just *howls* around our house. My wife and I are both partial to leaving the window open just a crack so the wind will moan.
We're having one of those storms right now. Just a little gift to celebrate.
Kucinich: Another Whore for the Sacrament of Abortion
For Catholics, the Eucharist, the celebration of the living Christ, is the sacrament of unity, the ultimate binding power that holds the mystical body of Christ together. For the mystical body of Satan, the sacrament of abortion, the celebration of the death of innocents, is the parody, that binds all the mutual selfish antagonisms together in a hatred of life and the worship of power.
For Catholics, the Eucharist, the celebration of the living Christ, is the sacrament of unity, the ultimate binding power that holds the mystical body of Christ together. For the mystical body of Satan, the sacrament of abortion, the celebration of the death of innocents, is the parody, that binds all the mutual selfish antagonisms together in a hatred of life and the worship of power.
A chance to hold another episcopacy's feet to the fire
(Warning: this link has a rather graphic photo attached of a gay priest advertising his endowments.) Steve Brady of Roman Catholic Faithful continue to make life very uncomfortable for episcopal eunuchs. In case, you are wondering, here's the contact info for the guy who, though knowing about our extroverted priest, has so far opted to do nothing.
Most Rev. Andrew Pataki, J.C.L., D.D.
Eparch of Passaic
Eparchial Offices
445 Lackawanna Avenue
West Paterson, New Jersey 07424
Fax: 973-890-7175 / Phone: 973-890-7777
I'm a bit surprised that this stuff is tolerated in a Byzantine rite eparchy. I had the notion they weren't as lax as the Latin rite. But maybe I'm naive.
(Warning: this link has a rather graphic photo attached of a gay priest advertising his endowments.) Steve Brady of Roman Catholic Faithful continue to make life very uncomfortable for episcopal eunuchs. In case, you are wondering, here's the contact info for the guy who, though knowing about our extroverted priest, has so far opted to do nothing.
Most Rev. Andrew Pataki, J.C.L., D.D.
Eparch of Passaic
Eparchial Offices
445 Lackawanna Avenue
West Paterson, New Jersey 07424
Fax: 973-890-7175 / Phone: 973-890-7777
I'm a bit surprised that this stuff is tolerated in a Byzantine rite eparchy. I had the notion they weren't as lax as the Latin rite. But maybe I'm naive.
Padre Capodanno: A Catholic Hero
Something to lift your spirits for the AM. A verray parfit gentil knight.
Something to lift your spirits for the AM. A verray parfit gentil knight.
Wednesday, February 19, 2003
Another Chance to Unleash the Power of the Blog
Over at the Corner, Rod Dreher talks about a Friendly Sons of St. Patrick Dinner that will honor Eliot Spitzer, the second most powerful proabort in New York State. The dias will be shared by Cdl. Egan. Why not write his eminence and suggest this is not really a great idea? Remember the wisdom of St. Francis de Sales: you catch more flies with honey. Be polite, but let him know that it's not great to honor the man who is the biggest persecutor of the pro-life movement in NY. Sorry I don't have address links, but if some kind soul can send them to me, I'll blog 'em.
Over at the Corner, Rod Dreher talks about a Friendly Sons of St. Patrick Dinner that will honor Eliot Spitzer, the second most powerful proabort in New York State. The dias will be shared by Cdl. Egan. Why not write his eminence and suggest this is not really a great idea? Remember the wisdom of St. Francis de Sales: you catch more flies with honey. Be polite, but let him know that it's not great to honor the man who is the biggest persecutor of the pro-life movement in NY. Sorry I don't have address links, but if some kind soul can send them to me, I'll blog 'em.
I'm getting tired
So many of the people critical of the Pope seem to think that if they can just argue me into the ground about how wrong the Pope is to leave bad bishops in office it will somehow change things. Even when I agree with them, they go on. A classic example of displacement. Message to the Universe: I don't control the Pope's choices. I just say why I think he makes them. I think he's doing things for honorable reasons. I just don't think they will work.
So: a suggestion for the many people who seem to think that I hold the magic "Make the Pope Do What I Want" button:
Here is a handy dandy link to an article by Phil Lawler on the upcoming openings in the American episcopacy (oodles of them!), which includes the handy address of one of the muckety-mucks in the Church who *actually can influence episcopal appointments*. If my readers who are so bent on getting me to Just.See.What.The.Pope.Must.Do will stop wasting your energy on me and write *that* guy, you might actually have an impact on the Church. You sure you know the Perfect Candidate for Bishop? Write Hizzoner (or whatever his title is) and have at it. Change the course of history. You're sure not gonna do it in my comments boxes.
So many of the people critical of the Pope seem to think that if they can just argue me into the ground about how wrong the Pope is to leave bad bishops in office it will somehow change things. Even when I agree with them, they go on. A classic example of displacement. Message to the Universe: I don't control the Pope's choices. I just say why I think he makes them. I think he's doing things for honorable reasons. I just don't think they will work.
So: a suggestion for the many people who seem to think that I hold the magic "Make the Pope Do What I Want" button:
Here is a handy dandy link to an article by Phil Lawler on the upcoming openings in the American episcopacy (oodles of them!), which includes the handy address of one of the muckety-mucks in the Church who *actually can influence episcopal appointments*. If my readers who are so bent on getting me to Just.See.What.The.Pope.Must.Do will stop wasting your energy on me and write *that* guy, you might actually have an impact on the Church. You sure you know the Perfect Candidate for Bishop? Write Hizzoner (or whatever his title is) and have at it. Change the course of history. You're sure not gonna do it in my comments boxes.
Mobile arguments for war
When somebody says Saddam poses less of a threat to us than North Korea, it's quite common to say, "What about his brutality to his own people!" Aside from the fact that that North Korea is also brutal to their own people, there the uncomfortable reality that Saddam appears to be quite willing to be even more brutal to his people should we attack. If he succeeds in immolating Baghdad in order to die like a good heathen emperor, are the "We're doing this for the good of the Iraqi people" folks going to say "We had to destroy Baghdad in order to save it"? Or will we simply drop the arguments about the good of the Iraqi people and switch to arguments about the greater geopolitical good?
One of the things that troubles me about arguments for war, like arguments against war, is that trying to chase them down is like trying to tackle a crow. They keep flying away just when you reach one to ask it a question.
When somebody says Saddam poses less of a threat to us than North Korea, it's quite common to say, "What about his brutality to his own people!" Aside from the fact that that North Korea is also brutal to their own people, there the uncomfortable reality that Saddam appears to be quite willing to be even more brutal to his people should we attack. If he succeeds in immolating Baghdad in order to die like a good heathen emperor, are the "We're doing this for the good of the Iraqi people" folks going to say "We had to destroy Baghdad in order to save it"? Or will we simply drop the arguments about the good of the Iraqi people and switch to arguments about the greater geopolitical good?
One of the things that troubles me about arguments for war, like arguments against war, is that trying to chase them down is like trying to tackle a crow. They keep flying away just when you reach one to ask it a question.
More unhelpful rhetoric
Mark Steyn on the idiotic dribble of the Left against the war. I suppose what I'm looking for are the best arguments both for and against the war from a Catholic perspective. So much of the rhetoric of both sides is infected with purely secular inanities, both conservative and liberal.
Mark Steyn on the idiotic dribble of the Left against the war. I suppose what I'm looking for are the best arguments both for and against the war from a Catholic perspective. So much of the rhetoric of both sides is infected with purely secular inanities, both conservative and liberal.
