September 2003 Archives

Guys, this is my seventh post in a row. I don't mean to get medieval on your hineys, but I've posted all the new content for the last four days. (Comment boxes don't count.) Unless we're going to change the name of the blog to "Catholic Eric," you Catholic Lighters need to get cracking!

I found this on my computer as I was looking for something else:

"How well I have learned that there is no fence to sit on between heaven and hell. There is a deep, wide gulf, a chasm, and in that chasm is no place for any man." -- Johnny Cash

I think groups like Clowning for Christ are why many people have trouble taking Evangelicals seriously. Their mission statement:

We are a Christ Centered, Bible believing Ministry and our goal is to spread the Gospel through our unique clown performance in the foreign mission field as well as in local churches here in the United States. In addition to our performance ability we also teach a professional level of clowning to all Christian clowns as well as secular clowns.

You can't make up stuff like that. I thought of adapting Bible verses for CFC -- "He emptied himself, and took the form of a clown" -- but that verges on blasphemy.

Microsoft is poise to slither into another market segment: search engines. This isn't just part of their plan to dominate the world, oh no. It's a benefit to all humanity, or at least to the small portion of humanity with Internet access:

"Search engines are doing a good job but not a perfect job," said [Microsoft executive] Koenigsbauer, adding most search results today "don't deliver the results people are looking for."

What a pile of mendacious crap. You can find everything you need to know with Google. It's darn near perfect once you're good at searching with it. Heck, it's fantastic even when you're not.

If the past is any guide, Microsoft will come up with something that's 80% as good, then drive Google into the ground by out-marketing it and making it the default search engine for Internet Explorer. Then we'll be left with one fewer company to come up with new innovations and improvements. Search engines will be as stagnant as word processors, spreadsheets, and Web browsers, markets that Microsoft already dominates.

The New York Times ran a respectful obituary of Elia Kazan, one of the men for whom the word "legendary" was coined. A success in Broadway and Hollywood, he is perhaps most known for ratting out members of his Communist cell from the 1930s during the McCarthy hearings two decades later.

That the Times did not mention those hearings until the seventh paragraph is an honorable decision, and indeed the long appreciation of his life places that episode in its proper context. If there was a case to be made against the McCarthy hearings, surely the most compelling is that constitution doesn't grant the Federal government authority over movie studios. It wasn't illegal to be a Communist, and being a director or screenwriter isn't a public office. Soviet spies in the State Department were a real threat to the government and people of the United States and they should have been prosecuted and jailed. You can't say the same thing about an actor who joined a Communist front group for a few months.

I will always remember Kazan for "On the Waterfront," another movie with strong Catholic overtones. After a half-century, everything about the movie is still spectacular. If you know him as a bloated caracature of himself, you'll see where Marlon Brando's reputation comes from. The score by Leonard Bernstein is still jarringly effective, as is Boris Kaufman's cinematography.

Brando's Terry Malloy, who faces down the mob-run union oppressing his fellow dockworkers, is the center of the movie. He undergoes a saint-like transformation from mediocrity ("I coulda been a contender") to reluctant hero. Kazan, a poor Greek immigrant, transparently sympathized with Malloy's struggle against forces more powerful than himself.

Two supporting roles contribute mightily to the movie's greatness. Eva Marie Saint, playing the Catholic-boarding-school-educated love interest Edie Doyle, ultimately inspires Terry to be a better man than he is. She hovers between her attraction to Terry and her aversion to his sometimes-uncouth ways (watch her reaction as she takes her first sip of beer.)

Karl Malden plays Father Barry, a priest you'd want for your own parish. His zeal for justice is awakened by the brutal murder of a parishioner cooperating with the authorities against the mob, and tries to mobilize the dockworkers against their corrupt bosses. In one scene, he knocks out a thug blocking his exit from a bar, and then drinks the man's shot of whiskey. I'd say we could use a few more Father Barrys these days.

When Kazan recieved a lifetime achievement Oscar, many people criticized the Academy, though nobody argued that he didn't merited it on artistic grounds. Arthur Schlesinger Jr. shot back, "If the Academy's occasion calls for apologies, let Mr. Kazan's denouncers apologize for the aid and comfort they gave to Stalinism." Damn right. May you rest in peace, Elia.

Postscript: In this 2001 interview, Kazan tries to explain why "Waterfront" is so popular. "Something of the drama of the ordinary man who has feelings of guilt, who's searching for redemption- it's not a big word in the Catholic religion...." Well, actually it's the word in the Catholic religion. There's no other reason for it to exist. Still a great movie, though.

Many years ago, a liberal columnist -- I think it was Ellen Goodman -- said that it used to be the function of parents to introduce their children to as much culture as possible. Now it's the parents' job to keep the culture away from their kids. It surprises me that at least several good Catholics have cast their lots with the libertarian defenders of our popular culture, which is shot through with deeply destructive ideas and teachings. (See the comments section of the post for what I'm talking about.)

(Before I continue, let me try to head off some criticism. Although I think popular culture is ill, I don't think it's incurable. There is much literature, theatre, film, and music that is praiseworthy or at least indifferent. Besides, there will always be popular culture, so railing against it per se is silly. We should try to improve it.)

I've noticed a strain of Catholic thought that I would call "radical familialism," which is one step above radical individualism. That strain can take at least two different forms: one, exemplified by Chris and Josh, that say it is the parents' job and only the parents' job to protect children from potentially corrupting culture. Another strain looks at the culture, sees a slowly rising, fetid swamp, and thinks families ought to completely wall themselves off from the rest of society.

Either way, the implicit idea is that the family is the only meaningful institution in a country. That is how Islamic culture has gotten itself into so much trouble, because only the family and religion are sanctioned by the Koran. That means states, associations, professional guilds, etc., do not have their own proper spheres of influence, but must be subordinate to families and religious authorities.

"Come on," you tell me, "faithful Catholics believe in the Church as well as the family." Not in every case. Many faithful Catholics mentally support the Church but walk out on a particular parish if everything isn't to their liking. They may retreat into traditionalist enclaves, such as a group of Tridentine Mass attendees, or even a quasi-monastic entity like that St. John community up in Pennsylvania. "The Church," for more than a few traditionalists, amounts to their idea of the Church, comprised of one part doctrine and one part wishful fantasy. See Latin Mass magazine, New Oxford Review, and Mr. Patrick J. Buchanan.

The family, not the individual, is the natural building block of society. I don't know if that is a de fide teaching, but it ought to be self-evident. Like so many self-evident things these days, we have to provide evidence for it, and it's not my intention to defend that idea in this itty-bitty post. Rather, I want to defend the idea that society, family, and Church play mutually complimentary roles, with family being the most important. Society should assist families by assisting parents in appropriate ways: by allowing them to govern their homes as they see fit, by writing tax laws that are not unduly burdensome, and yes, by curtailing obscenity in popular culture. That need not take the form of government censorship -- I would prefer to see media industries police their own -- but it may be necessary at the local or state level.

No man is an island, and neither is any home. Parents have the primary duty to see that their children are raised well, but it would be nice if we could discourage other institutions from aggressively trying to corrupt them.

The Associated Press has an article about the 31 new cardinals appointed by Pope John Paul II. In the headline and opening sentence, they used two of the four words they, and every other secular media outlet, must mention in an article about the Pope. The words are:

1. Frail
2. Ailing
3. Conservative (never "orthodox")
4. Abortion (the only issue they think they understand because of the extensive political ramifications)

"The College of Cardinals is already mainly made up of like-minded conservatives," Nicole Winfield writes. The implication being that the Holy Father needs to start appointing liberals who will argue with him.

Still, there was one ray of light. She says later in the article, "One of the 31 on the list was unidentified, perhaps because he works in a country where the church is oppressed." No mocking quotation marks around "oppressed" -- she recognizes that in certain parts of the Earth, the Church is indeed oppressed.

In the made-for-TV Iraq war movie,

Paul Bremer	will be played by	William Devane.

The Washington Capella Antiqua will be performing solemn sung Vespers on the eve of the patronal feast of St. Michael and all Angels, to include Dufay's Ave, regina caelorum and some Cistercian chant, among others.

The service will be held this Sunday, 28 September, at 5:00 PM at St. Michael's Church, 805 Wayne Ave., Silver Spring, MD, three blocks from the Red Line's Silver Spring station.

In its new Kids Pak, the former cookie falls victim to a fruit roll-up, and the soft drink is deep-sixed for a 100% juice carton. The sandwich remains the same. All the major fast foodies are testing improved kids meals, but none has gone national yet.

"Daddy - where's my cookie?"

Laughter is good medicine and that makes Wesley Clark my podiatrist. If you saw Drudge yesterday you'll know what I'm talking about. Not only is the picture funny, but you'll also find out that Clark was recently (May, 2001) praising the Bush team: Bush, Cheney, Rice and Rumsfeld.

So in honor of that, let's do a caption contest. Here's your subject. It may be familiar to you.

Let them in the comments boxes.

The American Library Association (ALA) has been seized by radical leftists. (That isn't a joke, I swear.) They take the perverse, absolutist doctrine of free speech from the ACLU, and so anytime someone objects to a book being in their library, they consider it an assault on the First Amendment. It's a mystery how you can get from "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech" to "Thou shalt not complain about the book purchases of the people who work in public libraries."

This week the ALA is celebrating Banned Books Week, if "celebrating" is the right word. They have a list of the 100 most challenged books.

Not all of the challenges come from people concerned about sex and violence. Number 5 is The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which I read someplace else was the most challenged book of all in public school curricula. The objection is "racial stereotyping." Same deal for To Kill a Mockingbird, my favorite American novel. Their detractors come from a liberal perspective, by and large.

The ALA notwithstanding, an adult objecting to a book being carried by a library or taught in a public school isn't "censorship" in the true sense. They aren't trying to "ban" the books. They simply don't think libraries and schools should have certain materials. If the Feds prohibit a book, that's a ban.

