Pride Goeth Before Destruction ~ Celebrate Humility

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Recall, Christians, what Sacred Scripture declareth: 

"Pride goeth before destruction: and the spirit is lifted up before a fall." [Proverbs 16:18]

And also:

"Pride is the beginning of all sin. He that holdeth it, shall be filled with maledictions, and it shall ruin him in the end." [Ecclesiasticus, 10:15]

Pride is numbered in the Catholic Catechism among the Seven Deadly Sins [CCC 1866]. Writing in the early Seventh Century AD, Pope Saint Gregory the Great reflected on the sin of pride in his epochal Moralia in Job, saying:  

"Whoever extols himself above his proper condition, is weighed down by the very burden of his pride, and plunges himself the lower, the more he has rushed into the sin of pride, and has separated himself far from Him Who is truly exalted... [Moralia in Job, Book XXIV, Chapter 3]

Not surprisingly, Gregory recognized the link between pride and all the other sins, including fornication, saying:  

"And it is certain that there is not even genuine chastity in the heart of him who lacks humility, since by pride corrupting him within he commits fornication, if from loving himself he departs from the love of God. [Moralia in Job, Book XXII, Chapter 2]

As a remedy to this awful sin, St. Gregory proposes:

"Wherefore the sin of pride must be cut up at once by the very roots, that when it springs up secretly it may be cut off vigilantly, so that it may not gain vigor by growth, or strength by habit." [Moralia in Job, Book XXIV, Chapter 23]

Thus, we should never celebrate pride. Furthermore, we should never present pride as something acceptable or remarkable when teaching our children. 

Rather, Christians are enjoined to reflect on humility.

"The fruit of humility is the fear of the Lord, riches and glory and life." [Proverbs 22:4]

Even though he was God incarnate, Jesus of Nazareth was never puffed up with pride, but was rather an exemplar of humility. The image above is taken from a scene in the Gospel of Saint John [Chapter 13] where, after the Last Supper, Jesus washes the feet of the Apostles:

"He riseth from supper, and layeth aside His garments, and having taken a towel, girded Himself. After that, He putteth water into a basin, and began to wash the feet of the disciples, and to wipe them with the towel wherewith He was girded."

When Saint Peter objected to Jesus humbling himself, Our Lord cautioned him, saying:

"If I wash thee not, thou shalt have no part with me."

Peter responded, saying: 

"Lord, not only my feet, but also my hands and my head."

Jesus then explained to His Apostles that if they wish to be the leaders of His Church, they must first become servants.

"Know you what I have done to you? You call me Master, and Lord; and you say well, for so I am. If then I being your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example, that as I have done to you, so you do also. Amen, amen I say to you: The servant is not greater than his lord; neither is the apostle greater than he that sent him. If you know these things, you shall be blessed if you do them." [John 13:13-17]

Gregory the Great in his Moralia in Job, calls humility "the mistress and mother of all virtues [Moralia in Job, Book XXIII, Chapter 13]," and offers contrite confession of sins as the hallmark of humility:

"For these are the proofs of true humility, both for a man to ascertain his own wickedness, and on being ascertained to discover it by the voice of confession."

Meanwhile, someone who is consumed by pride, will not only fail to confess but will attempt to cover-up, deny, and rationalize his sins. Gregory continues:

"But on the contrary it is the accustomed evil practice of man’s race, at once to commit sin keeping himself hidden from sight, and when committed to hide it by denying, and when brought home to him, to multiply it by standing up for it." [Moralia in Job, Book XXII, Chapter 14]

Thus we come to our own present ruinous culture which not only seeks to deny sins, but to create communities around them, celebrate them with parades, and force others to join the revel with them. 

The painting in the image above, showing Christ washing the feet of the Apostles, was done by the Venetian Tintoretto and was completed about AD 1549. 

Kate Smith: "All men are equal and have an equal right to enjoy the fruits of this earth."

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The memory of Kate Smith—best known for her soaring rendition of Irving Berlin's God Bless America—has been sullied over the past few days by accusations of racism against the mid-20th century singer. Two sports teams (The New York Yankess, and the Philadelphia Flyers) have decided to pull their regular use of Ms. Smith’s rendition of God Bless America as a result of this controversy. Further, the Flyers even went so far as to remove a statue of Smith which hearkened back to their Stanley Cup victories of the 1970s when she appeared before games as a good luck charm to belt out the tune.

All this happened ostensibly because Ms. Smith sang a couple of minstrel songs in the 1930s (out of the 3,000 that she recorded during her career) which used words and imagery that are considered racially offensive today. It should be pointed out that other artists of the time (both Black and White) recorded similar songs using the same terms—indeed, such imagery was commonplace in traditional songs as well-known as Swanee River and Old Kentucky Home.

