Category: The News

It’s October and time for the Nobel Prizes to be awarded, including the Peace Prize. This year’s winner seems to be a courageous person. Since Pope John Paul, a nominee several years running — and the subject of speculation this time around — was passed over again, it’s also apparently time for Catholics to whine a little about the slight.
Not me, though. After all, some of the winners make it look like a prize for effort rather than achievement. Jimmy Carter’s and Kim Dae Jung’s efforts in Korea seem to have sputtered, and John Hume’s and David Trimble’s brave effort in Northern Ireland limps along inconclusively. Arafat, Peres, and Rabin got the prize in 1994, and Yasir’s still calling in his bloodthirsty way for more “martyrs”. Kissinger and Le Duc Tho — well, enough of that.
A few winners have been plainly undeserving: Rigoberta Menchu appears to have won mainly by presenting a phony image that appealed to leftist sympathies.
It’s hard to argue that Catholics have been particularly disfavored by the Nobel Institute: Kim’s a Catholic; Bp. Belo of East Timor won in ’96; I presume John Hume’s a Catholic; of course there’s Lech Walesa and Blessed Teresa.
Anyway, I figure the prize does more good if it goes to some relatively unknown figure whose efforts will be strengthened by it. The Pope’s work for peace isn’t going to change one whit. Yes, giving the Pope the prize would be instructive to the world’s elites, but I’m not convinced they’d get much benefit from the lesson.
Update: David Brooks weighs in with an NYT op-ed.

The Archbishop of Birmingham has pointed out what many Catholics have thought: that the BBC has a pattern of bias and hostility toward the Catholic Church.
It shows up occasionally on the entertainment side: long before Popetown, the BBC presented insulting cartoons about Sister Wendy Beckett, even as it raked in cash from her art-appreciation shows.
But the news side matters more, and there the Archbishop runs down a laundry list of the Beeb’s cheap shots and underhanded efforts.
[Thanks to Religion News Blog.]

The Associated Press has an article about the 31 new cardinals appointed by Pope John Paul II. In the headline and opening sentence, they used two of the four words they, and every other secular media outlet, must mention in an article about the Pope. The words are:
1. Frail
2. Ailing
3. Conservative (never “orthodox”)
4. Abortion (the only issue they think they understand because of the extensive political ramifications)
“The College of Cardinals is already mainly made up of like-minded conservatives,” Nicole Winfield writes. The implication being that the Holy Father needs to start appointing liberals who will argue with him.
Still, there was one ray of light. She says later in the article, “One of the 31 on the list was unidentified, perhaps because he works in a country where the church is oppressed.” No mocking quotation marks around “oppressed” — she recognizes that in certain parts of the Earth, the Church is indeed oppressed.

Based on the massive freak-out of The Weather Channel and local DC-news outlets, much of DC is totally shut down. Federal Govt. Schools. Wachovia bank branches. Even the local food-by-the-pound buffet is closing at 2pm.
You’d think that the eye of the storm is stalled somewhere over 14th and K in downtown DC and is blowing the Capitol Rotunda over to Union Station.
Meanwhile, my 60 minute commute was 35 minutes. The phone has rung about 3 times since 9am. Most of my customers are closed, which means I can get some serious work done today. I’m looking out my window and the winds are picking up a bit but as of 10am it’s a breezy, cloudy day.
We’re probably shutting down in time to hit the buffet before they close…

Finally, there’s somebody who can tell publicity hound Mitchell Garabedian where to get off. He’s a lawyer for some of the abuse plaintiffs, and he was ready to turn a Saturday meeting between ten abuse victims and Abp. O’Malley into a media circus.
The talks were to be held at a location not announced publicly, but attorney Garabedian, according to the Associated Press, invited journalists to come to the site where he would give briefings during breaks in the action.
Attorneys Carmen Durso and Roderick MacLeish Jr., on the other hand, representing two other groups of plaintiffs, didn’t like the idea of having to putting their clients through a media gauntlet to get into the building, so they asked Abp. O’Malley to postpone the session, and the meeting for Saturday is off.