January 2004 Archives

(Thankx Jeff)

On one hand, this ruling means that more "leftover" embryos in in-vitro cases will be snuffed. On the other hand, if it could help people recognize that IVF is a bad thing in the first place, it isn't a total loss.

Donum Vitae says:

The transmission of human life is entrusted by nature to a personal and conscious act and as such is subject to the all-holy laws of God: immutable and inviolable laws which must be recognized and observed. For this reason one cannot use means and follow methods which could be licit in the transmission of the life of plants and animals."

So, buddy, as long as you don't put any embryos on deposit at the IVF bank, you can be sure your ex-wife isn't going to surprise you by taking 'em out.

One of Mr. Frum's readers sent him a very interesting email about the "problem" of the intelligence failure. Some hightlights:

...the intelligence community must naturally err on the side of pessimism and alarmism. The cardinal rule in military intelligence is to estimate the worst your enemy could possibly do, not what he probably is willing to do, or could economically do, or is likely to do. Worst-case analysis is the rule of the day. How could it be otherwise?

“I mean, here people are simultaneously saying 9/11 should have been anticipated, which would have required making seriously worst-case analyses about the threat posed by various low-level riff-raff, while at the same time making worst-case (instead of probable-case) analyses of the threat of Saddam Hussein was 'irresponsible.' Well, which is it? Which rule should the spooks follow?

Maybe somebody -- like Father Poumade, who knows about this stuff -- can explain how it's ethical for Georgetown University to use aborted babies for medical experiments? I realize the babies were not aborted for medical explotation, but still...isn't there something a little creepy about it? Would you want to use the contents of Saddam's mass graves for experimentation?

A follow up to my post about President Bush being a "deserter":

I need to wear my dress uniform for a function on Saturday night, so I was getting my ribbons organized so I could attach them properly. In the Marine Online system, it says I don't rate the National Defense Medal. The only qualification for the NDM is being on active duty during wartime. As I was on active duty during the Gulf War and the Iraq War, I rate two of them.

Funny though -- Marine Online says have a Combat Action Ribbon. In other words, the computer thinks I was in combat during wartime, but during combat I was not on active duty, and thus I do not rate the NDM. Hmm....

1983: This year, breaking celibacy was quite understandable.

TV's popular romantic lead was Richard Chamberlain in The Thorn Birds, portraying a fictional Australian priest who had an affair with a married woman. Catholics protested because ABC aired the miniseries during Holy Week, and progressive opinion pish-tushed us.

2004: This year, breaking celibacy is an actionable tort.

Archdiocese pays hefty settlement to adult children whom priest fathered in illicit relationship. Any chance we could file a counterclaim against ABC and Colleen McCullough? A responsible novelist would have made the priest an obvious villain who gets sued in the end.

[Thanks, Dom.]

According to the official records of the Department of the Navy, I'm a deserter. Or possibly a drug addict. I learned this several years ago when I applied to get my final two months of my G.I. Bill benefits, and received a letter saying that I could not have them because I was discharged by the Marines under "other than honorable" conditions.

That came as quite a shock, because not only was I not discharged that way, I've never been discharged at all -- I've been in the Marine Reserve continuously for 13 years (as of today, come to think of it!) But somewhere in the administrative bowels of the military, there is a record in a database saying that I was "administratively separated" from the Marines in 1997. That's the kind of discharge they give you when you commit an infraction and they don't want to bother with the expense of a trial. It's most often used if you don't show up for training, or if you test positive for illegal drugs. I've tried several times to correct this, because it bothers me that some computer is questioning my character.

I have also had an unusual training history, according to the Marine Corps' online information system. It says that I went to boot camp in 1994, but that I attended basic infantry school and radio school in 1991. It's unusual to be in the Marine Corps for three years before learning to be a Marine, but according to this Web site, that's what happened to me.

So when I hear corpulent gasbag Michael Moore talk about President Bush being a "deserter" because there is no record of him showing up for training in 1972-73, I take it with a grain of salt. Moore's assumption is that military records are never wrong, which is laughable to anyone who has actually been in the military.

Funny how Moore's crowd thinks of military men as murderous buffoons when it comes to warfare, but they think the same people keep meticulous, impeccable records of routine matters. They've got it exactly backwards: our Department of Defense is superb at fighting. It's the administrative part that never works quite like it ought.

An interesting article by Stanley Kurtz about Nordic countries' experiment with gay marriage. He claims that gay marriage, far from strengthening traditional marriage, has contributed to the latter's decline.

I don't think Kurtz proves his case. He does prove that gay marriage has done nothing to stop the collapse of the family in Nordic countries. However, I don't think you can make the leap to say that it has hastened it, either. More interesting are some other points, particularly that mothers working outside the home, bastardy, and weak family bonds are caused or at least aggravated by a huge welfare state. (In other words, if you're a Catholic Democrat, you are in favor of creating conditions where sexual sins will flourish.)

Here's some good news, though, about the Nordic folkways and their growth in Europe:

Yet the pattern is spreading unevenly. And scholars agree that cultural tradition plays a central role in determining whether a given country moves toward the Nordic family system. Religion is a key variable. A 2002 study by the Max Planck Institute, for example, concluded that countries with the lowest rates of family dissolution and out-of-wedlock births are "strongly dominated by the Catholic confession." The same study found that in countries with high levels of family dissolution, religion in general, and Catholicism in particular, had little influence.

My ancillary theory, based on being in Norway for a couple of weeks, is that Scandinavians have a very high incidence of beautiful women in their population, and that it would take severe mortification to avoid temptation. But my view has not gained ground among social scientists.

Why, yes; my confirmation name is Aquinas, so it is my name day! Oh, thank you! Oh, you shouldn't have!

