June 2004 Archives

A few days ago somebody linked to an article of Pete's here, and opined that CL seemed to be run by a crew of Canadians.
Of course that wasn't right, but it inspired a change in the blog decor to salute Pete's national day.
Cheers!

This is why I love the Web: articles like this one, which compares the reviews of "Fahrenheit 9/11" with "The Passion of the Christ." Can you guess which one received the better notices?

Admiral Al Sharpton has a reality show coming out. Before you find out what it's about, think of the possiblities:

"How Many Donuts?" - Contestants guess how many donuts Al can eat. They drive him from store to store as each donut shop runs out of inventory.

"Sharpton Your Rhetoric" - Al coaches up-and-coming demagogues on the fine art of whipping the masses to a froth. One by one contestants are removed if they fail to incite riots, protests and sit-ins at City Hall. Contestants get extra points when more than 3 city blocks are destroyed by fire.

"Al Across the Globe" - Contestants travel with Al to exotic locales where they meet with local dictators, watch military parades and are filmed trashing the U.S.A. Every contestant that makes it back to the plane wins.

It turns out the show is about career counseling. I'm sleepy now.

Woo-hoo! Tonight was the first of twelve rehearsals of the Harvard Summer Chorus, and I'm in it this year. We're meeting five hours a week to learn the Dvorak Stabat Mater under the direction of maestra Beverly Taylor, who taught at Harvard for 17 years and is back this summer. This is gonna be intense!

Prof. Taylor's account of her journey to being a conductor appeared in Gregory Wolfe's journal Image in 1997.

If I were pagan, I'd be totally behind this idea.

CommentaryPage.com, an opinion site run by one of my colleagues, posted an article written by me about the origin of the Washington Post's shoddy Iraq coverage. The main culprit is Rajiv Chandrasekaran, a 31-year-old reporter who heads the Baghdad bureau. He's twisted the facts from the beginning to suit his "America will fail" meta-narrative, and I saw it with my own eyes in Iraq. He's looking to make his name on helping to break American will, and I wanted to open people's eyes to that fact.

Michelle Malkin, mother, Catholic, columnist, author of books and all-around total badass, has already linked to it.

That is the sound of the economy, and with it the increase in Consumer Confidence.

More news like this and Michael Moore will be forced to make sequels to F/9-11 that feature conspiracy theories about the Bush landslide in November.

The First Amendment fetishists -- whose views usually triumph in the Supreme Court -- have scored another victory. Pornographers can still market their filth to children, according to our judicial masters. More precisely, they can market their filth, and the authorities can do nothing to stop them.

I haven't read the majority opinion, and I won't venture one of my own until I do, except to point out that "free speech" trumps practically every other consideration (except when it comes to abortion-clinic protests, smoking ads, or other things that disgust the Supreme Court).

Some people think that America will continue to slide down into a moral swamp until we're mired in depravity. I disagree. In typical American fashion, we won't choose a moderate path of tolerating that which we cannot eradicate, and discouraging evil. We will say "anything goes!" until the consequences of the evils are too great. Then we will scream "ZERO TOLERANCE!" and make war on the fruits of our vices. Careening from one extreme to another is one of the great flaws in our national character.

Pete hasn't popped in yet with any comments on the Canadian election result, so I'll fill in for the moment. While the newly merged Conservative Party failed to win a majority, it picked up seats: current CBC figures give them 99. The Liberals and the socialist NDP together got 155 seats in Commons, the bare minimum required to control the House, so they'll see a Liberal minority government up North for a while. Then if and when some by-election shifts a seat to the Conservatives or the Bloc Quebecois, giving them the magic 155, we may get to see a Con-Bloc coalition. They wouldn't agree on federalism vs. separatism, but they'd probably have some common ground on devolution. It appears that Canada has developed a lot of the same polarization as the US, with the Left carrying cities and conservatives stronger elsewhere.

I'm looking forward to Lifesite's take on the results. My guess is that the mild Conservative gain is a mild pro-life gain, judging by the opposition they evoked from pro-aborts before the election.

Scans uncover secrets of the womb

A new type of ultrasound scan has produced the vivid pictures of a 12 week-old foetus "walking" in the womb.

The new images also show foetuses apparently yawning and rubbing its eyes.

The scans, pioneered by Professor Stuart Campbell at London's Create Health Clinic, are much more detailed than conventional ultrasound.

Professor Campbell has previously released images of unborn babies appearing to smile.

He has compiled a book of the images called Watch Me Grow.

Joseph A. Califano Jr., Washington establishmentarian, sets it all straight for us. He's been there, and he's done it right. He knows how to reconcile his Catholic beliefs with occupying a public office. He tells us this from the pages of the Washington Post, in an article reprinted from America magazine, that bastion of rock-ribbed Catholic orthodoxy.

When God and Caesar claim controlling jurisdiction over public policy in America, public servants who are Catholic can get caught between a religious rock and a public policy hard place. Sen. John F. Kerry, who is at the center of a controversy over whether Catholic politicians should be denied Communion if their political views contradict church teaching, finds himself there. But he's not the first. I know. I've been there, too.

We crafted an uneasy truce: If [President Johnson] used the term "population problem" (which also allowed for solutions such as increasing available food) rather than "birth control" or "population control," the bishops would stay silent. Johnson kept his part of the bargain. So did the bishops.

I'd love to hear the bishops' explanation. Did they really agree to "stay silent" while the Johnson administration pushed condoms and vasectomies on poor people? If so, that's a shame, but that doesn't diminish Califano's actions.

As a citizen I consider it preposterous and wrong for the political parties to impose an abortion litmus test on eligibility for their party's presidential nomination: in support of abortion rights for Democrats, and opposed to them for Republicans. But that is no reason for the bishops to make the same mistake by imposing a similar litmus test for the right to receive Communion.

I believe that public figures who are Catholic are entitled to consult their own conscience to determine whether they are entitled to receive Communion. The Catholic tradition of leaving that decision to the individual Catholic and God applies to Catholics who have divorced, sinned or eaten food five minutes before Mass.

Read the whole thing here. Couldn't the Post find somebody with an original thought to contribute? Or someone who could come up with a line better than "a religious rock and a public policy hard place"?

It does provide a minor public service: we now know how culpable Joseph Califano was in midwifing the Culture of Death a quarter-century ago. I'm sure it will be read back to him at the Last Judgment.

I was able to register a new vehicle, get a title and new tags in 14 minutes at the Springfield, VA DMV. If this is a dream, I don't want to wake up.

Michael Moore is bigger than Jesus. I mean that literally: given that people were smaller 2,000 years ago, he is bigger than the Holy Family and all twelve apostles put together.

But that's not important right now. Some people think "Fahrenheit 9/11" is going to be more popular than "The Passion of the Christ." That seems doubtful, even though the per theater average is about the same as "The Passion" on its opening weekend. Says the respected movie stat site Box Office Mojo:

Though Fahrenheit's $25,115 per theater average is extraordinary, it's not unprecedented. It ranks as the seventh highest all time for a wide release (adjusting for ticket price inflation knocks it down to no. 28) and the third best this year behind The Passion of the Christ's $27,554 and Shrek 2's $25,951. However, they were super-saturation releases playing at 3,043 and 4,163 theaters respectively -- the lower the theater count, the easier it is to have a high average as the release isn't diluted by less populous locations with lower ticket prices.

It seems doubtful that "Fahrenheit 9/11" will top $600 million worldwide, which it would need to do to beat "The Passion." I'm sure it will be a hit, though, as the market for Bush-haters is looking bullish these days. (Whether that market is expanding is an open question.) Yet one of our readers, "jeff", is concerned that we are being insufficiently open-minded. To avoid misquoting him, his full comment is below (onomatopoeia in the original).

It's sad to me that people censor themselves - e.g., Michael Moore's film.

The America I know is one where people actually consider other points of view. Unlike some comments on this thread, I saw Fahrenheit 9/11... Do I agree with everything in it? Will it change my vote? Of course not. But, at least I can have a cogent discussion on the movie because I saw it.

Why are people so afraid of ideas that contradict their own? If your position is strong, films like Fahrenheit 9/11 will only add to it, not detract. Furthermore, when someone [who is ignorant] talks to you about the film, you can actually explain your [stronger] point of view.

The America of today seems to be: make your decision about whether to view/read/hear something based on second-hand information you read on some blog or heard on Fox News. Talk about being duped.

Sigh.

To clarify my own position, I will not be seeing the movie in question. Not in the theater, not on DVD, not on cable, not on network TV. Not in my house, not with a mouse, not in the dark, not with a lark...you get the idea. Yet I have absolutely no problem saying that in my considered, intellectual opinion, it sucks and I hate it.

To Jeff, this means I am "afraid of ideas that contradict [my] own." Untrue. If that were true, I would pay no attention to politics and would never listen to others' religious opinions.

The primary reason I won't see this movie is because I'm married with three little kids, and it's a lot of trouble for my wife and me to see a movie. It's also very expensive. An evening with a nice dinner, movie tickets for two, and a babysitter costs about $100 in this part of the country. For that price, when I see a movie in the theater I had better pass out from laughter or become a better person. I doubt either one will happen with "Fahrenheit." There are other reasons, enumerated forthwith.

Seeing the movie absolutely will not make me like it. That isn't true for a fictional movie. When I was away last year, I saw many movies I would not have seen unless I had nothing better to do. I thought I would have despised a teen comedy like "10 Things I Hate About You," but I found it hilarious and emotionally compelling. There were also movies I might have seen because I am married to a woman, such as "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days," which were unwatchable and managed to temporarily lower my I.Q.

No such epiphany is possible for "Fahrenheit." My objection to the movie is not aesthetic, it is intellectual. It's not as if my sources are saying it has ugly cinematography and unbelievable characters. This is a documentary, which means it comes from a point of view and presents facts accordingly. I consider the point of view to be that of a lazy, paranoid pseudo-intellectual. There are many purported "facts" which are either misleading or false. For example, I've read that Moore thinks the Saudis run Bush's foreign policy. Seeing that slander on the silver screen isn't going to make it any less false.

I've heard it all before. Nothing he says is going to surprise me. I'm familiar with the "point of view" because I've seen it on the Loony Left Web sites, from which all of his "facts" seem to originate.

Self-censorship is a good thing. Nobody has unlimited time on Earth. We must use it as best we can. All points of view are not equally valid or worthy of our attention. That means we have to filter out experiences that are unlikely to be of any benefit.

Paying to see "Fahrenheit 9/11" would give money to someone beneath contempt. Jeff, you might not know this, but Michael Moore thinks more American soldiers and Marines should die in Iraq. You cool with that? If you think that's an exaggeration or distortion, let's let him speak for himself:

I'm sorry, but the majority of Americans supported this war once it began and, sadly, that majority must now sacrifice their children until enough blood has been let that maybe -- just maybe -- God and the Iraqi people will forgive us in the end.

I understand there is a smarmy part of "Fahrenheit" where he emphasizes that the poor and minorities are the only ones desperate (or dumb) enough to enlist in Bush's military. Thus he thinks it's unfortunate that anyone should join the armed forces, but if they do, then they deserve to be human sacrifices for our national sins.

When I read that, I thought I would beat his flabby ass if I ever saw him in person -- but what would be the point of that? It hardly seems like a Christian response (a whipping seems more appropriate), and it lacks style. Then I envisioned the perfect attack: spray him with Silly String. It isn't violent, and it would drive that pompous mountebank insane. It has a historical precedent: our Founding Fathers used Silly String to ridicule their British oppressors.

So I already know enough about "Fahrenheit" to devise an appropriate way to converse with Michael Moore about his "ideas." And I've done it without wasting an evening and a hundred bucks. That works on so many levels.

Postscript: Anti-Americans in other countries should just give up, because Moore demonstrates our cultural superiority. We're so great, we can even do anti-Americanism better than foreigners! Everybody start chanting now:
U! S! A!
U! S! A!
U! S! A!

As I monitor a server at work, a thought fluttered into my head:

Political conservatives keep saying that "Farenheit 9/11" won't affect the election because Michael Moore is a paranoid buffoon. However, the movie is apparently doing quite well.