I don’t know if Ms. Smith was racist in her heart or not. But the chivalrous part of me can't stand the idea that a woman dead for 30 years and unable to defend herself is having dirt kicked on her gravestone. I did a little research about Ms. Smith as a result of this controversy, and I ran across the following quote which she said on the public airwaves on the day after VJ-Day (Victory over Japan Day, for those of you in the Millennial generation, 😉), August 15, 1945:

"Millions must be fed and clothed. Other millions must be taught an entirely new way of life: a philosophy which does not include aggression and cruelty and the absolute worship of a Hitler or a Hirohito. They must be taught that there is no super-race, that all men are equal and have an equal right to enjoy the fruits of this earth and the tranquility and decency to which the truly civilized subscribe."

This quote formed part of the closing of Ms. Smith’s radio program on that date. The program, entitled Kate Smith Speaks, broadcast on CBS radio from the late 1930s through the late 1940s. For a while, it was the most popular program on daytime radio. The quote may be found in the book, Kate Smith Speaks: 50 Selected Original Radio Scripts, 1938-1951 by Richard Hayes.

Call me crazy, but this statement does not sound like the sentiment of an inveterate racist to me. Perhaps other evidence will emerge, but at this point, the accusation of racism against Kate Smith looks fairly ridiculous, particularly when compared against how selflessly she used her talents during her lifetime. As Dan Cirucci detailed in a column over the past weekend: "during World War II, she traveled nearly 520,000 miles to entertain troops and sold a record $600 million in war bonds in a series of round-the-clock radio appeals. One of these, a 24-hour marathon on Feb. 1, 1944, raised a record $110 million in pledges." Indeed, these charges against Smith seem so ridiculous that they may be a cop-out.

My suspicion is that the perceived problem with Kate Smith, as identified by the massive corporate sports culture, is less about racism than about three little words that make them supremely uncomfortable these days:

God
Bless
America

Happy Saint Patrick's Day #1

The real Saint Patrick was a man of tremendous faith, courage and humility. Too often, these characteristics are obscured by the legends and pantomime that accompany the celebration of his feast day around the world.

Amazingly, two of Patrick's writings have survived from antiquity: his Confession and his Letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus. Here is an excerpt from his Confession about his calling to be an evangelist in Ireland:

"After a few years I was again in Britain with my parents [kinsfolk], and they welcomed me as a son, and asked me, in faith, that after the great tribulations I had endured I should not go anywhere else away from them. And, of course, there, in a vision of the night, I saw a man whose name was Victoricus coming as if from Ireland with innumerable letters, and he gave me one of them, and I read the beginning of the letter: ‘The Voice of the Irish’; and as I was reading the beginning of the letter I seemed at that moment to hear the voice of those who were beside the forest of Foclut which is near the western sea, and they were crying as if with one voice: ‘We beg you, holy youth, that you shall come and shall walk again among us.’ And I was stung intensely in my heart so that I could read no more, and thus I awoke. Thanks be to God, because after so many years the Lord bestowed on them according to their cry."

Find out more about the real Saint Patrick here:
http://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=89

The Communist Goals of 1963 and modern Libertarians as Useful Idiots

Click here to read this entry in the Congressional Record.

This past week, Rick Santorum was taken to task for daring to suggest in an eminently reasonable policy statement on his website that we should actually enforce laws already on the books to restrict the distribution of hard-core pornography. 

The hysterical reaction from the libertarian/left was predictable, likening Santorum to everything from a church lady to an American Taliban. 

 Following is a list of Communist Goals that was read into the Congressional Record by A. S. Herlong, Democrat Representative of the State of Florida in 1963. Every now and then, I like to revisit this list to see how the enemies of the civilization are doing accomplishing these goals. While some of the goals on this list are out-of-date historically speaking, many are in the process of being accomplished right now under our very noses. On the whole, the list provides a checklist for how to undermine a nation and set it up for destruction. 

 I hope that some libertarians will read this list and at least come to understand what you are defending and whose rhetoric you are adopting when you claim that a duly elected government has no right to restrict obscenity. 

 [Bold is mine] 

 ---------------------------------------

January 10, 1963

Current Communist Goals 

EXTENSION OF REMARKS OF HON. A. S. HERLONG, JR. OF FLORIDA IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

Thursday, January 10, 1963 

Mr. HERLONG. Mr. Speaker, Mrs. Patricia Nordman of De Land, Fla., is an ardent and articulate opponent of communism, and until recently published the De Land Courier, which she dedicated to the purpose of alerting the public to the dangers of communism in America. At Mrs. Nordman's request, I include in the RECORD, under unanimous consent, the following "Current Communist Goals," which she identifies as an excerpt from "The Naked Communist," by Cleon Skousen: 

CURRENT COMMUNIST GOALS

1.    U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.

2.    U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.

3.    Develop the illusion that total disarmament [by] the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.

4.    Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.