Katholics for Dean -- the "K" stands for "Kennedy" in case anyone wondered -- has responded to one of my earlier blog entries. Amidst the usual leftist accusations of "hateful language", KfD continues to misinform the public vis-a-vis President Bush and Howard Dean's respective records when it comes to pro-life issues other than abortion. (As an aside to those who have been around the right-to-life movement for some time, unlike our innocent brothers and sisters in the womb, Howard's scream coming out of Iowa wasn't silent.) Anyway, John Betts does a fine job calling out KfD on the primary right-to-life issue. Meanwhile, I've blogged a little comparison between the President and the Governor on secondary and tertiary right-to-life issues. Not surprisingly, even if we set aside abortion, the GOP comes out way ahead of the Abortion Democratic Party on most right-to-life issues.

I've been looking for a new job recently. I don't want to leave my current position unless I find something better, but it's probably time to leave before I get burned out and unsuitable for human company. Right now, I do Internet development for a company that owns a slew of news properties, including two you've almost certainly heard of. Our team runs the Web sites and the content management system that powers them.

There are plenty of jobs out there, despite what Hodean & The Gang says, but I've been picky about where I've applied. Several weeks ago, a former co-worker recommended that I submit an application to a company for which she was doing contract work. I did that, and they invited me to an interview. By the end, I wanted to switch my line of work to something more spiritually rewarding, like coal mining.

Margaret, the HR lady, met me at their development office. (I have changed the names in this story to protect the innocent and the guilty.) She introduced me to Benjamin, a skinny, pale, intense little person.

The first few questions were sensible: he handed me a short program, and asked me to tell him what various parts of the code did and what the output would look like. I felt like things were going quite well -- we were talking about the kind of things that Web developers should know, and I sailed through that part. Then it started.

"What," Benjamin asked, "is a Cartesian join?"

"I don't know," I said after thinking a moment. "I've heard the term but I can't define it for you." I don't believe in pretending I know more than I do, and I find that people usually appreciate that kind of honesty.

"Umm...okay...." He looked taken aback. "Well, tell me what this SQL code will do."

"Oh," I said, "That will return a resultset with all the rows in both tables."

"That's right. That's a Cartesian join."

Okay, I thought to myself, This guy definitely majored in computer science.

Then we went through the looking glass. "Do you know what a Fibonacci sequence is?"

Nope. Sure didn't. He explained it, and asked me to write a program to calculate it. I started fumbling my way through it. To understand my frustration, an analogy:

Knowing how to calculate a Fibonacci sequence is to running a real Web site as knowing about Monet's paintings of the gardens at Giverny is to running the garden in your backyard. I managed to get over the sheer irrelevance of the task and came up with a solution, but at that point I considered thanking them and leaving.

Yesterday, my lovely wife and I attended Mass at Old St. Mary's in Chinatown, Washington, D.C. They have the Ecclesia Dei indult, and we were treated to a Low Mass. (I am a 30-year-old convert living in the Arlington Diocese, and our bishop has not found it necessary to grant the indult; consequently I have never participated in the "old" Mass before.)

Had I know the delights that awaited me, I would have gone much sooner. I was struck by the silence, the Tridentine mumble, well-trained altar boys, the lack of pop music, the repetitions, and the reverence of the faithful, the servers, and the priest, among other things. I was also struck by the difficulties a renegade priest would have if he wanted to abuse the ritual to suit his own tastes.

The entire experience was, in a word, perfect.

Yesterday, Howard Dean made an interesting comment in which he compared pro-lifers to the Taliban. In a nutshell, this incident summarizes why Catholics no longer have a home in the DNC. Here's an unofficial transcript from [sic.] Catholics for Dean: "And the implication that the government has the right to tell a woman when she can and cannot bear a child is different, but has the same philosophical root as the implications of the Taliban telling women how they're to behave and how they're to act."

Why the Dems Still Don't Get It..

Pete Vere

Kathy Shaidle, a fellow Catholic blogger, recently forwarded me her response to an interesting email she received. It came from a Howard Dean supporter named Tim Huegerich. Having performed a small internet search on Mr. Huegerich, he seems like a sincere pro-life Catholic. Which is why his attempt to recruit Catholics into Howard Dean’s campaign makes absolutely no sense.

“Aside from the issue of abortion...” Tim writes, “Howard Dean in line with Catholic Social Teaching across the board, far surpassing the other candidates. He opposed the Iraq war, stands for workers and fair trade, has delivered health insurance for all children in Vermont, and has begun a revolutionary change in politics by attracting thousands of disenchanted non-voters and financing his campaign with contributions from ordinary people averaging less than $100.”

Kathy's response to the concept of “Catholics for Dean” is rather appropriate. This is so embarrassing... she writes. While there is no question I would be a Democrat if every issue held equal weight, the truth is that some issues are more important than others. Abortion is one such issue. As a practicing Catholic, the right to life is non-negotiable. Period.

Hence the problem with every presidential candidate running within the Democrat primaries: 1) The Democratic nominees don't get the abortion issue; 2) The Democratic party doesn’t want to get the abortion issue; and 3) No Democratic presidential candidate even wishes to try and understand how practicing Catholics approach the abortion issue and why we think the way we do. Thus I am likely wasting my time in stating the obvious.

To a practicing Catholic, what lay in a woman’s womb is not just some anonymous blob of cancerous tissue. Rather, it is a human life. Abortion ends that human life. Therefore a Catholic is no more open to negotiating the abortion issue than an African American is open to debate over slavery. Catholics believe that abortion is murder, and when the state permits abortion, Catholics believe that abortion is state sanctioned murder. Regardless of whatever stance a candidate puts forward when it comes to other issues, abortion trumps them all. As practicing Catholics we believe in freedom of choice within the abortion debate only insofar as a well-formed Catholic conscience always chooses a pro-life candidate over one who is pro-abortion. We simply have a hard time voting for politicians who campaign on the killing – rather than the kissing – of babies.

When I mentioned this uncomfortable fact (at least from the perspective of a pro-life Deaniac) to Mr. Huegerich, he replied: “You underestimate the gravity of these ‘other issues.’ 24,000 people die every day around the world from hunger [...] there are also 42 million uninsured Americans enduring untold suffering.” These are indeed legitimate issues that concern the Church’s social teaching. Yet like her system of governance, the Church’s social teaching is of a hierarchical nature. Catholic social justice begins with the right to life, from which all other social rights and obligations flow. The state’s duty is to protect this fundamental right. Common sense dictates that a butchered baby laying in a Planned Barrenhood dumpster has no need of socialized healthcare.