By most people's reckoning, the presidential election will be decided by a slim margin, and by people who make up their minds at the last minute, despite the wealth of information they have about both candidates, their records, and their positions. These are people who don't know much about national affairs, and who will make their decision based on television ads or other ephemera.

So the election may very well be decided by the ignorant and the easily duped. From what I've read, only the ignorant and the easily duped will be persuaded by Moore's movie. Therefore, it could very well decide the next election. Think about it....

Masses were offered today for the protection of the unborn and an end to abortion in some parishes in Arlington. The readings of are providentially, perhaps even hauntingly, appropriate for the occasion. Excerpts appear below.

Lamentations 2:2, 10-14, 18-19

18 Cry aloud to the Lord! O daughter of Zion! Let tears stream down like a torrent day and night! Give yourself no rest, your eyes no respite!
19 Arise, cry out in the night, at the beginning of the watches! Pour out your heart like water before the presence of the Lord! Lift your hands to him for the lives of your children, who faint for hunger at the head of every street.

3 Direct thy steps to the perpetual ruins; the enemy has destroyed everything in the sanctuary!
4 Thy foes have roared in the midst of thy holy place; they set up their own signs for signs.
5 At the upper entrance they hacked the wooden trellis with axes.
6 And then all its carved wood they broke down with hatchets and hammers.
7 They set thy sanctuary on fire; to the ground they desecrated the dwelling place of thy name.
20 Have regard for thy covenant; for the dark places of the land are full of the habitations of violence.
21 Let not the downtrodden be put to shame; let the poor and needy praise thy name.

After the Masses a group of the faithful prayed all four mysteries of the Rosary in front of an abortion clinic in Alexandria. I spoke with a man who had been praying with the group for years. He said the worst thing is to see a father drive his teenage daughter to the clinic to procure an abortion. "What kind of sicko would do that?" he asked. "The man who gave his little girl life is taking her to kill her own baby." It reminds me of one of the many things Mother Teresa said about abortion:

"Please don't kill the child. I want the child. Please give me the child. I am willing to accept any child who would be aborted, and to give that child to a married couple who will love the child, and be loved by the child. From our children's home in Calcutta alone, we have saved over 3,000 children from abortions. These children have brought such love and joy to their adopting parents, and have grown up so full of love and joy!"

Reflecting on the beautiful quote I posted below and what I've read of and by St. Josemaria Escriva, I'm convinced that the spirituality of Opus Dei is the antidote for the pathologies of modernity: atheism, secularism, hedonism, spiritualism, and whatever other "isms" I've neglected to mention. The tendency in the West to remove any mention of the Christian God or religion from public discourse is countered by the Opus Dei, which seeks to sanctify everyday life in a practical manner, thus giving its members a means to answer the universal call to holiness of Lumen Gentium and providing the world with an authentic witness of Christ.

"I will go up to the foot of the Cross; I will press my arms tightly around the cold body, the corpse of Christ, with the fire of my love.....I will unail it, with my reparation and mortifications....I will wrap it in the new winding-sheet of my clean life, and I will bury it in the clean rock of my breast, where no one can tear it away from me, and there, Lord, take your rest! Were the whole world to abandon you...serviam! I will serve you Lord."
-St. Jose Maria Escriva

Ora pro nobis!

Thomas Sowell explains how.

A 'real nun'
with a fake name
sends an e-mail
to a fake nun
to confirm that
she's a real nun.

Jeff Miller explains it all for you.

1. Leahy had it coming:

   "It was partly that, it was partly also ... it had to do with -- he is the kind of individual who will make those kinds of charges and then come act as though he's your best friend, and I expressed in no uncertain terms my views of his conduct and walked away," Cheney said.

   "Part of the problem here is that instead of having a substantive debate over important substantive policy issues, he had challenged my integrity, and I didn't like that. But most of all I didn't like the fact that after he'd done so, then he wanted to act like everything was peaches and cream."

   
   
2. I'm glad Cheney felt better after giving Leahy a piece of his mind.
   
3. This is probably the funniest graphic I've ever seen on CNN:

MADRID, Spain (AP) -- Pigeons fluttering through a hole in the ceiling of a Spanish cathedral led an art restoration team to discover a hidden Renaissance fresco of winged angels that had been covered by a false ceiling for more than 300 years.

Iranian Source: British Sailors Apprehended To Swap For 40 Iranian Volunteers for Suicide Missions Captured in Iraq

Hi folks, I have an urgent prayer request. There's been a rather frightening twist in my moving plans back to Canada. Barring Divine intervention, I'm likely gonna find myself stuck in no-man's land between the US and the Canadian border. It concerns importing my car, as I attempt to negotiate between US customs, Canada customs, my insurance company and possibly a second one, and the bank that holds the lien on my car. Please keep this in prayer, as it needs to be resolved before the day is over.

Betrayal: AOL staffer sells customer list to spammer

A friend says, "Now this is a case where even the USCCB might support the death penalty."

Lawmakers Mum on Rev. Moon Event - foxnews.com

WASHINGTON — It’s one of the most bizarre incidents to take place on Capitol Hill in a long time: A ceremony honoring the very controversial Rev. Sun Myung Moon, with at least a dozen lawmakers in attendance.

During the ceremony, a crown was placed on Moon’s head and he said he would save the souls of everyone on Earth, just as he had done for notorious dictators Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin — whom the reverend said were reborn because of his teachings

Can you imagine being one of the legislators at this ceremony?

Amateur singers normally don't sing without breaks in the sound that cut up the flow of the line. In music terms, they don't know how to sing legato.

One cause of non-legato singing is the singer simply doesn't know how to hold his breath while singing. You don't push the air out to make sound, you have to hold your breath. The tension created in the torso is not something your average person is used to. The singer releases the tension whenever possible and that breaks up the line.

The other issue is that singers tend to close to voiced consonants to early. A voice consonant has a pitch: "ng" as in "King", the letter n, the letter m are all example. Instead of giving the vowel the full duration, the sing will close to the "ng" and hold that on a pitch. That works for Sinata but no Palestrina. Even Haugen sounds crappy (crappier?) when not sung legato.

I can normally get good results if I just bring up these two points. It's tough to create choral habits, but legato singing should be one of them.

GREENWOOD VILLAGE, Colo. — Colorado Republican Senate hopeful Pete Coors yesterday criticized the legal drinking age, chiding the federal government for coercing states into raising the age limit from 18 to 21.
"We got along fine for years with the 18-year-old drinking age," the former CEO of the Coors Brewing Co. told an audience of about 200 people at a candidates' debate here. "We're criminalizing our young people."

The Bush administration, in violation of the Geneva protections to which fighting men are entitled, paraded eight Iraqi prisoners on television. This is a war crime: governments are not supposed to use pictures of prisoners in propaganda. The officials who approved this should be held responsible and put on trial.

Wait -- sorry for the error. It was the Iranian government parading British sailors for the cameras. But I'm sure the Left and our major media are going to go ballistic when they see this, right? Because they keep telling us that violating the Geneva Conventions is pretty much the worst thing a government can do. Because the media are so even-handed, they treat all prisoner abuse seriously.

I expect when I wake tomorrow and stumble out to my driveway, that photo will be on the front page of the Washington Post, along with a long analytical article and an outraged editorial. No, two outraged editorials. Maybe even three, plus a shot of a prisoner's family member dabbing at her eye with a handkerchief.

Otherwise, we might get the idea that the media are willing to look the other way when it's not U.S. soldiers committing abuse. Or that they are incapable of understanding the difference between officially sanctioned abuse and unofficial, punishable abuse. Or that the Left is so afraid of Islamic terrorism that it ignores or explains away abhorrent actions when radical Muslims do them, but not when Westerners do them.

Our proofreader, Nihil Obstat, wrote the following on Wednesday, May 05:

Well, I don't think anyone wants it be a curly Catholic blog.

Care to buy an infinitive, N.O.?

Some weeks ago I volunteered to help manage and train the altar servers at my parish. I've noticed that the vast majority of them have no clue what is going on during Mass; they don't say the proper responses or sing things like the Alleluia, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei. Does anyone know of a simple booklet out there to teach kids what the Mass is all about? I'm looking for something small and inexpensive. Give Mr. Sal some help now and we might get more vocations out of this parish!

The Vatican has strongly protested to China over the arrest of three Roman Catholic bishops - one of them 84 years old - in the past month.

It's a bee-sting and a paper cut with a dash of salt.

It was a symptom of Bill Clinton's tackiness that he inverted the old axiom that "everyone lies about sex." It's true, gentlemen did lie about sex to protect the honor of women. Bill Clinton lied about the honor of women he had sex with to protect himself.

-Jonah Goldberg on NRO

As some of you know, I'm currently in an MBA program at UMUC. I've learned alot so far and that's helped my company and my customers.

There is one overarching issue in the program related to teamwork. We have a huge amount of social loafing in the teams. The overacheivers want to do a good job and work hard, while some of the folks are content to act busy, deliver something that is inaccurate or rudimentary, and then be first in line for the high-fives when the team gets an A.

One team member is now being called the "Loch Ness Monster." He pokes his head above water on rare ocassions to act like he's engaged, then dives to the bottom of the Loch until the project is turned in.

I'm sure other folks have Loch Ness Monster sightings at work or school. Or maybe more colorful nicknames...

I saw a retrospective of this young fella on the Today Show this morning. I've never read his poems so I can't comment on his message in detail, but he seemed like a wonderful kid who did his best to bring light to the world in the time he had.

Here's the WashPost article.

I watched the first half of the BBC interview with Bill Clinton, which you can see here. You may have heard that he grows angry with the interviewer, and so I'll save you some time if you want to see it: skip to 19:00, and you'll see the lead-up. The outburst starts building at 24:30, with a crescendo at 28:50.

I thought of so many things while watching it, but I am so tired of thinking about that man that I cannot summon the energy. A few thoughts, though:

A close family member used to work with Ken Starr. One of my best friends took a constitutional law class with him. When I had lunch with a senior editor at another news organization, he said he had interviewed Starr many times over the years. All of them, to a man, remarked how fair and honest he was, and that he was light years away from the snarling partisan that Clinton imagined, and continues to imagine in this interview.

Some of his facts are flat-out wrong. Susan McDougal was jailed for contempt of court by a judge, not Starr, who was not a prosecutor. She was one of the "little people" Clinton says were trampled by the all-out rush to ruin him. Governor Jim Guy Tucker, the sitting governor of Arkansas, also resigned and went to jail as a result of Starr's investigation. Apparently the criminal justice system had it in for Clinton, too.

The outburst itself was classic Clinton. The childish sense of persecution, the peevish remarks to the interviewer such as "people like you always help the far right" (was he even familiar with the guy interviewing him?) His descriptions of how "the other side" operated was the mirror opposite of the truth. He says the evil Republicans thought that politics was about power, and he thought it was about how power ought to be used. But if there is a modern politician who believed in acquiring power for his own sake, it would be him.

Clinton doesn't ever say "I lied," he says "I did not tell the truth." He talks about "personal mistakes," too. His language is carefully selected so he can admit to the bare minimum ("leading parallel lives," whatever the hell that means -- maybe he has a different view of the space-time continuum, and thinks there are actually two Bill Clintons.)

I'm not very interested in re-fighting the 1990s. I just wish he would go away.

Right around the time Clinton left office, I was at my father-in-law's house on the Eastern Shore, flipping through the cable channels. (We don't pay for our TV viewing, so it's a small pleasure when I can do that.) An ad for a video caught my eye, with the title "Funniest Presidential Moments" or something like that. There was one scene with President Clinton and Boris Yeltsin are laughing at an off-camera incident. Both of them are roaring with mirth.

It occurred to me that this was the first time I had ever seen Clinton in an unselfconscious moment. He always seemed to be looking around at who was watching him, playing to the crowd, giving people what they wanted to hear. But here he saw an incident and laughed at it, not to get on someone's good side, but merely because it was funny.

Then a subsequent thought hit me: since early 1992, when he first became nationally known, I had never thought of Bill Clinton as anything other than a fraud. There have been other politicians I have loathed for their politics, but I could concede that at least on one or two issues, they really believed what they said, or they had some trait that humanized them.

