June 2006 Archives

The press has been buzzing for a few days over hyper-billionaire Warren Buffett's arrangement to merge most of his money with Bill Gates' foundation. To the extent that they do something good that benefits people, this is laudable.

On the other hand, I can't get all sanguine about it, since Buffett, like Gates, has been a population-control zealot for years and, as Mary Meehan wrote in 2001, a big donor to abortionists in the US and overseas. He even bankrolled the liars of (well, really they're ex-)Catholics for a Free Choice.

One commentator in the business press has the nerve to point out that this supposed Mr. Philanthropy earned his money the old-fashioned way: with ruthless amorality.

But that's not a surprise, considering he wants to "help" the poor by seeing that fewer of them make it to birth.

From the WashTimes Politics Blog.

On the very day of Archbishop Wuerl’s installation, two of Massachusetts’ most pro-choice Catholics — Kerry and the state’s senior U.S. senator, Ted Kennedy — showed up and sat in the VIP section. Archbishop Wuerl shook their hands as he moved toward the altar. I didn’t see whether Kennedy took Communion, but I know Kerry did because I talked with him immediately afterward. He was there, he said, as a longtime friend of the archbishop’s.

Isn’t it odd that two of the Senate’s most liberal Catholics made time in their schedules to be at the installation Mass while their conservative Republican colleague from Pennsylvania, Sen. Rick Santorum, did not?

Santorum, I heard, had to stay close to his office for a vote. All the same, here were two Democratic senators giving the new archbishop notice that they intend to ignore any move to disenfranchise them from the Eucharist. No one could miss the message.
Welcome to Washington, Archbishop.

Good to see Card. O'Malley on the right side of this one.

Multifaith coalition targets O'Malley
In an unusual incidence of religious leaders in Massachusetts publicly criticizing one another, a multifaith coalition of clergy who support same-sex marriage plan to accuse Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley and other Catholic leaders of ``religious discrimination" today. ... more

"Multifaith" coalition? Is that like Multigrain cereal? With fruits and nuts?

Once again, the question of the "legality" of the Iraq War has reared itself on Catholic Light. I am so tired of debating this subject that it actually makes me a bit queasy to type this, but here goes.

As you probably know, there is a war going on in Iraq. But it isn't the same war as the 2003 war to remove Saddam Hussein and dismantle his regime. If you want to argue about U.N. resolutions and "BUSH LIED!!!!!!!" and all that stuff, go ahead. But that's history. That war is over. Saddam is on trial for his life, and nobody, not even the most committed Bush-hater, is arguing that his regime should be restored.

The war today is being played for a much different set of objectives.
It might be useful to think of this second war as a sports contest, so here is a list of the players, the objectives of the game, and the rules of play:

STARTING LINEUP

Side #1:
1. The democratically elected Iraqi government
2. The overwhelming majority of Kurds
3. The overwhelming majority of Shiites
4. Some Sunnis
5. The allied military coalition led by the U.S.

Side #2:
1. The majority of Sunnis (though this is shifting)
2. al Qaeda terrorists
3. Native Sunni terrorists

OBJECTIVES OF THE GAME

Side #1:
1. Deter or destroy international terrorist groups.
2. Deter or destroy illegal combatants (a.k.a. "insurgents").
3. Protect ordinary Iraqis from being murdered.
4. Support and sustain the Iraqi state so it can keep public order.

Side #2:
1. Create a Taliban-style theocratic state.
2. Kill as many Kurds and Shiites as possible, including women and children.
3. Humiliate the United States by forcing it to leave Iraq.

RULES FOR EACH SIDE

Side #1:
1. Follow the laws of war.
2. Avoid civilian casualties.
3. Spare mosques, schools, hospitals, and other civilian infrastructure unless they are receiving fire from those buildings.
4. Prosecute anyone on side #1 who does not follow the laws of war.

Side #2:
1. Ignore the laws of war.
2. Use your opponent's observance of the laws of war against him.
3. Murder civilians, including (and, often, especially) women and children.
4. Bomb mosques, schools, and hospitals.
5. Store ammunition in mosques, schools, and hospitals.
6. Shoot from mosques, schools, and hospitals.
7. Use your allies in the U.S. Democratic Party and the Western media to assist you with objective #3.

If you want to argue that the present war in Iraq is "illegal," go ahead. But you will have an extremely difficult time doing so, since secular law isn't with you. There is a sovereign government in Iraq, which was democratically elected by the Iraqi people. This government is recognized by the United Nations, and by its member states, as the competent authority in that country.

As a sovereign nation, Iraq has the right to determine whether foreign armies may station troops within its borders. Its government not only permits allied troops to remain, it actively encourages those troops to carry out anti-terrorist campaigns, either alone or in coordination with Iraqi security forces.

Therefore, if you want to say that the present war is "illegal," you have to say that the Iraqi government is acting illegally by rooting out murderous thugs and letting its allies assist. Does anyone seriously want to argue that point -- that Iraq has no right to seek outside assistance when it cannot secure the peace within its borders? And that the U.S. and other nations are acting illegally in coming to the defense of this legitimate, sovereign government?

Because they don't want to look at the present moral questions of the present war, anti-war activists want to elide the difference between the two wars (or, if you like, the two distinct phases of the same war). They apparently think that since the war did not meet their standards at its commencement, the United States cannot do anything of any value in Iraq, ever. It wouldn't matter if the "insurgents" put nuclear warheads on ICBMs and prepared to incinerate the Eastern seaboard of the United States. All the moonbats would still screech "Where are the WMDs?" and demand an immediate pullout.