There once was an exception to the Democrat’s well-deserved reputation as the Abortion Party. His name was Bob Casey. He was the Governor of Pennsylvania. Back when we lived in Scranton, our family had the good fortune of moving into the Governor’s neighborhood. In fact, we often stopped to converse whenever we met on the sidewalk. Governor Casey was a principled Catholic, a principled politician and a principled Democrat. If he were still living, I would support his presidential campaign over that of any Republican candidate.

Throughout the Governor’s political career, the right to life was non-negotiable. He put his faith first and his political aspirations second. Yet when the DNC silenced Governor Casey at the 1992 convention, it became clear that there was no longer any room left in the Democratic Party for practicing Catholics – an observation since confirmed by the Senate Democrat’s fillibustering of any pro-life judicial nominee. The DNC silenced the debate over abortion and sent practicing Catholics packing for the GOP and various third parties. The Republicans did not use abortion as a wedge issue, rather the DNC handed us over to the GOP. And if pro-life Catholics are now wary about engaging in bona fide dialogue in the Democratic Party over abortion, as Mr. Huegerich alleges, it is because the Democrats shut down the dialogue and showed their lack of good faith when they silenced Governor Casey.

Whatever other faults one may find with Dubya and the Republican Party – and the Republican pro-life record is far from perfect – there is still room under the Republican tent to argue the pro-life case. This is not the case with the Democrats who, in the interest of short-term political expediency, chose to abort their traditional Catholic constituency. Having subsequently lost the White House, the Senate, the House of Representatives and several key Governor’s mansions, their post-electoral-abortion syndrome is the consequence of this decision.

[Permission to reproduce in whole is granted by the author, provided that credit is give to CatholicLight.StBlogs.org ]

Padre Pio was the subject of some suspicion and controversy during his lifetime, and I guess it's not too surprising that there's still some occasional fuss related to him.

In 1970, Vera Calandra and her family founded the Padre Pio Centre near Reading, PA, to promote the canonization of the saintly friar who had miraculously healed her daughter in 1968. For years the Centre was the official representative of his canonization cause in the U.S., authorized by Padre Pio's Capuchin order to raise funds and distribute literature. Now that the canonization has been accomplished, it seems to make sense that the Centre could continue its work of promoting devotion to St. Pio, spreading his spirituality, and eventually develop into a shrine for those purposes, ideally with the participation of Capuchins.

That's where the catch comes in: the Padre Pio Centre remains under the direction of the Calandra family. The Diocese wants to control it; the family says their mortgage obligations won't let them turn it over; and the two sides have never reached an agreement. The Capuchins are understandably standing back from the project until the bishop and the family work it out.

Now Bp. Edward Cullen of Allentown has said Merry Christmas to the Centre by ordering them to stop the two Masses per week that he had previously allowed at the site's chapel.

Here's a local news story found in Google's cache:

Mass stopped at Padre Pio site

By Megan Wolf

[Boyerstown Area] Times Staff

The National Center for Padre Pio in Barto may no longer hold Mass, and Center officials want it back.

Effective January 1, the Rev. Edward P. Cullen, D.D., Bishop of Allentown, has directed that enrollment in the Padre Pio Association of Poor Souls be discontinued.

According to the Diocese of Allentown, a letter dated Dec. 17 was written to the officials of the Padre Pio Center, where Bishop Cullen stated the decision to withdraw permission for Mass and Sacraments was due to the Center's failure to conform to canonical mandates.

"There has never been a specific allegation of impropriety. Never," said Julie Calandra-Lineberg, vice president of the center.

In a prepared statement, the Diocese of Allentown said, "The Bishop's letter said the mandates have been repeatedly explained in meetings and correspondence between the Diocese and Center officials over the last five years."

"The Bishop has withdrawn permission for Mass and the celebration of the sacraments at the Centre, which is not a shrine and has never been recognized as such by the Catholic Church," the statement from the Diocese read.

"The former Bishop Welsh officially blessed the center and welcomed it into the Diocese, in 1991. Now, Bishop Cullen is forming a new board to give the Bishop complete control of the Center, which is a civil organization. It cannot be done, and he was told that repeatedly," she said. "We have been absolutely courteous. We cannot do that which is not legal."

The Association of Poor Souls, begun in 1992, allowed for donations to be made for members to be remembered in a Mass.

Now, the Pontifical Society for the Propagation of the Faith will assume the responsibility to fulfill the spiritual benefits to enrolled members.

New members will not be accepted.

The Center held Mass twice a month and on the first Saturday.

Officials at the Center said they hope to hold Mass in the future.

According to Calandra-Lineberg, the Bishop has 30 days to answer the Center's appeal, which is Feb. 1.

"Perhaps he should reconsider. The Bishop's directive was incorrect," she said.

In other news, the center is planning an expansion project, which will add a 22,000-square-foot museum.

The three-story museum will house a cultural education center, dedicated to the life of Padre Pio, who was canonized into sainthood in 2002.

The construction began in August and is slated to be complete by this summer.

I have to figure that the Church has resolved similar property disputes in the past, and can do so again, without resorting to the interdicts and excommunications that the U.S. bishops used in the 19th-century controversy over "lay trusteeship".

[Via Amy.]

This came in the mail from San Antonio's Fr. Christopher Phillips:

Many of those who have purchased a copy of The Book of Divine Worship have indicated an interest in having a video of the celebration of the Mass using the liturgy of the Anglican Use. Work has begun on the production of a DVD, and you may see a trailer of the upcoming video by going to this site:

http://atonementonline.com/dvd/index.php

My response to an individual from the [sic.] "Catholics for Dean" camp on why abortion, as an issue, is non-negotiable to faithful Catholics.

By voting unanimously for the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act in July '03, they affirmed an important pro-life principle, that, in the words of Prof. Hadley Arkes,

the child marked for an abortion, but born alive, has a claim to the protection of the law, and that claim cannot pivot on the question of whether anyone wanted her.