Clinton is all appetite, as Jesse Jackson once remarked. He was, and is, driven by his emotional needs and sexual desires, which are probably indistinguishable. His soul is a black hole for adulation, which he craves like a narcotic. Anything he gives, he gives only in the expectation of getting.

It would be difficult to think of a more perfect narcissist -- his life and career were completely ordered toward maximizing his own self-importance. He never sacrificed for others, but asked others to make great sacrifices for him. Many of them did: Susan McDougal went to jail to avoid implicating him in a crooked real-estate deal. The feminists destroyed their own movement when they defended his abuse of power. (Who can possibly take them seriously about sexual harassment, or anything else?) Congressional Democrats went from a majority to a minority because of Clinton, yet they issued teeth-bared defenses of him when he was impeached.

So who are these two million people buying Clinton's new book? Presidential memoirs are a dreary sub-genre, even for presidents like Reagan who knew how to express themselves. For a known liar and slight-of-hand artist like Clinton, who never expresses his own mind without doing the political calculations, why would anyone care to buy it?

The best explanation I can provide is that for the Bush-haters, it's a demonstration of their contempt for the current president. I can't imagine more than a tenth of the buyers will be able to plow their way through almost 1,000 pages of preening. His book might have been interesting in 20 years, after time has worn down his body and his partner has left the Senate.

According to the reviews I've read, such as the AP's, "It's like being locked in a small room with a very gregarious man who insists on reading his entire appointment book, day by day, beginning in 1946." If someone else wants to read it and post their thoughts, by all means, and I salute your bravery and tenacity.

To describe this film as dishonest and demagogic would almost be to promote those terms to the level of respectability. To describe this film as a piece of crap would be to run the risk of a discourse that would never again rise above the excremental. To describe it as an exercise in facile crowd-pleasing would be too obvious. Fahrenheit 9/11 is a sinister exercise in moral frivolity, crudely disguised as an exercise in seriousness. It is also a spectacle of abject political cowardice masking itself as a demonstration of "dissenting" bravery.

Hitchens critique of Moore and his "documentary" is devastating. It won't keep Moore from laughing all the way to the bank with this dreck, coming soon to a theatre near you.

The anti-Christian movie "Saved!" (don't forget the exclamation! point! at! the! end!) was released in hundreds of movie theaters two weeks ago. Why is it anti-Christian? Because Christians are portrayed as nasty, thoughtless, and intolerant, and the symbols and beliefs of Christianity are held up for ridicule. Other than that, it's very respectful, I'm quite sure.

Despite reflecting the film industry's general contempt for faith, movie reviewers are bothered by the movie. You might find that shocking -- are they saying that evangelical Christians deserve fair treatment, at least as fair as Muslims or Arabs? Nope. They are concerned because an unwed teen mother didn't consider killing her baby.

...You see, the main character, a high-school senior, gets pregnant while having sex with her gay boyfriend. She then carries their baby to term. Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly lamented that the girl's "crisis is 'resolved' with a starry-eyed naivete that borders on the irresponsible. I wish that Saved! weren't a facile pro-life movie." Atkinson was likewise bothered by the way "the narrative fastidiously avoids . . . the possibility of abortion." Ditto for Denby. And double ditto for Salon's Stephanie Zacharek, who spent a quarter of her review on this lament.

Don R. Lewis, of Film Threat, wrote that Saved! is "a sweet and funny movie that starts off with bite but settles into an honest feeling of happiness and acceptance for all types of people and their choices." Of course, he doesn't really mean all types of people. He went on to note that the movie is "a gentle exploration of why the judgments of the Catholic church are so screwed up." (Saved! is about evangelical Christians--not Catholics--but you know how it is. They all look alike.)

[Warning: Harsh Blog Commentary Follows -- Not suitable for mothers, young ladies and children]

With apologies to GWAR...

It's not your imagination and it's not a bad trippy,
yes, that's right, it's Michael Moore the hippy

As some of you might be aware, there's a federal election going on in Canada right now. And guess what? The Conservative Party is winning. The reason for this is simple: Canadians like myself who take their religion seriously are sick and tired of having the Liberal goverment (assisted by the socialist NDP) shove the homosexual agenda down our throats.

Michael Moore is not happy about the rise of the Conservative Party of Canada in the polls. So he recently made his way to Toronto where, with all the arrogance of an American imperialist, he warned Canadians against voting for the Conservative Party of Canada.

Michael, I've spent the past four years living in the United States. Most Americans I have met are warm and hospitable people. These are memories that I will take with me when I move back to Canada next week to pursue my doctorate. You, however, are the exception to my otherwise positive experience of Americans. In fact, with your smug paternalistic attitude YOU -- and not President Bush -- are the stereotypical ugly American that the rest of the world complains about. You're obnoxious, you're condescending and you're also fat from eating too much junk food.

We Canadians know how we will vote in the next election. Our votes are not about to change because some journalistic equivalent to masturbation (your entire shtick, in my opinion, is about Michael Moore -- nobody else -- so you don't even have enough credibility to be dismissed as a hack) orders us to do otherwise.

Michael Moore, go home! You've made a big enough nuissance of yourself in your own country. Leave Canadians alone...

As a number of my print readers enjoyed the following interview I conducted with Paul Tuns, editor of the Interim (Canada's national pro-life newspaper) for the Wanderer, I thought I would share it with my cyber-readership as well. Enjoy!

Inside Canada’s Culture War
The Wanderer Interviews Paul Tuns

by Pete Vere

While the majority of our readership is of American nationality, Canada continues to provide our nation with an important barometer concerning the culture war. This is because after each victory gained in Canada, the culture of death will often seek to replicate their advance in the United States of America. Thus the Wanderer has featured many stories over the past year that concern the culture war in Canada.

At the forefront of Canada’s culture war stands Paul Tuns. Our Canadian readers will recognize Paul as the editor of the Interim, which happens to be Canada’s national pro-life newspaper. For the rest of our readers, the Interim is also a sister organization to LifeSite News, whose timely press-releases regularly find their way into the pages of the Wanderer. Recently, Wanderer correspondent Pete Vere had the opportunity to interview Paul concerning the culture war in Canada.

For our American readers, could you please tell us a little bit about the Interim?

The Interim is Canada's largest (more than 20,000 circulation) pro-life, pro-family newspaper. A non-partisan paper without formal ties to any religion or religious organization, it has published monthly since March 1983 with the support of our advertisers, parish sponsors and the generousity of Campaign Life Coalition (CLC). CLC is the political lobbying arm of the Canadian pro-life movement.

CLC started The Interim in 1983 when the media refused to cover a Bernard Nathansan press conference in Toronto. CLC decided that if the media was not going to cover pro-life stories, it had to get into the business of journalism. Shortly afterward, The Interim was incorporated as an independent entity.

We cover news from Canada, the United States and around the world on issues such as abortion, contraception, euthanasia, the family, homosexuality, education, religious and free speech rights, the United Nations and numerous issues that would fall under the rubric of social/cultural conservatism.

What are some of the major pro-life issues facing Canadians?

We recently fought against Bill C-13, the government's reproductive and experimental technologies bill. Normally government legislation is rammed through Parliament quickly but not this bill. Originally introduced in May 2001, it took nearly three years to pass, mostly because of the work of pro-life Canadians lobbying their Members of Parliament.

In the end, the government had to make a deal with one of the opposition parties to ensure passage of this fundamentally flawed bill that allows embryonic stem cell research and, because of the faulty language the bill uses, human cloning. Despite having a majority, the government had no idea if the bill would pass without their deal with the NDP [Canada’s socialist party] because numerous Liberals opposed their own government's anti-life legislation.
Right now, pro-life Canadians are getting ready for a federal election in which no major party leader or platform is pro-life, leading most social conservative voters to closely examine the local candidates. In terms of specific issues, some provincial groups are trying to raise awareness about public funding of abortion and on Parliament Hill last week, several Members of Parliament began talking about the need for conscience protection for health care workers and other professionals. Unfortunately, a media-imposed silence on the issue makes it very difficult to begin any national pro-life campaign.

How is the culture war in Canada different than that of the United States?

It is very different and for many reasons. First, the abortion issue hardly reaches the surface of political debate in Canada. In the 2000 federal election, Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chretien said Canada had social peace on abortion. If it does, it is paid for by the blood of at least 106,000 unborn babies each year.

But I think Chretien confused forced silence with social peace; the major parties, the major papers, the three major broadcasters and the single national news magazine are all silent but the fact is there are more Canadians who are members of pro-life groups in Canada than there are members of political parties (in non-election years). Obviously many Canadians haven't got the memo that they were supposed to surrender their principles.

Secondly, as bad as judicial activism is in the United States, it is worse in Canada. For 15 years, Canada has had no abortion law because the Supreme Court struck it down. Only twice since has the federal government considered any legislation or motions on the issue. To make matters worse, on abortion and the gay rights agenda, legislators defer to the courts and claim it is out of their hands to address the issue because the courts have spoken. Weak-kneed politicians have surrendered their rights and responsibilities to the robed dictators.

The culture wars in Canada operate almost entirely in cyberspace. Because the media and political elite are overwhelmingly socially liberal – even more so than in the United States, it is almost the only place any debate on the issue occurs. We have no Fox News, no National Review. If you don't count The Interim, there is only one major conservative magazine (the Western Standard) and one nominally non-liberal newspaper (the National Post).

Furthermore, our Catholic colleges harbour numerous heretics and there are few who challenge them. There is no Ave Maria law school, just a collection of Georgetowns. Our biggest Catholic newspaper is more likely to editorialize on poverty than abortion, homosexuality or the filth that passes as culture. There is no broadly conservative think tank. In short, the conservative movement is a loosely connected grassroots movement that does not have the trappings of a movement – publications, research centers, anything really – that develops ideas or encourages debate.

This is slowly beginning to change. My friend Tristan Emmanuel, a Presbyterian minister, has begun a publishing house, Freedom Press (Canada) Inc., that hopes to publish several titles a year by new conservative voices. But it will take a lot of work.

Should Americans pay attention to the struggles of the pro-life movement in Canada? Why?

Yes, and we what happens in the United States. I say this for three reasons. The first and obvious is that what happens in one country does affect the other. Our media, politicians and academics get ideas from one another. The border is very porous when it comes to ideas.

The second is that the Left uses the same bullying tactics and arguments north and south of the border. Watching each other's struggles we can learn to anticipate their next moves and what does and does not work to counter them.

Lastly and most significantly in recent years are the court decisions in our two countries. Following last year's Lawrence decision, several members of the Supreme Court admitted to having consulted international and foreign law; that is, the legal decisions of other nations, including the Ontario (provincial) Superior Court that legalized same-sex marriage in one part of Canada was cited as evidence of a growing tolerance of homosexuality. If Canadian precedents are going influence American law (and presumably vice versa), we should be aware of those decisions and the arguments used in winning and losing cases.

How difficult is it to be a pro-life politician in Canada?

Extremely. The political mythology has it that pro-lifers are all bigoted Christians and that merely courting their support is a political albatross, a signal to Canadians that one is little more than a neanderthal with a tie. Pro-life Conservatives have faced media ridicule as unenlightened religious fanatics trying to take over the party. Pro-life Liberals [Canada’s closest equivalent to Casey Democrats] face the scorn of their caucus colleagues and a severely diminished chance of ever being promoted to the cabinet. Canada has moved from the idea that one does not have the right to impose their personal beliefs on abortion on the rest of the country to the idea that people who hold pro-life views ought not run for political office at all.

Recently, the Globe and Mail, Canada's oldest national paper, claimed the Conservative Party was being taken over by evangelical social conservatives because three candidates (out of 308) had histories with evangelical organizations. Even many in the Conservative Party are uncomfortable with pro-lifers running under their banner. Of course, they want our votes, but the party doesn't want to do a lot to earn it. At most, they offer a seat at the table to raise our issues but they don't realize that politics is about more than airing grievances; political debate is about trying to persuade others of the superiority of your views over another. Pro-lifers are increasingly denied that opportunity in the political arena.

Any concluding thoughts you wish to share with our readers?

As much as I have sounded that the cause is hopeless, I do not believe all is lost. Five or six years ago when President Bill Clinton was vetoing the partial-birth abortion ban, I am sure many pro-life Americans were wondering when the madness would stop. If an almost fully delivered infant can be aborted , what limits could there possibly be? But pro-life legislation has been passed and signed at the federal and state levels in the US.

