October 2005 Archives

It didn't take long before the Moonbat Left started employing anti-Catholicism against Judge Alito. No sooner was he nominated to the Supreme Court, but the loons on Daily Kos started hyperventilating about a CATHOLIC MAJORITY ON THE SUPREME COURT!!! They didn't notice that Scalia and Kennedy often find themselves at odds, and neither of the judges use their religion to justify their rulings, as well they shouldn't. (In fairness, several commenters dissented from this display of raw bigotry.)

Alito would join faithful Catholics Scalia, Thomas, and Roberts. That would make a 4-1 ratio of decent Catholics to Judases on the Court. Not as good as the 11-1 ratio at the Last Supper, but for a secular institution, not bad.

The best thing I can say about this article by Maureen Dowd is that I didn't hate it from the very first line. The tipping point came here: "Men, apparently, learn early to protect their eggshell egos from high-achieving women." This was in a middle of a passage where Dowd tries to convince us that men don't like to marry women who are too darn smart and successful. (Like her: fifty-three years old, a columnist at the most powerful newspaper in the world, and as single as an ace of spades.)

This opinion is backed up by a bunch of pseudo-scientific claptrap:

"A study by psychology researchers at the University of Michigan, using college undergraduates, suggested that men going for long-term relationships would rather marry women in subordinate jobs than women who are supervisors. Men think that women with important jobs are more likely to cheat on them. There it is, right in the DNA: women get penalized by insecure men for being too independent."

There probably is an evolutionary explanation for that phenomenon, assuming it's true, but it isn't what Dowd thinks. If evolution is all about perpetuating your genes, then men will naturally tend to avoid many high-achieving women, because they presume that these women will want to spend more time on their career and less time caring for their offspring.

For women, the reverse isn't true, because primarily they want men to contribute two things to families: moral leadership and physical sustenance. If Dowd thinks that will ever change, she's fooling herself. Women will only behave differently if they are under the sway of false ideologies such as radical feminism, or if they aren't thinking of marriage at all.

Long-time Catholic Light readers will recall that I've asked whether Dowd is "the dumbest prominent columnist in America, or the most prominent dumb columnist in America." This piece has all of Dowd's hallmarks, from the embarrassingly unreadable sentences ("Jurassic feminists shudder at the retro implication of a quid profiterole") to the lengthy passages where she assumes everybody agrees with her already:

Many women now do not think of domestic life as a "comfortable concentration camp," as Betty Friedan wrote in "The Feminine Mystique," where they are losing their identities and turning into "anonymous biological robots in a docile mass." Now they want to be Mrs. Anonymous Biological Robot in a Docile Mass. They dream of being rescued - to flirt, to shop, to stay home and be taken care of. They shop for "Stepford Fashions" - matching shoes and ladylike bags and the 50's-style satin, lace and chiffon party dresses featured in InStyle layouts - and spend their days at the gym trying for Wisteria Lane waistlines.

I wonder if "many women" hated Betty Friedan and her ilk because back then, there were many recent survivors of real concentration camps, who probably didn't appreciate the equasion of Buchenwald and the suburbs.

Be that as it may, Dowd's article, excerpted from a forthcoming book, is not a screed, and for her that's saying quite a lot. When she writes, "...the feminist revolution would have the unexpected consequence of intensifying the confusion between the sexes, leaving women in a tangle of dependence and independence as they entered the 21st century," it's a startling admission.

In the '90s, feminists argued that feminism hadn't succeeded in making women happy because feminism wasn't yet fully implemented. (Just as Marxists said that no state had ever implemented communism correctly, so you couldn't say it had ever failed.) Feminism originally appealed to many women (and not a few men) because of the spiritual emptiness of postwar American consumerism, as well as the undeniable injustices that men often perpetrate upon women. At its best, feminism affirmed that women needed lives with dignity and self-worth, and should not be treated as means to an end.

As a living intellectual movement, feminism ran out of ideas a long time ago, and as a political movement it committed suicide by defending Bill Clinton's disordered sexuality. Its fundamental mistake was to seek material solutions for spiritual problems. For example, feminists demanded that women should be able to work outside the home and thus gain their own status; the American tendency to value money too highly was left unchallenged.

What began as a ringing challenge to treat human beings as uniquely valuable has shriveled into an increasingly strident, narrow demand that unborn children should be treated as worthless blobs of cells, which (if you'll pardon the phrase) seems to be their sole remaining viable political issue. Had they rooted their movement in an authentic anthropology such as the late Pope John Paul II's, or at least left the door open for an understanding of what humans truly are, they might have survived. Instead, feminism still wanders the world, doing much damage but having forgotten why it began in the first place.

For 44 years after World War II, the Communist authorities of East Germany forbade the rebuilding of Dresden's Church of our Lady, destroyed by Allied bombers. In 1989, though, the boot was lifted from that country, and the people and the Church in Dresden knew what they wanted to accomplish: a restored Frauenkirche.