The public pays the money for the buildings and the staff, so the public gets a say in what goes on in its institutions. The concept is called "democracy," and it never guarantees the outcome everyone wants, or even the right outcome. Our democracy in particular guarantees that people get to "petition the government for a redress of grievances." They might be wise or foolish, and they might not get other people to go along with their ideas. But they do get to express them.

Funny how the ALA is concerned about authors getting to express their views, but they're implicitly telling everyday citizens to shut up about how their tax money is being spent. Irony?

The Catholic League points out that megainvestor Warren Buffett is one of the top donors to the organization "Catholics for a Free Choice". Get that? He's a non-Catholic, a zealot for population-control causes, and he's financing a deceitful group that attacks Catholic teaching. Nice to know who your friends aren't.

Now he's the financial advisor to candidate Arnold Schwarzenegger. I don't want to make Arnold guilty by association, but (a) Arnold's already declared himself in favor of abortion and the gay agenda, and (b) electing a candidate does mean electing a pack of advisors too.

Is any of the prominent candidates for governor of California at all pro-life?

Field Marshall Wesley Clark, Ret.
"At the Pentagon, they have a plaque dedicated to my campaign in Kosovo that reads, 'Never before have we dropped so many bombs on so few targets.' As President, I would never send in a SEAL team to make a surgical strike when I can engage $500 Billion in air assets and make craters the size of the Great Lakes."

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio)
"Until today, I bet most of you didn't even know what I looked like"

Sen. Kerry and Sen. Lieberman
Kerry: "Joe, you have the cutest dimples."
Lieberman: "Is that your real hair, or did a mongoose build a nest on your head?"

Sen. Edwards
"I would only give up my multi-million dollar per year litigation practice because I care about you, the voter, and potential asbestos victim that's just been involved in a hit and run with a Wonder bread truck. I'll be right behind the Ambulance. I mean... vote for me. "

Rev. Sharpton
"I'm recommending every American put a pinch of nutmeg in their Alfredo sauce."

All photos are from the AP and referenced from the WP site.

Here's something Catholic for the blog: how about a second collection? :-)

I suspect John Mallon's car must have been named Christine.

I found a great t-shirt while surfing the web over the weekend. It said, Guns don’t kill people, abortion kills people. I hope it arrives in time for my parents’ next visit. You see, my mom is a civil lawyer, a feminist and a Canadian. By contrast, I am a canon lawyer, a traditional Catholic and a legal resident of the United States. To the chagrin of my father, also a lawyer, bickering over gun control or abortion is a favorite past-time when talking to my mother.

While going another round over the phone with mom the other day, she appealed to the obligatory statistics. You know the ones – basically the number of violent gun crimes in the United States versus the number in Canada. Of course, liberal proponents of the nanny state feel these statistics vindicate their position. Perhaps these social leftists feel residual guilt over having abandoned their children to daycare facilities as they pursue their career. I know not. But never mind personal responsibility and civil liberties, social liberalism makes for a kinder and gentler state.

Or does it? After stumbling upon this t-shirt, the time was ripe for my own statistical analysis – not for my sake, but for my mother’s. Tough love works both ways in the parent-child relationship; just as friends don’t let friends vote for Bill, good sons don’t allow their mothers to parrot Hillary. But enough musing about my family; when compared to the statistics on gun violence, the abortion issue speaks for itself. In short, liberals kill more people than guns.

According to some statistics I picked up from a number of American proponents of stricter gun control (therefore they must be true since liberals don’t lie about these things), in 1995 there were 35,957 gun related deaths in America. The number of gun homicides numbered 15,835. Given America’s population of 264 million, this is approximately one gun homicide for every 16,672 members of the American population. Canada, with a population of 29 million, suffered 1,189 gun related deaths during the same year, of which 176 were homicide. Thus the gun homicide ratio north of the border is one for every 164,773 people living in Canada – about one tenth that of the United States.

In contrast, according to the 1997 United Nations’ Demographic Yearbook, people in Canada procured 70,549 abortions in 1995. This is approximately one abortion for every 411 Canadian residents. Stated another way, for every gun homicide in Canada, there are 401 abortions. The Canadian child in the womb will no doubt take comfort in the kindness and gentility of the strict gun control laws governing our socialist state – that is, if she survives to birth. One should not assume. Just ask the 70,549 victims of Canada’s liberal abortion policy.

The statistics for the United States are no less telling. In 1997, under the ever-compassionate leadership of Bill and Hillary, 1,210,883 American babies were aborted. Statistically, this represents one abortion for every 218 residents of the United States of America. While the American ratio of abortions to gun homicides is much lower than in Canada, it is no less lopsided: 76 to 1. Of course, we seldom hear this statistic from liberal statists.

So next time you run into a liberal proponent of the compassionate nanny state, which usually means restricted gun ownership and unrestricted abortion, remember the t-shirt. Guns don’t kill people, abortion clinics do.

Was there any better composer of church music than Giuseppe Perluigi da Palestrina? The only two contenders I can think of would be Haydn or Bach. Opinions?

Everyone has a besetting sin, or at least everybody I know. For you non-Catholics and under-catechized Catholics out there, a besetting sin is the one that keeps cropping up in your spiritual life, no matter how hard you try to eradicate it. It can also keep you from growing in virtue, and quite often, it drives other forms of sins that might not even be related. For instance, if you gamble excessively, you might begin to steal to support your habit.

My besetting sin is sloth. Considering that I'm usually quite busy, what with work and three kids and a wife and the house and all, it surprised me to realize that. I often allow myself to be distracted by other things when I need to do something difficult, and the time I take away from my duties is spent on trivial things (as evidenced by the fact that I am typing this at my place of employment. Hey, consider it a coffee break.)

The small things I do might be harmless in themselves, but the results of my self-indulgence tend to snowball. If I stay up late because I've been piddling around, I can be more anger-prone the next day, or I might not be as productive at work. Sloth steals precious time that would be better spent praying or talking to my wife.

What's your besetting sin? Did someone else tell you about it, like a confessor or spiritual advisor? Or did you, like me, read something that made you realize what it is?

(How's that for something Catholic, John Francis?)

so we don't lose our "Catholic Light" ethos.

Radley "Yes, that is my real name" Balko has an article on NRO about the comeback of Opus from Bloom County. Entertaining read and a walk down memory lane. Not to cheapen it with a tired cliche or anything.

From the Washington Times:

Hillary incensed over Chinese censorship

The former first lady is demanding a recall of the Chinese edition of her memoir "Living History," which, translated into Mandarin, contains none of her criticisms of China's human rights record.

Let them pay high prices for over-roasted coffee, and let them enjoy it!

Starbucks to Open First Store in France

From WashTimes:

An overflow crowd of Episcopalians gathered at Virginia Theological Seminary last night and clashed with bishops and lay leaders of the Diocese of Virginia over the recent election of an openly homosexual bishop.

Those who disagreed with the ordination outnumbered supporters by a 4-1 ratio among attendees who got the chance to speak.

I have two words for you: Altar Girls. Word in the street is the Vatican is considering guidelines to crack down on liturgical abuses, and one of the items up for discussion is altar girls. As most of your know, Arlington Diocese doesn't have altar girls due to an administrative ruling by the late Bishop Keating. Keating's successor, Bishop Loverde, has not issued any directive related to the issue and many Arlington priests are not keen on the idea of altar girls.

We'll have to wait and see what the guidelines are when they are finalized, but in the mean time, here's the most meaningful quote from the article:

"'This premature news is creating a journalistic sensation that is not helpful,' [a] Vatican official said."

He is so unserious and self-contradictory that I can barely muster any strong feelings toward him, but attention must be paid to Howard Dean. At least for the moment, until he has an aneurysm from being so darn angry all the time.

The article says Dean is "focusing his criticism squarely on Bush, whom he said was dividing Americans by race, class, religion and sexual orientation." How's this for inclusive rhetoric:

"This democracy and the flag of the United States do not belong to Rush Limbaugh, and Jerry Falwell, and Tom DeLay, and John Ashcroft, and Dick Cheney," Dean said as he listed prominent conservatives. "This flag and this country belong to us and we want our country back."

Did he mean the flag doesn't only belong to Rush et al.? Because surely the flag is just as much the property of Jerry Fallwell as it is Howard Dean or any of his sandaled followers.

Dean doesn't think fundamentalist Christians are Americans, either:

I want my country back. We want our country back. I am tired of being divided. I don’t want to listen to the fundamentalist preachers anymore. I want America to look like America. Where we are all included, hand in hand, walking down. We have dream. We can only reach the dream if we are all together – black and white, gay and straight, man and woman.

...unless you're one of those creepy snake-handling Christians, in which case you can go to hell.

Speaking of creepy, here is Nietzsche's Superman advocating bad policy in the same speech:

We have made Medicaid into a middle class entitlement. If you made $52,000 a year or less in Vermont everybody under 18 in your family is entitled to Medicaid...if you are at the upper-end of that, we charge $50 a month...Now, if we can do that in a small rural state which is 26th in income in the entire country, surely the most wealthy and powerful society on the face of the earth can grant all of its citizens healthcare. I am a governor and I am a doctor and I have done it.

How magnanimous! His Excellency Governor Dean, ruling a population the size of Milwaukee, "granted" his subjects "free" healthcare. As Pete Vere said in a previous post, free healthcare ain't free, and Dean didn't mention that Vermont has the highest per-capita tax burden of any U.S. state.

In Vermont we have conserved hundreds of thousands of acres that will never be developed, and I might add Mr. President, they’re never going to be drilled on either.

Has there been a recent stampede to exploit the vast oil deposits of Vermont? One that was manfully resisted by Governor Dean?

For sheer head-scratching nuttiness, my favorite quotation is from two weeks ago, from a speech at the University of Maryland--

"Let's talk about that middle class tax cut," Dean said. "Tell me how much your tuition went up last year. Tell them how much your parents’ property taxes went up. That was money taken from the middle class and given to Ken Lay and the boys who ran Enron."

I don't know how they do things across the river in Maryland, but our property taxes went up because our house is worth a lot more than it was last year. The Johnsons consider that a good thing.