I am hopeful that eventually the tide will turn in Canada, too. Abortion is propped up by nothing but lies and lies cannot withstand the force of truth forever. As more Canadians learn the truth about abortion – that is kills an unborn human being, that it harms women, that is costs taxpayers untold tens of millions of dollars, that doctors are not being graduated from med schools because they refuse to participate in abortions – Canadians will turn against abortion-on-demand. It might take 5 or 10 or 20 years, but it will happen. To despair is a sin; we place our trust in God and continue to do his work. Through us, the seeds of a culture of life are being sewn. I hope that I will see that tree blossom some day.

Here's a stinker in the offing: "Constantine," a movie about supernatural stuff.

Rachel Weisz (who my wife thinks I like because she's beautiful but I also enjoy her acting) is the skeptical naif who "doesn't believe in the devil." She'll look like the Thespian Queen next to Keanu Reeves, her co-star, who will someday have the anti-Oscar for worst male actor named after him. (The female award will be named after Melanie Griffith.)

I gather from the trailer that Keanu is some kind of exorcist guy who battles supernatural devil things and all that. In his best grown-up voice, he says "God and the devil made a wager for the souls of all mankind." Evidently, Warner Brothers has wagered tens of millions of dollars that people will want to see a movie with that bird-dropping of a premise.

Lot of movies in the last few years that have combined special effects, action, and pseudo-religious mumbo-jumbo: "Stigmata," "End of Days," and others I can't remember because I didn't see them. Most of them have been flops.

Since Hollywood is one of the most relentlessly secular places on Earth outside of Scandinavia, movie bigwigs want to exploit that religion thing they keep hearing rumors about, but they don't want to treat it seriously. They know it's a mess of lies and moral extremism, and anyone with more than half a brain knows it's a bunch of hooey; proceeding on that premise, they then make movies for people with half a brain.

I thought this would be a movie about Emperor Constantine. Maybe it's better that it isn't, because Hollywood would screw up the story just like they screwed up the real story of God and the devil, which is infinitely more interesting. Not to mention deadly important.

The Dallas Morning News series on molester priests transferred to other countries to protect them from the law started today. The photo with this particular story shows convicted molester Fr. Frank Klep handing out candy to kids after Mass in Samoa. The series will apparently be a big deal at the DMN: it gets its own Flash presentation.

For decades, liberal judges have advanced their agenda by arbitrarily declaring "rights" that defy the Western legal tradition, articulated so well by Cicero, Aquinas and Martin Luther King Jr., that just laws comport with God's laws. They have declared peddling pornography, killing unborn babies and even same-sex marriage are "rights."
These are not rights, they are wrongs. For judges to enshrine them permanently in our law, they must first unthrone God — and put themselves in His place.

A reality check on Kerry's fantastic promises for his first 100 days in office.

A devotional two-fer this weekend, Solemnity of the Sacred Heart yesterday and Immaculate Heart of Mary today. I have a beautiful visage of the Sacred Heart that belonged to Grandma Ravilla that I will attempt to post here later today. It's one of a kind and I've often thought of having it reproduced. I am in awe that the Church was born from the very Heart of Christ, cruely pierced by human sin though boundness in merciful love for each one of us.

From the depth of my nothingness, I prostrate myself before Thee, O Most Sacred, Divine and Adorable Heart of Jesus, to pay Thee all the homage of love, praise and adoration in my power.
Amen. - - St. Margaret Mary Alacoque

From The Holy Father:

Mary was at the foot of the Cross, co-participant of the Passion of the Son. She offers her Mother's heart as refuge to those who seek forgiveness, hope, and peace, as we were reminded in the feast of the Immaculate Heart. Mary has cleansed us in the blood of the crucified Son. To her, we entrust the blood of the victims of violence, so that it will be rescued with that blood that Jesus poured out for the salvation of the world.

The Vatican's chief official for relations with other Christians gave a speech Friday morning. Here's how our friends at Catholic World News led the story:

Cardinal Kasper backs "Eucharistic hospitality"

Vatican , Jun. 18 (CWNews.com) - Cardinal Walter Kasper, the president of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity, has said that "Eucharistic hospitality" is licit in some circumstances.

Speaking at a major conference of German Catholics in the city of Ulm on June 18, Cardinal Kasper said that "there are circumstances when a non-Catholic can receive Communion at a Catholic Mass."

In his 2003 encyclical Ecclesia de Eucharistia, Pope John Paul II devoted most of a chapter to the issue, stressing that non-Catholics should not receive Communion. The Pope argued forcefully that the practice of intercommunion is an offense against ecumenism, not an aid, because it creates the false impression that non-Catholics share the Church's teaching on the nature of the Eucharist.

In the recent instruction Redemptionis Sacramentum , the Congregation for Divine Worship reiterated that stand, emphasizing that under any normal circumstances "Eucharistic hospitality" is a grave abuse.

"Kaspar is an embarrassment to Catholicism. His positions are heretical and reflective of an apostate who has lost the faith...."

"Cardinal Kasper should be given the boot out of the Vatican's door...."

"What a joke - the head of the council for Christian Unity doing everything he can to destroy unity in the Church. ..."

All in all, I think the CWN piece misrepresents the Cardinal's speech, so here's the relevant passage, available from the conference website (my translation):

God swiftly answered the prayer for vengeance on Paul Johnson's murderers. Thanks be to God. May he have mercy on the three dead terrorists' souls. Let their examples stay the hands of other evil men, and move them to repentance.

Please do not let this take your focus off of months-old American crimes at Abu Ghirab prison, nor the outrageous memo <sarcasm>which is the equivalent of the Final Solution</sarcasm>. I would like to point out that Al Qaeda has brutally murdered another American civilian, engaged in innocent, legal commerce.

This might cause you to think that the war on terror A) exists; and B) that a worldwide conspiracy dedicated to mass murder is much worse than a bunch of soldiers who are headed for prison themselves. Please dismiss such thoughts from your minds and think about that freaky West Virginia slut with the leash.

<total_seriousness level='high'>
May God rest the soul of Paul Johnson, and may the enemies of the innocent either repent or, as the Psalmist says, choke on their own blood.
</total_seriousness>

<humorous_conclusion mode='black'>
Let us not forget, however, that this is nothing compared to the Hitler-like treatment meted out to José Padilla.
</humorous_conclusion>

Three Dallas Morning News reporters have found that much as some dioceses moved abuser-priests from town to town or across diocesan lines, some religious orders moved priests known to have molested children from country to country to spare them from public exposure and prosecution. Reporters found such priests still in active ministry with children. Any bishop who thinks the worst of these revelations are over is engaged in wishful thinking.

Cantors have been known to cause heartburn, anxiety, dismay and hearing loss. Everyone could relate a story about the Cantor who made a liturgy nearly unbearable because of the volume, tone or gestures. Did he reach the high note that starts "On Eagle's Wings?" Probably not, and neither did the rest of the congregation.

A cantor is supposed to lead the musical/congregational prayer of the liturgy. I try to be as unobtrusive as possible. I say as little as possible, I only move to bring the congregation in (usually with one arm) and I move away from the mic when the range is such that I don't need the mic and when it's time for the congregation to sing. There's nothing worse than what Thomas Day calls "Mr. Caruso" - the cantor that has the mic planted firmly between his front teeth and is extracting every decibel possible from the parish's shoddy sound system.

If cantors remembers it's all about prayer to God rather than all about themselves, that usually goes a long way to helping the situation.

I could go on and on, but I'm out of time and I'm sure you have opinions.

Fair is fair: Mark posted my e-mail to him on his blog, and links to Catholic Light. I am linking back to him. You may decide for yourself if my view is "absurd," but please read my elaborations in the comment box before you come to a conclusion. (Funny -- no one has commented on my assertion that "one should be very careful in using the word "polestar" in connection with Andrew Sullivan.")

'Material Girl' to change name to Esther.

Yup. Washtimes.com. Interesting article!

Biologists inject 'fidelity' gene into voles

These guys have good timing for publicity: with the remake of The Stepford Wives coming out, I suppose this is the right time to talk about love, fidelity, biology, and freedom.

It's "Citigroup Pride Month," a celebration of homosexuality at the Manhattan headquarters of one of the worlds biggest corporations!

In celebration of Pride Month, the GCIB and Smith Barney Office of Global Diversity invites you to attend its special panel discussion "Being Out in the Workplace: The Impact on Relationships with Colleagues and Customers." The panel will feature several gay, lesbian and straight Citigroup professionals who, over the course of the luncheon, will share their experiences about being "out" at work. Among other things, the panelists will also share their views on the issues facing LGBT employees today.

For the last week or so, I've been aggressively commenting on Mark Shea's blog, basically arguing that people should refrain from rash judgement about a Justice Department memo (a memo! not a policy! a memorandum!) I've also said that some foreign detainees are not entitled to the protection of the Geneva Conventions, and that all forms of coercion are not torture.

Not for the first time, this revealed the worst tendencies of blog commenters. If you say X, somebody yells at you because although you said X, you "really" mean Y. Your motives get questioned, even though the people don't know you. Insults get thrown that would never be directed toward me in person.

And then there is my least favorite aspect of Internet commentary in general: rank hyperbole. As a part of the continuing torture discussion, Mark compares this memo to the statute giving Hitler plenary powers over the German state. Here's the exact quotation:

Taken seriously, and aggressively pursued and enforced as a course of actual action by the American State, I can see small difference between that statement and the Enabling Act of 1933 which gave Hitler the power to do Whatever He Deemed Necessary for the Security of the Reich.

The memo argues that a law enacted by Congress is superceded by the president's constitutional authority as commander-in-chief. You can debate that point. You can question the substance of the memo. What you can't do -- logically, at least -- is translate a legal opinion written by a bunch of government lawyers into the birth of an American Third Reich.

Mark asks: "...how ready will we be to sell basic human rights down the river to the first Man on Horseback who promises us bread and safety should things get worse?"

I'd ask: if you're going to wail and moan about a *memo* you don't like, how will you be able to warn people of *real* dangers to society, when people have already inured themselves to your hyperbolic rants?

All I'm asking for is a sense of proportion. Because if you don't have a sense of proportion, you're worse than Hitler, Stalin, and the people who write computer viruses.

Stop me before I start linking to articles on washtimes.com again today. I need to get some work done.

Whoops -- sorry, by "anti-abortion" I meant "environmentalist," and by "abortion clinics" I meant "houses and cars." Apparently, radically anti-human environmentalists have been destroying property they don't like and endangering other peoples' lives. Their targets are new housing developments and SUVs.

We await the following:

• Reporters asking the Sierra Club, World Wildlife Federation, and other non-violent environmentalist groups if they repudiate these domestic terrorists;
• Reporters asking John Kerry and other prominent Democrats if they think the Earth Liberation Front is a legitimate political organization; and
• Reporters grilling environmentalists about whether they are sincere about their beliefs -- because after all, if you oppose suburban land growth and big vehicles, you must necessarily use violence to destroy those threats, as surely as night follows day.

I wonder if there will be a ratio of about 1,000 news stories for each SUV destroyed, the way there was about that many stories for each abortion clinic bombed and abortionist murdered.

(Thanks to an anonymous friend of Catholic Light who brought this to our attention.

In and Out of Communion

Giving 'Exodus' a new meaning, Cal Thomas - washtimes.com

Now comes what could be the most radical and most successful education reform proposal ever made. The Southern Baptist Convention — the nation's largest Protestant denomination with about 17 million members — meets this week in Indianapolis, and among the resolutions it is considering is one calling upon parents to withdraw their children from public schools and either educate them at home or enroll them in private Christian academies.

Sorry, RC, I disagree with both you and John! I know it seems like Eric and I are waxing Sean Hannity's car over here, but it's difficult to have strictly Catholic posts when so many ancillary topics affect the life of Catholics these days. We have an upcoming election where the Democratic candidate is material heretic, a culture war ongoing since before said Democratic candidate reached puberty, and a multi-front, multi-dimensional war against an age-old enemy of Christendom. This is the civilization that said Democratic candidate and other liberal illuminati loathe. And I count most of the media among the liberal illuminati. I agree that today I may as well have posted some links with the headline "Let's read the Washington Times together," but these topics are more or less relevant to the blog.

