The Forum

Defending Marriage

2012-02-16T08:25:00.000-08:00

Brendan O'Neill is a writer for the UK's Telegraph. He is an avowed atheist, but he makes a strong argument for traditional marriage in his latest article by debunking the claim that opposition to homosexual "marriage" is another manifestation of the kind of prejudice that once opposed interracial marriage. Here's an excerpt from the piece:

...this comparison between restrictions on interracial marriage and restrictions on gay marriage is utterly moronic; it is historically illiterate and politically opportunistic. Gay-marriage supporters might like to fantasise that they are bravely struggling against an injustice as terrible as America’s old bans on interracial marriage or European states’ one-time bans on Jewish-Gentile marriages, but there is one very important difference between those who campaigned against bans on interracial marriage and those who campaign against restrictions on gay marriage: the anti-racist activists of old were calling for democratic equity within an already-existing institution, whereas today’s pro-gay marriage activists are calling for the creation of an entirely new institution. ...

Gay marriage is very different, because such an institution, the state-approved union of two men, has never existed before. Where black and white lovers or Jewish/Gentile sweethearts once demanded, rightly and bravely, equity within an existing social institution, gay-rights activists today are actually demanding the creation of a brand new, historically unprecedented institution – one in which two men can, in the eyes of the state and society, form a marital union.

Personhood Advances

2012-02-16T06:54:00.000-08:00

From the AP, via CBSNews:

(AP) OKLAHOMA CITY - The Oklahoma Senate has overwhelmingly approved an anti-abortion "personhood" bill that declares life begins at conception.

The vote Wednesday upset doctors who fear the proposed law will jeopardize reproductive medicine.

The bill now heads to the House, where it is expected to pass. Republican Gov. Mary Fallin typically won't comment on pending legislation, but she has described herself as strongly "pro-life."

And there are more positive shifts like this one in the Old Dominion:

The Tuesday passage in Virginia of two of the strictest anti-abortion bills in the country has sparked fierce debate over abortion rights the battleground state, with Democrats decrying the acts as an unprecedented encroachment on women's rights as Republicans push to move the legislation forward.

One bill, Republican Del. Bob Marshall's House bill 1, would define personhood at conception and "provides that unborn children at every stage of development enjoy all the rights, privileges, and immunities available to other persons, citizens, and residents of the Commonwealth." The second bill requires that women be required to undergo an ultrasound procedure prior to having an abortion.

Archbishop Listecki Questions Walker Recall

2012-02-15T17:22:00.000-08:00

Responding to "Tax the Rich"

2012-02-15T07:37:00.000-08:00

At about the 7.30 mark, Paul Ryan tackles this common line of argument from the left. It's a great interview, so characteristic of Ryan, who again, should be running for president. No one demonstrates such effortless mastery of these economic issues as Ryan, and he's the one who should be debating Obama one-on-one.

Turnaround?

2012-02-14T13:07:00.000-08:00

Encouraging news, from The Washington Examiner:

There goes the Catholic vote. Nearly four years after President Obama won 54 percent of Catholic voters, their support has plummeted to just 40 percent in the first poll conducted after he imposed a new birth control mandate on employers, including Catholic agencies.

In a new Rasmussen poll, 59 percent of Catholics now disapprove of the president's job. Rasmussen reports that 44 percent strongly disapprove. About 40 percent at least somewhat approve of Obama's job.

Catholic Soul Searching

2012-02-13T12:35:00.000-08:00

Obama at Notre Dame

Cardinal Bernardin. The Seamless Garment. FDR. The New Deal. The Democratic Party. Social Justice. Abortion. Where we are today.

This is just a snippet from an excellent essay written by Paul A. Rahe, a professor of history at Hillsdale College. The full text can be read at Ricohet:

...the leaders of the American Catholic Church fell prey to a conceit that had long before ensnared a great many mainstream Protestants in the United States – the notion that public provision is somehow akin to charity – and so they fostered state paternalism and undermined what they professed to teach: that charity is an individual responsibility and that it is appropriate that the laity join together under the leadership of the Church to alleviate the suffering of the poor. In its place, they helped establish the Machiavellian principle that underpins modern liberalism – the notion that it is our Christian duty to confiscate other people’s money and redistribute it.

At every turn in American politics since that time, you will find the hierarchy assisting the Democratic Party and promoting the growth of the administrative entitlements state. At no point have its members evidenced any concern for sustaining limited government and protecting the rights of individuals. It did not cross the minds of these prelates that the liberty of conscience which they had grown to cherish is part of a larger package – that the paternalistic state, which recognizes no legitimate limits on its power and scope, that they had embraced would someday turn on the Church and seek to dictate whom it chose to teach its doctrines and how, more generally, it would conduct its affairs.

Cardinal Wuerl on HHS Mandate

2012-02-13T10:24:00.001-08:00

Pill Culture

2012-02-13T06:52:00.000-08:00

Here's an excerpt from an outstanding article by George Weigel, appearing in National Review:

But if Leviathan is to be confronted, and defeated, in his attempt to impose the sexual revolution by brute state power, a critical mass of morally serious minds have got to get clear on one crucial point: The invention of the oral contraceptive was, with the splitting of the atom and the unraveling of the DNA double helix, one of the three world-historical scientific developments of the last century — scientific accomplishments that have within themselves the capacity to change culture and history in fundamental ways. By effectively sundering sexual expression from procreation, modern contraceptives have done something their less-effective predecessors were unable to do for millennia: They have created a contraceptive culture that identifies fertility with disease and willful infertility with “health.” Those who celebrate that culture are not interested in compromise: They are interested in having everyone pay for what they want, and in levying serious penalties on those who won’t truckle to their will.

Ryan Rips Obama's HHS "Compromise"

2012-02-12T13:47:00.001-08:00

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Healing

2012-02-11T16:06:00.001-08:00

Our Lady of Lourdes

Obama and Henry VIII, BFF

2012-02-11T09:15:00.000-08:00

As usual, Mark Steyn hits a home run with this National Review piece:

For one thing, the Catholic Church in America has been pathetically accommodating of Beltway bigwigs’ ravenous appetite for marital annulments in a way that Pope Clement VII was disinclined to be vis-à-vis the English king and Catherine of Aragon. But where’d all the pandering get them? In essence President Obama has embarked on the same usurpation of church authority as Henry VIII: As his Friday morning faux-compromise confirms, the continued existence of a “faith-based institution” depends on submission to the doctrinal supremacy of the state. ...

As Philip Klein pointed out in the American Spectator two years ago, the Obamacare bill contained 700 references to the secretary “shall,” another 200 to the secretary “may,” and 139 to the secretary “determines.” So the secretary may and shall determine pretty much anything she wants, as the Obamaphile rubes among the Catholic hierarchy are belatedly discovering. His Majesty King Barack “shall have full power and authority to visit, repress, redress, record, order, correct, restrain, and amend all such errors, heresies, abuses, offenses, contempts, and enormities whatsoever they be.”

'No'

2012-02-11T06:10:00.001-08:00

From Politico:

Hours after calling the Obama administration's contraceptives compromise a "first step," the Catholic bishops said Friday night they have "two serious objections" to the new policy and will fight its enactment.

First, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said the administration’s plan still includes a “nationwide mandate of insurance coverage of sterilization and contraception, including some abortifacients.”

“This is both unsupported in the law and remains a grave moral concern,” the bishops said in their statement.

“We cannot fail to reiterate this, even as so many would focus exclusively on the question of religious liberty.

And while Obama’s new plan allows religious-affiliated employers to refrain from paying for contraceptive coverage — insurers would be obligated to provide the coverage for free — the bishops said the change doesn’t go far enough.

Of course, there's no such thing as a free lunch. Everyone will pay for this with an increase in premiums. Obama didn't blink, there was no compromise. He merely pivoted a bit. But he'll come back for the Church at another time. He is still operating under the faulty idea that he has the authority to dictate any of this in the first place, which he doesn't. He cannot order Catholic institutions or insurance companies what they have to provide and at what cost they must provide it. Obama's so-called compromise simply demonstrates the astonishing breadth of his abuse of power.

Worst Quote of the Year Award Goes To...

2012-02-10T16:25:00.000-08:00

Democratic Congresswoman Gwendolyn Moore made the most absurd and idiotic assertion of any politician of the past year.

"The National Institute of Health has said that it is a danger to women's health and safety of their families, that for 30 years, to be exposed to the prospects of pregnancy." ~Gwendolyn Moore

Did you catch that? Families are threatened by pregnancies. Goodnight everyone! Did anyone ever teach Moore about the birds and the bees? She's from Milwaukee, I'm utterly ashamed to say. Initially, I didn't want to contaminate my blog with this piece of rhetorical flotsam, especially as a follow-up to the brilliant Paul Ryan. But ultimately, I think it is very revealing in that it shows exactly what the far left thinks of children. In light of this doozie, I think all of Wisconsin will spend some time to reappraise the Milwaukee Public Schools' laughable "High Standards Start Here!" mantra.

Move ahead to the 2.05 mark to hear Moore's embarrassing statement.

Pro Business and Pro-Market

2012-02-10T12:37:00.000-08:00

A worthwhile interview with Paul Ryan:

A Good Point

2012-02-10T10:00:00.001-08:00

From CBSNews:

WASHINGTON - Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum created a stir at a high-profile conservative conference on Friday by aggressively charging that his GOP rivals aren't conservative enough to excite voters - in the primary or general election.

"We always talk about appealing to moderates," Santorum said at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). "Why would an undecided voter vote for the candidate that the party's not excited about? We need conservatives to rally for a conservative, to pull with that excitement moderate voters, and to defeat Barack Obama in the fall."

PC World

2012-02-10T07:58:00.000-08:00

Rick Santorum raised very rational objections to the Pentagon's plan to open up more positions in the military to women. Predictably, he is facing a barrage of criticism from those who are always eager to pounce on anyone who dares to question liberal dogma.