You know, baseball can bring some spiritual benefits! Here's the story as Fr. Bryce Sibley tells it:

Last week I was on retreat in Alhambra (CA) at the retreat house belonging to the Carmelite Sisters of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. Before I left I asked some of the sisters to pray that I could get tickets to the World Series...

I just deleted a comment, for the second time ever. It was by someone who has been commenting a lot recently, and he shall remain nameless. Here was the comment:

Maybe if those bishops at that worthless synod that Paul VI instituted after Vatican II would have some guts and decided to excommunicate these "Catholic by name only" murders, or at least deny them communion, we would not have this discussion. But you see the Popes after Vatican II and the Bishops themselves are no better than the pharisies of the 1st century who handed our Lord over for crucifixion, only now they are handing our Lord over to baby killers. And you contribute money to this baby killing church?

They are more worried about being Loved by the world like JPII than doing what is right by God, and they are paying the price now.

I can't speak for anyone else here on Catholic Light, but if you want to insult me, go right ahead -- I've got a thick skin, and I can hold my own. But you will not use this space to disparage any pope, or the bishops collectively.

Offering a critique of a pope's governance of the Church, with respect and true charity, is fine. Nobody said any pope is perfect (and any pope would agree with that.) But you simply cannot claim to be a faithful Catholic while throwing around phrases such as "baby killing church."

I'm frustrated that many bishops don't firmly rebuke Catholic politicians for publicly betraying the Faith. Everybody else on Catholic Light thinks the same way, too. If you really want to see the bishops take action, do you think baseless, angry accusations are the best way to accomplish that?

Not bad: a school in liberal Newton, Mass., cancelled Halloween observances in response to complaints. It's good that somebody in this very P.C. place respected the objections of offended religious parents -- whether Christian, Jewish, or Muslim, we don't know yet.

The article also doesn't say quite what the parents' objections were. The old Celtic pagan holiday that fell on the 31st seems relatively benign, a bit of harmless myth-making, so I don't object to that too much, except on the grounds that I don't want public schools to promote neo-paganism. But in the pop culture, Halloween has become an opportunity to celebrate figures of evil and horror, and (call me a fundamentalist, but) I don't want that degraded phenomenon to have a platform in the schools. After all, if it weren't for the schools promoting Halloween, it would be a pretty minor annual affair, as it deserves to be.

Virginians know that God created Maryland to make Virginia look even better than it is. But we can envy our northern neighbors for its lieutenant governor, Michael Steele, who is running for the U.S. Senate next year.

Steele grew up in poverty to a single mother, attending Catholic schools on his mother's earnings in a laundromat. He's more conservative than the Republican governor, and he's charismatic and loquacious. At the 2004 Republican National Convention, he gave a solid prime-time speech.

What's more, Steele is openly pro-life in a very pro-abortion state, and one of his personal heroes is John Paul II, whom he quoted in his announcement speech. In a state where elections are decided in two places -- Baltimore and the D.C. suburbs -- Steele's race won't hurt him, either. Keep an eye on Michael Steele, because you might be seeing more of him in the very near future.

If you're a Virginia resident, for the second year in a row you have the opportunity to decide between a pro-life, conservative Protestant and a pro-abortion sell-out Catholic. This time, instead of Bush and Kerry, it's Kilgore and Kaine. (Too many "K" names, I know.)

Tim Kaine, the current lieutenant governor, is the liberal former mayor of a big city who alternatively runs away from his record or tries to conceal it. Virginia is a solidly right-of-center state, and the only reason we have a Democrat governor is because he swore up and down that he wasn't a liberal. Kaine has to win by simultaneously pretend he isn't a lefty, while sending enough lefty vibes to urban and suburban liberals to keep them interested.

It probably won't work, although it isn't for lack of smarmy pandering. Read this statement on "Values and the Family." He quotes scripture, talks about being a Catholic missionary...you'd think this was a true son of the Church. This abortion statement would lead an unsuspecting voter to believe that Kaine is pro-life because of his Catholicism: "I have a faith-based opposition to abortion."

That is so misleading that it constitutes a lie. He does not want any abortions prohibited, so far as I can determine (feel free to send me evidence to the contrary.) He wants to promote contraception as an alternative to abortion:

Kaine said the state should emphasize "tried and trusted ways to cut abortion," including contraception access. He does not support abortion, citing his faith, but said he would enforce laws allowing it.

Worse, Kaine doesn't even stand up for his own principles. He used to be an opponent of the death penalty, which enjoys massive support among Virginia voters. Executing murderers, along with abolishing parole, liberalizing concealed-carry permits for firearms, and imprisoning more criminals, led to a dramatic drop in the statewide crime rate over the last decade, significantly more than the national average.