Literally, this is what he's saying:

1. Last year, the Republicans figured out how to siphon off tuition money paid to the University of Maryland, and tax money sent to the Treasurer of Maryland, and stick it in a Federal account.

2. The Republicans then ordered the U.S. Treasury to write one of those yellow Statue of Liberty checks, payable to "KENNETH LAY AND THE BOYS AT ENRON."

3. This was accomplished through a middle-class tax cut that did not take effect until more than a year after Enron declared bankruptcy, and "Ken Lay and the boys" were out on their ears.

Like lots of people who are more knowledgeable than me, I don't think Howard Dean will be president, and I don't know that he'll even get the Democratic nomination. Then again, I always thought everyone must surely see right through Bill Clinton, and he wouldn't stand a chance.

[Quotations were edited for spelling and grammar.]

I'm moving this dispute out of the comment box because it's not germane to the original topic. In my post on the aggressively eccentric Martin Sheen, I said "the 'root cause' of most poverty is bad morals: infidelity leading to divorce, illegitimacy, drug and alcohol addictions, etc."

Gordon Zaft strongly disagreed with my characterization of addictions, calling me a "fool." (Join the club! "Gordon Zaft" might be a pseudonym for one of my former teachers, or perhaps an ex-girlfriend.) Gordon elaborates in a subsequent comment:

Drug and alcohol addictions are most certainly NOT merely "bad morals" and it is, pardon me for saying so, unChristian to suggest that it is. It also does not square with a great deal of real research which shows real causes for addictive personalities. To deny them is, in fact, foolish.

If by "real" you mean that certain people are genetically predisposed to addictions, then you're right. The idea that certain weaknesses can be passed along to children is an insight that predates modern medicine by more than 2,000 years. Further, it wouldn't surprise me if the same studies confirmed that the level of predisposition varies from individual to individual.

The Catechism leaves no room for doubt that abusing drugs or alcohol is intrinsically sinful:

2290 The virtue of temperance disposes us to avoid every kind of excess: the abuse of food, alcohol, tobacco, or medicine....

2291 The use of drugs inflicts very grave damage on human health and life. Their use, except on strictly therapeutic grounds, is a grave offense....

[see quotation in context]

So there is a physical, genetic component to addictions, and a moral component. In some individuals, the physical component can be overwhelming, and the moral component minimal. In others, the opposite can be true. As addictions progress, the addict's will tends to become weaker and weaker, until the choice to take another drink or reach for the syringe is barely a choice at all.

I'm not a moral theologian. I don't even play one on the Web. But I can't really see how "bad morals" is an incorrect way to describe drug and alcohol abuse. I am not saying that addiction is exclusively a moral matter in every case, but unless someone is clinically insane and not responsible for his actions, then the addict must confront his own sinfulness and repent. It doesn't do him any good to explain away the addiction as merely genetic.

Gordon, maybe you could elaborate a little more about your objection. Perhaps I'm not understanding your point. Anyone else who wants to throw in their two cents (or if you're from Canada, two pesetas), please do so.

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em? A sect of storefront churches trying to attract Hispanic Catholics to its services adopts the strategy of simply calling itself Catholic, and it's misleading enough faithful that the Archdiocese of Atlanta has sued to get them to stop. Archbishop John Donoghue wrote about it in July to Hispanic Catholics.

‘‘They give the impression that they are loyal Catholics and in communion with the Catholic church,’’ Donoghue wrote. ‘‘For months now this group, ‘Capilla de la Fe,’ has been creating confusion in the Hispanic community by pretending to be in communion with the Church and the Magisterium of the Church. ... Unfortunately, many of our good Hispanic people are confused by their pretense and they are leading many away from the Catholic Church.’’

The sect offers healing through the use of blessed water and oil and seems to be appealing to superstition:

Some Capilla de la Fe services are unlike anything offered at Roman Catholic parishes, including one focusing on "strong prayer to destroy witchcraft, demon-possession, nightmares, curses, envy, bad luck, or spiritual problems."

On his blog, Mark Shea quoted an e-mail message from me about extraterrestrials. You can read it here.

Please keep John Pacheco in prayer. This Wednesday, as the candidate for the Family Coalition Party, John will be debating Dalton McGuinty, who happens to be the leader of the Ontario provincial Liberal Party and a Catholic who has capitulated on more social issues than Nancy Pelosi. Unfortunately, Dalton's experienced a recent surge in the polls, despite being a notoriously bad campaigner, and he now stands to become the next Premier of Ontario (Canada's most populous province.)

Admitting the obvious, the Dixie Chicks say they aren't country musicians anymore. Good -- maybe the local country station will stop playing their music. They're one of the major reasons I don't tune in anymore, because I'm tired of hearing their pseudo-country stylings, especially "Goodbye Earl," a disturbing tale of first-degree murder. The theme: pre-meditated killing is fine, as long as your husband is a brutal jerk. If I wanted amoral music, there are plenty of other options out there.

Maybe they can have an official excommunication ceremony in Nashville, the Country Music Vatican. Instead of bell, book, and candle, they could have a steel guitar, a Hank Williams Sr. songbook, and a headlight from an old Ford F-150 pickup.

So be it.

Our power went out Thursday night and came back on Sunday at 12:10pm. My wife and I had just sat down to eat grilled hamburgers when we heard the whirr of the A/C and heard people in the neighborhood hollering. We had started to get miserable we had nothing: no power, phones, running water, etc. Our kind neighbors across the street let us shower at their house because they had a generator.

I wish I could say that I made good use of the down time, but I ended up doing little reading and praying because I was busy feeling sorry for myself. So there's my confession for the day.

Pete, you're wrong to talk bad about Canada's moral condition. Loudmouth Catholic public person Martin Sheen says it's in great shape. I'll quote this in its entirety, because it will doubtless disappear from Drudge soon:

American actor and activist Martin Sheen had kind words for Canada when he received an award for being a Christian role model, the CANADIAN PRESS reports.

"Every time I cross this border I feel like I've left the land of lunatics," Sheen said Saturday, adding he was "proud" of Canada for not entering the Iraq war.

"You are not armed and dangerous. You do not shoot each other. I always feel a bit more human when I come here."

Sheen, who has been outspoken recently in his opposition the U.S.-led war in Iraq, was in Windsor to receive the Christian Culture Gold Medal from Assumption University.

The university will offer a new scholarship in his name.

I have a plea for Mr. Sheen, if he's still up north: Stay there, Christian role model! Stay there and be more human! Come back and visit sometimes, but by all means, if you're beset by all the insanity of living in the USA, and you've found a better place, it's time to move. Maybe Martin and Pete can trade citizenship? Let's find a lawyer to arrange it.

I'd have a lot more tolerance for the man if he talked about the injustice of abortion instead of his boutique moral concerns like the School of the Americas, or running interference for Marxist thugs like the Sandinistas. He prattles on and on about the poor, but in this country at least, the "root cause" of most poverty is bad morals: infidelity leading to divorce, illegitimacy, drug and alcohol addictions, etc.

Similarly, it's fine that he's a pacifist, and I admire his willingness to get arrested for his beliefs (over 200 times!), but Sheen never seems to suffer any real consequences. Does getting arrested that way really help change people's minds? People would be impressed if he risked 5-to-10 in the Federal slammer for sabotaging a nuclear weapons lab, but if all he has to do is pay a fine, he can't expect anyone to take him too seriously.

The more I hear him, the more I realize that the drugged-up schizoid character he played in "Apocalypse Now" wasn't much of a stretch for him as an actor.

Sheen will probably decline voluntary exile, and return to the shootin' gallery that is America. After all, he has to pick up his "West Wing" paychecks on this side of the border.

Coming in the next Left Behind book: the Washington Beltway is renamed as Interstate 666. Plausible, eh?

"The Mission," Roland Joffe's harrowing, fictionalized account of the evangelization and betrayal of native South American tribesmen, is finally available on DVD. I have not bought it yet, but it will be high on my Christmas list this year. Warner released it as a two-disc set with lots of goodies, including a "making of" special that I am eager to see.

If you consider yourself a serious Catholic and have not seen this movie, you ought to schedule some time for it. "The Mission" has some of the most beautiful moments -- visually and emotionally -- ever put on film. Briefly, the story is about Father Gabriel, a Jesuit who brings the Gospel to the hostile natives who live in dangerous, inaccessible highlands above a waterfall. The slaver Mendoza also seeks out the natives, but to bring them back as chattel. When Mendoza finds out his brother has been sleeping with his mistress, he murders him.

Dying inside with guilt, Mendoza accepts Fr. Gabriel's offer of reconciliation and seeks the forgiveness of the natives. Instead of killing him, they accept him into their community.

Because of political machinations between European powers, the pope, and the Jesuits, the two men are ordered to withdraw from their mission (Mendoza joined the Jesuits to complete his abandonment of his former life.) They refuse their superior's direct order to leave, remaining with the natives as soldiers approach to force them from their land.

Robert de Niro, as Mendoza, is the tortured centerpiece of the movie, and his performance reminds one of the power of film acting. I've seen the movie at least five times, and I am still reduced to tears at the moment when he realizes the natives have forgiven him. Jeremy Irons's Fr. Gabriel is a convincing portrait of a genuine pacifist, a man who eschews violence but not because of physical cowardice (as the ending makes clear).

The only thing that detracts from the movie are the left-wing political references sprinkled throughout the movie, derived from Latin American Cold War politics in the 1980s. It was "topical" when it came out in 1986 because of the civil wars in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and other Spanish-speaking nations. Than man's injustice to his fellow man is frequently manifest in politics, there can be no doubt; but in a movie like this, which derives its greatness from great themes of Western fiction -- death and life, freedom and slavery, sin and redemption, obedience and conscience -- transient politics intrude upon the work's integrity.

There are other flaws: at the end of the credits, when the cardinal looks at the audience with an accusatory stare, as if we are responsible for these murders, is too heavy-handed. Some lines (written by the incomparable Robert Bolt) fall flat, such as when Fr. Gabriel gives a brief speech whose theme is "God is love" -- a true statement, but a cliché as a sermon topic.