5.    Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.

6.    Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.

7.    Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.

8.    Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.

9.    Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.

10.    Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.

11.    Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces.

12.    Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.

13.    Do away with all loyalty oaths.

14.    Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.

15.    Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.

16.    Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.

17.    Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.

18.    Gain control of all student newspapers.

19.    Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.

20.    Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.

21.    Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.

22.    Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."

23.    Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."

24.    Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.

25.    Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.

26.    Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."

27.    Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."

28.    Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."

29.    Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.

30.    Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."

31.    Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.

32.    Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.

33.    Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.

34.    Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

35.    Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.

36.    Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.

37.    Infiltrate and gain control of big business.

38.    Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand [or treat].

39.    Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.

40.    Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.

41.    Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.

42.    Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use ["]united force["] to solve economic, political or social problems.

43.    Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.

44.    Internationalize the Panama Canal.

45.    Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction [over domestic problems. Give the World Court jurisdiction] over nations and individuals alike.

--------------------------------------- 

 Beyond libertarians, however, it is dismaying to me how easily some well-intentioned conservatives have fallen for the narrative that obscenity is a "free speech" issue when it never was before the 1960s. Here are two snippets from Supreme Court decisions that were subsequently overturned by the radical courts of the 1960s, much to this country's detriment:

Chaplinsky vs. New Hampshire (1942): "There are certain well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech, the prevention and punishment of which have never been thought to raise any Constitutional problem. These include the lewd and obscene, the profane, the libelous, and the insulting or 'fighting' words....It has been well observed that such utterances are no essential part of any exposition of ideas, and are of such slight social value as a step to truth that any benefit that may be derived from them is clearly outweighed by the social interest in order and morality."

Roth vs. The United States (1957) "Obscenity is not within the area of constitutionally protected freedom of speech or press--either (1) under the First Amendment, as to the Federal Government, or (2) under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, as to the States.... In the light of history, it is apparent that the unconditional phrasing of the First Amendment was not intended to protect every utterance.... The protection given speech and press was fashioned to assure unfettered interchange of ideas for the bringing about of political and social changes desired by the people.... All ideas having even the slightest redeeming social importance--unorthodox ideas, controversial ideas, even ideas hateful to the prevailing climate of opinion--have the full protection of the guaranties, unless excludable because they encroach upon the limited area of more important interests; but implicit in the history of the First Amendment is the rejection of obscenity as utterly without redeeming social importance."

Personally, I am happy to see a national candidate of Santorum's stature address this issue.

The Obama Nation

(This is an article I wrote back in March for the 2009 issue of the Tarpeian Rock literary magazine. Just getting around to posting it now. I'm a little behind schedule...)

This past November, the major news outlets triumphantly reported that Barack Obama’s victory in the presidential elections was due in no small part to the “youth vote”. The Chronicle of Higher Education reported that over 68% of voters age 18-29 cast their ballots for Obama.

For many outside that age bracket, this was seen as a disheartening turn of events. Ridiculous optimist that I am, however, I choose to see the glass as 32% full.

Even the more honest Obama supporters will openly admit that their candidate was the recipient of the most massive deluge of media-driven idol worship in American history. Yet, despite this, millions of young Americans were able to slice through the hype and vote against Obama.

Of course, within the first few months of his administration, Barack Obama has turned out to be every bit as divisive and retrograde as his critics warned he would be. His solution to every problem we face is not just big government, but colossal government. What those young voters who came out so strongly for Obama don’t yet realize is that the bill for the trillions upon trillions of dollars in government spending that Obama has already proposed will fall squarely upon them. They effectively voted themselves a gigantic promissory note.

On the issue of life, Obama has already been a catastrophe. During the campaign, he famously pronounced that he wouldn’t want to see his daughters “punished with a baby” and declared that the question of when human life begins was “above his pay grade.” Yet his supporters piously assured us that Obama cared deeply about the unborn and that his policies would actually reduce the numbers of abortions.

Anyone who voted for Obama thinking he was pro-life is eating a big crow sandwich now. Among his first acts as president was a repeal of the Mexico City policy which forbade US taxpayer dollars from funding abortions in poor countries.

Worse, Obama supports FOCA, the ill-named Freedom of Choice Act. If this travesty becomes law, every hard-fought restriction on abortion would be swept away—including the right of parents to be informed when their minor child attempts to procure an abortion and the right of doctors not to perform them.