I believe we can appreciate how all this issues do fit into a larger context: the Church Militant must minister and evangelize in the present age, fight its enemies both internal and external, and above all remain faithful to Christ its Head. Could we be connecting these points better? I suppose so. But let's confuse take morality and faith out of political discourse as they would have us do.

Now I'm going to write something very snarky about the Becker Litany of the Saints and how Marty Haugen should give up music for a career in Antartic Horticulture.

The last 20 posts have been about the following topics:

• Middle East, including Iraq: 5
• Politics (including some humorous items): 4
• Media: 2
• Religion news: 1
• Other humor: 2
• Music: 3
• Food: 2
• Schools: 1

foxnews.com - 9/11 Panel: No Evidence of Al Qaeda-Iraq Link

But over at newsmax.com we find the following:

"Two senior Bin Ladin associates have adamantly denied that any ties existed between al Qaeda and Iraq," says the Commission.

Such a statement begs the question: Why does the Commission, let alone the press, take the word of two senior bin Laden associates over, say, Iraq's new prime minister, Iyad Allawi.

Last December he told the London Telegraph, "We are uncovering evidence all the time of Saddam's involvement with al-Qaeda."

Reacting to the discovery of an Iraqi intelligence document placing 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta in Baghdad two months before the attacks, he continued:

"This is the most compelling piece of evidence that we have found so far. It shows that not only did Saddam have contacts with al-Qaeda, he had contact with those responsible for the September 11 attacks."

Not only does it look like a site of ill-repute rather than a news site, it is seriously lacking in substance now.

Reacting to Bush's meeting with Vatican officials, Kerry says, "I think it was entirely and extraordinarily inappropriate, and I think it speaks for itself." Which means, "I'm the one who's Catholic, damnit! All those contracepting, fornicating, aborting, sodomizing, and/or masturbating 'Catholics' are supposed to vote for me!" That's the so-called "Catholic vote" Kerry is courting, right? These are primacy of conscience types who have killed their conscience. Rather than primacy of conscience it is primacy of the spirit of the world.

CNN refers to Bush's request "promoting those issues that are part of his social agenda." You can almost feel the writers of this piece bristling at the thought of the leaders of one of the world's major religions getting involved in what they see are domestic political issues, not issues of absolute morality. Kerry is reported as disagreeing with Bush's request on the basis of the separation of Church and State. How does this endanger the separation of Church and State? It doesn't. What the liberals would have us believe and practice, as they do, is religion has no role in public discourse. It is an argument from authority (the weakest kind, according to St. Thomas); the authority of a document, the U.S. Constitution, whose First Amendment has been misinterpretted and misrepresented again and again to remove religion from the public life of this nation.

The Constitution is based in large part on Natural Law, correct? Natural Law admits the truth of a universal, not relative, morality. Absolute morality forbids all manner of things people have gone through the civil courts to obtain in the name of personal rights. Bringing the Church and other Christian churches into the fray of these moral issues is essential if we are to spread the Gospel, but also if we are to protect our rights.

And lastly, an aside I picked up listening to a tape of Fr. John Corapi: Natural Law also admits the existence of God, reality Himself. To be disconnected from God is essentially to be disconnected from reality. This is a good definition of insanity. Something that Frank Sheed and Fr. Corapi agree on - aetheism and secularism are a form of insanity.

Karzai lauds U.S. war on terror - a top story on washtimes.com but unreported on the front page of the Washington Post (online edition, cnn.com, foxnews.com and abcnews.com. It just doesn't fit in with the meta-narratives of the day. The President of Afghanistan praising the U.S. and the current administration? I guess it's not newsworthy if it won't help Kerry get elected.

UPDATE: I checked the print editions of the Washington Post and USA Today. Neither carry the Karzai story on the front page.

Can you imagine how John Fonda Kerry will deal with the growing threat of Iran? Editorial on the growing threat via washtimes.com, America's newspaper and Eric's employer.

As the IAEA meets in Vienna to consider a European-drafted resolution pointing to Iran's continued refusal to come clean about its nuclear program, representatives of the Islamist regime continue to threaten the agency. The speaker of the Iranian parliament yesterday warned that members may not ratify Iran's signature to an additional protocol to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) — something insisted on by the IAEA after it discovered that Tehran was attempting to develop atomic weapons in violation of its obligations as a signer of the NPT. The speaker, Gholam Ali Hadad-Adel, suggested that by pressing Iran to tell the truth, the Europeans were doing the bidding of nefarious "Zionists." Late last month, the head of Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guards warned that that the regime was prepared to launch suicide attacks or missile strikes against "29 sensitive sites in the U.S. and in the West."

Michael Moore Kicking Self For Not Filming Last 600 Trips To McDonald's

The Southern Baptist Convention voted yesterday to sever its 99-year relationship with the Baptist World Alliance on the grounds that it includes a Baptist denomination with openly homosexual members.

This is a huge controversy among the Baptists. It's worth reading the whole article to get the gist of it. What they need is a universal magisterium and less autonomy. Though even with the gifts God has bestowed on His true Church, we're still plagued with similar issues of faithfulness to Church teaching.

Commencement exercises are tomorrow (my least, least, least favorite part of the year).
It's my least favorite time because of the repertoire. I enjoy Elgar, especially Enigma, Gerontius, and the other marches besides the ubiquitous one. I enjoy other English marches, too, particularly Crown Imperial and Orb and Sceptre, but we have to use the Elgar. It annoys me when people say, “It’s Traditional.” No, it isn’t. I don’t think Americans have very much of an understanding of what constitutes a tradition, not to mention what is worthy of tradition. Which march is co-opted for a procession at a high-school graduation IS NOT WORTH CRYING OVER. It’s JUST A MARCH. I would love a moratorium on its use until we’ve all forgotten about the diaper ads, the puppy-chow commercials, and the sundry high-school-band butcherings we’ve all seen and heard.

(None of the above argument applies to chant, by the way, for the following reasons:

1. Chant is sanctioned by the Magisterium. There’s no such thing in American academia.

2. Graduations are traditions of men, undoubtedly; the Mass isn’t.)

Just so you know that Iraqis are neither subhuman nor amoral. Here's a quotation from one of the Iraqi heroes:

Private Jassim added that the firefight created an even stronger bond between Iraqi (ICDC) soldiers and American Marines. Speaking through an interpreter, he said, "I feel very, very bad the Marine was shot because they are like my brothers now, but I'm ready to go out again. I'm always ready."

"Rage Explodes After Another Baghdad Blast," bellows the headline in this morning's Washington Post. It is the paper's take on the story mentioned below, about the murder and maiming of dozens of innocent Iraqis and foreigners.

Other than the pretense of objectivity -- making it sound like the snarling mob has some legitimate grievances, and that killing random innocents is just a civil rights protest -- the thing to note is the ingrained racism. Arab anger is treated as a force of nature, something that cannot be contained or mollified. They are essentially sub-human, and it is useless to challenge their paranoic rantings (in the Post's stories, there is never any indication that the reporter ever challenges the wild assertions of the mobsters, probably out of fear.

For instance, the story says "[m]en shouting at the top of their voices swore they had seen an Israeli flag in one of the vehicles shortly after the bomb detonated." Right. An Israeli flag on an SUV in Baghdad. Those filthy Jews are getting careless! The assertion is merely repeated without comment. "Isn't it interesting," the subtext reads, "that these Arab creatures equate the U.S. and Israel?"

The focus of the story is not on facts, events, or analysis, but on an emotional reaction. This is consistent with the Post's Iraq reporting, which is calculated to provoke an American emotional reaction, not to inform the public. More on that in a future post.

Ten people were murdered today in Iraq, including five Westerners. A bomb destroyed a convoy of trucks carrying men who were "helping to rebuild power plants."

Please, don't let this distract you from the Iraqi prisoner scandal, though those crimes ceased months ago and people are starting to go to jail for them already. Focus your minds on that evil, not the ongoing struggle against the vicious thugs who battle against the horrible Western imperialist plan to give Iraqis uninterrupted electrical service. Do I have to draw a chart for you?

Once you realize that there are no good guys or bad guys in Iraq, you will understand how the Western media covers the news from that country. Feel free to refer to that chart whenever you get the uneasy feeling that maybe murderers are morally inferior to power workers.

Nothing screams
"POSTHUMOUS CELEBRITY ENDORSEMENT" or
"THE ESTATE WISHES TO LEVERAGE THE MARKETING VALUE OF THE DECEASED"
like this:

J. Garcia Wine Sells Out in 30 Days

Singers sometimes get a little caught up in the music (or themselves) and move around when they sing. You've probably seen the cantor or lone chorister swaying their torso, taking a huge, obvious breath or move their chin up and down based on the pitch. All these things get in the way of good singing and music-making.

Moving too much creates your own rhythm. If you get to swaying, bobbing or tapping, changes are your tempo will be different than the conductor. Don't externalize rhythm - watch the conductor and follow his rhythm.

Moving too much adversely effects your instrument. There's a reason organ pipes are a fixed size - the size and characteristics dictate the pitch and timbre. Same thing with the voice - you can't have a consistent, good sound you are moving your instrument around. The entire instrument, from air in the lungs to the shape of the throat and other areas where there's resonance shouldn't be moved around.

Moving around is distracting. There's no benefit, particularly in a liturgical setting, to drawing attention to yourself in such a silly way. Someone might give you a leotard and a big, curly banner and ask you to lead the liturgical dance ministry.

Moving around means you're probably not paying attention. If you are busy "emoting" you are probably not engaged with the rest of the ensemble.

That covers it. If you stay still, you'll look better, sing better and be a more valuable part of the ensemble.

Did I ever mention I love Johnny Costa? He was the Pittsburgh jazz pianist best known for his role as music director of the children's TV show Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. He died in 1996 and there's a web site in his honor now.

For much of his career, he didn't make recordings: a few LPs in the '50s that are unavailable now, and then in the '90s, four CDs for Chiaroscuro Records. Now it turns out that he recorded one more album in '95, with Christmas and religious music, so I'll definitely be getting it. Will it be Catholic jazz?

On Friday, we consumed the bottle of Aquinas Chardonnay, mentioned in this space last week. Although there is always a Chardonnay bottle or two in the Johnson household, it's hard to match with food (which is strange, since it's incredibly popular) and so we usually drink it with smoked salmon or chicken.

Our Lord ate fish cooked on a charcoal fire after his resurrection, as the Bible says (John 21:9-13), and so it seems like an appropriate Friday meal, though I suppose Sunday would be just as good. With salmon grilled over charcoal and hickory, homemade bread, potatoes au gratin, and a light salad with vinaigrette, Aquinas Chardonnay was a great companion. It wasn't too fruity, had a surprisingly strong body for a $9 wine, and didn't have the taste that screams I SPENT SOME TIME IN AN OAK BARREL!!! like many inexpensive Chardonnays do, presumably to cover up for their shortcomings.

Father Poumade couldn't make it, but another priest came, whose name I won't mention because I didn't ask him. Our lovely and loquacious friend Cindy was also in attendance, which was good not only for her excellent company but because our kids love her to death.

One last thing I have to mention -- when I pulled the cork out of the wine, there was a quotation from the Angelic Doctor himself: "...for it is written, that wine makes glad the heart of man." Unlike the bogus quotation I found, this one is genuine. It's from an article entitled
"Whether wine of the grape is the proper matter of this sacrament?" Aquinas quotes Psalm 103, which would seem to answer the perverse fellows who think that what Bible calls "wine" is unfermented. Whose heart ever became glad from grape juice?

Here's how the spammers are addressing me today:

Subject: Chonak visionary ecumenist iliad
From: "Ramona Perry" <mnvcsllrrtvdi@yahoo.com>
Date: Thu, 17 Jun 2004 17:12:44 +0600
To: "Chonak" <chonak@-----.com>

Anyway, I am reading the Iliad, so they got that one right.

At Reagan's funeral.