It occurs to me that you might be put off by these shortcomings, and I hesitate to write them in case it puts anyone off from seeing it (or seeing it again). You would miss other gorgeous scenes, like the crucified martyr falling down a raging waterfall, or Fr. Gabriel's "preaching" of the faith through music and icons.

You would also miss having yourself prodded by the central theme of "The Mission," which is that whether we fight with the sword or without it, faith must be strong enough to face down death, or it is unworthy of the name. At the heart of the film is the small, enduring belief that in a world smeared with ugliness and power-worship, beauty and goodness will ultimately triumph.

This Sunday, St. Matthew Cathedral in Washington celebrates the completion of restoration work with a rededication Mass. The results are, a friend says, "stunning".

Turns out that Svend Robinson, the first Canadian homosexual member of parliament (who belongs to the socialist party, of course...) has another hobby when he's not heckling President Ronald Reagan (and threatening to do the same should President Bush visit Canada), sucking up to the Taliban, pushing through homosexual marriage legislation and trying to get the Bible and the Catechism of the Catholic Church branded hate literature. He poses for in the buff for an on-line gay calendar. [Warning: Make sure there are no minors around when you visit the aforementioned link!]

Here's a Dominion Power outage map, showing I live in an area where there's 1,000+ people who are without power. I'm at the office, where thankfully, we have power. But it's been 24 hours since I had a shower.

Well folks, after this past week, Canada has now fallen behind enemy lines in the culture war. We've also shed our last vestiges of democracy and laid the foundation for a future religious persecution at the hands of the Sexual Revolt. First off, a motion to protect the traditional definition of marriage as "between a man and a woman" was narrowly defeated in our federal legislature. The Bill C-250 passed the following day (Thursday), which adds "sexual orientation" to the Canadian Code of Criminal Law in such narrow terms that basically the Bible and the Catechism of the Catholic Church now fulfill the legal definition of hate literature. Lifesite News provides a pretty good roundup of the situation. Meanwhile, all is not lost... John Pacheco continues to soldier on in the provincial election. However, I'm on the verge of seeking US citizenship.

Here's a photo of the Potomac River breaching its banks on the Virginia side.

How many pets are too many pets?

There here's your answer.

Based on the massive freak-out of The Weather Channel and local DC-news outlets, much of DC is totally shut down. Federal Govt. Schools. Wachovia bank branches. Even the local food-by-the-pound buffet is closing at 2pm.

You'd think that the eye of the storm is stalled somewhere over 14th and K in downtown DC and is blowing the Capitol Rotunda over to Union Station.

Meanwhile, my 60 minute commute was 35 minutes. The phone has rung about 3 times since 9am. Most of my customers are closed, which means I can get some serious work done today. I'm looking out my window and the winds are picking up a bit but as of 10am it's a breezy, cloudy day.

We're probably shutting down in time to hit the buffet before they close...

Pansy Moss and Peony Moss, Two Sleepy Mommies, have brought their web site to stblogs.org! Welcome, gals!

Or is it just a Rollover?

A few months ago Cardinal Law took bold and decisive action against the dissenting movement within the Archdiocese: well, no, not really. Instead, all he did was tell diocesan agencies to stop holding events at the most notorious dissenting parish, large, affluent Our Lady Help of Christians Church in Newton. After all, "Our Lady, Help Us Christians" was the launching pad of the self-important VOTF, and its pastor was vocally gay-friendly Rev. Walter Cuenin. For years, the archdiocese itself had been honoring this badly-misled parish by holding conferences and special services there. Most prominently, why on earth had they let Boston's #1 dissenter (well, maybe he's #2) have the honor of hosting Mother Teresa on her visit to Boston? That was a scandal.

It seems Cardinal Law finally got the point and ordered a stop to these affairs shortly before he resigned, but today, says the paper, Abp. O'Malley has lifted the prohibition in an arrangement worked out by Bp. Lennon, auxiliary for the western portion of the archdiocese.

Guess who's 75? Bishop Sullivan of Richmond. That means in a few months he'll be retired to the Monastery of Mount Showtunes.

The few times I've been to Mass is that diocese can only be described as liturgical mayhem. It's a place where I've been to Mass, and then wondered if I actually went to Mass. Everything else I've heard about Richmond is pretty frustrating. It's a place where Gather Comprehensive is used more widely than the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The language is so inclusive it excludes anyone who thinks that God became a man.

One can only hope some discipline and obedience can get applied there over time, but who knows who'll get appointed...

In the mean time...

Top Ten Slogans of the Liturgy Office of the Diocese of Richmond.

10. Smile and Build Community Or We'll Club This Baby Seal.

9. Home of the Raisin-Nut Altar Bread

8. Putting the "YA" in "Kum-ba-ya" for Over 29 Years

7. Instead of Vatican III, Let's Have Richmond I!

6. We Have Altar Girls and Our Backward Neighbor To The North Does Not. Na-na-na-na-na-na!

5. Welcome to Richmond, Here's Your Leotard

add more in the comments boxes.

Update as of 9:41am Wednesday: A big, scary new hurricane path map.

The current path of Hurricane Isabel has it bearing down on the DC-area, where 60% of the CL contributors reside. Luckily, our in-house Canonist and our up-north Catholic Light-kateer* should be out of harm's way. And the Catholic Light network operations are within a weather-proof, bomb-proof, lunch-meat stocked network center in an undisclosed location. Much like VP Dick Cheney.

*That would be RC. RC - help me with a new nickname.

Recovering Choir Director pointed me to this post by Elinor Dashwood.

She says, "Nobody ought to be paid a dime for assisting in the liturgy" and compares paying music directors with paying actors to be lectors and paying boys to be altar boys.

The big issue here is that music directors should have specialized skills and education that go far beyond those needed to perform other roles in the liturgy. Money isn't the only factor that drives quality, but it can be an influencing factor, particularly when it's an issue of someone actually making a living as a church minister. I've been on both sides of the fence here as both an paid choir director and a volunteer. When I was just starting out and still in school, the compensation was a huge help to me. When I got a real job with decent pay, the compensation wasn't something I needed and I was able to volunteer.

So it's not the pay, it's the focus of the program. Elinor points out in a later post that yesterday, on the celebration of the Triumph of the Cross, her music director didn't pick anything hymns that actually had a text related to the Triumph of the Cross. It wouldn't matter if that organist was paid or not - obviously that person needs to go to music planning 101 and get a clue about what's appropriate.

Here's another nugget:
"How any Catholic can bring himself to take money for assisting with the Mass is incomprehensible to me."

So the organist at the Cathedral who has a Doctorate in Organ Performance and has 30 years experience in leading parish music programs should work full time at the local hardware store to make ends meet? That's absurd.

It does sound like Elinor and I have the same taste in music (We did sing "Lift High the Cross" yesterday) but when it comes to pay for musicians, we'll have to disagree.

Time, the once-great magazine that has shrunk to 12 pages a week, has an interview with Madeleine Albright on the occasion of her new book. Like every memoir by a former Clintonoid, I won't read it -- I tend to shy away from fiction -- so I rely on articles and reviews to tell me what to think of it.

Reading the interview, I thought, "Was tact a disqualification for a job in the Clinton administration?" I don't recall anyone from Bush the Elder's gang going out of their way to trash the Clintons; maybe there were a few, but they didn't make themselves as obnoxious as these people. We're not just talking about mid-level appointees trying to make a name for themselves, we're talking about cabinet members all the way up to Bill and his lovely wife, Bruno.

Back to Madame Albright: the interview is very short, but it's packed with howlers, such as "President Clinton focused on terrorism from the start," and "Frankly, if there was a President Gore, we wouldn't be in this particular mess." There are several other questionable statements, like "Iraq is in fact a breeding ground for terrorists" (more accurately, it's a magnet for terrorists as few of them seem to be homegrown.)

One nasty answer particularly stood out --

(Q) Bush's foreign policy started as "Anything But Clinton" in almost every area—the Middle East, North Korea, China. Now events have pushed it back much closer to your approach. Do you ever succumb to schadenfreude?

(A) No, I'm much too kind and generous a person.

Because I'm kind and generous myself, I will not point out that Madame Albright looks like Ursula the Sea Witch from "The Little Mermaid." Instead, I will let you decide.

(Original joke made in 1997 by Steve Schultz when Albright was named secretary of state. Photos edited by me. Original photos (c) ???? whoever owns them.)

A number of readers have asked me to comment on what canon law has to say about the Italian church where some evil and blasphemous pornographers lied about filming a wedding scene. Basically, canon 1211 covers this subject in stating as follows: "Sacred places are violated by acts done in them which are gravely injurious and give scandal to the faithful when, in the judgement of the local Ordinary, these acts are so serious and so contrary to the holiness of the place that worship may not be held there until the harm is repaired by means of the penitential rite which is prescribed in the liturgical books." I would say that filming a pornographic scene between a prostitute (they're certainly not actors) pretending to be a priest and one pretending to be a bride that mocks not one but two sacraments (confession and marriage) is certainly gravely contrary to the holiness of a parish church.

God bless Johnny Cash. If there was anybody in popular culture who so well expressed both the strength and misery of man, it was he.

At a ball game the other day shortly after he died (Chicago at Boston), the Fenway showmeisters saluted Cash during a break in the action by playing the tune from his hit "Ring of Fire". Sure, it was a popular song; it's a fun song. But with those lyrics? Let's think this one over, guys.

At Caritate Dei, Rob Diaz likes a hymn spoof I sent him, and wants more. Any volunteers?

(Update: Down in the comments, Rosemarie posted a link to a smashing parody of "Gather Us In". Thanks!)

Babies are smiling.

I've been posting way, way too much lately, and I swear I'll refrain for a while after today. However, I wanted to get in one last post.

In looking for something else, I found this article from New Zealand that encapsulates a couple of irritatingly persistant arguments about Iraq.

First, the idea that the U.S. has "sqandered" the "goodwill" of the "world" in the last two years. This guy says:

If, heaven forbid, there is another attack of September 11 proportions, there will not be the same sense of innocent incredulity heard worldwide when the Twin Towers fell, and still heard at the first anniversary. The ledger is even now.