A challenge for you anti-war folks: come up with an international law that says the U.S. and other nations can't fight on the Iraqi government's behalf.

Bonus question: Find a church document that prohibits a nation from intervening militarily on the behalf of another nation, when the object is to restore justice and protect human lives.

On this day in 1535, besieging forces conquered the city of Münster, at the time run by a violent Anabaptist cult.

The returning civic authorities put on an impressive display afterward.

(Janet Reno, call your office.)

In the mental Wonderland of the Left, refusing to serve your country is "patriotism." Their latest "patriot" hero is Lieutenant Ehren Watada, who received his commission after the Iraq War commenced, and is now refusing to deploy to Iraq with his unit.

Lieutenant Watada is not a hero, although he is not a coward (he will be punished under military law, unlike those who fled the country to avoid their sworn service to this country.) He abandoned the troops he was supposed to lead, and betrayed the country he pledged to defend.

He also needs to brush up on the law: being ordered to Iraq with his unit is lawful order by a legitimate authority, and he disobeyed it. If he was ordered to deliberately kill noncombatants, that's an illegal order, and he would have a moral duty to disobey it. His self-righteous moonbat nonsense about "the deception used to wage this war, and the lawlessness that has pervaded every aspect of our civilian leadership" is beside the point. Going to war is a decision for elected officials, and an officer who receives his commission from the President of the United States does not have the authority to override it.

Now you know.

Dell laptop explodes at Japanese conference.
Link. Includes. Photos.

[Given everything going on in the Episcopal church this past week, I thought some of you might find my June column in Challenge Magazine -- a Canadian Catholic monthly -- of interest. PJV]

Christendom vs. Christophobia

Pete Vere

“It's as though a spiritual tsunami hit our shores, beginning in the early sixties,” Mark Mallett said. “The earthquake that started it all began several hundred years ago when the Church lost its powerful influence in society through the French Revolution. The first powerful wave to hit North America was contraception.”

His words left me stunned. Mark Mallett is one of Alberta’s most well-known Catholic musicians. He happened to be passing through our small Northern Ontario community last fall. Taking advantage of the situation, our pastor invited Mark to give a concert at the parish. I was blessed with the opportunity to interview Mark prior to the concert.

“The world dismissed Pope Paul VI's warning about the dangers of the pill,” Mark continued, “but he was right. As this wave hit shore, it began tearing apart marriage and the family, with no-fault divorce becoming available. As this tsunami continued through the seventies and eighties, it literally destroyed life as abortion laws eased and STD's proliferated. Through the nineties, pornography and the AIDS epidemic exploded as sexuality and its true essence continued to be washed away. Then, I believe, the wave came to a stop this past summer, as the very image of the Trinity--marriage--was redefined.”

“Once you take the very image in whom we are created, and invert it, that has grave consequences for the future.”

Mark would go on to give an excellent concert. His music was clearly inspired by Pope John Paul II, the Blessed Mother, and Our Lord’s Real Presence. Yet I found it difficult to focus during the concert. His prophecy concerning our nation’s future continued to haunt me. Quo vadis, Canada?

I remember the vote in the House of Commons. Aiden Reid, Campaign Life Coalition’s Director of Public Affairs, had invited me to join him in the Visitor’s Gallery. Together we watched as parliament debated the third and final reading of Bill C-38 – the bill that attempted to re-define marriage to include homosexual pairings.

When the vote passed, the stained-glass window behind the Speaker’s chair went dark. This struck me as an ominous sign; the sun had set on Parliament Hill. I shivered. “If we are arrogant enough to destroy the very institution God created for the stability of society,” I said to Aidan. “Then this bears grave consequences for the future of our country.”

Yet how did we arrive at such a point in Canada’s history? In seeking an answer to this question, an evangelical Protestant friend of mine recommended Rev. Tristan Emmanuel’s Christophobia: The Real Reason Behind Hate Crime Legislation (Freedom Press, Ontario, 2003). My friend assured me that the author sided with the Culture of Life and that he had extensively researched the pernicious influence of secularism and homosexuality within our culture.

Tristan Emmanuel is a Presbyterian minister. He currently works with the evangelical and fundamentalist Protestants community in Canada. He organizes them and helps them to become more politically active. This is no small feat as fundamentalists and evangelicals traditionally have a short attention span when engaged in politics.

Christophobia is Tristan Emmanuel’s attempt to explain how secularists and homosexuals seized Canada’s political agenda. Their ultimate target, Emmanuel believes, is Christians. Legislation like Bill C-38 and C-250 is designed to silence Christians from preaching the Gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Tristan argues his points with sincerity, conviction, and quite a few facts.

“The record of judicial activism has sown deep suspicion in the hearts and minds of reasonable people,” he concludes in one of his closing chapters. “The bottom line is that in Canada, religious rights are relative, while the rights of homosexuals are absolute.”

