Okay

After several reader critiques, I've decided to remove the post about McCarrick and GU's stem cell research. I think I was overhasty in my judgement here. I'll give it more thought.

Ever since we got one, our cat has stopped channeling Lyndon LaRouche messages to us

Peace and quiet reign in my head.

The Sibleys!

Don't forget to vote for my blog for excellence in all categories!

I want one of them cool statuettes with Fr. Sibley's "I dissent against Acts 15! Bring back circumcision NOW!" action figure pose.

Kerry to Abp. Burke: I worship Moloch, not Christ

Liturgical Translation Revolutionaries Stamp Tiny Feet in Impotent Rage

Dear Lord! New translations of the Liturgy are actually going to reflect what the liturgy says and not what liturgical revolutionaries distort it to say! The Woodstock Generation wets its pants (either due to frustration at losing their grip on power or out of sheer decrepitude).

Fr. Michael Barber, SJ

Marine Corps chaplain in Iraq and one helluva fine priest and hero.

Just to further confuse my readers who think I'm a Yellow Dog Democrat despiser of the Military who loathes Jesuits.

The Pro-Life Catholic Mask is Ripped Off My Yellow Dog Democrat Face!

A reader writes:

Enclosed is an article which is headlined below: re: President Bush deserves to be re-elected.

You might put this on your "blog". It would certainly off-set some of your other comments about Pres. Bush. You seem to find so much wrong with him and his administration that to me you appear to be a "yellow-dog Democrat" masquerading as a pro-life Catholic.

The following is the last part of an article I wrote and have sent to several Catholic publications. Not one, however, has agreed to publish it, because it is "too political" and comes down "too hard on our Catholic bishops and priests, many of whom are too cowardly or too Democrat to lead their flocks as they should.

"President Bush has come out strongly on many pro-life positions and yet, some pro-lifers fault him and speak against him for not being 'pure enough.' He has bucked the part of the Republican Party who are pro-abortion look-alike Democrats. Yet few, if any, bishops, priests, or laity publicly support him. It even appears that some so called pro-lifers long to return to the "good old days of (pro-abortion) President Clinton." For them, their back pocket is their most important consideration.

Some criticize President Bush for not "taking to task" the Democrat, pro-abortion, Catholic U. S. Senators to force them to approve the pro-life judges whom he has nominated. (As though he has any influence over them, when their obvious goal is to obstruct anything he tries to do, and ultimately get rid of him.)

While I am not completely satisfied with everything President Bush has done, or not done, where abortion is concerned, he has a record of standing for the Sanctity of Life, unlike any of the present Democrat presidential contenders, or for that matter, any of the other pro-abortion men and women in the U. S. Congress, or State Legislatures.

If we as Christians truly care about the unprotected lives of the unborn, (and THIS should be our most important consideration, NOT Party affiliation) we must show President Bush (and others) that we support and appreciate a staunch pro-life position. It is our battle as much as it is theirs to turn this country around and eliminate legalized abortion. We all must become like Mother Teresa and encourage and pray for our pro-life elected officials that they may have the wisdom and courage to stand up and speak out for the unborn. If we disagree on some levels, we need to continue to educate them and pray for them to see more clearly, not abandon them and allow radical abortion rights supporters to be elected. We must each do our part to help elect those who will stand for the unborn, regardless of Party affiliation.

In the U. S. Senate there are ten Democrat and two Republican Senators, making up the "Deadly Dozen," who continually block the appointments of any judges who have any appearance of being pro-life. These 12 claim to be Catholics, while continuing to support legalized abortion. In the 2004 election all voters who believe in the sanctity of life must vigorously oppose the reelection any of these Senators whose terms are up at the end of 2004. We need to pray for their immortal souls but we also need to see that they are voted out of office. They need to be replaced with men and women who are pro-life by conviction and who will stand firm for the sanctity of all human life. Those senators, who might be cured of their intoxication with power if they are defeated, may then hopefully begin worrying about where they could be spending eternity.

Remember, some day each and every one of us will meet our Maker. When He asks what we did for His little ones (and I believe truly that He will) we may not be able to say we stopped their massacre, but hopefully we can say, "We tried"."

I note below that, in addition to this shocking expose of my True Nature, my criticism of Grand End to Evil Projects (based on my deep-seated suspicion of secular messianism, not my Yellow Dog Democrat inclinations) is met with the intelligent comment, "Mark Shea disses Bush, supports coreligionist Kerry. News at 11."

Er, yes. No doubt it's my support for Kerry that lead me to write that "Kerry must be stopped." All part of the cunning Yellow Dog Democrat facade that leads me to comment endlessly on the Braindead Left and the Dems as the Evil Party whose sole uniting principle is fanatical dedication to the Sacrament of Abortion. Yessirree. I'm just an especially subtle Dem operative.

Why? Because I criticize Bush and the Stupid Party for their minimalist approach to human life issues. Therefore, I must really want another Dem abortion fanatic in the White House. It could not possibly be, of course, that I will support Bush, but at the same time urge the Right to take more seriously the centrality of the family and the dignity of the human person. Support for Bush must be total and unequivocal. Anything less makes you a Yellow Dog Democrat.

And they say conservatives are not ideologues.

The Cost of Grand End to Evil Projects

I come from a military family. That's why I fret about Grand "End to Evil" Projects. It's generally guys like my Dad and brothers who have to pay the bills for that in blood. That's why I like to be reeeeally reeeeally sure we know what we are doing when we embark on such projects.

A reader writes:

I've started going to meetings of the Christian student group at my law school (no Catholic groups here). They are a great group of people, and I'm enjoying spending time with them, but I am also feeling that I should be a bit cautious not to be pulled into anything "too" evangelical.

For instance, in the past few weeks I've heard lots of those "just really" prayers. Also, the president recently decided that everyone should give "testimony" for us to get to know each other better, one person each week. I'm a bit uncomfortable with this style of praying and "witnessing," since I feel particularly comfortable in the familiar ritual of Mass each week - and with the idea of living your faith without always witnessing/evangelizing. I'm happy to answer questions about my faith when asked, but I don't work Jesus into every other sentence. (These guys don't do that all the time, but it's there.)

I used to work for awhile at Family Research Council (in the so-called Catholic corner of the building :) but doctrinal matters didn't usually come up, since we were focused on our mission of family matters. This is a new situation for me. I do think it's good to do some Bible study - we Catholics are often woefully understudied in that matter - and it's great to work on ecumenism and form a community with people of similar values, but how can I share my Catholicism and still be a part of this group?

Any suggestions on what I can do? I would really appreciate it :)

The main thing, I think, is to always keep in mind the distinction between theological and cultural differences. Both Catholics and Protestants have a hard time doing that and so either tend to absorb real theological notions at various with the Faith or avoid merely cultural things as somehow a danger to the Faith. Classic example #1: Catholics who fall into saying things like "as long as you believe in Jesus nothing else really matters" and then proceed from there to jettison any Catholic dogmas that Evangelicalism is uncomfortable with. Classic example #2: spontaneous prayer vs. liturgical prayer.

The dogmas really matter. The prayer style are both/and, not either/or.

My recommendation is for Catholics to be thoroughly ecumenical and at ease in an Evangelical setting, but to also know their faith well enough so that they can understand the so-called Catholic distinctives for what they are: the teaching of the apostolic Tradition in its fullness. The paradigm Catholics must grasp is that Catholic Faith *is* "mere Christianity". Anything less than the full deposit of Faith is not "the basics". It is a subtraction and an oversimplification which can only be mended by the fullness of the Faith as it is revealed through the Catholic Faith.

One needn't be obnoxious about that. There's no need to beat wonderful Evangelical people over the head with triumphalism. Indeed, to be triumphal is dumb since there's nothing particularly meritorious about it. We don't "possess" the Truth. At best, the Truth possesses us despite our labors to screw it all up.

But there's also no reason to feel ashamed of it, as Paul was not ashamed of the gospel. So when your Evangelical friends, with the best intentions, say things like "It doesn't matter what you believe as long as you believe in Jesus" (by which they mean, "You don't need all that extra Catholic junk") you can always make it clear that it matters very much. Just ask them to join you in saying a prayer to the Blessed Virgin Mary for the Holy Souls in Purgatory. Voila! I matters very much to them that you *not* believe such things. And if you do, for many of them, your faith in Jesus is in real question. From that point, of course, you can discuss the basis of such points of perfectly biblical doctrine and make it clear that the Church has not *added* anything: all this is implied in Scripture. Rather, Evangelicalism has made a good start, but the Church has gone rather further in exploring the revelation.

Or, if you prefer a less confrontive way, you can simply describe how it is you have found Jesus in the context of the Catholic Faith. Most Evangelicals are open to the idea that Catholics are Christian. But they often have a vague notion that they have a "relationship with Jesus" that just happens to go on independent of their relationship to the Catholic Church. Making it clear that this relationship is inextricably bound up with the Church and its teachings is often a very eye-opening experience for Evangelicals since it ultimately leads us to confront the same question about the Church that Jesus asked about himself: "Who do you say I am?"

Speaking of which...

the NY Times bravely speaks out against the mainstream press' lockstep opposition to the limitless splendors of gay marriage.

One Catholic priest, who has violated his church's ban, said: "We can bless a dog, we can bless a boat, we can bless a car, but we can't say a prayer over two people who love each other and want to spend their lives together. You don't have to call it marriage; you can call it a deep and abiding friendship, but you can't bless it."

Thank God for that kind of culture-bucking courage from our anonymous priest vs. his evil church's "ban"! And, thanks to Sweden, there may soon come a time when he will be able to bless dogs in a whole new way too! Destroy all taboos!

Some observations on yesterday's Brownshirt kafuffle

A number of readers wrote to object when I connected ideologically-driven property damage and vandalism to brownshirts. The typical objection can be summarized as "Stickers do not rise to the level of Kristallnacht or the Holocaust."

And, of course, this is true--and would matter if that was what I was saying. But, of course, that's not what I'm saying.

Permit me to illustrate what I *am* saying. If I tell you that so and so is a lazy slob and remark that "idle hands are the devil's playground" most of us would not immediately say "Oh, so you are saying that a lazy person is the same thing as a satanist who performs grisly ritual murders on innocent little children, eh?"

We would recognize that small things are *related to* and can lead to big things. Indeed, we make these sorts of connections all the time. We recognize relationships, while not feeling the moronic compulsion to proclaim complete identification. We say of some fool out protesting for abortion rights that they are "doing the devil's work" without meaning that they are necessarily even aware they are doing so. Jesus made rather stark use of this principle when he rebuked Simon Peter in Matthew 16. ("Get behind me, Satan!")

Now, when I point out brownshirt behavior among "gay activists" I am doing basically the same thing. As Andy's breathless fulminations make clear, a culture that no longer understands where real Ultimate Evil is found (in Satan) can still recognize the best icon of evil our race has yet furnished: the Nazis. Interestingly, if I were to write that ideologically-driven vandals were "doing the devil's work", I doubt Andy would hyperventilate, though, in fact, I would be speaking quite literally and relating such actions to evil far greater than Hitler's. Somehow, I think he could grasp that I do not make an absolute identification between some stickers and the Prince of Darkness, but that I am saying that in their own feeble way, such vandals are doing their pathetic best to advance his kingdom of Noise. But when I relate such actions to the much more minor business of mere human evil in the Third Reich (which is vanishingly small compared to the evil of Satan), Andy's limited imagination is suddenly fired up! I am mocking the sufferings of millions!