Unhelpful rhetoric
War is one of those things that tends to make people raise their voices. And, as has been famously said, the first casualty is truth. I wrote below that the thing I find most difficult to understand are those who simply cannot see any merit to the position they do not hold, whether pro- or anti-war. I myself am reluctantly or tentatively pro-war. I simply think it enormously imprudent to let Saddam go on till he gets the WMDs he craves. Particularly since he stands astride the economic carotid artery of the world. I have no problem with blood for oil, since I know that a colossal economic catastrophe like taking mideast oil offline means an ocean of blood would be spilt as a result. Think of the Great Depression as a speed bump and you have some conception of what could be in store. And, since I think there are people out there in the Mideast who hate us more than they hate Saddam, I think we stand a very good chance of finding one of Saddam's WMD's in New York harbor. Given that I have friends in NYC, I don't enjoy that prospect.
That's my basic reasoning. However, I can respect the arguments against war. Particularly the concern about the long term effects of war and the chances of breeding a lot more bin Laden's if the Foaming Bronze Age Fanatics (FBAF) manage to convince the waffling soul of the Muslim world that this is an alliance between Crusaders and Jews, blah blah, etc. So I'm mortally grateful that Rome is not saying "You go, George!" and is supplying Islamicist propagandists with no fuel for a general jihad against Christendom. Of course, the FBAF will see the Church as the enemy in any case, but they will have a hard time convincing the mushy middle.
What I find trouble though, is the reasoning of other pro-war people. As I've already noted in the comments boxes, some of the rhetoric, particularly directed at Rome, strikes me as deeply problematic. As though there is something inherently ridiculous about the Pope trusting in God to intervene. As though there is something inherently wimpy or craven about asking God for peace or (worse yet) trusting God for peace. Isn't that, well, his *job*?
Another thing that bothers me is this sort of rhetoric (with fisking from yours truly):
Well, yes. You could be. Starting with the assumption that "peaceniks" are a monolith, all acting from stupidity and/or duplicity and without any brains or principles at all.
Just like North Korea, which is a "diplomatic" not a military problem, according to our administration. Does that mean my correspondent is a "fool" since he's not urging the same course of action there?
...as a US Ally. And his most recent war of aggression was undertaken with the understanding that we would approve it as we approved the Iran-Iraq war. Something Rome has not forgotten.
Um, ally-of-the-moment is a game we've played too. Not that this sets my heart at ease about Al-Quaeda, of course.
I basically agree with this. But I'm capable of stating it without the intellectual contempt. Especially because I can acknowledge that there is another side to the argument, albeit one I disagree with. Namely, it's not a slam dunk that Saddam will give WMDs to people who hate him just a little less than they hate us.
I don't think this correspondent is a bloodthirsty warmonger. I do, however, think that is this sort of polarized rhetoric which contributes enormously to the fog of war. For in the end, to agree with this rhetoric is to call JPII and a great many other principled Catholics with real reservation, a "fool", a "coward", a "hypocritical, hard-hearted pig" who "doesn't give a rat's ass" and who is a "moron". Such pro-war arguments serve only to weaken your case.
In the same way, the huge number of anti-war "arguments" which consist of "Bush is stoopid!" and all the other inconsequential piffle painted on signs all over Europe and San Francisco contribute nothing to serious consideration of the matter from a Just War perspective. Sorry, but this one is not easy. And if you think it is easy, I doubt seriously whether you are really thinking.
War is one of those things that tends to make people raise their voices. And, as has been famously said, the first casualty is truth. I wrote below that the thing I find most difficult to understand are those who simply cannot see any merit to the position they do not hold, whether pro- or anti-war. I myself am reluctantly or tentatively pro-war. I simply think it enormously imprudent to let Saddam go on till he gets the WMDs he craves. Particularly since he stands astride the economic carotid artery of the world. I have no problem with blood for oil, since I know that a colossal economic catastrophe like taking mideast oil offline means an ocean of blood would be spilt as a result. Think of the Great Depression as a speed bump and you have some conception of what could be in store. And, since I think there are people out there in the Mideast who hate us more than they hate Saddam, I think we stand a very good chance of finding one of Saddam's WMD's in New York harbor. Given that I have friends in NYC, I don't enjoy that prospect.
That's my basic reasoning. However, I can respect the arguments against war. Particularly the concern about the long term effects of war and the chances of breeding a lot more bin Laden's if the Foaming Bronze Age Fanatics (FBAF) manage to convince the waffling soul of the Muslim world that this is an alliance between Crusaders and Jews, blah blah, etc. So I'm mortally grateful that Rome is not saying "You go, George!" and is supplying Islamicist propagandists with no fuel for a general jihad against Christendom. Of course, the FBAF will see the Church as the enemy in any case, but they will have a hard time convincing the mushy middle.
What I find trouble though, is the reasoning of other pro-war people. As I've already noted in the comments boxes, some of the rhetoric, particularly directed at Rome, strikes me as deeply problematic. As though there is something inherently ridiculous about the Pope trusting in God to intervene. As though there is something inherently wimpy or craven about asking God for peace or (worse yet) trusting God for peace. Isn't that, well, his *job*?
Another thing that bothers me is this sort of rhetoric (with fisking from yours truly):
What? It isn't immediately obvious why we pro-war folks think the peaxeniks are fools? Could I be mistaken?
Well, yes. You could be. Starting with the assumption that "peaceniks" are a monolith, all acting from stupidity and/or duplicity and without any brains or principles at all.
Well, let's see what the situation is, and maybe that will give us a clue as to how I went wrong: Hussein is a mass murdering psychopath who has been torturing an entire nation in numerous ways for decades, who has had his hands on various sorts of WMDs on and off for a long time now, including a very close call at his possessing nuclear warheads
Just like North Korea, which is a "diplomatic" not a military problem, according to our administration. Does that mean my correspondent is a "fool" since he's not urging the same course of action there?
(Thank you, Lord Jesus, for the bravery of the Israelis' decision to waste the reactor at Osirik that the mercenary French vermin built for Saddam), who has waged wars of aggrandizement in the past
...as a US Ally. And his most recent war of aggression was undertaken with the understanding that we would approve it as we approved the Iran-Iraq war. Something Rome has not forgotten.
and who was recently mentioned in the most recent "Bin Laden" communique (which is an official statement from Al Queda leadership, regardless of whether it actually comes from Bin Laden or not) as an ally-of-the-moment because self-glorifying secularists are less evil than "crusaders" (isn't it nice to see that the Wahabis can play the "lesser of two evils" game?).
Um, ally-of-the-moment is a game we've played too. Not that this sets my heart at ease about Al-Quaeda, of course.
If he's left alone, he will have whatever WMDs he still has stashed away all to himself, plus whatever else he can get his hands on when Blix finally gives up on the hard task of making his farcial "inspections" look like the real deal; he will still be a major conventional military power in a region filled with vital resources; he will still be able to help his new-found allies; and he will still have an entire nation to reign over like the modern day spiritual son of Nero Caesar and Herod that he is.
I basically agree with this. But I'm capable of stating it without the intellectual contempt. Especially because I can acknowledge that there is another side to the argument, albeit one I disagree with. Namely, it's not a slam dunk that Saddam will give WMDs to people who hate him just a little less than they hate us.
Wow. I don't know what I was thinking. I must be a bloodthirsty warmonger, wanting to get rid of Hussein and thinking that people who think that they can and should coexist with him are fools who would rather believe comforting lies than the truth, cowards who don't care to risks their own lives to defend themselves, and hypocritical, hard-hearted pigs for "caring" enough about the Iraqi people to deplore the accidental deaths that will come when this man-demon is toppled from his throne but for not giving a rat's ass about them when it was their "leader" who was deliberately murdering them in swathes. I see no reason whatsoever to think that these people are morons.
I don't think this correspondent is a bloodthirsty warmonger. I do, however, think that is this sort of polarized rhetoric which contributes enormously to the fog of war. For in the end, to agree with this rhetoric is to call JPII and a great many other principled Catholics with real reservation, a "fool", a "coward", a "hypocritical, hard-hearted pig" who "doesn't give a rat's ass" and who is a "moron". Such pro-war arguments serve only to weaken your case.