Kaine called for a death-penalty moratorium in the past, and as an attorney he represented capital-murder defendants. His opposition seemed honorable, but now he's running advertising where he practically promises to kill death-row inmates with his bare hands. "My faith teaches me that life is sacred," Kaine says into the TV camera, "but I will carry out death sentences handed down by Virginia juries, because that's the law."

His opponent, Kilgore, has been running tough ads attacking Kaine's previous views on the subject, and so Kaine decided that the law trumps faith. Had he said, "I believe that the death penalty is necessary to defend society against the worst criminals," he would have remained within Catholic tradition. But unlike abortion, where he will merely look the other way, Kaine is willing to take an active role by signing convicts' death warrants. It's the kind of thing that gives weak-willed politicians a bad name.

Kaine's candidacy is an opportunity squandered. In 1928, Virginia gave its electoral votes to Republican Herbert Hoover because the Democratic candidate was Catholic, marking the first time that our commonwealth had ever gone Republican. It's heartening to see that Kaine can showcase his Catholic faith for this overwhelmingly Protestant electorate, but it is unconscionable that he should attempt to conceal his moral and political cowardice with a veil of religion.

Which is why on November 8, I will vote to give him the sound electoral thrashing that he so richly deserves.

Two encouraging actions show bishops with backbone:

The bishop of Peterborough (ON) has removed a pastor who not only vocally supported ordination for women, but declared that he had celebrated Mass with "women priests" during a visit to the US.

In Sacramento, Bp. William Weigand directed a high school to dismiss a non-Catholic teacher who was found by a local pro-lifer to be a Planned Parenthood abortion mill volunteer, directly opposing the efforts of pro-lifers to save women and their unborn children from abortion.

A few years ago, Zimbabwe was a major food exporter, and one of the few African economic success stories. Its president, Robert Mugabe, saw that white Zimbabweans (most of whom had lived there for generations) were largely responsible for this success, and he wanted his black countrymen to be more prosperous.

So he immediately implemented free-market legal reforms, including an anti-corruption campaign to secure private property. He worked with religious and tribal leaders to gain their support, emphasizing education and entrepreneurship as the keys to prosperity, along with the virtues of hard work, honesty, and looking out for one's community.

Kidding! Mugabe got armed bands of thugs to throw the white farmers off of their land. Those farms, which don't magically sprout crops but require hard work and planning, don't grow much food anymore. Now 200,000 people are facing starvation, according to Catholic Archbishop Pius Ncumbe.

But despite Mugabe's responsibility for the deaths of thousands of black Africans so far, with thousands more to come, the international Left has largely been silent. Why? Because Mugabe is one of their fellow loons, attending international conferences to denounce their favorite targets:

"Must we allow [Bush and Blair], the two unholy men of our millennium, who in the same way as Hitler and Mussolini formed [an] unholy alliance, form an alliance to attack an innocent country?" asked Mr Mugabe, apparently referring to Iraq.

And this was at a food summit! While his countrymen are going hungry because he blew up his own economy simply to stir up racial resentment! Imagine if a white dictator caused mass hunger on this scale, with thousands of Africans facing death? Would he be invited to any fancypants international conferences?

The racialist modern Left is always willing to cut murderous dictators lots of slack -- just as long as the dictators are Darker People, and regardless of whether Darker People are the ones watching their kids die for lack of food. This demonstrates that Leftists are motivated primarily by hatred of the West and capitalism, and the United States most of all. When they encounter someone who shares their hatreds, they will look the other way, even when innocent people are killed and oppressed.

Postscript: A bishop named "Pius Ncumbe" must be a total badass.

Congratulations to Warsaw mayor Lech Kaczynski!

Gothic novelist Anne Rice attempts a story about the most mysterious Person in history. Newsweek's David Gates writes:

Rice knows "Out of Egypt" and its projected sequels—three, she thinks—could alienate her following; as she writes in the afterword, "I was ready to do violence to my career." But she sees a continuity with her old books, whose compulsive, conscience-stricken evildoers reflect her long spiritual unease. "I mean, I was in despair." In that afterword she calls Christ "the ultimate supernatural hero ... the ultimate immortal of them all."

Columnist Betsy Hart is on C-SPAN's Book TV tonight:
"We live in a culture that doesn't want to admit that the greatest danger to a child is the foolishness of his own heart."

"...even when it comes to caring for kids, too many parents idolize their children — almost, it seems, wanting something FROM them in the form of their accomplishments and achievements. Or they are spending so much time pursuing the golden ring of achievement themselves so they can give their kids stuff (and be liked in return) that they don't give their kids what they really need: Time. And an effort to reach their child's heart — not just an effort to get the child to Harvard."

"My goal for my kids is Heaven, not Harvard. Now, if they get into Harvard on the way to Heaven..., that's marvelous. But that's not my goal."