Well, no. I am saying there is a real relationship (not an identification, a relationship) between the ideologically-driven contempt that fuels these small acts of vandalism and property damage and other larger acts of vandalism and property damage. I am saying that small acts of contempt lead to bigger and more horrible ones.

Now the thing I am responding to when I name such acts of bullying cowardice is precisely the bullying cowardice. The goal of bullying cowardice is to intimidate by whatever means necessary. And so, for instance, some folk in my comments boxes have, with the narcissism I've come to expect whenever dealing with gay agitprop, completely overlooked the fact that what prompted this discussion was, after all, an act of vandalism by the Gay Agitprop Brigade. Instead, they've invoked all the normal sob stuff about pink triangles and concentration camps: as though anybody who objects to ideologically-driven acts of vandalism by gays is eager to load gays on the boxcars. In short, more desperate attempts at bullying.

Now my response to bullies is to make fun of them. It is to mock, not the suffering of millions, but the bullying of bullies. Hence, the "Gay Brownshirts on the March!" headlines when I run across the remarkably frequent acts of threats, vandalism, intimidation, and even violence that seems to characterize the Sexual Orientation of Peace.

Some good souls, such as Alias Clio, express an understandable concern that this approach does not make for a good debate. Quite true. And if I were seeking to debate with bullies, that would matter. But I'm not. I'm seeking to fight bullies and the best way I know how to do that in the public square is to make clear that people who act this way are indeed bullies and are doing the devil's (or, if your imagination is limited by atheism) Hitler's work.

As I've said repeatedly, I do not regard all, or even most gays, as brownshirts. I regard gay brownshirts (and their apologists) as brownshirts. There are, as Jeff Miller's handy Brownshirt Activity Discernment Threat Level Meter makes clear, different degrees of brownshirt activity and thinking and I will attempt to color-code accordingly. The sticker thing was at Code Level Sienna. There are also, of course, brownshirt actions committed by various other sorts of ideologues. For instance, as I have pointed out, there are alledged "Catholic pundits" who advocate the mass murder of the innocent men, women, and children of Tehran, Mecca, Medina, Damascus and Tripoli. Such people are every bit as enamored of evil as the gay brownshirts I criticize in my little brownshirt alerts. But such people tend not to have many people making excuses for them. And they are, thanks be to God, powerless to implement their murderous agenda. Gay brownshirts have lots of people making excuses for them and muffling public awareness of their bullying actions. And they *frequently* not only talk about, but act on their Brownshirt Dreams, as the links I post make clear. I opt not to ignore such actions but to point them out.

Insensitive? You betcha! But then I don't much care about the feelings of bullies. I care about their victims and stopping their bullying.

Claybourn on Lawrence, the Swedes, and Their Special Animal Friends

Gotta love the handwringing complaint in the article yesterday that all this unpleasantness is due to the criminalization of sex with children. Our poor furry friends! Suffering due to the irrational prudishness of those who just can see that Love Knows No Age Boundaries!

Not to worry. The logic at work behind Lawrence will corrode this and every other last vestige of moral sanity. At the end of the day, the *sole* question will center on individual consent. It is mere sentiment that keeps the "Sex with Children is Totally Different" Brigade afloat. Sooner or later it will be pointed out that children are quite able to give consent and then the wheedling and pleas will begin to soften that societal barrier as well. Look for the introduction of the magic word "taboo". When that enters the conversation, it's the signal that the Chattering Classes have decided another hitherto granite moral prohibition is now just a malleable "irrational prejudice" to be swept away.

And here's a picture of the agitprop that will help advance the Revolution. For the full article, go here. And remember, the real issue is not the glaring and obvious pathologies in the gay community, it's those who use insensitive language when mocking the fact that those pathologies are excused, covered up, and shouted down.

I predict the preferred strategy for shouting this piece down will "Pay no attention to this because the Family Research Council wrote it. Refute the documentation? Who needs to when the messenger has been sufficiently demonized?"

Big Trouble for Microsoft and IE 6.0 Users

A Man's Best Friend is His Rabbit

Threat Level Elevated to "Brownshirt"

Speak incorrect opinions that happen to reflect biblical teaching, get sued for a "hate crime" for (I'm willing to bet) considerably more than $500. The vandalism is to the right of free speech and the teaching of Christ.

I ask and the Curt Jester Provides!

Color-coded "Threat Levels" for all your Brownshirt Activity Discernment needs!



Jeff Miller: Bloomin' Genius.

Sweden: Not Ready for Prime Time--Yet

But who's to say it's wrong? Indeed, isn't it hateful to say it's wrong?

Could there possibly be anything more incredibly glorious and splendid than homosexuality?

NO! say the critics! NOOOOO!!!

Down in adoration falling
This great lifestyle choice we hail
Over ancient forms of union
Newer rights of sin prevail
Faith will tell us all are latent
When our propaganda fails.

(Kudos to Mark Gordon for the Hymn to All Things Gay).

O'Malley v. Kerry?

Could be interesting.

A reader springs to the defense of the Jesuits

Come on yall. Everytime you bash the Jesuit order just because of what only some Jesuits do, you run off potential good guys who are thinking about the order and you run the nutty guys right into the arms of the Jesuits. It's gross stereotyping like this that nearly kept me from entering the order and participating in its renewal!

(O, how I wish S.J. John had left his email!)

I love the legacy of the Jesuits - and I'm a Presby! I think the current S.J. bashing is, ironically, a manifestation the same kind of historical myopia you bemoan in pop culture today. Don't damn tomorrow's sons for the sins of their fathers without also remembering the faith of their grandfathers. Isn't the point of Holy Tradition that the Church has, by the Spirit's ongoing work, drawn supernatural strength for the present crisis by remembering and reemphasizing its past? Hasn't the Church always regained her strength in times of moral torpor by recalling the heights from which it has fallen? That's the kind of hope I see for the Society of Jesus, an order so intimately connected to the Church's post-Reformation survival and growth that its woes must either prophesy or indicate the larger Church's peril. The Jesuits have meant and still mean something wonderful, even if only, at present, in their fundamental identity and forms.

Yes, they're in sorry shape in North Am, but I'm exactly who S.J. John is talking about. As you know, I'm pretty seriously converting to the RCC and becoming an S.J. (I'm aiming for Most Hated of 2008: abandoned Protestantism + left girlfriend for priesthood + joined Jesuits!!!) A regular commenter at CAEI, whom I appreciate very much, yesterday at Amy Welborn's blog quipped, "no wonder the Jesuits are a dying breed." Wow! Can this really have been spoken by a Catholic, for whom despair is not an option, and for whom, mystically, the woes of every member are his own? What effect might all this pessimistic scorn have on a hopeful seminarian (which, for me, is not an abstraction, since my roommate's friend is an S.J. novice)?

Responding to S.J. John, Charles R. Williams complained the Jesuits are too corrupt for someone to safely try reforming from the bottom up. Well, the world is also a pretty dangerous place to try reforming too (or so I've heard), but that hasn't stopped the Church from getting its hands dirty loving it from the bottom up (or so I've heard). I'm stunned and disappointed by the air of contemptuous apathy I hear so often about "today's Jesuits." As if "Jesuit" is a dirty word. Where would the Church be without the SJs? Granted, respect often means knocking sense into a person you love; problem is, I don't hear much love or sympathy for the SJs. (Dean: "Bush is not my neighbor." St Blog's: "Jesuits are not my neighbors"?) Love never fails and grace abounds manifoldly beyond sin for individuals (1 Cor 13:8, Rom 5:20). Is there any reason this is not equally true for an ecclesiastically founded (and historically rock-out awesome!) Order?

(What's more, the Reformation ain't over by a long shot; only now it's Pentecostal. There's rough days ahead south o' th' 'quator; we could use another Ignatius, y pronto!)

I recently heard "rage floats" on a great Catholic blog. Unfortunately, rage, and only rage, seems always to fly towards the Jesuits at St Blog's. Why write them off as a whole so crassly? The Jesuits have done so much for the Church. It's time, by prayer and chastisement aimed at restoring the fallen (Jam 5:19-20), to return the favor. It would take a Jesuit to help (I dinnit say save!) the Jesuits. And maybe that's where I am. For what it's worth, I guess the only "change" I'd appreciate would be a post every now and then encouraging prayers (or even posting a famous prayer of Ignatius, Xavier, Ricci, et al?) for the restoration of the SJs. It just seems more in line with the mystical unity of hope and undying mercy Catholicism embodies to the world.

Vote for ME!

Tales of Catechetical Horrors

A reader relates an all-too-familiar tale:

I graduated from law school last May and now live in D.C. with my wife. Sometime last year I was drawn back to Christianity after several years wandering in the desert of Logical Positivism. I had been raised a Southern Baptist, but since I was more or less now starting from scratch, I delved into Theology and the history of the church. Needless to say I was rather taken aback by the argument in favor of the Roman Catholic Church. Being raised a Baptist, I naturally had certain ingrained anti-Catholic prejudices, and so I spent about 3 or 4 months attending an Episcopal Church before I could make the Great Leap.

This was all going on while I was in Alabama, my home and the state in which my wife and I attended law school. We had decided to look into an RCIA program in D.C. and were pleased to find one being conducted at the beautiful Cathedral for the Archdiocese of D.C., home church to Cardinal McCarrick. We have since been attending RCIA there since August.

Now I come to the point: Having studied the Catechism, and the teachings of the Church, I have become rather shocked and dismayed with many of the things our RCIA director says in our meeting. Here's a sampling:

* Salvation is a matter of cooperating with God's grace. Since no one could probably ever fully reject God's grace, everyone in the world is saved and no one is going to hell.

* Annulments are easy to get. The Church's teachings on divorce are out of date, and should be seen only in their "historical context." The Church simply uses annulments to get around the older, out of date teachings.

* If you find that any of the Church's moral teachings don't "draw you closer to God" you are free to reject them and do whatever feels right to you. A gay man who disagreed with the Church's teachings is free to reject them and live his life as he chooses.

* Gay marriage is "just around the corner." The Church's teachings about marriage are bogged down by out of date medieval philosophy which will soon change to accept gay marriage.

* If you've committed a "mortal sin" but personally don't believe it was wrong, you don't have to confess it.

Furthermore, when a devout young seminarian was helping out with class and explaining that the because of the apostolic nature of the Church every priest and bishop could trace his authority all the way back to Christ, our RCIA leader's Methodist fiancee leaned over to him and asked, "Is that true?" Our RCIA leader responded, "No." We also get a lot of "How does it make you feel" questions about scripture rather than anything from the Catechism. Lastly, my wife and I would like to switch to NFP in order to respect the Church's teachings even though it may be difficult for us. I asked our RICA leader about this and he promised me that birth control was not a mortal sin, that Humane Vitae was probably wrong, and gave us no real encouragement.

After I decided to joining the Church, I felt that I had an obligation to humbly submit my will to the Church I believed was truly founded by Christ and guided by the Holy Spirit. I understood that it would be hard sometimes, but that religion isn't always supposed to be easy. Because of the things our RCIA leader says, I have become very upset and confused. It's hard to keep struggling the way I have when you keep getting this "I'm okay you're okay" theology. Is it legitimate for me to be totally steamed and upset with this guy? What should I do? I have written to him about my concerns, and he just blows me off. In a recent e-mail, he told me that he disliked the "Pay, Pray, Obey" Church and instead wanted to make sure it was open to all. That sounds nice, but it seems he wants to open it up by removing all of its standards. What gives? Is this kind of attitude normal in the Church? What would the Cardinal think about it?