Read Prof. Arkes' NR comment explaining the Act and the bizarre Federal court decision it overturned: one which denied a 20-day-old born child the right to life.

It's a slow weekend, so I'll post another picture from my sojourn last year. This time, the scene is a casual Friday evening, on the back porch of our tent. I'm on the left, my friend Todd, a corporal, is on my left, and Joel, a gunnery sergeant, is on the right. (I'd use their last names but I don't have their permission. They probably wouldn't care, but still.)

Paul Rex writes a sensible weblog with a silly name, so it's a perfect fit for stblogs.org.

Is Howard Dean the missing member of Guns N Roses? I just stopped by DeanGoesNuts.com where Dean's recent primal scream is set to a number of different songs. Most of them aren't bad, but check out the one where Dean's naming of the states is set to GNR's Welcome to the Jungle. The timing between the two is so accurate, it's spooky.

During the war, I smoked the occasional cigarette. They were all around, they're a pleasant diversion, and when you don't shower for 37 days straight you don't worry too much about the smell it leaves behind on your clothing. But then a warning on a carton of British cigarettes told me I should mend my ways...

...and I never smoked again.

Well, except for cigars. They don't count.

I used to watch him a bit when I was a wee one. Only problem with this pic is it looks like he was thinking about cooking the bunny up Tuscan style for dinner.

"Kids, does that sound tasty to you? It sure does to me!"

Speaking of Howard Dean, Jeff Miller posted a hilarious parody of a Billy Idol song based upon Dean's primal scream. That being said, I'm gonna stand by my previous comments that Dean is the guy to beat in the dem. primaries. Clark is a close second.

Yeah, I know, conventional political pundits are counting these two out right now, and I think this is a mistake. Dean and Clark are the only two major candidates who realize that the traditional dem base is not gonna get them elected. So they're trying to reach into other constituencies. There's gonna be some rough sailing in so doing, as we've seen this past week, but given the media's short attention span, it isn't the end of the world.

Dean put a pretty good spin on things yesterday when he was on Letterman. His Arnie impersonation was excellent. His primal scream will likely make him a stronger candidate once this blows over since it, to a certain extent, immunizes him from future criticism for his over-the-top behavior much like the Gennifer Flowers situation immunized Slick Willie from the Monica Lew[d]insky affair. It is also the wakeup call the Dean people needed to tone their guy down. We're now seeing Dean 2.0, namely, the balanced-budget and quasi-libertarian Dean.

Hopefully, Kerry and Edwards will stay in the game with Clark and Dean long enough to insure a badly damaged dem candidate in the fall election.

Fr. Johansen comments on the march for life and decries both political parties (validly, I think) for their either overt or de facto support of the culture of death. I agree with him that the president's absence from the march was troubling. I know the man can't be everywhere, but this does not seem to me to be the event to which he should "phone it in." I don't know where he was, but it's not where I would have had him be, and this holding-at-arm's-length is not encouraging.

This is encouraging: the vanguard of the pro-life movement seems to be the under-30s. Let us hope and pray for a social revolution.

One of the things that has been occupying my time lately is a travelling program we're having at my school in March. It's called Challenge Day. It's quite expensive (of course), and it's being touted as the best thing to have ever come down the pike. The video introduction to the program called to my mind tent revivals in the South, complete with tears, hands in the air, and other signs of emotional breakdown.

It seems to me that those children would have been better off going to confession.

I don't know how many readers we have who are in the education business, but I'd appreciate hearing the reaction of somebody who has witnessed this program first-hand before I start recommending students to stay home that day.

I haven't seen too much about Hodean's abortion views. I assumed he was as pro-abortion as the rest of the Democrat candidates -- which is to say, he is in favor of any abortion at any time for any pregnant female, no matter how young or vulnerable she is. That assumption was correct.

Now it turns out that he is a liar about abortion, too. In a speech, he claimed he saw a 12-year-old female patient who was pregnant with her own father's child. He left out the part that someone else was convicted for getting her pregnant. The invaluable Tim Russert confronted Hodean about leaving out that inconvenient fact. (By the way, conservatives should thank God that someone as intellectually honest as Russert is NBC's main political analyst. He's a liberal Democrat, but he asks tough questions of everyone he interviews.)

Not that anyone should be surprised by this revelation -- after all, if you believe in unrestricted abortion on demand, you have to believe in all kinds of untruths: that the state has no business intervening to protect a helpless child, that an 8-month-old fetus doesn't experience pain and isn't really alive, that most abortions are performed by the free choice of the mother and not out of male coersion or sheer terror...et cetera, et cetera.

I have a lot of empathy for a scared girl who is pregnant long before she can handle it. I have not even the feeblest amount of compassion for politicians who think it's all right to get rid of her child and call it a good social policy.

The language manipulators are there, even at the Vatican:

A phrase in section 3 of the new apostolic letter on the liturgy says:

in French: la communauté des hommes,
in Italian: la comunità degli uomini,
in Portuguese: a comunidade dos homens,
in Spanish: la comunidad de los hombres,
in English: the whole community of men and women

Cardinal Arinze, would you kindly call your office?

Open Source Shakespeare, my master's thesis project, now has all of Shakespeare's plays in it. Check all of them out here.

The next stage will be to make the search tools better, as well as indexing the complete works word-by-word, instead of line-by-line. However, it should be useful right now as it is. Enjoy!

I read the wheels came off Howard Dean on Monday night.

Everyone was talking about his speech, "We're going to New Hampshire! And Nebraska! And Boise! And Constantinople!!! And Paris on a yellow submarine!!!! YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!" Or something like that.

In any case, reading about the primal scream made me think he let out a howl like Schwarzenneger would have in any one of his movies except Kindergarten Cop. Come to think of it he probably screamed at the kids once or twice.

Anyway - I watched the video on the Foxnews.com site and came away thinking, "That's it?" Dean was doing his best demogoguery, which turned out to make him look like a mental patient. It wasn't an action-film scream. It was just silly.

But he was getting egged on by a crowd of Deanies. Perhaps mental patients travel in packs.

The news from the Friars is being updated most days at their web site.