K-Lo interviewed Betsy Hart in September. Here's her book.

A few points from some of the fifty propositions offered (I paraphrase):

13: The synod Fathers suggest rethinking the order in which the Sacraments of initiation (Baptism, Confirmation, First Communion) are given. In the Latin tradition, the First Communion of children has come to be before Confirmation, but there is no dogmatic reason for this; for adults, Confirmation precedes First Communion.

23: The Fathers suggest moving the Sign of Peace to another point in the Mass.

24: New formulas for the "Ita missa est" (solemn blessing, prayer over the people, etc.) could be given to better express the sending of the faithful to their mission in the world.

36: Priests should be taught in seminary to understand and celebrate Mass in Latin, and to use Gregorian chant.

37: The Fathers suggest that the competent organizations (Episcopal Conferences, SCDW) propose regulations for concelebration when the number of concelebrants is especially high.

46: Catholic politicians should note that there is no "eucharistic coherence" when they promote laws that harm the integral good of man, which are against justice and the natural law. Bishops should apply the virtues of strength and prudence, taking into account the concrete local situation.

Coptic Christians, who make up about 5-10% of Egypt's people, are not hiding in a corner and hoping the violent Islamists who threaten society there will, Inshallah, go away. Instead, last year their pope protested attempts to force Christians to convert to Islam; now, a church in Alexandria has the fortitude to denounce the criminals via a dramatic performance. What do the Islamists' supporters do to protest this unjust criticism? One stabbed a nun this week and a crowd came straight from Friday prayers to riot at the church. That'll prove those infidels wrong!

Remember our brothers and sisters who suffer for the Christian faith.

This has got to be the funniest line in the whole article: "Bush faces prison time if the case goes to trial and he is found guilty."

Note to American readers in the military. Please ensure that ordinary Canadians are not caught in the cross-fire. Any retaliation should be directed at Ottawa.

Where might one purchase a clicker? Not a neon-green dog trainer's model, you understand, but a real real-nun certified version?

(I'm not planning shenannigans at the local Trid Mass, by the way, or, for that matter, shenannigans anywhere.)

You may have heard about the Duggar Family, the Arkansas couple who have 16 kids, ages 1 to 17. Although they are Evangelicals, they abandoned birth control after four years of marriage, embracing the idea that children are gifts from God and accepting as many children as God might give them.

The Duggars inspire mixed feelings in me. On the one hand, if they say that it's God's plan for them to procreate 16 people, who am I to say that it isn't? Truly, they live lives of heroic sacrifice. On the other hand, nowhere does it say in Scripture that we are called to have as many children as possible. Apparently, after child #10, a doctor advised Michelle the wife that she probably shouldn't have any more kids, which could be a serious enough reason to refrain from having any more. Also, their children's names all begin with the letter J. But the Duggars are not living on public support, as the husband makes a good living in real estate, and their hearts seem completely focused on God.

But to Mark Morford, a lunatic columnist in San Francisco, the Duggars are a threat to all that is right and good:

Let us be clear: I don't care what sort of God you believe in, it's a safe bet that hysterical breeding does not top her list of desirables. God does not want more children per acre than there are ants or mice or garter snakes or repressed pedophilic priests. We already have three billion humans on the planet who subsist on less than two dollars a day. Every other child in the world (one billion of them) lives in abject poverty. We are burning through the planet's resources faster than a Republican can eat an endangered caribou stew. Note to Michelle Duggar: If God wanted you to have a massive pile of children, she'd have given your uterus a hydraulic pump and a revolving door. Stop it now.

You gotta read the entire diseased essay. Morford's columns are light-years beyond parody. He manages to pack all of the Left's hatreds into a comparatively small space, screeching against chastity, marriage, Christianity, Wal Mart, etc. And where did the "repressed pedophilic priests" come from? If someone is pedophilic, wouldn't it be good for them to be repressed?

Assuming he's not truly insane, Morford does say a couple of things worth commenting upon. First, overpopulation, even if you believe in it, is a local problem. Arkansas is not overpopulated. It has 20 people per square kilometer, well below the density for the entire U.S., meaning that there are 33 states with higher densities. New Jersey's population is 2,110% more dense, and somehow most of them manage to eat and clothe themselves, except perhaps in Newark. Even if Arkansas were "overpopulated," it's unlikely that one couple having 16 children is going to make much difference.

Second, Morford suspects that maybe in the long run, it's people who have more kids who will inherit the earth, because his buddies on the Left aren't producing many "funky progressive intellectually curious fashion-forward pagan offspring." Those who are in love with sterility and death will eventually die out, like dinosaurs. Quite perceptive.

Every time I have the slightest twinge of doubt that Catholic school is worth the money, something like this happens.