First off, I can relate. Read my own story of catechetical horrors here.

Second, you've every right to be ticked. But don't get mad, get even: become a faithful Catholic, learn your faith thoroughly (this is what the Catechism and the plentiful works of serious Catholics are for), and then start doing the teaching yourself.

Simply put, it is no good a) staying out of the Church because catechesis sucks or b) hoping that the heretical catechist will change his spots. Therefore, import into the Church the gifts you have as a pro-active Protestant who takes his baptismal obligation as prophet, priest and king seriously. Assume that the disaster with which God is confronting you is a call to ministry until God makes it clear you are wrong to assume so.

That is, more or less, why I started writing: I wanted to provide people with all the stuff nobody gave me when I was entering the Church. The Church's teaching is solid. It's her teachers that suck. Happily, it is the Church, not the individual catechist, to which you are to submit your will. When the catechist says something cockamamie and at obvious odds with the Church's real teaching, feel free to ignore it. Feel free also to give the correct teaching--but in love. Don't pick fights because a) it will scare onlookers who won't hear the Church's teaching, but simply hear Angry Guy vs. Tolerant and Open Minded Guy and b) it will kill your chances of getting to do catechesis later. Serpents. Doves. Etc.

Finally, seek first the kingdom. After a traumatic experience of lousy catechesis, it's easy to focus more on Opposing Bad Catetchists than on the positive proclamation of the truths of the Faith. If you do the former, you may find yourself rejecting some legitimate part of the Faith simply because Mr. Lousy Catechist taught it. If you do the latter, then you can focus on Christ and not on protest.

Hope that helps.

Secret Agent Man Does the Definitive Fisk of the Latest Hatchet Job on the Passion

Get a cup of coffee for this one.

People are mad at me for the latest Gay Brownshirt entry

Apparently, deliberate ideologically-driven property damage and vandalism has to reach a certain threshhold before it's brownshirt activity. Smash shop windows and scrawl "JUDEN" on the doors: that's Brownshirt. Just do slightly smaller acts of vandalism and property damage and it's not.

Somebody needs to publish the Official Index of How Much Ideologically-Driven Vandalism and Property Damage You Can Get Away with Before Being a Brownshirt. I'm rusty at measuring these nuances and think all such acts of ideology-prompted vandalism and property damage are morally indistinguishable from the sort of bullyboy crap the SA enjoyed doing.

The Prophet Chesterton on the Difference Between Martyrs and Suicides

For people no longer capable of making elementary moral judgments:

Under the lengthening shadow of Ibsen, an argument arose whether it was not a very nice thing to murder one's self. Grave moderns told us that we must not even say "poor fellow," of a man who had blown his brains out, since he was an enviable person, and had only blown them out because of their exceptional excellence. Mr. William Archer even suggested that in the golden age there would be penny-in-the-slot machines, by which a man could kill himself for a penny. In all this I found myself utterly hostile to many who called themselves liberal and humane. Not only is suicide a sin, it is the sin. It is the ultimate and absolute evil, the refusal to take an interest in existence; the refusal to take the oath of loyalty to life. The man who kills a man, kills a man. The man who kills himself, kills all men; as far as he is concerned he wipes out the world. His act is worse (symbolically considered) than any rape or dynamite outrage. For it destroys all buildings: it insults all women. The thief is satisfied with diamonds; but the suicide is not: that is his crime. He cannot be bribed, even by the blazing stones of the Celestial City. The thief compliments the things he steals, if not the owner of them. But the suicide insults everything on earth by not stealing it. He defiles every flower by refusing to live for its sake. There is not a tiny creature in the cosmos at whom his death is not a sneer. When a man hangs himself on a tree, the leaves might fall off in anger and the birds fly away in fury: for each has received a personal affront. Of course there may be pathetic emotional excuses for the act. There often are for rape, and there almost always are for dynamite. But if it comes to clear ideas and the intelligent meaning of things, then there is much more rational and philosophic truth in the burial at the cross-roads and the stake driven through the body, than in Mr. Archer's suicidal automatic machines. There is a meaning in burying the suicide apart. The man's crime is different from other crimes -- for it makes even crimes impossible.

About the same time I read a solemn flippancy by some free thinker: he said that a suicide was only the same as a martyr. The open fallacy of this helped to clear the question. Obviously a suicide is the opposite of a martyr. A martyr is a man who cares so much for something outside him, that he forgets his own personal life. A suicide is a man who cares so little for anything outside him, that he wants to see the last of everything. One wants something to begin: the other wants everything to end. In other words, the martyr is noble, exactly because (however he renounces the world or execrates all humanity) he confesses this ultimate link with life; he sets his heart outside himself: he dies that something may live. The suicide is ignoble because he has not this link with being: he is a mere destroyer; spiritually, he destroys the universe.

The Prophet Chesterton on Catholics for Dean

...or Kerry or any of the other pro-abort fanatics currently running the Dem circus:

Since the modern world began in the sixteenth century, nobody's system of philosophy has really corresponded to everybody's sense of reality: to what, if left to themselves, common men would call common sense. Each started with a paradox: a peculiar point of view demanding the sacrifice of what they would call a sane point of view. That is the one thing common to Hobbes and Hegel, to Kant and Bergson. to Berkeley and William James. A man had to believe something that no normal man would believe, if it were suddenly propounded to his simplicity; as that law is above right, or right is outside reason, or things are only as we think them, or everything is relative to a reality that is not there. The modern philosopher claims, like a sort of confidence man, that if once we will grant him this, the rest will be easy; he will straighten out the world, if once he is allowed to give this one twist to the mind.

In much the same way, the Catholics for Dean types claim, like a sort of confidence man, that if you will just accept the basic twist that it's fine to overlook a candidate's fanatical devotion to murdering the innocent--that if once we will grant him this--the rest will be easy; he will straighten out the world, if once he is allowed to give this one twist to the mind.

No wonder the site is run by a philosophy major.

Fling the Cow

You heard me.

Nice Common Sense Defense of Abp. Burke

Episcopal Spine Alert

Question: How do they enforce this?

Patricia Heaton is cool

Part of my ongoing campaign to mock Evangelicals in that triumphalist way I have.

John Stossel is a Tonic

Kerry's Done That, Peg. Now, of course, Kerry Must be Stopped

Noonan on Gen. Jack Ripper.

Looks like I was wrong about Edwards. Don't let it stop you from coming to France with me. We shall, 'ow you say? drown our poleeteecal woes in vino on ze banks of ze Seine and make ironic postmoderne remarques at passing Americans amid clouds of clove cigarette smoke. Quelle magnifique!

Way to go, TAC!

"The damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain"

Paging Catholics for Dean! Paging Catholics for Dean!

Ahem:

"Indeed, the failure to protect and defend life in its most vulnerable stages renders suspect and claims to the 'rightness' of positions in other matters affecting the poorest and least powerful of the human community." (US Bishops, 1998, Living the Gospel of Life, n.23)

"Above all, the common outcry, which is justly made on behalf of human rights--for example, the right to health, to home, to work, to family, to culture--is false and illusory if the right to life, the most basic and fundamental right, and the condition of all other personal rights, is not defended with maximum determination." (Pope John Paul II, 1988, Christefideles Laici, n.3

(Both taken from the Jan/Feb 04 Priests for Life)

Gay Brownshirts on the March!

Respect for private property is for untermenschen. When you are gay, you are above such pedestrian concerns.

Wanna Go On a Pilgrimage to France with Me and Fr. Rob Johansen?

Now's your chance!

This will be wicked fun and cool! Sign up today!

Thanks to reader Mark Windsor, Travel Agent Extraordinaire, for thinking up this idea.

It's not set in stone yet. Mark tells me:

There are a couple of things you might want to stress.

1) we have to have at least 20 people for the pilgrimage itself;
2) we have to have at least 10 people buy the air in order to get the discounted rate;
3) if we get 30 people there is a reduction in price.

By the way, if you are wondering how the heck I afford this when I was scraping for dough to get our roof fixed, the answer is: "There's no way I could afford this. That's why it's so wonderful that Mr. Windsor asked me to be a host of the trip along with Fr. Rob. That way my bills are all covered. My deepest gratitude to him!"

No, No and Yes

The correct answers for Adrian Warnock's Sex Survey.

Jesuits. Again.

A reader writes:

Justice Anthony Kennedy (author of Planned Parenthood v' Casey and Lawrence v' Texas) will dedicate the new home of the University of San Francisco School of Law (its been renovated and expanded) on Thursday Jan. 29. Before the ribbon cutting ceremony, Kennedy will give a keynote address at St. Ignatius Church (across the street - S.I. is both the chapel of USF and an archdiocesan parish). Leading the ceremonies is University president, Fr. Stephen Privett, S.J.

I included the Archbishop's address, because Privett doesn't care what anybody thinks. The typical bishop response to something like this is "I don't run the university." He does, however, in this instance have direct authority over St. Ignatius church.

Bishops, like Bourbons, seem to remember everything and learn nothing. Give 'em hell.

Liars for Abortion

Howard Dean Loves You and Has a Wonderful Plan for Your Life!

But Republicanism has separated you from Dean.

However, Dean has made a provision for your sin by becoming Incarnate as a Presidential candidate and dying in the polls.

With your vote, he can Rise Again and make a way for you to be One with him. But you must believe. Believe with all the faith of this guy!

Never attribute to malice what can be sufficiently explained by stupidity

A source in Rome who has been following all of the "Passion" kafuffle writes:

First of all, the Pope is not supposed to have said "It is as it was", he was supposed to have said "era cose", the Italian (well, that is what Dziwisz told the producer. One presumes any conversation between the Pope and Dziwisz would have been in Polish). Remember, the Times guy he found the guy who acted as the translator.

Now, why would this be important? "It is as it was" has a certain profundity when Peggy Noonan writes a flowery column about it. That assumes the first "it" refers to the movie and the second "it" refers to the Passion. However, if you think about it: What if both "it"'s refer to the movie! Which, by the way, in the Italian - that would be the probable inference. Although, we are getting it third person, probably with two translations involved!

The fact is, Dziwisz, if the conversation did take place (which he says it didn't), seems to have been giving the producer a blow off response. Possibly in English, the probable translation would be "The movie is what it is".

Now, do you think the Pope and Dziwisz didn't discuss the film? I just don't buy that. Do you think Dziwisz would tell a film producer about that conversation?? No - he wouldn't. When the Pope wants, he will invite the director in to watch a film with him, and talk to him about it (he did that with "Life is Beautiful"). He doesn't have his secretary convey messages over the phone.

Okay. Looks like a big ol' heap o' miscommunications to me. Not everything's clear, of course. What's the story about Navarro-Valls? Who knows? If he got some garbled version of the quote and (mark this) was an enthusiast for the film (not somebody out to sabotage it) he may have gotten hepped up and passed the "quote" along to Allen and Noonan and the Icon folk in the hope it would help boost the film, but without adequately checking to see if he got his facts straight.