Abortion has claimed the lives of nearly 50 million “youth voters” since 1973. One would think that outlawing this hideous practice would be a major priority for the fortunate survivors.

Finally, there’s the issue of the recently passed GIVE Act, part of which authorizes the federal government to determine the feasibility of a “mandatory service requirement for all able young people.”

There’s a word for government-imposed “mandatory volunteerism”—serfdom. I don’t think many young people voted for that when they pulled the lever for Obama. An excellent take on Obama’s “youth service corps” was filmed by students at John Paul the Great University entitled “Who do you serve?” I encourage you to check it out on YouTube:



But what do I know? I’m an old guy. Pretty soon, most of these issues won’t even affect me directly anymore. I’ll be too old to worry about procreating. I’ll be collecting government entitlements, while all those Obama-voting youth will be paying massive taxes required to keep said programs afloat. And I’ll be too decrepit to be drafted into some government-run youth slavery program.

If youth voters want real change, you’re not going to get it voting for a guy who has repackaged failed socialist ideas from the mid-20th century and slapped his own personality cult seal of approval on them.

And a politician who gets 100% ratings from the abortion industry isn’t peddling hope, for without life, there is no hope.

Starbuck nails it

Anyone who's a child of the 1980s like I am knows who Dirk Benedict is. He was Starbuck, the hot-shot Viper pilot on the original Battlestar Galactica. He was also Face, the wisecracking, lady-killing member of the A-Team.

Well, ol' Starbuck has a few things to say about Hollyweird that made me stand up and take notice. He wrote an article called "Lost in Castration" [warning: R-rated content] that appeared recently on Andrew Breitbart's Big Hollywood site. In the article, he slams the new 'reboot' of Battlestar Galactica as having a completely different--and lame--moral tone from the original series. Benedict writes:

“Re-imagining”, they call it. “Un-imagining” is more accurate. To take what once was and twist it into what never was intended. So that a television show based on hope, spiritual faith and family is un-imagined and regurgitated as a show of despair, sexual violence and family dysfunction. To better reflect the times of ambiguous morality in which we live, one would assume.

This is something I complain about all the time. The fiction, movies, TV shows, etc. that are released today are all morally repellant. Every character is a scoundrel and one's virtue is determined by how "tolerant" he is of someone else's "differences" [assuming, of course, that those "differences" are this week's talking-points memo of acceptable beliefs or behavioral fetishes]. Perhaps that's why I spend most of my TV-hours these days watching Korean historical dramas like The Great King Sejong [This show is vastly superior to anything on American TV, btw. If you can tolerate the subtitles, check it out].

Today, another article has appeared about Benedict, this one written by Mark Hemingway of National Review Online. And man, is this article ever littered with great quotes, among them:

“Hollywood attracts people who want to be famous,” Benedict says. “It attracts people who are insecure in who they are, and their identification comes from pretending to be other people. But it’s really a profession for 14-year-olds in terms of the intellectual demands on an actor — which is why children are so good at it. It’s difficult for adults to grow up and still be a 14-year-old.”

“Even up in Montana I’ve spent the last 20 years defending the right of my boys to throw a frickin’ snowball, to climb a tree, to jump off a little cliff, to go out in the canoe off my dock without a life jacket,” he says. “All the little boys that refused to give into that were put on Ritalin. The future warriors of America are all on Ritalin in the second grade.”

“The only thing I wanted to do was raise my boys. And I’ve done it. They are a joy to behold, and they are my contribution to the world and I can die happy tomorrow because of what I’ve done,” he says. “They understand this culture that they live in. They’re equipped. I’d rather have that than 25 Oscars.”

Go read the article that puts these quotes in context. It's a beauty. I hope Dirk continues to speak out on these issues--now more than ever, voices like his are desperately needed.

Boston College -- Where young Catholics go to lose their Faith (assuming they ever had it to begin with)

It's good to know that BC is doing such a bang-up job catechizing the students in its care in the basics of Catholic moral teaching. In a recent article in the BC student newspaper, The Heights, it was reported that 89% of the voters in the recent school-wide elections approved of a "sexual health" referendum. According to an article by Alexi Chi in The Heights, this ballot question was:

added to the ballot by a group called BC Students for Sexual Health and calls for support for affordable sexually transmitted infections testing, the availability of prescription birth control medication, and condoms on campus.

Don't you just love the terminology? "Birth control medication"?

Referenda like this are a clear indictment not only of the so called Catholic identity of Boston College, but also of the cultural Catholic parents of the students who voted. One must assume that if 89% of the student body at BC votes against basic Catholic moral teachings, then:

1.) nearly 9 out of 10 students at BC are no longer functionally Catholic, and
2.) that the university itself is doing an absolutely wretched job of catechizing young people and helping them understand that giddily following the pied piper of pop culture depravity is a sure path to both earthly and eternal misery.