The main reason I'm not still a public school teacher is I once asked a fat kid if he could retain anything besides water. My character deficiencies are far outweighed by the public school system, though, as you can see by this news story:

N.Y. Teacher on Leave for Soapy Punishment - a teacher washes a 3rd grader's mouth out with soap after the "10-year-old boy directed 'a vile, very nasty sexual reference' at a third-grade girl in March." The teacher got suspended indefinitely.

"Text of Margaret Thatcher's Eulogy"

Of Stem Cells and Fairy Tales - weeklystandard.com

"stem cell experts confess . . . that of all the diseases that may be someday cured by embryonic stem cell treatments, Alzheimer's is among the least likely to benefit."

But people like Nancy Reagan have been allowed to believe otherwise, "a distortion" Weiss writes that "is not being aggressively corrected by scientists." Why? The false story line helps generate public support for the biotech political agenda. As Weiss noted, "It [Nancy Reagan's statement in support of ESCR] is the kind of advocacy that researchers have craved for years, and none wants to slow its momentum."

Charles Krauthammer, the Washington Post's best columnist, takes on the media folks who are eulogizing Ronald Reagan. They "dwell endlessly on the man's smile, his sunny personality, his good manners. Above all, his optimism....'Optimism' is the perfect way to trivialize everything that Reagan was or did."

Eric's Prediction of the Day: when the Holy Father dies, look for the media to follow the same pattern. They'll say John Paul helped destroy communism, that he attracted some of the largest crowds in human history, and left an influential legacy of words. The way they'll trivialize his achievements is by pointing to smartypants Western theologians who think they're more Catholic than the pope (literally), and the "widespread dissent" from Church teachings among secularized Catholics.

Just when you think public life in Europe is a lost cause and thoroughly secularized, somebody lets you know that there are currents in the other direction.

I got an e-mail today about the European Parliament elections coming on Sunday, appealing for Christians in Germany to join in reviving the "Zentrum" (Center) Party. Zentrum was a Christian-oriented party that had functioned with considerable Catholic support until the Nazis forced it to disband in 1933.

Zentrum is apparently standing for a pro-life ethic, for the acknowledgement of God in the EU constitution, for authentic marriage, and for economic policies that benefit families with children.

Our German readers can tell us if this is really a sign of something credible or just a group on the fringe: I'm not in a position to know.

As long as America keeps producing men like this, we'll be okay.

From FoxNews - Study reports that dogs can understand over 200 words.

How many of the insurgents have we killed in Iraq? You might think it's a macabre question, but it's relevant to whether our excursion there was a good idea. After all, if we're not militarily effective, that would have some bearing on whether the war was just, and the lessons we learn from the Iraq phase of the War on Terror will affect future phases and future wars.

So who keeps track of enemy body counts? Not the military, not since the press decided to make that statistic the butt of jokes in Vietnam. Has the press kept count? Are you kidding? They'd have to get out of their air-conditioned offices and get their shirts all yucky with sweat, then scurry around a hostile area among thugs who don't really care if you're a journalist, just that you're a Westerner and fair game for beheading.

From the reporters who have actually bothered to explore the question, it would seem that American forces are creating something on the order of ten casualties for every one we take, and the ratio could be even higher. Nobody disputes that whenever there is an actual battle or skirmish, and the insurgents fight instead of slither away, they end up getting their clocks cleaned.

Which leads me to an even more pointed question: how many innocent people have these cowardly insurgents killed? They've blown up worshippers, shoppers, policemen, U.N. employees, a busload of schoolgirls...surely someone is keeping track, right? This number should be easy to find out, since there's little question that, say, Issa the mechanic was guilty of no crime when he was blown up while passing an electrical station.

But we have no idea how many innocent people have died from the thugs. The soon-to-be-disbanded Coalition Provisional Authority doesn't publish those stats. What about our left-wing "watchdog groups"? They say they're keeping track of innocent deaths, but that is not true. They only care about innocent deaths if they can be ascribed to the Coalition.

So when a car bomb blows up a few blocks away from the CPA headquarters, and kills three Iraqis, that doesn't count for the watchdogs, which are always saying they're anti-war, not anti-American. However, there are at least two sides to every war. Why are they only concerned about innocent deaths inadvertently caused by one side, and positively dismissive about innocent deaths deliberately caused by the other?

One is tempted to think that dead Iraqis only interest the hard Left when they can pin the blame on the people they hate. After all, they didn't seem overly concerened about dead Iraqis when Saddam was filling his mass graves. This isn't new. They got all weepy about dead Vietnamese civilians until the North took over the South and exterminated tens of thousands of them, and drove hundreds of thousands out of their homes. Where were the peaceniks then?

The Left uses the people of the Third World as props in their imaginary morality plays of the Big Bad West and the Poor, Exploited Darker People, but with honorable exceptions like Amnesty International, I have yet to see much evidence that they care about the actual people involved.

Combinaton spoon and torch? A burn mark from cigar? A stain that won't come out no matter what you do? Nope. You're all wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

SPORCH is the Society for the Preservation Of Roman Catholic Heritage. And they have a link to a website that has a pattern for a cassock. Does Steve's mom know about this?

"You have suffered the passion of the cross and have received grace. There is a purpose to this. Because of your suffering and pain you will now understand the suffering and pain of the world. This has happened to you at this time because your country and the world needs you."

-- Mother Teresa of Calcutta, addressing Ronald Reagan in June 1981, quoted here.

"Sorrow can be alleviated by good sleep, a bath
and a glass of good wine."

--St. Thomas Aquinas

I've seen that quotation many places, but without reference to the source. I approve of the sentiment, but it doesn't sound very Thomistic to me. Anyone want to venture an opinion?

I just saw an ad that said, "Congratulations. You are the 1,000th visitor to our web site and..."

I thought, "1,000??? Did the clock turn back to 1995 or something?"

A business school tidbit: The Customer Relationship Management people that write for Harvard Business Review and other publications think it's high time marketers were honest with people so that a real relationship can either happen or not happen.

So perhaps the banner should read:

"We aren't creative enough to come up with a promotion that means something, but why don't you give us all your personal info and we'll add you to a e-newsletter that comes out twice a day and splatters you with all sorts of travel offers. It will make you feel pretty. And we promise we won't sell your e-mail address to the Martians or anyone that has all five vowels in the sequential order you learned them in pre-school in their last name."

I guess that's too big for a banner...

Like just about everyone who was alive during the 1980s, I have many memories of President Reagan. His words and deeds influenced my way of thinking more than any other man (Jesus Christ excepted, of course). The two memories that stand out in my mind are completely different, yet for me they showed what kind of man he was, and what kind of men we should be.

The first was watching excerpts of the 1976 Republican convention on C-SPAN on a summer afternoon when I was in high school. (I guess it was a slow summer that year.) Reagan gave a speech that electrified the crowd, not so much because of what he said, but because of the gigantic breadth of vision he brought to the podium. The assembly roared its approval, and without meaning to do it, Reagan stole the show from the sitting president of the United States.

Then after the speech, as the commentators yammered on, the Fords and Reagans remained on the dais while balloons dropped from the ceiling. As they fell, Reagan smiled and batted a few of them out into the audience. Some mischievious people hit them back to him, which Reagan thought was hilarious. It was a small moment that proved his unselfconsious humility.

The other memory is a simple speech from a significant but not world-shaking event, the firing of the air-traffic controllers. As you may recall, the controllers, despite signing a promise not to strike against the government, walked off their jobs to force the Federal government to give them a gigantic pay raise. This not only violated the terms of their employment, it was a federal crime.

The five-paragraph speech itself was not memorable for its rhetoric, but although I was only nine years old, its argument was completely comprehensible. Some people, whose job was to keep planes from crashing, promised not to strike against the government. They went back on their word, so the president said if they didn't go back to work, they'd be fired.

This was justice at its most elemental level: the controllers did something wrong, and they needed to repent or face punishment. I couldn't figure out why some adults tried to find an excuse for these people. If I disobeyed my parents or teachers, I got punished. Why should the consequences be different for grown-ups who break the law, which, it seemed to me, was a much more serious thing than breaking a household rule?

It was then that I decided I liked Ronald Reagan. The lesson he taught me throughout his presidency was supremely valuable -- if you see something is right, work for it in any way you can. Compromise only when it gets you closer to your goal, and never give up just because it seems difficult. There will always be those who try to explain away evil, or who complain that doing good is too hard; they are to be either convinced or ignored.

Above all, he taught me that ideas mattered because they are real, more real than events. In an odd way, that paved the way for my later religious conversions. Turning your life over to Christ is a forthright denial of the world's ultimate importance, a declaration to the world that credo quod absurdam, "I believe because it is absurd." Many people thought that Reagan's timeless principles -- which were rooted in human dignity -- were absurd because they were obsolete, false, or unworkable. With quiet satisfaction, I note that many of the people who viciously criticized him two decades ago are now eulogizing him as a great man.

We may never know the importance of what we do on earth until we are dead. May God grant us the ability to discern what is right, and the confidence to do it. I thank God for the example of Ronald Reagan's courage and fidelity, and for his genuine humanity. He was a better leader than we deserve.

Rest in peace, Mr. President.

June 12: Atlanta

Sept. 24-25: Washington, DC

Oct. 10-17: International Congress in Guadalajara

Catholic bishops share in the charism of infallibility when they speak on faith and morals, in conjunction with the Holy Father. That is part of the magisterium, the teaching authority by which we know the pure truth of the Gospel. That magisterium cannot be broken because it comes from God himself (Mt 16:18).

When they stray from faith and morals, bishops are no more likely to be free from error than any other well-informed people. On many important subjects in the 1970s and '80s, American bishops brought their prestige to bear against many policies Ronald Reagan favored. Some examples of their stances:

1. The American government should not deploy nuclear weapons even if they are possessed for defensive purposes.

2. Firearms in private hands should be strictly regulated, and cheap handguns should be banned.

3. Persons receiving monetary support ("welfare") from the government are entitled to that support, even if they are capable of working.

4. Money spent on national defense should be diverted to "human needs."

Some have suggested that the bishops' decline in influence is because of "the scandal," the reshuffling of predatory homosexual priests. That is a recent development. The main problem is the bishops' concern with being "relevant" and speaking confidently on issues in which they have no particular competence (arms control, economics) and going soft on subjects where they not only have competence, but a divine mandate to explain (contraception, divorce, homosexual behavior).

Much as it pains me to say, where they disagreed, Reagan was mostly right, and the bishops mostly wrong. The bishops don't need better analysts -- they simply need to narrow their focus to the eternal things, and leave petty politics to the politicians.

Preacher: Today I'd like to talk about a man who died in God's service...

Parishioner: Which one: the 9:30 or the 11:30?

Folk Ensemble Society Annual 2004 Annual Meeting
Folk and Contemporary Musicians in the Liturgy: Quo Vadis?

Add more in the comments boxes, please!

President Bush's Remarks

This is a sad hour in the life of America. A great American life has come to an end. I have just spoken to Nancy Reagan. On behalf of our whole nation, Laura and I offered her and the Reagan family our prayers and our condolences.

Ronald Reagan won America's respect with his greatness, and won its love with his goodness. He had the confidence that comes with conviction, the strength that comes with character, the grace that comes with humility, and the humor that comes with wisdom. He leaves behind a nation he restored and a world he helped save.

During the years of President Reagan, America laid to rest an era of division and self-doubt. And because of his leadership, the world laid to rest an era of fear and tyranny. Now, in laying our leader to rest, we say thank you.

He always told us that for America, the best was yet to come. We comfort ourselves in the knowledge that this is true for him, too. His work is done, and now a shining city awaits him. May God bless Ronald Reagan.

The historical parallels between our time and 1964, when Reagan delivered this speech, are striking. Conservatives are still fighting the same battles, to greater or lesser degrees. Here is an excerpt of the excerpts that appear at the above URL.

It's time we asked ourselves if we still know the freedoms intended for us by the Founding Fathers. James Madison said, "We base all our experiments on the capacity of mankind for self-government."

This idea — that government was beholden to the people, that it had no other source of power — is still the newest, most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.

You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man's age-old dream — the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order, or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism.

Regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would sacrifice freedom for security have embarked on this downward path. Plutarch warned, "The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits."

The Founding Fathers knew a government can't control the economy without controlling people. And they knew when a government set out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. So we have come to a time for choosing.

