May 2004 Archives

Here's one-stop shopping for bishops' statements on political support of abortion and communion. Fifteen bishops are pictured with their statements, in some cases multiple statements. A very hopeful sign.

Teresa and I are back from vacation - it was a restful time out at the Outer Banks in North Carolina. We also had a family reunion in Waynesboro, Virginia, including four generations of Muellers - from a few months old to nearly 94. Teresa's dad was able to be transported from the nursing home and had steak, potato salad, country ham and a gin and tonic. He does alot better with home-cooking than the food at the home.

I returned to a pile of e-mail, including a little nugget from the liturgy director at my parish. We've been soliciting feedback via e-mail and received a missive that included the words "I would like to see more music from the Oregon Catholic Press." It also said that people who want latin at church are on some sort of "nostalgia trip."

Oh, well. I'm glad I'm back, even if I need to fight the dragons.

On this day we remember those who served this country, alive and dead, fallen on the battle field or safely home, I'd like to thank any veteran that reads this blog. You have gone to a place that I have not. You have served your country with distinction and at the hour of her greatest need. May our country remember you dearly, and may all the enemies of God repent from their evil.

What's next? Al Gore to the rescue? Barbara Streisand sends buckets of cash and a plate of hash brownies?

From Robert Spencer, the coauthor of Inside Islam: A Guide for Catholics. I happened upon his site which cruising Kathy Shaidle's blog. It's not a big stretch to read Spencer's site and think that we're slowly being Islamified.

I've become increasingly interested in Islam in the wake of 9-11, terror war, and because the liberal (read Western) head-in-sand-sand-rapidly-rising ideal of "can't we all just get along?" is horribly wrong. Spencer offers a unique perspective and gives ample support to those of us who know we can't just get along. We simply can't abide the privation of justice that Islam has wrought. In this respect, would you think history a valuable guide? Most often, yes. Is experience the best teacher as long as it's someone elses'? Absolutely! It's up to the government and allies to decided how best to deal with the threat of islamic militants and terrorists, but we as Catholics have to consider how we approach the culture that Islam is thriving in so that we can evangelize.

CHICAGO — Parishioners who wore rainbow-colored sashes to Mass in support of gays and lesbians were denied communion (search) in Chicago, while laymen in Minnesota tried to prevent gay Roman Catholics from getting the sacrament.

Priests at Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago refused to give the Eucharist to about 10 people wearing the sashes at Sunday Mass. One priest shook each person's hand; another made the sign of the cross on their foreheads.

Firstly, the headline is biased towards our rights-crazy culture.

Per Canon Law, people suffering from same-sex attraction have the same rights as straight Catholics. No one has a "right" to commit sacrilege against the Body and Blood of Our Lord because they think the Church is behind the times or, as Mark Shea oft writes of them, that gay sex is "the source and summit of all that is great and good in the human race since the beginning of recorded history."

The irony is we support gays, just not in the way gays to be supported. We support their conversion and salvation, not, again to quote Mark, the "fabulousness" of gay sex. Listen: if sin did to the outside of a man what it does to his soul, no one would ever, ever watch "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy." Come to think of it, no one would watch that much TV at all. Maybe just EWTN. We'd all be praying and reading a lot more.

Incidently, it looks like the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan don't-you-know-your-orders-are-null-and-void Williams, watches a bit too much TV.

May our hearts leap with the same joy as John the Baptist did in the presence of our Lord!

HLI's Fr. Thomas Enteneuer responds to the 48 pro-abortion politicians who wrote to Cdl. McCarrick.

I took these photos today in North Hampton, New Hampshire.

I received a copy of a sermon from Father James Poumade, parochial vicar at our parish. He commented, "Feel free to share it with anybody you think may be interested," and since he is a personal friend and avid reader of Catholic Light (and godfather of my younger son), I thought he wouldn't mind if I posted it here for everyone's edification. The text follows, with italics in the original.

An 11-year-old girl gets sick of Nordstrom selling only clothes fit for prostitots. She writes a letter that finds it's way to the President's desk. He decides to begin carrying more conservative clothing for this age group; "that it's important to maintain a balance and selection." Gosh, I think it's important not to make 11-year-olds look like tramps!

An October 1 release date has been announced for Leonardo Defilippis' film about the life of St. Therese. Keep up with news about the picture at theresemovie.com.

The American church "is called to respond to the profound religious needs and aspirations of a society increasingly in danger of forgetting its spiritual roots and yielding to a purely materialistic and soulless vision of the world," John Paul said.

"Taking up this challenge, however, will require a realistic and comprehensive reading of the 'signs of the times,' in order to develop a persuasive presentation of the Catholic faith and prepare young people especially to dialogue with their contemporaries about the Christian message and its relevance to the building of a more just, humane and peaceful world."

John Paul added: "An effective proclamation of the Gospel in contemporary Western society will need to confront directly the widespread spirit of agnosticism and relativism which has cast doubt on reason's ability to know the truth, which alone satisfies the human heart's restless quest for meaning."

"Universal health insurance" is one of the zillions of things that sounds great in theory, but in practice is less than perfect. Mark Steyn reprints a column he wrote four years ago on that subject. Did you know that it's illegal to receive medical care from anyone other than the government in Canada?

I've never quite understood the Church hierarchy's position on this matter. From what I've read, it considers health care to be a "human right," which I don't get: how can you have a "right" to a good that may or may not exist? Put another way, if there aren't any MRI machines or cardiologists in rural Namibia, how can you have a "right" to use those things?

Or is it a question of access -- that is, no one should be denied access to health care based on their social status, race, etc.? That doesn't seem to be what the hierarchy is saying, though. Skimming through the documents produced by the Vatican and NCCB, they believe people have a positive right to health care, that if an individual needs it, someone is obliged to provide it to him.

That opens up a raft of questions. First of all, who is obliged? The state, I'd assume, since the documents that address the subject seem to be directed towards governments. But that means the state must remove one good -- money -- from a group of citizens to pay for heath care. What if the people who receive the care could afford it by reducing their consumption of luxuries (cable TV, eating at restaurants, petty gambling, etc.)? Does the state still have an obligation?

You hear often in the U.S. about those 37 million people without health insurance. But they fall into two categories: the young and healthy, and the poor. Can we agree that if you're healthy, you don't need insurance nearly as much -- and if you do, it only needs to cover emergencies? And the two categories overlap quite a bit -- younger people make less money than older people because they have less experience. Why would a 23-year-old college graduate need a comprehensive insurance policy? And why would we treat him the same as a 38-year-old poor single mother caring for two children?

More: what kind of health care are we supposed to provide? Everything from routine doctor visits to extensive cancer treatments? Bandages, or just things like prosthetic limbs? Should every cancer patient be flown to the Mayo Clinic?

Not to mention that having a single entity controling all, or nearly all, of a good is an invitation to abuse. Why is it that everyone can see the danger in having one corporation control, say, the oil supply, but somehow if the government controls the medical system it is immune to human frailty?

When government sticks to basic public functions (defending the borders, stopping crime, enforcing contracts, etc.), it generally doesn't interfere with family life. When government has to take care of the population, by providing for the necessities of life, it will treat its citizens like a pestilence.

That's why Western Europe is slowly depopulating: its socialist states don't want to deal with so many people, so they discourage larger homes and drain families of money through confiscatory taxation. By contrast, in most of the rest of the world, the government doesn't directly provide private goods like health care or retirement pensions, so they don't care as much how many kids each family has. Socialism does not co-exist with the Culture of Death. Socialism is the culture of death.