I am an alumnus of Boston College. BC was a moral sewer when I attended over 15 years ago. It's sad to see that little has changed--indeed, it appears that things have gotten even worse.

In years past, few parents knew that "Catholic" schools like BC had rotted from the inside out. Today, it couldn't be more clear--as referenda like this one so stunningly demonstrate. For that reason, none of my children kids will even consider Boston College when the time comes.

If you are one of the 11% of actual Catholics left in the student body at BC, I implore you: get out now. There are several excellent, authentically Catholic universities across the country who'd be happy to have you--Christendom, Franciscan University of Steubenville, Thomas Aquinas, Ave Maria University, Magdalene, and the new John Paul the Great University in San Diego, CA.

Don't waste any more of your time and money at a university that people jokingly refer to as "Jesuit, but not Catholic."

Our state-sponsored media

What do you call it when those in the so-called "free press" see their responsibility as primarily to exalt and defend our elected leaders?

Hat tip to Newsbusters for finding this.

Here's what Chris Matthews said back in November in the aftermath of Obama's electoral victory:

Yeah, well, you know what? I want to do everything I can to make this thing work, this new presidency work...My job is to help this country.

Sure, Chris. Just like you wanted to help this country when Bush was president by trashing him every opportunity you got.

Now, we've got Tavis Smiley saying something very similar on Morning Joe: "We're all working for Barack Obama," Smiley said, "we have to help make Obama a great president."

So there you have it. Any pretense of impartiality is out the window. The next four years are going to witness some of the most crass and outrageous regime-inspired propaganda the world has ever seen.

Obama has already shown himself adept at creating strange government offices that never existed before in American history. Given his giddy approval of government take-overs of failing industries, and the precarious financial situation of much of the American media, one wonders how long it will take the Great Obama to nationalize the media and rename it the Ministry of Propaganda.

At this point, that would be a more fitting appellation.

Abortion not linked with depression?

A news article is floating around today claiming that there is no link between abortion and depression:

A team at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore reviewed 21 studies involving more than 150,000 women and found the high-quality studies showed no significant differences in long-term mental health between women who choose to abort a pregnancy and others.

"The best research does not support the existence of a 'post-abortion syndrome' similar to post-traumatic stress disorder," Dr. Robert Blum, who led the study published in the journal Contraception, said in a statement.

Worse, the academics behind this article simply declare that evidence to the contrary is "low quality" and "politically motivated."

How about a little transference with your baloney sandwich?

But hey, maybe these clowns are on to something. There may be less evidence of depression among post-abort women because many of these poor totured souls opt to commit suicide instead.

Suicides after pregnancy in Finland, 1987-94: register linkage study

Here's the money quote from this article:

The mean annual suicide rate was 11.3 per 100 000. The suicide rate associated with birth was significantly lower (5.9) and the rates associated with miscarriage (18.1) and induced abortion (34.7) were significantly higher than in the population.

I reckon this is one of those "low quality" studies Dr. Blum was referring to above.

Wouldn't it be nice if the medical and mental health communities got back into the business of actually helping people and not making immoral, counter-intuitive or just obviously wrong political statements?

How's that for turn-around?

Yesterday, I sent my observation about Random House's cowardice to the Catholic League. In typical form, they cranked out a press release about it today--

RANDOM HOUSE KILLS “ANTI-MUSLIM” BOOK; PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED THE DA VINCI CODE

Gotta love Bill Donohue! The Catholic League is really on the ball with this stuff.

Profiles in Cowardice -- Random House

Check this out. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, publishing giant Random House has pulled the plug on novel it had under contract (The Jewel of Medina by journalist Sherry Jones) because the company received "from credible and unrelated sources, cautionary advice not only that the publication of this book might be offensive to some in the Muslim community, but also that it could incite acts of violence by a small, radical segment."

It is to laugh.

Keep in mind, Random House is the parent company of Anchor Books, the publisher of--you guessed it--The Da Vinci Code.

So what have we learned today, children? Simple--big publishing will spinelessly change its business practices if threatened with actual physical harm. There's a word for people who surrender their supposed priciples under threat--cowards.

Professor in Minnesota needs an exorcist

As some of you know, a pathetic individual posing as a university professor, Paul Zachary Myers, had nothing better to do with his time that to engage in a public act of profound bigotry against Catholics and their dearly held beliefs. As a matter of principle, I will not link to this individual's blog. It does no good to express your outrage on his message board--to call him invincibly ignorant is an insult to the simply ignorant. I'm convinced this man is possessed--literally.