From MSNBC:

The U.S. military wants to open thousands of jobs that could put more women on the front lines of combat, a move Rick Santorum believes could compromise missions.

“When you have men and women together in combat, I think men have emotions when you see a woman in harm’s way,’’ Santorum told TODAY’s Ann Curry Friday. “I think it’s something that’s natural that’s very much in our culture to be protective. That was my concern, and I think that’s a concern with all the military.’’

The orders from the Pentagon issued Thursday — ending restrictions that prevent women from taking certain military positions once considered dangerous —will take effect in 30 works days if Congress offers no opposition.

Santorum cited the Israeli army’s policy of not allowing women on the front lines of combat to support his stance. On CNN Thursday, he said that having women serve in combat was “not in the best interests of men, women or the mission.”

I read an interesting quote from a female veteran who complained that the Pentagon isn't going far enough with its new rule. She wanted to see all military positions open to women, including, presumably, Special Forces and all combat-related roles. All positions should be open to "qualified women," she declared. This is simply absurd. Physically speaking, women are not capable of the incredibly demanding rigors of Special Forces training, something I know a good deal about thanks to a friend who successfully completed such training. It's not a slight against women to say this, but merely an honest appraisal of the limitations of a woman's natural physical strength. So does the military ease up on, i.e. water down, the intensity of the training, so as to better accommodate women, all in the name of equality? So much for equality in that case, as an adjustment in training would represent an admission of a disparity in physical abilities between men and women. Does blind adherence to political correctness or an ideology so override common sense and, in this case biology, that we're going to ignore reality? That's kind of what liberalism is all about, after all.

You often read testimonies from reflective soldiers who claim that the military taught them how to "be a man." Traditionally, serving in the military has afforded a unique opportunity for the soldier to prove himself as a man. I still think this is the case, but where are we headed?

Outside Support

2012-02-10T07:11:00.000-08:00

From FoxNews:

Seemingly emboldened by the support he received after skipping a trip to the White House a few weeks ago, Boston Bruins goalie Tim Thomas has put himself in the middle of another political fight with the Obama administration, this time expressing his support for the Roman Catholic institutions that are resisting the federal government’s attempt to force them to include coverage for contraception in health plans for their employees.

“I Stand with the Catholics in the fight for Religious Freedom,” wrote Thomas on his Facebook page earlier today before quoting from “First They Came,” a poem by Martin Niemöller, a German Protestant minister who regretted his failure to resist the Nazis before they came to power in the 1930s.

“In Germany they came first for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew,” wrote Thomas. ... "Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up.”

Elephant in the Room

2012-02-09T20:58:00.001-08:00

The Church, or rather those in leadership positions within the Church, should see the national controversy over Obama's birth control mandate (for now the burden of insurance companies) as a golden opportunity to educate the faithful on the reasons behind the Church's teaching on artificial birth control. Instead of just playing defense against the outside political establishment, bishops and pastors should be pursuing an internal catechetical offensive geared to lay Catholics in the pews on Sunday. Now that the issue has been so dramatically brought to the fore, why not take the time to catechize the faithful on this sensitive subject, rather than simply talking about the First Amendment violation and the chutzpah of the federal government? For an example of this, check out the Archdiocese of Saint Louis' flashy new Youtube video on the subject:

It's not a bad clip per se, but in fact, from the perspective of a serious Catholic, this issue is very much about the "pill", contrary to the video's assertion. The video presents birth control as almost a sideshow, just a red herring for the real bête noire, an overreaching government, when in fact birth control is a major theme in all of this from the Church's perspective. It's understandable for politicians to focus more on the power grab of the Executive Branch and the First Amendment, but Church leaders need to reexamine how they have presented the Church's teaching on the subject of birth control over the past several decades, rather than just tackle the political angle of the controversy.

Harsh statistics reveal the sad truth that the overwhelming majority of Catholics use birth control. And yet these same Catholics receive Holy Communion time and time again. This is a serious problem that requires serious attention. Clearly, someone, or some group of people, dropped the ball when it came to proper catechesis on the subject. (Add this to a long list.) This is a problem that has been decades in the making, and now it is laid bare for all to see. I've watched interview after interview of bishops and cardinals being grilled on various secular news outlets, and the interlocutor, without fail, gleefully reminds the prelate about the gaping disparity between most Catholics and their bishops on the subject of birth control. It's an awkward moment, to say the least.

On the one hand, this issue is being portrayed by politicians and Church leaders as an unprecedented assault by the government on religious freedom, and that is certainly true. The other side to this issue that I find perhaps more important, the elephant in the room, if you will, is the in-house business relating to the Catholic Church and the fact that so many of its members, sadly, sharply diverge from official Church teaching on a specific issue pertaining to the moral life. And then related to this is the scandal of observing so many so-called Catholic politicians on the left dutifully circle the wagons in support of this mandate. New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand comes to mind, and who could forget Kathleen Sebelius? What is being done on this front? How long will such public, grave dissidence, the source of so much confusion to lay Catholics, be tolerated by Church leaders? Don't strong public scandals call for a strong public reaction from the leadership? And I'm not talking about issuing statements.

What Obama's Up To

2012-02-09T15:45:00.000-08:00

This is a chilling, yet wholly accurate summation of where Obama wants to take this nation with his pernicious HHS mandate. From Janet Daley, writing for the Telegraph:

Obama moves closer to post-religious Europe

...it is also a departure from the traditional American view (enshrined in the Constitution) that the government shall not interfere in the people's right to religious assembly and practice. What the Obama White House has effectively decided is that religion can not be allowed to interfere with the secular values which government has decreed - such as the right to equality in contraception services. Religion itself is being firmly put in its box. If the state decides that contraception must be available to all, then no church or theological text will be allowed to stand in the way. Once again, the US is following where Europe leads: to a future in which all values will be determined and enforced by the state.

Sanctum Santorum

2012-02-09T08:58:00.000-08:00

Just what is the Santorum appeal? Conservatives know the answer without thinking twice, but the GOP establishment and much of the mainstream media are scratching their heads on the subject. Here are a couple standout reasons from CNN's Top Ten list:

7. Santorum doesn’t just talk about opposing abortion, he’s legislated on it. As a senator, he was an architect of the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003. He pushed the ban even in the1990s, when Bill Clinton was in the White House and the legislation stood nary a chance of a presidential signature. “He walked the walk,” Land says. “When no one else would carry our water in the Senate, he would.”

8. Ditto on same-sex marriage. Santorum sponsored a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage at a time when many Republicans lawmakers didn’t want to touch such a hot potato.

I have to say that Santorum's resilience truly surprises me. I certainly didn't think he'd last this long. Still, doubts stubbornly linger about his electability in a general, but come on, wouldn't it be outstanding if he became president? Now there's a man you could trust to go to war on the big issues we face and not back down.

Conversion

2012-02-08T21:33:00.000-08:00

"Conversion is an act of obedience toward a reality which precedes me and which does not originate from me. Conversion does not lead into a private relationship with Jesus. It is a delivery into the pattern of doctrine...the entry into the "we" of the Church." ~Pope Benedict XVI

This wise reflection, from the Holy Father's The Nature and Mission of Theology, is a good place to start with the "I love God, but hate religion" crowd.

Boehner's Line In the Sand

2012-02-08T16:01:00.000-08:00

"This attack ... on religious freedom in our country cannot stand and will not stand."

From YahooNews:

From the Republican presidential candidates to top GOP lawmakers in Washington, party leaders are engaging in a full-court press against the Obama Administration's decision to force employers affiliated with religious groups to offer health care insurance plans to workers that cover birth control free of charge, even if the action contradicts the employer's religious beliefs.

In a rare move for someone in his office, House Speaker John Boehner, Republican of Ohio, took to the floor of the chamber on Wednesday to discuss a legislative plan to overturn the decision. Calling the rule "an unambiguous attack" on faith-based groups, Boehner said the House would begin work on a bill immediately.

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Air Force Atheism

2012-02-08T11:52:00.001-08:00

Just when you thought the government's assault on religion and God couldn't get any more blatant, there's this. From The Hill:

A group of Republican lawmakers is protesting the removal a reference to God in the patch logo for the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office (RCO).

The 35 lawmakers, led by Rep. Randy Forbes (R-Va.), wrote a letter to Air Force Secretary Michael Donley and Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz urging them to restore the logo with a reference to God.

Forbes warned that the action taken by the RCO could set a “dangerous precedent” when it comes to religion and the military.
"The action taken by the RCO suggests that all references to God, regardless of their context, must be removed from the military,” Forbes wrote. “As we are confident that your legal advisors would not suggest that censorship is required for compliance with the First Amendment, we ask that you reverse this perplexing decision.”

The patch logo was changed after a military atheist group, the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers, protested the reference to God on the patch.

Rand Paul Sides With Catholics (And Freedom)

2012-02-08T07:06:00.000-08:00

Here's the intro. of an excellent article by Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, appearing in National Review:

In his 1991 encyclical Centesimus Annus, Pope John Paul II delivered a scathing critique of socialism, declaring that “the fundamental error of socialism is anthropological in nature. Socialism considers the individual person simply as an element, a molecule within the social organism, so that the good of the individual is completely subordinated. . . . Socialism likewise maintains that the good of the individual can be realized without reference to his free choice, to the unique and exclusive responsibility which he exercises in the face of good or evil.”

Pope John Paul II’s indictment of socialism is illustrated in the Obama administration’s recent edict requiring nearly all employers — including Catholic hospitals, schools, and charities — to cover sterilizations and contraception in their employees’ health-care plans. Because “contraception” includes abortifacients, this decision — made under the powers granted to the executive branch under Obamacare — also threatens many Protestant employers.

With young, savvy legislators like Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Paul Ryan, and not to mention stellar governors like Chris Christie, Bobby Jindal and of course, Scott Walker, the future of conservatism looks brighter than ever. (At the same time, it's too bad that none of these politicos are running for the presidency. Quite simply, they outshine the GOP candidates in every category. Here's to a VP slot.)