I know that much of this is grounded in the "universal destination of material goods," that all things have their origin in God and thus will return to the Creator at the end of time. However, that presumes that there are a finite number of particular goods in the world. My employer gives me money in exchange for the work I produce. If I sit at home all day eating Cheetos and watching TV, I am not producing anything (except a bad example for my kids), for a net loss of goods in the world.

There is not a finite amount of "health care," the way there is a finite amount of land on Earth. Its existence is dependent on human activity and not natural phenomena. The question is how to make sure those who are truly needy get the medical care they need, not how to snare everyone -- rich and poor, healthy and sick -- into a gigantic, unworkable government bureaucracy.

I've heard it said that the Church has much to say about how goods ought to be used, but not much about how goods are created. Much of that topic is outside its competence as the final authority on faith and morals, but the bishops should consider giving us some guidance as to how we can address the question.

Teresa and I celebrate five years of marriage today. It's been a wonderful, holy time and we hope we can spend five times ten more years together.

I love you Teresa and will always take care of you.

John and Teresa are away at the beach for the week celebrating their anniversary. She sent me this photo of her hangliding. She writes, "Talk about getting closer to heaven!" Look how high up she is! FYI - The man in the photo is not John. He's apparently a certified hanglider who makes piles of cash off adventurous tourists. I don't think John would get on a hanglider unless there was free beer involved.

Prayer is the most commonly used "alternative medicine," according to a survey of more than 31,000 adults released by the National Institutes of Health yesterday...

I'm tempted to hang it up on the wall, but out of love for the Holy Father, I won't. This certificate came in the mail a few days ago after I sent a few bucks to the Capuchin Friars in Pittsburgh. It was accompanied with a letter that said, "Please accept the enclosed Parchment Blessing and St. Anthony Novena booklet as our gifts to you."

That term "Parchment Blessing" seems to be a sloppy use of language, doesn't it? Obviously it's meant to refer to the bit of decorative -- well, at least, decorated memorabilia they sent me. I can see calling the thing a "blessing parchment", but not the other way around.

By the way, I don't mind a little religious kitsch here and there: it's part of popular piety and in that context, a good thing. I'm just disappointed at the seeming linguistic failure, as much as I'd be disappointed by a moral one.

Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been four weeks since my last confession. Since then, I have committed acts of solecism twice....

The bad part is that they even put this goofy term in the Pope's mouth: notice the text on the certificate itself: In grateful appreciation for your generous support of the Capuchin Franciscan Friars of the Province of St. Augustine, I bestow my parchment blessing on Mr. Richard Chonak. I really doubt the Pope ever signed any sentence containing the term "parchment blessing". Here, the term is supposed to refer to the blessing itself. Now, a blessing is a spiritual act, a prayer: what on earth would a "parchment blessing" be, then: a parchment prayer? It sounds as if Pope John Paul were being made to say: I bestow on you this (tacky) certificate. (I know, he has been apologizing a lot lately, hasn't he?)

No, no, dear Friars, if you're going to put words in the Pope's mouth, please let them make sense: he's giving us a blessing; you're giving out the parchments.

Back when I was coming into the Church, my old friend Meredith Gillespie Alcock summarized the image of the Franciscans as "dumb but holy". Maybe she was onto something.

Here's another mind-numbingly stupid statement made by Gore during his conniption yesterday - via yahoo news.

He said that Kerry should not "tie his own hands" while campaigning by offering any specific proposals for how he would handle a situation that is "rapidly changing and, unfortunately, rapidly deteriorating."

Does Gore think America collectively fell off a turnip truck and sustained massive head injuries? How can a politician campaign without offering specific proposals? The democrats have a tenor not unlike the cicadas infesting the lovely Washington Metro area - a senseless, high-pitched whine.

If anyone knows who owns the domain peterschair.com, would you please contact me? That site is hitting our web server all too often, so I have had to block its access.

Yes, Algore actually said that today: "Dominance is as dominance does," just like Forrest Gump. I don't think he was trying to be funny. "Stupid is as stupid does" didn't make sense in the movie, and it doesn't make sense in a long, rambling, screaming speech either. Below are excerpts from his speech with my comments in italics.

The first principle: a thing cannot be and not be at the same time.

"Those who deny the first principle should be flogged or burned until they admit that it is not the same thing to be burned and not burned, or whipped and not whipped."

Avicenna
Ancient Muslim philosopher

Veggie orchestra plays with food

The nine-piece orchestra plays a range of original compositions on instruments constructed from vegetables -- including a flute made from a carrot, a saxophone carved out of a cucumber and a pumpkin converted into a double bass.

Is what I would call a fire at an warehouse in England full of crappy modern art.

Among other famous works feared lost in the flames was Emin's "Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963-1995," a tent embroidered with the names of all her sleeping partners.

Talk about a big tent! Can I start the fire next time?

Phil Lawler of Catholic World News grouses about the parish closings in his e-mail today:

Closing parishes might solve the superficial problem, by saving money. But it doesn't solve the deeper problem. If there's a long-term plan in place for revitalizing the archdiocese-- getting ordinary Catholics back to church-- I haven't heard about it.

I don't want to lump Phil in with some of my fellow parishioners, but they make the same complaint too, and in their case I call it whining, because they speak of long-term efforts to preach the gospel and re-convert the lapsed faithful as a substitute for consolidating parishes.

That's a losing proposal from the start: instead of correcting real current problems with overextended priests and underfunded, underattended parishes, it tells everybody to keep paying and praying, and tells Father to keep saying four Masses on Sunday, and makes the future of the Church dependent on the return of people who have left the Church!

Look, miracles are great, and a substantial re-conversion of lapsed Catholics would be one, but to base the Church's pastoral strategy on them would be somewhere between irresponsibility and presumption.

Theology being the study of God, do Muslims have any sort of theology given that they believe God is unknowable and inscrutable? Do they then, have only exegesis of the Koran and not actual theology?

And people ask me why the Church grants so many annulments?

As some of you know, I work full-time for a diocesan tribunal. Like most lay canonists, I also work part-time for several (about a half-dozen) Catholic tribunals on the side. A package arrived from one of these today that contained about a dozen cases. Of course I cannot name the tribunal or share any detailed information, but here's a quick breakdown based upon the length of the marriage in question:

Over 15 yrs: 1
10 to 15 yrs: 2
7 to 9 yrs: 1
4 to 6 yrs: 2
1 to 3 yrs: 4
Under a year: 2

Exactly half these cases concern marriages between two individuals who were
not Catholic at the time of marriage. Four of the cases concern mixed marriages between Catholics and non-Catholics. Only two concerned a marriage between two Catholics.

Well, the list is out and my parish in Boston is on it. Holy Trinity Church has been ordered to close, with one year delay. Now, that's interesting, since it seems to indicate a willingness to take our needs into account.

Here's the full list....

We should be so lucky! Unfortunately, this is pure fiction. It's from 'The Day After Tomorrow,' the disaster movie about global warming where our hero, Al Gore, comes to the rescue of the entire pale, blue planet by inventing cars that run not on gasoline, clean natural gas, ethanol, wind, solar power, electric power, or cat feces. No, Algore saves the day (after tomorrow!) with cars that run on Republicans - a clean, renewable resource since many Republicans actually have babies.