Keeping in mind that Bill C-250 had not yet passed when Emmanuel first published the book, the author continues with the following warning: “Bill C-250, or whatever will be proposed to replace it, will exacerbate this situation because it will give activist judges the legal billy club to accuse Christians of hate crime. The evidence is there for anyone to read. Left wing, activist, God-hating judges who want to erase the Christian heritage of this nation have been itching to criminalize Christian debate, speech, writing and text, and any expressed opinion about the (negative) moral dimensions of homosexuality. Hate crime legislation will be the tool they’ll use to achieve this goal. Outrageous as it may seem, they are on the verge of getting away with it.”

Here is where I disagree with our Protestant friend. The criminalization of Christianity does not seem outrageous when one takes a Catholic view of history. For secularism and the culture of death are little more than the logical outgrowth of Protestantism.

If the French Revolution gave birth to the spiritual tsunami described by Mark Mallett, it was nevertheless conceived by the Protestant Revolt. Martin Luther’s heresy of Sola Scriptura destroyed the unity of the Christian faith in the western world. Under Protestantism, man replaced God as the judge of all that was holy and moral.

Similarly, contraception may have flamed the current culture of death, but King Henry VIII’s divorce is the tinder that started it. Anglicans were the first Christians since the gnostics of the early Church to permit the breaking the sacrament of marriage. Is it mere coincidence that the Anglican Communion was the first Christian denomination to permit contraception?

Thus no one should be shocked when Anglicans in Canada “bless” so-called same-sex unions. Nor should anyone be surprised when Anglicanism’s American counterpart, the Episcopal Church of the United States of America, attempted to consecrate a practicing homosexual to the episcopate. The Anglican promotion of the homosexual agenda is nothing more than the unnatural outgrowth of King Henry VIII, founder of the Church of England, refusing to live up to his wedding vows.

From lust was the Anglican Communion founded, and to lust will the Anglican Communion return. History simply ain’t ecumenical in this respect. Under Christendom, Christ was King of Society. Under Anglicanism, an adulterer.

This is why I was struck by Christophobia’s references to Christ the King within a political context. “Strictly speaking,” Tristan Emmanuel writes, “politics is a natural development and application of my faith. I absolutely believe that Jesus Christ is the King of kings. And that is, if nothing else, a very political statement.”

A few paragraphs later, the author speaks of a spiritual awakening of sorts. “That night, I realized that Christ was King who died for me. A King. He wasn’t just some guy. He wasn’t just a good man, not just a great teacher, not even simply the Savior. No. Christ, the Son of God, was a King. The King of kings, the King of the whole universe, and He was my King.”

This is well and good. Christ is King. He is our King. Yet our separated brother misses the obvious: every king must possess a kingdom over which he governs. In the case of Our Lord Jesus Christ, this kingdom was Christendom–at least until Protestantism shattered it into pieces. This in turn opened the door to secularism and an aggressive homosexual agenda.

“Community spirit prohibited the breaking with custom, and custom maintained community spirit,” Dom Gérard Calvet, the Abbot of Ste. Madeleine du Barroux monastery, explains in Tomorrow Christendom. “So that a child born into the world of Christendom was surrounded by a forest of signs, rites, and sacramentals which spoke to him of his duties, before he learned to read, even before the catechism presented him with the precepts of the Decalogue. Without waiting to receive religion from the mouth of the priest, he ‘caught it’ from his surroundings, by way of contagion. From this point of view, Christendom can be considered the outer garment of the Ten Commandments. An outer garment of flesh and bone, an ornament of poetry, gestures, formulas, chants, not bereft of beauty [...] The disappearance of these customs and traditions is the death knell of civilizations.”

Calvet then quotes the following words from Gustave Thibon, a French author and philosopher: “So, what do I care about the past as past? Don’t you see that when I weep over the break with a tradition, it is especially about the future that I am thinking? When I see a root decaying, I pity the flowers that will shrivel up tomorrow, for want of sap.”

Canada is decaying as a nation. Marriage is the root of every strong civilization, and yet our marriages are anything but strong. I see it every day in my apartment complex. My wife and I know several other parents in our building; yet as far as I know we are the only married couple. This does not bode well for the future. Repeated studies show that married heterosexual couples provide the most stable environment in which to raise children.

Hence the reason Catholicism and Christendom sought to protect marriage. Hence the reason Catholicism and Christendom bestowed upon the sacrament of marriage a favoured status within the law. Not simply was doing so moral, it was political and sociological as marriage was vital to long-term preservation and growth of society. Without marriage, society would once again degenerate into barbarism.

Same-sex marriage marks another milestone on the slippery slope to barbarism. Gang shootings in Toronto no longer shock us. One hundred thousand abortions a year hardly earns a whisper in the mainstream media. Group sex among strangers is now protected by Canada’s Supreme Court provided that the participants are consenting adults – an adult being defined as fourteen years of age when it comes to sexual intercourse. News of eight people found shot dead – Ontario’s biggest mass murder in some time – simply disappears from the media after a couple of days.

Why? Because nobody is interested. Without Christ as King of our society, everyone’s focus falls upon the individual rather than society and family. As long as it does not affect me personally, who cares?

Yet this coarsened culture is neither the fruit of secularism nor of the homosexual agenda. Rather its roots lay in Martin Luther’s revolt from the Christian faith, along with Henry VIII’s revolt from Christian morals. It is Protestantism that uncrowned Christ as King; at the root of Christophobia one finds Martin Luther’s non serviam coupled with Henry VIII’s unwillingness to control his natural urges.

Hence there is only one answer to Christophobia, just as there is only one antidote to the dark times that await the future of Canada. It is Catholicism and a return to Christendom.