Then, (such is the nature of bureaucratic bungling) the Vatican goes berserk because it suddenly seems the Pope is endorsing a film, when all Dziwisz did was give the guy a polite reply (use the Italian accent, and say to yourself in mob-guy fashion "it is what it was", and you can kinda see how the phrase can have a few shades of meaning).

Then (such is the nature of bureaucratic bungling) we get the first response - deny, deny, deny! followed by the second response: "Memo to N-V: Fall on Your Sword."

If that's what happened, it was not the best route to take (to put it mildly). They should have explained that "it is as it was" was not necessarily referring to the Passion itself, but to the movie (although, that may make it sound like the Pope hated the film, which may explain why they didn't do this since that would have been misleading too). Bottom line: we don't know what he thought about it: He, and presumably Dziwisz, are the only ones who know). More to the point: It illustrates (if it an accurate guess) how such things can happen with everybody having honorable intentions and nobody lying.

Somehow this reminds me of one of the incredibly well-constructed bits of dialogic chaos in a Tom Stoppard play like "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead".

The Empty Chair

Read this. - The Management

The Lexicon is Oh So True

However, Carl left out two of the most important words in Spontaneous Evangelical Prayer that is Ever So Much Closer to God than the Stiff Ritualistic Prayers of Catholics and Mainline Protestants: "Just" and "Really".

"Oh Lord, I just really want to just really come before you and just really thank you as I just really pray, Lord, that you would just really take the words "Just" and "Really" out of my prayer vocabulary." - One of the funniest Wittenberg Door cartoon captions ever published.

'LORD OF THE RINGS' WINS DEMOCRATIC NOMINATION

Victory! I have beaten Fr. Bryce to the punch on this one!

"The King James Code". Yep. Somebody takes this stuff seriously.

Build up the Church in Seattle!

Hey you Western Washingtonians! I will be giving a talk about my conversion ("How I Got This Way") this Friday evening followed by my "Making Senses Out of Scripture" workshop from 9:00 to 3:00 on Saturday!

The goal is the build up the Church in two ways:

First, and most important: spiritually. Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ, so come and learn about the treasure of Scripture so that you can grow closer to Christ and be conformed to his image.

Second: Physically. In 2001, the Big Quake on Ash Wednesday damaged Blessed Sacrament parish to the tune of 3.6 million bucks. Our insurance covered 2 million of the cost. We have to raise the rest. So this weekend is a fundraiser. All the registration dollars go to the building fund. Your support is badly needed as we are not a rich parish by any stretch of the imagination.

So come and do double good for the Kingdom of God! You'll be glad you did!

To register, contact the Blessed Sacrament Church Office at (206) 547-3020, or e-mail blessedsacrament@yahoo.com.

A new form of Catholic Evangelization

"Fellow" writes concerning the German cannibal:

The murderer's just another sicko, nothing special. We all know what makes this story special, what made it grab headlines -- the guy who wanted to be eaten.

Mark likes to pretend it’s THIS GUY’S FAULT he wanted to be eaten, because the path of secular humanism persuaded him. It's *his fault*, Mark says -- he chose the wrong path.

As I've said before, I just feel sorry for the guy. For crying out loud, this guy was willing to BE EATEN ALIVE to find happiness -- he's not exactly lacking in diligence. Aren't you guys in awe of Christian martyrs who basically did the same thing -- died horrible deaths to be happy? To please God?

This guy clearly had the stuff to be a martyr for God. But Christians couldn't find a way to show this guy how God will make him happy. So he chose to be a martyr without a cause.

Where were the Christians in this poor man's life? Who left him wanting to die this twisted death when, according to Christians, the truth is out there as plain as day? For that matter, where was God? What kind of world drives a man to want to be eaten alive, and why would God create it?

People want twisted things because there's a vacuum in their lives. And Christians, despite the “truth” they claim to have, aren't filling that vacuum. God isn't filling that vacuum. These people are just floundering blindly, searching for something to make them happy.

It's Christians who have failed to create a compelling message that seems like a valid solution leading to happiness for the majority of mankind.

I think that's the real reason this story freaks Christians out -- just as Romans were freaked out by Christian martyrs, Christians are wondering "what did this guy see that we don't see? Why didn't he just believe what WE believe, which is so obviously right?"

I get it. Fellow is actually a Christian evangelist, trying to frighten wavering people into the arms of Christ by presenting arguments against the Faith that are the most grotesque apotheosis of the morally blind musings of contemporary culture. I mean, nobody could write something like this and be serious, could they?

Catholics for Moloch

Another sophisticated argument from the Theological Whores for Baby Killing Brigade. Remember this Dan Maguire creep, because he is one of those McBrienesque "go-to" guys in the Media Rolodex. Whenever Abp. Burke does something sensible, you can bet the press will quote this Judas for "balance".

Good thing we aren't barbarians like Islamofascists

They probably don't have anything *like* this sort of sophisticated philosophy to justify their acts of mass murder. Those poor crude bastards. When they want to kill innocent people, they just do it and don't hire some guy in a turtleneck to explain to TV-watching mouth-breathers why what they are doing is Deep and Enriching for Society.

Consequently: it's a public relations disaster! Kill a few thousand people and the world hates you!

But here in the West we have so honed the art of massaging public relations that we can run entire industries built on the slaughter of millions of babies each and every year and people can call this a "tiny" problem right in my own comments boxes. And so, why not expand the Franchise? Why should the Industry be cruelly hindered from harvesting still more dollars from the murder of infants as well? Or are you one of those damn liberals who opposes the Free Enterprise System?

The West: Where every private individual can be his own Saddam. That's why God is on our side. We make murder democratic, not oligarchic.

Never Assume

...that just because people belong to something with an imposing name like "World Economic Forum" they know what they are talking about. Here's a PDF on the latest fulmination among the "experts" at WEF, jabbering about the latest trends among other jabberers about religion. So guess what they're saying? Why, they're regurgitating the latest bad fiction fads from the Da Vinci Code! Wanna know why? Because they don't really know anything about theology, or history. But they do know what their peers at wine and brie soirees talk about and they have to provide some sort of justification for their determination to attack the Church as the softening campaign before imposing the Typical Agenda.

My Latest on Catholic Exchange

Keating v. Matatics

Subject: Karl Keating's E-Letter
Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 16:53:49 -0800

KARL KEATING'S E-LETTER

January 27, 2004

GERRY MATATICS MIMICS HOWARD DEAN

The former governor of Vermont has been the object of jokes on late-night talk shows because of his now-famous scream, issued after he came in third in the Iowa caucuses.

Last week I was the object of screaming by Gerry Matatics. After thirteen years' absence, he came to San Diego to give a talk. The evening ended with him gesticulating and yelling at me at the top of his lungs. It was a weird and disturbing sight.

During the question period that followed his talk, someone asked whether an unbaptized person could go to heaven. Matatics--who a decade ago declared that he had undergone a "second conversion" and had moved from conservative Catholic to Traditionalist Catholic--gave an answer that closed heaven's gate to almost anyone who is not a formal member of the Catholic Church.

The followers of the late Fr. Leonard Feeney, who was best known for his rigorist interpretation of "no salvation outside the Church," exist on a narrow but real spectrum. Some, such as Matatics's friends at the New Hampshire-based Saint Benedict Center, are at one end and say a person must be a formal member of the Catholic Church to be saved. They take the most hardline position.

Other Feeneyites permit a little more leeway but still end up with a position that is more rigorous than that taught by the Catechism of the Catholic Church (846-848) or by Vatican II (Lumen Gentium 16) or by the most conservative pope of the nineteenth century, Pius IX. Feeneyites leave either no or little room for "invincible ignorance."

Matatics, who at his seminars used to distribute literature from the Saint Benedict Center, makes a tiny distinction between that group's position and his own and uses that distinction to claim that he is not really a Feeneyite. (If not, why distribute the most hardline Feeneyite literature?)

Unlike the Saint Benedict Center, he is open to the possibility that a catechumen who desires baptism but who dies before being baptized might be saved through what is commonly called "baptism of desire." But such a catechumen's salvation is not sure, says Matatics. It might be that he is not saved after all.

Anyone further removed from the Catholic Church would have even less hope--or no hope--of salvation. This would include not just the unbaptized but also Protestants. (Matatics has said in public that he expects his own parents to go to hell, because they remain Protestants.)

In Church history there cannot have been many cases of catechumens dying on the way to their baptisms. As a practical matter, therefore, Matatics's position reduces to the position of the Saint Benedict Center: Formal members of the Catholic Church are saved, and everyone else is lost.

The members of the Saint Benedict Center indisputably deserve the moniker "Feeneyite." In my opinion, Matatics does too. After all, there are Feeneyites who are more generous than he is in their interpretation of "no salvation outside the Church." He is midway along a narrow spectrum, but he is still on the spectrum.

Although for years Matatics has adopted a position almost indistinguishable from that of the Saint Benedict Center, the members of which do not object to being called "Feeneyites," he has insisted that the label should not be applied to him.

One can understand his reluctance: Being identified with a fringe movement is not a good way to ensure speaking engagements. But "pigs is pigs," and Matatics should cease objecting to a label that fits.

He has espoused the Feeneyite understanding of salvation but has been unwilling to go by the Feeneyite designation. He embraces the theory but not the name of the theory. He has not been candid with his audiences and so has done them a disservice.

THE SCREAM

Toward the end of the evening, Matatics referred to my January 13 E-Letter, which may be found at http://www.catholic.com/newsletters/kke_040113.asp

In that E-Letter I wrote about "The Point," a little journal printed by Feeney's original group in the 1950s. I listed the titles of the twelve issues published in 1957. All but one was about Jews and the problems they allegedly cause. I said that Feeney's group was "preoccupied with the Jews, to the point of obsession."

Not so, said Matatics. The Feeneyites were not obsessed with Jews. They simply were concerned about the salvation of Jews. I rolled my eyes.

In the U.S. of the 1950s, Jews were outnumbered by Protestants. They also were outnumbered by people of no religion. Jews then, as now, represented about two percent of the American population. Subtract Catholics from the mix, and Jews represented about three percent of the population.

So why were eleven out of twelve issues of "The Point" focused on perceived problems with Jews? Where were the articles about Protestants, members of Eastern religions, and unbelievers? They, too, by Feeneyite standards, are not on the road to salvation. Why so much supposed solicitude for Jews but not for Baptists or Hindus or agnostics?

I reminded Matatics's audience that Feeney's men used to go to Boston Common and give public lectures. When talking about Jews, they used slurs such as "kike."

A woman in the small audience asked what "kike" meant. I explained that, with respect to Jews, it was the analogue of the "n-word."

Someone using the latter word to refer to blacks is suspected of racism--and rightly so. Similarly, someone using "kike" to refer to Jews is suspected of anti-Semitism.

Matatics turned up the volume. His friends at the Saint Benedict Center were not anti-Semites, he yelled.

I didn't say they were, I replied. I had been writing about the original Feeneyite group of the 1950s. In my E-Letter I noted that today's Saint Benedict Center reprints articles from "The Point." I asked whether today's group repudiates the anti-Semitism of the 1950s. My words were lost in the din caused by Matatics and his fans.

He was visibly agitated. His voice went from a yell to a scream and eventually broke. He was on a rant. I couldn't make out what he was saying, and I couldn't get a word in.

But I could get out. I was standing by the door, and I went through it, Matatics screaming after me. I was relieved that he didn't chase me as I made for the hotel's exit.

As I stood in the night chill, several people gathered around me, shaking their heads at what they had witnessed. One smiled consolingly and said the evening had reduced my time in purgatory.