Ok, I admit Al Gore doesn't make an appearance in this flick but you and I both know he should have had a cameo at the beginning. He could have grown the look-I-can-grow-a-beard beard again and walked around New York wearing a sandwich board that says "We are doomed" on one side and "Don't blame me, I voted for me" on the other.

Here's a review from foxnews.com and an editorial from an environmental scientist who works for the CATO institute.

As a scientist, I bristle when lies dressed up as "science" are used to influence political discourse. The latest example is the global-warming disaster flick, The Day After Tomorrow.

This film is propaganda designed to shift the policy of this nation on climate change. At least that's what I take from producer Mark Gordon's comment that "part of the reason we made this movie" was to "raise consciousness about the environment."

Fox spokesman Jeffrey Godsick says, "The real power of the movie is to raise consciousness on the issue of (global warming)."

$200 million is a high price for such a vacuous message.

*UPDATE*

Storm Warning - Op/Ed from the WashTimes

Looking at your Googlewar post below, I'm lead to believe that you have something against folk music. What exactly is your beef with folk music?

As I was walking in downtown D.C., I saw a story in the Washington Post that actually made me purchase the paper:

U.S. Forces Move Into Stronghold Of Cleric Insurgents Scatter as Hunt For Their Leader Intensifies

KARBALA, Iraq, May 23 -- U.S. forces expanded an offensive against rebel cleric Moqtada Sadr on Sunday by pushing into his stronghold of Kufa for the first time, as his armed followers vanished from the streets of this Shiite holy city.

The battle for southern Iraq, which has occupied U.S. soldiers for weeks, appears to have shifted from a broad engagement across several fronts to a sustained battle aimed at a single elusive objective: Sadr, who leads thousands of militiamen, known as the Mahdi Army.

For seven weeks, U.S. forces have been killing scores of the fighters loyal to Sadr, who has fomented an anti-American insurrection in a region once receptive to the occupation....

Wait a sec...what's that again? "U.S. forces have been killing scores of the fighters loyal to Sadr"? Not just a few here and there, but scores of them? Boy, I don't remember seeing that on "Today," my morning infotainment show! Must have missed it between the Iraqi prison photos and the 13,406th segment on low-carb dieting.

So it would appear that our war efforts are not failing. You will recall that less than a month ago, Iraq was on the verge of a full-scale civil war, and that arresting the respected Shiite thug leader Sadr was going to inspire the citizens to revolt, and the security situation was "deteriorating," quagmire Vietnam failure unilateral blood-for-oil rama-lama-ding-dong.

Then the media abruptly switched to the prison abuse story. We are informed -- by reporters who, judging by their stories, rarely venture out of their air-conditioned offices except under the protection of the U.S. military -- that Arab opinion is "enraged" by these photos, trotting out numbers about how only .00034% of Moroccan Bedouins support Iraqi occupation, etc.

I remember reading similar poll numbers two years ago, before we even invaded Iraq. What's the difference? And in a country where everyone -- literally, everyone -- had a family member imprisoned or murdered by the former regime, are Iraqis really that fainthearted?

Think back to 6-8 months ago, when the occupation was "failing" because "services" were not restored to the populace. Recall the endless stories from Baghdad about the electricity going out sometimes (which reporters noticed because that screwed up their laptop batteries.) Today, Iraq has more electricity than before the war, water is more abundant, schools are open, food is plentiful, etc. You never hear about the "services" because they all work, more or less, at least as well as the top-tier Third World countries.

I've written in Catholic Light about how the press has a meta-narrative for just about everything they write (if I didn't, I meant to write about it.) Because of the exigencies of writing against a deadline, reporters can't re-think The Big Picture every time they sit down to compose an article. So they have these meta-narratives they use. You know them:

Gays Are Conquering Prejudice to Claim Their Full Civil Rights

Greedy Corporations Cause Lack of Medical Insurance

Catholic Church Resists the Noble Forces of Modern Liberalism

Minorities Get Shafted -- Again

Women Can Do Anything Despite Men's Efforts to Keep Them Down

In this case, the meta-narrative is "U.S. Occupation Failing." The narrative of an individual story is just a subset of the meta-narrative. Thus, lack of electricity is proof that the occupation is failing. So are random bombings of soldiers, and mass murders of innocent Iraqis. So are disgusting pictures of prison abuse. Or meaningless polls.

You see what I mean? Even though the original justifications for the conclusion have evaporated, the conclusion rolls along, because it's the meta-narrative. Intellectual honesty would seem to demand a re-assessment of the conclusion, given that the facts have changed dramatically, but none is forthcoming.

You could list many huge stories the press has gotten wrong in the last 20 years, including the 1994 Republican takeover of Congress, the fall of the Soviet Union, and the rise of radical Islam and its threat to America. Yet by and large, after missing big stories, journalists don't collectively scratch their heads and say, "How the heck did we miss that one?" They just adjust their meta-narratives, even though that approach got them into trouble in the first place.

In five weeks, there will likely be more violence after Iraq gets its sovereignty. Mark my words, that will spark another round of breast-beating. The occupation could fail, but the cause won't be the policies or the people involved. It may happen because the news media will have sold their defeat meta-narrative to the American public.

Then thousands and thousands of Iraqis will die. Does that futher peace on earth? Is it good and right to allow innocent human beings to die in order to defeat President Bush? It would be nice if the media re-thought their commitment to this storyline, before it's too late.

A look at the pop-Kabbalah sect that has roped in various Hollywood types as adherents.

Washtimes - Inside the Beltway

Taking a seat at the recent U.N. Commission on the Status of Women — where the focus was on the role of men and boys in achieving gender equality — was Janice Shaw Crouse, a senior fellow at the Beverly LaHaye Institute.
"The bottom line was clearly stated: We must nurture boys into developing more feminine characteristics — gentleness, compassion and tenderness, among others — and train them away from the more typically male aggressive and competitive behavior," she says.
But Mrs. Crouse concedes while there's "nothing wrong with masculine gentleness, compassion and tenderness," given the problems in today's world "there is also nothing wrong with competitiveness or aggressiveness within bounds ...
"And, there is definitely nothing wrong with masculinity (boys being boys and men being men) or with femininity (girls being girls and women being women)."

What is gender equality? It is believing men and women to be the same. Men and women are not the same. Gender equity is another matter entirely. Gender equity is just. Gender equality contradicts the truths of biology, psychology, ontology and probably some other ologies I've forgotten.

Using the terms equality and equity interchangeably has done great harm to human dignity and caused a few generations, mine included, to be seriously confused about gender roles. Anyone who is in their late 20's or early 30's and dating would probably agree with me.

Here's an unrelated but humorous aside that a friend related to me from his experience in England. An uber-lib nun, apparently in favor of the ordination of women, says to the parish priest, "Why do I have to have what you have between your legs in order to celebrate Mass?"

The priest replies, "Good God, woman, I use my hands!"

Holy Trinity Church, the home of Boston's indult Mass, is profiled in the Globe, and now the secret's out: it's a growing parish with a lot of young families, not a service for a shrinking bunch of seniors. We expect to be on the parish closure list when it comes out tomorrow, but I'm glad the case for keeping the church has been made publicly.