Beliefnet has a page about religious board games. Can anyone recommend others?

Looks like Hodean is going to have a rocky road on the way to the Democratic presidential nomination, if indeed he makes it at all. His third-place showing in Iowa will be hard to recover from, especially since he'd been camped out there for two years and was the odds-on favorite as recently as three weeks ago.

Senator Kerry is a better candidate for the general election, but his nomination will doom the Democrats anyway. Why? Because Hodean's supporters aren't going to campaign for a regular, boring, "establishment" guy. They wanted moxie, spunk, fire -- all of the things that Kerry does not have. The Deanie babies will be disillusioned with the election, and possibly with politics in general. That's fine by me -- I hope they're so mentally scarred by the experience that they never vote again. If they do vote, they'll probably latch onto whomever the Green Party nominates this year, which is the next-best thing.

Let me be the first one to tag Hodean as "Dot-com Dean." His candidacy has had the feel of a dot-com company circa 1997. Hodean attracted a ton of venture capital in the form of Internet donations, and his "user base" of college students and graying hippies were excited about the novelty. Yet when it came time to deliver the product, it didn't quite live up to the hype -- the rollout was fraught with gaffes, and the target market didn't embrace it wholeheartedly. The established "brick and mortar" candidates learned from his mistakes and swept him from the field.

Howard Dean: the Pets.com of Election 2004.

Mark Shea posted a snide comment about this image of Iraqi Shiites demonstrating for speedier elections:

I had the following to say in the comments box, after seeing some of the less-than-pithy postings:

I hate to introduce something so vulgar as "facts" to this discussion, but here are a few:

1. Most Iraqis are Shiites.

2. Despite that fact, most Iraqis do not like Iranians, despite Iran being the only other majority Shia nation.

3. Shiites have no problems with "graven images." Their brand of Islam is quasi-incarnational, in that they believe in the spiritual efficacy of natural objects, unlike, say, the Wahabbis, who are very anti-materialistic. Go into any Iraqi Shiite home and you will see at least one, and probably many, pictures of Hussein Ali, the founder of the Shia branch of Islam. You might even find, as I did in one family's home, that they have a picture of Jesus as the Good Shepherd.

4. There are fundamentalists and then there are fundamentalists. The majority of Iraqi Shiites are salt-of-the-earth types who simply want to harvest their dates or run their auto shop. They have very conservative religious views but they are not interested in an Islamic revolution, much less in exporting an Islamic revolution.

5. In all of the opinion polls conducted since the war, Iraqis have overwhelmingly indicated their preference for a secular government rather than an Islamic one. That Iraq is an Islamic country, and their secular law will likely reflect their religious values, is to be expected and even encouraged. It might be nice if our laws consistenly reflected our values -- perhaps that's an idea they could export to the U.S. I believe that idea -- the enshrinement of the majority's preference -- is part of what we call "democracy."

I found I liked the Shiites when I was among them, and Catholics have more in common with them than other branches of Islam. If I had more time, I'd write a long essay about it.

The Lay Witness just released its annual pro-life issue, which features a wrap-up co-authored by Fr. Johansen and I on our experience this past fall with Terri Schindler-Schiavo.

I am scheduled to be at a meeting for the Alhambra in Brooklyn from Friday, Feb. 20th to Sunday, Feb. 22nd. Anyone interested in getting together?

Also, for those of you who live in the Chicago area, a number of us from St. Blog are planning on getting together on Friday, Feb. 6th. Here's where
we will meet:

Marriott Courtyard
6 Trans Am Plaza Dr.
Oakbrook Terrace, IL

We'll be in meeting rooms A & B on the first floor, from 5pm to 1 am
The hotel phone number is (630) 691-1500.

Look forward to seeing everyone there.

I completely agree with your post below, John. I've met -- and seen on the Web -- far too many Catholics who proceed on two false assumptions:

1. The "traditions of men" prior to Vatican II are praiseworthy merely because they are old.

2. It is impossible to be too rigid or legalistic.

In the case of #1, an example: I'm not against folk masses because I happen to prefer Palestrina. I'm against them because I think they're not conducive to repentance or adoration -- and thus they do not lead to true joy. (I use the term "traditions of men" not as an insult, but to point out that they are secondary things that flow from the central truths of the Faith.)

As for #2, it's common to think that because you see lots of people err in one direction that it is impossible to err in the other direction. While I would not join the chorus of people who think the Church in the 1950s was a cauldron of cruel pathologies, neither would I say that it was a paradise. Doubtless, in many, possibly most respects, it was superior to our state today; however, something made millions of Catholics abandon their faith in the '60s, so if the Church were perfect before Vatican II, then why did so many people leave?

As for the word "restoration," I rather like the term. Our task is not to "turn back the clock" to make things as they were. Our duty is to consecrate this time and place to Jesus Christ -- and though that will assuredly mean reviving forgotten practices and strengthening neglected ones, it does not mean that all things must be replicated. They need to be re-ordered; restored.

It's remarkable how easy it is for the younger generation of Catholics to get giddy about the graying of the post-Vatican II crowd.

I was looking over the comments to RC's post and thinking about how we need to be careful not to cross the line from driving the effort to reverse the liturgical, theological and cultural mayhem of the past century to becoming the invading army that lays waste to people and practices.

"But - they squashed our chant! They smashed the communion rail! They gave us stones instead of bread!"

I know "they" did, and I've experienced how the 60's agenda warped decades of religious education, liturgy, faith and morals. R.E. was all cupcakes and crayons for small kids, and big colorful books about love and happiness for a big kids.

And many of "them" are unrepentant.

Still, we need to work in charity, or else we will become like them.

The Reverend romance-novelist Andrew Greeley cites some studies on the attitudes of priests and tells us good news -- well, at least from our point of view:

My most recent analysis, based on survey data that I and others have gathered periodically since Vatican II, reveals a striking trend: a generation of conservative young priests is on the rise in the U.S. Church.