A New Low

2012-02-08T07:00:00.000-08:00

From FoxNews:

Vending machine at Pennsylvania college dispenses 'morning after' pill

Students at a public Pennsylvania university can buy the "morning after" pill from a campus vending machine, though the school's minister is working to get the dispenser off of school grounds.

The vending machine at Shippensburg University's Etter Health Center that provides Plan B emergency contraceptive pills for $25 was installed after a survey found that 85 percent of student respondents supported it, according to Peter Gigliotti, the university's executive director for communications and marketing. The machine also dispenses condoms and pregnancy tests.

What next?

Seeing Is Believing

2012-02-08T06:51:00.000-08:00

From the Telegraph:

Texas forces mothers seeking abortions to view image of unborn child

The state of Texas is to enforce a law requiring abortion doctors to show a woman an ultrasound of her foetus before allowing her to go ahead with the operation.

The law, enacted in 2011, requires abortion providers to perform an ultrasound on pregnant women, show and describe the image to them, and play sounds of the foetal heartbeat.

Though women can decline to view images or hear the heartbeat, they must listen to a description of the exam.

Army Chaplains Reined In

2012-02-07T11:07:00.000-08:00

First, Obama forced the military to accept open homosexuality in its ranks, and now his loyal minions are censoring Catholic chaplains in the Army. A true authoritarian.

From FoxNews:

Army chaplains have been told not to read a letter in Masses on Sunday that expresses disapproval of a new regulation in the Obama administration's health care law because the language in the letter speaks too strongly against the commander in chief.

According to a senior Army official, Chief of Chaplains Donald Rutherford was asked not to let chaplains read the Jan. 26 letter sent by Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio because of the sentence that states: "We cannot -- we will not -- comply with this unjust law."

"There was a worry that would be a call for civil disobedience," said a senior Army official.

Mark Steyn made a great point yesterday. "When government gets bigger, everything else gets smaller."

Update: From FoxNews:

The Army said Tuesday that a request for chaplains not to read a letter in Sunday Mass that expressed disapproval of a new regulation in the Obama administration's health care law was not an attempt to "censor," but rather a cautionary move to preserve "military order and discipline."

The Army acknowledged that Chief of Chaplains Donald Rutherford had asked chaplains to only distribute, but not read, the Jan. 26 letter sent by Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio. The concern was apparently over a single line.

"The Chief of Chaplains was concerned that one line in the 456-word letter could be misinterpreted as a call to civil disobedience within our nation's military ranks," the statement said.

This is outrageous. For any government to insert itself between a Catholic and his priest during Mass when the latter is instructing on faith and morals represents a terrible precedent.

"I am the King's good servant, but God's first." Saint Thomas More, pray for us.

Romney on HHS Mandate

2012-02-07T07:18:00.000-08:00

Mitt Romney is certainly not backing away from the issues that matter most to social conservatives. From the National Journal

CENTENNIAL, Colo. – With the U.S. economy improving, Mitt Romney is expanding his focus to other areas of attack against President Obama, and on Monday honed in on a social issue – contraception – that he has rarely discussed on the stump.

At a high school in Centennial, a Denver suburb, Romney took aim at recent regulations requiring women’s contraceptive services to be covered by insurance policies under the Affordable Care Act. The Catholic Church had sought a broad exemption for the many Catholic institutions in the country to recognize its canonical opposition to artificial birth control. Instead, the Department of Health and Human Services excluded only “religious employers” that primarily employ members of their own faith communities. ...

“Think what that does to people in faiths that do not share those views. This is a violation of conscience,” he said. “We must have a president who is willing to protect America's first right, our right to worship God according to the dictates of our own conscience.”
He added, “The creator gave every human being his rights. I’m just distressed as I watch our president try and infringe upon our rights. The First Amendment of the Constitution provides the right to worship in the way of our own choice.”

And the there's this, from CBSNews:

"I am a pro-life individual, I was a pro-life governor, I served as a pro-life governor, I'm a pro-life candidate. I simply do not want to participate in anything that takes the lives of an unborn child." ~Mitt Romney

Bishop Stands Pat

2012-02-06T16:53:00.000-08:00

It's a great thing to catch wind of a fearless bishop who speaks truth to power. From CNS News:

(CNSNews.com) – The Catholic bishop of Harrisburg, Pa., has apologized for offending anyone with his recent comments that Hitler and Mussolini “would love” the public school system in Pennsylvania, because it is similar to what they sought to create in their totalitarian states.

But in a statement issued by the diocese of Harrisburg, Bishop Joseph McFadden did not retract comments he made during an interview on Jan. 24 with WHTM-TV, the ABC affiliate in Harrisburg.

The bishop made a comparison between the interests of the public school system and totalitarianism, while discussing what he sees as a lack of school choice in Pennsylvania.

“In the totalitarian government, they would love our system,” McFadden said. “This is what Hitler and Mussolini and all them tried to establish -- a monolith; so all the children would be educated in one set of beliefs and one way of doing things.”

This is simply the truth.

Twilight's Last Gleaming

2012-02-06T16:47:00.000-08:00

A storm is brewing, and American Catholics are quickly arriving at a time for choosing. On what side will they fall? From CBS New York:

Catholic League Poised To Go To War With Obama Over Mandatory Birth Control Payments

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — Catholic leaders upped the ante Monday, threatening to challenge the Obama administration over a provision of the new health care law that would require all employers, including religious institutions, to pay for birth control.

As CBS 2’s Marcia Kramer reports, it could affect the presidential elections.

Catholic leaders are furious and determined to harness the voting power of the nation’s 70 million Catholic voters to stop a provision of President Barack Obama’s new heath car reform bill that will force Catholic schools, hospitals and charities to buy birth control pills, abortion-producing drugs and sterilization coverage for their employees.

“Never before, unprecedented in American history, for the federal government to line up against the Roman Catholic Church,” said Catholic League head Bill Donohue. ...

“This is going to be fought out with lawsuits, with court decisions, and, dare I say it, maybe even in the streets,” Donohue said.

Romney's Intervention

2012-02-06T16:30:00.000-08:00

Here's an excerpt from an incredible story about Mitt Romney that is presently circulating on the web. From Politifact:

A number of readers recently have asked us to fact-check a story about Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. The story, currently circulating on email, Facebook, and blogs, says that Romney helped a colleague of his at Bain Capital locate his missing teenage daughter. ...

Three days later, her distraught father had no idea where she was. Romney took immediate action. He closed down the entire firm and asked all 30 partners and employees to fly to New York to help find Gay’s daughter. Romney set up a command center at the LaGuardia Marriott and hired a private detective firm to assist with the search. He established a toll-free number for tips, coordinating the effort with the NYPD, and went through his Rolodex and called everyone Bain did business with in New York and asked them to help find his friend’s missing daughter. ... Romney and the other Bain employees scoured every part of New York and talked with everyone they could – prostitutes, drug addicts – anyone.

"That day, their hunt made the evening news, which featured photos of the girl and the Bain employees searching for her. As a result, a teenage boy phoned in, asked if there was a reward, and then hung up abruptly. The NYPD traced the call to a home in New Jersey, where they found the girl in the basement, shivering and experiencing withdrawal symptoms from a massive ecstasy dose. Doctors later said the girl might not have survived another day. Romney’s former partner credits Mitt Romney with saving his daughter’s life, saying, ‘It was the most amazing thing, and I’ll never forget this to the day I die.’ ...

By all accounts, the effort by Bain employees was central to the effort to locate the girl, and Romney reportedly played a significant role in that effort. We give the account now circulating a rating of True.

Rogers' Neighborhood

2012-02-04T20:11:00.000-08:00

Aaron Rogers is the NFL's MVP of the year! He's a good man and an amazing quarterback. Here's to next season!

Shutting It Off

2012-02-04T08:34:00.000-08:00

This guy is definitely on to something. Real life and real relationships are what matter most, not the virtual social world. Instead of calling or texting a friend, Jake Reilly would ride his bike to visit them in person in order to chat. From Yahoo!:

Could you live without daily electronic conveniences -- Twitter, Facebook, email, texting and more -- for 90 days? Jake P. Reilly, a 24-year-old copywriting student at the Chicago Portfolio School, did just that. [Related: See more of Reilly’s work at www.bodycopybyjake.com]

From October to December, he unplugged from social media, email, texts, and cell phones because he felt that we spend more quality time with gadgets and keyboards than we do with the people we really care about.

During his social experiment, he found that some people he counted among his close friends really weren't that close after all. ...

In the opening of your "Going Amish" presentation, you say that you had friends over and realized what was going on. Describe what you noticed and your feelings right at that moment.

Reilly: I live with three guys and we had two of our best friends in visiting from New York City. We only see these guys once a year, maybe every six months. We were at the University of Wisconsin watching a Badgers basketball game or something like that. Every single person had either a laptop or a cell phone. That's just kind of funny to begin with, then, I was like, "What are we all doing?" I asked everyone what they were doing and somebody's playing Words with Friends, somebody's playing Angry Birds, somebody's playing online trivia. Nobody's really doing anything, just sitting quiet. It's like this was what we were all looking forward to and we're just sitting here numbing our minds.

I've often posted on this disturbing trend in society, whereby people are becoming sucked into their handheld mobile devices, to the extent that their ability to interact with the people physically present to them is severely hampered. These days, is it possible to go anywhere, out to dinner, for a drink, etc., and not see someone, even your friend, pull out his phone or whatever, almost without thinking about it, and begin texting away?

She said what???

2012-02-03T20:49:00.000-08:00

An astonishing story: Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court and Clinton appointee, basically pooh-poohed the U.S. Constitution while in Egypt, and suggested that present-day statesmen in search of political wisdom would do better to rely on more contemporary constitutions instead of our own.

From ABCNews:

Asked by the English-speaking interviewer whether she thought Egypt should use the Constitutions of other countries as a model, Ginsburg said Egyptians should be “aided by all Constitution-writing that has gone on since the end of World War II.”

