The Catholic Guys

Altar Girls Revisited

2011-12-08T14:56:00.000-08:00

If you are in the Diocese of Arlington, you've probably read or heard about the altar girl brushfire that was sparked when Fr. Michael Taylor, Pastoral Administrator of Corpus Christi Mission in South Riding, decided to reinstitute the practice of having only boys serve at the altar. He made the change and "grandfathered" (grandmothered?) the current girls who may continue to serve until they age out. The subsequent controversy was fanned by the Washington Post and the local news who covered a protest at the chancery attended by a meager crowd. The Post subsequently ran a survey on altar girls, a manipulated poll I might add. Fr. Z blogged about it. The Post apparently wasn't getting the results they wanted, so they tried again. It still ended up overwhelmingly against altar girls. That hasn't stopped the altar girl cheering section that includes Call to Action, Voice of the Faithful, and the Women's Ordination Conference among others.

Fr. Taylor's action follows one taken earlier this year by Fr. John Lankeit pastor of the Cathedral parish in Phoenix. His approach was a little different. He ended altar girls immediately and established a sacristan group for the girls. Their are other priests around the country, even in liberal dioceses, who quietly continue to use altar boys only. Hopefully, this is a growing trend that will expand because of the very publicity meant to force altar girls on unwilling priests.

I wrote an article on the Arlington fuss for the Autumn issue of the Les Femmes newsletter entitled Back to the Future: Revisiting Girl Altar Boys. I invite you to stop by and read it. And if you have a pastor who maintains the time-honored tradition of using only boys as servers, tell him thank-you. You can be sure others are complaining.

A Catholic Looks At Veteran's Day

2011-11-13T10:42:00.000-08:00

(hat tip to The Wanderer Forum Foundation, wandererforum.org)

Veteran's Day Address to Notre Dame ROTC Tri-Military Veteran’s Day Ceremony

Prof. Emeritus Charles E. Rice, Notre Dame Law School, University of Notre Dame

Nov. 11, 2010

This commemoration used to be called Armistice Day, in observance of the end of World War One. That was supposed to be “the war to end all wars.” It didn’t work out that way, as your presence here in uniform confirms.

You are volunteers. One price you pay for that decision is misunderstanding by others as to who you are and what you are doing. In an environment of “political correctness,” especially on college campuses, we can understand how sincere but misinformed critics disparage your choice and the military vocation as contrary to the Christian tradition. But those critics are wrong. Let’s try to set the record straight.

When “soldiers” asked John the Baptist, “And we—what are we to do?,” John did not tell them to find another line of work. “[H]e said to them, ‘Plunder no one, accuse no one falsely, and [perhaps most important] be content with your pay.” St. Paul did not demand that newly converted Christians who were soldiers must leave that profession. Instead he said, “Let every man remain in the calling in which he was called….[I]n the state in which he was called, let every man remain with God.” In the early Church, Christian pacifists drew support from Tertullian, Origen, Lactantius, and other theologians, but they reflected neither the dominant Christian view nor the teaching of the Church.

Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J., dealt with this issue: “What was the attitude of the early Church toward the bearing of arms? More truly citizens of the earthly fatherland than has sometimes been thought, Christians similarly did not hesitate to become soldiers, charged with their country’s defense and perhaps extension. Accordingly, we find numbers of them in the Roman armies at a time when military service was obligatory only for the sons of veterans or in the infrequent cases of extraordinary levies. The fact that Emperor Galerius on the threshold of the fourth century had to ‘purge’ the armed forces because they had too many Christians is the best proof that, from the end of the second century to the beginning of the fourth, ‘conscientious objection’ was not felt by the majority.”

One reason for the rejection of military service by some early Christians was not an intrinsic objection to military service as such, but rather the potential of that service to require immoral conduct and idolatry. An example from the third century illustrates the duty of the Christian citizen both to participate in the common defense and to recognize that his ultimate loyalty is to God rather than to the State. The Theban Legion, composed entirely of Egyptian Christians and stationed at Thebes in Egypt, was ordered by the Emperor Maximian to march to Gaul to suppress a rebellion. Under the command of Mauritius (Maurice), the Legion marched through the Alps into Gaul. Maximian then ordered, in 287, that the whole army must offer sacrifice to the pagan gods and must take an oath to assist in the extermination of Christians in Gaul. The members of the Theban Legion unanimously refused. Their number is commonly placed at 6,600, although that number has been disputed. In reaction to the Legion’s refusal, Maximian ordered the legion to be decimated, with every tenth man selected to be killed. A second decimation followed, but the survivors remained resolute. Following the lead of Maurice and their other officers, they sent Maximian a reply which capsulizes the vocation and duty of the Christian soldier:

We are your soldiers, but are also servants of the true God. We owe you military service and obedience; but we cannot renounce Him who is our Creator and Master, and also yours even though you reject Him. In all things which are not against His law we most willingly obey you, as we have done hitherto. We readily oppose all your enemies, whoever they are; but we cannot dip our hands into the blood of innocent persons. We have taken an oath to God before we took one to you: you can place no confidence in our second oath if we violate the first. You command us to punish the Christians; behold, we are such. We confess God the Father, author of all things, and His Son, Jesus Christ. We have seen our companions slain without lamenting them, and we rejoice at their honour. Neither this nor any other provocation has tempted us to revolt. We have arms in our hands, but we do not resist because we would rather die innocent than live by any sin.

Maximian proceeded to execute every member of the Legion, none of whom offered any resistance. The massacre occurred at Agaunum, now St. Maurice-en-Valais, Switzerland.

So don’t let anyone, on this campus or elsewhere, tell you that your commitment to military service is somehow inconsistent with the Christian tradition. That commitment might be unpopular with one group or another from time to time. But it is a noble calling fully in accord with, and indeed dictated by, the Christian tradition.

It is not enough, however, for you to rest on the assurance that you are doing the right thing. You have to know why it is so and you have to be prepared to educate your critics on the realities of the duty to defend the common good. So let’s review some basic principles.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church affirms the traditional Christian view that “governments cannot be denied the right of lawful self-defense, once all peace efforts have failed.” Citizens are obliged to support a just war. “Public authorities, in this case, have the right and duty to impose on citizens the obligations necessary for national defense.”

Such defense must satisfy “just war” analysis. The requirements for jus ad bellum, justice in going to war, are proper authority, just cause and right intention. The Catechism lists further details: “[T]he damage inflicted by the aggressor… must be lasting, grave and certain;” war must be a last resort, with “all other means impractical or ineffective,” “there must be serious prospects of success;” and “the use of arms must not produce evils… graver than the evil to be eliminated.” “The evaluation of these conditions,” however, “belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good.” Citizens, including members of the military, are obliged, in effect, to give a benefit of the doubt to the decisions of those in lawful authority.

Jus in bello, justice in fighting a war, requires proportionality and discrimination (non-combatant immunity from intentional attack). The Catechism of the Catholic Church affirms that: “Every act of war directed to the indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants is a crime against God and man, which merits firm and unequivocal condemnation.” Pursuant to the principle of the double effect, however, it can be morally justified to attack a military target of sufficient importance even though the attacker knows, but does not intend, that innocent civilians will be killed in the attack. The key is the intent. No one ever has the moral right to intentionally kill the innocent. But the good act of attacking the legitimate target can be justified even though it has the unintended evil effect of killing the innocent, provided that the good effect of the attack is not obtained by means of the evil effect and provided there is sufficient reason for permitting the unintended evil effect.

The Uniform Code of Military Justice, the very restrictive Rules of Engagement and other binding military policies effectively protect noncombatants and otherwise conform to the requirements of jus in bello. Some military personnel violate the law but their record is far better than that of corporate executives and members of Congress. And the armed services are diligent, sometimes even to the point of excess, in prosecuting putative offenses.

The Second Vatican Council affirmed that, “All those who enter military service in loyalty to their country should look upon themselves as the custodians of the security and freedom of their fellow countrymen; and when they carry out their duty properly, they are contributing to the maintenance of peace.”

The universal pacifist refuses to take part in any and all wars: “Those who renounce violence,” said Vatican II, “and, in order to safeguard human rights, make use of those means of defense available to the weakest, bear witness to evangelical charity, provided they do so without harming the rights and obligations of other men and societies. They bear… witness to the… risks of recourse to violence.” However, a universal pacifism which denies the right of the state to use force in defense, is inconsistent with the teaching of the Church.

Granting the sincerity of universal pacifists, their claim to moral superiority is flawed. One can well “bear witness to evangelical charity” by renouncing force in defending himself. The universal pacifist, who denies that force can ever be used in defense of the common good, would refuse to defend not only himself but others. He would deny to his fellow citizens their right to have the state provide what the Catechism calls “legitimate defense by military force.”

Unlike the universal pacifist, the selective pacifist refuses to take part in a particular war he regards as unjust. The law of the United States allows exemptions from military service only for universal, and not for selective pacifists. The Catechism urges, but does not require, the state to make “equitable provision” for all conscientious objectors who “are nonetheless obliged to serve the human community in some other way.” It is difficult, however, to see how an exemption for selective objectors, who object not to war in general but only to a particular war, could be administered without inviting fraudulent evasion.

Whatever its legal status, selective pacifism is required by the teaching of the Church. We should all be selective pacifists, insisting, with prudence, that any war—or any other act of state,-- is subject to the higher standard of the natural law and the law of God. A strong presumption of validity attaches to the decisions and acts of those entrusted with the care of the common good. But that presumption is not conclusive. All wars are debatable, including the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Subject to the legitimate authority of Congress, the president has the duty to defend the nation. His decisions and those of Congress are entitled to a strong benefit of the doubt. But there are limits.

To participate in the defense of the nation and the common good is an honorable calling. Those who do so deserve appreciation and respect. So, please, do not permit anyone to try to lay a guilt trip on you for your commitment to your country’s military service. You should be proud of that freely given service. You have earned the appreciation and respect of the Notre Dame community, and especially of those who profess allegiance to the Christian tradition.

Yesterday was the 235th birthday of the United States Marine Corps. Permit me to quote a line from the Marine Corps Hymn which I rightly apply to you and to the Army, Navy and Air Force in honor of your service: “Here’s health to you and to our Corps, which we are proud to serve.”

Thank you. And God bless you.

Notes:

Luke 3:14.

1 Cor. 7:20-24.

John A. Hardon, S.J., The Catholic Catechism (1975), 346-347.

Butler’s Lives of the Saints (1963), vol. III, 619.

The Roman Theban Legion, http://bibleprobe.com/theban/html. St. Maurice of the Theban Legion,

HYPERLINK "http://www.suite101.com/content/st-maurice-of-the-theban-legion-a42501" http://www.suite101.com/content/st-maurice-of-the-theban-legion-a42501.

Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC), no. 2308.

CCC, no. 2310.

CCC, no. 2309.

Gaudium et Spes, no. 79.

CCC, no. 2306.

CCC, no. 2309.

CCC, no. 2311.

Ron Paul Talks About His Pro-Life Convictions

2010-02-01T07:59:00.000-08:00

The Wanderer interviews Dr. Ron Paul, Republican Congressman of Texas.

July 2008

[As the Congress prepared to go out on its annual August recess, Dr. Ron Paul met in his Capitol Hill office with Wanderer contributing editor Christopher Manion].

The Wanderer. Dr. Paul thank you for your hospitality today. Let's get right to the point. Today, as the Congress is about to go out of session for the August recess, healthcare is the number one agenda item. Where does that stand, especially from the point of view of those of us who consider the life issues as paramount in this legislation?

Representative Paul. I think it's going to be very bad. I've always assumed that the worst tactic the left could use is to make pro-life people pay for abortions. That gets their attention like nothing else will. And they're going to do it. They been doing it for years -- I used to fight all this foreign aid and this pretense that we send this foreign aid and that they say “Oh, yeah, no abortions,” and yet you know it goes to certain groups – these funds are fungible, and they end up going to abortions, and it's going to get a lot worse."

Even the Hyde Amendment isn't perfect, but this actually blatantly violates or removes the Hyde amendment. I think ultimately the only way you can prevent taxpayer funding for abortions is no funding for those organizations.”

The Wanderer. The GOP has been regarded as the pro-life party in these past few elections, and the party hasn't done very well. What do you think the prospects are for the GOP as a vehicle for conservative ideas in general, and especially for pro-lifers?

Rep. Paul. I don't think -- you know it's shifting, but over the years we never suffered from it. I mean Ronald Reagan you know took a pro-life position, but it is true that the Republican party, like in many other issues, would speak more strongly than their actions -- you know, they didn't do a whole lot once they were in office. I think for the Republicans to be successful, they should stick with it, but I have a position that's slightly different than the average Republican. Which is less confrontational, because I don't want to use the cloud of the federal government to settle this dispute. I want to do it constitutionally, so I don't want to write national laws, and I want to go back to the states, which means that I want to repeal Roe versus Wade and I want the state of Texas to be able to write these laws and to be left alone, and lo and behold, that is not nearly so antagonistic as having constitutional amendments and more mandates. Sometimes our right to life groups get upset with me because they write laws up here and they use the clout of the government to punish, and I don't think that's the proper way to do it. I think it's an act of violence, and I think all acts of violence, whether it's robbery and murder and manslaughter – all these things are meant to be local issues. And I think that's where they should stay.

The Wanderer. A lot of people get rankled when I mention that you've delivered 4000 babies (he chuckles) because they don't want to confront the reality of a baby in your arms.

Rep. Paul. Yeah, that’s right.

The Wanderer. You are a champion of the Constitution with regard to the pro-life issue and with regard to the wars abroad. What is going to happen to the Constitution with all the new influx of American responsibility and troops into Afghanistan now, and in the Middle East in general?

Rep. Paul. Well, I would probably phrased the question in a slightly different way -- you say, "what is going to happen to our Constitution," and I might say, “what has happened to the Constitution?" Because, you know, I don't think we have a whole lot left of our Constitution. It gets worse all the time, whether it's in the executive branch, or the judicial branch, or the legislative branch. And we go to war without declarations, and we print money without authority to print money -- you know, in the Federal Reserve system -- and it all goes on and on. So I think it's going to continue. So often I make the point that we got into this financial and political mess and foreign-policy mess because we don't obey the Constitution. Maybe we could get out of it if we decided to follow the Constitution. I'm not hopeful that in the next year or two that were going to have any majority vote in the Congress changing the course that we've taken. But I am very optimistic about the number of young people who are really really interested in what we've been talking about and coming to our rallies. Our campus meetings that we’re having and our rallies have been very well attended, and they're very interested in the Constitution.

And that's what it takes. You know, Keynsianism in economics came in vogue in the 1930s. And that is a philosophic issue that is pervasive in the Republican and Democrat parties-- it is both. So a philosophic revolution has to affect both parties. Whether it has to do with gun issues or right to life issues or economic issues, to be successful you really have to have a philosophic change.

And that's why I'm encouraged. The young people are willing to look at these issues because they know they're getting dumped on, they know they're getting a bad deal. They're getting wars to finance, wars to fight, and these bills to pay. So I look at this as much as an opportunity as a danger that we have today.

The Wanderer. Dr. Paul, the Fed [the Federal Reserve Bank] has always been a mysterious institution. In the last six months, they’ve lent two trillion dollars to people whose names they won’t reveal. Isn’t that our money” I notice that your “Audit the Fed” Bill now has a majority of congressman sponsoring it. But it's clearly going to get resistance from the Senate and from the White House. Why is the Fed so important for our readers to understand?

Rep. Paul. Well, because of the assumption made, especially with your readership, who are people who have moral principles. The basic moral principle in dealing with the Fed is that it should be illegal to counterfeit money. People understand counterfeit, and the Bible says something about honest weights and measures, it's been around a long time that you're not supposed to cheat people. And when you're just printing money out of thin air, you're diluting the value of the dollar that we hold and there's no restraint on the printing press.