In the same way, the huge number of anti-war "arguments" which consist of "Bush is stoopid!" and all the other inconsequential piffle painted on signs all over Europe and San Francisco contribute nothing to serious consideration of the matter from a Just War perspective. Sorry, but this one is not easy. And if you think it is easy, I doubt seriously whether you are really thinking.
Another Conflicted Reader writes:
I share very much your opinion on the current "war" situation (as I do on many other topics): I see no alternative to dislodging Saddam by force, but I hate the idea of waging a war and I am challenged by the official statements coming from Rome.
But the more I think about it the more I believe that those statements are very much justified, in a vein similar to the actions taken by Pope Pius to save Jews during WW2. (The two situations are not equal of course, I am just drawing a connection between the Vatican's actions) The key is in the global view that the Pope and the rest of our spiritual leaders must take in these matters. For the Church what is important is not only the immediate situation, but also the long term ramifications of what happens.
Let us say that the Vatican stated officially that the US is right in attacking Iraq and let us say that this prompts the US administration to finally decide to do it. Let us also say that, bolstered by endorsements like this, the US wages a careless war in which basic rules of "ius ad bellum" and "ius in bellum" are neglected and many unwarranted deaths and destructions are caused. What effect would this have on the world and the Church? How would such a statement be judged or lived by future generations? For how long would the "Nagasaki" question linger: was this really necessary?
What the Vatican is doing instead is calling the legitimate authorities to look at the situation with the gravity it deserves, to make sure that if it comes to war it is really a last resort and is waged according to just war principles. They are trying to make sure that in the long run nobody will be able to accuse the Church (or the US for that matter) to have acted hastily and foolishly.
I am not completely updated on this matters, but while I have heard lots from the Vatican on the importance of avoiding a conflict, I have not heard anything to outright condemn a possible war. As you keep repeating, I keep hearing prudential judgments directed at those who are recognized as having the ultimate charisma for deciding on these matters.
Unfortunately there are many "pacifists" these days who ARE condemning any war on Iraq under any circumstances and their voice (rushed and uncritical and often plain stupid) is being joined and confused with the pastoral words coming from the Vatican.
I cannot believe how many people still claim that the US are acting hastily even after experiencing the enormous patience of the US administration in this crisis. But that is reality in our society: whoever has the microphone gets the right, even when they are wrong.
Lest we forget
This is the man who is one of the major forces in the Democratic party. Mr. Truman, you must be rolling in your grave.
This is the man who is one of the major forces in the Democratic party. Mr. Truman, you must be rolling in your grave.
Amy Welborn is blegging for good Lenten reading for a webpage she's preparing
Help her out if you can!
Help her out if you can!
More on Al Kresta
Please keep praying! On the bright side, Steve Ray tells me he's responding to medication.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
NEWS FROM THE AVE MARIA FOUNDATION
For Additional Information Contact:
BILL KOSHELNYK - 734-930-3646
bkoshelnyk@avemariafoundation.org
Radio Talk Show Host, Al Kresta
In Critical Condition After Surgery
"ANN ARBOR, MI, WED., 2/19/03 - Al Kresta, host of the syndicated Catholic radio talk show, "Kresta in the Afternoon," was listed in critical condition, after emergency surgery to remove the lower portion of his left leg. He had been in intensive care since about 2:00 a.m. Tuesday, suffering severe leg and back pain along with swelling in the limbs and fluctuating blood pressure.
After close observation, doctors became alarmed when blotches appeared on Kresta's leg, due to sepsis (blood poisoning) from an infection of unknown origin. Exploratory surgery was undertaken at about 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, and it was determined that amputation was necessary to save his life. As of 6:00 a.m. today, Kresta was responding to treatment. He remains in critical condition under heavy sedation.
The three-hour "Kresta in the Afternoon" is produced by the Ann Arbor, Michigan-based Ave Maria Radio and distributed live, Monday through Friday, to Catholic radio stations around the country. Al Kresta is well known in Catholic circles as a speaker and lay evangelist. He is the author of the popular catechetical work, "Why Do Catholics Genuflect?" published last year by Servant Books of Ann Arbor.
In addition to his writing and on-air work, Kresta is CEO of Ave Maria Radio, which operates two Michigan stations - WDEO (990 AM) in Detroit-Ann Arbor, and WMAX (1440 AM) serving the Tri-Cities area (Saginaw, Bay City and Midland) - and maintains a satellite program distribution service for Catholic broadcasters around the country. Before joining Ave Maria in 1996, Kresta hosted a daily talk show on Detroit Christian station, WMUZ. Kresta and his wife, Sally, have five children and reside in Ann Arbor."
Please keep praying! On the bright side, Steve Ray tells me he's responding to medication.
My readers are brilliant!
Re: the Sisters of Mercy "Give our pro-abort 'Catholic' governor a photo op!" lunch date, one of my readers has the following ingenious suggestion: "The best thing would be for a pro-life family or group of families to give the highest bid for this auction item. That would be an ideal opportunity for a prolife student or family to discuss the issue with the governor."
Greg Popcak: If you are reading this, why not urge your readers and listeners to give that a go. Governor Granholm might get more than she bargained for!
Re: the Sisters of Mercy "Give our pro-abort 'Catholic' governor a photo op!" lunch date, one of my readers has the following ingenious suggestion: "The best thing would be for a pro-life family or group of families to give the highest bid for this auction item. That would be an ideal opportunity for a prolife student or family to discuss the issue with the governor."
Greg Popcak: If you are reading this, why not urge your readers and listeners to give that a go. Governor Granholm might get more than she bargained for!
Dom: I have the same misgivings
He lets the Churches stay open, so a little genocide is okay? I kinda think the bar has to be a little higher than that from the standpoint of a Catholic analysis of the justice of war against Iraq.
He lets the Churches stay open, so a little genocide is okay? I kinda think the bar has to be a little higher than that from the standpoint of a Catholic analysis of the justice of war against Iraq.
Pigs fly!
Donna Brazile and I agree completely: the Dems need to listen to Al Sharpton. Listen *carefully*. Let *him* be your guiding light! You're getting sleeeeeeepy! Make Al your candidate! Sleeeeeepy!
Donna Brazile and I agree completely: the Dems need to listen to Al Sharpton. Listen *carefully*. Let *him* be your guiding light! You're getting sleeeeeeepy! Make Al your candidate! Sleeeeeepy!
Ambivalence! Get Your Fresh Hot Ambivalence Right Here!
Cameron, Morrison, Katz, and Miller all express baffled reservations about both pro-and anti-war arguments. Miller and Cameron appear to come down about where I do: tentatively Pro. Morrison is still up in the air. Katz definitely plumps for war. Miller's is especially interesting because it is a rebuttal of Novak's arguments for war by somebody who is, himself, pro-war.
The thing that most amazes me are the people who are dead sure they are right (whether pro- or anti-) and simply regard the opposite side as evil or fools.
On the bright side, as a friend notes: "Don't you find it interesting that many of the people who are making serious arguments whether or not to go to war are using Just War Theory as a point of reference? Sometimes I think people forget the great contributions the church has made to western civilization and just take these philosophical/moral gems for granted."
Cameron, Morrison, Katz, and Miller all express baffled reservations about both pro-and anti-war arguments. Miller and Cameron appear to come down about where I do: tentatively Pro. Morrison is still up in the air. Katz definitely plumps for war. Miller's is especially interesting because it is a rebuttal of Novak's arguments for war by somebody who is, himself, pro-war.
The thing that most amazes me are the people who are dead sure they are right (whether pro- or anti-) and simply regard the opposite side as evil or fools.
On the bright side, as a friend notes: "Don't you find it interesting that many of the people who are making serious arguments whether or not to go to war are using Just War Theory as a point of reference? Sometimes I think people forget the great contributions the church has made to western civilization and just take these philosophical/moral gems for granted."
Al Kresta urgently needs our prayers
Al Kresta is known to many of you. He works for Ave Maria Radio in Michigan and is a fine convert. He has one of those rapidly growing, flesh-eating bacteria, and the condition is extremely life-threatening. They have already amputated one of his legs and may have to take the other. Please, please pray for him.