What did Myers do, exactly? Well, he encouraged people to steal consecrated Hosts from Catholic Churches and send them to him. Why? So he could desecrate them. He wrote (as taken from The Catholic Herald): "Can anyone out there score me some consecrated communion wafers?...I'll show you sacrilege, gladly, and with much fanfare....I won't be tempted to hold it hostage, but will instead treat it with profound disrespect and heinous cracker abuse, all photographed and presented here on the web. I shall do so joyfully and with laughter in my heart."

Of course, someone was able to supply Myers with a consecrated Host, apparently stolen from the London Oratory, and he "thought of a simple, quick thing to do: I pierced it with a rusty nail. And then I simply threw it in the trash, followed by the classic, decorative items of trash cans everywhere, old coffee grounds and a banana peel."

Thus confirming my suspicion that the man is indeed possessed. Satan thought he could get rid of Christ in exactly the same way.

Yet, Satan always overplays his hand. Out of this act of desecration, the priests at the London Oratory "are urging worshipers to be vigilant at Mass and to receive Communion on the tongue. Communion plates have started being used at certain Masses again."

Furthermore, on several discussion threads, including this one on Free Republic, many non-Catholics are expressing their contempt for Myers's action and their support of Catholics to believe as they please without harassment from bigots.

And lastly, Myers's hypocrisy for attacking Catholicism exclusively led his critics to point out that he was too afraid to attack Islam in the same way. To prove that he was an equal opportunity bigot, Myers ripped pages out of the Koran and threw them in the trash as well. Talk about overplaying your hand. Catholics will only hand you your head in a figurative sense for messing with their Faith. Muslims tend to be much more literal about these things.

Of course, the university where this bigot molds young minds has taken no action against him to date. According to the Catholic League website, the university recognizes that Myers's actions violate the code of conduct, but apparently, in this case, that's ok.

Catholics are encouraged to write a letter to University of Minnesota Chancellor Jacqueline Johnson (jrjohnso@morris.umn.edu) to demand Myers be fired. They won't do it, but they need to know how many of us are out there and that we're very angry about this.

And finally, it's clear to me that Myers needs one thing above all else: prayer. Please pray for the salvation of his soul. I will be.

On Human Life

A fantastic feature appeared in the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin last week on the war between the Culture of Life and the Culture of Death in the world today. I have only skimmed a few of the articles, but they have been excellent and they contain information that EVERYONE needs to read, especially Catholics.

See here: Of Human Life

Our Black-Robed Popes

The Supreme Court of the United States, in one of their patented 5-4 decisions, declared that it is unconstitutional to enforce the death penalty in case of child rape. (Warning, file is a PDF).

Yes, you heard that right. If some fiend rapes a child, he may not receive capital punishment anywhere in the United States.

Now, I agree with the Pope that capital punishment, in this day and age, is largely unnecessary. However, given the hideous facts of some of these child rape cases, I'd be hard pressed to argue that the death penalty wasn't warranted. I also understand that my opinion on this matter may not reflect that of the majority of others in this country and that folks in other states have an absolute right to decide how to govern themselves with regard to issues like this.

But in another case of usurpation of the right to self-government, the five unelected judges of the Supreme Court have taken it upon themselves to decide for the entire nation when the death penalty may or may not be applied.

The reasons for this ruling as provided by the five liberal dictators on the court are completely specious and yet another example of unelected judges not only making law from the bench, but pontificating on morality as well. As Justice Alito wrote in dissent:

The Court provides two reasons for this sweeping conclusion:

First, the Court claims to have identified “a national consensus” that the death penalty is never acceptable for the rape of a child;

Second, the Court concludes, based on its “independent judgment,” that imposing the death penalty for child rape is inconsistent with ‘the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.’”

Did you get that? The Supreme Court (or at least the five liberal tyrants on the Supreme Court) have decided that they are the arbiters of our 'evolving standards of decency.' Don't forget, it was the Supreme Court that ruled that 'evolving standards of decency' now included God-given rights to abort our children, buy, sell, and produce pornography, and engage in sodomy.

Am I the only one who feels just a bit uncomfortable with individuals like Justices Stevens, Bryer, Ginsberg, Souter, and Kennedy defining our national morality?

Defend the Family in California

California, the state that wants to mandate homosexual education for children and outlaw homeschooling is at it again. This time, the black-robed dictators on the California Supreme Court have issued a mandate saying that the state must recognize "marriages" between two men or two women. This is in direct contradiction of a voter initiative banning such phony marriages which passed 60%/40% some years ago.