Apparently, some athletes Osbourn High School in Manassas decided to have a "sexual incident" one afternoon, to use the clinical term from the article. And did the parents discipline their children, or move to another state? No -- according to WMAL, a local station, they complained that their rutting children were punished too severely.

Whenever parents attack the authorities for punishing their misbehaving kids, one can only assume it's displaced anger from shame. They think that by defending their children, they can refrain from blaming themselves. That's the charitable interpretation -- the less charitable one would be that they really think there's nothing wrong with such an "incident."

I will be completely happy to write that tuition check next month.

No, not the Madonna. This time, it's just Madonna the singer.

I should have predicted this, it's been so obvious; it's time for her to reinvent herself as a defender of values other than the tolerance of weirdness.

Unfortunately, from the snippet Drudge quotes, she might be a little anti-material in the gnostic sense; but maybe that's part of her quasi-kabbalah religion thing, if she's still into that. At this rate of change, she may end up as a Christian again someday.

Watch for her to take up singing standards.

Does it mean you can't force a public official to be a certain religion?

Does it mean you can't show preferential treatment to people or organizations that have a certain relisious affiliation?

Does it mean "God" can't be mentioned at anything that has anything to do with public schools, city hall or the governor's mansion?

Or does it mean a high school marching band can't cover the Charlie Daniels band classic "The Devil Went Down to Georgia?"

Yes: We are getting very stupid about "separation of church and state." At least this time it involves the devil, and not recasting bronze that happened to have some mention of "divine justice" or "eternal truth" or just plain old, "God."

Once upon a time in the Middle Ages (in 1278), a Cistercian abbot in what is now the Czech Republic brought home some earth from the Holy Land, and he scattered it on the local cemetery. This gave it the status of very holy ground, and made it an especially desired place to leave one's mortal remains. In the next forty years, over 30,000 of the faithful were buried on that sacred site.

In 1511, bones from the graves were relocated into a chapel crypt so that the graveyard could be re-used (I'm told this is not unusual in Europe), and in 1870 an artist was given the assignment of turning the bones into decorations for the interior of the chapel. The results of his devotional artwork are there today in the Ossuary church at Sedlec.

Remember Senator John Edwards (D-Prell)? Okay, probably not. He was the guy who lost the presidential election along with that other guy, you know...the one with the gray bouffant hairdo and obnoxious wife.

Anyway, before running on the Al Qaeda Proxy Candidate ticket, Senator Edwards ran for the Democratic presidential nomination. He told voters that there are "Two Americas," one with gold plated toilets, the other with no indoor plumbing, one that shops at Tiffany's, the other that can't afford to shop at Wal-Mart, etc. This clumsy quasi-Marxist theme didn't play well, even with hard-core Democrats, who, if they believed in the death penalty, would limit its use to anyone making over $200,000 a year.

Nevertheless, without so much as a self-serving press release, John Edwards took a look at both Americas, and decided that the leather seats and martinis of Rich America looked better than the folding chairs and Pabst Blue Ribbon in Poor America. He's joining a private investment group so he can "[develop] investment opportunities worldwide and strategic advice on global economic issues."

Edwards was worth about $50 million when he ran for VP eleven months ago, so it's not like he needs the money. The BusinessWeek article notes that other politicians have gone into the financial sector, but none of the examples they list had ever run on a haves vs. have-nots agenda before doing so.

Democrats say they're for "social justice," which is why far too many Catholics buy their rhetoric and vote for them. But that platitude translates into sordid things like racial set-asides and massive income transfers from working families to the often-undeserving elderly. And for all their talk about compassion for the "little guy," when it comes to the littlest guys at all -- babies in the womb -- they have no compassion at all.

Bravo for John Edwards: he isn't going to pretend to work for the wretched and the oppressed. He's going to make buckets full of money and throw them on his pile. At least Jimmy Carter has done some demonstrably good things in his well-deserved retirement.

There are plenty of sleazy Republicans, too, but at least under their policies, we get to keep at least a little more of our money, and nobody ends up dead.

4,000-Year-Old Noodle Dish Found in China

"These are definitely the earliest noodles ever found," said Lu Houyuan, a researcher with the Institute of Geology in Beijing who studied the ingredients of the pristinely preserved pasta.

A co-worker overheard this dialogue in a Las Vegas casino:

Wife: Let's go find an ATM.

Husband: What do you need money for?

Wife: I need to win back what I lost.

At a two-day training class I attended a couple of weeks ago, the students were mostly civilians, but there was a large contingent of Navy medical officers. In one session, groups of students had to hammer out a strategy for a fictional company we supposedly worked for. In the course of the discussion, one of the officers suggested that "indoctrination" would be a good idea for line workers.