Lord Jesus Christ, please heal Al!
Al Kresta is known to many of you. He works for Ave Maria Radio in Michigan and is a fine convert. He has one of those rapidly growing, flesh-eating bacteria, and the condition is extremely life-threatening. They have already amputated one of his legs and may have to take the other. Please, please pray for him.
Lord Jesus Christ, please heal Al!
Tuesday, February 18, 2003
The Usual Suspects Hyperventilate about Bush's Public Piety
Where were these guys when Clinton made use of various Evangelical stooges like Tony Campolo to feign soul-searching?
Get used to it guys. Religious and biblical language has always suffused American political discourse.
Where were these guys when Clinton made use of various Evangelical stooges like Tony Campolo to feign soul-searching?
Get used to it guys. Religious and biblical language has always suffused American political discourse.
Things that give me pause
If we had been around in 70 AD, I wonder how many Catholic conservatives would have bitched about the cowardice of the hierarchy and their cozying up with dictators when they fled Jerusalem rather than engage in a hopeless war against the Roman powers who destroyed the city? No, I'm not suggesting that Iraq is an instrument in the hand of God for judging Israel, nor am I saying that our attack on Iraq will be hopeless for anybody but Saddam, so just cool your jets. I'm simply pointing out that national interests are not always the same as God's. For myself, I find that the charges of "traitor" and "coward" that routinely seem to be leveled at people who are not at all convinced that war with Iraq is just or something the church should endorse always tend to make me think of similar charges that were leveled at Jewish Christians during the sack of Jerusalem.
I'm also unsettled by a conversation I had a while back with a Catholic friend who more or less said that if war is a sin then we just have to go ahead and sin. That bothers me a great deal.
Believe me, I'd love to be unconflicted about this war. But there are some very troubling things said in favor of it and some very sensible things said against it too. Don't look to me for moral guidance on this one. I've seldom agonized over something as I have over this war.
If we had been around in 70 AD, I wonder how many Catholic conservatives would have bitched about the cowardice of the hierarchy and their cozying up with dictators when they fled Jerusalem rather than engage in a hopeless war against the Roman powers who destroyed the city? No, I'm not suggesting that Iraq is an instrument in the hand of God for judging Israel, nor am I saying that our attack on Iraq will be hopeless for anybody but Saddam, so just cool your jets. I'm simply pointing out that national interests are not always the same as God's. For myself, I find that the charges of "traitor" and "coward" that routinely seem to be leveled at people who are not at all convinced that war with Iraq is just or something the church should endorse always tend to make me think of similar charges that were leveled at Jewish Christians during the sack of Jerusalem.
I'm also unsettled by a conversation I had a while back with a Catholic friend who more or less said that if war is a sin then we just have to go ahead and sin. That bothers me a great deal.
Believe me, I'd love to be unconflicted about this war. But there are some very troubling things said in favor of it and some very sensible things said against it too. Don't look to me for moral guidance on this one. I've seldom agonized over something as I have over this war.
Meanwhile, here's something to ponder
All of creation exists, according to Catholic teaching, for the sake of the Church, since the Church is one with its Lord and all things exist for his sake (Colossians 1:15-20). What happens if we really order our lives and our politics as though that is a statement about reality and not merely one of those abstract theological things religious people say? (Conservatives: remember "the Church" means the Body of Christ, not just the heirarchy. Liberals: remember the Church includes the Magisterial office, not just whatever a bunch of clueless AmChurch people feel is important based on what they heard on NPR this week. Everybody: remember that the "the Church" includes both the living and the dead.)
All of creation exists, according to Catholic teaching, for the sake of the Church, since the Church is one with its Lord and all things exist for his sake (Colossians 1:15-20). What happens if we really order our lives and our politics as though that is a statement about reality and not merely one of those abstract theological things religious people say? (Conservatives: remember "the Church" means the Body of Christ, not just the heirarchy. Liberals: remember the Church includes the Magisterial office, not just whatever a bunch of clueless AmChurch people feel is important based on what they heard on NPR this week. Everybody: remember that the "the Church" includes both the living and the dead.)
Don't Stand So Close To Me
Just a thought: do proponents of war really *want* the leader of the Christian world saying "Go for it!" to the Bushies? Doncha kinda think that would corroborate everything the Foaming Bronze Age Fanatic Advertising department has been saying about "Crusaders"? I wonder if the Bushies aren't secretly rather happy that they won't have to beat that rap.
Just a thought: do proponents of war really *want* the leader of the Christian world saying "Go for it!" to the Bushies? Doncha kinda think that would corroborate everything the Foaming Bronze Age Fanatic Advertising department has been saying about "Crusaders"? I wonder if the Bushies aren't secretly rather happy that they won't have to beat that rap.
Another rather sensible argument from Novak
Any point-by-point rebuttals out there? I really wanna know.
Any point-by-point rebuttals out there? I really wanna know.
Paradoxes Abound
Neumayr describes people who defend Saddam and oppose Bush as victims of Stockholm Syndrome. I use the same term to describe people who think the way to heal the Church is to jettison even more of the Apostolic Tradition. Yet, paradoxically, the Pope (a custodian of the Tradition) opposes Bush and defends Iraq. Of course, it's not a perfect paradox since it appear that the Iraqi people, particularly the poor, are the ones the Pope has in mind, not Saddam. But it's still weird and baffling, particularly since Saddam has killed a great many of the Iraqi people.
Neumayr describes people who defend Saddam and oppose Bush as victims of Stockholm Syndrome. I use the same term to describe people who think the way to heal the Church is to jettison even more of the Apostolic Tradition. Yet, paradoxically, the Pope (a custodian of the Tradition) opposes Bush and defends Iraq. Of course, it's not a perfect paradox since it appear that the Iraqi people, particularly the poor, are the ones the Pope has in mind, not Saddam. But it's still weird and baffling, particularly since Saddam has killed a great many of the Iraqi people.
Another Lay Catholic Trying to do Moral Navigation in a Time of Puzzling Messages from Rome
Yes, I know *that* Rome disapproves of war. Everybody knows that. What I don't fully grasp is why. The arguments for war seem rather persuasive and simply replying "Yes, but Rome disagrees" is not much help. I'm willing to be persuaded. I don't *like* being at odds with Rome. But I'm not getting much help in finding reasons why Rome's position is persuasive. In matters of prudential judgment, that's pretty crucial.
Yes, I know *that* Rome disapproves of war. Everybody knows that. What I don't fully grasp is why. The arguments for war seem rather persuasive and simply replying "Yes, but Rome disagrees" is not much help. I'm willing to be persuaded. I don't *like* being at odds with Rome. But I'm not getting much help in finding reasons why Rome's position is persuasive. In matters of prudential judgment, that's pretty crucial.
Everybody Gets to Meet with the Pope But Me
And, of course, as we all know whenever the Pope meets with somebody it means he endorses whatever they think 100%. That's why I want to meet with him. It will mean I have the divine stamp of approval on everything I think and do.
And, of course, as we all know whenever the Pope meets with somebody it means he endorses whatever they think 100%. That's why I want to meet with him. It will mean I have the divine stamp of approval on everything I think and do.
Hey! All you fans of Celtic Rock n Roll on the Eastern Seaboard
Once you get dug out from the snow, you¹re gonna need a Ceili Rain show!!
FEBRUARY
Thurs 20- Worcester, MA- Holy Cross College- Kimball Theatre
(508)793-3487
Fri 21- Ocean City, NJ- Philadelphia Diocesan Youth Rally
Ocean City Music Pier,
Boardwalk Moorlyn Terrace 9PM show
(609) 525-9245 x10
Sat 22- Exton, PA The Mustard Seed- in-store appearance 12 noon
(610) 363-1068
Sat 22- Philadelphia, PA- Tin Angel 20 S. 2nd St.