If an individual did it, they’d go to prison for counterfeiting. Here, we've created -- we've allowed it to be created by Congress -- a secret private organization that is not monitored and has no significant oversight, and they’re a government unto itself. They print money, and not only have they done this for years, but just recently with the financial crisis, they been able to bail out their buddies. You know, there are a lot of people who have gotten loans, and guarantees, they've allowed to get involved in loans to governments, and loans to other central banks, and in a way they're doing something that should only be done by treaty. They're actually having agreements with other governments. Here we are, having the Federal Reserve get involved and treaties, and they're doing it without the authority of the Constitution. The Constitution has not given any authority for a central bank, and we have been instructed to use only gold and silver as legal tender, so there's a lot of reasons why we should oppose the Fed, and it's also the reason that I’m writing a book that's coming out, it’s called End The Fed.

The Wanderer. Pope Benedict and America’s founders seem to agree that do have a society that enjoys liberty, morality is indispensable in the people. Can you restore liberty to this country without restoring morality?

Rep. Paul. No, there's no way. I think even the abortion issue is more of a moral issue than a legislative issue. I've admired Mary Cunningham Agee, she's very, very strong on pro-life, but she doesn't deal in politics. She deals in taking care of young women.

The Wanderer. When I was the pro-life faculty advisor at Boston University 20 years ago, she was very helpful in a very practical way to our efforts.

Rep. Paul. Well, she emphasizes doing something, caring for these girls and caring for the unborn. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't have laws against abortion, because it is killing, and we should do it directly under the Constitution. I became very much aware of the abortion issue in the 60s when I was studying OB/GYN. I tell the story in my little booklet on right to life that I walked into a room -- and the law was still pretty strong against abortion -- and I walked in where they were doing a hysterotomy, because the fetus was fairly large, a pound or two, and they deliver the baby, and it was still breathing and crying, and whimpering, and they put the baby in a bucket and put it in a room and pretended that they didn't hear anything. And I thought, “Wow! Isn’t this something,” but the law was against it. But they were defying the law. Society had changed -- we had the drug culture, the Vietnam culture, and the so-called desire for these abortions on demand, then the law changed. We didn't become immoral because the courts said it’s okay to do abortions, we did abortions, society endorsed abortions, so the courts were reflecting society. And I think that's an example of how you need to be a moral society. The Constitution is a great document, but the document is only dependent on the people, and dependent on the quality of the people … [even] if you have a good document, it won't change the morality of the people.

The Wanderer. Dr. Paul, I think you've been a great inspiration to millions of people. Thank you for talking to us today, and keep up your good work for the cause of liberty.

What Happened To Notre Dame? [Part Two]

2009-09-21T08:13:00.000-07:00

Is Abortion Just Another “Issue”?

By Christopher Manion [from the Wanderer]

The more one pages through Charles Rice’s new book, “What Happened to Notre Dame,” the more Obama’s triumphal visit there last May emerges as a turning point, not only for the university, but for Catholic education and the American Catholic Church. No longer could the university pretend that the “Fighting Irish” would fight for the lives of the unborn. Instead, the event sent the message that Notre Dame had demoted abortion from the status of an intrinsic evil to just one of many increasingly obscure threads in the “seamless garment” that Obama’s favorite archbishop, Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, conjured up long ago to diminish the relative importance – indeed, the horror -- of abortion in America, reducing it to a political issue that must be considered alongside many others.

Rice confronts that dialectic head-on, using the lens of Cardinal Ratzinger’s “Dictatorship of Relativism.” I wonder, do Notre Dame students read Orwell any more? Because the truth is right there in Animal Farm: in the seamless garment, “all issues are relative, but some issues are more relative than others.” Professor Rice drives the point home: “Could you possibly imagine Fr. Jenkins … honoring a public official who persistently expresses his approval of the Holocaust or legally enforced racial segregation, because of that official’s stand on the economy or health care?”

Come on, class, let’s not always see the same hands.

Relativism nonetheless has its supporters in the Church. While some eighty-three American bishops criticized Notre Dame’s decision to honor the most pro-abortion president in history, a couple of hundred were silent. Last month, one of their number, Archbishop Michael Sheehan of Santa Fe, criticized his colleagues who were critical of Father Jenkins. According to the National Catholic Reporter, “Sheehan said the Catholic community risks isolating itself from the rest of the country and that refusing to talk to a politician or refusing communion because of a difference on a single issue was counterproductive.” Archbishop Sheehan, who said he had once worked under Cardinal Bernardin, called the bishops’ criticism of Notre Dame “hysterical.”

I am grateful to Archbishop Sheehan for candidly revealing that he thinks not theologically, but politically – taking politically in its post-modernist, relativist, and reductionist sense. Abortion is reduced to a pesky “single issue” -- oppose it forthrightly and you “risk isolating yourself”! The good archbishop pretends that those 83 bishops “refuse to talk” to pro-abortion politicians, a canard that sounds pretty “hysterical” in itself (He does not complain that pro-abort politicians might not have ears to hear). But if that’s what Abp. Sheehan is against, what is he for? The Reporter again: “He said his approach – whether dealing with civic officials or church members, relied heavily on collaboration, a technique he said he learned from the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago.”

Collaboration or Cooperation?

Rice recognizes that collaboration is a dangerous road. Regarding Obama’s support of cloning, and then killing, human embryos for stem-cell research, he writes, “the experiments performed by Nazi doctors on concentration camp prisoners were unimaginative and primitive by comparison. By conferring Notre Dame’s highest honors on the national leader who is setting the stage for such an atrocity, Notre Dame’s officers acted like ‘good Germans’ who were submissive to their Führer.”

In German, they called those folks “Kollaborateur” -- collaborators. How does Archbishop Sheehan counsel us to prevent his (apparently innocuous) collaboration from becoming cooperation? He does not say.

His positivism persists: Abp. Sheehan next claims that “the majority” of bishops agree with him. Perhaps that is true. He complains: “We’d be like the Amish, you know, kind of isolated from society, if we kept pulling back because of a single issue.”

Why the Amish, Your Excellency? Why not the English martyrs?

Darn those silly little “single issues”! But not all of them: near the end of his life, Cardinal Bernardin was very concerned about the precipitous decline of voluntary financial support for the Church from the laity. Could that explain why the USCCB has turned to the government, which has given their educational, charitable, and medical institutions tens of billions in taxpayer dollars? Didn’t Cardinal Bernardin ever warn Archbishop Sheehan that the issue of money might tempt the bishops not only to collaborate, but to cooperate, with abortionists? Was government money a “single issue” that the Church just couldn’t refuse?

Bravo Bishop D’Arcy

One prelate who takes his job more seriously than money or politics is my hometown bishop, John M. D’Arcy. After Rice’s book went to press, D’Arcy penned “A pastoral reflection on the controversy at Notre Dame” for America magazine – perhaps placing it in that liberal journal to make sure that folks at Notre Dame would see it. Bishop D’Arcy gets right to the point: “Does a Catholic university have the responsibility to give witness to the Catholic faith and to the consequences of that faith by its actions and decisions—especially by a decision to confer its highest honor? If not, what is the meaning of a life of faith?”

Bishop D’Arcy finds much to applaud in the students of Notre Dame: “I attended the Baccalaureate Mass the day before graduation, for the 25th time, speaking after Holy Communion, as I always do. Then I led an evening Rosary at the Grotto with students, adults and a number of professors. We then went to a chapel [the largest, in Dillon Hall] on campus. It was packed for a whole night of prayer and Eucharistic adoration.” (By the way, Fr. Richard McBrien, Notre Dame’s notorious critic of popes past and present, recently wrote that because today’s Catholics “are so literate or even well-educated … there is little or no need for [such] extraneous Eucharistic devotions.”) About Fr. McBrien’s colleagues in the Theology Department, Bishop D’Arcy makes a stunning, possibly promising observation: “It is notable that a vast majority has been willing to seek and accept the mandatum from the local bishop [D’Arcy],” he writes.

For Bishop D’Arcy, l’affaire Notre Dame is not yet over. “I firmly believe that the board of trustees must take up its responsibility afresh, with appropriate study and prayer. They also must understand the seriousness of the present moment,” he writes. It is up to board to address “the situation that so sundered the church last spring.” Well, since Land O’Lakes, that board has been pretty proud of its independence from the hierarchy. No matter -- Bp. D’Arcy makes his role clear: “The bishop must be concerned that Catholic institutions do not succumb to the secular culture, making decisions that appear to many, including ordinary Catholics, as a surrender to a culture opposed to the truth about life and love.”

Bishop D’Arcy then puts three questions to the board of Notre Dame: “(1) Do you consider it a responsibility in your public statements, in your life as a university and in your actions, including your public awards, to give witness to the Catholic faith in all its fullness? (2) What is your relationship to the church and, specifically, to the local bishop and his pastoral authority as defined by the Second Vatican Council? (3) Finally, a more fundamental question: Where will the great Catholic universities search for a guiding light in the years ahead? Will it be the Land O’Lakes Statement or Ex Corde Ecclesiae?”

In his introduction to Rice’s book, Professor Alfred Freddoso observes that Notre Dame invited Obama thinking it “could reap the great public relations benefits of a presidential visit, once it survived what it undoubtedly expected to be a short-lived protest by the local bishop.” Clearly Notre Dame got it wrong. Those questions are not going away: Bishop D’Arcy is waiting for answers.

[Charles Rice's book is pubished by Saint Augustine's Press

What Happened To Notre Dame? [Part One]

2009-09-21T08:09:00.000-07:00

What Happened To Notre Dame?

[a review of Charles E. Rice's new book from St. Augustine's Press]

By Christopher Manion for the Wanderer

A few weeks into Notre Dame’s Fall semester of 1949, a sleeping freshman was jostled awake by a couple of upperclassmen.

“Hey, fella,” they shouted, “hey, we just wanna know -- how did you get into Notre Dame if you’re not Catholic?”

That awakened the sleeper in a heartbeat. “Whaddya mean, ‘not Catholic,’” he retorted. “Of course I’m Catholic!”

“Then why don’t you go to Mass!” they sternly replied.

That freshman became one of our family’s best friends – and one of Notre Dame’s most passionate alumni. All his life, he attributed his profound faith and his ardent love of Holy Mother Church and our Blessed Mother to Notre Dame. For him, and for generations of the Fighting Irish, Notre Dame was the exemplar of the Catholic Faith.

But times have changed.

“What happened to Notre Dame?” I have heard that question countless times since I graduated forty years ago. A ready answer does not come easily to mind. After all, Knute Rockne, Notre Dame’s legendary football coach, used to tell my father (who started teaching there in 1919), “You should never spit on a man’s head if you’re standing on his shoulders.” And countless thousands of Notre Dame alumni undoubtedly owe their academic, their professional, and even their spiritual formation to Notre Dame. How can they criticize Notre Dame if they are “standing on its shoulders”?

Everything good about Notre Dame comes from God. For a century and more, the Holy Catholic Church and the salvation of souls was Notre Dame’s sole reason for being. By the 1960s, however, Notre Dame had grown weary of “standing on the shoulders” of the Church. Like a wayward spouse, it longed for independence, to be of the world as well as in it. Finally, with Land O’Lakes in 1967, Notre Dame filed for divorce. “For the sake of the children” (its students and alumni) and money (their financial support), it continued to project a public façade of harmony between the Church and its own secular relativism. But Notre Dame was simply trying to serve two masters, keeping up its Catholic appearances while sinking ever deeper into the mire of worldly infidelity. Last May, the flimsy façade finally came crashing down.

Hey, Wake Up!

The timing of even the most inevitable earthquake is hard to predict. But for years, Notre Dame has been poised athwart a widening chasm that makes the San Andreas Fault look like the Rock of Gibraltar. Charles E. Rice, Professor of Constitutional Law at Notre Dame since 1968, has long been a defensor fide there. His column in the campus newspaper regularly pierces the fog of faculty doubters like the siren of a Catholic Rescue Squad, racing to resuscitate victims who have been run over by hit-and-run heterodoxy. His numerous books, his Wanderer columns, and his speeches and legislative testimony have made key contributions to the intellectual and legal defense of the Culture of Life in the United States. When “Old Notre Dame” collapsed for good with Barack Obama’s commencement appearance last spring, Dr. Rice went to work. With his new book, What Happened To Notre Dame, he once more rides to the rescue.

In the introduction, Notre Dame philosophy professor Fred Feddoso succinctly explains Obama’s visit: “Both sides had much to gain. President Obama could cloak himself in the mantle of Our Lady’s university as part of an ongoing campaign to solidify his standing among those many Catholic voters for whom life issues are not very important, or at least not overriding. The university, on the other hand, could reap the great public relations benefits of a presidential visit, once it survived what it undoubtedly expected to be a short-lived protest by the local bishop, John D’Arcy of the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend, and a few hardcore pro-life activists.”

Ever since, both Obama and Notre Dame have struggled to stay on message: “No big deal -- just a natural meeting of a great university and a great leader. Turn the page.”

Well, not just yet. Professor Freddoso limns Notre Dame’s transition from Catholic orthodoxy to national prominence, a course that Rice examines in detail. Freddoso’s ruminations conclude that “Notre Dame is a wonderful place in many ways. [But] What it is not is a Catholic university, i.e., an institution of higher learning where the Catholic faith pervades and enriches, and is itself enriched by, the intellectual life on campus.” Freddoso concludes with the arresting description of Notre Dame as “a public school in a Catholic neighborhood.” The kids are Catholic, but the education -- what is taught in the classroom -- “has little or nothing to do with Catholicism.”

In celebrating Obama last May, University President Father John Jenkins was giddy with exultation. All that was missing was a tattoo across his forehead, proclaiming, “Fighting Irish Welcome O’Bama.” Rice zeroes in on the telling moment, early in Obama’s address, when a voice from the cheap seats shouted, “abortion is murder!” Immediately the students answered with a roar, shouting Obama’s campaign slogan (“Yes we can!”) and their favorite football cheer (“We are N. D. !!”).

How could it be that the kids from the “Catholic Neighborhood” were cheering the premier advocate of abortion in the western world? Perhaps the students were not just cheering Obama. They were cheering Father Jenkins, who had defeated their arch-rivals. And who were the bad guys? Not Michigan State or Southern Cal, but the Church, the orthodox faithful, the old alumni, and, ultimately, the Magisterium.

Notre Dame As A Lesson For Everyone

Always the master teacher, Rice examines the Obama appearance with precision. He then moves to a deeper consideration of the principles that inform Catholic education, and compares them with the conflicting assumptions and key events that have made Notre Dame “a small Purdue with a Golden Dome” that eventually collapsed into the arms of modernity with a longing for money, prestige, and worldly “success.” Over the years, Notre Dame has built a very expensive house of cards designed to serve two masters – the modern secular world of the intellectual, political, and cultural elite, on the one hand, and traditional Catholic faithful and alumni, on the other. With Obama’s appearance, those cards came tumbling down. One by one, Rice lays them face up on the table.

In one example, Rice addresses Notre Dame’s desire to be a “research university,” which brings in millions in grants, but gives the back of the hand to undergraduate education. Almost anticipating this criticism, Notre Dame broadcast an infomercial during its season opener in September touting its role “as a premier research university [that] works to pursue a cure for .. rare diseases often overlooked by mainstream science.” The irony? Right under its nose, there is a very widespread disease, all the more dangerous because it is so rarely detected – a loss of faith, a dalliance with the culture of death, a celebration of modernity, and an abandonment of the university’s responsibility to provide a Catholic education.

Rice’s book is not a polemic but a roadmap. “In its historical acceptance of its full Catholic character, including the teaching authority of the Church, Notre Dame had it all. And then walked away from it,” he concludes. The remedy? Return – not to the past, but to the timeless truths that the “Fighting Irish” used to cheer and fight and die for – the truths of the Faith, our firm defense against the dictatorship of relativism.

Christopher Manion won the Father Hesburgh Prize in 1968.

Who's On First?