From the Googlewar site, comparing the raw number of results from two Google queries:

"catholic" vs. "protestant"
results: 14,600,000 to 1,870,000

eucharist" vs. "communion"
632,000 to 2,260,000

"orthodox" vs. "heretical"
3,240,000 to 235,000

"eric" vs. "johnson"
24,400,000 to 32,300,000

"catholic light" vs. "catholic darkness"
13,500 to 41

"folk music" vs. "good music"
2,570,000 to 1,640,000

"Linux" vs. "Microsoft"
108,000,000 to 101,000,000

"folk music" vs. "plainchant"
2,570,000 to 13,400

"weak soldier" vs. "strong marine"
199 to 3,650

Hi folks, although I haven't been blogging much lately, I'm still alive! Sonya and the girls are back in Canada now, so I wanted to spend as much time with them as I could before they went back. I'm scheduled to drive back in another five weeks with all our stuff...

On another note, I've now finished two of three book I have coming out in the fall. So between packing and watching vampire movies (more on that later), I've been doing a lot of writing and editing. The first book I have coming out this fall is co-authored with Patrick Madrid, and concerns the SSPX schism. Our Sunday Visitor is publishing it.

The second, which was also a lot of fun, is called Surprised by Canon Law. My buddy Michael Trueman (another lay canonist) and I slapped together 150 of the most common questions we receive from fellow laity concerning canon law. So it is very much a canon law Q&A for the Catholic working man. It was a lot of fun to do so nobody, to our knowledge, has ever set out to write a canon law book for Catholic laity before, except on the topic of annulments. (We covered it, but we also cover a heck of a lot of other areas of interest to the laity as well).

Anyway, about the vampire movies. I'm thinking of doing another Catholic horror novel. Basically, one concerning the culture of death. Since vampires are an ancient literary metaphor for sexual immorality, I figured I would start there.

Our blogging neighbor Nathan Nelson has had a change of heart or mind, and posted a note to "The Tower" to say that he doesn't want to give up on being a Catholic after all. Now he wants to be a "progressive Catholic".

So welcome back, Nathan! If you can be "progressive" while truly remaining one in faith and communion with the Catholic Church, you're doing OK. Do try to be accepting toward the Church, and give her the benefit of the doubt when the opportunity to do so arises. Being Catholic is a gift, and when Somebody gives you a gift, it's good to at least accept the whole package, even if you don't yet recognize the value of all the items inside it. Maybe they actually do go together.

For your penance :-) , read Fr. Groeschel's book Spiritual Passages. It's about phases in the spiritual life, and I figure you could use some long-term perspective.

Doesn't every sports fan need a home vending machine to help recreate the stadium atmosphere? Well, not really. However, if you are so inclined as to buy one through the linked image to the right, stblogs.org will get a kickback. :-)

It gives medical malpractice attorneys new grounds for claiming damages. Isn't luv beautiful?

Please, please, beam me up.

The site (http://www.savior.org/) seems to have a laudable reason for being, by the way.

On another page, this photo appears.

Aaaaah, now isn't that better?

At the state-owned Cow Palace in California, you're allowed to have a convention dedicated to sex shows. However, if a bunch of law-abiding citizens want to sell each other legal firearms, they can't do that in the Cow Palace, according to a bill passed by the California legislature.

I know what you're thinking: no woman would ever go to a place called the "Cow Palace," so that's why their events must revolve around guns and sex.

My wife and I were forced by circumstance to attend Holy Mass in a small parish in southwestern Virginia a couple of weeks ago. This was our first, and, until there is an administrative change there, our last trip to this parish. After the collect, the celebrant said (paraphrased), "The text for our Gloria can be found in the front cover of the hymnal." Before we had a chance to even wonder what that could possibly mean, he began to intone the following, to the tune of Beethoven's Hymn to Joy:

Glory be to God the Father,
To our God who reigns above.
May he send his peace upon us
And his everlasting love.
Songs of praise and songs of blessing
To our God who reigns on high.
Let us raise our loud hosannas,
Let us raise our joyful cry.

Here in the USA, we have Dollar General and Just a Dollar.

Did you know Cuba has dollar stores, too?

The only problem is, it's not "Just a Dollar."

48 Democrats sent a letter to Uncle Ted, er, His Emminence Cardinal McCarrick, imploring him to "go-easy" on pro-abort politicians. Rep. Peter T. King, New York Republican, responds, "Anyone who knows anything about Catholic theology knows you cannot equate abortion with the war in Iraq," he said. "Abortion is always intrinsically evil but, as for war in Iraq, that involves prudential judgment. You have the moral right to make a decision on what is the best policy to follow."

The operative words in Rep. King's response are "anyone" and "anything." Too few of the faithful know the faith. Young and old treat Catholic teaching like social studies. To say that abortion is always intrinsically evil is not expressing another worldview, it is true. Anyone who knows what the word "intrinsic" means would understand that.

This refers to the man replacing our gas cooktop on Friday, whose name is Jesús.

UPDATE: Jesús just finished installing the cooktop, and the thing works great.

A little local news here: security nabobs for this summer's Dem convention in Boston are planning to shut down the city's inbound highways and commuter rail access for four days in July. Even Mayor Tom ("Mumbles") Menino, who brought this money-losing disaster to town for the glory of Massachusetts Democrats, has given up the happy face and is telling businesses to take the week off.

What are the odds that the voters will make the Dems pay a price for this? Slim and none.

YOUR CAPTION HERE

The first question: why is Eric awake at 3 a.m.? Because I had to fix something at work, and I want to wait a few minutes before going to bed, in case the thing breaks again.

The next question: is Maureen Dowd the dumbest prominent columnist in America, or the most prominent dumb columnist in America? Many people read her because for some reason they read the New York Times, a habit I've never cultivated or even understood. Every time I read Dowd's columns I feel like I'm reading a 19-year-old undergrad who thinks she's clever because she writes alliterations and gives lame nicknames to public figures she doesn't like ("Rummy," et al.)

So it's not just that I disagree with her -- a forgivable offense -- she's a crappy writer, and furthermore, one of the many pseudo-Catholics who gets agitated when the Holy Father disagrees with the NYT magisterium. She is someone whose views I can safely ignore.

Then I read this piece, and my wonder at Dowd's prominence is renewed. It's a pastiche of anti-Bush statements that all begin "In Bushworld," which is so fascinatingly clever that she's now writing a book called "Bushworld." How can someone who writes so ineptly, who regurgitates left-liberal pieties on command, get to be one of the top columnists in America? This piece (of...) is begging to be fisked thusly:

"In Bushworld, we can win over Fallujah by bulldozing it."

We didn't, MD. We ordered the Marines to stop fighting before they succeeded in killing the vicious thugs who are killing innocent Iraqis. That was in all the papers, including yours.

"In Bushworld, it was worth going to war so Iraqis could express their feelings ("Down With America!") without having their tongues cut out, although we cannot yet allow them to express intemperate feelings in newspapers ("Down With America!") without shutting them down."

We shut down one newspaper because it was blaming murders by insurgents on the Coalition, and was fomenting violence against the Coalition. Even in America, you can't agitate for killing government officials. Maybe you can in Dowdworld.

"In Bushworld, you don't consult your father, the expert in being president during a war with Iraq, but you do talk to your Higher Father, who can't talk back to warn you to get an exit strategy or chide you for using Him for political purposes."

Nice -- borders on blasphemy. God can't talk back to you? News to me. Why do so many people bother talking to him, then? What did they teach you in your alleged Catholic upbringing, MD? While we're at it, what's your exit strategy? Care to express an actual idea instead of sniping?

"In Bushworld, you get to strut around like a tough military guy and paint your rival as a chicken hawk, even though he's the one who won medals in combat and was praised by his superior officers for fulfilling all his obligations."