The civilian half of the group assumed he was either joking or revealing himself as a crypto-fascist, but he was doing neither. "Indoctrination" is often used as a pejorative, but that is not its primary definition:

in·doc·tri·nate
1 : to instruct especially in fundamentals or rudiments : TEACH
2 : to imbue with a usually partisan or sectarian opinion, point of view, or principle

Or as one weapons instructor said to us in boot camp, "Indoctrination doesn't mean brainwashing." Immersing yourself in "fundamentals or rudaments" doesn't mean you have to amputate your faculties of reason; if you're really ingesting what you're learning, the opposite is true.

Fear of "indoctrination" is, I think, at the heart of why adults today are reluctant to teach kids firm principles. But the only way you can get kids to learn something is to repeat it until they understand, and then reinforce it frequently. Kids don't want, much less need, fine distinctions -- they crave clarity. When they want a fuller explanation as to why it's wrong to clobber your brother with a mallet, you can provide it when they are ready. Until then, mallet-clobbering is bad because it's wrong to hurt people, period.

I'm off to Las Vegas for a conference, so I may go to Mass Sunday
at this striking-looking church (once a shrine, now the cathedral); or maybe this shrine.

Since I'm interested in Latin Masses, I checked for one, but it doesn't appear there's a licit T-Mass in the diocese. There used to be a 1970 Latin Mass at this shrine, when it was a chapel of Discalced Carmelite nuns, but alas for the city, the Carmelites moved to Lincoln, NE. The chapel itself looks rather nice, but I'll have to see the sculpture out front in person to get a real sense of it: I assume it's a recent addition, since the place became a Vietnamese shrine-parish.

Bishop Robert Vasa of Baker, Oregon, has served notice that he is not going to comply with USCCB policy on "safe-environment" programs for children. While he's willing to offer one in Catholic schools, he's not going to push it on every child in the diocese, out of respect for parents' right to direct the education of their children in sexual matters.

Thanks to Bishop Vasa for his willingness to buck the demands of the bureaucracy.

(via CWN)

Proving that shoddy religious journalism is not an American phenomenon, the Times of London has decided to tell us that the "Catholic Church no longer swears by truth of the Bible."

"THE hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church has published a teaching document instructing the faithful that some parts of the Bible are not actually true," the article begins. Yes, it's true: Wisdom really isn't a woman, and she doesn't have teeth "like a flock of sheep that are even shorn." Also, when Jesus said we should be like serpents, he didn't expect us to grow scaly skins.

The article continues:

The document shows how far the Catholic Church has come since the 17th century, when Galileo was condemned as a heretic for flouting a near-universal belief in the divine inspiration of the Bible by advocating the Copernican view of the solar system. Only a century ago, Pope Pius X condemned Modernist Catholic scholars who adapted historical-critical methods of analysing ancient literature to the Bible.

There is an excellent, disinterested summary of the Galileo slander here, written by a non-Catholic. Somebody else can look up the Pius X quotation, but when I read it a few years ago, I remember that he was condemning the use of literary theories as the sole way to interpret scriptural truth. The Holy Father's condemnation fell thus not on those who wished to place the Bible in its historical context, or apply textual scholarship to the Bible (which is absurd on its face -- source criticism was invented to disintangle the early versions of scripture.)

"The document is timely, coming as it does amid the rise of the religious Right, in particular in the US," Ruth Gledhill writes. The "rise of the religious Right" has been proceeding for three decades in America, so it's nice of Ms. Gledhill to notice. Religion has played a starring role on the national stage since long before this country's birth; the question is not why religion is a political factor now, but why it was so dormant for so long.

Gledhill and the Times can run such stories, even though their audience is largely right-of-center, because to British elites, believing Christians are freaks of nature. Nevermind that the Evangelical movement was started by the Brits, including the indominable Wesleys, today that movement is populated by otherworldly dolts who long to bring back the rack and the Iron Maiden (excellent!).

When I was in London last month, the BBC ran some footage of a couple dozen earnest-looking folks who gathered on the Supreme Court steps to pray for a good incoming justice on the court. Not my thing, really, and they did look a tad goofy, but so what? Anybody who works in downtown D.C. knows that there are always a few people demonstrating for this or that; nobody pays that much attention unless the demonstration is blocking traffic, in which case the demonstrators are courting murder.

But to illustrate their theme of the benighted fools who dare to pray in public, the BBC was so pleased with this footage that they were still playing it several days later. Were they aware that about a third of the American public identifies itself as Evangelical? And that means there are more Evangelicals than, say, viewers of network evening news programs?

It's unfair to single out our British cousins, who are, after all, guided by the same constellation of class-based prejudices and hatreds as our American elite media. Such as the Washington Post: "Strong Grounding in the Church Could Be a Clue to Miers's Priorities," its headline blared Wednesday. Did they run an article called "Work as ACLU Lawyer May Indicate Future Rulings" when Ruth Bader Ginsberg was nominated?