I love eating animals of any kind -- there's no such thing as an "unclean" animal that Christians can't consume (c.f. the book of Acts). And whether it's jellyfish in China or lamb brains in Kuwait, when I'm in an ethnic restaurant or foreign country, I love to try new animals, or parts of animals I've never eaten.

That being said, I have some sympathy for Whole Foods' decision to end the sale of live lobsters and crabs. Maybe you will tell me they did this because their management is a bunch of secular left-wing pinko commies, and they are trying to appeal to the pale, squeamish upper-middle-class yuppies who patronize their stores. I'll take your word for it.

Have you ever stuck a metal skewer through the length of a lobster's body? In one of the restaurants where I was employed, that was part of my job. I did it a few times, and the things reacted...pretty much as you would expect: they tried to curl up and defend themselves, but their claws were banded and there was little they could do. So I had to pry their tails down, ram the skewer as straight as I could up their bodies, and out through their heads, with bits of their innards oozing out through their faces. Then I threw them into a steamer where they cooked for a while and died at some point. We served their tails cold and with three kinds of sauce on the side.

Unhappy with this cooking method, I thought I would euthanize the lobsters before skewering them. I did some research, and found out that if you stick a knife between two of the plates near the head, it would sever something important (I forget what) and the things would die instantly. I tried this a couple of times, but botched it and ended up with pissed-off crustaceans.

After that, I refused to use the skewer. Patiently, the sous chef explained that a straighter tail made for a better presentation. I politely told him that I didn't care if people ate lobsters, but I saw no reason to make another living creature suffer just to make its lower half look better on a bed of ice. He shrugged and said he'd get somebody else to do it, and that was the end of it.

I am not the least bit squeamish about the use of lethal force against human beings. If someone broke into my house tonight, I wouldn't think twice about shooting him (it would fill me with disgust, but not remorse.) But there is something uniquely repulsive about causing unnecessary suffering to an animal when the end is the carnal pleasure of consuming its flesh. Lobsters and crabs are luxury foods; practically nobody relies on them for sustenance. Even if these creatures were a significant part of the food supply, they could be killed and their flesh preserved through refrigeration or freezing, just like other animals.

Crab meat doesn't take that well to freezing, and lobsters even less so -- true gourmands would shudder at the thought of eating a frozen lobster tail (though the Safeway near my house sells them). The only reason to sell them in tanks is to keep them completely fresh. If catching, processing, transporting, and displaying live animals causes pain, then it isn't necessary to preserve human lives, and the practice should be abandoned.

That's where the case against Whole Foods' prior practice breaks down. Kids tapping on the lobster tank glass is not torture (except perhaps in Mark Shea's world.) The CEO's comment about "the importance of humane treatment and quality of life for all animals" is risible. What does "quality of life" mean to a lobster or crab? Maybe they prefer being in a big glass tank with no predators.

But even though the management of Whole Foods is probably made up of morally silly people, avoiding pain in animals isn't morally silly per se.

Teresa and I were blest last weekend to attend the ordination of 7 priests in Arlington, VA. Among them was Father Bjorn Lundberg, who sang in my choir seven years ago while his application was being considered. He'll serve his first assignment at our cathedral. He has been a dear friend to us and will have many happy years of service.

He's got a wonderful singing voice, and also does an amazing impression of Mother Angelica, the Papal Nuncio, his Rector Fr. Rippy, and our own Bishop Loverde.

AUSTIN, Texas - Customers craving fresh crustaceans will have to look beyond Whole Foods Market Inc. after the natural-foods grocery chain decided Thursday to stop selling live lobsters and crabs on the grounds that it's inhumane.

The Austin-based grocer spent seven months studying the sale of live lobsters from ship to supermarket aisle, trying to determine whether the creatures suffer along the way.

In some stores, they experimented with "lobster condos," filling tanks with stacks of large pipes the critters can crawl inside. And they moved the tanks behind seafood counters and away from children's tapping fingers.

Ultimately, Whole Foods management decided to immediately stop selling live lobsters and soft-shell crabs, saying they could not ensure the creatures are treated with respect and compassion. ...more

So what's next? Beef? Pork sausage? Broccoli? Will Whole Foods stop selling cheese if they think the cows are under duress?

PETA is happy, of course:

"The ways that lobsters are treated would warrant felony cruelty to animals charges if they were dogs or cats," said Bruce Friedrich, a spokesman for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

Note to PETA: we don't eat cats & dogs. We eat lobsters, softshell crabs, steaks, chops, ribs, roasts, drumsticks, & nuggets. Beef, pork, chicken, duck, goose, buffalo, moose. And they are tasty.

If anyone needs some lobster tanks, I know where you can get them. Cheap.

New Catholic Mass translation OK'd

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- The nation's Roman Catholic bishops signed off Thursday on a new English translation for the Mass that would change prayers ingrained in the memories of millions of American parishioners. ...more

Gay Brownshirts on the March

Of course Gov. Ehrlich of Maryland would throw a political appointee in front of a bus when he expressed his Catholic belief about homosexual behavior. He's a Republican serving in a heavily democratic state.

Maryland Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. yesterday fired Robert J. Smith, his appointee on the Metro transit authority board, for referring to gay people as sexual deviants on a cable television show.