Except most people who were with Kerry in Vietnam have said he's a disgrace to those medals, because he repeated lies about alleged atrocities that didn't happen and impugned the character of Vietnam servicemen. Plus, he didn't fulfill all his obligations -- he ran away from his men after four months in country. Anyway, you don't care about medals or heroism anyway, so why bring it up?

"In Bushworld, you brag about how well Afghanistan is going, even though soldiers like Pat Tillman are still dying and the Taliban are running freely around the border areas, hiding Osama and delaying elections."

If everything isn't going perfectly, nothing is going right and you can't talk about any successes. Is that the formula? Let's see if MD sticks to it if Kerry is elected.

"In Bushworld, we went to war to give Iraq a democratic process, yet we disdain the democratic process that causes allies to pull out troops."

Just because a decision was arrived at democratically doesn't mean we have to like it. The "democratic process" gave us Jim Crow, forced sterilization of "mental defectives," Chancellor Hitler, and the income tax. We can be against those things without impugning the "process" that produced them, can't we?

When I used to read the best liberal columnists, I often thought, "Hmm, that's a good point -- I wonder what a good response would be." Now I think, "Are we living in different universes?"

terrisfight.org has the latest news on efforts to protect disabled Terri Schindler Schiavo from a death by starvation imposed by her adulterous husband. This week, Terri's parents have been cleared of spurious accusations that some marks a nurse's aide saw on Terri's arms were puncture wounds and that the parents had caused them. The Clearwater Police report stated that was no evidence that there were any such wounds or that any assault had been committed. The accusations are especially baseless, considering that the marks were discovered before the parents' visit that day.

A petition seeking sanctions against Mr. Schiavo's attorney George Felos for his alleged public misrepresentations is being prepared for submission to the Florida Bar, Department of Lawyer Regulation.

(Thanks to Juan Schoch for info on the petition.)

A collective Catholic Light Total Badass award goes to the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, for eliminating 35 obstacles to peace on Earth:

OUTNUMBERED British soldiers killed 35 Iraqi attackers in the Army’s first bayonet charge since the Falklands War 22 years ago.

The fearless Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders stormed rebel positions after being ambushed and pinned down.

Despite being outnumbered five to one, they suffered only three minor wounds in the hand-to-hand fighting near the city of Amara.

If each embryo had a name would that keep it from being killed?

Bad news for Michael Moore: scummy trial lawyers are suing Krispy Kreme for bad management.

This is another sign of moral decay. (As opposed to tooth decay, to be sure.) If the management was imprudent in their stewardship of the company, they will be punished by declining sales and, ultimately, by losing their jobs. That's a much more effective way to handle imprudence than involving Federal courts.

According to the story, it does not appear that the management was guilty of anything other than misjudging a market trend. Such things happen every day. They did not "cook the books," or steal company money for their personal use, or trade stock based on "insider information," or any other crime. They just didn't do a good job calibrating their business strategy to the low-carb diet fad.

That might be dumb, but is it wrong? Is it even illegal? Don't we all believe that "you can't legislate morality"? Apparently it's possible to litigate morality, or at least scummy trial lawyers think they should, for a decent cut of the settlement money.

"The guards were escalating their abuse of prisoners in the middle of the night," says the report, when they thought no one was watching. "Their boredom had driven them to ever more pornographic and degrading abuses of power." Those sentences aren't from a report on the abuse of prisoners in Iraq. They're the words of Stanford University psychologist Philip G. Zimbardo, past-president of the American Psychological Association, describing what happened during his classic experiment that simulated prison life in the summer of 1971 at Stanford University.

Read the whole thing.

I was involved in a discussion over on Mark Shea's blog about legal and illegal combatants, and how they are to be treated when they are detained. I claim no special expertise, but I've had probably 40 hours of training over the last 13 years in the law of war, because members of my Marine unit were expected to be the "duty experts" on the subject so we could advise commanders.

So I'm not talking from a position of total ignorance, either. Below is an expanded and edited response to one of the more intransigent, confused people in the Mark Shea comment box.

----

Certain prisoners under U.S. control -- especially the ones from Afghanistan, and probably many in Iraq, are illegal combatants.

If the U.S. government makes it a policy to treat illegal combatants better than it is legally required to do, that's its prerogative. However, neither civilian appointees nor DOD regulations trump the Geneva Conventions, which, as treaties signed by the president and ratified by the Senate, assume the same level in American law as the consitution.

Those Conventions state that if an irregular force (i.e., a group of fighting men not authorized by the state) meets certain conditions, they are entitled to protected status and should be treated as legal combatants. The Third Geneva Convention says:

(2) Members of other militias and members of other volunteer corps, including those of organized resistance movements, belonging to a Party to the conflict and operating in or outside their own territory, even if this territory is occupied, provided that such militias or volunteer corps, including such organized resistance movements, fulfil the following conditions:

(a) that of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates;

(b) that of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance;

(c) that of carrying arms openly;

(d) that of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.

Terrorists often meet the first condition but not the other three conditions, so they are not legal combatants. Since they fall outside the protection of the Conventions, an opposing force may execute them as spies or saboteurs. That isn't my opinion, it's the law.

In my view, we should have executed at least some of the illegal combatants from Afghanistan, as an example to others. I say this not because I am bloodthirsty, but because it might have encouraged our enemies to fight more humanely. If we made it clear that we would kill any terrorist who targeted civilians or used other illegal warfighting methods, but we would intern those who respected the law of war, that would provide an incentive for our enemies to stop murdering the innocent. That's a worthy goal, isn't it?

Example number one: Michael Moore

'Fahrenheit 9/11': Connecting With a Hard Left - washpost - registration required so those pinkos can keep track of you.

Why is the title of Moore's flim inspired by Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451? How ironic that Bradbury's work is about censorship and anti-intellectualism. Left-wing propaganda doesn't get more anti-intellectual than Fahrenheit 9/11.

*UPDATE*

Example number two: The nuts who cooked up The Day After Tomorrow, Al Gore, and moveon.org. Algore and the like-minded irrational animals at moveon.org are planning a rally the day that The Day After Tomorrow Comes out. I sense a Passion of the Christ kind of passion for the message of this disaster film. It's a new gospel written by the liberal illuminati. They'd like to see us all live like Franciscans of the Primitive Observance without the poverty, charity, humility, and of course, faith in Christ.

Moveon.org is calling this flick "the movie the White House doesn't want you to see." They admit the movie is "more science fiction than science fact," yet they trying to score political points by scaring the poop of people who can't separate science fact from science fiction. They vote for democrats, you know.

The Washingtime Times, for their creative use of quotes in this article.

Professor Edward Peters, in his usual lucid manner, dispels a cardinal's misunderstandings about whether it is proper to admit or bar pro-abortion politicians from Holy Communion.

Julianne Wiley wants to engage the culture:

Massachusetts Marry-Pranksters! Time to get out there with your dogs and cats, in pairs and groups, and demand marriage licenses for all 3 or 4 or 5 of you!

I'm kidding, but I'm not kidding. Guys, get your 3 best poker friends --- ladies, get the gal next to you at Curves --- and demand a license! See if you can re-marry your spouse PLUS the Best Man! See if they refuse you?! If they do, threaten a lawsuit! Make sure you bring your digital camera.

At least get out there with a picket sign that says, "Kitty Catastrophe is My Best Friend! Why Don't You Recognize Our Love???"

~Make a little mischief~

I'd do it.

