Author: Eric Johnson

“Infants Now Murdered As Often As Teens“
On the social progress front, infants are now being murdered as often as teenagers. No, they aren’t joining gangs or running drugs, but for some reason people, mostly parents and family members, think they can get rid of babies when they don’t want them. This has been going on for about 30 years, according to this report. I’m trying to think of a social development 30 years ago…also connected to babies…that may have something to do with this….
(Hint: it’s waaaay down there at the bottom of the article, third paragraph from the end.)

Bombay is dbomb
I was looking for some information on Bombay, India, and noticed that Catholic-Hierarchy.org’s page on the Archdiocese of Bombay is called “dbomb” (full address: http://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/diocese/dbomb.html). I thought that was pretty funny. Okay, mildly funny.

Check the family tree
Trent Lott, the Senate Majority Leader with fantastic hair, made a dumb comment last weekend about how if Strom Thurmond had won the presidency in 1948, we wouldn’t have had any problems. It’s the kind of innocuous thing that people say at formal occasions that no one is expected to believe. Well, people did some checking, and they found out that Strom was a segregationist a half-century ago (as was practically every other Southern politician). Now, the Hymietown Rhymer has called on Lott to resign, and former Vice President Algore (D-Sequoia National Forest) wants Lott censured by the Senate.
Leaving aside the Rhymer…no, wait, I won’t leave him aside. Lott should, according to Jesse Jackson, leave public life because he made a dumb comment, the implications of which he certainly did not mean. Jesse himself shouldn’t leave public life for cheating on his wife, fathering an illegitimate child, and using money from one of his “charities” to hush things up. Calling New York “Hymietown” in an unguarded moment when he didn’t know he was being taped wasn’t enough to shame him from public life, either.
My real reason for posting is Algore, though. He says Lott’s statement “is divisive and it is divisive along racial lines.” He ought to know about senators sending strange signals on race: his daddy did the same thing. Though he was known as a “progressive” senator, the elder Sen. Algore voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. His defenders say that this was one blemish on an otherwise impressive record, but that happened to be the most important piece of civil rights legislation since Reconstruction, and he opposed it to get himself re-elected.
P.S. Everybody knows about Algore the Younger and his record of moving from pro-life to pro-abortion and all the other issues, but has anyone read or seen the new book from the Gores? The one about how “family” is anything you want it to be? I saw it at Border’s the other day, but I didn’t pick it up because my wife hates it when I get mad during a nice evening together.

Simple apologetical advice
Sal asks below about how to talk to someone about returning to Catholicism. I don’t know exactly what to do in that particular situation, but I can offer the piece of apologetical advice that I find most useful: smile. When discussing the Faith with others, I used to be serious, almost deadly serious. It was such a contrast to my normally affable demeanor that I think it threw people for a loop. Now, whenever the subject of religion comes up, I don’t change my tone and I talk about Catholicism like any other subject. It defuses any tensions, and I’ve been surprised at what I can get away with saying — a light touch can make the most difficult of subjects seem palatable.
If you believe that deep down, everyone wants to embrace and live the truth, you have only to show it to them. This is a way of saying that you’re not doing anyone a favor by withholding an uncomfortable truth. Yes, Jesus revealed the Gospel to the Apostles slowly, but he did not hesitate to warn people if they were endangering their souls. Even though a person might not be committing a sin because of ignorance by receiving the Eucharist unworthily, gently pointing her in the right direction is the right thing to do.
From my own experience, I never resented anyone telling me that I could not receive the Eucharist before I formally entered the Church, or that I should go to confession beforehand. If the Fugitive gets upset by a reminder about confession, maybe she’s not ready yet. Not knowing her mind, I don’t know for certain, but she’ll probably react better than you think she would.
Please let us know what happens, Sal — if she does re-enter the Church, I think we should all welcome her back. I’ll keep her and all other fallen-away Catholics in my prayers. They know not what they left.

Bush, Clinton and Kwanzaa
NRO’s David Frum has a comparison between Bush and Clinton’s remarks at the lighting of the national Christmas tree. Besides the firm statement of Christian belief in the Bush’s message, I thought one of the remarkable points was Clinton’s mention of Kwanzaa.
Although I find the entire idea of Kwanzaa to be ridiculous, I generally favor more celebrations rather than fewer. If I were a kid, I’d want more gift-giving holidays, too. But to put it on a par with Christmas, the third-most-holy day on the Christian calendar behind Good Friday and Easter, is way too much. It’s not even on a par with the minor Jewish Festival of Lights. My biggest problem with Kwanzaa is that the implicit message isn’t just that one ought to celebrate one’s ethnic heritage — a harmless thing, if kept in perspective — but that Christmas is a “white” holiday. There are tens of millions of black Christians in the world; do they really think Christ wasn’t born for them? Doubtful.
I wonder what the future of Kwanzaa will be. Given that its organizers have harnessed the powerful engine of consumerism in its service, it might be around for a while, but my bet is that it will mostly die out within a generation.
And what’s with the extra “a” at the end? Was it originally a Dutch word?