"Homosexual behavior, in my view, is deviant," he said. "I'm a Roman Catholic." Smith said his comments had been part of a discussion about a proposed ban on same-sex marriage. "The comments I make in public outside of my [Metro board job] I'm entitled to make," he said. His personal beliefs, he said, have "absolutely nothing to do with running trains and buses and have not affected my actions or decisions on this board."

I hope the Catholic League jumps all over this.

A few weeks ago, the NYT offered the fascinating story of a group of jungle-dwelling people in Colombia that decided to give up its nomadic life and come out of the bush.

Alas for the Nukak, introducing aboriginal people into settled life brings risks to their culture, their health, and even their mental health. They came out to "join the white family" for their own safety, as Communist guerrillas and coca growers are operating in their area.

(via The Confessionator)

From BeliefNet

Though most of the changes are minor, they alter parts of the daily Mass so familiar to American Catholics that it could lead to a "liturgical disorientation," said Monsignor Kevin Irwin, an adviser to the bishops' liturgy committee and professor of liturgy and sacramental theology at Catholic University.

"Liturgical Disorientation" - like...
1. When liturgical dancers show up unannounced?
2. When DRE's turn First Communion into "The First Communion Pageant & Reception" aka "Your Child Will Experience A Special Meal Today!"
3. When the priest drives a VW Bug up the aisle on Ascension Sunday (this actually happened in the 70's at a parish in Virginia.

Episcopalians weigh not having gay bishops

New Hampshire Bishop V. Gene Robinson, the first openly gay Episcopal bishop, pleaded with the church General Convention not to enact a ban. "Please, I beg you, let's say our prayers and stand up for right," he said, then adding, "The window treatments at this conference center are fabulous!"

On June 6, the Pontifical Council for the Family published a new document on Family and Human Procreation, but so far, a week later, the document is only offered on paper in Italian:

Famiglia e procreazione umana
Autori: Pontificio Consiglio per la Famiglia
Libreria Editrice Vaticana
Data di pubblicazione: 8 giugno 2006
Formato: Paperback
Codice ISBN: 8820978342
EUR 2.5

No translations? No web release? Why the delay? Don't they know the press and the propagandists have been out there distorting this thing from the word Go?

(sigh)

I need to take a breath here. Back in the '80s, I'd be thrilled if a new document showed up in English at the Daughters of St. Paul store two months after publication. Now I'm getting cranky 'cause it's not available for free on the 'net within a week.

I guess the delay really doesn't mean much, except that the folks at the Vatican didn't consider this such an important and newsworthy document that they would go to the extra trouble of holding up the release until the major translations were all done.

Oh, well, if you want it ASAP, go ahead and get the Italian. You can even put the text on-line, and we'll all try to work out what it means. :-)

Update: In response to my e-mail query, a member of the Pontifical Council wrote on Thursday that he has the Italian version, but has heard nothing about the publishing of translations.

As the parents of a very precocious six-year-old, my wife and I are naturally worried that eventually she will become precocious in other ways. So far, she hasn't shown any signs of a premature interest in romantic matters. Like all the other kids, she watches harmless PBS shows and G-rated movies, and has no trouble putting boys in their place, thanks to the presence of her two brothers. She's is full of spunky, good-natured, innocent exuberance, and we would like to keep it that way.

It's tough to do that when many older girls dress like trollops at Mass. We can shield our kids from "inappropriate" entertainment, and gently guide them toward good behavior, but we do have to go to church every Sunday. Now that the weather is warm, clothing standards completely fall apart.

This is true for both sexes, and all ages, since the ultra-casual Baby Boomers have begun their less-than-graceful slide into senility. In the future, I anticipate arguments with my sons that involve the line, "But plenty of people wear shorts and no socks to Mass!" Deliberately dressing badly is an affront to God, but dressing badly in a lascivious way is especially bad.

The most recent painful incident of this kind was a few weeks ago, when our parish had its spring carnival. At the Mass right before it started, there were plenty of people dressed down for the event. A couple of teenage girls were sitting two rows in front of me and my older three kids. One of the girls had on very short shorts, and at one point during the Liturgy of the Eucharist, I glanced up and saw that they didn't entirely cover her rear end.

Now, I know this girl and her family: she lives around the corner and babysits our kids. Her sister also babysits sometimes, her brother comes over occasionally and plays with my boys, and her mom is a family friend. But I didn't really need to see her butt crack (or anyone else's).

The bizarre thing is that she's a nice kid. During the Mass, she and her friend were completely reverent and prayerful. We were all sitting in the balcony, which has no kneelers, and they knelt the whole time on the hard floor. There weren't any adults making them behave, either -- they genuinely wanted to act correctly.

You may say that I have a weird Catholic aversion to anything sexual, but I don't think that's true. I am not a prude, at least not by the classic definition. It does not bother me to see the female form dressed in a way that flatters it, nor do I have any aversion to healthy sexuality. I simply do not wish to see young girls dressed in a way that invites men to look at them as flowers to be plucked, because I have daughters who will inevitably start to take their cues from what older girls are wearing and doing.

Once again, this shows the fallacy of our age's individualistic ethos, which is the idea that "I can do what I want, and it won't affect you." The way we dress and act has a profound affect on other people, especially impressionable young ones. What we do with our bodies speaks much louder than any words we say, and I wish more parents were mindful of that.

