[I typed a response to something Mark Shea posted, and I realized it was long enough to make it blog-worthy.]
…The Pope asks, “When will these conflicts cease? When will people finally see a reconciled world? We will not facilitate the peace process by allowing, with guilty indifference, injustice and to prosper in our planet.”
The alternative to going to war with Iraq was to let Saddam’s regime in place, free to murder political opponents, imprison the innocent, and instill a generalized terror into the population. Leaving aside whether it was ultimately prudent to go to war against Iraq — the answer to that question will become clearer with the passage of time — it was a net advance for the causes of human freedom and worldly justice.
I say this with sadness, because my deep regard for this pope was one of the factors in my conversion to Catholicism, but if the U.S. and U.K. had followed his advice (and that of the majority of the world’s bishops), the mass killings, unjust imprisonments, and general terror would still be in place in Iraq. Qusay would have succeeded Saddam, and this wretchedness would proceed for another generation.
I agree that the world, and particularly the West, is in the grip of a Culture of Death. I agree that we suffer from amnesia about our human nature and relationship to God. I agree that the key to renewing the world is to dedicate ourselves to Jesus Christ and live as he would have us live. In short, I agree with the Holy Father’s critique of the West.
However, in this matter, I believe that the war was justified on humanitarian grounds alone. The weak are not preyed upon by the strong, and the guiltless prisoners are out of their jails. A massively corrupt government no longer threatens its neighbors. Isn’t that enough?
Author: Eric Johnson
We hate Bush. We hate Bush. We hate Bush.
The Santa Cruz, California city council, a dues-paying corporate member of the Loony Left, weighs in with a proposal to impeach President Bush. Is it for lying under oath? Trying to suppress evidence in a civil trial? Suborning perjury? No, he apparently “violated international treaties by going to war in Iraq, and that the president manipulated public fears to justify the war and undercut Constitutional rights.”
If “manupulating public fears” is an impeachable offense, then no Democrat is fit to serve in Congress, because every two years they try to scare old people into thinking the Republicans are going to take away their Social Security and Medicare. Also, the U.S. has never signed an international treaty precluding it from making war; if that happened, it didn’t make the headlines.
This “movement” was founded by a University of Illinois law professor named Francis Boyle. He comments, “President Bush wants to waste another $87 billion in Iraq….That could pay for a lot of stop signs in Santa Cruz.” Or psychiatric hospitals, which are in perpetual short supply in the Golden State.
The rise of conservative Catholic universities
Check out this article in the Washington Times about the increasing popularity of orthodox Catholic higher education.
When I was a reporter for the diocesan paper of Arlington, I covered many events that Christendom held, and I was always impressed at how they strove for sanctity without being priggish. I would be pleased if my children went to any of the institutions mentioned in the article, provided they don’t get screwed up in the next 15-17 years.
A dissenting note to the article: I don’t think things are so bad at Catholic universities in general. Yes, they are too enamored of secularism, but mostly that’s out of weakness. Universities selected their staffs from the Herd of Independent Minds, and they tailor their views accordingly. When deans and presidents talk about “academic freedom” trumping an authentic Catholic identity, they’re really saying, “We’re afraid we won’t get any respect from other people who work at universities, because they spit on our backwards papist religion.”
For instance, I happen to know that Notre Dame, which is singled out as an example of a Catholic university gone wild, has quite a lot of Catholic character. I know many people who went there, by way of my friend Andy, and when I visited there I knew I was in a place where Jesus was alive and well. They have Masses in the basement chapels of every dormitory, and the architecture and statues remind you that you’re not on a secular campus. Sure, there are some questionable faculty working there, and they could certainly stand for some improvement. But they’re not lost, and neither, I suspect, are most Catholic universities.
Thongs at church
Yesterday at 10 a.m. Mass, we were sitting together as a family, an uncommon occurence because my wife Paige is often the cantor. When we sat down for the Liturgy of the Word, I noticed that the woman in the pew in front of me was wearing a cropped shirt that exposed about three fingers’ worth of belly, as well as a skimpy thong.
“You should have been concentrating on the liturgy or praying,” you might say. I agree, but I had my squirmy 3-year-old daughter in my arms, so my concentration was not as acute as it might have been. I happened to glance past my daughter and saw more than I wanted to see: when the woman sat down, her low-cut pants didn’t conceal the top part of her underwear.
Is it really too much to ask for someone to refrain from dressing provocatively at church? The guy next to me was wearing an untucked shirt and jeans; there were many overly casual people there. I’ve learned to filter that out. There could be a charitable explanation for dressing sloppy — maybe she’s sick and could only put on sweatclothes; maybe he’s poor and that “Brew Thru” t-shirt is all he owns. There’s no excuse for dressing like a tart, though.
If being disrespectful to God isn’t enough to get people to reconsider their clothes, there are a couple of other good reasons. First, it’s a terrible example to kids. We’ve already got our hands full — quite literally — when we take the kids to Mass, and we’re trying to convince them that church is a special place where we’re on our best behavior. When other people look like they’re going to a picnic, that’s hard.
Bad examples don’t just influence the pre-school set. Last summer when we were in Maine, I noticed some girls who must have been 11 or 12 wearing low-riding jeans with thong straps sticking out. It made me mildly ill. Where did they get the idea that they should present themselves as sex objects? From older females like their favorite singers (thanks, Britney!) and other people they see around them.
The last, weakest, and perhaps the most convincing reason to dress up for church is that these clothes render you unattractive. Men, most women are turned off by slobs, and other men won’t respect you much. Women, those super-keen fashions probably don’t work on you. Spaghetti straps on a thin, tall woman can make a woman look more graceful and elegant, but on 97% of the female population it makes you appear thicker.
Low-cut tight pants make your butt look bulbous and your hips wider than they are (again, unless you’re skinny and tall, but all clothes look better on skinny, tall people.) If you have the least bit of fat on your hips — in other words, you’re a normal woman — your pants will show that fat to the world, making your abdomen look like sausage meat that’s trying to escape its casing.
Like women priests and gay marriage, I find discussions about inappropriate attire to be tedious not because there aren’t important issues involved, but because there aren’t that many interesting aspects to the debate. I bring it up in the hope that someone, somewhere, will read this and think about wearing nice clothes to meet the King of the Universe.
Children and venial sins
Can children under the age of reason commit venial sins? From my external observation, I think they can. I can think of several cases where my daughter and older son have known what was the right thing to do, and deliberately chosen not to do it. Also, when my wife and I discipline them, I don’t get the idea that we’re disciplining mere jumbles of instincts and passions, but that their intellects and wills are thrown into the mix.
So while I have no trouble believing that small children can’t commit mortal sins because they are incapable of full, rational choice, I would think they could commit venial sins. Anybody have an answer for me?