7:30PM and 10PM shows (215) 928-0770
I love these guys! Go hear 'em!
Once you get dug out from the snow, you¹re gonna need a Ceili Rain show!!
FEBRUARY
Thurs 20- Worcester, MA- Holy Cross College- Kimball Theatre
(508)793-3487
Fri 21- Ocean City, NJ- Philadelphia Diocesan Youth Rally
Ocean City Music Pier,
Boardwalk Moorlyn Terrace 9PM show
(609) 525-9245 x10
Sat 22- Exton, PA The Mustard Seed- in-store appearance 12 noon
(610) 363-1068
Sat 22- Philadelphia, PA- Tin Angel 20 S. 2nd St.
7:30PM and 10PM shows (215) 928-0770
I love these guys! Go hear 'em!
The Sisters of Weasel at Mercy High Reinstate the Lunch with Granholm
Turns out a former Sister of Weasel (Agnes Mansour) had a choice once upon a time between remaining a Sister or quitting her order to go help facilitate access to abortion by working for the Michigan state government. In the best tradition of AmChurch, she chose earthly power over Christ. However, she still exercises power back on the board of Mercy High, and the spineless Sisters of Weasel have seen the light. What's so bad about an ardently pro-abortion governor who pretends to be Catholic? Let's have one of the kids who survived long enough to be born give her a photo op! Read the article and contact Cdl. Maida. You can also read all about it at HMS Blog.
Turns out a former Sister of Weasel (Agnes Mansour) had a choice once upon a time between remaining a Sister or quitting her order to go help facilitate access to abortion by working for the Michigan state government. In the best tradition of AmChurch, she chose earthly power over Christ. However, she still exercises power back on the board of Mercy High, and the spineless Sisters of Weasel have seen the light. What's so bad about an ardently pro-abortion governor who pretends to be Catholic? Let's have one of the kids who survived long enough to be born give her a photo op! Read the article and contact Cdl. Maida. You can also read all about it at HMS Blog.
Just to show how utterly out of touch I am
I never saw "Joe Millionaire". I don't care who, if anyone, won or got picked or whatever. The whole premise sounds incredibly debasing to me.
I never saw "Joe Millionaire". I don't care who, if anyone, won or got picked or whatever. The whole premise sounds incredibly debasing to me.
Haloscan sez:
Everything should be resolved by "Tuesday at the latest". Of course, that could mean "in the next 60 seconds" or "by 11:59 PM Remotest Pacific Ocean Time". Anyway, patience is appreciated!
Everything should be resolved by "Tuesday at the latest". Of course, that could mean "in the next 60 seconds" or "by 11:59 PM Remotest Pacific Ocean Time". Anyway, patience is appreciated!
Monday, February 17, 2003
Die, Aging Heretic!
... of natural causes. And childless.
Geezer Seminar finds nobody to carry the torch. Clues for the clueless: Your Jesus is a paralyzing bore. So is the Jesus of all heretics.
... of natural causes. And childless.
Geezer Seminar finds nobody to carry the torch. Clues for the clueless: Your Jesus is a paralyzing bore. So is the Jesus of all heretics.
When you're a Fundy, everything's in black and white
CAI sounds off on my attempts to analyze what the Pope is up to in not firing our miscreant bishops. Notice the careful nuanced thought for which CAI has recently distinguished itself. If I say, as I do, that it's not a bad thing to try to understand what the Pope's thought is, this is, for the brains at CAI, identical with saying Catholics are "required to cheer for, defend, or at least "explain" away everything the Vatican says and does". Despite the fact that I have repeatedly said that, if it were up to me, there are a number of bishops who would summarily lose their sees (and, I might add, quite possibly have to abstain from the eucharist for 20 years while they sat in sackcloth an ashes outside their cathedrals), CAI somehow manages to read me as saying the Pope's policy (which I've always said is dicey) is "a masterful stroke of genius".
No. I've merely said that, while I disagree with the Pope, I think it's a good idea for Catholics to try to understand what may lie at the back of his thought since maybe, just maybe, there might be some benefit in knowing what you are talking about before issuing sweeping judgements. Otherwise, who knows? You might develop the habit of going off half-cocked. And if that happened, why, you might just do something stupid like go out and download every bit of anti-semitic garbage you could find on the web, cut and paste it into an inane screed against the Jews, and then find out only afterwards that the garbage you cut and pasted without attribution was from a Nazi propaganda pamphlet.
I know that no *responsible* Catholic apostolate would ever do such a thing. But there are always those kooks and crackpots out there.
CAI sounds off on my attempts to analyze what the Pope is up to in not firing our miscreant bishops. Notice the careful nuanced thought for which CAI has recently distinguished itself. If I say, as I do, that it's not a bad thing to try to understand what the Pope's thought is, this is, for the brains at CAI, identical with saying Catholics are "required to cheer for, defend, or at least "explain" away everything the Vatican says and does". Despite the fact that I have repeatedly said that, if it were up to me, there are a number of bishops who would summarily lose their sees (and, I might add, quite possibly have to abstain from the eucharist for 20 years while they sat in sackcloth an ashes outside their cathedrals), CAI somehow manages to read me as saying the Pope's policy (which I've always said is dicey) is "a masterful stroke of genius".
No. I've merely said that, while I disagree with the Pope, I think it's a good idea for Catholics to try to understand what may lie at the back of his thought since maybe, just maybe, there might be some benefit in knowing what you are talking about before issuing sweeping judgements. Otherwise, who knows? You might develop the habit of going off half-cocked. And if that happened, why, you might just do something stupid like go out and download every bit of anti-semitic garbage you could find on the web, cut and paste it into an inane screed against the Jews, and then find out only afterwards that the garbage you cut and pasted without attribution was from a Nazi propaganda pamphlet.
I know that no *responsible* Catholic apostolate would ever do such a thing. But there are always those kooks and crackpots out there.
72%-73% of flock don't think McCormack should be their bishop
Talk about burying the lede. This article has a bunch of blah blah about McCormack's latest attempts to do whatever bureaucratic eunuchs do to make everybody feel included in some inane "process". But the real hard spike of incontrovertible fact is there at the end. Two surveys show nearly 3/4 of his flock don't want him as their bishop. And who can blame them? Have a swift and ignominious retirement, Bishop McCormack. You seem to be learning nothing, so please step aside.
My crystal ball is still at the shop, but I'll stick my neck out and say "If he's still there by next Christmas, I'll be surprised." What, I wonder, was the percentage of "no confidence" votes when Law finally resigned?
Talk about burying the lede. This article has a bunch of blah blah about McCormack's latest attempts to do whatever bureaucratic eunuchs do to make everybody feel included in some inane "process". But the real hard spike of incontrovertible fact is there at the end. Two surveys show nearly 3/4 of his flock don't want him as their bishop. And who can blame them? Have a swift and ignominious retirement, Bishop McCormack. You seem to be learning nothing, so please step aside.
My crystal ball is still at the shop, but I'll stick my neck out and say "If he's still there by next Christmas, I'll be surprised." What, I wonder, was the percentage of "no confidence" votes when Law finally resigned?
Not for the Sake of the Kingdom
Fr. Wilson on the episcopal eunuchs who brought you the Long Lent of 2002.
Fr. Wilson on the episcopal eunuchs who brought you the Long Lent of 2002.
Hey! HMS Blog Gets Results!
Over at Heart Mind and Strength Blog, the husband of Gov. Jennifer "Jesus Kills the Little Children" Granholm, ardent pro-abort and pretend Catholic, pays a visit and is not amused. HMS Blog: Speaking truth to power.
Over at Heart Mind and Strength Blog, the husband of Gov. Jennifer "Jesus Kills the Little Children" Granholm, ardent pro-abort and pretend Catholic, pays a visit and is not amused. HMS Blog: Speaking truth to power.
Oh, and for all you people on the Eastern seaboard...