2009-07-11T05:11:00.000-07:00

From Under The Rubble

by Christopher Manion
The Wanderer, July 2, 2009

So Obama has weighed in on the removal of Honduran President Jose Manuel Zelaya Rosales by the country’s Congress and Supreme Court, and, ultimately, the Honduran army. It’s “not legal,” says Obama – but neither was Zelaya’s plan to pull a Chavez-style coup of his own. The Honduran constitution limits the president to a single term. Zelaya, elected in 2005 with 49% of the vote, wanted to defy the constitution – undoubtedly modeling himself not only on Venezuela’s Chavez, but perhaps also on our own stateside Democrats and Republicans who routinely ignore the U.S. Constitution at home and abroad. Well, Zelaya announced that, whatever the Honduran constitution says, he would run for re-election anyway. To accomplish that goal, he announced a referendum, which the country’s Supreme Court and Congress both declared illegal. He ignored them, and demanded that the army provide security for it.

Army Gen. Romeo Vasquez Velasquez refused, citing the constitution. Zelaya fired him and branded the rest of the government as “elitists.” The rest of the country’s top military commanders quit in support of General Vasquez Velasquez, and the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the general’s firing was illegal. The Honduran Congress stripped Zelaya of his presidential powers, and instead of providing security for the Sunday referendum, the army surrounded Zelaya’s house and sent him packing to Costa Rica.

Since Zelaya is a leftist, this event is popularly known as a “coup.” Were he a rightist, his removal would be hailed as “national liberation.” But let’s not quibble about vocabulary, since by now the reader might be experiencing what Bill Safire, who used to be funny, once coined as “MEGO” – “My Eyes Glaze Over.”

The average American isn’t expected to keep up on all those Latin American tinhorns, and neither is our own youthful, energetic president. Obama certainly doesn’t want to be bothered with such depth of detail without his teleprompter – after all, isn’t General Motors bigger than General what’s-his-name in Honduras anyway? But we can all rest assured that our State Department, under the seasoned hand of Hillary, has everything under control – right?

Well, as one Foreign Service lifer used to answer every question, “only up to a point.” And how we arrived at that point – that is, history – is worth looking at. Let’s start with the last eight years.

The Seven Lean Years

In attempting by force to enkindle the “natural democratic spirit” in Middle Eastern Islamic societies after 9-11, the Bush Administration missed a golden opportunity to solidify the still fragile, America-friendly democracies in Latin America. In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan had managed to clean up after Jimmy Carter and nurture that continent’s move away from dictatorship while directing the final, triumphant conduct of the Cold War leading to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

A historic feat indeed. Alas, the Bush years were different. In fact, the contrast with the Reagan years could not be more stark, nor the consequences more dire. Latin America has for years been a foreign policy backwater, attracting sentimental leftists to academic and government posts dealing with the area. The tough assignments were Russia, Asia (primarily China), and the Middle East, and Europe. Regarding Latin America, Bush’s first Secretary of State, Colin Powell, didn’t have a chance. After a long battle, he lost control of foreign policy to the neocons. They then damaged him beyond repair by feeding him disinformation regarding Iraq and WMD that Powell repeated in public testimony before the U.N. Security Council. Dismayed and discredited, Powell finally left office.

Colin Powell was succeeded by Condi Rice, Bush’s National Security Advisor. Rice was undoubtedly well-intentioned, but she was simply inept. Nonetheless, President Bush valued her highly, as he did his other gentle protectors, Karen Hughes and Harriet Miers, whose support he relied on most during the years that Dick Cheney ran the executive branch and foreign policy as the most powerful vice-president in history.

While the Bush Administration studiously ignored our neighbors to the south, China’s top leaders treated Latin America like their backyard, sealing long-term economic and political deals, encouraging leftists and anti-Americans of every stripe, and simply outclassing their American counterparts. During the Bush years, U.S. officials appeared to be merely bewildered as Latin America veered ever more leftward. With Obama, that momentum will now be facilitated by Hillary’s State Department and the Senate veteran Chris Dodd, who has steered Latin American policy to the left for the Democrats there for almost 30 years.

A Whiff Of An Empty Bottle

Dr. Erik von Kuehneldt-Leddihn was a conservative original. He traveled the world, lecturing six months out of every year, spending the other months studying at his home in the Austrian Tirol. He knew a dozen languages and was always busy learning another one (“I have to go upstairs and study Japanese,” he said on one of his last visits, as he finished breakfast). Dr. von Kuehneldt-Leddihn was “an expert on everything, including expertise,” one wag fondly observed, and Leftism, his magnum opus, still stands as a true work of genius.

He once told me about a short story he had written (I’ve never been able to find it – he published it under a pseudonym, and in an obscure journal) -- in the late 1940s. He referred to it on several occasions to illustrate the inevitable decline of a culture, or even a civilization, once its central core of truth is abandoned.

The final scene is unforgettable. A young man has become a revolutionary. His father, a weak-kneed Lutheran minister, tried to restrain his son with reminders of the civic virtues, admonishing him to avoid extremes – all typical of the plaintive liberal weakling. The son, fed up with his father’s vacillations between progressivism and propriety, finally erupts. He points to the portrait hanging over his father’s desk. It depicts his grandfather, whom his father reveres – who was all his life a staunch and devoted Lutheran minister.

“He believed in something,” the son shouts, pointing to his grandfather. “He had principles, he had faith, he had courage, he had convictions. But you – (here his father cringes) – you -- you are living off the whiff of an empty bottle!”

I was reminded of Dr. von Kuehneldt-Leddihn’s young revolutionary by Hilaire Belloc’s description of William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury under Charles I. Laud came to power as “the leader of and representative of those who feared and disliked Puritanism as a moral disease.” Laud had “sympathy” with all things Catholic – images, Our Lady, the Sacraments, even the Eucharist. But he and his cohorts “remained (though they would not have admitted it) thoroughly anti-Catholic, because they rejected that one part of Catholic doctrine which is its essential -- the combination of unity and authority. The unity of the visible Church and its invincible authority were repugnant to their growing nationalism, and those who preserved such an attitude of mind were just as much the enemies of Catholicism as the most rabid Puritan could be, or the most complete agnostic.”

As we survey the cultural wreckage around us, and hear platitudes about “human rights” (the homosexual slogan) and “I am personally opposed to abortion but…” – we see everywhere a dying body politic. But the whiff of an empty bottle cannot revive it. Only the Truth – Christ crucified, who unites us while platitudes and perversion divide and destroy us – can save us. Loyalty to Christ, to his Vicar on earth, and to the unity he represents is the true hope of the world.

Another Battleground

2009-07-11T05:06:00.000-07:00

From Under The Rubble

by Christopher Manion
The Wanderer, July 2, 2009

During the early days of the Reagan administration in 1981, Guatemala was living through one of its more chaotic moments. The country’s military waged pitched battles with armed Marxist-Leninist terrorists throughout the country. Cardinal Mario Casariego, Archbishop of Guatemala City, was candid regarding the number of Catholic priests who supported the revolutionaries. There were quite a few of them, he told me – disobedient, passionate, and harmful to the Catholic Church as well as to the country.

The Cardinal’s observation came to mind when I was given a briefing by the U.S. embassy staff in Guatemala City. This "country team” meeting involved in-depth presentations by all the senior embassy officials -- perhaps ten in all. As they surveyed the economic, political, agricultural, and military disasters besetting the country, they never mentioned religion, much less the Church.

When they were finished, I asked a simple question: "I understand there are many American protestant missionaries here in the country. Have any of them come to you and said something along these lines: "Please tell the military government that our church doesn't preach politics like the Catholics, we only teach the Bible."

“Oh, yes!” came the answer -- from virtually everybody around the conference table, almost in unison. Then there was a moment of silence as they all stared at one another. Apparently, every one of them had heard similar complaints from American protestant missionaries in Guatemala – they were afraid that the military government classified all American missionaries as leftists, just because so many Catholics were. These non-Catholic missionaries -- primarily independent Evangelicals and Baptists – were all over the country, including some remote village areas that were often controlled by the terrorists. They didn't want the military to think that they were terrorist supporters -- "like those Catholics."

What surprised me most was how ignorant our State Department officials were. Every one of these "experts" at that briefing had heard the same complaints from Americans in Guatemala, but had never bothered to report them or even to discuss them with each other. As far as religion goes, they were clueless -- like most secular government types then and now. Furthermore, most of them were liberals, if not socialists, and they probably thought that, for all they knew, Liberation Theology represented progress for Latin America.

Well, it certainly didn’t represent progress for the Catholic Church there. Evangelical missionaries from the United States roundly denounced the Catholic Church. Like the Liberation Theologians, they attacked it as a backward institution that kept the people poor. Like their American sponsors, they preached “the Gospel of Prosperity,” promising Latin Americans that “God wants you to be rich.” Jimmy Swaggart packed them in, 90,000 people a night, at the soccer stadium in Lima, Peru.

Most of these American evangelical missionaries were supported by individual, independent congregations throughout the United States. Those churches tithed religiously and made their foreign missions a highlight of their activities. Their missions built schools, medical clinics, and orphanages, and also provided a good number of volunteers from the congregation for several weeks a year to work on those projects.

Unfortunately, leaving the Church has not helped Guatemalans achieve either peace or prosperity. A friend there tells me that gangs, kidnappings, and murder now abound. He’s been there since I first visited in 1959, and he’s never seen it worse. People are looking to get out, either to Spain, or to the U.S.

The Theology of Reconciliation

Liberation Theology was popular among the Latin American left for political, not religious reasons. “Human rights” advocates in the United States would criticize only governments, not the revolutionaries who terrorized their countries. Politically, the terrorists got a free ride in Congress: the domestic Left relentlessly attacked President Reagan’s policies, often employing religious language and stooges. Not surprisingly, the culturally illiterate State Department officials were pathetic, and always on the defensive.

That was not the case with the Latin American Church. Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo of Colombia became known and beloved by American Catholics in the 1990s because of his heroic efforts on behalf of the family. But in the 1980s, as secretary and then president of the Latin American Bishops Conference (CELAM), he championed “the Theology of Reconciliation,” an authentic antidote to Liberation Theology based on man’s true liberation from sin in Christ, rather than in ideology and revolution. Cardinal Lopez Trujillo was never fooled by the religious trappings of liberation theology – he knew from long years of study and experience that it represented the Marxist theory of class warfare, which he knew would destroy Latin American culture.

Pope John Paul II made over 100 international trips during his pontificate, but the very first was to the meeting in Puebla, Mexico, in January 1979 – arranged by then-Archbishop Lopez Trujillo. Puebla lay the important groundwork for the Church’s response to Liberation Theology for the next 25 years.(Incidentally, the principal advocate of liberation theology, both at the preparations for the meeting in Puebla and throughout the 1980s, was Father Gustavo Gutierrez, O.P., who now serves as the Cardinal O’Hara Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame.)

A Two-Front Battle

For 40 years, the Catholic Church in Guatemala (like its sister churches throughout the hemisphere) has fought on two fronts: first, against the "liberationists," and second, against the "sects" -- the fundamentalists. Unfortunately, a recent report from the Catholic News Agency (CNA) indicates that the battle is far from over – that the Catholic Church in Guatemala is seriously threatened by the growth of Evangelical sects that try to win converts with offers of money, jobs, and other material goods:

“Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), a Catholic Charity that works with oppressed and suffering Christians throughout the world, found that half of the people of Guatemala are now Evangelical, and new churches are appearing rapidly,” says the report, which actually describes a steady process that took over 30 years. The report details allegations that the fundamentalists’ recruitment efforts include outright payments and even bribes, which may be true; but the most powerful attraction of the “sects” is their focus on the Bible, and the stress they place on economic advancement as part of their evangelization.

Our own bishops confront similar problems -- again, on two fronts. First, we have our own Liberation Theology -- the "parallel Catholic Church" applauded by Obama at Notre Dame – that is advocated by Catholic university faculties and the staff of the USCCB. Second, a detailed study by the Pew Charitable Trust reports that ten percent of American evangelicals are former Catholics. Of course, some of those defections can undoubtedly be attributed to Catholics who disagreed with the moral teachings of the church and who left in search of friendlier pulpits. But as Wanderer readers know all too well, there are other very plausible reasons, too many to number, for this sad exodus.

The U.S. Church also confronts the Latin American dilemma. The millions of Hispanic immigrants, legal and illegal, in the United States undoubtedly comprise millions of former Catholics who are now members of fundamentalist churches. Like their brother bishops in Guatemala, our bishops naturally want to keep the Catholic faithful from jumping ship. While we might differ with their chosen means – supporting amnesty for illegal aliens, and advocating a left-wing political agenda in Washington – the laity should certainly do all it can to help our bishops and priests bring wavering Hispanics back to the fullness of the faith.

Perhaps we can start with Sonia Sotomayor.

No Way To Treat A Laity

2009-07-11T05:03:00.000-07:00

From Under the Rubble

The Wanderer, p.3
June 18, 2009

In this “age of the laity,” the laity that the USCCB bureaucracy pays attention to features Chris Dodd, John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, Pat Leahy, and Nancy Pelosi. Now Barack Obama, has taken the lead, brandishing his newly-minted Fighting Irish imprimatur and adroitly evading moral absolutes as he preaches the same political agenda that the USCCB has embraced for years.

Obama’s speech at Notre Dame was a clarion call for pro-abortion “Catholics” to stand up and fight for the heresy that Pope Benedict has called “the dictatorship of relativism.” That effort requires a sly semantic two-step -- first, reductionism: equate the importance of the paramount life issues of abortion, stem-cell research, and contraception to the “social justice” issues like those found in the platform of the Democratic Party. This approach echoes the “seamless garment” sleight-of-hand promulgated by Obama’s favorite bishop ever, Joseph Cardinal Bernardin.

The second step is pragmatism: we must (ahem, regrettably) admit that we are not within practical reach of reversing Roe v. Wade, passing a Human Life Bill, or adopting a Human Life Amendment to the Constitution. Therefore, we must find “common ground,” without alienating those pro-abortion politicians whose cooperation and support is so critical to the successful expansion of our “seamless garment” goals. Now, those same pro-abortion politicians are all supporters of “gay rights” as well. They are busily cooking up “hate crimes” bills that might outlaw the preaching of Catholic moral teaching altogether, as like-minded leftists have already done in Canada and England.

Many bishops have taken a firm stand of late in defense of traditional marriage, but some apparently find it difficult to take the next step and preach Humanae Vitae, even though Paul VI prophetically predicted the evils that are ravaging our culture today. These sinful indulgences are advocated in the public schools and celebrated on once-Catholic university campuses. They permeate the entire popular culture, and represent nothing less than a brazen and virtually unopposed frontal attack on the Catholic Church.

Models Of Perfection

On June third, we celebrated the Feast of Saint Charles Lwanga and companions, who were brutally executed by Ugandan King Mwanga on June 3, 1886. King Mwanga, a homosexual, hated Christians. Charles Lwanga was a lowly page in the court of the King, but he and his companions bravely rejected the King’s advances. The irate King ordered savage executions for the boys, all of whom chose to die for their Faith. Their heroism so impressed Pope Paul VI that he canonized the Ugandan Martyrs in 1964, then traveled to Uganda to in 1969 to break ground for a Basilica to be built on the site of St. Charles Lwanga’s execution.

On that occasion, Pope Paul VI said, “Who could have predicted to the famous African confessors and martyrs such as Cyprian, Felicity, Perpetua and – the greatest of all – Augustine, that we would one day add names so dear to us as Charles Lwanga and Matthias Mulumba Kalemba and their twenty companions?… The infamous crime by which these young men were put to death was so unspeakable and so expressive of the times. It shows us clearly that a new people needs a moral foundation, needs new spiritual customs firmly planted, and to be handed down to posterity.”

Holy Mother Church is so devoted to the memory of these valiant young men that Pope John Paul II made a pilgrimage to the basilica in 1993. All Uganda reveres them every year on June 3, which is now a national holiday there.