A telling set of quotes on the Great Translation Vote of '06

The Vatican recently issued updated guidelines for the translation of the Latin texts with the goal of arriving at a more accurate translation, as well as one that reflects "a deeper language that's more expressive and more poetic," said Monsignor James. P. Moroney, who leads the liturgy office for the bishops' conference.

and

"My big concern is people are going to feel like they're being jerked around. They finally got used to the English translation and now they have to get used to another translation," said Rev. Thomas Reese, a senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University and a Jesuit priest.

I'll take expressive, poetic and truer to the Latin any day.

Studio Script Notes on "The Passion" Dictated To Steve Martin ____________________________________

Dear Mel:

We love, LOVE the script! The ending works great. You'll be getting a call from us to start negotiations for the book rights.

Love the Jesus character. So likable. He can't seem to catch a break! We identify with him because of it. One thing, I think we need to clearly state "the rules." Why doesn't he use his super powers to save himself? The creative people suggest that you could simply cut away to two spectators:

Spectator one 'Why doesn't he use his super powers to save himself?'

... and here's the rest.

Summer is nearly here, the time of slightly cuckoo rural festivals.

Seen in Brookfield, MA on Monday.

Here's is a political question with a natural law twist. I (and probably you) frequently read sentiments like this: "...of all rich countries the US has lost the most civil liberties recently. But I'm not too worried yet. I'm hoping once the present administration is out, the natural openness of American culture will reassert itself."

You can see the quotation in context here, but it doesn't matter that much. What interests me are two things:

1. The blatant exaggeration. In this case, the author doesn't bother to enumerate which civil liberties we have "lost" -- and people who write such things rarely do. They talk about wiretapping powers as if the Feds are listening to every phone call we make. But even if these measures are contrary to our rights, at best these are marginal encroachments: no one, to my knowledge, has abolished the right to free association.

2. The connection with natural law. Americans like to conflate natural rights (which are given by God) and civil rights (which are granted, or at least recognized, by temporal powers.) These are overlapping categories, certainly. The right to bear arms is connected with the natural right to self-defense. The right to property is explicit in both natural law and revealed scripture.

What about other civil rights? I do not consider voting to be a natural right, as it is possible to have a just government without elections or democracy. Free speech, at least as we constitute it today, does not seem to be a natural right, either. Those civil rights are good for our system of government, because they allow citizens to remove bad politicians and substitute good (or less bad) ones, and to speak out against their government's policies or actions and urge correction. But that does not make them part of natural law, as their objects -- the goods they serve -- are ordered toward right government and not man per se.

I am not arguing that any civil right should be curtailed or abolished, but it would help to distingush between them and the ones that are truly inalienable.

Yet another article about the St. Mary's by the Sea debacle, where a pastor has been removing folks who kneel during communion from the Pastoral Council, leading the altar boys, etc.

Here's the "Catholic Academia Spin^TM" on the issue. I've highlighted the dubious statements in italics and my comments in brackets.

At the center of the controversy is the church's concept of Christ, said Jesuit Father [You sure should we should trust this guy?] Lawrence J. Madden, director of the Georgetown Center for Liturgy at Georgetown University in Washington.

Because the earliest Christians viewed Christ as God and man, Madden said, they generally stood during worship services to show reverence and equality. [Maybe. Maybe not. Would love to see the real evidence for this.]

About the seventh century, however, Catholic theologians put more emphasis on Christ's divinity and introduced kneeling as the only appropriate posture at points in the Mass when God was believed to be present.

Things started to change in the 1960s, Madden said, when Vatican II began moving the church back to its earliest roots. [Is there a line anywhere in the Vatican II docs that says anything about "moving the church back to its earliest roots? That's such a dubious, dishonest assertion.] What has ensued, he said, is the predictable struggle of an institution revising centuries of religious practices.

The argument over kneeling, Madden said, is "a signal of the division in the church between two camps: those who have caught the spirit of Vatican II, and those who are a bit suspicious. Because it's so visible, what happens at the Sunday worship event is a lightning rod for lots of issues."

Now: why would the same folks who are crying that changes to the English text of the Mass used for 40 years are a serious problem, but changing the posture of the faithful that has been the norm for over 1,000 years is right, just and better reflects our relationship with God. And get on board or you're not welcome in our parish. Nothing to see here as long as you follow the rules about standing.

An even-handed article about the upcoming vote on translation changes for the Mass.

It has a perfectly awful example of gender-revisionist language, which happens to be very appropriate following Trinity Sunday, and one I could have gone my whole life without reading:

Consider the most common Catholic utterance: ''In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti.'' It is translated, literally, as ''In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.''

To the horror of traditional Catholics, some groups — including Dignity USA, a coalition of gay and lesbian Catholics — offer ''In the name of the Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier'' as a gender-neutral alternative.

It has one sensible quote from Bob Sungenis, and another that attempts to boil down the translation issues a little too far:

'Modernists don't like redundancy,'' he said. ''Traditionalists love it because it reinforces in their mind the point to be made. The modernists want to streamline things. The problem with streamlining is you take away the effect, cadence and rhythm of words.''

Saying "modernists want to streamline things" is a bit like saying that Islamic terrorists want to "have a greater voice in the political struggles of the Middle East."

It will be interesting to see what happens with things like the Gloria settings for the last 40 years. Catholic hymnal publishers will need to clear cut hectares upon hectares for the reprints. I bet some pastors will be happy they have OCP's disposable hymnals.