...it's sunny and mild here in Seattle. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!
...it's sunny and mild here in Seattle. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!
A reader writes:
I urge you to consider carefully these two press releases from Communion and Liberation (available at www.clonline.org). They help us to understand that the Pope is motivated not by a naive pacifism, nor a dispassionate academic just-war analysis, but by a profoundly Christian sense of hope.
THE POPE'S WAR
Milan, 16th January 2003 "Never as at the start of this millennium has man perceived how precarious is the world he has shaped. I am struck by the feeling of fear often dwelling in our contemporaries." This is what the Pope said in his address to the Diplomatic Corps accredited to the Holy See. He then made a long list of situations of injustice, of war, of poverty that characterise our world.
"But everything can change. It depends on each one of us". And here John Paul II listed what are the positive "imperatives" (yes to life; respect for law; the duty of solidarity; no to death, to selfishness, to war) that sustain man's life and his need for happiness: the prosecution of these imperatives is the factor for building the peace the Pope wants so much, with Christian passion for the destiny of peoples, because in this is realised the destiny of the individual concrete person.
The Pope is for peace, he is not a pacifist. We feel reminded by him of the fact that peace is not the result of political strategies that win over others (even Bush says he is going to war so as to make peace); peace is the dramatic outcome of the search for Truth and for God, who alone can defeat what seems to be an inevitable enmity between men. From this point of view the Pope, in fighting for peace, is more at war than others "peace is not the virtue of the unwarlike", as Mounier said, and we are with John Paul II, because he untiringly offers his faith and his witness before a world in which the majority do not want war, but do not work for peace, because they do not know what to want and what to do. Meanwhile, in this confusion, men go on fighting and spreading that death and that incapacity to hope that are the true objects of the Pope's attack.
NO TO WAR, YES TO AMERICA
No, President George W. Bush does not convince us, just as his father, President George H.W. Bush, did not. We cannot understand why Saddam is the most wicked of them all, why he is the most dangerous, why his overthrow is so indispensable to the fight against terrorism. As a matter of fact, Saddam's tyranny seems "moderate" when compared with other regimes. Christian churches should be shown tolerance everywhere; in Iraq they exist, but not in certain other countries. We are against this war. We are on the side of the Pope, who sees this war as being out of all proportion, both in method and in aim, and is resorting to all licit means to avoid it, to spare the poor Iraqis not only human and political oppression, but exposure to the far more lethal aerial bombardments, and to spare all of us the consequences of a useless conflict.
We are on the Pope's side not only against the war, but above all in support of his work of peace-building. The Pope does not de-legitimize America. He does not label it the den of all the vices of the opulent West. He does not anathematize or excommunicate the Catholic soldiers who have left for Iraq, but invites everyone to join him in prayer ("Only an intervention from on High can make us hope
in a less gloomy future. I invite everyone to pick up the Rosary and beg the intercession of the Blessed Virgin." - The Angelus, February 9th, 2003) and in the search for a more adequate way to combat the violence that is threatening us.
We see an inalienable aspect of this more adequate way. It is the safeguard of freedom: freedom to believe, freedom of expression, freedom to work for a better future, the freedom of the Church and the freedom of the State, freedom of institutions and freedom of democracy. America is an example of this, such a clear example that it seems almost a dream, most of all for the more underprivileged. So even if the American government is wrong on this present issue, we shall not disown America, because, amongst other things, in America you can be against America?s war. In too many countries they do not even dream of this kind of freedom. We will not disrespect the American flag. We will not follow the utopia of a society so perfect that no one needs to be good. We do not feel righteous because we make declarations approved by the majority.
We feel responsibility, bitterness and pain for the contradictions that cannot be solved; for the impotence of international organizations; for the conditionings that inevitably bind relationships between States. We know that our freedom must be used for changing things through toil, determination and civilized choices.
The true peace movement is a movement of education. It affirms, as the people's conscience, the choice that evil "fearfully present in each one of us, and not only in the enemy outside (which changes according to which part we side with)" shall not prevail over good. In this way every judgment and action might be factors of peace, justice and civility.
Another amazing find in my email box this AM
The amazing thing, of course, is that some people will be more offended by the ditty than by the fact that this stuff happened.
The Ballad of Petey the Parrot: An Uplifting Poem for Children
Petey the Parrot served twenty-one months
Of a rap for indecent exposure.
His Bishop paroled him and give him a perch
On his pear-wood episcopal crosier.
He scolded the skeptics who labelled the bird
Unsuited for pastoral placement:
"I'm giving him charge of the CCD staff
And an office in Barney Frank's basement."
Chorus:
Hide the eggs, Gwendolyn, hide the eggs Tom!
Hide the eggs Kate and Kareem!
Petey the Sinister Young Adult Minister's
back on the pastoral team!
With an aawk! and a squawwk! twenty months and you walk,
back on the pastoral team!
Petey was therapized, pampered, prepared,
Pronounced cured by professional weasels
Who shortly thereafter were found to have died
From a sorrowful shortage of T-cells.
The cops nearly nabbed him at Cock-a-Two's Bar
But Petey was just enough quicker
To fly through the window, and home, where he found
He'd been named archdiocesan vicar.
Chorus:
Hide the eggs, Gwendolyn, hide the eggs Tom!
Hide the eggs Kate and Kareem!
Petey the Sinister Young Adult Minister's
back on the pastoral team!
With an aawk! and a squawwk! twenty months and you walk,
back on the pastoral team!
When the parents complained that his ministry style
Included non-standard relations,
The kindly old bishop asked Petey to screen
First his phone calls, and then his vocations.
It didn't take long for the entering class
To grow from near thirty to -- zero.
Now Petey's a bishop himself, don't you know,
and described as "The NCR's hero."
Chorus:
Hide the eggs, Gwendolyn, hide the eggs Tom!
Hide the eggs Kate and Kareem!
Petey the Sinister Young Adult Minister's
back on the pastoral team!
With an aawk! and a squawwk! twenty months and you walk,
back on the pastoral team!
The amazing thing, of course, is that some people will be more offended by the ditty than by the fact that this stuff happened.
Fascinating
Reminds me of Lewis' account of a pastor he knew who once saw Hitler in the flesh. Someone asked, "What did he look like?" The pastor replied, "He looked as all men do: like Jesus." What marks the woman in the story off from Singer is that she can see humanity in a monster while he cannot see humanity in a human being.
Reminds me of Lewis' account of a pastor he knew who once saw Hitler in the flesh. Someone asked, "What did he look like?" The pastor replied, "He looked as all men do: like Jesus." What marks the woman in the story off from Singer is that she can see humanity in a monster while he cannot see humanity in a human being.
What? We funded a trip to a pro-abortion rally? Golly! How did that happen?
Looks like backpedaling to keep the dumb alums in the dark.
Looks like backpedaling to keep the dumb alums in the dark.
Thanks, but no thanks
Various people are taking it upon themselves to subscribe me to various newsletters, email thingies and so forth. I just don't have time to read them. Please don't subscribe me to anything without first asking me. And unless it's desperately fascinating, assume my answer will be "No." I'm buried in stuff as it is.
Various people are taking it upon themselves to subscribe me to various newsletters, email thingies and so forth. I just don't have time to read them. Please don't subscribe me to anything without first asking me. And unless it's desperately fascinating, assume my answer will be "No." I'm buried in stuff as it is.
Saturday, February 15, 2003
Friday, February 14, 2003
Part of what disturbs me...
about what might be called the "Buchananite Traditionalist" faction of Catholics who oppose war with Iraq (as distinct from the Dorothy Day types) is that a none-too-subtle anti-semitism undergirds their thought.