Eternal rest grant to him, and let your light shine upon him. May God grant us the grace to remember how blessed we were with a leader such as Reagan.

A Boston priest has adopted the nom de blog "Father Elijah" for his site Fides et Ratio, which approaches church affairs in Beantown with a refreshing frankness. Welcome, Father E!

Charlie says yes! What do you guys think?

This will be served next week when Father Poumade comes over for dinner.

A year and a half ago, before the war, before the Howard Dean phenomenon (remember him?), I wrote the following:

...it would make a lot of sense if the Democrats ran someone who was truly moderate on the Dems' signature issues. Let's say the candidate supported a ban on partial-birth abortion and sex-selection abortions, plus he favored parental consent for minors, but was "pro-choice" under other circumstances. He might strongly affirm the second amendment, but say that cheap handguns have no place in our society; he'd favor expanding IRA accounts but would leave Social Security alone; he would favor raising taxes on the "most fortunate Americans" but not "working Americans"; etc.

The candidate I'm describing would stand a strong chance of winning in the general election. A charismatic, truly moderate Democrat would give Republicans a lot of trouble in 2004, but it won't happen because of the primary process. In order to get the nomination in the first place, a candidate has to convince his own party that he represents them. The people who vote in primaries are the ones who would walk through fire to support their party, and the Democratic faithful are probably going to remain enraged until those primaries happen in 14 months. They can't believe that they've been trounced by the barely articulate boob in the White House, and they're going to want an old-fashioned tax-and-spend big-government social liberal as their candidate, or the closest thing they can find. They aren't hungry enough for victory to swallow their principles, as they were for Bill Clinton in 1992 and '96. Given all that, they have to run a pro-abortion liberal next time around. Count on it.

Ephesians 4:29-32

Never let evil talk pass your lips; say only the good things men need to hear, things that will really help them. Do nothing that will sadden the Holy Spirit with whom you were sealed against the day of redemption. Get rid of all bitterness, all passion and anger, harsh words, slander, and malice of every kind. In place of these, be kind to one another, compassionate, and mutually forgiving, just as God has forgiven you in Christ.

Romans 13:11-12

It is now the hour for you to wake from sleep, for our salvation is closer than when we first accepted the faith. The night is far spent; the day is near. Let us cast off the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light.

Moore used Rep. Mark Kennedy's image in "Fahrenheit 9/11" but not his response the question Moore posed:

"I was walking back to my office after casting a vote, and all of a sudden some oversized guy puts a mike in my face and a camera in my face," said the Minnesota Republican. "He starts asking if I can help him recruit more people from families of members of Congress to participate in the war on terror."

Kennedy said he told Moore that he has two nephews in the military, one who has just been deployed in the Army National Guard.

But to Kennedy's annoyance, his response to Moore was cut from the trailer (and from the film, according to a spokeswoman for the movie).

Story via the Washington Times.

Why did I think it was going to be a pop-up book?

British military historian John Keegan writes about how the media needs to drop the drama and take a lesson from history. We could have either bombed the Iraqis into totally submission as we did to the Germans and the Japanese at the end of WWII, or we deal with the chaos that ensued by occupying a land that was not totally subjugated and demoralized in defeat. Clearly the latter would have been unjust, so we're left with the former. That isn't Keegan's point, however. He says not all wars ended neatly and what is happening in Iraq is to be expected.

...the serried ranks of self-appointed strategic commentators who currently dominate the written and visual media's treatment of the Iraq story, have a duty to stop indulging their emotions and start remembering a bit of post-war history. Iraq 2004 is not Greece 1945, not Indochina 1946-54, not Algeria 1953-62 and certainly not "Vietnam".

Read the whole thing - it's quite good! Link via Fr. Mattew at SoDakMonk

"Lopez" has peppered our comments of late with pithy questions. At first they seemed misguided but innocuous. Now he asks, "Why is this site called 'Catholic Light'? Shouldn't be called dim religious dork?"

I invite rational discourse with him on the whatever topic on which we disgaree. I suspect he will reply, "I've got your rational discourse right here, buddy!" and go back to watching meta-narratives on cable news. The same cable news where he's heard "Gay marriage doesn't hurt anyone."

If this story in the Portugal News is correct, then last fall's furor about non-Catholic groups conducting their own worship at the shrine at Fatima turns out to be wholly justified.

On May 5th, SIC and SIC Notícias carried a report on a Hindu religious service held in the Chapel of the Apparitions at the shrine.

SIC’s broadcast appears, to some extent, vindicate The Portugal News’ October report. Sixty Hindus led by a high priest had travelled from Lisbon to pay homage to the Goddess Devi, the divinity of nature. SIC’s reporter described how before leaving Lisbon the Hindus had gathered at their temple in the city to pray to and worship various statues of Hindu gods.

Arriving in Fátima the pilgrims made their way to the Chapel of the Apparitions, where from the altar a Hindu priest led prayer sessions. A commentary on the service was given by the TV reporter who explained: “This is an unprecedented unique moment in the history of the shrine. The Hindu priest, or Sha Tri, prays on the altar the Shaniti Pa, the prayer for peace.” The Hindus can be seen removing their shoes before approaching the altar rail of the chapel as the priest chants prayers from the altar’s sanctuary.

You think any major US news outlets would run this video? This Op-Ed from the Washington Times.

Ambulances for terrorists?

Last week, an Israeli television station aired footage of armed Arab terrorists in southern Gaza using an ambulance owned and operated by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).

Palestinian gunmen used the UNRWA emergency vehicle as getaway transportation after murdering six Israeli soldiers in Gaza City May 11. The footage shows two ambulances with flashing lights pull onto a street. Shots and shouts ring out during the nighttime raid. A gang of militants piles into one of the supposedly neutral ambulances, clearly marked "U.N." with blue flag flying, which then speeds from the scene.

That is to say, "Come, coreligionists! Into the handbasket! We're going to Hell!"

ST. CATHARINES, Ontario — The Anglican Church of Canada approved a measure Thursday to "affirm the integrity and sanctity of committed adult same sex relationships."

The move stops short of authorizing dioceses to hold same-sex blessing ceremonies, but is still likely to complicate efforts aimed at unifying the 77 million-member Anglican Communion. The worldwide Anglican body is deeply divided over homosexuality.

Delegates to a national church meeting handed the victory to supporters of gays and lesbians as a consolation prize the morning after they voted to delay any national go-ahead on church blessing ceremonies for same-sex couples till 2007 and possibly 2010.

The "integrity and sanctity" measure was approved by a show of hands.

Sanctity is now determined through democratic means. How convenient!

Inside the Beltway - washtimes

I'm trying to figure out if this is a joke or not!

Parochial attire
White House correspondents planning to cover the upcoming meeting between President Bush and Pope John Paul II are being told to sport their Sunday best.
"Men should wear dark suits and dark shoes," says a White House memo. "Women should wear dark skirts — below the knee — covered legs, and closed-toe shoes. Women meeting the Pope are required to wear a veil."
If lady scribes don't own a veil, one will be provided by a White House advance team.

In a country that can't engage in rational discourse, it is understandable that there are no rational constraints on the use of metaphor. Case in point: "LA 'on the road to Falluja'?" - BBC dot co dot UK

The LA murder rate is going up and the police chief has requested more officers. But California is broke and cannot afford to recruit.
Civil rights lawyer Connie Rice warns that with too few officers to "police humanely", parts of the city may as well be in Falluja.

I agree this is a problem, but what does "may as well be in Falluja" really mean?

Of course when Matt Drudge posts the link to this article it says, "GANG WARS: Lawyer claims L.A. is 'on the road to Falluja'..." and the too-few police in LA are equated with Falluja? This is misleading and intellectually dishonest. But hey, it sells ads because it gets people to click away!

I found Handlo.com this week, a site that has hundreds of classical choral scores available for download for a small fee. The licensing allows for the duplication of the score for amateur choirs, so for $5 - $20, I can download and print the score for the whole choir.

I bought this Victoria "Veni Sancte Spiritus" (the link is a PDF file of the first page)- if we have enough singers next year we'll do this for Pentecost. It's for double choir which means I need two strong readers on each voice part.

The California Supreme Court ruled that "Catholic Charities of Sacramento is not a religious institution and as such must provide coverage of contraceptives for its workers." Why?

...Catholic Charities does not qualify as a religious employer because it offers secular services to the public without regard for the recipients' beliefs and without preaching about Catholic values. Catholics do not make up either a majority of its employees or a majority of the recipients of its services.

Of course this is ludicrous, so ludicrous in fact that some new derivative of the word "ludicrous" must be used to describe it. We shall say it is "ludicricious." Aside from the ludicriciousness of the Court's decision, I believe that Catholic charities of any kind should always, in the course of their work, preach the Gospel. Too often Catholic social justice activity looks like government service. Material needs are provided without respect to spiritual needs. Actually, I know some parishes here in Arlington where social justice is basically income redistribution. What I mean to say is that it is ludicricious for a Catholic institution to not preach the Gospel. If anything, put some pamphlets by the door for Christ's sake! For Christ's sake indeed.

Among Canada's middle class, elections are a sport whose popularity -- as we are now seeing -- surpasses even hockey. (Which is good since Calgary has always been my team back in Canada, whereas Tampa is the local team.) This is why blog activity is down among Canadians at St. Blog, except to comment on the election slated for the end of June. Anyway, since everyone else has weighed in with their predictions, I thought I should do the same.

First off, I think Stephen Harper will pull off a bare majority, hovering at the 160 seat range. Basically, I see the Conservative Party of Canada sweeping the Prairies, doing well in BC, holding their own Ontario (taking about fifty seats), establishing a beach-head in Quebec (5-10 seats), and probably scoring about a third of the seats in the Atlantic provinces. Of all the major party leaders, Harper has run the best campaign thus far, keeping expectations low, snipping problems in the bud before the other parties can capitalize on them, and not deviating from the script.

While he comes across as somewhat dull, this is good given that the initial game-plan of his opponents was to paint him as a right-wing extremist. In short, Canadians find him boring, but not scary. Neverless, this continues to keep expectations low, and to maintain the slow and steady upward momentum, Harper only needs to hold his own in the English debate and avoid any major stumbles in the French. Since he's a phenomenal debater, he should exceed expectations and boost his momentum going into the election.

Secondly, the Bloc will form the Official Opposition. Duceppe actually seems to have learned from his previous elections and is running a solid campaign. If he can avoid the temptation to cross from soft separatist to hard, he should have no problem winning 60 of Quebec's 75 seats.

In third place, I see the Liberals squeaking just behind the Bloc. The West will shut them out completely. Ontario will yield about 30 to 40 seats, meaning that Ontario will continue to give the Liberals the bulk of their seats, however, both the seat count and support base in Ontario will be greatly reduced. With a renewed Conservative Party, I doubt Quebec will cough up any more than 5-10 seats. The only region I see the Liberals winning is the Atlantic provinces. That being said, I think Martin sending out his Ministers of State to crash Harper's campaign events backfired into a defining "kitten-eating-alien" moment.

So this leaves Jack Layton and the socialist NDP in fourth. Jack looked good going into this campaign, having renewed the NDP and pushed their momentum upward. For our American readers, a strong performance from the socialists generally helps the conservative in national elections since the socialists draw their vote from the Liberals. In other words, think Ralph Nader syphoning off 10-20% of the Democrat vote. However, and this is the only thing the Liberals have said during this campaign with which I agree, Jack couldn't resist shooting off his mouth and becoming the Howard Dean of Canadian politics.

It remains to be seen whether his ludicrous accusations against Martin concerning the death of a number of homeless in Toronto will prove to be Layton's "Dean Scream" moment. While Layton hasn't yet crashed as a result of those comments, people were turned off, his momentum has reversed, and he's now lost a couple points in the polls. But I still think he will hold enough support together to retain official party status. I give Layton 15-20 seats, but not his own. Mills is one of the few Liberals running a good campaign, so I don't see Layton knocking him off. Nevertheless, Layton can then pass the socialist leadership off to his wife unless Broadbent wins in Ottawa.