Now, the "I and others" in that sentence may be a little stretch: the only data he takes from his own organization's polling are 34 years old, so they reflect the "then" part of the comparison, not the "now". Young priests are decidedly different from those of 1970:

These are newly ordained men who seem in many ways intent on restoring the pre-Vatican II Church, and who, reversing the classic generational roles, define themselves in direct opposition to the liberal priests who came of age in the 1960s and 1970s.

The key, perhaps the motivating, issues of the divide are in the understanding of sex:

The divisions created by Vatican II are not new, of course. Caught up in the reform euphoria that followed the council, the lower clergy and the laity almost immediately developed a new ideology based on respect for women and for the freedom (including the sexual freedom) of the laity. On these matters, quietly or loudly, the laity and the lower clergy did resist the teachings of the Church.

The ideology of sexual liberation manifests itself in the usual hot-button issues:

The 2002 Los Angeles Times study reveals that priests of the Vatican II generation overwhelmingly support the idea that priests should be allowed to marry. In the study 80 percent of priests aged forty-six to sixty-five were in favor.... Only about half the priests under thirty-five, however, supported the idea.

The study revealed a clear divide, too, on the ordination of women. Sixty percent of priests aged fifty-six to sixty-five, and at least half of those aged forty-six to seventy-five, supported the idea, but only 36 percent of priests under forty-six did.

...[Y]ounger priests are more than twice as likely as priests aged fifty-five to sixty-five to think that birth control and masturbation are always wrong, and they are significantly more likely to think that homosexual sex and premarital sex are always wrong.

But -- and Fr. Greeley is surprised by this - in spite of the older generations' enlightened liberal views on sex, they don't seem to respect women as well as younger priests do.

And younger priests seem to have a higher general regard for women than older priests do—an attitude demonstrated most clearly in the 1994 Los Angeles Times study, in responses to questions about support for official condemnation of sexism and for better ministry to women, and concern for the situation of nuns. This attitude, which is in line with the views of the laity, explains some of the clergy's resistance to the Church's teachings on sexuality.

I suspect Father's assumption here -- aligning regard for women with moral dissent -- is off-base: he doesn't mention the influence on young priests of Pope John Paul's "theology of the body", which brings together a high regard for women and a stronger adherence to the Church's teachings on sexuality.

Ah, what will we do with these young priests? They even believe that old stuff about an ontological character imprinted by the sacrament:

[Dean] Hoge reports that half the newly ordained priests he encountered believe that a priest is fundamentally different from a layperson—that he is literally a man apart.

Good Heavens, they might even have some elan.

For Greeley, the conflict is all about power, now held by a generation of "moderate men", but soon to be ceded to those unrealistic reactionaries trying to turn back the clock to 1961: those young priests engaged in a "Restoration" -- he writes as if describing a bunch of monarchists (not that there's anything wrong with that, mind you).

The power is slipping away from Greeley's generation, the precious, precious power. We only wants it a little longer.

See Al's comments over at Amy's blog. The parents who objected to the Diocesan implementation of this program are clearly on solid ground. Here's a church document for you, Eric:

The Truth and Meaning Human Sexuality, November 21, 1995

"Sex education, which is a basic right and duty of parents, must always be carried out under their attentive guidance, whether at home or in educational centres chosen and controlled by them. In this regard, the Church reaffirms the law of subsidiarity, which the school is bound to observe when it cooperates in sex education, by entering into the same spirit that animates the parents".[69]

While some would say Good Touch, Bad Touch is a safety program, its content makes it a sexual education program as well. The parents have primacy with respect to sex-ed. They also have a responsibility to protect the innocence and the latency period of their children. By all means, write the Diocese, call the Chancery Office, harangue your pastor and parochial vicars, but know, parents, it is up to you to educate your children in this regard. It is up to you to determine if you child is old enough to be taught about human sexuality, and one of the key considerations is not only are they old enough to understand sexuality in combination with Christian moral principles as taught by the Church. If you are not comfortable with this program then opt out. If I had 1st grade children I wouldn't want them to go through this under any circumstances.

In the comments box below, I listed some ways to legitimately dissent from a policy that a diocese has adopted. It should go without saying -- though it might not -- that I am not talking about immutable dogmas of the Church, lest you think if you write enough letters, we'll have women priests. There is no legitimate dissent from Catholic teaching.

That being said, if your diocese does something you don't like, you can

• Call or write the chancery and express your misgivings.

• Talk to your parish's pastor about the problem. He presumably has some way to communicate with the bishop.

• Find other people who agree with you, and prayerfully and charitably speak as one voice.

• Always propose an alternative (as, I believe, some of the Arlington protestors were, to their credit.) Don't just say "no," say "here's a better and more faithful way to accomplish what you're trying to do."

• Don't assume that just because the diocese adopts a policy, it's forever. Never give up.

It's your duty to help reform your little part of the Church, and do it in a way that will not embarrass the Church in the outside world.

In eight months, my wife and I will send our two older children to a Catholic school in the Arlington diocese, so we're concerned about what happens within the system. The article cited by John below is disturbing, but more because of the behavior of the protestors than the proposed sex abuse curriculum.

I have no opinion on whether "Good Touch, Bad Touch" is appropriate for kids or contradicts Catholic values. Not having seen it, I refuse to base my opinion on heresay. I do have an opinion on the obnoxious behavior of those who disagree with the curriculum. If you disagree with someone, don't yell things or pray the Rosary to "drown out...the diocesan director of child protection and safety."

I wasn't there, so I can't confirm Julia Duin's account -- but she has a well-deserved reputation for fairness and she wouldn't write something like that unless it was true. Anyone who was there and wants to correct me, I'll gladly amend this post.

If you were there and you were one of the people shouting or praying loudly, let me tell you something as your brother in Christ. You don't advance orthodoxy (or orthopraxy) by making asses of yourselves, and by implication the cause you represent. How can we say that living an authentically Catholic life will make us better people if the people living that life are acting like jerks?

If you're so fond of quoting Church documents, you might want to take a look at the Catechism's section on blasphemy, and reflect on the part about "misusing God's name." You think Jesus and Mary appreciate their names being used to silence an employee of the Church -- even if that person is wrong?