As the headline indicates, the article attempts to rat out Harriet Miers for attending a church where they believe in the reality of Christ's sacrifice, if you can imagine. They even seem to think that the Gospel says something about how humans ought to live their lives -- "There are antiabortion pamphlets inside the church and literature opposing premarital sex," the Post helpfully reports.

About ten years ago, Christopher Hitchens wrote a terribly unfair book about Mother Theresa, intending it as a hatchet job. His main theme -- apart from the transparently absurd charge that she was a publicity-seeking fraud -- was that secularists shouldn't be taken in by Mother Theresa's corporal works of mercy. No, that tiny Albanian nun did not do these things because of an Enlightenment-inspired ethos, but because she thought she was bringing souls to heaven. Hitchens' book was wrong, but at least he bothered to take his subject seriously. The same cannot be said of practically any mainstream journalist writing about religion today.

Sandro Magister leads up to the Synod by reviewing Pope Benedict's particular emphases so far: his call for a more purified Church, as seen in the Burresi and Maciel cases; his thoughts on good and bad ecumenism; and his approach to relations with non-Christians, refraining from the dramatic gestures of his venerable predecessor; and a focus on priestly formation: Magister predicts a housecleaning of US seminary officials and a policy against candidates with "pronounced homosexual tendencies".

If that word "pronounced" is really in the text, then the nuance has arrived, and we're about to see a lot of the fuss over this document deflate.

(Via Vatican Watcher.)

[From my latest article, "Sedevacantism at the Gates?"]

Neither sedevacantism nor sedeprivationism claimed many adherents back when I first embraced the tridentine liturgy. Thus the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) spoke of the “Council’s decrees, constitutions, and declarations, contain[ing], more or less explicitly, some of the same doctrinal errors for which liberals in the past had been condemned,” [SSPX US District official website, “What are Catholics to Think of Vatican II?” (September 23, 2005)] and of the Novus Ordo being “intrinsically evil,” but SSPX adherents were not to publicly question the validity of the post-conciliar Roman Pontiffs. Sedevacantism became the line that older generations of traditional Catholics dare not cross.

Today, things have changed. Surf traditionalist websites for any length of time and you soon discover that younger traditionalists do not shy away from sedevacantism. Among the growing list of relatively young sedevacantist authors are: John Lane, John S. Daly, Mario Derksen, Griff Ruby, and the Dimond brothers. Many others hang around individual blogs, chat lines, message boards and email discussion forums. From my own experience as a canonist, I now field more questions relating to sedevacantism than every other aspect of traditionalism combined. These questions come from other canonists and other laity. If my recent experiences are any indication, sedevacantism is on the rise.

Read the whole article

[I've received a number of positive comments from readers concerning the September 8th "Of Canons and Culture..." -- a column I write for the Wanderer. So I hope nobody minds if I blog the original unedited version -- PJV]

Of Canons & Culture
Canada, Homosexuality and Children

Pete Vere

“Daddy,” my four-year-old asked, “why are those two men kissing like you and Mommy?”

While I initially hoped to avoid mentioning homosexuality in this month’s column, the question left me stunned. It was Saturday afternoon. My daughter and I were enjoying the public playground down the street. We were not sitting around watching Gerry Springer, MTV, or Dan Blather covering a joint NARAL-DNC convention. Just a father pushing his daughter on a swing and catching her at the end of the slide. I look forward to this family time each week.

Now the answer to my daughter’s question is obvious: these two homosexuals were not kissing like Mommy and Daddy. Even the most confused and careless of storks steers clear of the former, whereas my four-year-old owes her existence to the latter. Of course she is innocent of this truth, and despite the shock this may cause sex indoctrination...er...education experts, her naivety is entirely appropriate for one her age. Yet even at four my daughter recognizes something unnatural about two men kissing. I’m not so sure about most sex education experts.

The liberal Canadian establishment reverences homosexuality with a passion they once reserved for abortion. For example, Bryan Pinn and Bill Dalrymple are two Canadian men. Best friends for 22 years, they each claim to be heterosexual. Thus it surprised friends and family when Bryan and Bill announced their impending marriage for, to quote the report in Agence France Presse, the "significant tax implications.” “The [law] did not specify that the couple had to be gay,” the story notes.

The reaction of Canada’s homosexual lobby was predictable. “It makes a mockery out of marriage,” one homosexual activist complained. Although you may find this difficult to believe, the activist was reportedly expressing outrage and not satire. Other homosexual activists followed through with their ritual accusations of homophobia, at which point Pinn and Dalrumple called off the wedding. In Canada, “homophobia” has replaced “Jesus” as the name before which every knee shall bend and every tongue confess.