Maybe, maybe not. But I know it reduced, almost to oblivion, the residual regard I had for Gerry Matatics, and it reaffirmed my belief that he would do the Church a favor by finding another line of work.

Until next time,

Karl

RadTradism and Weird Obsession with Jews: They Go Together Like Peas and Carrots.

So I open my email yesterday...

and here's this big private exchange going on between some chucklehead for "Catholics for Dean" (Motto: We Catholics need a President who used to intern for Planned Parenthood, but who is too chickenshit to acknowledge whether or not he murdered babies personally). Seems he was trying to bring me on board the Dean Train. I didn't respond because a) a vote for Dean is a vote for Planned Parenthood and b) Kathy Shaidle and Pete Vere were handling the guy nicely. Oh, and the Curt Jester had some blunt remarks for the "Pay no attention to the blood on Dean's hands" Catholics too.

Anyhow, demonstrating the class that has characterized the Deanie Babies, Catholics for Dean has now opted to unilaterally publish the private correspondence between Tim Whatzizface and Shaidle.

Quelle Jerque!

Interesting Discussion of Apologetics

Here, here, and here.

Carl Olsen nails the key point when he says, "All of Gaillardetz's good points have already been made. By a "new apologist." Read Mark Brumley's How Not to Share Your Faith: The Seven Deadly Sins of Catholic Apologetics and Evangelization (Catholic Answers, 2002)."

PM follows it up with the other essential point. The complaint of Real Theologians[TM] against those darn upstart apologists is the complaint of the Eye against the Foot for not being an Eye. The apologists are complained against because apologetics doesn't look like the ecumenical dialogue that theologians like to conduct. The remedy is the lesson of 1 Corinthians 12. The reason apologists do what they do is varied yet rather consistent. I started doing the work of explaining the faith because I wanted to do for others what (ahem) hardly anybody did for me when I was coming into the Church.

Do we need a new apologetics? Yes. But we need a new *apologetics*. Not the scrapping of apologetics and the replacement of it with a nice harmless watery dialogue that affirms everybody in their okayness. There are plenty of pathologies at work in the Apologetics Subculture: arrogance, triumphalism, Fundamentalism that Thinks it is Catholicism. It is a subculture that is particularly attractive to young, unmarried males who are spoiling to beat the crap out of somebody in a fight and call it "defending the Faith." Brumley has done a fine job of analyzing and prescribing cures for these pathologies. What he has *not* done is essentially attempt to geld the entire apologetics project or (most maddening of all) pat apologists on the head and speak as though they are rustic rubes whose childishness and flat-footed enthusiasm should be taken in hand by Grownups such as himself. This seems to be the province of Real Theologians, who issue little warnings about "the new apologists" every couple of years.

Since I was so hard on NRO-ites the other day...

It's only fair to point out that Stanley Kurtz has an excellent piece in the Weekly Standard on the disastrous effects of gay marriage in Scandinavia. It only makes sense of course, since Sullivan's stupid argument boiled down to "Look at Britney Spears! She trashes marriage! So why can't gays further pervert the purpose and point of marriage?"

Gay marriage advocates wish to portray the drive to stop this act of societal suicide as oppression. Nope. It's exaltation--of the family. A society which does not privilege and protect the family is a society that it doomed. The result of gay marriage will not be gay marriage. It will be the further exposure of the family to the destructive forces that have done so much to harm it already. The mania of modern culture is to destroy what is natural and then "solve" the catastrophic results by redefining the monstrosity we create as being just the same as what went beforeandbesideswhocareswhatwentbeforeanyway.

Episcopal Spine Alert!

Why Washingtonians Lie and Say it Rains Here All the Time

It's to keep people like this in California.

More proof we live in a fallen world

Alec Baldwin gets an Oscar nomination and Ian McKellen does not.

"Franken said he's not backing Dean but merely wanted to protect the right of people to speak freely."

Reason #9095468456644509 the Left is brain-dead. "Protecting free speech" = "inflicting physical violence on people who heckle millionaires".

Is it not getting weird the way the Left seems to go out of its way to exalt Islam?

I begin to think that it's really about separation of Christianity and State.

By the way, speaking of Fr. Bryce Sibley...

Everywhere I went in South Dakota, all the priests of the rising generation knew him and loved him. That should fill you with hope--and a little bit of fear. Apparently his bulletin board at the North American College was endlessly fascinating. An early draft of his blog, by all reports.

I promised myself I would only have only blog about Papal Break Dancing

So, I've decided this is the link, since it gives you video, as well as Fr. Bryce' inimitable take on things.

I must say that, for sheer hysterical over-reaction, I thought a couple of the comments at Amy's blog were priceless: "Today's art performance is tomorrow's "liturgy" - that's been the pattern for a long time now..."

Uh huh.

Amy's Dead Right, of Course

EWTN goes over you with a fine tooth comb... unless you are Mel. Very idiosyncratic.

Hee hee hee!

General Jack Ripper finds himself wedged in an exceedingly painful spot between two PC orthodoxies: The Glories of Homosexuality vs. the Immutable Rightness of Everything a Politicized Black Preacher Has to Say.

Pish Tosh! Think Nothing of It!

We must continue the race to manufacture humans! Manifest Destiny! Historical Inevitability! Grant monies! Nobel Prizes! And, er, Serving Humanity (whatever we determine that word shall henceforth mean).

How AIDS works

AIDS does not generally kill you. What kills you are the infections that result from other diseases when AIDS makes it impossible to defend yourself from them. There are lots of organisms present on your skin right now that will kill you in days--if you suddenly lost your immune system.

The German cannibal case is an example of Cultural AIDS at work. There are always some nuts present in any society who will do something horrible. A healthy culture is able to say why they are wrong and dispense with them to prison or the gallows. A deeply sick society--like ours--has trouble figuring out exactly why such people are wrong (we wouldn't want to use a judgemental word like "evil"). Such a society is begging for the proliferation of more evil.

Lucky for us, God is on our side.

What the picture doesn't show you...

according to a reader...

is, that upon release, the "doves of peace" were viciously attacked by the sea gulls which circle St. Peter's Dome, and the Vatican groundsmen had to pick up the pieces of their torn apart bodies behind the Basilica after the Angelus!

Sounds like a scene from "Mars Attacks!".

Lawmakers Vote to 'Celebrate' Running People Through Plastic Shredders Abortion

America: Where anybody who wants can be their own private Saddam.

The Weirdness That Results from Trying to Have an Ethnic State

What's the difference between this and Jim Crow?

"Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction." Dick Cheney 8/26/2002

Our previous statements are inoperative.

Speaking of the Passion

I must say I'm glad I was out of town. I gather that the Vatican did some sort of klutzy attempt to back away from An Official Papal Endorsement and, in the course of this, managed, depending on how you phrase these things, to either lie or use Vaticanese. It sounds to me like a little of both.

At any rate, try as I might, I couldn't get too worked up about it, because that would have meant ruining a number of perfectly fine days trying to reconstruct the mental processes of people about whom I know virtually nothing, based on secondhand reports of emails than may or may not have been written by whosit about whatsit. Life being as short as it is, I decided to forego the matter. I did think that Disputations nailed it when he said that the reason this matter attracts our attention is because it is really about who gets to tell the most important story in the world.

From what little I could glean in the middle of all the yelling, accusations and counter-accusations, it looks to me like some bureaucrat who really liked the movie said to use the Pope's words to enthusiastically promote it and then got called on the carpet with a reminder the function of the Holy See is not to act as a Hollywood press office. So, with characteristic Vatican clumsiness, he (or somebody else) then went forth to say, "Uh, nevermind. Never said it. Forget it." Acrimony all round. Everybody looks dumb as a result. Mel's got less reason than ever to trust Rome. Rome fritters away a perfectly good chance at rapprochement with a disaffected and very influential Catholic. Everybody's mad. Lots of prophetic judgements from all quarters on who is Responsible for the Horrible State of the Church.

Frankly, what sticks out in coming to this issue cold and from the outside is how disproportionate the rage on all sides is to the subject. I can understand Mel or Peg Noonan being ticked. After all, it's their good name that's called into question. But people, it's not your good name and, at the end of the day, it's just a movie. It reminds me of those raw moments in family conflicts when somebody leaves the milk jug out on the table to get warm and all of a sudden *that* becomes the focal point for an outpouring of rage and tears about 20 years of neglect and abuse. The milk isn't the issue. The issue is that this was a sort of trigger for a huge amount of pain and betrayal.

The problem, of course, is that sometimes our disproportionate responses are themselves acts of injustice. When somebody in the family explodes in rage at the 17 year old for leaving the milk jug out and reams him out for his 17 years of being a burden on Mom and proceeds to inform him that he is lying irresponsible scum... well, that has an effect on the 17 year old. It also potentially has an effect on the other kids. But, of course, if it turns out that the 17 year old didn't leave the milk out, the wounds don't go away. If it turns out that there is some more reasonable or at least less culpable explanation, it's too late. The rage has already done its work.

I don't really quite understand what happened in the bowels of the Vatican. Part of me suspects that there was some pretty major a) enthusiasm for the movie coupled with b) loose words as a result and then there was somebody somewhere who said, "I don't care what you told them before or how big a fool it makes you look, kill the publicity permission you gave them." Result: cloddishness and a stupid lie. But then, what do I know. Maybe instead, the Pope never said what he was reported as saying, but his spokesman *thought* he did. I have a friend who once had an audience with the Pope and was very excited. The Pope walked up to him and his wife and baby and said....

"Fishbone."

My friend stood blinking like a deer in the headlights, thinking to himself, "Fishbone?"

It took a few second before it finally dawned on him that, through the double handicaps of a Polish accent and Parkinson's, the Holy Father was asking, "Firstborn?" concerning their baby.

Try mumbling "It is as it was." with a Polish accent and a mouth full of marbles. Under what circumstances was this collection of morphemes uttered? To whom? How did Navarro-Valls get wind of it? How did Icon get wind of it? Or the Pope's secretary. I don't know. And there is simply no way I can ever find out. It seems to me there are any number of scenario ranging from cloddish lying to cover up an earlier stupid enthusiasm to the possibility that Navarro-Valls just got his facts wrong and shot his mouth off.

The main thing I take away from it is that we have to pay attention to our own souls because rage floats. It is right to be enraged about things that deserve our rage. When a priest rapes a kid and we know that a bishop has covered it up, that calls for outrage. When some bureaucrat may or may not have done something dumb and we really don't know what's going on, to transfer our rage from the raped kid to the extremely fuzzy circumstance of what somebody coming out of a theatre may or may not have mumbled through a Polish accent and a bad case of Parkinsons is to let our anger float, it seems to me.

Okay. Blast away.

Thrust

and counterthrust

Me? I couldn't say. Haven't seen it.

New Blog!

The G. K. Chesterton Society Presents

"Can a Conservative Be an Environmentalist?"

A Lecture by Jeffrey Cain, Ph.D.,
Director of Institutional Advancement,
The Intercollegiate Studies Institute

Casey Commons
Casey Hall
Seattle University
Wednesday, January 28, 7:30 PM

The Catholic Big Tent

Some people find this mode of piety a real boost to their faith. Other people, like me, prefer... almost anything else. The Church welcomes both sort of people.