Like many homosexuals today, King Mwanga hated the Catholic Church. Yet Popes Paul VI and John Paul II underscored the heroic witness of the Ugandan martyrs to the truth of Catholic moral teaching in defiance of the king’s hatred that he inflicted with such brutality. Today, as we watch one “Catholic” state after another ratify some sort of officially-recognized homosexual consortium, Saint Charles Lwanga and his companions might be admirable models for our prayerful advocacy of moral foundations and spiritual customs based on the truths of the Catholic Faith.

Pope Paul VI visit to Uganda came less than a year after he had promulgated Humanae Vitae. He clearly recognized the fearless heroism required to defend moral teaching in the face of a decadent culture backed by a vile and powerful ruler. Today, in our midst, the battle is on. Saint Charles Lwanga and companions, pray for us!

Abortion Is Child Abuse

The Catholic Church teaches that abortion is an intrinsic evil, but a lot of Americans don’t think we really mean it. A majority of Catholics -- and possibly even of our bishops -- apparently voted for Obama, and today many “Catholics” willingly serve and support the most pro-death administration in American history. How can we restore the unity of the faithful that prevailed among our ancestors just 100 years ago -- when virtually everyone (and not only Catholics) considered abortion to be murder?

Christ prayed “that all may be one,” (John 17:22), but today the sheep are scattered indeed. In recent months, many of our bishops have bravely confronted the Culture of Death in the political sphere. At their upcoming meeting on the weekend of June 17-19, they have two opportunities to make further progress.

First: In 2008, when employees of Catholic Charities of Richmond, Virginia, procured an abortion for a minor under their care, neither Bishop Francis X. DiLorenzo nor the director of Catholic Charities reported the incident to the Safe Environment Director in the Chancery. The lawyer for the diocese justified such secrecy, insisting that abortion is simply not considered either child abuse or murder by the Diocese of Richmond.

At their meeting this month, the bishops should take their cue from Bishop DiLorenzo. They should amend the definition of "abuse" in their 2002 Dallas “Charter For the Protection of Children and Young People” to include “abortion, or the procurement of an abortion for a pregnant minor.” It may seem like a no-brainer, but believe me, the bureaucrats, lawyers and insurance companies will scream bloody murder if the USCCB even discusses the issue in public.

But wait, there’s more: Bishop DiLorenzo fired four employees after this incident, but required them to sign nondisclosure agreements or lose their severance pay. This cover-up, was paid for with the money of the faithful to keep from the faithful facts they deserved to know. Such deceit was a central ingredient of the scandals for decades – but today it is also a direct violation of article VII of the Dallas Charter, which requires – which demands -- transparency.

Is there any worse occasion of "child abuse" than the murder of the defenseless child in the womb? The bishops should act swiftly.

Second: another no-brainer. the bishops should amend the Charter to reverse their decision in Dallas to exempt themselves from its provisions. In 2002, the bishops acknowledged that they had lost the credibility of the faithful because of the clerical sex abuse scandals. Cardinal Avery Dulles warned them that their Charter would alienate them from their priests. You could see them on EWTN, furtively glancing at the cameras as they voted to amend the definition of “cleric” to exclude bishops.

Unfortunately, that same approach has also alienated many of our bishops not only from their priests, but from the laity. In 2002, the bishops thought they could sweep it all under the rug and “put the scandals behind them.” Today we know all to well the damage wrought by that approach.

The Greatest Generation? No Way!

2009-07-11T04:58:00.000-07:00

From Under The Rubble
The Wanderer, P. 3
June 11, 2009

In January 1973, my car broke down after dark about an hour north of Green Bay, Wisconsin. The temperature was 30 below, I was in the middle of nowhere, and the only building within a mile was a farmhouse set far back from the highway. No one was home, but the door was open. I went in, called the police, and waited for a tow truck.

Two hours later, I saw the flashing lights out on the highway. As I went out, a car came up the driveway. It was the farmer and his family and the biggest dog I have ever seen, barking at me from the back seat. "My car broke down -- that's my tow truck," I explained. "I've been in your house for the last two hours.” The farmer just laughed and said, "Well, that's great!" I didn't think to tell him how grateful I was that he had taken his dog with him.

The tow truck driver had my car up by the time I got there. When I climbed in, he let fly. "I own this company. None of my drivers wanted to work on a Friday night. So I came out to get you myself. (Pause)... one of these days, us old folks are going to stop pulling this gravy train, and you kids are going to have to get out and push."

My generation is not the greatest. I was born two weeks after George Bush and three weeks before Bill Clinton -- certainly nothing to brag about. So I thought of my tow truck driver when I read the address by Indiana's governor, Mitch Daniels, to the graduating class of Butler University in Indianapolis, delivered at about the same time that Obama was speaking at Notre Dame. Here's what Daniels said about us “children of the baby boom":

“As a group, we have been self-centered, self-absorbed, self-indulgent, and all too often just plain selfish. Our current Baby Boomer President has written two eloquent, erudite books, both about -- himself…. We have spent more and saved less than any previous Americans…. we ran up deficits that have multiplied the debt you and your children will be paying off your entire working lives…. We voted ourselves increasing levels of Social Security pensions and Medicare health care benefits, but never summoned the political maturity to put those programs on anything resembling a sound actuarial footing.

“In sum, our parents scrimped and saved to provide us a better living standard than theirs; we borrowed and splurged and will leave you a staggering pile of bills to pay. It's been a blast; good luck cleaning up after us.”

Illegals: The Next Generation

Meanwhile, in the name of “Welcoming the Stranger,” our bishops are advocating amnesty for illegal aliens. They also support giving them generous government benefits like universal health care and exemption from immigration law enforcement. So I was surprised, for a moment, to read that the bishops have recognized some limits to this taxpayer largesse. While they support “unlimited” visas allowing extended family members of illegals to enter the U.S., they oppose visas for homosexual “partners.” Apart from that, apparently, anything goes.
Bishop John Wester of Salt Lake City, chairman of the USCCB’s Committee on Migration, puts it this way: “It is extremely important that barriers that keep the nuclear family—husband, wife, and child—divided are removed as soon as possible. The legislation achieves this goal while preserving the ability of other close family members, including siblings of United States citizens, to reunite with their loved ones and without eroding the institution of marriage and family.”

Of course, the “barrier” that prohibits such reunions on U.S. soil is the law. Nothing prohibits aliens from reuniting with their extended families in their home country. Why doesn’t Bishop Wester advocate that? Sure, millions of illegals now have “anchor babies” – children born in the U.S. to an illegal mother – but why don’t they reunite back home, where they are all legal? Somewhere between twelve and twenty million aliens already reside illegally in the United States. Bishop Wester’s proposal would double, and perhaps triple, that number. Coming from corrupt countries, wouldn’t these immigrants tend to vote for “corruptos” like the ones they knew back home? Is that what Bishop Wester wants?

Alas, the good bishop fails to tell all. I volunteer as a translator for law enforcement. Most of the people we interview are in the U.S. illegally. Virtually every one of them leaves family in his home country. Now, each illegal must not only pay thousands of dollars to a “coyote” to get smuggled into the U.S., but he must continue paying bribes long after he arrives. Not only does he send money home to his wife, but he must also bribe his hometown police chief, the local gang leader, and the mayor – or his house will be ransacked and his family assaulted. Virtually all illegals come from corrupt countries where survival requires breaking the law and paying bribes. That is not their fault, but it is the only culture they know. Their habits will not magically change merely because they are legal in America.

Studies indicate that forty percent of those who actually attend Mass in the U.S. are Hispanic. Sadly, in recent decades, huge numbers of Latin American Catholics have left the Church to become evangelicals – apparently, they do not like liberation theology. Moreover, the Pew Foundation reports that ten percent of American evangelicals are former Catholics. Do our bishops fear alienating Hispanics and losing them to the evangelicals if Catholics don’t support amnesty? If so, shouldn’t our bishops tell us, in this “age of the laity”?

A local clergyman asked me this winter to translate for a Salvadoran who showed up at the rectory. He had no job, no friends, and no plans, but wanted money to stay in town. “Why don’t you go home,” I asked him. “I would,” he replied, “but my wife wants the kids to go to school here.”

La Piñata

Free school, free health care, free food stamps, and a host of other “free” taxpayer-funded benefits – no wonder Mexicans call it the “Piñata.” It’s great for them – but what about us? Why doesn’t Bishop Wester tell the people in the pews that virtually every decent home in the countries these “strangers” come from is surrounded by a wall, with barbed wire and shards of glass on top? That many homes require round-the-clock guards? Why do you think that is, Your Excellency? Because otherwise the house would be trashed within hours. And what about rampant kidnapping? It’s a way of life south of the border – not only with the hundreds of thousands of well-armed members of the criminal drug gangs in Mexico, but with countless common criminals throughout the hemisphere who just want to make some easy money.

You don’t have to read Spanish -- the Los Angeles Times reports regularly how Mexican, Salvadoran, and Honduran drug gangs have spread their tentacles throughout the United States – with kidnappings, decapitations, and, of course, bribes. When our local sheriff is called to deal with Hispanics, the single most common phrase I have to translate is, “get your hands out of your pockets.” The deputy is afraid they are reaching for a gun. I know they are getting out their wallets -- to pay a bribe.

Before committing the Church to this radical agenda, doesn’t Bishop Wester owe the faithful an explanation?

2009-07-11T04:54:00.000-07:00

From Under The Rubble

Christopher Manion

The Wanderer - June 4, 2009, p. 3

Contradiction or Capitulation?

The recent unpleasantness at Notre Dame has shed a helpful light on a contradiction that has increasingly troubled the American Catholic Church for the past forty years. Bound up in this contradiction are, on the one hand, the Church’s bureaucracies, and their budgets and political agendas. On the other hand are the teachings of the Catholic Church and the Magisterium.

Like many bishops, Archbishop Wilton Gregory of Atlanta, the former President of the USCCB, welcomed Obama’s election victory as “a great step forward for humanity.” At Notre Dame, Father John Jenkins echoed Gregory’s sentiment, declaring that, “as the first African-American holder of this office, [Obama] has accelerated our country’s progress in overcoming the painful legacy of slavery and segregation.” There were celebrations all around.

We should recall that the USCCB’s voter guide for the 2008 elections, Faithful Citizenship, specified only two “intrinsic evils” of which Catholics should take special notice when considering how to cast their ballots - abortion and racism. From the signals that the faithful are receiving these days from the majority of bishops, Catholic universities, and the virtually unanimous left-wing bureaucracy at the USCCB, it is evident that “racism,” however loosely defined, is much more universally opposed where the rubber meets the road than abortion is. For example, one strains to remember a Catholic University ever honoring an outspoken racist on campus, but pro-abortion speakers are routinely welcomed at a good number of them.

A recent example nicely outlines the irony. At Providence College in Rhode Island, a student group invited Tom Tancredo, a pro-life former congressman from Colorado, to speak on campus regarding the immigration issue. But Mr. Tancredo opposes granting amnesty to the twelve- to twenty-million aliens illegally in the country already. Therefore, the President of Providence College, with the full support of Providence Bishop Thomas J. Tobin, withdrew the invitation because Tancredo disagrees with the USCCB bureaucracy, which supports amnesty.

While the college didn’t actually call Tancredo a racist, the administration certainly treated him like one. It reacted as though Tancredo advocated an evil far more intrinsic than abortion. But Providence College has often welcomed pro-abortion speakers to campus, and undoubtedly will again, even though the USCCB has called on Catholic institutions not to do so. In this regard, as Socrates would put it, the USCCB is Providence College writ large. In theory, our bishops abhor racism and abortion. In practice, many of them abhor racists but not pro-abortion politicians, as long as those politicians support the bishops’ liberal political agenda.

About a quarter of the American hierarchy, including some major prelates, eventually criticized Obama’s appearance at Notre Dame. However, I have not heard similar criticism from any senior administrators of Catholic universities. This is not surprising: while the bishops are still muddled in contradiction, the universities have virtually collapsed in capitulation to secularism.

Salvation As Politics – Or Politics As Salvation?

This past January, the USCCB urged President Obama and Congress to pass government-run health-care, amnesty for illegal aliens, increased funds for Medicaid and SChip, more taxpayer funding for a variety of government poverty programs, new government spending for a “national safety net,” and – oh yes, to seek “common ground that will reduce the number of abortions in morally sound ways.” The billions that the government spends at home and abroad on contraception is not mentioned. The USCCB has indeed endorsed President Bush’s “conscience protections” for health care providers who oppose contraception and abortion, but Obama abolished those protections anyway -- long before he was cheered at Notre Dame.

Ideas have consequences, said Richard Weaver. Well, so do contradictions, and they are becoming clearer all the time. Obama’s triumph marks a victory over racism -- but embryonic stem-cell research, homosexual rights, abortion on demand, and attacks on public witness to religious faith will all be advocated in Obama’s America. But so what? How on earth can our bishops acknowledge Obama as the most pro-death leader in the western world when they are so busy cheering his election as a victory over racism?

As is the case in so many moral questions, the answer is simple but not easy. Borrowing the theme of Obama’s campaign, the bishops need to embrace “change.” Let’s face it: when it comes to protecting human life, the Church that Obama singled out for praise – that of Cardinal Bernardin – has failed. A long-time member of Bernardin’s staff at the USCC (who is as much a fan of Bernardin as Obama is) tells me that, while Pope Paul VI was valiantly trying to resonate Catholic moral principles in Humanae Vitae, Bernardin was busily politicizing the USCC (now the USCCB) irreversibly to identify the liberal agenda with the Catholic Church in every possible way.

Money Talks, Nobody Walks

Catholic leaders embraced Bernardin’s political agenda, preaching it far and wide, for years. As payback, federal money flowed freely. Unfortunately, some of the advocates of this largesse were, and are, among the most corrupt politicians in the country. Wanderer readers will recall how Father George Parker, who barred pro-abortion Senator Chris Dodd from his parish in the Connecticut Diocese of Norwich, was forced to retire by his bishop in retribution. As Cardinal McCarrick put it later, years of perpetuating Cardinal Bernardin’s cozy relationship with the pro-abortion “social justice” crowd on Capitol Hill had put today’s bishops in a bind: either keep the money flowing by keeping silent to, or risk “alienating” the corrupt pro-aborts (and their funding) by preaching Humanae Vitae and applying Canon Law to rampant scandal and crimes against the Eucharist.

The simple solution --“Damn the funding, follow Canon Law and preach Humanae Vitae” – certainly resonates with the truth, but it poses problems to the current organization of Catholic institutions all over the country. Our bishops might be tempted to be silent, but they now confront an even more dangerous threat: Obama’s radical allies, including his appointments to the federal bench, are simply going to declare war on the orthodox Catholic bishops in this country.

In fact, they already have. Homosexual groups are demanding that the IRS remove the tax exemption of churches that oppose same-sex marriage. Catholic hospitals are being forced to offer “family planning” services and referrals. Obama’s judges will require that Catholic organizations provide “equal protection” for GLBTQ employees, applicants, students – you name it. On every front of the culture war, the Obama Left wants to push the Catholic Church to the wall.

Meanwhile, Father Jenkins drones on: Obama “has set ambitious goals across a sweeping agenda -- extending health care coverage… improving [public] education …. promoting renewable energy….”

Jenkins represents capitulation. What we need is a revolution. The Catholic Church should refuse all government funding immediately – it’s all stolen money anyway. Then it should renounce its tax exemptions, to prevent Obama’s Thought Police from threatening to revoke them. These steps would allow our bishops to be bishops, preaching the Gospel in all its beautiful fullness, and to turn away from pro-abortion politicians and government bureaucracies and towards the people in the pews for their sustenance and support.

Another “Catholic” Justice?

Obama has nominated Judge Sonia Sotomayor to replace David Souter on the Supreme Court. Much is being written and spoken about her Catholic background – especially the Catholic education she received thanks to the Archdiocese of New York. Do not expect her to be grateful. If Sotomayor were pro-life, she would still be sitting out on the curb in the Bronx, and she knows it. Now we know it.