Bishop Sheridan takes his office and the faith seriously, to wit:

"Any Catholic politicians who advocate for abortion, for illicit stem cell research or for any form of euthanasia ipso facto place themselves outside full communion with the church and so jeopardize their salvation,"

See the full article here .

On the weekends, after the older two children invade our bed, and I have gathered the courage to face the morning, I herd the little ones downstairs so they can watch something while I make breakfast. As we have no cable or satellite television, the television in the playroom is usually tuned to a PBS station.

While the "Thomas the Tank Engine" video was rewinding, I saw part of "Religion and Ethics Newsweekly" describing how Catholic politicians are feeling the heat for not acting like Catholics while in office.

I have expressed my displeasure with PBS religious programming in another post, but this segment was evenhanded. It did, however, give disproportionate attention to Mario Cuomo, the former New York governor and failed radio talk-show host. I couldn't immediately remember the part of my right-wing catechism that talked about hating Mario. All I remember was that he was prickly about his ethnic background (as if being Italian in New York City was unusual) and was, for a time, the #1 apologist for pro-abortion Catholics, including himself. As I was not Catholic in the 1980s or the early '90s, when Cuomo was governor, I didn't care too much about the Catholic angle, so I didn't remember the details.

The only other time I heard Cuomo speak was on his short-lived radio show, and that was probably by accident. He seemed affable but clueless about what makes good radio, as evidenced by the show's brief run. On this PBS show, he seemed thoughtful and possibly even prayerful, talking about why he was personally pro-life but politically pro-abortion.

"Maybe I can respect this guy," I thought, as Cuomo explained that Catholics had Protestant beliefs crammed down their throats a century ago, so Catholics shouldn't do the same to other people. That's a plausible point, though as I keep saying, abortion isn't a religious issue, it's a straight-up question of natural law. But at least Cuomo appeared to have thought the issue through, and if he was misguided, he was honestly misguided.

The show moved on to capital punishment. Cuomo complained (always in a genial way) that the Church didn't do enough to speak out about capital punishment. "For 12 years" he opposed capital punishment, and he claimed, "I even wrote the pope, saying 'come on guys, help me out here!'"

This tactic was a clever way of saying that he was, in point of fact, more Catholic than the Pope, more pro-life than the Roman curia. Then it all came flooding back: this was the same man who vetoed laws authorizing capital punishment, even though New York voters favored it by a huge margin and the bills always passed by comfortable majorities. Those bills were passed every year until Cuomo left office, and always shot down by the governor.

It takes courage to stand up for your beliefs when they are unpopular, especially for a politician who must stand for re-election, so points for Mario. But we have to subtract points for honesty. For although Mario loves giving his hand-wringing moral lectures about the inner conflict of a Catholic politician when his beliefs differ from what his constituents want, he "allowed his personal beliefs" to "interfere" with his "duty" to do whatever the opinion polls tell him to do.

Mario Cuomo might be sincere and misguided, or he might just be running interference for the Left in the cases of the death penalty and abortion. However, he wants everyone to know he is a serious, deliberate man, and therefore I agree with the latter possibility.

Photos from Mark Shea's visit to Michigan and Indiana, courtesy of Fr. Rob. More....

Writer/editor Fr. Peter Stravinskas is probably best known for his apologetics work, but he's announcing a new general-interest Catholic magazine he plans to launch in July. I look forward to it. Here's his announcement.

(Thanks for the bandwidth, eje.)

I took my car to get washed today at the Vienna Mr. Wash and was greeted with something pretty offensive.

I emailed the contact on the Web site what is pasted below. If you have feelings on the matter please do the same.

Hello -

I'm a regular customer in the Vienna Mr. Wash and was very unhappy with my visit today. Pasted on the fish tank behind the cashier is a fake dollar bill with a likeness of President Bush and the number "9-11" The implication of the text on the bill is that President Bush is a liar and he is responsible for 9-11.

I found this highly offensive. I come to your store to get my car washed, not to see a highly misguided, deceitful and disrepsectful political statement.

I called the store manager and expressed my concerns. I'm hoping that he understood what I was saying and will take the note down.

Please follow-up with your store staff and inform me when the item is removed. I won't be returning to your Vienna store until I hear this has been taken down and you've informed your employees that posting such material is bad customer service, offensive and harmful to your business.

Regards,

John Schultz
Vienna, VA

No, the Johnson kids are not playing in my yard.

We have a couple of Barred Owls living in our trees. They sound exactly like the owls here. I'll try to get a photo of the ones in my yard.

It's pretty cool to see them flying around the yard. Mating season is March - August so we'll keep a look out for the wee-ones.

And yes, this is another good reason for the Johnson's to come over.

Fr. Keyes attended a recent consultation the USCCB liturgy office arranged with church musicians, on the subject of the new translations.

Reuters reports: A new Vatican document on migrants recognizes troubles Catholic women have had in mixed marriages with Muslims, particularly in Muslim countries.

The choir directors at my parish have been informed that the liturgy/music office is getting beaucoup complaints about two things:
1. Songs are not familiar enough.
2. There is "too much" Latin being done.

Here's the environment:
Sat. Vigil Mass - contemporary group - piano, guitar and mostly recent music
1st Mass on Sunday - Mix of traditional and contemporary, with some classic hymns. Sometimes piano are guitar are used for accompaniment. Some standards in terms of Greek/Latin prayers such as the Kyrie and Agnus Dei.
2nd Mass on Sunday - More traditional, mostly hymns but some songs. Some piano accompaniment but no guitar. Some Greek and Latin prayers such as the Kyrie and Agnus Dei and some Latin motets. This is the Mass I conduct.
3rd Mass on Sunday - Totally contemporary: guitars, tambourines, conga drums, etc. Yes - there ara conga drums used at our Parish.

Now - I am by no means Captain Latin when it comes to the liturgy. I am not one of those people that wishes I was born in 1890 so I could have died before Vatican II and watched the liturgical mayhem of the 1970's from purgatory.

Use of Latin is well-within the directives of the Vatican II documents on Liturgy. Chant and Latin Polyphony are encouraged directly.

So my frustration is this:
When you have plenty of liturgical choices, why complain when a Kyrie or Agnus Dei isn't in the same language you use to order pizza? Pick another Mass if you get some kind of rash when you hear a chanted Sanctus. And if you choose to go to the Mass that has a few very typical prayers sung in Latin, then don't call the liturgy office and get all indignant. Just because some un-glued liturgist told you 25 years ago how evil Latin was doesn't mean you have the right to ruin it for everyone else. There are way too many choices if you feel the need to go to a liturgy that has been liberated from 1500 years of musical tradition.

As for songs being unfamiliar - I'm sure the contemporary groups do lots of original compositions with odd intervals, rhythms and melodies. We do a few slightly obscure hymns on an annual basis on Sundays like the Baptism of the Lord. I don't have strong feelings about the unfamiliar music issue, except to say that it's possible to have that mentality bring you "One Bread, One Body" on 32 Sundays a year.

"Welcome to Purgatory, here's your abridged OCP hymnal containing the six songs we'll be singing until you are ready to join in the glory of your Eternal Lord and Creator. Please turn to page 4 and we'll start with 'On Eagle's Wings'"

Bill White has announced a new blog about homeschooling, and a strange new goal in his personal life.