The voters in California aren't taking this lying down, however. And as this issue has the potential to affect ALL of us via the Full Faith and Credit clause of the US Constitution (phony marriages in CA will have to be recognized in other states), we need to support the good, upstanding Californians who are fighting this battle. Here are two websites to check out:

Recall California State Supreme Court Justice Ron George

Protect Marriage.com

We can either work now to defeat this assault on our traditional values, or else wait and be forced to fight the battle in our own backyards in a few years.

The America-Hating Left Sinks to a New Low

Just when you thought the anti-war, anti-American left couldn't sink any lower, they plummet to Marianas Trench level. Below is a photo I snapped today of three absolute tools displaying their ignorance on Independence Mall in Philadelphia:


These morons have no idea how much harm they do their cause with stunts like this. A woman colleague of mine who is generally a liberal commented after seeing this display that these cretins ought to meet the business end of a blunt object.

For the record, I have no problem with legitimate expressions of dissent from President Bush's Iraq policy. Heaven knows, I've voiced it on occasion myself. But this approaches John Kerry-like status in terms of slandering our military.

Here's another picture of the same three morons:

Subway snubs homeschoolers

The Subway restaurant chain is running a story contest for kids with the grand prize being $5,000 in athletic equipment. Their official rules state:

Contest is open only to legal US residents, over the age of 18 with children in either elementary, private or parochial schools that serve grades PreK-6. Home schools not eligible.

In response to a storm of protest from homeschoolers, Subway issued the following non-apology apology, couched in some of the most ridiculous post-modern marketing-speak I've ever seen:

We at SUBWAY restaurants place a high value on education, regardless of the setting, and have initiated a number of programs and promotions aimed at educating our youth in the areas of health and fitness.

We sincerely apologize to anyone who feels excluded by our current essay contest. Our intention was to provide an opportunity for traditional schools, many of which we know have trouble affording athletic equipment, to win equipment. Our intent was certainly not to exclude homeschooled children from the opportunity to win prizes and benefit from better access to fitness equipment.

To address the inadvertent limitation of our current contest and provide an opportunity for even more kids to improve their fitness, we will soon create an additional contest in which homeschooled students will be encouraged to participate. When the kids win, everyone wins!

Did you get that? No? Well, I happen to be an expert at deciphering post-modern marketing-ese. Here's the translation.

We at Subway are sincerely sorry you annoying cretins found out about our contest. We didn't intend to exclude you — honest — even though our promotional copy specifically said "no home schools will be accepted". The reason we didn't include you is because there's a good chance you'll win — given all the time you spend studying and not attending diversity/sex ed/global warming alarmism classes — and we just can't have that. Oh, and by the way, you're still excluded from this contest, but we swear on our mother's grave that we'll include you in future contests. Trust us!

Well, the only good thing about this is that I don't have to boycott something I like. As I come from the land of cheesesteaks and hoagies, I have always found Subway sandwiches to be utterly tasteless and vile.

Cultural relativism, modesty, and John Paul II

In a wide ranging conversation last week, the topics of modesty, cultural relativism, and JP II's Theology of the Body were raised. On one side, the position was taken that modesty could mean different things to different cultural traditions, and the example of a bare-breasted woman from Papua New Guinea acting as lector at a Mass for John Paul II was put forward as something that could be acceptably modest there, but not in the West. Further, it was posited (I think) that the reason it wasn't acceptable in the West was due to a cultural defect on the part of Western civilization that overly sexualizes the body.

While certainly agreeing with the later point--that the dominant "post-Christian" Western culture hyper-sexualizes the body, I took the position that cultural relativism was not a proper position to occupy and that Christianity has and should influence the cultures it comes into contact with in terms of correct behavior and mode of life. This includes how men and women display their bodies in public which should be modest and not tending toward attire (or lack thereof) that would arouse sexual desire in the opposite sex. This view was criticized as stemming more from American Puritanism than from Catholic teaching.

Of course, this is part of a wider, long-standing debate that goes back at least to the time of Fr. Matteo Ricci in China and before concerning which parts of a non-Christian culture are compatible with Christianity and could be retained, and which are not and should be discarded.

The Jesuits and other missionaries in the New World had much the same issue when preaching among the Hurons, Algonquins, and Iroquois. In general, the missionaries in New France made it clear to those who would be Christians that they would not baptize them until they believed and understood the tenets of the Catholic faith and conformed their lives to Catholic moral teaching. For many of them, this was tremendous change as Eastern Woodland life allowed for pre-marital relations and easy divorce, encouraged the blood-feud, sanctioned the murder of slaves at the whims of their masters, and celebrated the grotesque torture and cannibalism of enemy captives.