“I would not look to the U.S. Constitution, if I were drafting a Constitution in the year 2012. I might look at the Constitution of South Africa,” says Ginsburg, whom President Clinton nominated to the court in 1993. “That was a deliberate attempt to have a fundamental instrument of government that embraced basic human rights, had an independent judiciary. … It really is, I think, a great piece of work that was done. Much more recent than the U.S. Constitution.”

Ginsburg, you'll remember, is perhaps the strongest advocate of the ludicrous "living Constitution" theory, whereby the essential tenets of the mossy ole Constitution are gutted in favor of the so-called "evolving standards of decency" of our enlightened era, which must, of course, include the right to kill an innocent child in the womb.

Spain Rolls Back Zapatero-Era Laws

2012-02-03T20:35:00.000-08:00

The rain in Spain is over. From the Christian Science Monitor:

Spaniards have been taken by surprise by the new conservative government's aggressive efforts to implement social reforms, overturning several liberal laws passed by the previous government amid tremendous economic uncertainty.

People's Party rising star Justice Minister Alberto Ruíz Gallardón, a former mayor of Madrid and one of the most popular politicians in Spain, announced he would soon introduce a bill to overturn the changes the Socialists made to Spain's abortion law, reverting to the 1985 version.

According to the current version, approved in 2010, teenagers aged 16 and older can have an abortion without parental permission in some cases and don’t need to meet pre-approved circumstances, such as rape or mental illness, as long as it’s during the first trimester. The People's Party's reforms will reverse both changes ...

And on Jan. 30, Education Minister José Ignacio Wert announced that a new law would replace the civic education curriculum that Socialist introduced in 2006, which included lessons on religious, racial, and sexual tolerance that were loudly criticized by the Catholic Church and the country’s extreme right. Mr. Wert said he would eliminate “issues that controversial and susceptible to ideological indoctrination,” although he didn’t offer more details.

The People's Party has not said when either of the laws would be introduced or passed. But a landslide victory in November elections gave the party an absolute majority in Parliament, meaning it doesn’t need to negotiate support from any other parties in order to pass legislation.

My advice: Don't stop now.

"You are Peter"

2012-02-03T15:14:00.000-08:00

AP Photo
Vespers yesterday at Saint Peter's Basilica

Economic Realism

2012-02-03T09:09:00.001-08:00

Unemployment rate down, but...

And from FoxNews:

Three years after Obama became president, even the official unemployment rate still remains high. The newly released 8.3 percent unemployment rate is still a half a percentage point higher than when he took office.

But that still might be looking at the bright side. If we include those who have given up looking for work and those who could only find part time work, the unemployment rate stands at almost an entire percentage point higher than when Obama entered office.

In January 2009, 11.6 million Americans were out of work and 23 percent of them had been unemployed for more than six months.

Today there are 12.8 million unemployed and 43 percent have been out of a job for more than six months. The average length of unemployment has increased dramatically since even the recovery started. Back in June 2009, “only” 29 percent of the unemployed had been unemployed longer than six months.

Outrage

2012-02-03T07:44:00.000-08:00

When it comes to determining what qualifies as "art" nowadays, anything goes. From the Diocese of Charlotte:

CHARLOTTE — The faithful of the diocese, led by Bishop Peter J. Jugis, are standing up for the Catholic faith by protesting a blasphemous play being performed Feb. 2-18 at the Blumenthal Performing Arts Center in Charlotte.

"The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told," an off-Broadway play written by Paul Rudnick in 1998 and being performed this month by the Queen City Theatre Company, retells the Creation story with two homosexual couples, portrays Mary as a lesbian and mocks the Virgin Birth.

The play "presents a gleefully outrageous reinterpretation of Creation. Adam and Steve begin their journey in the Garden of Eden. After being banished from Eden, they encounter Jane and Mabel, who insist they were the earth's original couple," according to the promotional information on the Queen City Theatre Company and Blumenthal Performing Arts Center websites. The two homosexual couples are then portrayed in various Old Testament stories, ending up in Central Park in modern-day New York, where Steve is suffering from AIDS and Jane is nine months pregnant. The irreverent play questions the existence of God, features homosexual acts and bestiality, and lampoons heterosexual fidelity. ...

More than 100 Catholics also stood in peaceful protest on the sidewalk in front of the Duke Energy Theater at Spirit Square in uptown Charlotte Thursday night, Feb. 2, praying a Rosary of Reparation and Divine Mercy Chaplet immediately before the opening night performance. The crowd grew quickly from 60 people to start with about 7 p.m., then to 85, and then to 105 by the time the prayer vigil was concluding around 8 p.m.

United Catholics Rise

2012-02-03T06:54:00.000-08:00

Peggy Noonan wrote an excellent analysis of the political damage that could stem from Obama's unprecedented birth control mandate. Noonan's argument is that the HHS mandate, so unpopular and so brazen, could be a major factor in Obama's defeat in November. Of course, a lot of this will hinge on the Church's leadership here in the states, and its ability to keep this issue front and center in the minds of their flock. So far, the forceful and united response from the bishops has been impressive. They must not relent.

From The Wall Street Journal:

The church is split on many things. But do Catholics in the pews want the government telling their church to contravene its beliefs? A president affronting the leadership of the church, and blithely threatening its great institutions? No, they don't want that. They will unite against that.

The smallest part of this story is political. There are 77.7 million Catholics in the United States. In 2008 they made up 27% of the electorate, about 35 million people. Mr. Obama carried the Catholic vote, 54% to 45%. They helped him win.

They won't this year. And guess where a lot of Catholics live? In the battleground states.

Concealed Carry: 'It levels the playing field'

2012-02-01T14:01:00.000-08:00

A little local, Brew City news for you.

MILWAUKEE -- It's the first known case of a concealed carry permit holder in Wisconsin shooting someone, and it happened in the middle of a Milwaukee grocery store, where a customer stopped two men from robbing the store by shooting one of them, Milwaukee police said.

It was just after 7 p.m. Monday when two men stormed into the Aldi at 76th Street and Villard Avenue. Police said at least one of them was waving a shotgun, despite the presence of two unarmed security guards.

Still, they couldn't have counted on a customer legally carrying a concealed handgun, who opened fire on them.

Everyone involved in the attempted robbery has been arrested. A short video on the story accompanies the link. It's worth watching, and it presents a few interesting anecdotes:

1. Unarmed security guards... Seriously? What's the point?

2. The store boasts a sign warning, "Weapons of any kind are prohibited". Do people really think that criminals are going to take note of that sign and have a change of heart about carrying out their plan to rob, or murder? I've never understood the logic of these signs. Criminals will not care a wit, and the only ones who might care about following the rules are those interested in protecting themselves.

3. The refreshingly common sense observation of a nearby worker, Larry Rowell, who declared (in a classic Milwaukee accent) "I'm really happy because now the criminals are gonna be afraid 'cause who knows who's gonna have their weapon on 'em? ... I think it levels the playing field."

Let's put Rowell up as a candidate for Mayor of Milwaukee.

2012-01-30T11:29:00.000-08:00

"Theology is born when the arbitrary judgment of reason encounters a limit, in that we discover something which we have not excogitated ourselves but which has been revealed to us." ~Pope Benedict XVI, The Nature and Mission of Theology

Catholic QB

2012-01-30T06:37:00.000-08:00

If you caught any of the Pro Bowl yesterday, you would have seen San Diego Chargers quarterback Philip Rivers playing for the AFC. He is also a committed Catholic.

And while we're on the subject of sports, check out this article from across the pond: Former Man United footballer to become a priest

Gathering Storm

2012-01-30T06:27:00.000-08:00

Writing for National Review Online, James Capretta does a marvelous job of spelling out the many dangers stemming from the Obama Administration's appalling contraception mandate.

The decision last week by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to reject the appeals of scores of religious leaders and retain a very narrow “religious” exemption from Obamacare’s so-called contraception mandate has ignited an uproar among Catholic leaders, as well it should — because it’s hard to fathom a government dictate more offensive than this one. ...

Not only must Catholics who work for non-Catholic employers pay for such products with their premiums, HHS also wants religious employers to cover such products in their health plans. Knowing that Catholic leaders and others would strongly object to this requirement, HHS included in the regulation issued last August a narrow exemption from this requirement for employers that are basically houses of worship. Much larger religiously affiliated institutions, such as Catholic universities, hospitals, and charitable enterprises, do not fit within the HHS exemption.

Read on...

And for information about an event featuring James Capretta, check out this link, from the Thomas International Center.

Sticking Around

2012-01-29T18:10:00.000-08:00

From the Associated Press:

A pair of doves seemed to prefer the company of Pope Benedict XVI to the great outdoors on Sunday when he had trouble convincing them to take flight in a traditional peace gesture.

The first dove hesitated on the windowsill of the pope's Vatican apartment for a long spell before flying off, while the second flew back into the room before flying out again.

"They want to stay in the pope's home," Benedict said, flanked by two children.

Sending Out an S.O.S.

2012-01-28T07:10:00.000-08:00

Calling in the big guns: Saint Michael the Archangel

From EWTN:

Bishop Daniel Jenky of Peoria, Ill. has asked parishes, schools, hospitals and religious houses to insert the Prayer to St. Michael the Archangel into the intercessions at Sunday Mass to pray for Catholics’ freedom.

The move comes in response to a new federal requirement that will force many Catholic organizations to provide insurance coverage for sterilizations and contraceptives.

“It is God’s invincible Archangel who commands the heavenly host, and it is the enemies of God who will ultimately be defeated,” the bishop said in a Jan. 24 letter to the Catholics of his diocese.

Now that's more like it.