Leave aside the moral equivalence between terrorists and anti-terrorists in the last sentence. "Innocent incredulity" wasn't the universal reaction to the terror attacks. I recall watching Palestinians celebrate on the West Bank; I remember left-wing columnists writing their "but" columns. ("Sure, killing officeworkers and airline passengers is wrong, but we [pollute the environment/support Israel/fill in the blank].") The world did not suddenly support American foreign policy on Sept. 12, 2001. They didn't love us -- they pitied us. There's a wide chasm between the two.

Second,

Rather than resume the pursuit of Osama bin Laden, or the difficult, clandestine tasks of counterterrorism in unpleasant foreign places, the President chose a much easier target - an old foe he felt sure he could find in an already defeated and devastated country.

We are pursuing Osama, fighting terrorism in "unpleasant foreign places," and a host of other things such as freezing bank accounts and disrupting communications -- all at the same time. Why is it so hard to grasp that U.S. counterterrorism efforts can proceed at several different levels simultaneously?

The Democratic presidential candidates repeat this charge all the time. This is a crowd of people that wants the Federal government to do more and more with each passing year. Their party is responsible for making the Federal Government the size of Germany's entire economy, with dozens of departments, bureaus, and agencies performing hundreds if not thousands of tasks at the same time. Yet our several national security entities can either depose the Iraqi dictator or find Osama -- but not both?

---

That's it for the serious entries. I'm going to find something funny to write about.

Don't let the p*rn film crew work unsupervised.

To start with, there's probably some rule against letting a fiction film be made inside a church. But if a pastor's going to ignore that and allow it anyway, he needs to watch over the filming and make sure the church isn't profaned to the extent that it needs a re-consecration.

Anyway, Father, the thing to do is just send these people to make their movies in a suitable non-Catholic church. Some of them look more like a Catholic church than some of ours do.

[My apologies for again "repurposing" something I've written elsewhere. I was responding to the question about civilian casualties during the Iraqi war, and disputing a wildly inflated total of over 37,137 deaths.]

There is no way there were 3,581 civilian deaths in Nasiriyah, as reported by Wanniski. My Marine unit had teams attached to most of the infantry forces in the city, and they did witness several dozen civilian casualties, many of them fatal. These occured mainly because the Fedayeen would do things like shoot from occupied buildings. That number of deaths could have only resulted from either intense artillery bombardment or a concentrated air campaign. Neither one happened.

Additionally, we spent a month in Kut, and went all around the city talking to civilians (that's a big part of our peacetime role). There was no widespread destruction, and we met few people who had lost family members. In a city of 200,000, Wanniski's reported figure of 2,494 is over 1% of the population. We would have seen some evidence -- mass graves, lots of mothers in mourning, that kind of thing. We had teams in Diwaniyah, Hillah, and Najaf, and a dozen other places. No one reported mass deaths.

My team's primary mission during the war, like that of all the other civil affairs teams, was to minimize civilian casualties by keeping them away from the fighting. This also let the commanders maneuver and shoot without fear of harming the innocent. I don't think people realize the efforts the military made to avoid civilian casualties. In many cases, Marines and soldiers placed themselves at mortal risk to save innocent lives, or refrained from destroying an enemy position because civilians would be injured.

For what it's worth, the Iraqis blamed the noncombatant deaths on Saddam for causing the war in the first place. They considered the losses unfortunate, but an acceptable price for getting rid of their tyrant.

Michelle Malkin has a dead-on column about all the people who are impeding the war on terror at the local, state, and federal level. I would disagree that their resistance constitutes "spitting on their graves," but it does endanger the living.

Last night on PBS (yes, I do watch PBS on rare occasions) they had a BBC special on Sept. 11, focusing on the government response to it. One of the things the Federal government did was seal the borders. I thought, "If they can seal the borders for one day, why couldn't they do it every day?" They must have meant closing down border crossings. Whatever they did, two of the most significant things we could do are to seal the borders against illegal aliens, and deport illegal aliens who are here, with a high priority placed on countries that export crops of terrorists (Saudi Arabia, Syria, Colombia).

Neither one is going to happen, because the Bush administration doesn't have the guts to stand up to the Diversity Uber Alles crowd. That virtually ensures another terrorist attack from foreigners. For the sake of their own sense of moral superiority, the Left, along with far too many irresponsible folks on the Right, has decided that any new law-enforcement measure is ipso facto one more move toward a police state. No matter how innocuous the plan, such as classifying air passengers by the risk they pose, the reaction is the same as if the feds abolished the Bill of Rights.

Some people apparently think that law enforcement is like a sport, and neither team should have a particular advantage over the other one. Like I said, this silliness isn't limited to the Left.

David A. Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, worries that the computer screening program will go beyond its original goals. "This system is not designed just to get potential terrorists," Keene said. "It's a law enforcement tool. The wider the net you cast, the more people you bring in."

Aaack! The cops might catch MORE CRIMINALS! Why, if this plan goes through, CRIMINALS MIGHT NOT EVEN TRAVEL BY PLANE ANYMORE! How will they get to visit their relatives in other states? Let us rend our garments.

(Our bishops aren't too helpful here. Has anyone seen a statement from any U.S. prelate with even the mildest rebuke for immigration violators? Everything I've seen from the bishops says that all of our immigration laws are immoral, more or less.)

I've been mentally preparing an essay called "The emerging anti-anti-terrorism," about the backlash against the war on terror. So much of this new phenomenon is identified as anti-war or anti-Bush activity, but we're seeing an intellectual movement that is rapidly becoming an ideology. Just as the premise of anti-anti-Communism was that Americans had an "inordinate fear of Communism," as Jimmy "Ask Me about My Foreign Policy Successes!" Carter put it, anti-anti-terrorists don't think that terrorism poses a particular threat to the U.S., or at least not one we ought to get excited about. We'll see if I get around to writing it. (Not that you probably care too much -- I'm throwing it out there to see if it sounds interesting to anyone.)

Part of his welcome address to the people of Slovakia:

"Do not be satisfied with the sole quest for economic advantages. Great affluence, in fact, can also generate great poverty"

It's a interesting paradox that nearly all good things can be turned on their head to become something disordered, misused - an object of sin. I'm sure many worldly people will think this quote is referring the struggle between the rich growing in their riches and the poor staying poor, but I'm sure he means more than that. Anything placed before God can create a poverty in our lives: the poverty of having love for things that will pass away.

I'm glad to hear that the Holy Father is persevering in the adversity of his failing health. He is striving to do the work of the Lord even to the end.

[I typed a response to something Mark Shea posted, and I realized it was long enough to make it blog-worthy.]

...The Pope asks, "When will these conflicts cease? When will people finally see a reconciled world? We will not facilitate the peace process by allowing, with guilty indifference, injustice and to prosper in our planet."

The alternative to going to war with Iraq was to let Saddam's regime in place, free to murder political opponents, imprison the innocent, and instill a generalized terror into the population. Leaving aside whether it was ultimately prudent to go to war against Iraq -- the answer to that question will become clearer with the passage of time -- it was a net advance for the causes of human freedom and worldly justice.

I say this with sadness, because my deep regard for this pope was one of the factors in my conversion to Catholicism, but if the U.S. and U.K. had followed his advice (and that of the majority of the world's bishops), the mass killings, unjust imprisonments, and general terror would still be in place in Iraq. Qusay would have succeeded Saddam, and this wretchedness would proceed for another generation.

I agree that the world, and particularly the West, is in the grip of a Culture of Death. I agree that we suffer from amnesia about our human nature and relationship to God. I agree that the key to renewing the world is to dedicate ourselves to Jesus Christ and live as he would have us live. In short, I agree with the Holy Father's critique of the West.

However, in this matter, I believe that the war was justified on humanitarian grounds alone. The weak are not preyed upon by the strong, and the guiltless prisoners are out of their jails. A massively corrupt government no longer threatens its neighbors. Isn't that enough?

I'm involved with a project at work, and maybe somebody out there can help. My employer's annual calendar is very PC and includes major holidays of various religions and cultures, because, like a lot of high-tech firms, we have a culturally diverse work force. Since last year's edition had a few mistakes in listing the Christian holidays, I volunteered to help gather info for the 2004 edition.

Apparently the editors had been using whatever info they could find on the web, and some of it was old or wrong; so I'm looking for official or at least reliable sources for the data I turn in. Documenting the Catholic holidays is not hard: the Catholic Almanac has a list. Can anybody point to some reliable source for a list of Orthodox holidays?

Also, what days would Protestant Christians consider important enough to list: just Easter and Christmas? Pentecost? Maybe Reformation Sunday? Obviously Protestant customs are going to be all over the map; but advice from our non-Catholic readers (if any) would be a boon. Thanks!

Or this, or this, and certainly not this.

It's too bad, really. Gotta say no.

My driver's license renewal form came in the mail last week, so I looked it over and started to fill it out. One of the questions is:

Do you want to have the organ donor designation printed on your driver's license?

And my choice the last time around was: Sure, why not. The Church approves of organ donation; it's a charitable way to help somebody, to do a pro-life act. Fine. Happy to help.

But this LifeSite item reminds me that not everybody has the ethical details quite right. (Read the story here if you don't have access to CWN.) It's about unscrupulous doctors in Russia collecting organs from people who weren't dead yet. (They are now.)

Dr. John Shea, medical advisor to Campaign Life Coalition, said that he is not surprised: "The less dead a person is, the better," for purposes of organ harvesting. The practice now is to have the attending physician in a trauma ward make a decision against continuing life-saving efforts, shut off the respirator, and remove organs as soon as possible after even a simple head trauma, he said.

"Let's not blame the Russians, this is going on in Canada and the United States under new protocols for 'non-heart-beating' organ donation. The patient does not even have to be brain dead. The term 'brain death' is useless anyway. No-one ever knew what it meant; now it is being ignored," he said.