Diocese's antiabuse program rejected

The Summa Mamas have relocated to new pink digs at stblogs.org: welcome, gals!

Get over there, folks, and tell SpecialK what name she should give the baby!

Please pray for Fr. Groeschel's recovery: he was reportedly injured in an auto accident Sunday night (January 11). Dom has a little more detail.
Update (1/14/04): A letter at the friars' site has further information.

I just came across the Songs for Dean website. It is actually pretty well done. Anyway, I've decided to put together my own Songs for Bush blog.

Merry Christmas! Now stick 'em up!

Maybe it's all that coffee from Starbucks?

Hey everyone, God permitting, I will be in Chicago area on the first weekend of February for a big Alhambra event. Most of our activities will be open to the general public, so if anyone wants the details, please call Mark or Ricky Montalbano at Montalbano Majectic Furniture (708) 547-1010 or email mark@montalbanofurniture.com

Someone recorded and posted this hilarious parody of the homosexual Episcopalian Bishop Gene Robinson.

By the way, I'm in Washington this weekend to attend an ordination service Saturday morning at the Shrine. Three fine religious brothers, including Matthew Palkowski, OFM Cap, are to be made deacons.

Bishop Raymond Burke of La Crosse, WI -- soon to be the archbishop of St. Louis -- has decreed that pro-abortion politicians are not to be given Holy Communion.

Thank you, Bishop Burke, for "speaking truth to power": advocating legalized abortion is indeed a "manifestly grave sin".

I'll ask canonist Pete Vere to comment on legal aspects of this action.

Thanks to buddy John Griffin for sending the article.

Steve, you're gonna love this.

Fr. David Hudgins of East Lansing tells us why he has the best job in the world.

foxnews.com - President Bush will announce plans next week to send Americans to Mars and back to the moon and to establish a long-term human presence on the moon, senior administration officials said Thursday night.

Bush doesn't plan to send Americans to Mars anytime soon; rather, he envisions preparing for the mission more than a decade from now, one official said.

The president also wants to build a permanent space station on the moon.

This story appeared in yesterday's WaPo. Arlington has not complied with all the requirements of the child protection policy adopted in 2002.

The audit said that Arlington has not yet launched a "safe environment" program for children to raise their awareness of inappropriate conduct by adults. It also has not been conducting proper criminal background checks on diocesan personnel who come into contact with children, relying instead on a "self-reporting method" for obtaining information, the audit said.

Catherine Nolan, the Arlington diocese's director of child protection and safety, said that the diocese is addressing those deficiencies.

Missing from this intermediate "report card" is the fact that since the formation of the Diocese, Arlington has had no proven cases of child sexual abuse and paid no settlement money. These important fact should be included in the comprehensive report that is coming out in February. That report will contain info on sex abuse cases and settlements for each Diocese over the US for the last 50 years. Expect the spin in the media to be tremendous.

Sirius Satellite Radio has announced that they've added two channels of EWTN Radio (in English and Spanish) to their line-up. Admittedly, not everything on the Sirius schedule is family-friendly: they have a raunchy comedy channel (and are about to add a family-oriented one). And some of the talk on the talk channels isn't quite right, e.g., the gay-oriented channel. But today Sirius is doing a Good Thing. Good doggie!

One of my very best friends, Brian McEntire, asked his girlfriend Vanessa Clay to marry him last Saturday. In an uncharacteristically weak moment, she accepted. I'm kidding -- he's a great guy, which is why I was glad to sponsor his confirmation into the Church. They announced their engagement for the first time at a party at the Johnson house (attended by John Schultz and his better half -- or, given his size relative to her, better one-quarter.)

Please pray that their marriage will be as joyful as it promises to be, and that their preparation goes smoothly. The nuptial Mass is scheduled for November in Houston's cathedral. May God give them many happy years together.

In November, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-Wellesley) she said we needed a different mix of troops in Iraq, with more MPs, civil affairs, and special operations forces, and less heavy infantry and armor. Rush and Hannity and all the rest were all over her, saying she was "anti-military" and was using this to attack Bush, etc.

Thing is, she's right: tanks require a huge amount of logistical support, and they aren't great for patrolling. As a civil affairs Marine who served with an infantry battalion in Iraq, I agree with her, and I'm pro-military and anti-Clinton (any Clinton, even George. Sorry, P-Funk.) Why disagree with someone just because their other opinions and actions are repulsive? When someone is right, they're right. If they're wrong, don't resort to sloppy ad hominem attacks. Tell her why we need artillery to fight small groups of insurgents, instead of deploying sniper teams to ambush them.

So now she's in trouble because she made some comment about Indians running gas stations. The outrage is over the top. (Had she ever shown any inclination to tweak the noses of the P.C. police, she might have gotten away with it -- but can you recall any other comment she's ever made that was the least bit un-P.C.?) It's part of the strain of liberalism that holds manual labor to be inherently demeaning. I wonder how well that goes down with the unions. Wait -- modern unions are all about avoiding labor of any kind. My fault.

Let the record show that I have now defended Hillary Clinton for two different things. I will now go lie down for a while so I can recover.

Hodean, the heir apparent to Algore, continues to blather about his religious "views." The primary mission of Christianity is "to reach out to people who've been left behind." You thought it was to get sinners to repent and go to heaven. Silly you. Don't point out that this definition is equivalent to secular political liberalism, because that would be hurtful.

Dean's decision to sign the Vermont civil unions bill was part of this "reaching out" process, he said. Compared to the rest of the population, self-identified gays are better educated, hold professional jobs with substantially more pay, and live in nicer neighborhoods. Exactly how are they "left behind"? Oh, yes: there are still people who think that a marriage needs a man and a woman, the way it's been since before Abraham. They must be overridden by the courts and browbeaten until they learn to love gay sex. Traditional Christians don't need to be "reached," they need to be corrected, with the force of the state if necessary.

I also like his comment about his wife's medical practice: "There's not that element of self-sacrifice of her career that there is in some political families." God forbid! Some think marriage is all about self-sacrifice -- like St. Paul and the Holy Father and the One on whose behalf they speak -- but what do celebate men know about personal fulfullment?