Okay, some of you noticed are now thinking the math falls a little short since there are still a few seats I have not accounted for. This brings me to a prediction many will no doubt find surprising. I think this will be a breakout election for the Green Party. Although many would have thought this impossible, Harris has actually done a credible job of fleshing out the Green Party platform and moving the party closer to the center.

As a small businessman, he may not be as exciting as previous Green leaders, but his dull blue suits and moderated tone are breaking down the anarchist-enviro-wacko-tree-hugger stereotype common to Green Party activists. He's also building a strong youth following, which will help the party in the future. So in many ways, albeit on a smaller scale, he's proving himself to be a Stephen Harper of the left. I don't think Harris can win Official Party Status this time around, but with the angry political mood among Canadians and Jack Layton running a reckless campaign, I can see the Green Party establishing a beach-head in Parliament with up to five seats. These will likely come from BC and the territories. Additionally, if Martin loses the election and control over the Liberal party reverts to the left, I wouldn't be surprised if the Green Party displaces the NDP within the next ten years as Canada's third major party

One of the reflex principles of ethics states that, when there is a question about the morality of an act, the morally safer course must be followed. With respect to abortion, stem cell research, and any issue dealing with pre-born humans, the morally safer course must be followed. Once cells begin dividing, absent a miscarriage before birth, the only result is a living, breathing human baby. The morally safer course is to ensure the baby safely comes to term. Of course, pro-aborts would have us believe there is no doubt that the embryo is not human life.

In his support for stem-cell research, Orrin "Don't count your Hatches before they chicken" Hatch states that after discussing the matter with all manner of experts: religious, ethicists, and scientists, he can't believe that a mass of cells in a petri dish is human life. That is absurd. Medicial technology allows a fertilized embryo to be placed inside a woman so the baby can come to term. When does it become human life? When placed inside the mother? When it is born?

Fr. Stanley Jaki wrote a fascinating essay on the Galileo controversy called "Galileo Lessons". In the last section he addresses modern technological advances and the question of abortion vis-a-vis the Church. He brilliantly connects Galileo's statement upon signing his confession to the question of the continuance of the human embryo. "And yet it moves."

The Jaki book is worth getting just for those last few pages.

How can the Church's tax-exempt status come into question? Pundits, like Cindy Rodriguez, who I linked to earlier today, see moral issues as purely political issues. To her, if a priest or bishop states that the faithful should not vote for representatives who support abortion-on-demand, they are explicitly supporting candidates who are pro-life. Ms. Rodriguez and others see this as an endorsement of pro-life candidates rather than a statement on morality in accord with Church teachings.

She appeals to the sense of moral relativism and so-called primacy of conscience that brought the question of abortion to the courts to begin with. If questions of morality are simply issues for us to form opinions about based on sound bites and our own personal feelings, we elect representatives who will enact civil law that reflects that same moral relativism. The result in some cases is unjust law.

It's interesting that the title of her piece is "Let bishop guide votes, tithe to IRS." For liberals taxes are a kind of tithe because they look at the state as a god, their guardian and protector from cradle to grave. Tax money goes to the government to fund all kinds of activities and programs, some that are perfectly appropriate for the government to be engaged in and others that we as Christians know are immoral.

How do we bring the truth of natural moral law back into the public debate? Liberals can't defend the "inalienable rights" of people without admitting that our Constitution is based in natural law. The other constitutional issue, of course, is freedom of religion, something that would be tossed out with yesterday's news should religious institutions begin loosing their tax-exempt status because of their stance on moral issues. It seems Ms. Rodriguez surely defends the right of free speech over religious freedom. Yet the right of free speech has become, for the majority of the media, the right to foist atheistic and morally relativistic opinions on all of us, all the time. Not only that, but freedom of religion has come to mean freedom from any discourse of a religious nature in the public forum.

That leads me to another point that one of Eric's recent posts brought to the fore. Most of the media turns to what he calls "meta-narratives" when reporting the news. Doesn't the media have a fiduciary responsibility to report facts and data, sans spin, to the public? Editorials and opinion pieces notwithstanding, the problem is that facts and data don't sell newspapers or ads. And they don't generally agree with liberal notions of morality. What sells newspapers are headlines and politicized articles that galvanize the public in a partisan fashion. That's ok for Ms. Rodriguez and the Denver Post. They pay their tithe to their god, the state.

It didn't take a genius to figure out that Michael Moore mis-appropriated the name of his anti-Bush flick from Ray Bradury's Fahrenheit 451. In fact, that non-genius was me. Be that as it may, Mr. Bradbury would like the world to know what he thinks about Michael Moore. Caution: the interview with Bradbury contains rather coarse language. This sums it up: "Ray Bradbury was very clear that he considered Moore a dishonest thief, but refused to answer if he would press charges in any way." I think Moore is an intellectually dishonest, unimaginative ninny, too.

Proof from authority is the weakest form of proof.

St. Thomas Aquinas
Summa Theologica

Seen in fashionable bulletins about town (especially towns under the jurisdiction of Richmond, VA) this new name for confession:

'Sacrament Interviews'

I guess you come in for the interview to see if you have any sins to confess. Or, maybe I read it wrong and it is actually an exciting new program (begun under Bishop Walter 'Where's my Rainbow Sash?' Sullivan, of course) where the 'kreative' among us can propose a modern Sacrament to replace the mean, judgemental one we have right now. Perhaps something with puppies... everyone LOVES puppies!

If to name something is to give it power, then what happens when you re-name it? (I know, I know, ask the Pro-Abortion Lobby.)

1997 Acura 2.2 CL
Black outside, gray leather inside
Sunroof during the day, moonroof at night
5 speed manual transmission - fun to drive!
Sony 10-disc changer, cassette, AM/FM radio
Power everything
Stylish Coupe
104,500 miles

$6,250 or $6,225 if you show up with a six pack of Miller Lite.

E-mail to js (a) tenor.com if you are interested and capable of coming to the DC-area to check out the car.

This just shows how hopelessly befuddled this culture is about the word "love".

City of Brotherly Love kicks off gay ad campaign

Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love, has launched the first U.S. television advertising campaign to promote a city as a gay destination, officials said on Wednesday.

In the television commercial, a young man in colonial attire writes a letter inviting his beloved to meet him at Independence Hall, one of the city's main tourist attractions.

The man is approached by a woman who glances at him but passes by before another man greets the letter writer and accepts flowers.

The spot emphasizes the city's historic attractions and its friendliness to gay travelers and is part of a three-year, $1 million campaign using the slogan "Philadelphia - Get Your History Straight and Your Nightlife Gay."

I read Stephen Ambrose's Citizen Soliders last week. I enjoy reading Ambrose because he's a master story-teller that gets his facts straight and lets history speak for itself. The book includes hundreds of quotes and stories from the people on the front lines.

An interesting nugget for the "Any military engagement longer than 2 weeks is a quagmire" crowd: in the days following the D-Day invasion, certain people in the government and the military were concerned the invasion was "bogged-down" and no progress would be made. In some places it was, but overall it was a tremendous but costly success from a military standpoint.

No, you say?

Howell Raines compares John Kerry to Lurch of Addam's Family fame. Did John not say this first? Raines is brutal to Kerry:

"I personally find him easier to talk to than Al Gore, but there's no denying that he's ponderous," Raines continued. "And he's pompous in a way that Gore is not. With Gore, you feel that if he could choose, he would have been born poor and cool. Kerry radiates the feeling that he is entitled to his sense of entitlement. Probably that comes from spending too much time with Teddy Kennedy, but it's a problem. The TV camera is an x-ray for picking up attitudinal truths, and Kerry's lantern jaw and Addams Family face somehow reinforce the message that this guy has passed from ponderous to pompous and is so accustomed to privilege that he doesn't have to worry about looking goofy. It's as if Lurch had gone to Choate.

"Recently, a lot of campaign reporters were writing that Kerry is altering his 'populist' message and moving to the centre. If John Kerry was ever a populist, George W Bush is a Rhodes scholar. Here's what Kerry has to face up to and build upon. The difference between him and Bush is that Kerry represents the liberal, charitable wing of the Privilege party and George W represents the conservative, greedy wing of the Privilege party...."

"Surely someone in Kerry's campaign can figure out a way for him to say, 'Here's my plan for getting us out of Iraq and defeating terrorism,' and 'Here's my plan for making sure you're not sick and poor in your old age.' And then make him say it over and over again, no matter what question is asked of him.

"Kerry has to face the fact that even though the incumbent looks like Goofy when he smirks, he's going to win unless Kerry comes up with something to say. To stay 'on message' you have to have one."

When I tell the choir something important, I start by saying, "This is one thing you should remember forever, and if I get hit by a cement mixer on the way home from rehearsal, I won't be here to repeat it again." They used to laugh at that, but don't anymore - I need to come up with another untimely death scenario.

At the top of the list is that singers need to open their mouths. From an early age, we're conditioned to keep our mouths closed: "Don't chew with your mouth open" "Shut your mouth or you'll catch flies"

In a choir, a quick way to improve the sound is to have the singers open their mouths while singing. It prolongs the duration of the vowel and encourages legato singing. An open mouth generally leads to a better resonance in the voice and better vowel color. It also encourages concentration on the overall effort.

I have to fight the closed-mouth syndrome all the time because of old habits, but all the fighting pays off and open mouths can help any piece of music sound better.

Cardinal Francis George to JPII on the Catholic Church in America. Looks like we're hung up on step 5 of 12: "Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs."

Weeks and weeks ago, I mentioned that we bought a new house. Well, we moved in, and everything is great, though we have been working on modifications (which are much better than fixes.) Below is a picture of the house. Below it is Anna, Christopher, and Charlie in front of the big tree in the front yard.

The US Attorney's office has charged a Philadelphia catholic priest for child exploitation.

57-year-old catholic priest of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia father Matthew Kornacki is accused of possessing computer discs and other materials on his personal laptop computer at Saint Charles Borromeo seminary that contained child pornography .

US Attorney Pat Meehan says the images had been mailed, shipped and transported in interstate and foreign commerce. [emphasis mine]

If convicted, Kornacki faces a maximum of 10 years in prison and $250-thousand fine.

The Archdiocese of Philadelphia says Kornacki has been removed from active ministry.

He was a priest for more than 30 years and most recently served in the Department of Continuing Formation for priests at the seminary.

Who knows if this priest was trafficking in these images or if this means he just paid money for them? Regardless, this is a terrible charge, especially for someone who is faculty at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary. More info on this case and another charge, this for a priest of the Diocese of Allentown, can be found here.

Ramesh Ponnuru posted this link on The Corner earlier today.

You ever notice that some writers have shelf lives, like dairy products? They're good for a few years, maybe even decades, but then they sputter out into irrelevance.

Such a man is Robert Novak, who used to write a good column but is rapidly becoming a right-wing Andy Rooney. His writing used to be exciting because he really did provide solid "behind the scenes" information on what was "really" going on around D.C., and his assessments were correct more often than not.

Today, he's a cranky old man (despite converting to the fulness of Catholic truth a few years ago.) His sharp analysis has lapsed into lazy repetition, his source material mere anecdotes. Here's one example:

It is a strange war [in Afghanistan], with the JAGs -- Judge Advocate General military lawyers -- given a hand in military decisions. My sources tell of military commanders, despite credible intelligence of enemy forces, calling off air strikes on the advice of JAGs. This is the kind of restraint the U.S. military has experienced starting with the Korean War, when as a non-combat Army officer, I knew our forces had their hands tied behind their backs.

Because of the nature of my unit, I've known dozens of JAG officers, and they are hardly pacifists. They see their role as supporting the warfighting effort, and so they strive to balance military necessity against moral and legal obligations. Novak should meet a few of them instead of relying on a half-century-old memory.

Mark Steyn contrasts domestic reactions to the Civil War with the Iraq War, and finds them discomforting:

There is something not just ridiculous but unbecoming about a hyperpower 300 million strong whose elites -- from the deranged former vice president down -- want the outcome of a war, and the fate of a nation, to hinge on one freaky jailhouse; elites who are willing to pay any price, bear any burden, as long as it's pain-free, squeaky clean and over in a week. The sheer silliness dishonors the memory of all those we're supposed to be remembering this Memorial Day.

Read the whole article -- there's a riveting, shocking Civil War anecdote at the beginning.