Author: Eric Johnson

Like most Virginians, I believe that Maryland exists to make Virginia look good. High taxes, low morals, bad crime, and the most pro-abortion politicians outside of Massachusetts — they’re all there. Squishy, feel-good Catholic parishes? Got plenty. Want to start a business? You must be some kind of oppressor. Don’t want to join a union? Go talk to Bruno in the alleyway for a little while and see if you change your mind.
But there is a ray of light from that side of the Potomac: Kathleen “The Middle Name I Use Is Kennedy” Townsend is not looking like a winner this year. She may yet pull it out, and in a state where the Democrats control the political machinery, I wouldn’t bet against her. In the meantime, at least she’s not being handed the governorship. As a convert, I have never understood the Svengali-like hold the Kennedys have on Catholics above a certain age. Yes, I understand JFK was the first Catholic president (his tastes in women were certainly catholic, as well as his taste in “election coordinators” in places like Illinois), and I know that Catholics saw his election as validating their existence. Aside from some members of the family who stick to charitable work, most Kennedys have been public nuisances. Has any other family done so much to promote abortion on demand? Or family-destroying welfare programs? Or contraception and loose morals?
Remember: whenever a Kennedy goes to jail or loses an election, an angel gets his wings.

[I’m not going to post more than once per day very often, I promise.]
1. There’s a big difference between blocking traffic and civil disobedience. The anarcho-globo-poverty protestors in Washington today are breaking perfectly just laws, not unjust laws. The civil rights protestors were willing to go to jail for breaking laws that should not have existed in the first place. They were not challenging the idea of the rule of law (that every citizen is subject to the civil authority). They just wanted some laws to be changed. So they sat at whites-only lunch counters and allowed themselves to be arrested, in order to call attention to the injustice. They wanted everybody to know that they were otherwise law-abiding citizens who would not obey human laws that were grossly and scandalously at odds with natural law.
By contrast, the globos are breaking laws that apply to everybody and benefit society at large. They aren’t agitating for the abolition of traffic obstruction laws. I’d say that many of them are protesting the idea of the law itself: and if you look at a lot of their writings, you’ll see the contempt they have for the very idea of “the law” — they sneer at it because to them, the law is just a tool of oppression. They’re fascists in natural fibers, and if they ever gained power anywhere, they’d be a lot scarier. (Want to see a society where there’s no rule of law? There are plenty of them: Cuba, Iraq, Sudan, and Russia, to name a few.) If I were black, I’d be deeply insulted at the comparison between the two groups. On second thought, I might just think it was really funny.
2.This is hardly an original insight, but these protestors should actually visit the Third World. Not as part of some politicized tour group, but just traveling around and talking to regular people. Hopefully, they’d go someplace that reflected their utopia: burning non-fossil fuels, consuming very little animal meat, and not a McDonalds in sight. I spent a couple of weeks in just such a place earlier this year, and everything I saw convinced me that what they needed (economically, at least) was more capitalism, not less.
The average wage there is about $2.50 a day. That’s not a typo — workers could buy a Happy Meal for an entire day’s work. If Nike or the Gap sets up a factory there and pays the workers $10 a day, they’re “exploiting” the workers to the tune of a 300% pay raise. (I wish somebody would exploit me like that!) With rising wages, communities can afford to pay for better education, which means workers can work more efficiently. More efficiency means the companies can afford to pay them more, because they’re more productive. Think that’s wishful thinking? It’s how America became the leading industrial power in the 19th century. You can look it up.
One of my major complaints about Catholic social teaching is not what’s there, it’s what isn’t there. As one Catholic intellectual put it, “The Church has much to say about how goods should be distributed, and not much to say about how the goods are created in the first place.” (I’m paraphrasing because I don’t remember who said it.) There has been a lot of great work in the last two decades on economic matters, especially by Michael Novak and Fr. Neuhaus (and let’s not forget the Holy Father), but more needs to be said. On one side, you have throngs of Catholics who buy into the consumerist mentality that we are defined not by our status as children of God, but by what we purchase; on the other, you have Catholics for whom faith is merely a means to achieve social justice, and are more interested in confiscating and redistributing wealth than figuring out how wealth gets created in the first place. We need to hear more from people who see that capitalism, with all of the evils to which it is prone, is currently the best way to feed, clothe, and house the greatest number of people.
Personally, I think I can live with consumerism as a temptation if I don’t need to worry about where my family’s next meal is coming from. All these globos seem to think they know what’s best for the poor and oppressed of the world — why don’t they ask actual poor people what they think? I’m betting that given the choice, the poor would prefer to grapple with consumerism than starvation.
And don’t get me started with the people who want to keep the Third World poor because wealth would disturb their quaint little cultures….

What were you two thinking???
Hello, all —
This is my initial posting on Catholic Light, and I thank Mr. Sal for inviting me, even though every time I see him, I start singing, “I got a mule his name is Sal….”
I thought I’d begin with a brief personal note. My kids are 3 (the boy), 2 (the girl), and -5 months (sex unknown, due in February.) Charlie and Anna are twelve months, seventeen days apart. Let me list a few of the questions and comments we got when Anna was in utero:
• Was the baby an accident?
• Man! Give that woman a break!
• You know, they have things to keep that from happening these days! [a very frequent comment, usually delivered with a wink.]
• Well, I guess you’re Catholic. [eye roll]
This time, we’ve gotten two repeatedly:
• Have you considered how much money kids cost?
• Man! Give that woman a break!
Now, I am hardly a wealthy man, but I do make a decent salary, and we don’t spend money above our means. I don’t know why someone would presume that we couldn’t afford to support three kids. I know that college is expensive, but if you start saving when they’re little, it’s not that bad; the immediate expense of a baby is fairly small. Except for baby food (maybe $20-30 a week) and diapers ($10 or so), they’re pretty cheap. We’ve already got boy and girl clothes, and my wife is friends with a group of mothers who circulate children’s clothing among themselves as the need arises.
As for “giving her a break,” why on earth would someone assume that Paige wouldn’t want another baby? We talked about it beforehand, and decided that whenever God decided to bless us with another child, we would accept it. I’m quite pleased that we’re having another baby, and so is Paige. Lord help us when we have #4.
Doubtless, there are a myriad of explanations as to why someone would say something rude upon the news of a pregnancy. (I should also say that most of my friends and co-workers have been completely happy that we’re having another one.) I think there are two reasons for this. First is the culture of selfishness: children are seen as restrictions on the parents’ freedom, and freedom is defined as doing whatever you want, whenever you want — not the ability to choose the good, which is what Jesus and the Founding Fathers meant by freedom. Second is the culture of death: the procreation of a human beings isn’t the introduction of a beautiful new creature into the world, it’s the incarnation of a consuming little succubus that will drain money and time from the parents, and resources from the Earth.
That’s why whenever someone says they’re expecting, I use the only socially gracious response: “Congratulations!”