My prediction: if the translation changes go thru, we'll have the same bishops who act as if the only change in the GIRM was to have congregants stand through communion come up with some convoluted reason to implement only a small amount of the changes.

I love Scott Ott:

(2006-06-09) — As Blackberry devices and cell phones on Capitol Hill hummed with news of the death of terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi yesterday, Congressional Democrats vowed that despite the loss they would fight on in “the war on the war on terror.”

“Zarqawi will be missed because he put a human face on the futility of the illegal U.S. occupation of Iraq,” said one unnamed lawmaker, who assured a reporter that “Democrats are still optimistic. We’re still looking for the silver lining.”

Rep. John Murtha, D-PA, a former Marine and vocal critic of the military occupation of Iraq, immediately denounced “the Zarqawi massacre” and suggested that the F-16 pilot who dropped the bombs had snapped under pressure and murdered the al Qaeda leader “in cold blood.”

Ott also raises a cogent question: were Zarqawi's human rights violated? That is, did the F-16 pilots read him a Miranda warning before dumping a half-ton of explosives on his safe house? Did they have a warrant? Did they get their information about Zarqawi's whereabouts through an illegal, immoral, and unconstitutional wiretap by the NSA? Did the lying filthy neocon Jews engineer all of these violations of this poor guy's rights?

We need Senate hearings, right now.

Don't take my word for it.

Take Chaldean Patriarch Emmanuel-Karim Delly's of Baghdad:

The death of the Al Qaeda’s leader in Iraq and the filling of the last posts in the Iraqi cabinet brings “hope that violence may come to an end,” said the patriarch of the Chaldean Catholic Church here. ...more

Looks like Geno's is taking matters into his own hands.

English only at Philly cheesesteak joint

Situated in a South Philadelphia immigrant neighborhood, Geno's — which together with its chief rival, Pat's King of Steaks, forms the epicenter of an area described as "ground zero for cheesesteaks" — has posted small signs telling customers, "This Is AMERICA: WHEN ORDERING `SPEAK ENGLISH.'"

You can't have a policy like that without a journalist taking a swipe:

Of course, it's not as if native Philadelphians speak the King's English either. A Philadelphian might order a cheesesteak by saying something like, "Yo, gimme a cheesesteak wit, will youse?" ("Wit," or "with," means with fried onions.) To which the counterman might reply: "Youse want fries widdat?"

I would say that learning the word "Cheesesteak" will start an immigrant on his way to enjoying the many gastronomical delights we have here in the USA.

And "yooze guyz" is a perfectly acceptable way of addressing your homies.

Holland's a haven for drug users, but that's not so bad. You haven't dealt with the scourge of video-game addiction yet.

Admitting that I have a problem with computer addiction is the first step toward recovery.

Republican U.S. Rep. Marilyn Musgrave's re-election campaign was already heated, and it just got smelly as well: Her staff accused a Democratic activist Thursday of leaving an envelope full of dog feces at Musgrave's Greeley office.

Musgrave spokesman Shaun Kenney said someone stuffed the envelope through the mail slot in the door on May 31 and then sped away in a car. Kenney said most of the preprinted return address was blacked out, but staffers used the nine-digit ZIP code to trace it to Kathleen Ensz, a Weld County Democratic volunteer.

Ensz told The Associated Press she left the envelope at Musgrave's office but said it "wasn't in the office doors, it was in the foyer." Asked what she meant by the act, she declined comment. ...more

I suppose it speaks for itself. I'm just amazed she admitted to doing something so juvenile, tasteless and unsanitary.

I did not include Pat-Buchanan-style paleoconservatives on the list of people who are sad about Zarqawi's death. My apologies to the nutters on the far right, especially the ones who believe that Iran is a better country than the United States. If you are taking up a collection to emigrate, please send me your PayPal account information and I will gladly donate to your cause.

Please note that I am not talking about people who merely disagree with the decision to go to war. But if you think Iran is a harmless, traditional country with great family values, and you write columns called "Is Bush a Sith Lord?", you are a nut. If you give this blathering nonsense a platform by publishing it, you are irresponsible.

I caught a glimpse of a headshot of Cardinal McCarrick on FoxNews with the trademark line underneath: It said something like "Cardinal for Gay Unions?"

Here's the sad scoop of what happens when one tries to be "moderate."

From CWN

Without benefit of clergy: McCarrick stumps for same-sex unions

Theodore McCarrick, the tardily retired Archbishop of Washington, musters "defenses" of Church teaching so lousy, so mind-numbingly feeble, that they look like arguments for the other side. Yesterday CNN quizzed the Demosthenes of Dupont Circle on the Federal Marriage Amendment. (Tip to Gerald Augustinus).

BLITZER: So just explain. You think that you could live with -- you could support civil unions between gays and lesbians, but you wouldn't like them to get formally married, is that right?

MCCARRICK: Yes. I think -- I think basically the ideal would be that everybody was -- was able to enter a union with a man and a woman and bring children into the world and have the wonderful relationship of man and wife that is so mutually supportive and is really so much part of our society and what keeps our society together. That's the ideal.

Really so much part of our society. You'd think he were talking about the ability to make a right turn on red.

If you can't meet that ideal, if there are people who for one reason or another just cannot do that or feel they cannot do that, then in order to protect their right to take care of each other, in order to take care of their right to have visitation in a hospital or something like that, I think that you could allow, not the ideal, but you could allow for that for a civil union.