Exhibit A: ChristusRex.org. Note that in addition to the various links to Church leaders opposing war, we also get links to Anybody and Everybody (Robert Fisk, Le Monde, the Holocaust-denying and anti-Semitic Institute for Historical Review, bizarre junk about our "Illegal War in Afghanistan" and the same sort of quackish Talmud-combing that CAI specializes in) who opposes war and then, for good measure, a something called the Thirteenth Tribe with some gibberish or other about Jews as Khazars. (ChristusRex ominously informs us, in the best International Jewish Conspiracy tones that "As expected, The Thirteenth Tribe caused a stir when published in 1976, since it demolishes ancient racial and ethnic dogmas...At the height of the controversy in 1983, the lifeless bodies of Arthur Koestler and his wife were found in their London home. Despite significant inconsistencies, the police ruled their death a suicide..." One can practically hear the black Israeli helicopters hovering over the Koestler home in "whisper mode".)
Clearly what lies at the back of such stuff is the cherished Rad Trad notion that the Jews are the True Enemy, that if the US would just stop backing these Christkillers everything would be just fine. They wouldn't put it that bluntly of course. But the grotesque hostility to Jews that these links attest belies that. And it makes Buchananite Traditionalist anti-war arguments hard to buy. They aren't really rooted in Church teaching, methinks, but in a deep hostility to Jews.
about what might be called the "Buchananite Traditionalist" faction of Catholics who oppose war with Iraq (as distinct from the Dorothy Day types) is that a none-too-subtle anti-semitism undergirds their thought.
Exhibit A: ChristusRex.org. Note that in addition to the various links to Church leaders opposing war, we also get links to Anybody and Everybody (Robert Fisk, Le Monde, the Holocaust-denying and anti-Semitic Institute for Historical Review, bizarre junk about our "Illegal War in Afghanistan" and the same sort of quackish Talmud-combing that CAI specializes in) who opposes war and then, for good measure, a something called the Thirteenth Tribe with some gibberish or other about Jews as Khazars. (ChristusRex ominously informs us, in the best International Jewish Conspiracy tones that "As expected, The Thirteenth Tribe caused a stir when published in 1976, since it demolishes ancient racial and ethnic dogmas...At the height of the controversy in 1983, the lifeless bodies of Arthur Koestler and his wife were found in their London home. Despite significant inconsistencies, the police ruled their death a suicide..." One can practically hear the black Israeli helicopters hovering over the Koestler home in "whisper mode".)
Clearly what lies at the back of such stuff is the cherished Rad Trad notion that the Jews are the True Enemy, that if the US would just stop backing these Christkillers everything would be just fine. They wouldn't put it that bluntly of course. But the grotesque hostility to Jews that these links attest belies that. And it makes Buchananite Traditionalist anti-war arguments hard to buy. They aren't really rooted in Church teaching, methinks, but in a deep hostility to Jews.
All you folks sweating about the "Middle Eastern men who wanted to buy a crop duster" story from Massachusetts: Relax...
They weren't Middle Eastern and they didn't want a crop duster.
They weren't Middle Eastern and they didn't want a crop duster.
Just to help increase my reader's sense of moral paralysis...
As I've mentioned, I'm conflicted about war, however, I plump for it in the end since I think it's suicide to let Saddam stand astride the economic carotid artery of the world with nukes and I especially think that a region crawling with people who have shown their willingness to kill 50,000 American civilians in cold blood (that was the target number remember) is not a region I want headed by a Saddam with access to WMDs and a big need for quick cash. Them's my reasons.
At the same time, I can respect reasonable arguments against war. The one that has always held the most power for me is illustrated again in the unlikely form of this quote from a foaming Bronze Age fanatic on the evils of Valentine's Day:
The thing that most Americans do not seem to grasp is that Islam is a lot bigger phenomenon than Wahabism. There are, indeed, lots of Muslims who are empathetic to the West and not the foaming maniacs or secret gloaters we often think of. I wonder very much how these "moderates" will react to a sustained Western attack on one Muslim nation after another? Supposing we succeed in radicalizing, not the radicals, but all those "moderates" that our Bronze Age moron in the quote is fretting about? Supposing we manage to convince them that their Radical friends were right all along and they have to unite to Save Islam? I'm not saying we are making war on Islam. I'm saying "What happens if we are perceived as making war on Islam?"
Jesus tells the following parable: "What king, going to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and take counsel whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? 32 And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends an embassy and asks terms of peace." (Luke 14:31-32). Suppose we only *think* we are prosecuting a war against Saddam. Suppose the Muslim world become increasingly convinced we are prosecuting a war against Islam (with the helpful propaganda ministrations of Al-Quaeda and al-Jazeera)? Given our tendency to go weak in the knees over spilled coke in the FBI lobby, do we really think we have what it takes to prosecute a war against a broadly radicalized Islam in which Mr. Chamkani's voice has won the internal argument currently going on in the dar al Islam?
As I've mentioned, I'm conflicted about war, however, I plump for it in the end since I think it's suicide to let Saddam stand astride the economic carotid artery of the world with nukes and I especially think that a region crawling with people who have shown their willingness to kill 50,000 American civilians in cold blood (that was the target number remember) is not a region I want headed by a Saddam with access to WMDs and a big need for quick cash. Them's my reasons.
At the same time, I can respect reasonable arguments against war. The one that has always held the most power for me is illustrated again in the unlikely form of this quote from a foaming Bronze Age fanatic on the evils of Valentine's Day:
"This is a shameful day. The people in the West are just fulfilling and satisfying their sex thirst on this day," Khalid Waqas Chamkani, a leader of the Islami Jamaat Talaba in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) bordering Afghanistan, said this week. "Celebrating Valentine's Day is against our Muslim traditions."
He called on the government to ban Valentine's Day along with Basant, the annual spring kite-flying carnival celebrated in Lahore over the weekend, criticizing its participants as sellouts to the West.
"The so-called moderate elements are crazy about celebrating all Western days. They are following the West just to show that they are modern people," Mr. Chamkani said at a press conference in the NWFP capital, Peshawar. "Some Westernized people are celebrating all Western celebrations without thinking about the fact that they are against Islamic ideology."
The thing that most Americans do not seem to grasp is that Islam is a lot bigger phenomenon than Wahabism. There are, indeed, lots of Muslims who are empathetic to the West and not the foaming maniacs or secret gloaters we often think of. I wonder very much how these "moderates" will react to a sustained Western attack on one Muslim nation after another? Supposing we succeed in radicalizing, not the radicals, but all those "moderates" that our Bronze Age moron in the quote is fretting about? Supposing we manage to convince them that their Radical friends were right all along and they have to unite to Save Islam? I'm not saying we are making war on Islam. I'm saying "What happens if we are perceived as making war on Islam?"
Jesus tells the following parable: "What king, going to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and take counsel whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? 32 And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends an embassy and asks terms of peace." (Luke 14:31-32). Suppose we only *think* we are prosecuting a war against Saddam. Suppose the Muslim world become increasingly convinced we are prosecuting a war against Islam (with the helpful propaganda ministrations of Al-Quaeda and al-Jazeera)? Given our tendency to go weak in the knees over spilled coke in the FBI lobby, do we really think we have what it takes to prosecute a war against a broadly radicalized Islam in which Mr. Chamkani's voice has won the internal argument currently going on in the dar al Islam?
Idjit with a keyboard works for Detroit Free Press!
Feel free to write him with your opinion of the chemical activity that passes for "thought" in his cranial cavity.
Feel free to write him with your opinion of the chemical activity that passes for "thought" in his cranial cavity.
More Good News
Retired Bp. Paul Dudley is cleared of abuse charges. Everything I've heard about the guy is good.
Retired Bp. Paul Dudley is cleared of abuse charges. Everything I've heard about the guy is good.
Interesting comparison and contrast on the difference between actual obedience to the Tradition and mere slavery to Traditionalism
And Then? cites two pieces she saw on the web recently. In the words of the parable of Jesus, "Which of the two sons did what his Father asked?"
And Then? cites two pieces she saw on the web recently. In the words of the parable of Jesus, "Which of the two sons did what his Father asked?"