L'Osservatore Romano needs a new editor!

2009-07-07T06:52:00.000-07:00

Kudos to The Wanderer for Marielena Montesino's two-part commentary on the hijacking of L'Osservatore Romano. Over the past few months, the Vatican paper has not only failed to enlighten Catholics, it's added to the mass confusion inflicting the Church. The outright Obama love-fest is particularly appalling to orthodox Catholics in the United States who see Obama's rhetoric swallowed hook, line, and sinker despite his radically pro-abortion actions. Montesino calls for removal of the paper's editor, Giovanni Maria Vian. I second that!

There Goes "Old Notre Dame"

2009-06-05T12:52:00.000-07:00

From Land O’Lakes To Land O’Bama

In October 1964, Barry Goldwater’s running mate, Congressman William E. Miller of New York, visited Notre Dame. Miller, the first Notre Dame graduate (class of 1935) to run for national office on a major party ticket, attended a home football game, virtually next to university president Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C. Apart from a perfunctory handshake, Father Hesburgh showed little interest in his guest. In fact, Congressman Miller had not been invited by the university, but by a friend and fellow alumnus.

After the game, Miller was invited to speak on a platform (erected for an earlier rock band performance) in front of Sorin Hall. Father Hesburgh’s introduced Miller to a crowd of a few hundred along these lines: "Men of Notre Dame (there were no women in those days), you should always listen to people with respect, even when you do not agree with them. I give you Congressman William Miller."

Contrast that chilly reception -- of an orthodox, pro-life Catholic Notre Dame graduate -- to the recent jubilation surrounding the arrival of the proudly pro-abortion leader of the international culture of death who was granted an honorary degree by Notre Dame at its commencement on May 17. The look on the face of university president John Jenkins, C.S.C. as he hugged President Barack Obama was totally bereft of the dark and distant disapproval evident in Father Hesburgh's stern gaze of some 45 years before.

Fr. Jenkins was simply giddy with exultation. His introduction sounded like a cause for canonization. Jenkins was impressed, he insisted, that Obama had deigned to accept his invitation: “Obama has come to Notre Dame, though he knows well that we are fully supportive of Church teaching on the sanctity of human life, and we oppose his policies on abortion and embryonic stem cell research. Others might have avoided this venue for that reason. But President Obama is not someone who stops talking to those who differ with him.”

Sorry, Father John. Obama is not even someone who stops to talk to those who differ with him. Thousands of peaceful pro-life demonstrators lined every major route to campus that day, and Obama was forced to enter the campus by a nondescript back road, with police cars blocking every residential cross street for over a mile. No way would this fearless lover of conversation even have to see the demonstrators “who differ with him.” Nor did he see the thousands praying at the other end of campus, or the dozens of graduates who held their own (very crowded) pro-life graduation ceremonies at the Grotto.

Obama didn’t have to worry inside the hall, either. Not one official discouraging word was heard. The message? Even if Obama doesn’t stop the killing, Notre Dame will still cheer him on. Meanwhile, Fr. Jenkins, knowing his place, never mentioned Obama’s support of abortion, partial-birth abortion, infanticide, contraception, worldwide abortion-on-demand, or any other of those pesky little issues that might make “The One” feel unwelcome. No, we save the cold shoulder for the likes of our own pro-life graduates, like Bill Miller.

Barack’s Bernardin

As usual, Obama played the crowd like a very pliant fiddle. With a keen eye for the ideological fault line, he zeroed in on a leader of a bygone Catholic era, Chicago Archbishop Joseph Cardinal Bernardin. Now there was Obama’s kind of Catholic! Heterodox to the core, Bernardin was “congenial and gentle in his persuasion” – but, Barack, he didn’t seem to persuade you. In fact, didn’t Bernardin preside over the most disastrous period in the history of the American Catholic Church? You know, when homosexual abuse prospered under the guise of “the spirit of Vatican II,” when Bernardin’s bishops covered up for criminals, defied Pope Paul VI, and allowed their cohorts to defile the liturgy? And where were Bernardin’s brigade when their priests deep-sixed Humanae Vitae? Were they all too busy partying with his friend next door, Archbishop Weakland?

Nor did Obama forget Father Hesburgh, who in the 1960s decided that to be a “great university,” Notre Dame had to shed its parochial Catholic character so it could qualify for major funding from the federal government. Great Job, Father Ted! Today, Notre Dame prospers without its Catholic character, but it would collapse without that generous government funding, which public records indicate now runs around $57 million dollars a year. This is the Notre Dame Obama praises: the one that depends not on Catholic truth, but on federal money, for its very survival. Obama’s got Notre Dame right where he wants it.

Not since John F. Kennedy traded his faith for political gain has an American president so brazenly manipulated the Catholic Church. Meanwhile, Fr. Jenkins is pleased to play Obama’s lapdog, confident that the money and prestige will keep on flowing. He knows where his bread is buttered – and it’s not the Bread of Life.

Obama’s “Patriotic Catholic Church”

Obama’s Notre Dame marks an important “coming out” of what we might come to call the National Patriotic American Catholic Church (NPACC). NPACC is modeled on the official “Catholic” church in communist China, which receives government support while the underground Catholic Church that is loyal to Rome is mercilessly persecuted. NPACC and the USCCB ardently support the entire left-wing Democrat agenda, while soft-pedaling abortion and never complaining about taxpayer-funded contraception. Through Notre Dame and various other “Catholic” universities and institutions, NPACC receives billions of taxpayer dollars annually. Even those bishops who condemned Obama’s appearance at Notre Dame have a hard time dealing with Obama’s pro-abortion Catholic colleagues – they too realize how much money is at stake. But Notre Dame might be a turning point. NPACC has been around for decades, but has enjoyed a relatively “peaceful coexistence” with the Church of Rome for most of that time. In future years, Obama’s Notre Dame visit might well be seen as marking the end of that era.

Jenkins’s Comfort Zone

Brushing abortion aside, Fr. Jenkins applauded Obama’s leadership on other issues that apparently unite him with NPACC Catholics. Such as? “Extending health care coverage … improving education… promoting renewable energy … [the] fight against poverty, to reform immigration” … in other words, more left-wing USCCB mush to placate the Democrats who happen to be in charge of handing out all that government money.
And what about the graduates? For Jenkins, what is the greatest challenge confronting the Class of 2009? Is it living the Gospel in a hostile world? Preaching Christ Crucified to itching ears? Saving souls? Repentance and sacrifice? Prayer and fasting,? Selfless service to the cause of truth? Teaching the fullness of the Faith in the face of mockery and contempt?
Sorry, folks -- none of the above. No, Fr. Jenkins told the crowd that “easing the hateful divisions between human beings is the supreme challenge of this age.”
The Oxford English Dictionary defines “to ease” thus: “to render more comfortable, to relieve from pain.” Apparently, the task of Notre Dame-NPACC Catholics is to make our relationship with our sworn enemies – with abortionists, for instance – more “comfortable.” Hence, Father Jenkins’s goal was to make Obama as comfortable as possible at Notre Dame. Well, the unborn are human beings too. What about relieving their pain? Or healing the ‘hateful division” between them and their abortionist?
In the end, Father Jenkins knows that a university cannot serve two masters. As Donoso Cortes puts it, “liberalism can survive only in that brief moment that man decides, ‘Christ – or Barabbas!’”

Howard Phillips Had It Right On Souter

2009-05-27T07:58:00.000-07:00

Nineteen years ago, President George H.W. Bush put everything aside to call personally numerous conservative and pro-life leaders around the country. That he lavished such attention on them was unusual, but Bush had campaigned vigorously as a pro-life candidate to succeed President Ronald Reagan in 1988, and the retirement of Justice William Brennan gave him his first opportunity to fill a seat on the Supreme Court.

The fact that it was Brennan’s seat conferred a special significance on the vacancy. After all, Dwight Eisenhower had appointed Brennan by mistake, one which he later lamented. Early in Ike’s first term, his Attorney General, Herbert Brownell, had seen Brennan give a speech to a legal convention. Brownell came back to Washington and told Ike that Brennan was quite a conservative. The only problem: Brownell did not know at the time that speechmaker Brennan was standing in for New Jersey Supreme Court Chief Justice Vanderbilt, who was ill – and that Brennan was reading the text that had been written by Vanderbilt. Ike was looking for a conservative Irish Democrat to help him in the 1956 election, so Brennan got the nod.

Brennan was one of eight children of Irish Catholic immigrants, but he became an ardent champion of abortion – and an effective advocate of Roe v Wade, in which he voted with the majority. Curiously, when he died in 1997, his funeral was not held in his home diocese of Arlington, Virginia. Instead, in spite of protests of chagrin and outrage from the laity, the Archdiocese of Washington allowed him a Catholic burial, and Brennan’s funeral took place in Saint Matthew’s Cathedral in Washington.

Justice David Souter delivered the eulogy.

“Trust Me”

When Brennan retired, pro-lifers naturally expected President Bush to keep his word and nominate a strict constructionist to the court. That’s why Bush was busily making passionate calls all over the country. “Trust me on this one,” he repeatedly told conservative leaders. Alas, most of them did, some in spite of their better judgment, others ignoring danger signals like the strong support for Souter shown by his friend from New Hampshire, the notoriously pro-abortion Senator Warren Rudman. In the Senate Republican cloakroom, Rudman assured Senators Grassley (R – Ia.) and Helms (R – N.C.), “Chuck, Jesse, David Souter is just as conservative as you are.” (It is clear now that Rudman was either very dumb or a liar. Over the years before and since, he has paraded around Washington, invariably acting as though he were the smartest guy in the room. Draw your own conclusions). Meanwhile, Edith Jones, a young, brilliant, and constitutional judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, was waiting in the wings as the most solid conservative choice. But Bush’s chief of Staff, John Sununu, was also from New Hampshire. Ignorant in principle but a skilled tactician, he successfully short-circuited the selection process, with crafty assistance from Rudman, and Souter got the nod.

Enter Howard Phillips, founder and longtime president of the Conservative Caucus. Phillips had battle-tested experience with faux conservatives in Republican administrations who put the stiletto in the back of constitutional initiatives at the critical moment. Their number is legion. And so he alone, of all the conservative and pro-life leaders who had worked so closely and loyally with President Reagan, took the bull by the horns and went to the Senate Judiciary Committee to testify in opposition to Souter’s confirmation.

If He Walks Like A Duck …

It required a sense of bravery, as well as conviction, for Phillips to make his case. After all, the National Organization of Women had testified against Souter the day before, because Souter’s support of abortion was not sufficiently brazen for them. Furthermore, Phillips knew that this was the very same committee, still dominated by Democrats and chaired by Joe Biden, that had savaged Judge Robert Bork when President Reagan nominated him to the Supreme Court in 1987. (Pennsylvania Republican, now Democrat, Senator Arlen Specter was indispensable in that assault).

Phillips began his testimony where he always has in the forty years and more that I have known and admired him: “The Declaration of Independence asserted that ‘we are endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights,’” he told the committee, “and that, ‘among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’ The Declaration rested on the assumption that there exists ‘the laws of nature and of nature’s God,’” he continued. “Our law system is necessarily rooted in and legitimated by that fundamental recognition of higher authority.”

Based on that bedrock preamble of principle (after all, the truths that Mr. Phillips cited are supposed to be “self-evident”), Phillips zeroed in on the critical issue:

“One moment of truth for Mr. Souter came in February 1973, when, as a member of the board of trustees of Concord Hospital, he participated in a unanimous decision that abortions be performed at that hospital,” Phillips recounted. “It is one thing to intellectually rationalize the case for permitting legal abortions, while still opposing the exercise of such legal authority. It is quite another—something far more invidious, morally—to actually join in a real world decision to cause abortions to be performed, routinely, at a particular hospital.”

For Souter, The Self-evident Truth Isn’t True

But didn’t Roe v. Wade, issued just the month before Souter’s assent to abortions in the Concord Hospital vote, require him to “follow the law”? No way, said Phillips:

“Those abortions whose performance was authorized by David Souter were not mandated by law or court opinion. In fact, laws have remained to this day [1990, 17 years later] on the books in New Hampshire which provide criminal penalties for any ‘attempt to procure miscarriage’ or ‘intent to destroy quick child.’ Indeed, section 585:14 of the New Hampshire Criminal Code establishes the charge of second degree murder for the death of a pregnant woman in consequence of an attempted abortion. Nor were those abortions which Mr. Souter authorized performed merely to save the life of the mother, nor were they limited to cases of rape or incest.”

But might Souter’s Concord vote just have been an isolated mistake? No way. “Similarly, Dartmouth Hitchcock Hospital, which is associated with the Dartmouth Medical School, of which Judge Souter has been an overseer, has performed abortions up to the end of the second trimester,” Phillips testified.

The inescapable verdict? “One must conclude that either Mr. Souter accepts the view that the life of the unborn child is of less value than the convenience and profit of those who collaborate in the killing of that child, or that, despite his recognition of the fact that each unborn child is human, a handiwork of God’s creation, he lacked the moral courage or discernment to help prevent the destruction of so many innocent human lives, when he had the authority, indeed the responsibility, to do so.”

In an ironic and ultimately malevolent way, the pro-abortion committee members were probably heartened by Mr. Phillips’s testimony. Yesterday’s confused and wayward harridans of NOW could not be sure that Souter was their man, but Mr. Phillips’s precise, logical presentation made that conclusion inescapable.

In the years since Roe v. Wade, support for abortion has been demanded of virtually every Democrat: now they are solidly entrenched throughout the government. Self-evident truths have not swayed them. Prayer can. “In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33)

It Hurts To Talk About It

2009-05-27T07:56:00.000-07:00

Torture Hurts

Like a master jeweler who carefully studies the crystalline structure before cutting a beautiful diamond, Obama is applying stress to all the Republican fault lines. Meanwhile, the GOP “leadership” flops on the beach, supine, incapable of resuscitation, and all too willingly cooperating with its own vivisection.

Obama’s jiu jitsu is magnificent. Here we have the Democrats, notoriously and publicly advocating free abortion worldwide and free euthanasia as the calling card of government health care at home. Yet they have maneuvered events so that the Republicans are defending torture. But wait – can’t honest people differ? Well, that doesn’t matter, because the discussion we’re getting isn’t honest. It hardly touches on morality – in fact, it often mimics sheer buffoonery.

Now comes Dick Cheney, who was even more unpopular than George Bush as their second term ended, insisting that torture works, and demanding that secret documents be declassified to prove it! Torture is a sure loser for the dwindling number of Republicans still in office, but Cheney doesn’t care. Trotting Cheney out now is the kiss of death, so Democrats naturally welcome his histrionics. He is playing into Obama’s hands.

Republicans have by default allowed Obama to orchestrate an exquisite array of threatening scenarios – torture hearings run by Democrats? Special prosecutors? Perhaps a blue-ribbon torture commission? Meanwhile, Republicans are stuck defending the very Bush policies that destroyed their old majorities, when they should be busy building new ones. They hurl the usual catcalls – “witch-hunt” and “partisan politics” -- but all the public notices is desperate Republicans defending torture.

Last winter, George Bush told an interviewer that he hadn’t admitted mistakes during his presidency because it might have demoralized his people in a time of war. Well, could conservatives be any more demoralized than they are today? Maybe it’s time for the GOP to admit its mistakes after all. Conservatives should certainly admit the mistakes of those leaders we supported, for good or ill. But why do so many resist?

Conservatives are, well -- conservative. They seldom change their spots – or their leadership. Remember how Bill Clinton was on the ropes in 1996 and the GOP ran – Bob Dole? The groans in the Republican cloakroom were audible: “Well, it’s Bob’s turn,” the gloomy senators would mutter, shaking their heads. In 2000, the GOP went looking for a non-Clinton, and chose the scion of the very family that had betrayed Reaganism when it took over the White House in 1989. Again in 2008, the party went with another war-horse, John McCain, who split what was left of the coalition instead of uniting it. Admit mistakes? Get real. During the primaries, no Republican but Ron Paul would even mention George Bush, much less own up to his mistakes.