Special Ops and the New Plan

2012-01-27T20:28:00.000-08:00

Leaner, more surgical, and with less of a conspicuous footprint to serve as a target seems to be the modus operandi for future military action. My well-connected source, based on first-hand experience in the region, heartily approves this shift in tactic, as the numerous and extremely territorial tribes of Afghanistan instantaneously view any large, conspicuous foreign presence on their land as exclusively hostile, no matter what they are told to the contrary.

So be invisible.

From Army Times:

WASHINGTON — As traditional military operations are cut back, the Pentagon is moving to expand the worldwide reach of the U.S. Special Operations Command to strike back wherever threats arise, or better yet, enable local forces to do the job.

U.S. officials say the Pentagon and the White House have embraced a proposal by special operations chief Adm. Bill McRaven to send troops that are withdrawing from war zones to reinforce special operations units in areas somewhat neglected during the decade-long focus on al-Qaida. ...

The stepped-up global network would add top special operations personnel to these key global sites, better able to launch unilateral raids like the one that killed Osama bin Laden — and the one Tuesday that rescued an American hostage and her Danish colleague, a headline that served to drive home President Barack Obama’s national security achievements in his first term, just as his State of the Union speech Tuesday unofficially launched his bid for a second term.

Parade

2012-01-27T07:34:00.000-08:00

Here's to Saint Louis patriots. From the Associated Press:

ST. LOUIS (AP) — Since the Iraq War ended there has been little fanfare for the veterans returning home. No ticker-tape parades. No massive, flag-waving public celebrations.

So, two friends from St. Louis decided to change that. They sought donations, launched a Facebook page, met with the mayor and mapped a route. On Saturday, hundreds of veterans are expected to march in downtown St. Louis in the nation's first big welcome home parade since the last troops left Iraq in December.

"It struck me that there was this debate going on as to whether there should or shouldn't be a parade," said Tom Appelbaum, one of the organizers. "Instead of waiting around for somebody somewhere to say, 'Yes, let's have a parade,' we said, 'Let's just do it.'"

The Conservative Sport

2012-01-26T12:06:00.000-08:00

The UFC cage: a conservative's agora?

I've never watched a UFC fight, but I was intrigued by Arlen Delgado's case for making it the official sport for conservatives. She lists five reasons and they're all convincing. Here's number one:

Watch any UFC fight. It is conservatism, capitalism at its core, illustrated through a sport. There are no unions here; there are no safety nets (literally, yes; figuratively, no); there are no multi-year contracts and no guarantees regardless of outcome; in an age where liberals strive to downplay differences between genders, it boldly glorifies the alpha-male and warrior mentality; there is no team — it is all focused on the individual and his personal responsibility (Ayn Rand would be front and center at a fight). Its essence: two men in an octagon. He who works and fights hardest comes out on top. In other words, American meritocracy in its purest form.

Combat Evolution

2012-01-26T07:37:00.000-08:00

From FoxNews:

WASHINGTON – The Pentagon plans to expand its global network of drones and special-operations bases in a fundamental realignment meant to project U.S. power, even as it cuts back conventional forces.

The plan, to be unveiled by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta on Thursday and in budget documents next month, calls for a 30% increase in the U.S. fleet of armed unmanned aircraft in the coming years, defense officials said. It also foresees the deployment of more special-operations teams at a growing number of small "lily pad" bases across the globe where they can mentor local allies and launch missions.

Golden

2012-01-26T07:04:00.000-08:00

From FoxNews

Vatican City – Pope Benedict XVI will donate a golden rose to the statue of Our Lady of Charity of El Cobre, the patroness of Cuba, during his March 26-28 visit to the island, Cuban officials told Efe on Tuesday. ...

The golden rose will presumably be bestowed during the pope's visit to the patroness of Cuba at her sanctuary in El Cobre on the southwestern part of the island, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the finding of her statue.

John Paul II crowned Our Lady of Charity of El Cobre as patroness of Cuba on Jan. 24, 1998, during a Mass attended by 200,000 faithful.

Read more on the history of the Golden Rose here.

SEAL Mission

2012-01-25T12:28:00.000-08:00

From CBSNews:

MOGADISHU, Somalia - U.S. Navy SEALs parachuted into Somalia under cover of darkness early Wednesday and crept up to an outdoor camp where an American woman and Danish man were being held hostage. Soon, nine kidnappers were dead and both hostages were freed. ...

Members of SEAL Team 6, though not necessarily the same ones who participated in the bin Laden operation, parachuted into Somalia and were engaged in a firefight as they neared the pirates' compound in Adado. U.S. officials told Martin that the kidnappers were armed and had explosives nearby.

The raiders came in quickly, catching the guards as they were sleeping after having chewed the narcotic leaf qat for much of the evening, a pirate who gave his name as Bile Hussein told The Associated Press by phone. Hussein said he was not present at the site but had spoken with other pirates who were, and that they told him nine pirates had been killed in the raid and three were "taken away."

Communicating with Silence

2012-01-24T07:59:00.000-08:00

Very relevant reflections from the Holy Father's message for World Day of Communications:

Silence is an integral element of communication; in its absence, words rich in content cannot exist. In silence, we are better able to listen to and understand ourselves; ideas come to birth and acquire depth; we understand with greater clarity what it is we want to say and what we expect from others; and we choose how to express ourselves. By remaining silent we allow the other person to speak, to express him or herself; and we avoid being tied simply to our own words and ideas without them being adequately tested. In this way, space is created for mutual listening, and deeper human relationships become possible. It is often in silence, for example, that we observe the most authentic communication taking place between people who are in love: gestures, facial expressions and body language are signs by which they reveal themselves to each other. ...

Word and silence: learning to communicate is learning to listen and contemplate as well as speak. This is especially important for those engaged in the task of evangelization: both silence and word are essential elements, integral to the Church’s work of communication for the sake of a renewed proclamation of Christ in today’s world.

It's a good reminder everyone. Even in Church circles, there is sometimes an overemphasis on the dazzling effects of social media with all its potential, while silence, patience and the cultivation of those habits are overlooked.

Social media has its place, and the Holy Father has made that clear. At the same time, it cannot be ignored that inner silence and stillness, and the contemplative lifestyle that flows from these habits, run quite contrary to the sometimes frenzied demand for the flashy, the immediate and the instantaneous 'I need it now and I refuse to wait!' attitude that the social media bandwagon encourages.

Egypt Update

2012-01-22T08:26:00.000-08:00

From Reuters:

CAIRO (Reuters) - The Muslim Brotherhood won by far the biggest share of seats allocated to party lists in Egypt's first freely-elected parliament in decades, final results confirmed, giving it a major role in drafting the country's new constitution.

Banned under former leader Hosni Mubarak and his predecessors, the Brotherhood has emerged as the winner from his overthrow. Islamists of various stripes have taken about two thirds of seats in the assembly, broadly in line with their own forecasts.

What does this mean for the country's already beleaguered Coptic Christians? Nothing good, I'm afraid.

Lessons from Concordia

2012-01-21T06:35:00.000-08:00

A few snippets from a well-written and timely piece by Mark Steyn, National Review Online:

On the Titanic, the male passengers gave their lives for the women and would never have considered doing otherwise. On the Costa Concordia, in the words of a female passenger, “There were big men, crew members, pushing their way past us to get into the lifeboat.” After similar scenes on the MV Estonia a few years ago, Roger Kohen of the International Maritime Organization told Time magazine: “There is no law that says women and children first. That is something from the age of chivalry.” ...

And so the manly virtues (if you’ll forgive a quaint phrase) shrivel away to the so-called “man caves,” those sad little redoubts of beer and premium cable sports networks.

We are beyond social norms these days. A woman can be a soldier. A man can be a woman. A seven-year-old cross-dressing boy can join the Girl Scouts in Colorado because he “identifies” as a girl. It all adds to life’s rich tapestry, no doubt. But I can’t help wondering, when the ship hits the fan, how many of us will still be willing to identify as a man.

Hamilton

2012-01-20T12:45:00.000-08:00

"Let an association be formed to be denominated 'The Christian Constitutional Society,' its object to be first: The support of the Christian religion. Second: The support of the United States." ~Alexander Hamilton

Washington

2012-01-20T12:41:00.000-08:00

"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism, who should labour to subvert these great Pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of Men and citizens." ~George Washington

Adams

2012-01-20T12:38:00.000-08:00

"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." ~John Adams

Cardinal Newman's Chapel

2012-01-20T08:02:00.000-08:00

The Cardinal's Personal Chapel from Corpus Christi Watershed on Vimeo.

In the details

2012-01-19T07:47:00.001-08:00

Here are some close-up shots of the stained glass windows at Saint Joseph Chapel in Milwaukee. They are all from Innsbruck, Austria.

Anticipating the Pope in Cuba

2012-01-18T07:07:00.000-08:00

From Reuters:

SANTIAGO DE CUBA, Cuba (Reuters) - The Virgin of Charity of El Cobre is a gold-clothed, doll-like figurine which, according to Cuban legend, three fishermen found floating in a bay as Spain colonized the region with the sword and the cross.

She is Cuba's patron saint and Pope Benedict will visit her in the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba on March 26 to mark the 400th anniversary of her discovery.

Benedict's visit was agreed as the Catholic Church's relations with Cuba's communist-run state have improved in recent years.

On Chivalry

2012-01-18T06:48:00.000-08:00

A great article by Ed West, appearing in the Telegraph:

One of the disturbing aspects of the sinking of the Costa Concordia is the implication that men barged past families to rescue themselves, rather than adhering to the convention of “women and children first”. This has already led people to question whether chivalry is dead, or whether we should still abide by this unofficial rule of the sea. ...

Yet as a means of creating a gentle and pleasant society chivalry is hard to beat. Readers of the Guardian newspaper are in two minds about the concept, many readers arguing that priority should be given not based on sex but on need (taking aside, of course, the practical issue that sometimes it is logistically not possible to give one group priority).

The problem with this system is that it inevitably leads us to start making value judgments about other human beings; so if, one assumes, a young person should have priority over the old because they have their life ahead of them, perhaps one could easily make the argument that a healthy person should have priority over the sick or the disabled. One could even argue that a newborn should be last because, under the Peter Singer ethical model, they are not fully sentient.