Show me any Reuters article from the Middle East, and I'll show you at least one editorializing sentence. In this case, it's the lead:

ABU GHRAIB, Iraq (Reuters) - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld flew into the eye of the Iraqi storm on Thursday and denied his surprise visit was a publicity stunt to repair the damage from a scandal over the abuse of Iraqi prisoners.

What kind of crap is that? It shocks me that a "serious" news organization would imply that the Secretary of Defense should not visit a theater of operations, or that by doing so, he is

They're not even subtle. Usually, reporters who want to write stealth editorials will find someone else to mouth their agendas, but Charles Aldinger is apparently too lazy to do that.

The trip looked like a robust answer to critics who say Rumsfeld, one of the architects of the Iraq war, should resign, six months before President Bush seeks re-election.

"Looked like" to whom? The article doesn't say, so we can safely assume it's the reporter.

It's also pretty bad to quote Senator Kennedy ("We are the most hated nation in the world as a result of this disastrous policy in the prisons") accusing the Defense Department of deliberately abusing prisoners as a matter of policy -- something no Democrat has previously done, and there is no evidence to support the charge. Aldinger reports the comment as if it is a fact.

Then again, Reuters doesn't call terrorists "terrorists," because "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter." I'm not sure whether that's moral equivalence or rank nihilism, but it's sick, whatever it is.

Retired Episcopalian "bishop" "marries" "male" "partner" in SF "church".

Caption contest at The Curt Jester.

Some very bad news in the Terri Schindler-Schiavo situation.  It appears that Judge Baird, acting in a manner consistent with his previous rulings concerning Terri's case, has ruled Terri's Law unconstitutional.  Here's a sample of Fr. Rob Johansen's appropriately biting commentary:

What this ruling is really all about is apparent further on, where Judge Baird once again rules that Governor Bush may not introduce new testimony or new evidence in this case. Above all, Baird does not want his and Judge Greer's dubious deliberations subjected to impartial scrutiny. They do not want the evidence that Greer ignored in previous hearings, and advances in the understanding and treatment of brain-injured patients, to come out into the light of day. They do not want another court to consider facts such as the 43% error rate in diagnosing PVS patients. Because if they were, it might become apparent that they are wrong, and have been culpably wrong all along.

This case is, at the legal level, about more (and less) than Terri Schiavo. It is about judges protecting their power to decide who may live and who may die. They will do almost anything to protect that power.

And if the price of protecting their god-like power is Terri Schiavo's life, that's a price they're willing to pay.

Being both a judge myself, albeit in the canonical rather than the civil realm, and the son of a judge, I wish I could disagree with Fr. Rob.  But I cannot.   I fear Fr. Rob is right and Terri is about to become the next life sacrificed on the altar of judicial activism.  Please keep Terri and her family in prayer, and please pray for judges everywhere.

From the Associated Press

A woman has no parental rights over the twins she was raising with her lesbian partner - even though she is the childrens' genetic mother, an appeals court ruled.

and

The court said though the genetic mother was a loving, at-home parent, "functioning as a parent does not bestow legal status as a parent."

It's gotta be tough for some of these fringe devotional movements: sometimes a little twist in the story can bring it all to an end. Sometimes all it takes is the exposure of a misdeed, a heresy, a disobedience, and the group's following may evaporate very quickly.

How fragile is it all when the devotion is centered around a physical object: a rainbow-colored window in a bank building?

The era of Our Lady of Clearwater seems to have ended the night of February 29:

The majority leader of the New Jersey state senate is leaving the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church because the church wants her children to stop supporting baby-killing. This entirely reasonable request was too much for Senator Bernard Kenny (D-Moloch), who said, "If every faith starts trying to impose their rules on elected officials, democracy is going to be factionalized along religious lines," apparently thinking that there is something "religious" about defending innocent babies.

As interesting as that is, one other quotation caught my bloodshot eye:

U.S. Rep. William Pascrell Jr., also a Catholic Democrat, agrees that politicians have an obligation to represent all their constituents. "This is exactly what the Catholic Church said 50 years ago would not happen when Catholic politicians were trying to get elected to office," said Kenny, a former altar boy from Essex County....

"I will continue receiving Communion - not in defiance, but out of conscience," he said. "I have nothing to apologize for."

That should be Hell's new official motto:

For you choristers and choir directors out there, the Shaw-Parker Christmas Carol arrangements are something you might want to plunk thru between now and September. These are artful, challenging arrangements with some solo parts, but are very accessible to a choir that is willing to put the time in to learn then or has ringers to help carry the load.

A book of them is available at this link.

Some of my favorites:
Carol of the Birds
Good King Wenceslas
In the Bleak Midwinter (on the Holst tune)

...for my pooch?

This might be interesting to Catholic Light readers, especially since the previous discussion of universities veered off into a discussion about Catholic primary schools:

Jeff Jacoby, a Boston Globe columnist, reports that the Southern Baptists may consider a resolution at their convention "urging the denomination's 16 million members to take their children out of public schools and either home school them or send them to parochial schools."

If this becomes a trend, it's a huge shift for Protestant churches. It used to be that "secular" schools taught an essentially Protestant worldview, complete with Bible readings in many school districts. Therefore, Protestants -- including "good guys" like the Southern Baptists -- have been reluctant to give up on public schools.

This is an entirely good thing. We need more fellow citizens to stand up for the principle that it is parents who raise children with the assistance of the schools, not the other way around. Evangelicals are roughly a third of the electorate, as are Catholics. If we join forces, maybe we can enact the best school reform of all, which is getting the state out of directly running schools altogether.

A panel of the Archdiocese of Boston has proposed an additional 37 parishes for closure, alongside those already recommended by local "cluster" consultations. It's not clear whether these are all additions to the earlier list, or whether some of the choices are alternatives to those originally proposed.

Maybe the Pop Tart needs to meet the Tattoo-Removal Nun.

Alleged singer Britney Spears recently took her devotion to trendy Kabbalah spirituality a bit too far, and got herself inked on the neck with some Hebrew letters. However, due to an unexpected error in the editing process, the resulting tattoo meant... well, nothing. Ya gotta watch out with those right-to-left languages, they'll get ya every time.

Anyway, it's just as well, because Kabbalah forbids tattooing, and now you'll be able to count your visits to the dermatologist as an act of piety. Mazel tov, honey.

In honor of this most solemn time of the year, please refrain from burning anything for fun, or for the insurance money. (Yes, that means you too, Guido.)

Peter Wood, a professor at Boston University, weighs in on Senator Kerry's proposal to make college more affordable. I'm posting this because of the comments on my post about the "giant sucking sound" coming from universities siphoning people's money from their wallets. He confirms my thesis that higher education is expensive because of government intervention:

Why is college so expensive? Why does federal aid never really succeed in making college more affordable? These shouldn't be deep mysteries. For over a decade I participated in university meetings aimed at determining my university's annual tuition increases. The only real question was, "How much can we get away with?" And the only real worry was that, if we overreached, we might move to the dreaded top of the list for largest increases. Most years, it fell to me to draft a letter to parents from the Chairman of the Board explaining that the tuition increase reflected this or that combination of new construction projects and programs.

I recall visiting George Mason when Steve Schultz was going there in the early '90s, when Virginia balanced its budget by modest reductions in spending. The university president decided that if the state was going to reduce its subsidy, he would endanger the safety of his students. He didn't quite phrase it like that, but he did order the facilities department to start turning off random street lights for several hours a night, as a "cost-cutting" measure. He could have fired a useless administrators and that would have saved as much money, but instead he wanted to make sure young women would walk around in dark areas so they might be more easily assaulted.