For years, many conservatives just couldn’t bring themselves to criticize President Bush when he was being unconservative. It wasn’t long ago that one David Keene, a long-time conservative operative and Beltway trough-dweller, threatened to fire Don Devine, who had been a high-ranking Reagan official, because Devine had the temerity to criticize Bush to columnist Robert Novak. Would Keene do so today, or would he finally be willing to face reality? No one knows -- and that ambivalence plagues the entire “conservative movement.” It represents the conflict between nostalgia and loyalty, on the one hand, and timeless principle, on the other.

And there’s an element of pride involved too. Some key Bush supporters have changed their mind, but it wasn’t easy. Ken Adelman, famous for predicting a “cakewalk” in Iraq, later turned savagely on Bush and Cheney as the war dragged on (they always blame somebody else). But true conservatives also bear a burden. Being betrayed by someone you trust is a humbling, often bitter experience. The long and short of it is that Obama has diagnosed this infirmity in the GOP and is making the most of it. Meanwhile, what he is bringing about has, in the past, been called a variety of names – fascism, national socialism, social democracy, democratic socialism – but whatever history calls it, it is bad news, and Republicans are powerless to stop it. The fault lies not in their stars, but in themselves. If the Barry Goldwater of 1960 reappeared on the scene today, the GOP would probably run him out of town.

“Catholics For Torture”?

Catholics believe in admitting our mistakes – we have to: why else do we go to Confession? But the torture fiasco has made troubling ripples in Catholic ranks. Perhaps it was predictable, but it is nonetheless deplorable. Karl Rove, President Bush’s political director, was very skilled technically, but principles were not his strong point. Early on, he put together several ethnic and religious coalitions -- of Jews, of Catholics, and of Evangelicals, among others – and smothered his selected leaders with face-time in the Oval Office and other political lollipops. As George Bush changed from an advocate of a humble foreign policy in 2000 to a crusader for international wars to bring democracy to the world in 2004, Rove expertly kept his lapdog Catholic and Christian “leadership” groups in line. Seldom did they complain publicly about the plight of Christians in the Middle East, abut the martyrdom of Catholic priests and prelates in Iraq, or the devastation of Christian Nazareth and Bethlehem in Israel. They defended Bush down the line.

In recent weeks a considerable amount of evidence has emerged about the U.S. government’s use of torture during the past eight years. Even now, however, a rump core of Bush supporters nonetheless continue to defend his policies, including torture. This is not surprising, since a lot of careers are at stake, a lot of prestige, and, frankly, a lot of money. Maybe some of them really believe in torture. But what is distressing is the Catholics! A dwindling coterie of Catholics who stuck with Bush through thick and thin now find themselves trying to justify not only Bush, but torture! Suddenly torture is becoming an ingredient of Catholic “Just War” theory. Permissible in wartime only, of course – but wait: didn’t Dick Cheney say that the Global War on Terror would last through the lives of our grandchildren?

Meanwhile, as Americans are subjected to the public spectacle of these wayward Catholic Republican “leaders,” they might unfortunately have good reason to wonder, “if Republicans aren’t even serious about torture, are they really serious about abortion? Maybe those ‘Catholics for Obama’ were right after all.”

Black Eye For The Irish

One of those Catholics dazzled by Obama just got run over by reality. Father John Jenkins, C.S.C., thought he could use an award for a pro-life leader as cover for inviting Obama to Notre Dame’s graduation on May 17, but former Ambassador to the Holy See Mary Ann Glendon wasn’t buying. After being told she was to receive the prestigious Laetare Medal, Glendon learned that Notre Dame was trumpeting her appearance as a “balance” to Obama. No sale.

Admittedly, I was hoping that Glendon’s address at Notre Dame might have been as excruciating for Obama as Mother Teresa’s address to the National Prayer breakfast was for Bill and Hillary many years ago. But she did not like the odds: “"It is not the right place, nor is a brief acceptance speech the right vehicle, for engagement with the very serious problems raised by Notre Dames decision,” she wrote.

Jenkins has received hundreds of thousands of protests against the invitation, but this is the one that is most likely to help him come to his senses.

California Beauty, Notre Dame - Not

2009-05-27T07:54:00.000-07:00

Pin The Tail On The Bigot

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty”

John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn

When the Culture of Death attacks the Catholic Faith, it attacks all of it. That every spear-carrier in the cultural death squads has his assignment was recently demonstrated in – of all places -- the recent Miss USA pageant.

Precedent does not encourage us to expect much of such endeavors. In 2007, a Miss Teen South Carolina was asked why some American schoolchildren could not locate the United States on a world map. Blonde Caitlin Upton was clueless, and came unglued:

I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because, uh, some people out there in our nation don't have maps, and, uh, I believe that our education like such as in South Africa and, uh, the Iraq everywhere like, such as and I believe that they should, our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S., er, should help South Africa and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries, so we will be able to build up our future for our children.

But they’re not all ditzes. In 2009 Miss California, Carrie Prejean was on track to win Miss USA until a judge noticed that she attended San Diego Christian College. So he asked her, ““Vermont recently became the fourth state to legalize same-sex marriage. Do you think every state should follow suit. Why or why not?”
Prejean did not fall prey to the South Carolina syndrome. Her answer was direct: “In my family, I think that … a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anybody out there, but that’s how I was raised and that’s how I think it should be -- between a man and a woman.”

Little did Miss Prejean know that her questioner was a “celebrity blogger.” In California that apparently means flaming homosexual -- in this case a Mr. Perez Hilton. And Hilton wasn’t Carrie’s only problem on the five-judge panel. “Holly Madison” is a Playboy bunny. Another judge, Alicia Jacobs, later admitted that Prejean would have won if she hadn’t forgotten that “at least two people on the judges panel are openly gay. Another judge has a sister in a gay marriage. Her very own state pageant director, Keith Lewis is an openly gay man.”

Phew! Well, Mr. Hilton later observed that Prejean’s answer had “offended millions of Americans,” so naturally MSNBC and CNN immediately invited him to pontificate further on her bigotry. He obliged, calling her a “dumb b***,” asserting that she had “half a brain,” and said he “would have stormed onto the stage and ripped off her tiara if she had won.” He topped off assorted vulgarities with this: “I don’t want her talking about Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, because that's offensive.”

After “celebrity” Perez’s performance, the “gay rights” crowd cheered him as a hero. Which brings to mind a few timely truths. First, Satan hates truth and beauty. Perez’s foul-mouthed “justifications” are reminiscent of the vile epithets channeled by the demon in The Exorcist through the possessed Regan MacNeil. Secondly, homosexuals are unusually violent in their relationships, according to medical personnel in gay communities; they are also petty and vindictive. This is not a “homophobic” observation, but a clinical acknowledgement of reality that Catholics (including bishops, alas) need to understand when confronting the “gay rights” crowd. One must bear in mind that, like other intrinsic evils that the bishops address with more frequency, sodomy has profound consequences. Third, “gays” are rank cowards. Perez later insisted that “Yes, I do expect Miss USA to be politically correct.” But Miss Prejean sees it differently. She told the Today show that “it's not about being politically correct; for me it was being biblically correct.”

Miss Prejean’s sentences more than parse. She is just the kind of woman that homosexuals hate: smart, beautiful, talented, grounded, and Christian. Perez’s routine is just the latest national outburst of gay cowardice. Miss Prejean, on the other hand, stood her ground. “This happened for a reason,” she said after the contest. “By having to answer that question in front of a national audience, God was testing my character and faith. I'm glad I stayed true to myself.”

Another Looming Threat Awaits The Bishops

As a generation of pro-abortion politicians who were raised Catholic approach old age, the prospect of death – memento mori! – rears its ugly head. And therewith arises a question that vexes even the most prudent prelate: where do we bury these people?

This is not a merely hypothetical question. Back when Joe Biden was running for president in 1988, he was lifting weights in the Senate gym and thought he had pulled a muscle. Fortuitously, his doctor discovered that Biden had suffered a near-fatal injury and was able to save him in the nick of time. Ditto Teddy Kennedy, who escaped an untimely death not once but twice – first, when Indiana Senator Birch Bayh pulled him from a fatal plane wreck in the wilds of Alaska in 1964, and then five years later, when Kennedy managed to free himself from a sinking automobile and make it safely ashore after a tragic accident in Massachusetts.
So the grim reaper haunts us all – and, when the roll is finally called up yonder for all the Catholic pro-aborts, what will the bishops do to -- shall we say -- address the question of the disposition of their remains?

Canon Law is clear on the subject: “Church funeral rites are to be denied to the following, unless they have given some sign of repentance … Apostates, heretics schismatics … [and] Other manifest sinners to whom a church funeral could not be granted without public scandal to the faithful.” [1184.1, .3].

On the one hand, public supporters of the “intrinsic evil” of abortion [USCCB, Faithful Citizenship, 2007] are certainly “manifest sinners to whom a church funeral could not be granted without public scandal to the faithful.”(Please note that the 1983 Code of Canon Law prudently adds the helpful phrase, “to the faithful” in order to distinguish Catholics who embrace the Magisterium from the editorial board of the New York Times, or the panel of judges at the Miss USA contest).

On the other hand, the death of some of these political luminaries might occasion a funeral so grandiose that bishops will be fighting for seats in the bleachers.

What to do? Again, we turn to Canon Law. “If any doubt occurs, the local ordinary is to be consulted and his judgment followed.” [1184.2].

Well, I think we’d all agree that that makes it perfectly clear.

Not Exactly Henry At Canossa

Notre Dame’s spokesman admits that the university owns its own jet, but assures me that University president John Jenkins, C.S.C., did not use it to fly to Washington on April 21 to meet with Obama at the White House. Rather, Fr. Jenkins was in town for a “development” meeting. However, other developments are not so innocuous. Bishop John M. D’Arcy, in whose Indiana diocese Notre Dame is located, has written a stern letter admonishing Father Jenkins to correct the errors which Fr. Jenkins distributed to the public regarding his justification for the invitation of Obama to the university’s commencement exercises. Moreover, the good bishop chides Fr. Jenkins for a “serious mistake” – specifically, in extending the invitation, Jenkins “fail[ed] to consult the local bishop who, whatever his unworthiness, is the teacher and law-giver in the diocese.”

Faith Of Our Fathers

2009-05-04T12:48:00.000-07:00

Is The Faith Of Our Fathers Not Ours?

On his recent trip to Europe, Barack Obama boasted to Turkish President Abdullah Gul that “one of the great strengths of the United States [is that ] …we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation, a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation. We consider ourselves a nation of citizens.”

For Obama, speaking for all of us in the Jacobin language of the French Revolution, Americans are merely creatures of the state. But is he right? Enter Dr. John Howard, decorated veteran of World War II, longtime college president, and one of the first American cultural critics who rallied to defend the family as a key to the survival of a free society when the traditional, natural family first came under attack over thirty years ago.

The enemies of the family have mounted a second front attacking Christianity, an attack in which Obama serves as a powerful adjutant. To dispel Obama’s pathetic obituary of a Christian America, Dr. Howard has responded with an important book whose title is as clear and forthright as its author: Christianity: Lifeblood of America’s Free Society (1620-1945) [Summit Press: (719) 685-9103, www.summit.org). With a keen eye for the golden thread that binds our freedoms, Dr. Howard illuminates the Christian preambles that are indispensable to American liberty. From the first words of the Mayflower Compact – “In the Name of God. Amen,” America has been a religious nation, a fact confirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1892. And whatever religious faith that individual Americans might profess, it is Christianity that supplied the vital traditions, principles, and “Self-Evident Truths” without which we would be not only a nation of mere citizens, but a nation of sheep.

Dr. Howard’s little gem offers a clear and concise roadmap of our liberties since Plymouth Rock. It reflects years of wisdom and research, unearthing countless pearls of Christian wisdom long ignored by secular historians. The frosting on the cake are the wonderful quotes from each period that Dr. Howard has assembled at the end of each chapter. It is a bright light in a dark landscape, and is an especially commendable resource for home-schooling families.

Ruminations Amidst the Ruins

As the country sinks into a socialist swoon, liberal commentators are having a field day laughing at Republicans. The party is in disarray, its is floundering, it is hypocritical, it is bereft of principles, it is bereft of leaders and leadership – in brief, it is in ruins. Their conclusion? Obama gets to do whatever he wants.

Now the liberals have good reason to distract us from their malevolent crowd behind the curtain. Their two most prominent governors have been forced from office for malfeasance. The scandals in the Obama Administration are quickly acquiring Clintonian proportions, with a cavalier attitude (“We don’t have to pay taxes because we’re raising yours!”) as brazen as that of an entrenched tinhorn dictator. Moreover, Obama has betrayed millions of his antiwar supporters without whom he would never have been nominated, much less elected. And, lest we forget, he has betrayed those credulous Catholics who thought (or pretended to think) that he really meant it when he said he wanted to reduce abortions.

Obama’s approach is matter-of-fact: the unborn cannot vote. The aborted never will. But his Peanut Gallery nonetheless realizes that the best defense is a good offense, so they raise the cry defending his spending against his Republican critics: “So’s yer old man!”

Long ago, when clocks had hands and went “tick-tock,” we had a saying: “Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.” And once in a blue moon (that was another oldie but goodie), the liberals, whose clock stopped long ago in the mire of smug collectivism, stumble onto truth. And right now, unfortunately, they are correct about the GOP.

This liberal epiphany should not surprise us. For centuries, the method of leftism has been the “total critique” – the destruction (these days termed “deconstruction”) of history, tradition, and truth under the withering fire of ideological scrutiny. Karl Marx was a hopeless ideologue, to be sure, but he also rendered brilliant sociological observations (his description of society as a beehive in Das Kapital is a revelatory case in point). Liberals are often very good at moralizing. It’s the morals that fail them.

So it is painful for conservatives to watch the Left mock Republicans – accurately -- for their profligate spending during the Bush years. But then follows the granddaddy of non sequiturs – that we therefore have no grounds on which to object to the wholesale bankrupting of the country by Obamanomics.

Republicans are slowly coming around. Even the once-revered Heritage Foundation is awakening from its eight-year slumber, sponsoring a colloquium entitled “Getting Off Track: How Government Actions and Interventions Caused, Prolonged, and Worsened the Financial Crisis.” The day will undoubtedly come when Heritage is willing to have the same conversation about foreign interventions. After that sobering conversation, the GOP might have a shot at revival.

Even George Bush finally admitted his role in destroying the GOP’s congressional majorities. Last winter he recounted that he had been besieged by congressional Republicans in 2006 to announce the drawdown of the unpopular war in Iraq. He refused, and the Democrats swept into power on Capitol Hill that year and ruined pro-lifers’ hopes for dozens of appointments to the federal courts. By 2008, Bush’s administration was so drained of principle that it embraced the trillion-dollar bailouts that Obama has been glad to perpetuate and to enlarge. Thus, the GOP gave the Left all the ammunition it needed to needle Republicans endlessly.

A Lesson For Conservatives and Pro-Lifers

If there is a primordial lesson here for conservatives and pro-lifers amidst the ruins, it is this: we should never again abandon our principles to please or to promote the fortunes of a political party or personality. It is only the truth that will make us free. Look at Congressman Ron Paul: he was the only Republican in the 2008 primaries who was willing publicly to criticize President Bush. Had John McCain stopped rolling his eyes long enough to embrace Dr. Paul’s criticism of the Federal Reserve (forget his support of the crazed Armageddonites), McCain would be president today.

During the Bush years, The Wanderer often observed that profligacy at home and Wilsonian Wars abroad would bring in their wake collapse and calamity. Some Catholic neocons who had found favor with Bush – recruited by Karl Rove and masterfully stroked in Oval Office love-fests – resented that realism and said as much. Truth be told, they had, to put it bluntly, allowed their principles to be drowned by the cult of personality. Today the wreckage wrought by their misguided zeal now surrounds us all.