Relic

2012-01-17T06:12:00.000-08:00

An amazing discovery in Buffalo. From Buffalo News:

It traveled here from Rome, and then disappeared from view for nearly 100 years.

Now, a rare tapestry that has been found in Buffalo has become both a mystery and a symbol of enduring faith.

The artifact, which today hangs in the sacristy of St. Joseph's Cathedral, contains the relics of saints of the old Roman Catholic calendar: 365 of them.

But the reliquary's wonders do not stop there.

A translation of the Latin inscriptions around the reliquary's central image of a cross — bearing the motto "In Hoc Vinces," or "In this [sign] you conquer" — reveals that relics at the center of the tapestry purport to be relics of the life and Passion of Jesus Christ himself.

Taking Credit

2012-01-13T20:22:00.000-08:00

From ABCNews:

HILTON HEAD, S.C. – Appearing for the first time on the stump for Mitt Romney, former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton delivered a blistering review of President Obama’s foreign policy, accusing the Commander-in-Chief of unfairly taking credit for the killing of Osama bin Laden.

“You know the irony is, he’s campaigning on the basis that he’s a success as a foreign policy president,” said Bolton, who announced he would endorse Romney earlier this week, of President Obama. “It’s just really amazing and you ask, what is it that made the success? And it’s because Navy SEAL Team 6 killed Osama bin Laden. That’s his definition of success.”

“As somebody pointed out, in 1969 when Americans landed on the moon, it’s like Richard Nixon taking credit for that, because it happened to occur during his presidency,” said Bolton, who spoke alongside Romney, S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley and Sen. John McCain in a ballroom at a Hilton resort. “The fact of the matter is this president has been a failure across the board in foreign policy and it’s jeopardized the United States in critical ways.”

A President's Trick

2012-01-13T07:50:00.000-08:00

From the Associated Press:

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama will ask Congress on Friday for greater power to shrink the federal government, and his first idea is merging six sprawling trade and commerce agencies whose overlapping programs can be baffling to businesses, a senior administration official told The Associated Press.

Obama will call on Congress to give him a type of reorganizational power last held by a president when Ronald Reagan was in office. The Obama version would be a so-called consolidation authority allowing him to propose mergers that promise to save money and help consumers. The deal would entitle him to an up-or-down vote from Congress in 90 days.

Seriously, can Obama be trusted to "shrink the federal government"? That end isn't what he's about. There's a big gap between Reagan and Obama. Adults can handle knives, not children.

It was Reagan after all who famously said, "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'"

Disparity

2012-01-12T20:46:00.000-08:00

From Politico:

Conservatives continue to make up the largest segment of political views in the country, outnumbering liberals nearly two-to-one, according to a new poll Thursday.

The Gallup survey found that 40 percent of Americans consider themselves conservative; 35 percent consider themselves moderate; and 21 percent see themselves as liberal.

Romney Ties Obama to European Malaise

2012-01-11T09:14:00.000-08:00

From the AP:

LONDON (AP) — Europeans awoke Wednesday to find themselves plunged into the middle of the U.S. presidential race after a Republican front-runner accused President Barack Obama of cozying up to Europe while ignoring basic American values.

Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who served as a missionary in France and recently toured Europe, said Obama is determined to impose a Euro-style welfare state on the U.S. at the expense of free enterprise.

"He wants to turn America into a European-style entitlement society," he said in his victory speech after winning the New Hampshire primary. "We want to ensure that we remain a free and prosperous land of opportunity. This president takes his inspiration from the capitals of Europe; we look to the cities and small towns of America."

Because you don't see this everyday...

2012-01-11T09:11:00.000-08:00

Pope meets crocodile

It's safe to say the Holy Father has a soft spot for animals.

When Cardinal Ratzinger was the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the German newspaper Bild wrote, he tended to the cats that frequented the garden of the congregation’s building in the Vatican and bandaged their wounds.

Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone told an Italian newspaper in 2005 that the cats sometimes walked him to his office.

“One time the Swiss Guards had to intervene,” Cardinal Bertone joked. “ ‘Look, your eminence, the cats are laying siege to the Holy See.’ ”

"Certainly, a sort of industrial use of creatures, so that geese are fed in such a way as to produce as large a liver as possible, or hens live so packed together that they become just caricatures of birds, this degrading of living creatures to a commodity seems to me in fact to contradict the relationship of mutuality that comes across in the Bible." —from Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, God and the World: A Conversation with Peter Seewald

Obama's Way

2012-01-11T08:22:00.000-08:00

From Victor Davis Hanson, writing for National Review Online:

Tally up Obama’s early and recent unrehearsed and unguarded quips about wealth — “Spread the wealth”; his regrets that the Supreme Court has not addressed “redistributive change”; his concern that some have not realized that they already have made “enough” money; his warnings that now is not the time for “profit.” That serial message bookends the president’s slurs about millionaires and billionaires, corporate-jet owners, fat-cats, profit-driven doctors, and Vegas and Super Bowl junketeers.

All this unscripted editorializing reflects a recurring theme: Those with superior intelligence and higher moral authority must correct for warped private-sector compensation and human greed. And they can do that by deciding roughly how much each of us deserves to end up with.

In concrete terms, this pop socialism leads Obama to wish to enact more regulations, higher taxes on fewer taxpayers, and more on entitlements. ...

What makes Barack Obama a different president is not his racial heritage, his liberal outlook, or his mellifluous cadences, but rather the banal idea that the United States is fundamentally in need of this sort of radical change, and that only a select few like himself have the insight and skills necessary to both implement and preside over it.

Mitt Wins

2012-01-10T20:28:00.001-08:00

This is a great speech. You can hear echoes of Reagan.

On Media Bias

2012-01-10T15:14:00.000-08:00

I thought this was a solid article on how Republicans, using Reagan as their model, can turn the tables on the media. From The Wall Street Journal:

A funny thing happened on the way to the New Hampshire primary: ABC moderator George Stephanopoulos embarrassed himself on national television with questions plainly intended to embarrass the Republican candidates. Therein lies a lesson. ...

Whatever else we know about 2012, we know we will have many more Stephanopoulos moments ahead. Though it might be more satisfying to thunder against the injustice, there are other, possibly more effective ways to expose the bias.

On the social issues especially, the media narrative is that Republicans are obsessed. The truth is that at a time when millions of Americans can't find work, when our Middle East policy is in turmoil, when the future of Mr. Obama's signature legislative achievement—health care—is in question, every Republican in the running is itching for the opportunity to talk about how he would address these things.

In sharp contrast, it was Mr. Stephanopoulos and Ms. Sawyer who showed themselves consumed with nonexistent initiatives on contraception and what you might say to gay friends who are sitting in your living room. Saturday night on ABC, we saw this bias in its full, condescending form.

Read on.

Here's an excellent example from the other night's debate, where Newt Gingrich slams the moderators for their one-sided obsession with right-wing 'bigotry.'

Romney's Catholic Support

2012-01-07T21:19:00.000-08:00

Mary Ann Glendon

From the AFP:

Republican White House hopeful Mitt Romney, a Mormon facing doubts about his conservative credentials, said Saturday he had the endorsement of five former US ambassadors to the Vatican. ...

The former ambassadors said they were "united" behind Romney "because of his commitment to and support of the values that we feel are critical in a national leader" and "experience, vision and commitment to the common good."

The group included Thomas Melady, Raymond Flynn, James Nicholson, Francis Rooney, and Mary Ann Glendon, who served under both Democratic and Republican presidents as envoys to the Holy See.

I'm a huge fan of Mary Ann Glendon. Her support of Romney should assuage concerns about trusting him on the social issues. Glendon is an outstanding, 100% rock solid Catholic intellectual. She'd appear near the top of any listing of influential faithful lay Catholics in this nation. I hope we'll see more of her in the public arena, perhaps in a Romney Administration. She's that good.

Changes in the South

2012-01-07T10:40:00.000-08:00

Tim Stanley writes about the fascinating evolution of perceptions in the South, where two Catholics (Santorum and Gingrich) are gaining remarkable traction in a region long dominated by an Evangelical form of Christianity that looked askance at Catholicism. From the Telegraph:

Until the 1960s, it [the Democratic Party] was dismissed by snooty Republicans as the party of “rum, Rome and rebellion” – drinkers, Catholics and Southern confederates. But that changed when the Democrats embraced the lifestyle liberalism of the 1970s. Many ethnic Catholics remained within the fold, but the more faithful were driven into the welcoming arms of the prolife GOP. To this day, the electoral divide between Democratic and Republican Catholics is determined by how often they go to church.

Stanley then discusses Newt Gingrich's conversion to the Catholic Faith.

The answer lies in Gingrich’s conversion to the Catholic faith, which he says was due in part to the richness of the Catholic intellectual tradition. The answers he has given in debates have often referred to the evils of the Enlightenment and the need to reassert the kind of anti-secular moral theology that the Catholics do so well. Reading his account of his conversion, one is struck by the sense of certainty that the Church offered him – of the reassurance of its rituals and doctrine.

The flipside of Catholicism’s attractiveness is the comparative intellectual instability within several Protestant denominations – particularly on matters of faith and morals. The Quakers, the Methodists and the Episcopalians have all embraced gay rights to varying degrees. The Episcopalians have even appointed lesbian and gay bishops. This flamboyant liberalism is all well and good for casual church goers who like to see their faith “move with the times”. But it is nothing less than a betrayal to millions of believers who adhered to a certain dogma all their lives, only to see it overturned on a whim. These Protestants have started looking elsewhere for moral leadership and they’re finding it within denominations that their parents once considered heretical.