I don't know very many Catholics who go about *insisting* that if you don't like this sort of thing, you are not Christian. I do know any number of Christians who go around insisting that if you *do* find this sort of thing helpful to your faith, you are a pagan. Such Christians should stop and consider things like the bones of Elisha (2 Kings 13:20-21) and the fact that the Incarnation has hallowed the human body--even the dead human body.

In short, relics make perfect theological sense--even if they are not always aesthetically pleasing to personalities like mine.

The Consumer Culture: Enemy of Life

Dean's Tin Ear for Religion

Not that it matters now. The guy's toast. I still think Edwards could pull it out since he's prettiest.

My trip

Children! Ignorance of geography is ignorance of Christ (or at any rate, of Christ's Church). "Come to South Dakota!" they said. "Come to Sioux Falls Diocese." So I went, provincially assuming that I would be speaking in a few parishes in the Sioux Falls area. Did I look at a map? No. For I am dumb.

As it happened I wound up having a much bigger adventure that was much more entertaining. We started in Sioux Falls, to be sure. But then it was on to Brookings, Blue Cloud Abbey (and the Mysterious and Elusive Fr. Matthew K, prayer with the Benedictines (and Mass), and then Aberdeen. Aberdeen is the home of Sen. Tom Daschle (who was, by the way, *mentioned by name along with Teddy K as examples of egregious phony Catholic politicians* by Bp. Robert Carlson in his Roe v. Wade Memorial homily. The South Dakotans are begging me not to mention how terrific a bishop they've got lest somebody find out and steal him. But there, the cat's out of the bag.

Anyway, Daschle didn't come to the Newman Center where I talked but a lot of other people did, which was good. Then, it was out the door the next morning for a hundred mile drive to Mobridge (way over there on the Missouri River). I spoke twice there and they broadcast both talks on the radio. I also met Fr. Todd Reitmeyer (and here's his version of it).

Then it was off to Hoven, home of the Cathedral on the Prairie, a magnificent Church rising up out of nowhere to totally dominate the landscape of this tiny town. Spoke there and got to hang out with Chris, Fr. Lance (good guy!) and Anne, the lady that works in the rectory, drinking Irish Creams and hearing tales of the priesthood (priests live interesting lives).

Next morning, it was off to Mitchell, home of the amazing Corn Palace (Motto: "Ears to you!). This wonder of the modern world is entirely covered in artwork made of corn ears, stalks, and other parts of the plant. I love stuff like this.

Down the street, Chris and I stopped for supper at a restaurant that is a restored train depot, which was also cool. Then it was over to JPII Elementary School for the last talk, followed by another hours drive to Sioux Falls, a stay in the hotel and a long day at the airport(s) while flights were delayed. Got home last night around 6:30 and poured myself on to the couch to cuddle kids and watch cool "Thunderbirds" videos (in SuperMarionation!).

Oh, I had over 200 emails. Since lots of them dealt with Roe and last weeks news, I hope those who sent them will understand if I don't post the links or reply. (Glub! Drowning! Blub!)

Anyhow, thanks to the Diocese of Sioux Falls. And thanks to the not-faint-of-butt Chris Burgwald for his amazing ability to drive 700 miles without tiring.

Everything Happens While I'm Gone!

Belated greetings and ten thousand welcomes to LUCAS JOSEPH IGNACE DREHER. 8 lbs, 2 oz. Word has it that "Ignace" honors the Rector of the Maronite cathedral in Brooklyn, and "Joseph" is for a "certain meddlesome priest in Brooklyn." :)

Congrats to the Drehers on their brand new Dreherling.

Well, I'm gone again!

I'll try to check in later if I can. If not, see you Monday or Tuesday! No! Wait! Chris! Just a few more words! Just let me......

How do they *know* this?

I know, I know, the awesome US intelligence machine (you remember them, don't you? They were the ones who were right on top of things on September 11, 2001 and who accurately predicted the bushelfuls of WMDs that we'd find in Iraq) assure us that 70% of Al-Quaida (a body with notoriously shaky census data) is gone.

Uh-huh.

Checking in from the lovely (and extremely cold)

... Blue Cloud Abbey located in the remote hinterlands of northeast South Dakota, which is just south of southeast North Dakota!

Spoke at the Newman Center in Brookings last night and we had a jolly time. Got up this AM and blasted north so we could catch the noon Mass with the elusive and mysterious Fr. Matthew K (I've said too much already). After this we caught lunch wid da bruddas and got the tour of the Abbey.

Pretty soon, Chris will need to kick me off the computer so he can check his mail. Then we head for Aberdeen (SD, not Scotland or Washington) and I speak at yet another Newman Center tonight. Then tomorrow is the really busy day with three talks in a row, followed by Miller Time or the equivalent for people like me who dislike .
Then one more talk on Sunday and it's home again, home again jiggety-jig to squeeze my babies and kiss my Baby.

Bush Continues to Stiff Arm Prolifers

Why? Because he knows he has you and you have nowhere else to go.

By the way...

I think I should stop blogging more often. You guys have done a fine job of getting to know each other while I'm gone! I think 140 comments is a record!

Maybe they'll name him "Ebayby"

Remember. Children are resilient. Adult needs come first because adults are so fragile.

Noonan on the Dustup between Gibson and the Vatican

Oh sure. The Pope gets to see it. But what about Me? What about *MY* needs?

Astronauts could discover whole new meaning for "Blue Screen of Death"

...if the Spirit Rover is any harbinger of the future.

Greetings from Freezing Sioux Falls!

Got in yesterday and was met at the airport by Chris Burgwald. Got back to the hotel, checked in, lounged around for a bit, and then was whisked away to a lovely dinner with Chris and his wife and then a talk at St. Michael's parish. The speaker was absolutely gripping. It was like he read my mind.

Then back to the hotel for a lovely long night's sleep. Chris got me about 11 and took me over to the cathedral. It's built on the hill in Sioux Falls--I think it's the only hill.

Bishop Carlson celebrated the noon Mass in honor of human life and gave a rip-snorter of a homily in which, to my pleased amazement, he didn't simply make vague noises about nameless politicians who claim to be Catholic but betray the unborn and spit in the eye of their Creator. Nope. He actually *named* Tom Daschle and Ted Kennedy as example of politicians who were fundamentally false to their alleged Catholic profession of faith by their zeal for the sacrament of abortion. (No, he did not say "sacrament of abortion", but he did actually name these guys).

Sioux Falls has a very good bishop.

Tonight I'm off to Brookings. Oh, and to Chris' Mother in Law: Hi! Wish you were here! :)

I'm outta here till...

I, er, come back!

What a sale! What a bargain!

Monster offers to slaughter third trimester babies for free in honor of Roe v. Wade day!

I am not making this up.

Fortunately there are no superpowers capable of invading us to put a stop to such horrors. So we are safe--till God moves his hand.

I wonder if Tiller runs them through a plastic shredder when he's done.

So good to live in a culture where monstrous evil is not the province of a few tyrants, but can be practiced (with protection from the Law!) by average middle class citizens. O Glorious Land of Opportunity for All!

My Latest on Catholic Exchange

The woman wrote back, by the way. She said she was doing better. Thanks be to God! Dan Brown and a number of bishops and priests are going to have a helluva lot to answer for in the destruction they have wrought on the faith of lambs like her.

Who wants to see Mel Gibson's stupid old movie anyway?

And no. I'm not bitter! So there!

That Terry MacAuliffe is a funny funny guy

"Just a flesh wound! Come back here! I'll bite your leg off!"

A reader asks:

Do you get a lot of mail? Do you get a lot of praise/hate mail?

I get a *lot* of mail. More than I can cope with really. I feel bad because I can't adequately respond to the many nice things people write me and I am not equipped at all to deal with some of the things people write me ("My husband/wife is leaving me. What should I do?"). With few exceptions, I tend to refer such folks to a good counselor or priest because I am not at all equipped to deal with pastoral issues any more than I am equipped to tell them what's wrong with their car or how to deal with their stock portfolio. I'd love to help, but I'm a numbskull about such issues and would hate myself if I gave somebody bad advice.

As to hate mail, sure I get my share. The nice thing about that, though, is that persistent haters have been both kill-filed and kicked out of my comments box and I've not read them since then (technology is a fine thing). But these are few and far between.

As a general rule, it would make my life easier if people only email if they *really need to*. That, of course, includes interesting links and such (they are, after all, the fuel that powers this blog). But it's the short "Howdy" notes and the pleas for pastoral advice that flummox me. I want to be a nice person and reply to them all, but I just don't have the hours in a day! I don't say that to be mean. It's just that I can't get anything done with the mail pouring in.

A reader sez:

Many people are praying for Terri Schiavo. Are they also praying for her
husband? If he were converted it would not only be good for his soul,
it would mean he would stop trying to kill his wife.

Hey, All You Folks in the Sioux Falls, South Dakota area

I'm bundling up warm and coming your way starting tomorrow through next Sunday!

January 21: 7:00 p.m. St. Michael's Church - Sioux Falls. Topic: Family as Icon of the Holy Trinity.

January 22: 7:00 p.m. Pius XII Newman Center - Brookings. Topic: "Making Senses out of Scripture: Reading the Bible as the First Christians Did"

January 23: 7:00 p.m. Aquinas Newman Center - Aberdeen. Topic: This is My Body: An Evangelical Discovers the Real Presence.

January 24: 11:00 a.m. Middle School Theater - Mobridge. Topic: "Why Be Catholic?"

1:30 p.m. Middle School Theater - Mobridge. Topic: "Salvation: Participation in the Divine Nature"

7:00 p.m. St. Anthony of Padua Church - Hoven. Topic: "Behold Your Mother: An Evangelical Discovers the Blessed Virgin Mary"

January 25: 7:00 p.m. John Paul II School - Mitchell. Topic: "Where are you with God? The Sacrament of Reconciliation"

Contact for all the dates above: Chris Burgwald
Director of Adult Faith Formation
Catholic Diocese of Sioux Falls
(605) 988-3770
cburgwald@sfcatholic.org
www.sfcatholic.org

Note: This will probably make my blogging a bit scarcer.

How I Wish Dean Would be Nominated

The man crawls with pathologies and he cannot hide them from the camera. He may yet pull it out, but if the past is any barometer, I think it will ultimately come down to Edwards. Why? Because he's the prettiest and the TV camera decides these matters. Kerry looks too much like a walking cadaver.

The Great Enema Continues

Cannibal is "mentally sound"

The death knell of post-Christian culture.

"But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of stress. 2 For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 inhuman, implacable, slanderers, profligates, fierce, haters of good, 4 treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5 holding the form of religion but denying the power of it. Avoid such people."- 2 Tim 3:1-5

Is there anything more exquisitely wonderful than homosexuality?

"Romantic", "handsome", "celebrating", "triumphant", "not afraid to get hurt", "not afraid to be made fun of", full of hope for the future, dreamers, cute, flirtatious, "love is love", "The Lord made Ian the way he wanted, and I accept that", "committed to the future", "adorable", "natural", self-reliant", "charismatic and confident", "

I am so glad the Boston Globe is mustering the courage to say all this and pour forth unstinting praise for the glories and dazzling splendor that is homosexuality! Dear heaven, if I have to read another piece in the mainstream press full of criticism of the gay lifestyle and harping on and on about the diseases, promiscuity, suicide rate, and ugly brownshirt behavior of so many gay activists, I think I'll scream. Finally, a newspaper that dares to tell us the truth: that "People have to accept gay people for who they are, not their sexuality."