If I'm going to give anybody the OK to collect second-hand body parts from me, it's going to be in some other document that spells out the ethical conditions a little more precisely. I'm not going to leave it to the legislature.

Until then, I'll break it down for ya in the words of the Rev. M.C. Hammer: ...can't touch this.

This is Alex Cassar. Alex is the VP of the Family Coalition Party. Earlier today, Alex stopped by Catholic Light and kindly clarified his party's platform about lowering taxation for families. (The FCP is the party for which our very own John Pacheco from St Blog's is running.) So why aren't you running Alex? You would make a good candidate yourself!

Maggie Gallagher wonders whether the family is still declining:

How many children are living in intact families, with their own married biological or adopted parents?

At a fascinating Health and Human Services-funded conference last week in Washington, D.C., sponsored by the National Poverty Center, we finally got the answer. And the news is good. The analysis of the National Survey of America's Families (a survey of 40,000 nationally representative families) was done by Urban Institute scholars Gregory Acs and Sandi Nelson:

Between 1997 and 2002, the proportion of children under 6 living in intact married families actually increased. So did the proportion of all children in low-income households (the bottom quarter) by close to 4 percent.

It's encouraging evidence that the apostles of despair are wrong: The decline of marriage is not inevitable. Social recovery is possible. In fact, it is under way.

Back in the Spring, a number of our readers asked me to post excerpts from a talk I gave to a regional CUF conference in Tucson, AZ. In this talk, I had contrasted the Rosary and contraception as far as their effects on marriage is concerned. I had mentioned at the time that this talk was being edited into an article for CUF's magazine The Lay Witness, and I would let everyone know once it was out. For those who are interested, CUF has now made this piece available on their website under the title The Battle of the Bond. Here's an excerpt:

Take the Joyful Mysteries, for example. In the Annunciation, we recognize Mary’s complete and total self-gift in consenting to be the tabernacle of the Incarnate Word. Her simple fiat—“let it be to me according to your word”—would change the course of human history. Because she humbly consented to the beginning of the divine life within her womb, man was to find redemption and salvation. Yet, in contraception, we find man frustrating the beginning of life in such a way that he becomes a self-contradiction by being opposed to (“contra”) his own conception. He becomes the arbiter of life and sets himself up as a god.

The Santa Cruz, California city council, a dues-paying corporate member of the Loony Left, weighs in with a proposal to impeach President Bush. Is it for lying under oath? Trying to suppress evidence in a civil trial? Suborning perjury? No, he apparently "violated international treaties by going to war in Iraq, and that the president manipulated public fears to justify the war and undercut Constitutional rights."

If "manupulating public fears" is an impeachable offense, then no Democrat is fit to serve in Congress, because every two years they try to scare old people into thinking the Republicans are going to take away their Social Security and Medicare. Also, the U.S. has never signed an international treaty precluding it from making war; if that happened, it didn't make the headlines.

This "movement" was founded by a University of Illinois law professor named Francis Boyle. He comments, "President Bush wants to waste another $87 billion in Iraq....That could pay for a lot of stop signs in Santa Cruz." Or psychiatric hospitals, which are in perpetual short supply in the Golden State.

Check out this article in the Washington Times about the increasing popularity of orthodox Catholic higher education.

When I was a reporter for the diocesan paper of Arlington, I covered many events that Christendom held, and I was always impressed at how they strove for sanctity without being priggish. I would be pleased if my children went to any of the institutions mentioned in the article, provided they don't get screwed up in the next 15-17 years.

A dissenting note to the article: I don't think things are so bad at Catholic universities in general. Yes, they are too enamored of secularism, but mostly that's out of weakness. Universities selected their staffs from the Herd of Independent Minds, and they tailor their views accordingly. When deans and presidents talk about "academic freedom" trumping an authentic Catholic identity, they're really saying, "We're afraid we won't get any respect from other people who work at universities, because they spit on our backwards papist religion."

For instance, I happen to know that Notre Dame, which is singled out as an example of a Catholic university gone wild, has quite a lot of Catholic character. I know many people who went there, by way of my friend Andy, and when I visited there I knew I was in a place where Jesus was alive and well. They have Masses in the basement chapels of every dormitory, and the architecture and statues remind you that you're not on a secular campus. Sure, there are some questionable faculty working there, and they could certainly stand for some improvement. But they're not lost, and neither, I suspect, are most Catholic universities.

Here's some background info for the St. Blogs musicians & liturgists. I think it shows that having prayerful liturgies that draw from the musical tradition of the church is bigger than one person.

Read on...

Tonight on NRO, lots of great stuff:

Stephen Moore writes about all the trouble with Tom Daschle's mansion on Foxhall Road in Washington DC. I used to drive down Foxhall all the time to get to American U, so I've seen how the other half lives.

Also, The Krugman Truth Squad strikes again. They even gave Tim Russert some ammo this time.

Yesterday at 10 a.m. Mass, we were sitting together as a family, an uncommon occurence because my wife Paige is often the cantor. When we sat down for the Liturgy of the Word, I noticed that the woman in the pew in front of me was wearing a cropped shirt that exposed about three fingers' worth of belly, as well as a skimpy thong.

"You should have been concentrating on the liturgy or praying," you might say. I agree, but I had my squirmy 3-year-old daughter in my arms, so my concentration was not as acute as it might have been. I happened to glance past my daughter and saw more than I wanted to see: when the woman sat down, her low-cut pants didn't conceal the top part of her underwear.

Is it really too much to ask for someone to refrain from dressing provocatively at church? The guy next to me was wearing an untucked shirt and jeans; there were many overly casual people there. I've learned to filter that out. There could be a charitable explanation for dressing sloppy -- maybe she's sick and could only put on sweatclothes; maybe he's poor and that "Brew Thru" t-shirt is all he owns. There's no excuse for dressing like a tart, though.

If being disrespectful to God isn't enough to get people to reconsider their clothes, there are a couple of other good reasons. First, it's a terrible example to kids. We've already got our hands full -- quite literally -- when we take the kids to Mass, and we're trying to convince them that church is a special place where we're on our best behavior. When other people look like they're going to a picnic, that's hard.

Bad examples don't just influence the pre-school set. Last summer when we were in Maine, I noticed some girls who must have been 11 or 12 wearing low-riding jeans with thong straps sticking out. It made me mildly ill. Where did they get the idea that they should present themselves as sex objects? From older females like their favorite singers (thanks, Britney!) and other people they see around them.

The last, weakest, and perhaps the most convincing reason to dress up for church is that these clothes render you unattractive. Men, most women are turned off by slobs, and other men won't respect you much. Women, those super-keen fashions probably don't work on you. Spaghetti straps on a thin, tall woman can make a woman look more graceful and elegant, but on 97% of the female population it makes you appear thicker.

Low-cut tight pants make your butt look bulbous and your hips wider than they are (again, unless you're skinny and tall, but all clothes look better on skinny, tall people.) If you have the least bit of fat on your hips -- in other words, you're a normal woman -- your pants will show that fat to the world, making your abdomen look like sausage meat that's trying to escape its casing.

Like women priests and gay marriage, I find discussions about inappropriate attire to be tedious not because there aren't important issues involved, but because there aren't that many interesting aspects to the debate. I bring it up in the hope that someone, somewhere, will read this and think about wearing nice clothes to meet the King of the Universe.

You can get anything you want these days in worship, and the suppliers of church goods are ready to make it possible. Why not have sealed individual Holy Communion packages? After all, you wouldn't want to receive from the same one cup and one bread as other people, would you? Better for everything to be perfectly sterile.

My Capuchin pal Bro. Matthew commented that a Mass using these things might not be valid, since the priest is supposed to say the words of institution over the elements, not over their packaging. And that's besides any problems about the grape juice.

I bet some evangelistic TV outfits would love these Communion Cups: they could mail 'em out to supporters and conduct the next monthly communion service through the Satellite Ministry. Would you put your Communion Cup in front of the TV set, brothers and sisters, while I pray the Prayer of Faith? What the heck: we could do it over the Internet!

Victor noticed this other product from the same company. I'm cuckoo for Eucha-Puffs!

I just wanted to give a link back to A.A.E. for making CL a daily visit and linking back here. We have a bit in common in terms of our involvement with music ministry and are only 4 years apart in age. There you have it. I'm only 31. But I'm in to my 10th year of directing a choir at my parish.

I'd like some advice. This year November 2nd falls on a Sunday, so we celebrate all Souls during a Sunday Mass. I'm aware of two schools of thought for All Souls music: one is saint-music, the other is christian burial music. The saint-music people will sing things like Ye Watchers and Ye Holy Ones. The christian burial people will do more somber music.

Can I get some thoughts on tone for that liturgy?

We have the Stanford "Justorum Animae" in our repertiore and I'm inclined to plan to do that:

"The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God;
there shall no torment or malice touch them.
In the sight of the unwise they seem to die,
but they are in peace."

FYI, I haven't reviewed the reading for that day yet.

Teresa and I were in Corolla, North Carolina last week for our first beach vacation together. Though we've been married 4+ years we've never made it to the beach for an extended stay. We had a great time in spite of the fact we both can't totally escape from work. Here's some tidbits from the vacation.

We brought the dog. It's the first time she's been to the beach, so when we walked down the deck that goes over the sand dune and she saw the ocean for the first time, she totally flipped. She didn't quite know what to make of the noisy, salty, cold-water in the vast expanse in front of her. She finally got used to walking on the beach with us after a couple of days.

She had to sleep under the bed because that's what she does at home. Of course, she has about 10 inches of space under the bed at home and had 4 inches at the beach. She managed to squeeze herself under the bed and slept there every night.

Corolla has a 6pm Mass on Wednesday that counts for the coming Sunday obligation. By special indult from the Bishop of the diocese, there's an evening Mass on Wed. that makes it so you can hang out on the beach on Sat. in the late afternoon, sleep late on Sunday and still be totally set in terms of your Sunday obligation. We thought we were going to a simple daily Mass but when the parking lot was packed I knew something was up. The priest was an Oblate of St. Francis de Sales who gave a beach homily. A radtrad would say that it was all fluff and feel-good stuff about how God doesn't make junk, someone else would be able to see the merit in confronting your own broken-ness with the realization that everyone has a true dignity in the sight of God and God call everyone to healing.