Beleaguered Orthodox

2012-01-07T08:33:00.000-08:00

Epiphany in Istanbul/Constantinople

I always try to feature stories about the small community of Orthodox Christians holding on to the faith against all odds in the ancient City of Constantine. They deserve any attention they can get. It must be incredibly galling to these Christians that even in the post-Ottoman era, they still live under the oppression of the Turkish authorities and the occasional Islamic extremist, and all in a city that was theirs for over one-thousand years. Catholics can learn a lesson or two from their Orthodox brethren about the importance of perseverance and holding fast to tradition. From the Associated Press:

In Istanbul, dozens of police in riot gear stood guard at the outdoor Epiphany ceremony as a precaution following past protests by nationalists against the Patriarchate, which dates from the Byzantine Empire.

Bartholomew has called for the reopening of a theology school on an island near Istanbul that trained generations of church leaders, including himself, until it was closed by Turkey in 1971 under a law that put religious and military training under state control. The Halki Theological School closed its doors entirely in 1985, when the last five students graduated.

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, who met Bartholomew on a visit to Turkey last month, said he hoped Turkey would reopen the seminary.

For years, Turkey has said it is working on a formula that could pave the way for the reopening of the seminary. In August, Turkey's government said it was returning hundreds of properties confiscated from the country's Christian and Jewish minorities over the past 75 years in a gesture to the religious groups, who say they still face discrimination.

"Over the past 75 years..." what about the past one-thousand-plus years? What about Hagia Sophia? Probably more than half of the mosques in the city were once Orthodox churches. Let's be honest, the entire city was "confiscated" in 1453.

Banana Republic

2012-01-05T21:08:00.000-08:00

From The Wall Street Journal:

Remember those terrible days of the Imperial Presidency, when George W. Bush made several "recess appointments" to overcome Senate opposition? Well, Czar George II never did attempt what President Obama did yesterday in making recess appointments when Congress isn't even on recess.

Eager to pick a fight with Congress as part of his re-election campaign, Mr. Obama did the Constitutional equivalent of sticking a thumb in its eye and hitting below the belt. He installed Richard Cordray as the first chief of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and named three new members to the National Labor Relations Board. He did so even though the Senate was in pro forma session after the new Congress convened this week.

This story isn't receiving nearly as much attention in the mainstream media as it should be getting. Imagine if Bush had tried to pull off something like this. Obama's power grab is truly astonishing and can only be described as a severe violation of the very Constitution he swore to serve, defend and protect. Charles Krauthammer rightly blasted this sad move an embarrassing indicator of a banana republic. You'd expect shenanigans like this from Hugo Chavez or a Castro, not from a successor to Washington. Obama justified this naked authoritarian act by claiming that "America cannot wait for Congress to act..." and so on. It's as though he's consulted the 12 Steps To Becoming a Dictator manual. Step One: In the face of an immanent "crisis," sweep aside any challenge to your authority, like those messy checks and balances and such. One is reminded of Rousseau's Legislator who, given his self-appointed status as the sole representative and voice of the people, rules plenipotentiary.

What will congressional GOPers do? Time will tell. Until then, it's fair to question whether Cordray's appointment is even legitimate. Why not just ignore every command issued from him and his office?

Crony Capitalism and Coporatism

2012-01-05T13:12:00.000-08:00

Writing for the Telegraph, Daniel Hannan makes an important distinction that is often lost in the back and forth of economic debates.

The past four years have seen governments throughout the West turn to a ghoulish corporatism, in which selected private companies are bailed out with public money. Understandably, people from across the political spectrum have reacted angrily. The Tea Partiers and the Occupiers are both protesting against the same thing, viz the rescue of large banks by taxpayers.

But whereas the Occupiers, in a slightly inchoate way, believe they are complaining about capitalism, free marketeers point out that, in a capitalist system, bad banks would have been allowed to collapse, their assets sold to more efficient competitors. Bondholders, shareholders and some depositors would have lost money, but taxpayers wouldn't have contributed a penny.

Different, after all

2012-01-04T20:49:00.000-08:00

From the AFP:

Gender wars: Men, women more different than thought

Mars and Venus are much further apart than previously thought -- and we're not talking about planets.

In research by three European psychologists, using a new model for analyzing personality differences between men and women, claimed the gap between the genders has been sorely underestimated in previous studies.

"The idea that there are only minor differences between the personality profiles of males and females should be rejected as based on inadequate methodology," they wrote in the online journal PLoS ONE (www.plosone.org). ...

Comparing the overall profiles of men and women, and taking multiple traits into account, they discovered very large differences between the sexes -- differences which had seemed to be smaller when each trait was looked at individually, without correction for measurement error.

"These are extremely large differences by psychological standards," wrote Del Giudice and colleagues Tom Booth and Paul Irwing of the University of Manchester in England.

Quite relevant, as the machinations of political correctness relentlessly attempt to gloss over the differences between the sexes.

Greek 'Cross Dive'

2012-01-03T07:39:00.000-08:00

To the victor...

From the Associated Press:

TARPON SPRINGS, Fla. (AP) – In a spectacle repeated every Jan. 6 for more than a century, dozens of teenage boys set out from the stately Greek Orthodox cathedral in this Florida Gulf Coast town to seek God’s blessing in the chilly waters of a bayou several blocks away.

They dive off row boats and, in a chaotic flailing of arms and legs, grope in the murky water for a wooden cross tossed in by a priest. The one lucky enough to surface with it earns instant celebrity status, a ride through the streets on the shoulders of his peers and – the Greek-American boys believe – the favor of God in the coming year.

Gun Control Madness

2012-01-03T07:34:00.000-08:00

From The Daily Caller:

Ryan Jerome was enjoying his first trip to New York City on business when the former Marine Corps gunner walked up to a security officer at the Empire State Building and asked where he should check his gun.

That was when Jerome’s nightmare began. The security officer called police and Jerome spent the next two days in jail.

The 28-year-old with no criminal history now faces a mandatory minimum sentence of three and a half years in prison. If convicted, his sentence could be as high as fifteen years.

This is pretty outrageous.

Into the Fold

2012-01-02T08:14:00.000-08:00

From the AFP:

Pope Benedict XVI has founded the first structure in the United States to encompass disaffected Episcopalian Anglicans who wish to join the Roman Catholic Church, the Vatican told AFP on Monday.

Based in Houston, Texas, the "Ordinariat" -- the equivalent of a nationwide diocese -- will be led by 59-year-old Jeffery N. Steenson, a father of three who left his post as Episcopal bishop and converted to become a Catholic priest in 2009.

The Episcopal Church is the official American branch of the Anglican Communion in the US. Converts who join the new diocese, called "The Chair of St. Peter", will be full Catholics and will owe allegiance to the pope.

Friends

2012-01-02T08:05:00.000-08:00

From the Associated Press:

ROME (AP) — Jerzy Kluger, a Polish-born Jew who was a lifetime friend and childhood playmate of the late Pope John Paul II, has died in a clinic near Rome.

Kluger's wife, Irene, told The Associated Press that her husband, who was 90, had died on Dec. 31 after suffering from Alzheimer's disease for three years and was buried Monday.

Happy New Year

2012-01-01T07:47:00.000-08:00

Pope Benedict XVI offered his first Mass of 2012 at Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome.

Catholic Culture

2011-12-30T20:13:00.000-08:00

A friend with Polish roots sent me a link on a rich Christmas tradition in Poland.

On the first Thursday of December, crèche masters from around Poland and other parts of the world display their szopki at the history museum in the Krzysztofory Palace. The winning models are placed on display throughout the Christmas season. The szopka is a traditional Polish folk art that has its origins in the Middle Ages. The tradition is a rich and colorful one, having evolved over the ages. The szopki depict the Wawel Cathedral, which is a part of Krakow’s Wawel Castle with a Nativity scene set inside its doors. Some of the models are as small as 6 inches while others are around 6 feet high.

How's that for cool?

The Pope and Relativism

2011-12-30T13:41:00.000-08:00

From the Telegraph:

In a message for the 2012 World Peace Day of January 1, Pope Benedict said that neither peace nor justice was obtainable if the objective norms of morality expressed in the Ten Commandments continue to be rejected.

He words represent another severe criticism of moral relativism, the humanistic creed that holds there can be no objective standard on which to base morality. ...

"Deep within his conscience, man discovers a law that he did not lay upon himself, but which he must obey," he said in his message, Educating Young People in Justice and Peace.

"Its voice calls him to love and to do what is good, to avoid evil and to take responsibility for the good he does and the evil he commits," he said.

"Thus, the exercise of freedom is intimately linked to the natural moral law, which is universal in character, expresses the dignity of every person and forms the basis of fundamental human rights and duties - consequently, in the final analysis, it forms the basis for just and peaceful coexistence."

Life

2011-12-29T07:52:00.000-08:00

“I’m done, I did what I was supposed to. My baby is going to get here safe.”
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Only weeks after Jenni was diagnosed with cancer, she found out she was 10 weeks pregnant. Doctors told her she had to terminate the pregnancy or stop treatment while pregnant for the safety of the baby. Jenni reportedly did not consider terminating the baby. She decided to forgo radiation and chemotherapy while pregnant.

"Terminating the baby." It's amazing how such a chilling thing can be said with utter insouciance.

Block Him

2011-12-28T10:45:00.000-08:00

From FoxNews:

WASHINGTON – As a year marred with fights and stalemates within the federal government comes to a close, Republican lawmakers and President Obama are embroiled in yet another battle of wills.

Republican lawmakers are refusing to officially adjourn for the year in hopes of deterring Obama from making any unconfirmed appointments to controversial boards while Congress is on vacation.

Senate Republicans and the president can’t agree on new National Labor Relations Board members, leaving only two chairs on the board filled going into the new year. ...

In an effort to prevent these recess appointments, Republicans are having the Senate ‘gavel in gavel out’ every few days, meaning they are not officially adjourning for the year.

If this prevents the Senate from taking a recess, lawmakers believe Obama will be stopped from making any recess appointments.

This is what I like to see.