Unlike the Catholics they manipulated, the core neocons – that is, the secular leftists of the 60s who later became anti-Communists but not conservatives -- are consistently more loyal to their private agendas than they are to any American party. Witnessing the success of this very effective minority faction, conservatives and pro-lifers – especially those who once were wooed by their siren song -- should take note, and resolve to maintain our principled political independence from this day forward. The neocons today trash President Bush, now that they have safely abandoned the ship they have scuttled. In Washington it’s called the “If Only He Had Listened To Me!” syndrome.

Of this we can be sure: the neocons will never apologize. And they will always blame somebody else.

Beauty And The Beasts

2009-05-04T12:46:00.000-07:00

Pin The Tail On The Bigot

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty”

John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn

When the Culture of Death attacks the Catholic Faith, it attacks all of it. That every spear-carrier in the cultural death squads has his assignment was recently demonstrated in – of all places -- the recent Miss USA pageant.

Precedent does not encourage us to expect much of such endeavors. In 2007, a Miss Teen South Carolina was asked why some American schoolchildren could not locate the United States on a world map. Blonde Caitlin Upton was clueless, and came unglued:

I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because, uh, some people out there in our nation don't have maps, and, uh, I believe that our education like such as in South Africa and, uh, the Iraq everywhere like, such as and I believe that they should, our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S., er, should help South Africa and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries, so we will be able to build up our future for our children.

But they’re not all ditzes. In 2009 Miss California, Carrie Prejean was on track to win Miss USA until a judge noticed that she attended San Diego Christian College. So he asked her, ““Vermont recently became the fourth state to legalize same-sex marriage. Do you think every state should follow suit. Why or why not?”
Prejean did not fall prey to the South Carolina syndrome. Her answer was direct: “In my family, I think that … a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anybody out there, but that’s how I was raised and that’s how I think it should be -- between a man and a woman.”

Little did Miss Prejean know that her questioner was a “celebrity blogger.” In California that apparently means flaming homosexual -- in this case a Mr. Perez Hilton. And Hilton wasn’t Carrie’s only problem on the five-judge panel. “Holly Madison” is a Playboy bunny. Another judge, Alicia Jacobs, later admitted that Prejean would have won if she hadn’t forgotten that “at least two people on the judges panel are openly gay. Another judge has a sister in a gay marriage. Her very own state pageant director, Keith Lewis is an openly gay man.”

Phew! Well, Mr. Hilton later observed that Prejean’s answer had “offended millions of Americans,” so naturally MSNBC and CNN immediately invited him to pontificate further on her bigotry. He obliged, calling her a “dumb b***,” asserting that she had “half a brain,” and said he “would have stormed onto the stage and ripped off her tiara if she had won.” He topped off assorted vulgarities with this: “I don’t want her talking about Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, because that's offensive.”

After “celebrity” Perez’s performance, the “gay rights” crowd cheered him as a hero. Which brings to mind a few timely truths. First, Satan hates truth and beauty. Perez’s foul-mouthed “justifications” are reminiscent of the vile epithets channeled by the demon in The Exorcist through the possessed Regan MacNeil. Secondly, homosexuals are unusually violent in their relationships, according to medical personnel in gay communities; they are also petty and vindictive. This is not a “homophobic” observation, but a clinical acknowledgement of reality that Catholics (including bishops, alas) need to understand when confronting the “gay rights” crowd. One must bear in mind that, like other intrinsic evils that the bishops address with more frequency, sodomy has profound consequences. Third, “gays” are rank cowards. Perez later insisted that “Yes, I do expect Miss USA to be politically correct.” But Miss Prejean sees it differently. She told the Today show that “it's not about being politically correct; for me it was being biblically correct.”

Miss Prejean’s sentences more than parse. She is just the kind of woman that homosexuals hate: smart, beautiful, talented, grounded, and Christian. Perez’s routine is just the latest national outburst of gay cowardice. Miss Prejean, on the other hand, stood her ground. “This happened for a reason,” she said after the contest. “By having to answer that question in front of a national audience, God was testing my character and faith. I'm glad I stayed true to myself.”

Another Looming Threat Awaits The Bishops

As a generation of pro-abortion politicians who were raised Catholic approach old age, the prospect of death – memento mori! – rears its ugly head. And therewith arises a question that vexes even the most prudent prelate: where do we bury these people?

This is not a merely hypothetical question. Back when Joe Biden was running for president in 1988, he was lifting weights in the Senate gym and thought he had pulled a muscle. Fortuitously, his doctor discovered that Biden had suffered a near-fatal injury and was able to save him in the nick of time. Ditto Teddy Kennedy, who escaped an untimely death not once but twice – first, when Indiana Senator Birch Bayh pulled him from a fatal plane wreck in the wilds of Alaska in 1964, and then five years later, when Kennedy managed to free himself from a sinking automobile and make it safely ashore after a tragic accident in Massachusetts.

So the grim reaper haunts us all – and, when the roll is finally called up yonder for all the Catholic pro-aborts, what will the bishops do to -- shall we say -- address the question of the disposition of their remains?

Canon Law is clear on the subject: “Church funeral rites are to be denied to the following, unless they have given some sign of repentance … Apostates, heretics schismatics … [and] Other manifest sinners to whom a church funeral could not be granted without public scandal to the faithful.” [1184.1, .3].

On the one hand, public supporters of the “intrinsic evil” of abortion [USCCB, Faithful Citizenship, 2007] are certainly “manifest sinners to whom a church funeral could not be granted without public scandal to the faithful.”(Please note that the 1983 Code of Canon Law prudently adds the helpful phrase, “to the faithful” in order to distinguish Catholics who embrace the Magisterium from the editorial board of the New York Times, or the panel of judges at the Miss USA contest).

On the other hand, the death of some of these political luminaries might occasion a funeral so grandiose that bishops will be fighting for seats in the bleachers.

What to do? Again, we turn to Canon Law. “If any doubt occurs, the local ordinary is to be consulted and his judgment followed.” [1184.2].

Well, I think we’d all agree that that makes it perfectly clear.

Not Exactly Henry At Canossa

Notre Dame’s spokesman admits that the university owns its own jet, but assures me that University president John Jenkins, C.S.C., did not use it to fly to Washington on April 21 to meet with Obama at the White House. Rather, Fr. Jenkins was in town for a “development” meeting. However, other developments are not so innocuous. Bishop John M. D’Arcy, in whose Indiana diocese Notre Dame is located, has written a stern letter admonishing Father Jenkins to correct the errors which Fr. Jenkins distributed to the public regarding his justification for the invitation of Obama to the university’s commencement exercises. Moreover, the good bishop chides Fr. Jenkins for a “serious mistake” – specifically, in extending the invitation, Jenkins “fail[ed] to consult the local bishop who, whatever his unworthiness, is the teacher and law-giver in the diocese.”

Pelosi Power

2009-04-27T20:11:00.000-07:00

Pelosi: We’re Third World Too

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the Catholic San Francisco Democrat and pro-abortion communicant, has discovered how “to deal with the consequences of the downturn in our economy.” It’s simple: have fewer people. So in the near term, Pelosi supports over a billion taxpayer dollars in the aptly-named “stimulus package” for contraception and sex (pro-sex, anti-child) education. In the long term, as Humanae Vitae predicted, her logic will lead to government health care, rationing of medical treatment, and eventually the need to eliminate the portion of the population on which the government spends the most money – the old, the sick, and the infirm.

Pelosi’s Law is nothing new: in fact, the U.S. has had the same attitude towards the developing world for over fifty years. Pelosi’s only novelty is that she now treats the United States like any other Third World country. Since the 1950s, the U.S. Government has transmitted a simple message to the poor of the world: “There are too many of you.” In the name of doing good, the U.S. has funded contraceptive family planning programs throughout the Third World, costing tens of billions of dollars. By all appearances, these programs should help the world’s poor obtain clean water, basic health care, food, and agricultural assistance. The reality is less attractive: these programs usually require the host country and cooperating organizations to include contraceptives, Depro-Provera, even (at times) abortion and sterilization as mandatory ingredients of any “health” program – whether the host country wants it or not.

How did this come to pass? For decades, foreign aid has had two constituencies. “National security” assistance was designed to prevent the spread of communism during the Cold War, and was traditionally supported by conservatives. “Economic and humanitarian” assistance was designed to give aid to “developing countries,” and was traditionally supported by liberals. With that broad coalition, foreign aid always seemed to sail through congress.

Foreign aid has always had its opponents among taxpayers and conservatives, but their efforts were miniscule compared to the real beneficiaries of the programs: U.S. defense manufacturers, which supplied most of the “military assistance”; U.S. agricultural firms, which supplied the food assistance; U.S. nonprofits, which received and distributed the lion’s share of the humanitarian assistance; lobbyists for corrupt foreign governments, which always took a generous share off the top for themselves; and U.S. drug firms, which provided the medicines and contraceptives. (It was a sad specter to watch conservative senator Jeff Sessions in 2006, as he opposed outsourcing condom production to Asia. It turned out that the sole supplier of billions of prophylactics for U.S. foreign aid programs was located in his home state of Alabama.)

A “Conservative” Constituency For Family Planning?

During the Reagan Administration, lobbyists for the U.S. companies that profited from foreign aid programs dreamed up a new approach: suddenly, they were conservatives. The suppliers used products from every state in the union – and lo! elected official everywhere had a local “private sector” constituents strongly supporting foreign aid. No longer were those officials “handing out of billions of taxpayer dollars to the Third World.” Now could be praised for “providing good jobs, right here at home.”

So what constituency are Obama and Pelosi pleasing in pushing the anti-Humanae Vitae envelope? Well, as always, there are the profiteers: the “family planning” business in America rakes in billions a year, and its in-house partner, the abortion industry, is close behind (Even before the “stimulus,” contraceptive services alone received $1.6 billion a year from the federal government annually). But there are also the ideologues who simply oppose the traditional family and will do anything to destroy the values that sustain it. Domestically, we see this with Pelosi’s elimination of “abstinence education” funding, even as she advocates “sex education.” Internationally, the situation is best reflected in a report I heard on National Public Radio (NPR) after 9-11, when the U.S. forces invading Afghanistan entered Kabul. U.S. foreign-aid agencies were close behind, and NPR interviewed one of them, a woman who was supposedly bringing health services to Afghan women.

“These women are twenty-eight years old and they already have eight children,” she screamed into her satellite phone. “They won’t even listen when I try to offer them contraceptives. And the men are even worse!!”

So those who benefit from U.S. family planning programs, either financially or ideologically, do not complain. But another important voice is also silent: the U.S. bishops. On January 19, USCCB President Francis Cardinal George wrote President Obama, urging him to preserve conscience rights for health workers, and to oppose funding for abortion in foreign-aid programs. But he did not mention contraception at all:

“Once the clear line between family planning and abortion is erased,” he wrote, “the idea of using family planning to reduce abortions becomes meaningless, and abortion tends to replace contraception as the means for reducing family size. A shift toward promoting abortion in developing nations would also increase distrust of the United States in these nations, whose values and culture often reject abortion, at a time when we need their trust and respect.”

Dare I point out that Humanae Vitae does not draw the line there, Your Eminence?

No wonder that, over the past thirty years, countless Latin American Catholics, including dozens of bishops, have complained to me that U.S. population programs are an insult to their people, their families, and, yes to the Catholic Church itself. I’m sure Cardinal George meant to say “natural family planning” in his letter, but the absence of any meaningful effort on the part of the USCCB to convince its allies in the liberal wing of congress speaks for itself. It sounds an uncertain trumpet, at best. At worst, it delivers a message of silent approval, an abdication of Humanae Vitae, and a warm welcome for the Pelosi-Obama agenda in Washington.

Education: Control In The Long Run

Pelosi’s law relies on the unspoken assumption that children are the wards of the state, and grouses that funds could be more wisely spent elsewhere. This is hardly a new view, but never before has a presidential administration been so close to bringing us to a Brave new World. “Governments Line Up For [Stimulus] Dollars,” crows the Washington Post. As the private sector economy shrinks, Obama sees prospects for growth only in government. Behind all the prattle about “repairing infrastructure” lies a plan to federalize not only every aspect of the economy, but of education as well. The $900 billion stimulus bill contains over $150 billion for “education” – all of it for government schools, of course, with nothing for the eleven percent of American students who do not attend public schools. But with funding comes control, and we can only imagine what horrors the most pro-abortion administration in history will introduce into what will soon become a national social studies curriculum.
Ideologues abound in government education, and they are ever more gay-friendly and family-averse. Obama’s educrats will train children to expect the government to feed them (in the “school lunch” programs, which often include breakfast), to give them medical care (through the Medicaid S-Chip program), to monitor their parents and family life (through Child Protection Services), to give them training for life (through sex education), and, of course, to feed them the party line in whatever time is left for “class.”

If you think that we can defeat these efforts in court, consider: those pupils are also the future members of the juries who will hear our case.

The Old School And The New One

2009-04-27T20:10:00.000-07:00

A Dying Breed?

Senator Claiborne Pell, who represented Rhode Island forever, it seems, died at the age of ninety on New Year’s Day. He was an old-fashioned liberal and an old-fashioned gentleman, two dying breeds on Capitol Hill. One of the richest men in the Senate of his day, he is famous for having authored legislation for taxpayer subsidies of students paying college tuition – which rose even faster than the rate of inflation, thanks to endless spending sponsored by – Senator Pell. Of course, like the government grants named after Senator Fulbright, not a penny of those billions ever came out of the private pockets of the senators. So goeth government “charity.”
One facet of Senator Pell’s senatorial demeanor is instructive: I worked with him often, and his staff hated the fact that their boss refused to make me work through them (they were, shall we say, not gentlemen). Senator Pell was always receptive. They were always belligerent. (Of course, I told them that they were welcome to work directly with Senator Helms any time they pleased. None took the dare.)
Fast forward to (you knew it was coming) our beloved bishops. During the Reagan years, a variety of “Catholics” in the U.S. (think “Catholics for Obama”) supported the communist movements that were ravaging various Latin American countries. Left-wing nuns came to see me all the time (and left as soon as I started asking about the founding principles of their orders: they sought ignorant ears). To balance the ledger, the American Foreign Policy Council (AFPC) started bringing to the United States bishops from Latin America to offer a different view: most USCC (later USCCB) staffers supported the revolutionaries. Most Latin American bishops did not.
One day, AFPC brought a Salvadoran bishop to see Archbishop William Borders of Baltimore (over his staff’s objections, of course). The archbishop was visibly moved to hear the views of his brother bishop, and kept extending the conversation. “My staff hasn’t told me any of this,” he said. But eventually the visiting bishop had a plane to catch. “Let me drive you to the airport myself,” said Archbishop Borders. “I want to hear as much as I can from you.”
Hardly an isolated incident. Once a Catholic staffer from the Reagan White House was visiting Archbishop Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo in Managua when the Sandinistas were in power. He asked the Cardinal why his brother bishops in the United States did not seem to be aware of the persecution of the Church in Nicaragua and why they were not speaking out. “They must not be reading their mail,” the Cardinal drily responded.
American bishops are very busy men (just try to see one). They rely on their staffs for information, which their staffs happily supply. That helps to explain why so many people in the pews are bewildered when the USCCB embraces so much of the Clinton-Obama agenda. In fact, even mustering opposition to the “Freedom Of Choice Act” seems to make many bishops uncomfortable. Well, a stroll through the USCCB parking lot of 2000 and 2004 would explain the problem: Gore and Kerry for President bumper stickers abounded (in 2008, the bishops themselves gushed with praise for Obama– most notably former USCCB president Wilton Gregory, now Archbishop of Atlanta.)
Let’s face it – especially since the scandals erupted, many bishops are gun-shy about the laity. After all, that’s where all the abuse victims and their families were, and a lot of them were pretty mad. Many bishops appear to trust their lawyers more than they do the laity. That has made reconciliation very difficult. Too many chanceries have retreated behind “policies and procedures” which are, alas, useless. Their silly “child protection” courses refuse even to call abortion child abuse! Nonetheless, when you get by their staffs, there are undoubtedly bishops, successors to the apostles, many of whom are like Claiborne Pell – true gentlemen. Let’s hope that, in the case of Holy Mother Church, at least, they are not a dying breed.
Competing Histories
Since Christmas, President Bush and many of his supporters have given interviews designed to defend his “legacy,” with the common theme that “history will vindicate” the president, even though he is unpopular now. Most of the defenders focus on the Iraq War, not on the economy or on social issues. In fact, that latter topic always seems to come in last. One of the most troubling observations came from David Kuo, who was deputy director of Bush’s Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives:
“The reality in the White House is—if you look at the most senior staff—you’re seeing people who aren’t personally religious and have no particular affection for people who are religious-right leaders…. in the political-affairs shop in particular, you saw a lot of people who just rolled their eyes at … basically every religious-right leader that was out there, because they just found them annoying and insufferable.”
Once more, pro-life voters have been taken for a ride by powerful cliques with private agendas (mostly money, influence, and power). As the last few months demonstrate, those people still run the GOP, and will, long after Bush leaves office. Don’t expect them to lift a finger to help us save one life from Obamanation’s Culture of Death.

