Category: Culture War

A favorite past-times of Canadian lieberals is to find areas where Canadians supposedly exceded Americans. While I am not a liberal, I’m not sure America can produce an eco-feminist as stupid as those representing Canada at the United Nations. Not even Michael Moore has concocted anything this inane:
“Severe weather caused by global warming can pose greater physical danger to women than men,” a Canadian attending a UN conference on climate change said Friday. “‘For instance, often women don’t know how to swim, so in a flood situation that can lead to a higher instance of death or injury,’ Angie Daze, a program manager with a Canadian group called Reducing Vulnerability to Climate Change, said.
(Thanks to Kathy Shaidle the Shotgun) This is what I face everyday in Canada. You can understand why I cannot wait to finish the residency for my doctorate and get back to the United States.

I’ve been wondering when they’d make a movie about anything related to the War on Terror, and shockingly enough, Hollywood is on the verge of starting one. Even more shockingly, the story will be written by a former Marine who observed the battle for Fallujah, and the Marines will be the good guys. And it won’t star some second-rate has-been, but Harrison Ford. Granted, Ford is about 137 years old now, but still. Read about it in the Guardian here and here.
It is impossible to make a movie about Marines that don’t make them look like badasses. Even when the Marine is the bad guy, as in the colonel in “A Few Good Men” and the drill instructor in “Full Metal Jacket,” he ends up being strangely compelling. Plus, the spectacle of Marines administering some rough justice to murderous thugs should be interesting to a lot of people. I mean, the insurgents actually do wear black, kill humanitarian aid workers, and beat women for not dressing properly. You can’t make up bad guys like that.
Meanwhile, in other film news, Oliver Stone proved that anti-anti-terrorism is the new anti-anti-Communism. He has apologized for the 1979 movie “Midnight Express,” which portrayed Turkish prisons as unpleasant places, and Turkish justice as, shall we say, unenlightened by liberal standards. By this schedule, that means in just seven years, Stone will apologize to the U.S. Army for “Platoon,” and in 25 years he will apologize to Greeks for “Alexander.” I would like a personal apology for the time I accidently watched 10 minutes of “Natural Born Killers” while flipping through channels in a hotel room.

Last entry of the night! Yes, I spent the evening browsing the Web instead of finishing my thesis project! No, this isn’t the first time that’s happened!
Growing up, my family lived in a modest townhouse, and often I found myself arguing with liberal kids whose parents’ fancy German cars were worth more than my home. Most of them had all the money they wanted for designer clothes. Meanwhile, in order to pay for my share of the family car insurance, I was earning two bucks an hour after taxes to sling popcorn and clean out theaters at the local movie house.
As a Republican, I didn’t care they they had it materially better than we did (and I still don’t). However, it did gall me to be lectured about “the poor” by another teenager who never lifted a finger in her life. That reminded me of this post by Sarah of Trying to Grok:

When I sat down at our office Christmas lunch, I immediately remembered that I don’t like any of the people I work with.

How could any paragraph possibly live up to that intro?

…The table conversation would’ve been funny, I suppose, if it didn’t make me want to throw up. One woman was complaining about health care in the US and about how much better it is in Germany. She said that German doctors weren’t motivated by money like American doctors and that they earn the same salary as schoolteachers. “Then what’s the incentive to become a doctor?” I asked. She got all flustered and condescending. “But that’s thinking like an American! You can’t think like that!” “But I am an American,” I responded. “I’m an American to the bone.” “But life isn’t about money!” she whined. So here’s where the fun began. “OK,” I said, “then since we all work equally hard in our education center to help soldiers, why don’t we pool our money and all get paid the same salary?” “Oh, but that’s different because we work under the American system…” she trailed off. Different, really, how? Oh, because she makes $61,000 a year and I make $12,000. It’s her pocketbook now, so it’s different. “Germans aren’t motivated by greed like everyone is in the US,” she continued. Her mental gynastics were simply stunning: this is the woman who gets an outrageous housing allowance from the American government, illegally rents part of her house out, and uses the profit to buy up property in Germany and re-sell it. I suppose she does all of that out of the goodness of her heart and not for profit or anything.

Sarah, you and your soldier husband are welcome in the Johnson home anytime.

Islam or the homosexual lobby?

My older two kids and I were leaving our church today, on our way to the back parking lot to meet my wife, who was the cantor at the next Mass. Charlie and Anna scampered ahead of me to our pastor, as they always do, and started pulling on his vestments (as I’ve told them not to do). Father is a very patient man, with the young and the old. When my kids’ enthusiasm has gotten the better of their manners, he is laughingly indulgent, and when adults argue against Church teachings, he is earnest but firm.
Both of those scenarios were happening simultaneously as I walked up to him. As my children begged for his attention, a chubby guy in jeans was haranguing Father, asking where in the Bible it said that homosexuality was a sin. Father seemed surprised that anyone would even question what Scripture has to say about the subject, pointing out that homosexual behavior is condemned several times in the Old and New Testaments.
“No, that was like in a war crime, you weren’t supposed to do that during a war,” the chubby heterodox guy said. His female companion started looking more embarrassed.
“Well, the Bible also says you’re not supposed to engage in that behavior outside of war, too,” Father replied.
I have to admit that was a new one for me. I’ve heard the canard that the men of Sodom and Gomorrah were “violating hospitality” by threatening to gang-rape the angels and men who were visiting them. That seems like a rather mild way of putting it.
The Bible doesn’t explicitly condemn genocide, conducting dangerous medical experiments on people without their consent, or poking somebody in the eye with a sharp stick. Yet those are all sins. Homosexual conduct is condemned much more explicitly than any of those things (do I really need to list the passages?) Consensual sodomy is less sinful than male-on-male rape, I’m sure, yet just because a thing is less bad does not therefore make it good.
Even more than this specific issue — and there are few issues that bore me more than homosexuality — I am impressed with the gall the chubby guy had. The only time I’ve ever challenged a priest after Mass was when he said something that was explicitly unorthodox, and I think that’s only happened twice, neither time at my parish. Visiting priests have occasionally said things that made me uncomfortable, but if I gave them the charity to which they are entitled, I could not say they were speaking against the faith.
If you have a problem or a question about something a priest said, you ought to take it up with him privately, either in person or in a letter. When you challenge him on a point of Christian teaching, you ought to make sure that you are supported by the ancient teaching of the Church, not by the secular anything-goes materialism that appeared on the world-historical scene the day before yesterday.
Let me widen my net, to complete my point: if you are an orthodox Catholic, believing all that Holy Mother Church teaches, and you have a cynical, bitter attitude toward the men who serve the Body of Christ as priests and bishops, you are little better than the heterodox. If you say you believe that the bishops are the successors of the Apostles, yet you condemn them en masse as unworthy of their offices, are you not insulting the Holy Spirit, who guides the Church? Can you not see that by acknowledging apostolic succession with one side of your mouth, and insulting the successors of the apostles out of the other, you give scandal to non-Catholics and gladden the hearts of the Church’s enemies?
Have you never looked into your own souls, to see what darkness lies there? Have you no fear of judgment?
Hatred of priests is hatred of Christ. Hatred of Christ’s commandments is hatred of Christ. Either one will kill your soul.