Why don't they administer the lie detector test *before* they panic a nation?
The scariest thing about this war is that the government that brought you the NTSA is in charge of prosecuting it.
The scariest thing about this war is that the government that brought you the NTSA is in charge of prosecuting it.
About How I Thought it Would Go
JPII refuses to cheerlead for war, tells Iraq to be serious about compliance with 1441. Aziz insists he works for a harmless fuzzball. Smiles and pictures. Everybody goes home.
JPII refuses to cheerlead for war, tells Iraq to be serious about compliance with 1441. Aziz insists he works for a harmless fuzzball. Smiles and pictures. Everybody goes home.
Interesting but unconvincing attempt to analyze Bush's religious motivations
I was as offput by his "power, power, wonder-working power" reference in the SOTU as I was by Bill Clinton's promise of a "New Covenant". But religious language has *always* suffused American political language. As to the rest, precisely what I've *not* seen in Bush's approach to war is a cocky pridefulness. Yes, he's not a Theologian and is, I think, a rather simple man (in the best sense of that word). But I don't buy the arrogant fundy dolt portrayal that this piece strains toward.
I was as offput by his "power, power, wonder-working power" reference in the SOTU as I was by Bill Clinton's promise of a "New Covenant". But religious language has *always* suffused American political language. As to the rest, precisely what I've *not* seen in Bush's approach to war is a cocky pridefulness. Yes, he's not a Theologian and is, I think, a rather simple man (in the best sense of that word). But I don't buy the arrogant fundy dolt portrayal that this piece strains toward.
I've been thinking exactly the same thing
Osama's been dead for a year, but the mythmakers thought they could keep him alive via audiotape. However, the myth is wearing thin so, like bad screenwriters, they're looking for a way to bring that plot thread to a close. "I know! Let's have him martyr himself!" said one bright boy in a cave somewhere. Next time an al-Quaeda goes boom, we'll be told Fearless Leader has offed himself gloriously. No need to continue the charade and no need to admit the American's buried him alive in December 2001.
Osama's been dead for a year, but the mythmakers thought they could keep him alive via audiotape. However, the myth is wearing thin so, like bad screenwriters, they're looking for a way to bring that plot thread to a close. "I know! Let's have him martyr himself!" said one bright boy in a cave somewhere. Next time an al-Quaeda goes boom, we'll be told Fearless Leader has offed himself gloriously. No need to continue the charade and no need to admit the American's buried him alive in December 2001.
Okay. I'm wrong
The Pope's not a pacifist. Which makes his approach to the coming war all the more puzzling to me. I wish he'd return my phone calls. I mean, how busy could he be?
The Pope's not a pacifist. Which makes his approach to the coming war all the more puzzling to me. I wish he'd return my phone calls. I mean, how busy could he be?
A reader (with a background in Middle Eastern studies and actual familiarity with Christian missions in Muslim lands) writes:
Here is a piece that I found on the Christianity Today site about the status of Christian mission in the Muslim world. I thought that you might want to point your readers to
this in light of some of the wacky opinions being expressed.
A bit more good news
A reader writes:
A reader writes:
If you're interested in more good news on Catholic Institutions standing up for Church teaching, here's an article for you:
Essentially, a group of pro-abortionists took out a full page in the local paper on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. (The News-Journal in Wilmington, Delaware.) One of the signatories on the ad was a religion teacher at a local school run by the Ursuline sisters. She was offered the chance to retract her support for the ad. When she refused, she was fired. The bishop has been supportive of the action, saying "I am very, very pleased and proud of the administration's response to a very difficult situation." among other comments.
Naturally, this has been a topic of great conversation around here, but most people I've talked seem to side with the school, which is somewhat surprising to me. (We're not a very conservative area.) Letters to the Editor in the News-Journal were running about 50-50, but they may have controlled that, but even their very liberal editorial board defended the school's actions.
Hopefully, this is the start of a turn towards increased orthodoxy in Delaware.
Thursday, February 13, 2003
The Jesus Said "Huh?" Thing was Just a Joke
...not a life philosophy. Just for balance, allow me to present "In Defense of Theology". I'm the last person in the world to think that the gospel is simplistic.
...not a life philosophy. Just for balance, allow me to present "In Defense of Theology". I'm the last person in the world to think that the gospel is simplistic.
The Hope for the Future of the American Church
It's delectable for an old fart like me to watch as the tables are turned and serious Catholics become the outnumbered subversives going up against The Man. I think Catholics do some of their best work as outnumbered subversives and there's a definite gleefulness--what Tolkien called the "joy of battle"--in this delicious skewering of the incoherent blither being spouted by the greying eminences at Gonzaga who cannot cope with a President (the wonderful and formidable Robert Spitzer, S.J.) who is serious about implementing Ex Corde Ecclesia and a growing body of students who agree with him and view these babbling old flower children as the silly, power-hungry, and outdated geezers they are.
I'm reminded of a debate Chesterton once participated in. His opponent began by asserting that he was not sure he existed. To which GKC replied that he was quite certain he existed and so won the debate by default since the other guy might be a no-show. Idiot Jesuits who are unable to define either "Catholic" or "Jesuit" concede the field to those of us who are quite certain what these terms mean.
It's delectable for an old fart like me to watch as the tables are turned and serious Catholics become the outnumbered subversives going up against The Man. I think Catholics do some of their best work as outnumbered subversives and there's a definite gleefulness--what Tolkien called the "joy of battle"--in this delicious skewering of the incoherent blither being spouted by the greying eminences at Gonzaga who cannot cope with a President (the wonderful and formidable Robert Spitzer, S.J.) who is serious about implementing Ex Corde Ecclesia and a growing body of students who agree with him and view these babbling old flower children as the silly, power-hungry, and outdated geezers they are.
I'm reminded of a debate Chesterton once participated in. His opponent began by asserting that he was not sure he existed. To which GKC replied that he was quite certain he existed and so won the debate by default since the other guy might be a no-show. Idiot Jesuits who are unable to define either "Catholic" or "Jesuit" concede the field to those of us who are quite certain what these terms mean.
Nuns with spines!
Update: apparently it should read "Laity with Spines". The nuns sound more and more like they reluctantly complied with parental demands. Still, a small victory for the good guys.
Update: apparently it should read "Laity with Spines". The nuns sound more and more like they reluctantly complied with parental demands. Still, a small victory for the good guys.
Well, I'm embarrassed
Down below I ran a big plug for Catholic Scripture Study and kept emphasizing it's free. Now I go to the site and find this language there: "Catholic Exchange is pleased to begin offering in-depth responses to the questions provided in our Bible studies. Because this much requested feature requires additional development work and further strain on our small staff, we are asking users to please help defray the added cost by making a one-time donation of $15. Free access to the responses is provided for those of you currently supporting our apostolate with a $20 or more monthly donation, or who have donated more than $100 to Catholic Exchange on a cumulative basis. May God bless you for your support of our work. Enjoy the new Q-A element of our studies!"
So the studies *are* free, but the responses to the questions have a small cost attached to them. I did not know this when I posted. My apologies.
The studies are still, by the way, quite good and quite worth the piddly cost. Enjoy!
Down below I ran a big plug for Catholic Scripture Study and kept emphasizing it's free. Now I go to the site and find this language there: "Catholic Exchange is pleased to begin offering in-depth responses to the questions provided in our Bible studies. Because this much requested feature requires additional development work and further strain on our small staff, we are asking users to please help defray the added cost by making a one-time donation of $15. Free access to the responses is provided for those of you currently supporting our apostolate with a $20 or more monthly donation, or who have donated more than $100 to Catholic Exchange on a cumulative basis. May God bless you for your support of our work. Enjoy the new Q-A element of our studies!"
So the studies *are* free, but the responses to the questions have a small cost attached to them. I did not know this when I posted. My apologies.
The studies are still, by the way, quite good and quite worth the piddly cost. Enjoy!