Category: Controversies

By Victor David Hansen over at NRO. In the midst of an election year, it’s important to have a historical perspective.

About this time 60 years ago, six weeks after the Normandy beach landings, Americans were dying in droves in France. We think of the 76-day Normandy campaign of summer and autumn 1944 as an astounding American success — and indeed it was, as Anglo-American forces cleared much of France of its Nazi occupiers in less than three months. But the outcome was not at all preordained, and more often was the stuff of great tragedy. Blunders were daily occurrences — resulting in 2,500 Allied casualties a day. In any average three-day period, more were killed, wounded, or missing than there have been in over a year in Iraq.

And an article by Philip Chase Bobbitt, linked to by Jonah Goldberg, published before the invasion of Iraq, states that we can’t measure future outcomes based on the present, but rather we must judge future outcomes based on other possible future outcomes. So the question, “Are we better off now than we were four years ago” is meaningless:

Or, consider the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. Are we better off now than we were the day before we intervened? Probably not. Before that war we knew where Al Qaeda had its bases and it had not struck since Sept. 11; a number of American and allied soldiers who became casualties were then alive and unwounded; public opinion in Pakistan was less hostile to America; there was a greater measure of sympathy around the world for our losses in New York and Washington; our economy and confidence in our markets were stronger.
But let’s ask the relevant question: Are we better off today than we would have been if we had let the Taliban continue arming and sheltering our Qaeda enemies, many of whom we killed and captured in our intervention? Clearly, we are vastly better off for having acted.

A pretty old post of an article over at freerepublic.com, but worth reading the whole thing.

When the Catholic Church hierarchy took a strong stand on abortion, it found itself the target, rather than the position espoused. Quickly, the public issue of whether or not abortion should be fully legal in the United States descended into a cauldron of unrelated issues of separation of Church and State, the Catholic Church’s tax exempt status, the religious affiliation of abortion opponents, alleged “Catholic power,” and the imposition of sectarian belief on American law. As one New York state legislator would thunder in the midst of abortion debate, “you have no right to come to the floor of this body and ask us to enact into law church doctrine.”

Sound familiar? The author is talking about the abortion debate in the mid-1960’s.

SNAP and Voice of the Faithful aren’t satisfied with the Diocese’s action in the Krafcik incident and his subsequent (by 20 years) laicization.

On Monday, the diocese announced that the Vatican had defrocked Andrew Krafcik, 76, of Arlington, for a 1984 sex abuse conviction near Richmond. Krafcik served in limited ministry at a Fairfax parish for nearly 12 years after he was convicted.
The diocese has said no other victims have come forward with allegations of abuse by Krafcik. But Mark Serrano of Leesburg, a SNAP board member who was a victim of pastoral sexual abuse, said it’s foolish to assume there was only one victim without conducting an active investigation to seek others who may be reluctant to come forward.
“Some things are clear: A pattern of secrecy persists in the Diocese of Arlington, and victim outreach is woefully inadequate,” Serrano said. “Christ strapped on his sandals and walked the countryside to seek out the hurt, the sick and the wounded. … We are calling on Bishop Loverde today to strap on his sandals and seek out victims of clergy sexual abuse where they would likeliest be.”
At a minimum, Serrano said, Loverde should go the parishes where Krafcik served and urge people who may have been abused to contact police.

I don’t believe there is a pattern of secrecy in the Diocese or that victim-outreach has been woefully inadequate. In this climate, I don’t know how a Bishop could keep those issues a secret. Arlington has been extremely forthcoming with respect to past child sexual abuse. Quoting from this link,

[the late] Bishop Keating put in place diocesan Policy on the Protection of Children/Young People and Prevention of Sexual Misconduct and/or Child Abuse which was revised in 1993, 2000 and 2003 in light of the passage of the bishops’ Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People.

9 of the 891 diocesan and religious priests who have served in the diocese, or 1 percent, were accused of sexual abuse of minors by 11 victims. Of the nine priests, one was exonerated; two are deceased; one is retired without faculties; and the remaining five are no longer in ministry.

Mr. Krafcik must have been the one who was retired without faculties. He was laicized for an offense that occured twenty years ago. In Arlington, there not the terrible number of victims or repeat-offenders that there were in Boston and other parts of the country. I trust the Diocese and Bishop Loverde with respect to the information they’ve given the public about instances of child sexual abuse.

It wouldn’t serve any purpose for the Bishop to go to the parishes where Krafcik served to search for more victims. How does Mr. Serrano expect Loverde to do this? To speak at all the Masses on a weekend in each parish? That is absurd. There would be a public outcry unknown in the history of this Diocese. It would do much more harm than good. Instead of being viewed as a shepherd of the Diocese earnestly attempting to reach out to victims he would invite even more scrutiny. Everyone would ask themselves, “Why is he asking this at our parish unless he knows there are more victims?” The crisis of confidence in his leadership and spiritual fatherhood would be severe. The trust of many people in this Diocese would probably be unrecoverable.

Krafcik was a priest for about 45 years. He was most likely ordained in the Richmond Diocese. If there were other instances of child sexual abuse abuse I’d be shocked if the victims hadn’t come forward by now.

WASHINGTON, D.C., JULY 13, 2004 (Zenit.org).- Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and U.S. bishops are “very much in harmony” in regard to the Church’s position on the issue of pro-abortion Catholic politicians’ access to Communion.

Who are you and what have you done with Cardinal Ratzinger?

The article referenced below by professional buffoon Ted Rall is less provocative than his usual schtick. Next to condemning President Reagan to hell, or accusing a dead Ranger of wanting to murder innocent people, this is mild stuff. Maybe he reads his critics on the Web and has started to reconsider his vile tactics.
I love the quotation, “There isn’t even one letter written by a soldier at the time referencing” spitting on Vietnam veterans. There is no record of any liberal screaming at me when I was in college, or making rude comments to my girlfriend (now wife), but it did happen, whether or not I can document it. I didn’t think to report it to the police, because it didn’t seem like they needed to be involved. I imagine that if you were in combat for the better part of a year, you wouldn’t go running to the cops just because of saliva. Yet apparently there’s a professor — at Holy Cross, no less! — who wrote an entire book saying that no protestor anywhere spat on any veteran.
Now, as it happens, I have a good source of first-hand observations about Vietnam protestors and how they treated members of the military. He is my father, who was an ROTC candidate while a student at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Campus protestors showed their spirited yet civil disagreement with the war by blowing up the ROTC building. That did make the papers, so the good professor has some evidence for his next book. And the future Army officers could not wear their uniforms on campus, for fear of being physically attacked. These attacks were not urban legends, either.
I’ve known many Vietnam vets with similar stories. It’s funny, though — they never mention working-class folks performing the abuse. The only ones doing the hitting and yelling were privileged, self-righteous college kids. Perhaps all these stories are invented, too.
I enjoy the pseudo-analysis of military compensation. He refers to a “two-year stint” in the military, which is unusually short — most active-duty enlistment terms are four or six years. He complains that “Starting pay in the U.S. armed forces runs about $12,000 per year, about the same as working at McDonald’s,” but that pay increases almost immediately after boot camp, and the figure doesn’t include the free housing, food, medical care, and other benefits. Add in college tuition money, and they are earning the equivalent of over $30,000 annually, which isn’t bad for an entry-level job.
The cartoonist heroically says, “I’d rather sleep under a bridge, eating trash out of a Dumpster, than murder human beings for Halliburton.” That life would be a big step up for Ted Rall.