And that, of course, is why their sexuality and nothing but their sexuality is the definition of the discussion 24/7/365. It's not that people are sick to death of being told how wonderful homosexuality it and how they must approve of it. No. Not at all. It's because critics of homosexuality just can't see the sum of human perfection that is gayness and all its works and ways. They must be evil, stupid or both.

Fortunately, these crimes were committed by Good Guys, so it's alright

And since we are Good Guys too, it will be alright if we do it, should the necessity arise.

The great temptation we face is the one that faced ancient Israel: whether or not to crucify Christ "lest a whole nation perish". The issue is not that we are a wicked people bent on conquest and destruction. The issue is whether, in the end, we are willing to die rather than sin mortally. History does not provide an encouraging diagnosis of the human race on this question.

A reader asks:

I am a senior in high school. I am writing an english paper about The Da Vinci Code, and certain aspects. I was wondering if you would be able to answer some questions and give your opinion. It would be greatly appreciated. Here are the questions:
1.) How did Catholicism get started?

The Catholic Church was started on the Day of Pentecost in about 33 AD. You can read about it in Acts 2 in the Bible. For some background on where those disciples came from and why they happened to be gathered in that room, Read the Book of Luke. For a history of what happened *after* Acts 2, try Harry Crocker's engagingly written (but unabashedly biased) Triumph: The Power and Glory of the Catholic Church (though you'll want to read something a bit more sober if you want to touch on the darker aspects of Catholic history, such as Paul Johnson's History of Christianity.

2.) What are some of the basic principles and beliefs of Catholicism?

These are nicely summarized in the Creed, which describes what (or rather, in Whom) Catholics believe.

We believe in one God,
the Father, the Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all that is, seen and unseen.
We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, light from light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
of one Being with the Father;
through him all things were made.
For us and for our salvation
he came down from heaven,
was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary
and became truly human.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered death and was buried.
On the third day he rose again
in accordance with the Scriptures;
he ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
and his kingdom will have no end.

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father [and the Son],
who with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified,
who has spoken through the prophets.
We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.
We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
We look for the resurrection of the dead,
and the life of the world to come. Amen.

The Catholic Church also believes that the Ten Commandments summarize how we must live. Another good summary that states things more positively is "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

We also believe that Jesus Christ, as the founder of the Catholic Church, has left that Church with certain signs, called "sacraments", which impart his divine life to us, so that we can participate in that life, be freed from the power of sin, and mature into his image and likeness. You can read about sacraments (and the Creed and the Commandments) in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

Finally, we believe in prayer and that the Prayer which summarizes all other forms of prayer is found in the Our Father or "Lord's Prayer":

Our Father,
who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done on earth
as it is in heaven.
Give us this day
our daily bread
Forgive us our trespasses
as we forgive those who
trespass against us.
Lead us not
into temptation
but deliver us from evil. Amen.

3.) Do you think that The Da Vinci Code attacks the Catholic church? Please explain.

Yes. The Da Vinci Code is a calculated attack, not only on the Catholic Church, but on all Christian belief. It tries to palm off on people who have no historical understanding of the Christian faith a number of falsehoods, but the central one is the attempt to portray Jesus as a merely human teacher. It is a falsehood so old and so dull that it has grown white hairs. If you want a good summary of the bogusness of the DVC, go here, here, and here.

For a look at how Dan Brown plays modern, historically illiterate readers for suckers, go here.

"What happened in the past three years?"

Must See Video. The Brain Dead Left puzzles and puzzles and puzzles...

Karen Marie Knapp needs your prayers

"Islam Needs a Cromwell"

Right. Islam needs a mass murdering war criminal with delusions that God has personally anointed him to lead a Holy War.

Great idea. Run it past the Irish and see what they have to say.

Stupid Party Embraces Axis of Weasel on the Family

A reader sends this quote from a WaPo article (sorry no link):

A senior administration official said Bush will strike an "educational" tone about marriage and will not move beyond his previous statement that he would support an amendment to enshrine that definition in the Constitution if actions by courts or state legislatures made it necessary. Republicans said Bush is prepared to endorse such a constitutional amendment -- and some top advisers are eager for him to do so -- but officials said he will not do so in the immediate future.

He then asks:

Can you tell me the difference between 'support' and endorse'?

"Support" means "I will appear to want to do something". "Endorse" means "I will actually do something."

Mac Swift Offers to Use Holy Spirit to Perform Parlor Tricks

A reader writes:

If you read msgs 28-30 in "A reader asks" (your blog, Monday 19 January 2004), you will find that Mac Swift has accepted my challenge.

It consists in giving him a list of 10 quotations, only one of them from the KJV, the others made up or taken from other 17-19th century sources. He claims that the Holy Spirit will cause him to pick out the Biblical quotation...

So I gave him some friendly caveats and am now letting the exchange sit to gather interest in St Blog's.

But I have two favors to ask:

1) Can you advertise the challenge for me? Not too many readers go down to the 30th msg.

2) Can you suggest some fake-biblical quotations that sound like the KJV to a Protestant, but actually aren't?

1. Done.

2. Nope. You made the challenge. I'm sure you are up to coming up with fake quotes. Of course, you can also simply quote real verses with slight changes to them. I'm sure Mac's got the Holy Spirit well-trained to sniff such things out. After all, before he became Mac's Personal Assistant for his Theological Parlor Trick Show, he was rumored to be involved in the writing of the Bible and probably remembers quite a bit of it and will be happy to help His Boss perform this important stunt to the glory of Mac God.

Catholic Light begs to differ with me

What's always interesting about these sorts of articles is what's not there

Did you notice there's not a single quote from a Catholic? The whole thing is what Anglicans X, Y, and Zed think of the Catholic Church and how wrong it is about A,B, and C. No one thinks to quote some Catholic saying, "You know, the Anglican communion really put itself in the soup with this Gene Robinson thing, but we're willing to soldier on anyway and work for reconciliation." Nope, instead you get some guy declaring "There is no way we would want to be linked to the Roman Catholic Church. On some issues, its teaching is even worse now than it was at the Reformation." Yes. Well, I know we've moved further away from the pure vision of the Christian Faith articulated by Bishop Gene Robinson, ("Just simply to say that it goes against tradition and the teaching of the Church and Scripture does not necessarily make it wrong."). But we shall try ever so hard to catch up, Rev. Phillips.

A reader sez:

i am converting to catholicism. i was searching for information on Sacred Tradition, to define what ARE the teachings that were handed down at the time of the writing of the Bible.............i found your piece very interesting indeed..................but it did NOT clarify what the teachings were. can you please clarify what were the teachings mentioned by paul or whoever it was that wrote that verse? not the ones that came AFTER.........the ones that had been 'handed down'..............or point me to a resource that will help clarify?

You're approaching the problem in the wrong way. The Church teaches that Tradition is the common life, worship and teaching of the Body of Christ in union with the apostles and their successors, bishops and the Pope. A "life" is a much bigger thing than a mere set of doctrinal definitions. In the end, the Tradition is Christ Himself, who transcends our definitions. This does not mean that the Tradition is utterly unknowable. And if you are a stickler for legalism, you can be accomodated to a degree by reading Ludwig Ott's Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma. But in the end, you will be no closer to understanding the Catholic faith by taking such a Minimum Daily Adult Requirement approach. It would be like saying that Jazz "is" little black dots on a musical scale. The Tradition is a thing you swim in and breathe much more than it is a set of rules and easily memorized catch phrases. The best way to immerse yourself in it is through participation in the liturgy, through study of Scripture and Catechism, and through participation in the Church's prayer life and her works of mercy, both corporal and spiritual.

Drat those darn procedures! Can't we just kill somebody?

Happily, it appears that we can sometimes! Oh well, gotta break a few eggs to fry some people.

Lovely to see young Catholics respond to the call to heroism

I know John. A wonderful guy!

Iraq Shiites: On the Cutting Edge of the 10th Century



Good to see so many Iraqis finally get in touch with their Inner Khomeini. It fill me with assurance that God's Hand was on the War.

Highly Tasteful People Whimper for Their Hurt Feelings

I think the good ambassador was just being a "transgressive" artist. He deserves a medal and an arts grant.

I wonder if God's Hand is in this lovely facet of the culture we are eagerly exporting too?

Think of it as a plastic shredder for human souls. Or perhaps, as a machine for turning human souls into plastic.

Troops see God's hand in Iraq

Blogger sees writer trying to be a prophet without portfolio. I've no doubt that God's Providence has covered this war as it covers the fall of sparrows. I'm rather reluctant to conclude from this that the war was "God's Will" and still less that God Is On Our Side. However, such attempts at divination are quintessentially American, especially when things go well for us. We are still Puritans and still see ourselves as a City on a Hill.

Is Traditional Marriage too Much of a Threat to Be Allowed?

Just when you thought it could not get loonier.

Teen Girl Squad Bisexuals!

It's trendy!--and, er, genetic and immutable!

Amy Welborn Explains the Gullibility of Da Vinci Code Fans

A reader asks

Why is Mary the center figure of the Catholic Church and not Christ? Alot of people pray to her and other saints that you have, when Jesus said: I am the only way, no one and no one comes to God except by me. Why do you even have in most your churches figures of saints and Jesus when it is written that we should not make any figure of God at all? Does the Catholic Church really follow the New Testament? Why do your priests are not allow to marry when it is written that those who can should stay casts, but those who cannot let them marry before they burn?

First, with regard to Mary. If Mary is the "center figure of the Catholic Church and not Christ", then why does the Catholic Church do such a bad job of communicating that message by calling the Eucharist (not Mary) the "source and summit" of our Faith? Why does the Church condemn the worship of Mary as heresy? Why does the Church insist on reading that passage from John in the liturgy year after year after year? Why does the Church continually pray to Jesus, not Mary, saying "You alone are the Most High, Jesus Christ"? If they are trying to make Mary the central figure, they are certainly botching the attempt.

Second, what's wrong with asking fellow Christians to pray for you?

Third, it is not "figures" but *idols* Scripture forbids. So does the Church. Do you have images of your family in your wallet? Why? Any bowling trophies. They're graven! Doesn't Scripture forbid that? But wait! If an image is automatically an idol, why did God tell Israel to have graven images of cherubim on the Ark of the Covenant? Answer: because images which we do not worship are not idols. And Catholics don't worship the images in their sanctuaries.

Fourth, nobody holds a gun to a man's head and forces him to be a priest. If he wishes to marry he can. If he wishes to be a priest, he has a long time to think about it.

Well I'm convinced. Talk about irrefutable evidence!

Dale Price Fisks Laissez Faire Capitalism

This is where Catholic Faith and Conservatism part ways. For yer average conservative, the legal fiction "individual" called "the corporation" is at the center and the great god Mammon is to be exalted above all. For the Catholic Faith, the family is at the center and the corporation does not have the right to screw all those families for the sake of the Almighty dollar.

A Film Guaranteed to Make you Stupider

When you read they are making a film about the Crusades and you come across the sentence, "'the Brotherhood of Muslims, Jews and Christians,' is introduced, promoting an image of cross-faith kinship" you know you can stop right there because you know know all you need to. This is going to be one majorly stupid film. "evin Costner's Robin Hood level" stupid. Stupidity with a danger of developing a gravitational pull that can suck all intelligence from the theatre stupid.