Inspiring. I don't remember St. Paul's urging the Corinthians to accept a wee bit o' sodomy to expedite sick calls, but then McCarrick, the centrist, seems always to read from a different text. As a general rule, incidentally, whenever you hear a moralist use the word "ideal," you know the argument has gone off the rails.

But if you begin to fool around with the whole -- the whole nature of marriage, then you're doing something which effects the whole culture and denigrates what is so important for us. Marriage is the basic foundation of our family structure. And if we lose that, then I think we become a society that's in real trouble.

So we're to understand that civilly legitimating male-male and female-female pairings is not "fooling around" with the whole nature of marriage? Pointless to ask, of course. That whole paragraph could have come verbatim from an Eighth Grade classroom debate. More significant is what goes unmentioned, viz., that souls are imperiled by giving consent to a life of mortal sin -- something you'd have thought a Catholic might have an opinion about. But this is McCarrick. The centrist.

The Canadian author Stephen Leacock offered a cheerful and memorable explanation of his status as emeritus professor: "Emeritus comes from two Latin words. E, 'out,' plus meritus, 'and rightly so.'" Obliged to continue listening to the egregiously emeritus Archbishop of Washington, one is moved to wonder, not why he's out, but how in God's name he ever got in.

It is a sad day for mainstream journalists and liberals everywhere: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is facing the judgment of God for his crimes.

Zarqawi scurried away from Afghanistan when the U.S., the U.K., and Afghan militias destroyed his protectors' government. Despite the Left's fanatical insistence that Saddam Hussein had "nothing to do with al Qaeda," Zarqawi set up shop in Baghdad two years before the war, as an honored guest of the regime. He was in bad company -- Iraq had sheltered several other major international terrorists. Saddam also had extensive contacts (not to say alliances) with terrorists, directly funded Ansar al-Islam and used terror groups as proxies in his vicious struggles with the Kurds and Iranians.

Two years ago, Zarqawi announced that his band of merry thugs and murderers would be the Iraqi franchise of al Qaeda. They have killed hundreds of Americans and thousands upon thousands of innocent Iraqis. They are the avowed enemies of democracy and have promised to institute a Taliban-style theocracy in Iraq if they triumph.

Zarqawi and other terrorist leaders have depended upon the Left's footsoldiers to broadcast news of their murders and bombings, with little context or explanation, and the Left has been happy to comply in order to harm the standing of President Bush and the war in Iraq. With yet another major terrorist undergoing the anger of Allah, it will be difficult to spin this as anything other than a victory, but I'm sure journalists will do their best. Within 24 hours, you will see stories that say, "Despite the Zarqawi's death, the violence continued in Iraq...."

May the remaining terrorists repent of their crimes and turn themselves in to the civil authorities for temporal punishment. For those who do not, may God visit his wrath upon them for the innocent blood they have shed, and the discord they have sown.

It looks like Over the Hedge is holding its own against the anti-Catholic DVC movie, and even edged it out Friday.

The Epiphany Studio theater company is touring around Minneapolis/St. Paul this summer with its one-man play about the martyrdom of the young St. Maria Goretti and the conversion of her murderer Alessandro.

On Thursday, the Army Corps of Engineers announced that it was responsible for the flooding of New Orleans, because of bad design decisions in the city's levees and floodwalls. As you will recall, the mainstream media had blamed the Bush Administration, but CNN and the BBC could not be reached, and so it is not known if they will issue formal apologies to the president.

I haven't read the 6,000-page report issued by the Corps, but it sounds like they're being a little hard on themselves. New Orleans has been slowly sinking into the earth for a long time, and it will continue to do so. Hurricanes will keep forming in the Gulf of Mexico, barring some drastic change in the Earth's climate. Those two facts militate against any "solution" to the city's long-term survival.

But it isn't "nice" to ask whether it's prudent to spend tens of billions of taxpayer dollars on rebuilding a doomed city. In the past, the Corps has occasionally asked whether a proposed project made economic sense. It shall repent from this violation of the Gospel of Nice:

Thursday's report urged the Corps to shift its formulaic cost-benefit approach on how it decides what projects are worthwhile. The agency was urged to look at potential environmental, societal and cultural losses, "without reducing everything to one measure such as dollars."

There are certainly cultural landmarks that are worth spending an "irrational" amount of money to save. If the Washington Monument were about to topple over, it would be worth spending millions to fix it, but surely that shouldn't be the normative way to decide if a public-works project is worthwhile.

According to the Gospel of Nice, we are supposed to ignore such scruples. Once you start measuring flood losses by "societal and cultural losses," get out the Federal checkbook and don't put it away. Nevermind that by the time New Orleans is rebuilt and the flood defenses are strengthened, the Feds could have bought a new house on high ground for each of the displaced families. No, President Bush has already pledged "whatever it takes" to rebuild, and Congress is always happy to spend obscene amounts of money.

This Gospel abets so many evils in the world -- and this is a comparatively minor evil of misusing public money. Members of the Church are certainly not immune to it. Niceness dictated that bishops should not punish priests for heterodoxy or homosexual molestations. It continues to damage the Body of Christ by encouraging Christians not to live lives of heroic virtue, but rather embrace a fuzzy, non-judgmental credo of never giving offense to anyone.