Dewey the Progressive

2011-12-28T08:28:00.000-08:00

Tiffany Jones Miller wrote an insightful piece on progressivism that appears on National Review Online:

If the progressive label seems less radical today, it is only because progressivism is less well known than its liberal progeny. It was initially an academic phenomenon far removed from American politics. Particularly in the post–Civil War American university, professors — many of whom had obtained their graduate training in German universities, and whose thought reflected the “intoxicating effect of the undiluted Hegelian philosophy upon the American mind,” as progressive Charles Merriam once put it — articulated a critique of America that was as deep as it was wide. It began with a conscious rejection of the natural-rights principles of the American founding and the promotion of a new understanding of freedom, history, and the state in their stead. From this foundation, the progressives then criticized virtually every aspect of our traditional way of life, recommending reforms or “social reorganization” on a sweeping scale, the primary engine of which was to be a new, “positive” role for the state. As the progressives’ influence in the academy increased, and growing numbers of their students sallied forth into all aspects of endeavor, this intellectual transformation gradually began to reshape the broader American mind, and, in time, American political practice. “A new regime in thought,” as Eldon Eisenach writes, “began to become a new regime in power.”

Mount Athos

2011-12-26T09:42:00.000-08:00

Watch this incredibly rare look into the secluded life of the monks living on Mount Athos. It is impossible not to be deeply moved by this. I couldn't help thinking, "If only the Orthodox accepted the Pope."

The reporter comments, incorrectly, that the Orthodox Church is the only church that has not changed any of its teaching in 2,000 years. Of course, that is the view of the Orthodox, so I'm not surprised that it was repeated here. That statement was the only issue I had with this phenomenal series. Catholics can learn a lot from their Orthodox brethren when it comes to strict liturgical reverence and the mystical life. How wonderful it would be if East and West were united once again!

Saint Stephen

2011-12-26T09:32:00.001-08:00

The sarcophagus of Saint Stephen in the Church of San Lorenzo in Rome

Open Secret

2011-12-25T11:56:00.000-08:00

From the Telegraph:

Vatican throws light on history as it opens secret archives

...100 of the most historically significant documents held by the Vatican's Secret Archives are to go on public display in Rome – the first and probably last time that they will leave the buttressed stone walls of the tiny city state.

The priceless documents span more than a millennium, from the 8th century to modern times, and feature a cast of historical characters ranging from the Knights Templar to Galileo, Martin Luther and Henry VIII.

They are normally kept in air-conditioned, climate-controlled rooms in the Vatican's Apostolic Palace, which boasts more than 50 miles of shelves, as well as in a high-security underground bunker.

Archivists have gathered them together for an unprecedented exhibition, to be held in Rome's Capitoline Museums, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the founding of the Secret Archives in their present form.

Christmas Morning Attack

2011-12-25T07:52:00.000-08:00

From the Associated Press:

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI's Christmas pleas for peace around the world were brutally ignored in Nigeria, where an explosion Sunday claimed by Muslim extremists ripped through a Catholic church during Mass.

Authorities say at least 25 people were killed by the explosion at the St. Theresa Catholic Church in Madalla, near the Nigerian capital, Abuja. Boko Haram, a radical Muslim sect waging a sectarian fight claimed the attack and another bombing near a church in the restive city of Jos.

The assaults come a year after a series of Christmas Eve bombings in Jos claimed by the militants left at least 32 dead and 74 wounded.

Benedict didn't refer explicitly to the bombings in his Christmas Day survey of the world's trouble spots, delivered from the sun-drenched loggia of St. Peter's Basilica. But the Vatican issued a statement denouncing them as a sign of "cruelty and absurd, blind hatred" that shows no respect for human life.

2011-12-25T07:41:00.001-08:00

2011-12-25T07:36:00.000-08:00

Let's Get Real

2011-12-24T20:23:00.000-08:00

Today Christmas has become a commercial celebration, whose bright lights hide the mystery of God's humility, which in turn calls us to humility and simplicity. ...

Let us ask the Lord to help us see through the superficial glitter of this season, and to discover behind it the child in the stable in Bethlehem, so as to find true joy and true light.

... let us strip away our fixation on what is material, on what can be measured and grasped. Let us allow ourselves to be made simple by the God who reveals himself to the simple of heart. -Pope Benedict XVI

2011-12-24T09:26:00.000-08:00

Giotto's Nativity

Theodore Roosevelt on Family

2011-12-23T13:15:00.000-08:00

I don't often praise the arch-Progressive Theodore Roosevelt, but I came across this quote and thought it certainly warranted an airing here.

“It is exceedingly interesting and attractive to be a successful businessman . . . or farmer, or a successful lawyer, or doctor, or a writer, or a president, or a ranchman . . . or to kill grizzly bears and lions. But for unflagging interest and enjoyment, a household of children, if things go reasonably well, certainly makes all other forms of success and achievement lose their importance by comparison.”

A professor in college once related how Roosevelt would often single out large families for praise when out and about, holding them up as great assets to America. This, obviously, was before the worldwide birth control frenzy that substantially whittled down the average family, transforming children from gifts from God into rapacious economic consumers to be minimized and controlled. In my view, Roosevelt makes up for an array of political solecisms with his pro-family take, which was a common attitude, at one time.

The Affirmative Action Illusion

2011-12-23T13:01:00.000-08:00

Jeff Jacoby, writing for The Boston Globe, makes the case for eliminating affirmative action policies in higher education. Pretty convincing. Here's a snippet:

IF RACIAL preferences in higher education were good for racial minorities in higher education, we surely would have seen definitive evidence of it by now. Instead, a widening shelf of empirical research suggests that the opposite is true - that affirmative action in academia is not advancing minority achievement but impeding it. ...

When an elite institution relaxes its usual standards to admit more blacks and Hispanics, it all but guarantees that those academically weaker students will have trouble keeping up with their better-prepared white and Asian classmates. Minorities who might have flourished in a science or engineering program at a middle-tier state college are apt to find themselves overwhelmed by the pace at which genetics or computer architecture is taught in the Ivy League. Many decide to switch to an easier major. Others drop out altogether.

Especially when it comes to issues of race, no matter how bulletproof the evidence, ideology will always trump reason and cheap political pandering will outweigh the common good. Consequences be damned.

Exodus

2011-12-22T11:17:00.000-08:00

Life for Christians in Iraq

From the Telegraph:

Father Immanuel Dabaghian, one of Baghdad’s last surviving priests, is expecting a quiet Christmas. To join him in the Church of the Virgin Mary means two hours of security checks and a body search at the door, and even then there’s no guarantee of survival. Islamist gunmen massacred 58 people in a nearby church last year, and fresh graffiti warns remaining worshippers that they could be next.

The Americans have gone now, and Iraq’s Christian communities – some of the world’s oldest – are undergoing an exodus on a biblical scale.

Of the country’s 1.4 million Christians, about two thirds have now fled. Although the British Government is reluctant to recognise it, a new evil is sweeping the Middle East: religious cleansing. The attacks, which peak at Christmas, have already spread to Egypt, where Coptic Christians have seen their churches firebombed by Islamic fundamentalists. In Tunisia, priests are being murdered.

Maronite Christians in Lebanon have, for the first time, become targets of bombing campaigns. Christians in Syria, who have suffered as much as anyone from the Assad regime, now pray for its survival. If it falls, and the Islamists triumph, persecution may begin in earnest.

Who else is talking about this tragedy?

Shroud of Turin

2011-12-21T21:05:00.000-08:00

From the Telegraph:

Italian study claims Turin Shroud is Christ's authentic burial robe

Just days before Christmas, a new study has emerged that suggests that one of Christianity's most prized but mysterious relics – the Turin Shroud – is not a medieval forgery but could be the authentic burial robe of Christ.

...The scientists used extremely brief pulses of ultraviolet light to replicate the kind of marks found on the burial cloth.

They concluded that the iconic image of the bearded man must therefore have been created by "some form of electromagnetic energy (such as a flash of light at short wavelength)." Although they stopped short of offering a non-scientific explanation for the phenomenon, their findings will be embraced by those who believe that the marks on the shroud were miraculously created at the moment of Christ's Resurrection.

Fascinating.

Read more on this story here.

The Gingrich-Roosevelt Ticket

2011-12-21T12:08:00.000-08:00

In this article, appearing in National Review Online, John Fund highlights some very troubling comments made by Newt Gingrich regarding the Roosevelts.

But at the same time Newt tries to wrap himself in the Reagan mantle, he also exhibits another nostalgic tic that should give conservatives agita. Newt is an unabashed admirer of the Roosevelts — Theodore and Franklin. Together those two presidents embodied the Progressive Era and the New Deal, developments which dramatically expanded Washington’s powers and radically changed the expectations Americans had of government.

Just last week, Newt made clear his desire to emulate the two men when he told Newsweek magazine that, in handling intractable problems such as poverty, “we’re gonna experiment and experiment and experiment until we break through.” When Newsweek’s Peter Boyer dryly noted that this might “not please the ear of a small-government conservative,” Gingrich didn’t flinch: “It makes me, in some ways, like the two Roosevelts.”

I am pretty stunned that Gingrich, for all his brilliance, is so unreservedly pro-Roosevelt during a Republican primary. What is he thinking? It's going to be pretty difficult to win over the tea party crowd if you evince nostalgia for the two presidents who are most to blame for the deleterious accretions of big-government.

A First

2011-12-20T22:05:00.000-08:00

Blessed Kateri Tekawitha

From ABCNews:

Jake Finkbonner was near death for months with a flesh eating bacteria, but made a miraculous recovery that the Vatican credited to The Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha, marking the second miracle for the 17th century Mohawk-Algonquin woman and clearing the way for her to become the first American-Indian saint.

Pope Benedict XVI signed a decree Monday approving the miracle attribute to the intercession of the woman, and she could be canonized as soon as February. The Vatican said it believes that the prayers Finkbonner’s family directed to Tekakwitha were responsible for bringing the boy back from the brink of death.