Speaking of John Rhys-Davies...

Went to hear him on Saturday night. A magnificent man. Big as a bull. A born raconteur. He's like your favorite uncle. You want to find an easy chair with by a fire and have a brandy at your elbow and your feet up (along with a large circle of friends and family all gathered round in eager expectation). Then, all you have to do is say, "So. John. Tell us about Africa!" and he's off and running for the rest of the evening with tales, and poetry, and wonderful stories of filming "Lord of the Rings" and memories of his father and political theorizing and ruminations on the nature of art and great generous doses of self-effacing Welsh humor. A marvelous man!

Here, by the way, is my son Luke's proudest photographic moment so far in life:



Yes, that's Luke the Legolas stand-in, avenging elf-kind on the dwarf for the several jibes at Orlando Bloom during the course of the evening ("Ladies, I do not have Orlando Bloom's phone number. But if I did I would give it you out of pure malice.")

I shall be writing the evening up for Crisis Magazine. A lovely time!

John Rhys-Davies speaks common sense

Meanwhile, European chattering classes magically transform Islam into a "race".

Greg and Lisa Should Just Change their Name to "Rockcak"!

You should see them in spandex.

Dean: "I don't have baby blood on my hands! Er, not that there's anything wrong with having baby blood on your hands!"

The Moloch Party candidate twists himself into a pretzel.

"We have two choices. To abandon the primacy of the individual and accept the modern conservative notion that the state is justified in wielding its power to modify individual conceptions of morality and behavior, or to seek to remove this utilitarian flaw."

Uh, actually, we *could* say that neither the state nor the individual is at center stage, but rather the family and the human persons (NOT "individuals") who comprise it.

"By the time Law came in, Catholics were more sophisticated, better educated, and of a higher socioeconomic bracket, and they were less inclined to take religious dictates at face value." - historian Tom O'Conner

That's right! Now Boston Catholics let the TV dictate their religious values. A thundering herd of independent thinkers.

A question from a reader

I have a precocious 9-year-old boy who has picked up on the popular idea that our planet is threatened by overpopulation. He recently asked me how we were going to make room for all those people without cutting down the rainforests. (I'm not kidding!) I need to give him a better answer than the one I handed him at the time. Can you refer me to a good source for information on this issue? Have you ever come across books for children that discuss this?

I'm sorry. I haven't a clue. Anybody? Anybody? Bueller?

Ron Belgau to speak at Georgetown

On Friday, January 23, 2004 at 7:00 PM, I will be delivering a speech entitled "The Love that Does not Count the Cost: A Biblical Reflection on Same-Sex Attraction and Christian Love" at Georgetown University.

Since I've read your blogs at times, and appreciate your spirited defense of the Catholic faith, I thought you might be interested in passing the word on to those of your readers who live close enough to DC to make it.

My talk will focus on three main points:

1) The general call to holiness and sexual purity; the "Cost of Discipleship"; the need to rely on grace.

2) The reasons that Scripture and the Church forbid homosexual acts: procreation; male and female are complementary; marriage is an image of Christ and the Church; sexual impurity defiles the body, which is the Temple of the Holy Spirit.

3) The importance of relying upon the Sacraments, prayer, and chaste friendship in living a holy life, and the importance of service to others.

I have been published in the New Oxford Review, appeared on Catholic radio, and spoken around the country about chastity and homosexuality.

The talk is sponsored by Courage, the only ministry to those with same-sex attractions which is approved by the Holy See, and by the Georgetown University Knights of Columbus.

The speech may well turn out to be quite controversial, given the history of the issue at Georgetown in the last year, so it would be nice to have some orthodox faces in the audience.

For more information, see http://www.cityofgod.net/courage-seattle/washington-dc.htm

We all are stepping a faster pace

Look out! Here comes the Master Race!

David Morrison Responds to Lesbian Ex-Nun Letter to Abp Pell

French attempt to make a vacuum and call it peace

Won't work. It's all a half-baked prelude to the triumph of Islam if the French don't get serious about Christ.

Could there conceivably be anything more purely wondrous and superior than homosexuality? NO!

Homosexuality: It's brilliant, artistic, sensitive, spiritual, warm, generous, caring, and gosh darn it! great, great, great!

And thanks be to God, TIME magazine breaks with the lockstep hostility of the mainstream media to all things gay to inform us that homosexuals also make superior parents. Tragic that our ignorant enslavement to the blind processes of evolution has caused us to irrationally assume that nature favors a male and a female as the "natural" parents for a growing child. It turns out that Science is now revealing yet another facet to the many-sided jewel of human perfection that is homosexuality.

I was getting worried. It had been nearly 48 hours without a news piece alerting us to the shimmering aurora borealis of glories that is homosexuality. Good to see that the press is not slacking off in its duties.

And, in case you don't get it in TIME, the NY Times makes sure that you get the glad tidings. If only heterosexuals could somehow elevate themselves to level of our gay superiors. I just hope that I can raise my children halfway decently, handicapped as I am by my pedestrian heterosexuality.

I bet there are any number of priests out there who could raise up fine strapping boys based on the latest insights of the Chattering Classes.

Reckless? Hell yes! But cautiously reckless. So it's okay.

Mel Gibson Hates Me

Bill Cork--Bill Cork!--gets to see "The Passion" in a special screening.

Bill Cork....

Just Remember: The Left isn't Racist or Anything



Another contribution to American political discourse from the psychotic Lefties at whitehouse.org. Motto: We're working to drive normal people into the arms of George W. Bush!

More Reverb in the Blogosphere

Evangelical Outpost vs. NRO

Oh brother

"This is why I found it unconscionable for Mark Shea to encourage his readers to go out of their way to harm the dreams — the livelihood — of Joseph D'Hippolito." - Justin Katz' heartwringing "Plea for a Dreamer"

When the "dreams" of an author include the pre-emptive nuclear mass murder of the innocent men, women, and children of Tehran, Tripoli, Damascus, Mecca and Medina (all for a Higher Cause, of course), I have this funny idea that such an author should not go unchallenged when he repeatedly voices these "dreams" in the public square and refuses to back down.

It is purple rhetoric, but not, unfortunately, *accurate* rhetoric to say that I "damn" D'Hippolito (though Joe has on numerous occasions quite literally damned me, including a fervent wish that my plane would crash and I would burn in hell forever). Indeed, I hope very much that Joe will repent of his evil and murderous wish for the death of millions of innocent people as he repented of his death wish for me. But in the meantime, I think it salutary to express my opinion (an opinion shared by the several readers who sent me links and rolled their eyes at Front Page Mag's unfortunate lack of judgment). I don't see why Joe, of all the writers and articles criticized here, is such a fragile flower that criticism of him is "unconscionable". I do think it unconscionable that Justin could actually try to defend such an evil opinion.

I don't remember Justin feeling this way when I criticized Bob Sungenis' weird attacks on Jews publicly. But then, Sungenis is not an ardent advocate of the Iraq War.

At any rate, does anybody really think that my criticism is going to stop some editor who knows neither D'Hippolito nor me from publishing D'Hippolito if he wants to, simply by force of my awesome charisma? No. But an editor will (one hopes) think twice about publishing a person who advocates mass murder. In the length and breadth of Justin's handwringing Plea for a Dreamer, it is this little flaw in Joe's moral thinking that he never really addresses. He might as well weep bitter tears for my unforgiveable cruelty in pointing out that, for all his many merits, Wesley Clark *does* favor sticking scissors in a baby's brain right up till birth and, yes, this should affect whether people vote for him. D'Hippolito no doubt loves his German shepherd. I'm glad for him. Presumably he's a helluva sports writer and, if I cared about sports, I'd probably read him. But when he starts trying to be Catholic Pundit Man and lecture the world on what to think about the Faith and the evil men he would deliver it from so that we may all benefit from his Truer and Purer Vision, it is rather germane to note that he himself sees no conflict between the mass murder of millions of innocent men, women and children (for a Higher Cause of course) and the Faith he professes to understand so deeply.

A lovely post by an Iraqi blogger

In the end, it is love that will re-build Iraq. Love is the only thing that can build anything.

The Shimmering Shining Stars in the Cinematic Foimamint...

offer their deep thoughts on religion. Barb Nicolosi offers her hilarious thoughts in reply.

Has anybody thought to ask her to look through something else?

I mean, couldn't she just have committed an anatomy book to memory?

Science

It's only conducted by sober people in white lab coats with horn rimmed glasses and a highly developed sense of ethics, not by headline-grabbing hot dogs, Barnums, and quacks who would vivisect a baby if it would get them a grant or a Nobel Prize.

The original title was "A Passionate Affaire" (which is much better)

... but it got sanitized. It's odd how some places in the Catholic community are so uncomfortable with the Tradition's long use of erotic love as an image of divine love. Hasn't anybody read the Song of Songs or seen Bernini's "Ecstasy of St. Teresa"?

A reader writes:

By way of brief introduction, I'm the daughter of an evangelical pastor, went agnostic in high school and now (I'm a senior in college) am feeling drawn to the Catholic Church. I had a question about conversion that I thought you might be able to help me out with. I know you're a super busy person, so certainly don't expect a long reply or anything and would be grateful if you could even just recommend some reading or post my question on your blog so some of your knowledgable Catholic convert readers could share some wisdom.

I'll try.

So the question is quite simple: If you are thinking about converting, how do you know when it's time to stop thinking about it and just do it?

By taking action. Car wheels turn easier when the car is in motion. You make a judgement ("This looks true to me. I better investigate further") and then ask God to guide your exploration and plunge in. He will.

Clearly, you will always have more questions about, well, everything, but which are the most important questions to have answered before you can honestly join the Catholic Church?

In a certain sense, only you know that since only you know the things that bug you. Of course, the only *real* question you have to bother with is "Is this true?" But there are lots of questions that can *seem* like sticking points until we realize there's no There there. It's necessary to address those, not least because overcoming them helps us to realize that, as Newman said, "Ten thousand difficulties do not amount to a single doubt."

What are signs that you're not ready to convert (or that you are ready)?

I don't know that I'd think in terms of signs. Or perhaps I'd say you've already gotten your signs, which is why you are moved to explore the Faith. The next step is to act. If you really need more signs, God will supply them. And don't worry. That won't mean you are signing in blood anywhere. The catechumenate is a remarkably leisurely affair, with lots of escape hatches along the way. The Church really wants you to make a free choice, so you can bail at any moment.

But I frankly doubt you will, precisely because you are motivated by a desire to understand and the Holy Spirit is behind all such thirst for truth.

I hope that makes some kind of sense; I'd be happy to clarify. Thanks so very much in advance for your time and thoughts.

Hope that helps.

Now *That's* What I Call Art Criticism

Good for him!

And now we enter the reverberations from the reverberations phase...

Just making sure that Justin's views are heard. It's that freedom of speech thing I'm always going on about in my brownshirt hit squad way.

And Disputations offers a nice little analysis of NRO's thinking as well

A word about Disputations. Make it part of your daily diet of common sense.

More Reverberations in the Blogosphere from the SoCon/NRO Kaboom

Here, here, and here.

Chris Muir Cracks Me Up



That photo of Clark always makes me think of "Mad-Eye" Moody in Harry Potter and General "Jack" Ripper in "Dr. Strangelove".

Have the Dems ever put together a stranger collection of dwarfs than they have this year?

Post Abortion Pilgrimage

Interesting idea.