Some liturgical mayhem: in the diocese the bishop has declared everyone should stand until all have received communion. With no kneelers in this chapel, it wasn't a physical problem, but it sure is weird to me that with the options for posture after receiving communion and with all the other postures that are mentioned in the GIRM but not done widely this bishop would make a big deal of standing (definately not kneeling) during communion. After pet-peeve - "Through Christ, With Christ and In Christ..." instead of "Though Him" - that's just silly gender-revisionist claptrap. The guitar player did his best with City of God, etc. and the priest made a huge deal of the fact we would sing only one verse at the end of Mass. I'm assuming it's very important that at the beach Mass only last 45 minutes, even if it fulfills a Sunday obligation and gets you home in time to watch Jeopardy. It's musical poverty to pare down the verses to next to nothing. It makes the music unimportant and ultimately discourages participation.

On Sat. evening, we went to Holy Redeemer in Kill Devil Hills for the 5pm Mass. The priest was AWOL (reason unknown) so we had a rather reverent communion service. Another parade of Haugen & Hass that wasn't very inspiring, but we did sing "I Heard The Voice of Jesus Say" at the opening and closing (vs. 1 & 2 at the opening, vs. 2 & 3 at the closing.)

We did some grilling, had some nice meals out, visited some friends and when we weren't on the phone or doing email managed to relax. Someday I'll be able to leave work totally behind, I hope. Same for Teresa.

SHAMELESS SELF-PROMO ALERT!

California is not the only place suffering from election shennanigans right now, as true conservatives debate over whether they should support Arnold. Ontario, which is Canada's largest province, is also going through an interesting election. In my latest Enter Stage Right column, I share why social and fiscal conservatives should not be scared to vote Family Coalition Party as an alternative to the Progressive Conservatives, even though it will likely mean splitting the right. Here's a juicy excerpt from "Not Just For So-Cons: Why Fiscal Conservatives Should Vote Family Coalition Party in Ontario":

In fact, one of the things I find interesting about the Family Coalition Party is that unlike many other social conservatives I come across, the party resists the temptation of paleo-conservative protectionism. According to their campaign literature, the FCP "supports the long-term removal of all measures that insulate industries, businesses, financial institutions, professions and trade unions from domestic and foreign competition." In this sense, the FCP appears much more in tune with the global thinking of modern conservatism than the federal PCs under David Orchard.

Thus the FCP's social conservative roots provide for solid fiscal conservative policy. The party clearly explains this correlation in their policy handbook. "The family has an important and necessary role in protecting and nurturing life," one reads. "This role makes the family, rather than the individual, the basic building block of our society. When families are strong and prosperous, democracy and economic enterprise flourish. Strong families lessen problems in many areas of society; e.g.: marital separations, child abuse, teenage rebellion leading to alcohol and drug abuse, teenage pregnancies, runaways, school drop-outs, vandalism, theft and violence. Strong family ties and stable relationships are economically and socially beneficial, leading to fewer cases of single parents, better job stability, more productive members of society and decreased welfare costs."

Because strong families make for a robust and free-market economy, and vice-versa, the Family Coalition Party proposes an education policy more in tune with the free market than the current status – or should I say statist? – quo. "The state should not push its own political agenda onto children in classrooms," the policy manual states. "Choice is to education what competition is to business. It unleashes the pent-up creativity of educators, in response to consumer demands. Just as competition works to improve quality and lower prices, so taxpayers will save money when parents are allowed to choose in the education marketplace. Choice is the catalyst that will drive other school reforms -- it will spark innovations in teaching, management, and learning."

Steven Riddle's Flos Carmeli weblog has joined us at stblogs.org, and has brought along an archive even slightly bigger than that of Catholic Light.

Salve!

Can children under the age of reason commit venial sins? From my external observation, I think they can. I can think of several cases where my daughter and older son have known what was the right thing to do, and deliberately chosen not to do it. Also, when my wife and I discipline them, I don't get the idea that we're disciplining mere jumbles of instincts and passions, but that their intellects and wills are thrown into the mix.

So while I have no trouble believing that small children can't commit mortal sins because they are incapable of full, rational choice, I would think they could commit venial sins. Anybody have an answer for me?

A follow-up to my post "Movies you won't see anytime soon." How could I forget the chronological plot elements you'll almost never see, such as:

+ The 1950s: An employee at a movie studio thinks it's terrible that Senator McCarthy is trashing people's reputations, but points out to his colleagues that there are millions of Soviet troops forcibly occupying Eastern Europe, and the USSR stole the hydrogen bomb so they could use it on us, so maybe there's something to this communist threat after all?

+ The 1960s: A kid from a radical leftist New York family goes to college and starts hanging around the hippies. He discovers that drugs and free love aren't as good as his parents told him they'd be. He rebels by burning his Jimi Hendrix records, switching his major to Finance, and courting a demure coed from Utica.

Bill Cork has noticed that goofball bishop Thomas Gumbleton hasn't given up on the idea of ordaining women as priests yet, and Dale Price accordingly wonders if Cardinal Maida will give His Excellency the slapdown he deserves. One would hope so, given that His Eminence rightly stopped a parish from hosting some pro-fem-ord speakers not too long ago.

Fono spotted an article from Germany's Welt am Sonntag paper about the Pope's health.

As you've probably noticed, Pope John Paul's voice has become progressively more incomprehensible in his public speeches, and according to the article, he now regularly skips whole paragraphs of his Wednesday general audience talks.

This becomes a practical problem for the Church when there are some tasks only a Pope can fulfill: e.g., to declare one of the faithful departed a saint or a blessed, as he plans to do for Mother Teresa on October 19. For the Pope, giving up his trip to Mongolia, and the wished-for side trip to Russia means that he will probably never fulfill his dream of consecrating Russia to our Lady from its own soil.

Andreas Englisch writes:

John Paul II sees his fate head-on. He openly indicates that he believes he does not have long to live. He declines to name the overdue replacements for the two most important Vatican offices: both Secretary of State Angelo Cardinal Sodano and the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Joseph Ratzinger, have surpassed the age limit of 75 years and would normally have to go into retirement. Yet John Paul II does not want to fill such important offices himself. He wants to leave the choice of successors to the next Pope, who will have to work closely together with the cardinals in both key positions.

Well, he's not Ann Coulter, but St. Blog's very own John Pacheco has thrown his hat into the upcomming provincial election in Ontario. John's running for the Family Coalition Party, which with the homosexual marriage issue still fresh in people's minds, has the potential to break into major party status this election. (FCP is already the largest of Ontario's fringe parties and has been steadilly gaining for years.) John's playing a particularly important role for the FCP, in that in Canadian politics the leader of the party must run for legislative office. John's running against Dalton Camp, leader of the Ontario Liberal Party. Dalton, as I previously mentioned, has the backbone of a paralyzed squid. You can stop and visit John's campaign website at Pacheco.ca. Please keep John in prayer and offer him encouragement.

Finally, there's somebody who can tell publicity hound Mitchell Garabedian where to get off. He's a lawyer for some of the abuse plaintiffs, and he was ready to turn a Saturday meeting between ten abuse victims and Abp. O'Malley into a media circus.

The talks were to be held at a location not announced publicly, but attorney Garabedian, according to the Associated Press, invited journalists to come to the site where he would give briefings during breaks in the action.

Attorneys Carmen Durso and Roderick MacLeish Jr., on the other hand, representing two other groups of plaintiffs, didn't like the idea of having to putting their clients through a media gauntlet to get into the building, so they asked Abp. O'Malley to postpone the session, and the meeting for Saturday is off.

With a couple elections looming or in full gear, there's a number of interesting comments over at Musings, the weblog of Enter Stage Right. Many of them concern the sorry state of conservative politics in Canada. I can sympathize, particularly with regards to the provincial election in Ontario. Although she has gotten somewhat of a bad rap across St. Blog in recent weeks, what we really need in Canada is a visit from Ann Coulter.

Let's look at the leaders of the three major parties. Ernie Eves is the current Premier of Ontario and the leader of the Progressive Conservative Party. (Keep in mind this party tends to emphasize the adjective more than the noun). He's currently shacked up with some woman who heads a state-funded television station. He's also flip-flopped on the gay marriage issue. Fiscally, he's nowhere as brave as his predecessor. So basically, if Ernie Eves were an American politician, he would be the 1996 election campaign -- he's got the morality of Bill Clinton and the fiscal policy and charisma of Bob Dole.

Moving on to Dalton McGuinty, Jr., head of the liberal party. Dalton became MPP when his father, Dalton McGuinty, Sr., suffered an untimely death during his term of office as a Liberal member of provincial parliament. Dalton Sr. was a good Catholic and solid pro-lifer. Dalton Camp Sr. can justly be compared to Democrat Governor Bob Casey who stood up to Clinton over the abortion issue. McGuinty Jr., unfortunately, never seemed to have come out of a teenage rebellion and thus couldn't wait to jettison his father's moral legacy. I cannot really compare Junior to any American politician -- it's hard to envision Janet Reno as effeminate, but calling Junior a Kennedy Catholic would concede too much orthodoxy. Regardless, Dalton McGuinty Jr. is the type of politician that would make you seriously consider voting for Jesse Jackson if he were the only alternative.

The last of the three major leaders is Howard Hampton, leader of the socialist NDP. Howie's basically a cross between Grimace from the McDonald's commercials in terms of personality and Al Sharpton in terms of policy. What distinguishes him from Dalton in terms of leadership is that Howie is at least honest.

PFC Jessica Lynch, former soldier, is getting a million bucks for telling "her story" in a forthcoming book. She says she doesn't remember the attack on her convoy, the accident that caused her massive injuries, or much of her captivity. Considering she's only 20 years old, that ought to be a short biography.