Coincidentally, I had just finished reading This Side of Jordan when I came across Pinn and Dalrumple’s allegedly homophobic wedding. This Side of Jordan is Bill Kassel’s latest novel and it addresses the topic of homosexuality from an orthodox Catholic perspective. Although a tad sermonizing at times, I found the novel highly entertaining. In my somewhat cantankerous opinion, the book’s exchange between two fictional priests catches the essence of the word homophobia :

***

“I frankly think the biggest problem the Church faces right now is homophobia,” states Lowell Walton, a progressive pastor who eschews the title Father.

“Homophobia, Lowell?” replies Fr. Karl Muller, the protagonist and a champion of Catholic orthodoxy. “An even bigger problem may be homophobiaphobia—the fear of being called homophobic. I think it’s crippling our ability to discern truth from falsehood.”

***

In Canada, it is also crippling out ability to preserve our children’s innocence. For how do we teach our children to discern truth from falsehood when in our society none dare speak against the love that dares not speak its name in other societies? This question was the topic of conversation this past weekend when John O’Brien, John Pacheco and I met for coffee.

Our American readers may recognize John O’Brien as the son of Catholic novelist Michael O’Brien. Here in Canada, where many Catholic schools have become defacto public schools since accepting public funding, the younger O’Brien is a leading proponent of private Catholic education. As the principal of Wayside Academy (www.waysideacademy.ca), he saw this private Catholic academy in expand from a grade school to include a high-school as well.

John O’Brien believes that private Catholic education is the means for preserving our children’s innocence. Yet it is not just about religion, for O’Brien also believes private Catholic education is the best means for preparing our children to become productive citizens. After all, a child not obsessed with sex can focus on such novel subjects as reading, writing and arithmetic.

O’Brien is presently helping John Pacheco establish a sister grade school here in Ottawa. The name of the school is Maryvale Academy (www.MaryvaleAcademy.ca) and its first class of thirty-five students is now underway. Maryvale operates on a shoe-string budget. Pacheco spends most of his spare time these days looking and praying for donors. “I think we just may break even this year,” he shared during our conversation. He and the other founding parents have already dug deep into their own pockets, while Maryvale’s teaching staff have agreed to salaries that are less than half of what their public school counterparts bring home. Yet given the immorality corrupting Canada’s social and cultural institutions, this is the sacrifice we must make to preserve our children’s innocence.

A bunch of anti-Catholic fanatics vandalized the altar of a Catholic church in Alabama toward the end of a Mass Sunday. I wonder whether they know it's a Federal offense; conservatives got that provision into the same law that prohibits blockading an abortion mill.

The priest -- in a savvy move -- wouldn't allow the press to photograph the ruined, toppled altar, lest it "glorify" the violence. But that's not to suggest that we gloss over this crime and fail to prosecute it. A trial and a verdict will display the truth about the crime, and that's necessary; society's good and the church's safety demand that. After that we can talk about clemency.

Is it too much to hope that this will be the beginning of some relationship between these misguided people and the parish? These four are gonna need somebody to visit them in the Pen.

(via Amy.)

Pope Benedict had to bump out a synod session today due to a prior commitment.

Let me now sing of my friend,
my friend's song concerning his vineyard.

I cleared myself a vineyard, on a fertile slope o' ground;
Built a wine-press and a tower, and the choicest vines I put down;
But I went to look at harvest-time, (don't cha know) only wild grapes I found.

So neighbors, judge between me and this vineyard of mine:
Could I have worked it any better? Why don't it give me good wine?
I went to look for sweet grapes, but only wild grapes on the vine.

I'm gonna tear down all the fences, let the cattle trample through;
Let the sheep and goats graze on it: yes, that's what I'm gonna do;
Tell the clouds to hold the rain back, not a single drop of dew.

So hear: the house of Is-rael is the vineyard of the Lord;
and he gave the vine of Judah all the care He could afford (which is everything, don't cha know)
But the bloodshed and injustice means His word has been ignored.

(Oh, yeah.)

I hate to say it, but I think the sedevacantist Fr. Anthony Cekada has won round 1 in his debate with Remnant polemicist Chris Ferrara.

Sedevacantism and Mr. Ferrara's Cardboard Pope
Recognizing the pope — but “for display purposes only”

...just added a little more grease: Ontario Attorney General Moves to Confiscate Home of Rural Hunter.

NOVELTY pig calendars and toys have been banned from a council office — in case they offend Muslim staff.

Is anyone actually surprised by this?

The Netherlands has legalized polygamy in all but name, granting a civil union to a man and two women.

My grandmother, Rose M. Schultz, passed away today. She was very old and infirm.

I remember fondly that she was a daily communicant, and had stacks of prayer cards she would use to guide her prayer each day. She raised a ruckus at her parish when all the saint statues were moved to the cry room in the back of the Church.

Rest in peace, Nana. We will miss you as we miss all those who have cared for us and helped guide us toward the truth.

EU Wants Shared Control of Internet