Wood includes an ominous possible explanation for high prices:

But maybe we have just decided that high prices for a college education are a good way to organize our society. Those prices are high enough to discourage large families and to provide a strong incentive for both parents to work.

...which means the price of a college education is another manifestation, not of capitalism run amok, but of the Culture of Death.

I have not read a comparison of the last three Democratic presidential candidates, not even in the narrow subject of their proposed policies. Perhaps that's because Senator Kerry has few specific proposals, but I am not interested in that right now. What strikes me is that Clinton, Gore, and Kerry are all Hollow Men.

I use that term not to express my contempt for their politics, but as a description of their souls, at least the aspects of their souls we can see without knowing them personally. "The Hollow Men" was one of the most famous poems of the 20th century, composed by T.S. Eliot in 1925 and still frighteningly relevant today. He sings of men who are dessicated to the roots of their being, mere shadows of men.

On the surface, the three men seem very different. The Arkansas kid from a broken home, the son whose senator-father programmed him to succeed in politics, and the Swiss-boarding-school product have few superficial similarities. Yet consider these things: all of them knew at a very young age that they would run for president, and calibrated their actions accordingly. They spent nearly their entire adult lives in politics, and virtually no time in the private sector.

None of them have any discernable principles for which they have worked during their political lives, and they have introduced no significant ideas into politics. Their primary concern is promoting themselves, not for the sake of a cause, but solely for personal advancement. The three men reject traditional understandings of morality in favor of a fuzzy relativism.

Because they do not seek to destroy and murder their opponents like a Middle Eastern despot, their danger to the body politic is not immediately apparent. Whatever one might think of Jimmy Carter, for example, he was not a Hollow Man in that he truly attempted to serve others when he was in office, and though ambitious (what high officeholder isn't?), he did not allow his ambition to enslave him.

By contrast, the Hollow Men will subordinate everything and anything to their ambitions. They fought in the Vietnam War, they protested against it; they spoke out against abortion, they promise to nominate only doctrinaire pro-abortion judges; they say they will propose a tax cut, they raise your taxes; etc.

Sane men change their opinions in the light of new facts or upon deeper reflection. The Hollow Men change their opinions based on their perception of the world's trajectory. Every action has raw calculation behind it: will this gain me votes or will it lose me votes?

What frightens me is not simply that the Hollow Men are self-serving and venal, devoid of higher purpose. We will always have such men until Jesus comes again. What frightens me is that so many ordinary people vote for them. What frightens me more is that millions of ordinary people are exactly like them.

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

[Read the whole poem]

... I recently joined the Society for a Moritorium on the Music of David Haas and Marty Haugen. Here's one of their funnier parodies:

Gather Them In (for Thanksgiving)

Here in this place, our family's meeting -
Grandparents, cousins, uncles and aunts -
Getting in place for dinnertime seating,
And to my mother they're chanting these chants:

"Gather them in, the turkey and stuffing,
Gather them in, the gravy and ham!
And don't forget that Thanksgiving dinner
Just ain't complete without cranberry jam!"

Out in the den my uncles were spitting
Curse words in front of the big screen TV
While watching football (totally fitting):
Visitors thirty, home team only three.

"Gather them in," my mother requested:
"Gather them in, lest dinner gets cold."
And though at first, my uncles protested,
Watching the walloping quickly grew old.

Gone from this place, my sister's new diet.
Brother's already demanding more food.
To our surprise, the in-laws are quiet -
No petty fighting to break up the mood.

"Gather the beans, the corn and potatoes."
"Gather the pot roast, gather the bread."
"Haven't you got too many tomatoes?
Just one more bite will render you dead."

After our dinner, everyone's groaning,
Grousing, complaining, that they ate too much.
And this one thought has my cousins moaning:
Turkey breast sandwiches for next week's lunch.

"Gather them in, the Pepto-dash-Bismol,
Gather them in, the Pepcid AC.
Please do it quick, cuz' we're feeling dismal,
Next year we'll limit our helpings to three!"

Douglas LeBlanc kicked off this thread about bad church music at Get Religion back in March, but I get the feeling we'll be enjoying the comments for some time to come.

Over the weekend, an AP story portrayed Boston's Abp. Sean O'Malley, OFM Cap., as having apologized "to women" for a blanket condemnation of feminism (although he didn't really make one). Also, it portrayed him as backtracking on his (correct) observance of liturgical law at the Holy Thursday Lord's Supper liturgy, where he washed the feet of twelve men, in recollection of the Apostles.

Within minutes, the Internet started to whine with morose comments about the bishop's new spinelessness, but the whines turned out to be unjustified, since as usual, the secular press got it wrong.

What he really said, while explanatory and conciliatory, wasn't an apology: if anything, it was a gentle defense of his words and actions, and very appropriate.

OK, I'm a little disquieted at the Archbishop's suggestion that he will seek a "clarification" about the footwashing rule, as such a promise encourages the disgruntled to keep their demands alive; but I expect that Rome will confirm the discipline currently prescribed.

Six weeks ago, I wrote this:

Sen. Kerry is the kind of officer that enlisted men loathe -- working the system for his own benefit instead of theirs, advancing his own interests with no loyalty to those underneath him....I'd be curious to see what his former subordinates really think of him. They're probably too classy to denounce their former commanding officer in public, but it would be great to get them into a bar and see what they say after a few drinks.

Now we know: they don't think he should be the commander-in-chief.

UPDATE: Read this essay for a first-hand look at why Kerry doesn't measure up.

The guy on the right is Andy Rosenberg, who is running for Congress in the Virginia 8th District. He's competing for the Democratic nomination with Rep. Jim Moran, possibly the sleaziest man in Congress. Why is he sleazy? Let's see...

• He exploited his young, dying son to win re-election;

• When he divorced his second wife, she accused him of beating her up, which he did not contest in court;

• He has been in at least two physical fights in the Capitol building;

• He accepted "interest-free loans" from a person with business in front of his congressional committee;

• Two of his lovers showed up simultaneously at 2 a.m. to "help him celebrate his birthday" -- but they didn't know about each other, and they proceeded to get into a screaming, hair-pulling fight until the Alexandria police arrived (that's my favorite Moran anecdote); And

• He started screaming at a priest at Blessed Sacrament parish who tried to correct him about some matter, and had to be restrained. (Blessed Sacrament was one of the "problem" parishes in the Arlington Diocese, at least until they sent in Father Creegan, a no-nonsense pastor who went into the priesthood after retiring as a Marine lieutenant colonel.) Do I even need to mention that Moran is pro-abortion?

Those are just the things I remembered off the top of my head. Moran is in trouble now because he said it weren't for those meddling Jews, we wouldn't have invaded Iraq. Rosenberg's primary challenge arose from the backlash against that silly comment.

Though I didn't know anything about Rosenberg, I considered voting for him in the primary, figuring he couldn't be worse than Moran. I was wrong. At least Moran voted against partial-birth abortion. Rosenberg is all for it. I guess that's what comes when you are a legislative aide to Sen. Kennedy for three years.

Below is a message I sent to Rosenberg after reviewing his opinions on the issues.

Thanks to the happy 7 people who visited this blog and then took the Pepsi survey. My team got an A on the project, in large part because RC helped me with some statistics concepts on Friday evening. Sorry for making you miss "Murder She Wrote" reruns on TNT, RC. :)

Nathan says he's giving up.