The father of one soldier killed in the convoy attack, Randy Kiehl, doesn't think Lynch should be profiting from her comrades' deaths. At last, someone in his position is willing to question the canonization of Jessica Lynch. As I wrote before, I wish her well, but I don't think her experiences were more praiseworthy than others.

Lynch ought to donate that money to charity, or better yet to the dependents the dead soldiers left behind. May God rest the soul of your son, Mr. Kiehl, and comfort you.

Fr. Sibley wants to get a handy new high-tech item to help his parish finances, and now CWN reports that Peter's Pence will accept donations by credit card over the Internet. (Subscription required for full story.)

When the queues get too long at the donation machine, will Fr. appoint extraordinary teller ministers to help out?

Miguel Estrada, a Catholic of Honduran ancestry, withdrew his name from consideration to the Federal bench yesterday. Nobody thought that Estrada was unqualified. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law and his resume is impeccable. But he's not liberal, so he's now one more Romanist scalp the Democrats can nail to their Senate office walls.

This summer, Democrats have defended themselves against charges that they are anti-Catholic, since they are stalling many of Bush's nominees and a lot of them are Catholic. They're right in that they are not merely anti-Catholic: they are prejudiced against any Christian who holds to the ancient faith. Specifically, they're afraid that nominating traditional believers might threaten the One Big Thing they have written into the foundation of their part. Recall the gauntlet they put John Ashcroft through when he was nominated, and how he remains their whipping boy because he PRAYS IN HIS OFFICE before his workday begins!

The Dems haven't presented any evidence that these snake-handling nominees will disregard the law; the simple fact that someone has "deeply held [Christian] beliefs" is enough. You may reply that the Republicans did the same thing to President W.J. Clinton. You would be wrong. They did indeed stall many of his nominees, and even blackballed a few (both tactics have a long, venerable history in the Senate). However, the GOP could have rejected Clinton's judicial nominees on solid grounds, because in 1992 Clinton promised to only nominate judges who would uphold Roe vs. Wade. Regardless of the merits of the case in front of them, they would rule in favor of the abortion license, widely construed. Imagine if a judge said before confirmation that he would uphold all death penalty sentences, regardless of the facts.

Senate Republicans, remarkably, discovered their collective spines and are firing back. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, himself the victim of these smarmy tactics, has been pressing the nomination of Alabama Attorney General Pryor, another Catholic. Pryor made the mistake of opposing the One Big Thing in print, even in cases of rape or incest. In a Judiciary Committee hearing, Sessions said:

"Well, let me tell you, the doctrine that abortion is not justified for rape and incest is Catholic doctrine. It is a position of the pope and it's a position of the Catholic Church in unity. So are we saying that if you believe in that principle, you can't be a federal judge? Is that what we're saying? And are we not saying, then, good Catholics need not apply?"

Democrats on the committee, which has a depressing number of rabidly pro-abortion Catholics, went nuts. When one of them said that Sessions, a Protestant, had no right to tell them what Catholics do and don't believe, he shot back, "Some Catholics don't believe in Catholic doctrine."

Right on, brother Sessions! (Read the account of the exchange here.)

This shows -- if you needed more evidence -- that Evangelicals are the best friends of faithful Catholics in the culture today. I'd rather be governed by Southern Baptists than secular liberals. As long as they don't prohibit me from going to Mass, spreading my faith, or buying wine, I would be happy to let them take over.

Republicans should put Miguel Estrada's face in campaign ads next year. The Democrats pretend that they're the party of inclusion and acceptance, but they're the ones rejecting people on the basis of religion and ethnicity. Throw it back in their faces.

These news photos (which you may have missed) have been circulating on the net. Click on each thumbnail to see the full image.

California, home to one-eighth of the American population, has decided to legalize gay marriage.

You'd never know that from the news story. The state legislature approved "rights" for "domestic partnerships," which sounds so boring and normal. If you didn't know better, you'd think it was a business-related issue. The Associated Press reports:

...the bill would give domestic partners the ability to ask for child support and alimony, the right to health coverage under a partner's plan and the ability to make funeral arrangements for a partner.

Other provisions would give domestic partners access to family student housing, bereavement and family care leave and exemptions from estate and gift taxes, and in the event of a partner's death, the authority to consent to an autopsy, donate organs and to make funeral arrangements.

It also would prevent courts from forcing a domestic partner to testify against the other partner in a trial, and it would give domestic partners the ability to apply for absentee ballots on a partner's behalf....

Two years ago, the Legislature passed a measure giving domestic partners about a dozen rights previously available only to heterosexual spouses or the next of kin, including the right to make medical decisions for incapacitated partners, to sue for a partner's wrongful death and to adopt a partner's child.

As the article notes, some people think this bill violates Proposition 22, a ballot intiative enacted in 2000 with 61% of the vote, which defined marriage as one man and one woman. That raises the question, "What marital benefit doesn't this bill provide?" I'm racking my brain. Maybe you could think of one. Seems to me that the legislators have invented a legal relationship, called it "domestic partnership," and attached all of the rights and privileges pertaining to marriage. Since they don't call it "marriage," they aren't circumventing Proposition 22.

It's a cute ploy, however illegal it is. Then again, how often does the Left consider piddly things like "the will of the people" or "the law" when they get in the way of their agenda? Their new slogan should be "Celebrate diversity. Or else."

As a committed federalist, I believe in the Tenth Amendment. I don't like it when federal law usurps a function of the states, and regulating marriage is primarily a state responsibility. But when a few states want to impose gay marriage on all the other states -- over the objections of their own citizens, in California as in Vermont -- then it's time to write the definition of marriage into the Constitution. The Federal Marriage Amendment reads thus:

"Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this constitution or the constitution of any state, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups."

Draw the line right here, right now. In the 19th century, Catholic immigrants sometimes had to defend their churches by force, facing down violent mobs to protect the houses of God. Physical force isn't called for, but the same kind of moral commitment is.

Don't think, "Gay marriage won't really happen." Abortion happened. Easy divorce happened. Contraceptives for 12-year-olds happened. You don't have to be an alarmist to see that gay marriage will happen if nobody does anything about it.

A rather Evangelical Church of England parish streamed this week's Sunday service on the Internet.

"Thank you, children; thank you, Paul, for helping us with that Confession..."

Actually, the sermon is a thoughtful talk about finding God amid a confused culture.

It had to happen: when people want information on finding a religious community, they turn to... the web!

A Florida laywoman's publicity efforts are bringing interested visitors to consider the monastic life.

My daughter, Anna, is three years old, and has the personality of an exceptionally curious, willful puppy. Last night, I had to reprimand her for disobeying -- a common occurence -- and she said through her tears, "Daddy, do you love me even when I'm fussy?"

Before I gave the standard reply ("I always love you, no matter what") my older son Charlie piped up: "Yes, he loves you, Anna, he just doesn't like the fussy!"

I don't want to read too much into a 4-year-old's comment, but it's delightful to see a small child grasp the idea that you can love people without approving of all of their actions. Yet how many adults argue that unless we approve of their vices, we are unloving bigots? Sometimes, kids really are wiser than adults, or at least they see things more clearly.

To follow up on John's post below, let me ask a question: of these three, which is the worst crime?

1. A guy burns down a warehouse, destroying millions of dollars of computers.

2. A guy sabotages Internet lines, causing millions of dollars in damage.

3. A guy releases a small program that disrupts hundreds of thousands of computers, causing millions of dollars in lost labor and lost data.

Answer: #1 is the worst, because it could involve physical harm to human beings, but #2 and #3 do not. That being said, the other two are still very bad. The day after they caught the 18-year-old miscreant who released the Blaster worm, I saw some guy from MSNBC saying that he was only a kid and that authorities shouldn't be too hard on him. I don't care if he was celebrating his 18th birthday the day he released the worm. He's a felonious vandal and he should go to jail.

I'm guessing the reason people aren't more outraged is because his damage was intangible -- how do you figure the monetary value of the time and data the guy destroyed throughout the world? That, and because he's a fat, nerdy white kid instead of a muscular black youth. People don't feel as threatened by the former.

Still not convinced that this kid committed a serious crime? Then let's acquit the corporate criminals at Enron. After all, their crimes were (mostly) intangible, turning on things like accounting mirages, false statements, and stock price drops.

I'm guessing that American virus and worm production would drop dramatically if more of these guys ended up in the federal pen.

[/rant]

Jane had a strange dream, and she's onto something.

Or: Your Search String Speaks!

Here, just for fun, are a few of the curious things people were looking for when they found Catholic Light:

al franken is a liar
animals souls catholic (I like Fr. Hardon's take on the subject.)
marty haugen lyrics gather us in
catholic feng shui
bsforum (Maybe they were looking for the "Belgian Social Forum", a left-wing media group)

Canadians are raised to believe that our universal and socialized healthcare system is superior to the healthcare system in America. In fact, this is a topic of frequent debate in our family because my parents still believe it. Even Canadian conservatives have long accepted this claim as fact. In my latest Enter Stage Right column, I compare our family's experience with the healthcare systems in both countries.

Here's an excerpt: "Yet Canadians forget that our universal health system is not free; it comes from the high taxes our government collects. In contrast, I pay no Florida state income tax under Governor Jeb Bush. And what about President George W. Bush, the Governor's brother, who recently lowered my federal tax rate? Dare I mention that before President Bush's tax cuts, I still paid a lot less in taxes each year than what my best friend and former accountant from back home tells me I would have paid as a Canadian resident under Jean Chretien's regime?

"Now add the fact my wife is a stay at home mother and the U.S. tax code permits joint tax returns for married couple. In contrast, as many Canadian social conservatives so aptly point out, the Canadian tax code penalizes married couples. And the premiums I pay for family health coverage in the United States are deducted from my taxable income. Thus when my wife and I add up what we pay each year in taxes, health insurance premiums and deductibles for medical services, we would pay more in taxes if we still lived in the Dominion of Socialized Healthcare."

Comedian Jerry Lewis (a genius in France) is running his annual fund-raising telethon for the Muscular Dystrophy Association. The little spiels they present about research are mentioning possible treatments based on stem cells. Keep your expectations low.