All of Shakespeare's tragedies are now available on Open Source Shakespeare, a personal project of mine that will (hopefully) be my grad thesis when it's all done.

Why does it take NASA...

...to bring back 3-D Glasses?

(photo from WP)

Time for a new year and a new episode of "American Idol." I've never actually seen the show, but since Fox is the only place one can watch "The Simpsons," I've seen plenty of previews for it. A wife of mine (who shall remain nameless) has actually seen an episode or two.

Does anyone else think the way they treat contestants on "AI" is wrong? I used to do some acting, and the Brothers Schultz and I used to do a little singing way back when, and I remember the kind of nervousness you get when you perform on stage. The way I understand it, in the first few episodes, they drag in kids who can't sing and humiliate them in front of the cameras, then broadcast it to millions of people.

Ha ha ha. I've read that the producers identify the ridiculously bad performers and then tell them they're going to audition for the main judges instead of the lower-level screeners. So these people think, "Hey, I've really got a shot," but instead they get verbally abused. Maybe some of them think it's a lark afterwards, but from the looks on their faces, they seem genuinely shocked.

If I were one of the sucky performers, I'd probably want to shoot myself -- or that nasty judge, Simon. Where does he get off passing judgment on people's talents? He's the guy who inflicted the Spice Girls on the world. He should be on trial at the Hague, right after Milosevic is finished.

Anyway, the whole thing makes me sick. I don't really care about the whole "Star Search" aspect, but it seems like they could have that without the humiliation. Or is cruelty considered good clean fun these days, and I hadn't noticed?

UPDATE: I was wrong -- Simon Cowell did not create the Spice Girls, contrary to my memory. He is responsible for the Teletubbies and the Mighty Morph'n Power Rangers. Simon Fuller is the guy who created the Spice Girls. I should watch VH-1 more often to keep these things straight, but I don't have cable, so I can't.

I was going to do a little comparison between the earthquake in my ancestral homeland of California and the one in Bam, Iran. (Please, no comments on the unfortunate onomatopoeia of "Bam.") But lo, Jonah Goldberg beat me to it.

The California earthquake was somewhat smaller than the Iranian one, but killed two people instead of 30,000+. The anti-globalizers on the Left want to ensure that these disasters happen from now until the end of time. Who cares about mothers wailing for their children, or thousands of homes wiped out in a few minutes of screaming, suffocating chaos? All these things must be offered up to the god of environmental primitivism.

What do I mean by "environmental primitivism"? The anti-globalizers think that poor non-Western people are cute, so they don't want them to change their charmingly backward ways, which are (they imagine) the way people lived before the nasty Industrial Revolution with its so-called "abundant food," "long lifespans," and "housing codes." They love that poor people don't consume much energy or natural resources, and they use "organic" methods of agriculture -- which aren't very helpful for crop yields, but they don't use evil pesticides or fertilizers. And harvesting by hand -- so darn cute!

Likewise, the stone-and-mud-brick houses of the Third World are environmentally friendly. They're also a deathtrap during a natural disaster. But not one tree was bulldozed to make room for them.

Wealth brings medical training, healthy food, and houses that won't crumple during an earthquake. Poverty kills, and therefore the misguided leftists who want to keep poor people poor are, in an indirect way, conspiring to make sure poor people keep dying in earthquakes, famines, and epidemics. Maybe if our brothers in the Third World promise to keep being cute somehow, the anti-globalizers would let them build their houses out of solid masonry and sheetrock?

When peaceful silence lay over all, and the night had run half of her swift course, your all-powerful word, O Lord, leaped down from heaven, from the royal throne. (Wis. 18:14-15)

The stage show !Hero, written by Christian pop performer Ed DeGarmo, toured 20 cities in November, and plans another round this year. Christianity Today comments.

No, that's not quite right. Anyway, we've got some new neighbors.

Before Brian Finkel was convicted of 22 counts of molesting patients, he was a "pro-choice hero" who did 20,000 abortions and was proud of it:

Brian Finkel, a Phoenix, Arizona abortionist, told the Phoenix New Times in 1999: "This is my abortion machine, where I do the Lord’s work. I heal the sick with it.... Got a Tech 9 [machine pistol]. Every gynecologist needs a Tech 9, so I could have more rounds, ’cause they’re bringing me more Christians. There’s a Smith and Wesson .40 and a few rifles, for crowd control, down at the [abortuary]." He and his wife Diane aborted their first child, whom they later referred to as "Ernie the Embryo." Bruce Miller of Arizona Right to Choose has nevertheless extolled Finkel as "an unrecognized hero in our community" who hasn’t "gotten the accolades I think he should get."

I wonder what his fellow prisoners will think of him for the next 34 years.

Okay, the next sentence is gonna be a little cumbersome and involve heavy name dropping.... A recent piece on homosexual marriage, the suppression of civil liberties and the death of Canadian democracy written by John Pacheco of Catholic-Legate.com and I for a fall issue of Culture Wars is now available on-line at the Sierra Times. Here's a sample:

"On June 15th, 2001, the Saskatchewan Human Rights Board of Inquiry fined Hugh Owens, an evangelical Protestant, and the Saskatoon Star Phoenix $1500 for violating the equality rights of three gay men. Mr. Owen’s crime? He expressed his opinion on gay and lesbians sex through an advertisement in the Saskatoon Star Phoenix. This advertisement consisted of a pictograph of two men holding hands superimposed with a circle and slash- the symbol of something forbidden-and a list of Bible verses condemning the practice of homosexuality. While Mr. Owens is currently appealing this ruling, if he loses and still refuses to comply with the Board of Inquiry, he will potentially find himself charged with contempt of court. If convicted, he will likely find himself consigned to jail as the first prisoner of conscience in the war between sexual plurism and religious plurism."

Read the whole piece here

This is puzzling: is it worse to be wasteful by throwing one's fridge out the window, or is it a sign of detachment from material goods? Heads up!

According to the Sierra Times, the Dems have taken their vulgarity to a new low by spouting it off in a Lutheran church. This raises an interesting question, namely, will the 2004 presidential campaign require parental ratings?