Indeed, going back to early Christian times, the Church has always been a culture unto itself and deeply countercultural to those it encounters in this world. The ancient martyrologies are replete with stories of early Christians who rejected their own culture to embrace Christ. To me, it seems somewhat condescending and paternalistic that we must make the modern road to Christianity more "culturally sensitive" for people from Papua-New Guinea than it was for the Greeks, Romans, Franks, Slavs, or Hurons. Indeed, this modern method of inculturation may often do more harm than good, blurring the distinctions between Christianity and those non-Christian practices that should be abandoned or at least deeply transformed. Claudio Salvucci's forthcoming book, The Roman Rite in the Algonquian and Iroquoian Missions is instructive on this.

But returning to the subject of modesty, here's the relevant section from the Catechism:

2521 Purity requires modesty, an integral part of temperance. Modesty protects the intimate center of the person. It means refusing to unveil what should remain hidden. It is ordered to chastity to whose sensitivity it bears witness. It guides how one looks at others and behaves toward them in conformity with the dignity of persons and their solidarity.

Based on this, it seems not unreasonable to expect a woman from any culture to cover her breasts before approaching the lectern at Mass.

More on this later.

Pope Benedict XVI on the Sex Abuse Crisis

Sandy Rios writes the following on TownHall.com:

When [Benedict XVI] said he was ashamed of the existence of pedophile priests and their subsequent abuse of young boys, unlike the scoffers, I believe him....The church, however slow, has made attempts to purge themselves of this sexual deviance with one notable—and perhaps fatal—flaw. “We will rid the church of pedophile priests,” said Pope Benedict on his flight to America. That’s good news except for one thing: the root problem among the priests was homosexuality, not pedophilia.

Of course, she's 100% right on the money with regard to the root of the sex abuse crisis. However, she's wrong when she assumes that Benedict hasn't addressed the homosexual priest issue. In fact, it was one of the very first things that he did upon being elected Pope.

The link below goes to the text of the 2005 instruction forbidding homosexuals from entering the priesthood.

On Priesthood and Those With Homosexual Tendencies

This document says the following:

In the light of such teaching [quotes from the Catechism of the Catholic Church on homosexuality and the need to respect individuals with homosexual attractions while condemning homosexual acts], this dicastery, in accord with the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, believes it necessary to state clearly that the Church, while profoundly respecting the persons in question, cannot admit to the seminary or to holy orders those who practice homosexuality, present deep-seated homosexual tendencies or support the so-called "gay culture."(10)

Such persons, in fact, find themselves in a situation that gravely hinders them from relating correctly to men and women. One must in no way overlook the negative consequences that can derive from the ordination of persons with deep-seated homosexual tendencies.

By doing this, Benedict XVI was reinforcing a directive that the Vatican had issued in 1961 saying basically the same thing.

The big problem we face in this country is with the homo-friendly bishops who have historically refused to obey this order--with horrendous consequences.

And the truly amazing thing is that a huge number of politically well-connected people are trying to force the Boy Scouts to make exactly the same mistake that the American bishops made by giving people with disordered sexual attractions easy access to young people.

The Pope can only do so much. In the end, it's our local leaders who are to blame for this hideous scandal--and we ourselves for not demanding that they follow the guidelines clearly set out by the Vatican.

The cafeteria is back open?

I read a post today on The Cafeteria is Closed that frankly shocked me. In it, the ostensibly Catholic-in-all things author, Gerald Augustinus, made an apologia for the homosexual deathstyle based on the same absurd premises that one often hears out of the mouths of homo-promo cheerleaders in the “elite” media. That is, “they were born that way/we should accept them if they’re in committed relationships.” The usual rubbish.

Here’s the response I made on his site:

Gerald writes: "being in a committed gay is not the same as being 'enslaved' to sex..."

No? Based on my experience, the notion of "committed gay" is a complete myth. It's been confirmed over and over and over in my life among folks I thought were gay but otherwise "normal."

Don't know if you ever read this article from NOR, but it encapsulates everything I've learned about the homosexual deathstyle from the poor souls afflicted with this condition that I've known. (warning, graphic content):

The Truth about the Homosexual Rights Movement.

Enabling or affirming homosexual behavior is never loving or compassionate. It only compounds the sin and adds to the misery.

Christ told the woman caught in adultery to "Go and sin no more." That's precisely what Catholics need to tell people with homosexual attractions. Through the help of Christ, they can do it.

Safe to assume that the cafeteria is back open for Gerald. Very sad. One of the other posters suggested this was an April Fool's Day joke. I hope that turns out to be true.

Gerald, if you're reading this, I'm praying for you, my friend.