Category: Culture War

Canada Continues to Mistreat its Vets

This makes me sick. Our government invites vets (many of eighty years old) to the capital for Remembrance Day, then warehouses them in substandard (reportedly condemned) decrepit housing.

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Categorized as Culture War

NEWSFLASH: CATHOLIC CHURCH SAYS BIBLE NOT TRUE!

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.

Canada, Homosexuality and Children

[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.