The $100,000 Question

The bailout has cost eight trillion dollars already, we are told, and the “stimulus” will cost another trillion. Now Obama says that “trillion-dollar deficits may last for years.” Of course, this violates the Seventh Commandment, big-time. But, putting that aside, a question: why let the government spend all that money?
Here’s an idea. The Census Bureau says that there are 116 million households in America. Why doesn’t Obama merely give each head-of-household $100,000 and let them spend it any way they want? Total cost, $11.6 trillion – less than what Bush and Obama are spending right now. Just one problem: that lets the people, not government bigwigs, decide where the money will go. The beleaguered banks, insurance companies, mortgage lenders, and automakers are still going to get the money -- but they’ll get it from the people, not the government. Folks will pay off credit cards, mortgage balances, auto loans, insurance premiums, new cars – even (gasp!) open savings accounts! No Beltway lobbyists will be needed.
Right now, Mr. Paulson and the Federal Reserve are giving trillions secretly to their chosen cronies. The 116 million American households, still mired in hard times, aren’t getting a cent. After all that money is handed out, foreclosures and bankruptcies and collapses will continue unabated. The special interests will get trillions in taxpayer dollars and still be able to collect on all those additional trillions of consumer debt. Maybe, just maybe, that’s the way bankers like Paulson and politicians like Obama want it: they want everybody – the special interests and the beleaguered masses -- to depend on the government. Once again, freedom comes in last.

Love, Obama Style

My mailbox has been overflowing with invitations to purchase the “Obama Commemorative Dollar -- Washed with Gold and an Instant Collector’s Item!” As “Change” turns history upside down, I am tempted to take my precious coin of great price to Obama’s Sermon on the Hill on Inauguration Day. Perhaps, if I stand on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and hold it high, Obama will bless it for me from the Banks of the Reflecting Pool. After all, as our Latinist daughter observes, “Obama” spelled backwards means “I Will Love.”

Winners, Losers -- And Power

2009-04-27T20:09:00.000-07:00

The Rubble On The Right

The Obama juggernaut has done more damage to the country in a month than LBJ could do in five years, and Republicans seem powerless to stop it. They can’t even harness serious grass-roots opposition to the trillions of dollars that have flowed out of Washington since October. This is nothing new. The GOP has been losing credibility ever since it started backing George Bush’s “big government conservatism” years ago. Bush’s spending spree, coupled with the Iraq War, rivaled LBJ’s “guns and butter” policies during the Viet Nam War for profligacy. By last fall, when Bush bailed out the banks and bankers who (along with their political supporters) had gotten us into this mess, the Republican brand was virtually worthless.

For a while, GOP party regulars avoided that unhappy subject, but the tide is turning. One sign of candor comes from Newt Gingrich, who recently launched a salvo at “the Bush-Obama big government, big bureaucracy, politician-empowering, high-tax, high-inflation and high-interest-rate system.” Clearly, Gingrich recognizes that he risks alienating some pro-Bush stalwarts in the GOP, but two factors are on his side: first, Obama is going to keep on blaming Bush, so Gingrich may as well try lumping them together. After all, rhetoric aside, their approaches to the economic “rescue” do have a lot in common, and Newt wants to appear as the independent voice of reason. Second, in spite of the best efforts of Democratic spinmeisters, Newt knows that any alienation will fade as 2010 approaches and new faces come onto the scene (along with his old one, of course).

Gingrich is astute. As early as 2005, he privately acknowledged that 2008 would be a very tough presidential year. He told friends then that he was looking instead at a run in 2012 – seven years away. Candidate Gingrich would sound the “don’t blame me” mantra, since he had left congress long before Bush and congressional Republicans doubled the national debt by 2008. But he will have some serious explaining to do. For example, while he now insists that we turn our attention homeward from Iraq, he was once an ardent supporter of expanding the American war into Syria and Iran, in an effort to revolutionize the entire Middle East. Moreover, while his criticism of big government is appealing, he will have trouble attracting pro-family types. For one thing, every time he stages a political comeback, he seems to have a new wife. But he’s not ignoring the religious right: he just sent me an autographed copy of his “Discovering God In America.”

Sure, Newt’s trying to cover all the bases. But his frontal attack on Bush’s contributions to big government certainly confirm the widespread desperation in the GOP as it seeks new leaders and what’s left of its principles. Frankly, I wonder if any of the “old guard” Republicans can lead the GOP out of the desert where it now wanders. Only time will tell.

There Must Be Something In The Water

A Boston Globe series, oozing oceans of sympathy for the ailing senior senator from Massachusetts, sports a revealing headline: “Ted Kennedy had to weather the death of Mary Jo Kopechne,” it moans, and he thus lost an easy shot at the presidency.

Poor Teddy. All that bad weather. Tears all around, I’m sure. How thoughtless, really, of dying Mary Jo to ruin the career of a Kennedy. Imagine how much better off we’d all be if that senseless girl just hadn’t climbed into the back seat of Teddy’s car! Why, we could be enjoying five-cent Havanas, ten-cent gas, and years of peace and prosperity orchestrated by generations of benevolent Kennedys.

Instead, we’ve just had forty years of Ted’s bearing the baleful burden of bad weather, all because of that selfish Mary Jo.

So has the rest of the country, thanks in large part to liberals like John Kerry, the junior senator from Massachusetts, for whom last week was not his finest hour. The man who has serially wed increasingly wealthy women has harsh words for those who have earned their own money and want to spend it themselves:

"I've supported many tax cuts over the years, and there are tax cuts in this proposal,” Senator Kerrey reportedly said on the senate floor. “But a tax cut is non-targeted. If you put a tax cut into the hands of a business or family, there's no guarantee that they're going to invest that or invest it in America. They're free to go invest anywhere that they want if they choose to invest."

Apparently our families can be “guaranteed” that our money is being spent wisely only if we let Senator Kerry spend it for us. I can imagine him proposing to his wealthy wives…. “Let me show you how to spend your money wisely, my dear.” His approach does go a long way to explain why Massachusetts, with some of the highest taxes in the country, has one of the lowest per-capita charitable contribution rates of any state in the union.

Useful Idiots

Evangelical broadcaster Pat Robertson recently observed that Obama "has the makings of a great president." When Rush Limbaugh said “I hope he fails,” Dan Gilgoff of U.S. News asked Robertson to comment.
“That was a terrible thing to say,” replied Robertson. “I mean, he's the president of all the country. If he succeeds, the country succeeds. And if he doesn't, it hurts us all. Anybody who would pull against our president is not exactly thinking rationally.”
Well, to paraphrase Bill Clinton, it depends on what your meaning of “succeed” is.
Long ago, Soviet overtures of “peaceful coexistence” appealed to many Americans in the midst of a tense Cold War. It even took some time for our own State Department to realize what that concept meant to the USSR: “be so kind as not to interfere while we continue our conquests.” The sense of urgency created around the passage of the recent “stimulus” bill invites similar scrutiny. The bill was not an emergency measure written to solve the immediate financial crisis; it was a catch-all for every crackpot initiative ever conceived by left-wing senate offices and liberal lobbying firms, unions, and the rest of the tax-consumer peanut gallery, outrageous bills that would never have passed on their own merits. All over Capitol Hill, staffers rifled through old filing cabinets, looking for last year’s losers, because this year they could be winners. The “stimulus” was Christmas in February for special interests everywhere.

Health-care rationing is there, even though Hillary’s plan could not get a single vote in 1994; gun control is there, even though it could never pass on its own, no matter what party runs the congress. There is even four billion dollars for community agitators who have pledged “civil disobedience” on behalf of the poor. It is part Juan and Evita Peron, who ruined Argentina but were loved by “the poor,” and part Salvador Allende, whose shock troops (call them “community organizers”) I watched in 1973, marching through Santiago’s streets, menacing the citizenry and threatening violence to any critics.

Gerhart Niemeyer, America’s foremost scholar on Marxism-Leninism, wrote that “what Lenin demanded was that Communists use bourgeois institutions without keeping faith with them, that they participate solely with the intent of destruction, and that they obtain the institutions’ power but deny their order.”

Obama has used the congress, our most revered constitutional institution, to seize and maintain more power. He will not give it up lightly.

Nobody Here But Us Criminals

2009-04-27T20:06:00.000-07:00

Clinton Without the Criminals?

When Obama promised “change,” and then hired virtually the entire Clinton Administration, I was admittedly confused. I thought the age of “change” would avoid inviting the countless scandals that permeated those happy times when Bill Clinton was a Master of the Universe, and impeached. But already we are confronted with a classic Clinton Moment: “A full-court press by Obama’s team is likely to keep ethical questions from sinking the nomination of Treasury Secretary-designee Timothy Geithner,” reports the Politico. After all, Geithner only owes tens of thousands of dollars in back income taxes. He also had an illegal domestic servant, an offense which was considered to be so serious even in the Clinton years that two Clinton nominees for Attorney General were bounced on that account (Hillary Clinton, who was running that show, wanted a woman, so she finally found one who was unmarried and thus unencumbered by children who would need a nanny: Janet Reno).

The Clinton Administration was so rife with crime that America eventually yawned at reports several times a day of new malfeasance, enough special prosecutors to staff the Easter Egg Roll on the White House lawn, and stonewalls that would stretch to Rome if put end to end (OK, maybe Alcatraz). The current case of Mrs. Clinton, soon to be another thoroughly unqualified Secretary of State, is instructive. Hillary’s rap sheet would be as long as the waiting list for Redskins season tickets if she were a private citizen, but that did not deter senators of both parties from gushing over her at her confirmation hearings.

Their reception was a far cry from John Ashcroft’s experience eight years ago. The fact that Ashcroft was probably the most qualified Attorney General candidate in recent history did not deter the Democrats – we’re talking about his colleagues – from raking him over the coals at his confirmation hearings, goaded by the usual suspects -- left-wingers and the garden variety pro-aborts. Had Ashcroft exuded even a whiff of impropriety, his nomination would have been dead, of course. Witness the contrast to Hillary, who fairly reeks of criminality in every rehearsed smile. The only conclusion we can draw is that the Democrats are not going to change the beltway rule that has now, alas, become bipartisan: “Criminals Welcome!”

I worked for a major Chicago bank right out of college forty years ago, and was assigned to do some records research in the office of the Cook County Treasurer. Yes, this is the same Cook County that Barack calls home, and the same Daley machine was in power then. A dozen or so patronage employees sat at the huge conference table that dominated the records room, but I was apparently the only one working. Everyone else was just hanging out -- smoking, talking, reading, or talking to Mo, the bookie who ran the newsstand on the ground floor. Well, one day a new, smiling face came in the door. “Steve,” yelled my favorite hack. “When’d you get outta jail?”

“Yesterday!” Steve answered.

“Where ya workin’?”

“Here!”

Apparently, Obama has brought Chicago’s ways to Washington, masquerading as change. They won’t last, of course, but you sure can fool some of the people all of the time. Take Harry Reid, who is called the senate’s “Democratic Leader.” Mr. Geithner’s lapses bothered Harry none at all. “There's a few little hiccups, but that's basically what they are,” he said. “I am not concerned at all.”

Geithner will be handing out trillions, much of it in secret, to his banking pals. But hey, why worry? Isn’t that what change is all about?

Elvis And The Kings

If you ever want to use Elvis Presley’s image, recordings, or lyrics, be prepared to pay big bucks. His estate jealously guards those crown jewels of the man whom folks in Memphis simply call “The King.”

Well, Elvis is not the only bygone king demanding royalties. Over the years, the family of Martin Luther King, Jr., has made untold millions from licensing his works, sending a hefty bill to every media outlet that uses them. That effort can sometimes border on the tawdry: when the controversial decision was made to erect a memorial to King on the Washington Mall, King’s heirs immediately demanded a cut in the action, according to the Atlanta Constitution, or they would not permit his “name and likeness” to be used to raise money for it! I can see the fundraisers now: “Please help us honor you-know who!”

I’ve always gotten a kick out of this charade because I was teaching in Boston University’s Department of Religion when BU finally admitted that “Doctor” King had plagiarized, word for word, more than half of his doctoral dissertation in our theology department years before. In fact, Theodore Pappas, who has done the most extensive research on the subject, found that King plagiarized all the time, even in the popular “I Have A Dream” speech for which his family has demanded – and received – a king’s ransom. So it’s hardly surprising to read that the Atlanta University Center has paid the King Family $32 million for King’s papers, which were placed online for the first time in early January. Not surprisingly, readers are cautioned that, while they can read the papers, they are not allowed to quote them without paying a licensing fee (“please read silently: do not move your lips.”)

The observation of Eric Hoffer, the Longshoreman-philosopher, is probably most appropriate here: “Every great movement begins as a cause, becomes a business, and ends as a racket.”

Henry's Last Gasp

Henry Kissinger just won’t quit. Since 1957, he has advocated a New World Order, and he has seen every crisis since as a perfect opportunity for us all to join hands and leap into his one-world future. His latest piece is a conspiracy theorist’s dream, where he resonates his international billionaire clients (whose identities he has always refused to reveal), and demands that every country, including ours, must "redefine its national priorities." Or else.

Henry probably thinks that would be less work than cleaning house and throwing out the bipartisan gang of self-serving third-raters who have hijacked the American dream for their own power and profit. Instead, the virtuous people of Federalist 57 should relent, honor the hijackers' claim to superiority, let Henry trash the Constitution, and then hire him to write a New One.

You gotta hand it to Henry, he's got chutzpah. He has lived a life of self-indulgent, studied megalomania. “The alternative to a new international order is chaos,” he writes. Well, another alternative is the Constitution, but that’s pretty passé, isn’t it?

Henry’s logic is pretty simple: whatever he and his decadent pals can't control is, by definition, evil. It can be surmounted only by a "global agreement" with new "general rules" that everybody must follow. Big Brother, call your office.

Henry, meet the Leviathan. Unfortunately, Hobbes was wrong and Aquinas and Jefferson were right. The alternative to Henry’s nightmare isn't chaos. The alternative is freedom, following "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God."

Two Different Worlds

This year, the March For Life comes just two days after the inauguration. Somehow, I don’t think that many of those “Catholics for Obama” in town for the festivities will be staying on to join us in the March. And what about all those “Catholic” senators and representatives who are “personally opposed to abortion , but …”?

Well, I guess they just want to keep it personal.

2009-04-27T20:04:00.000-07:00

His Mysterious Majesty
Sirs, I here present unto you
Queen Elizabeth,
your undoubted Queen:
Wherefore all you who are come this day
to do your homage and service,
Are you willing to do the same?
The People signify their willingness and joy, by loud and repeated acclamations, all with one voice crying out,
GOD SAVE QUEEN ELIZABETH.
Then the trumpets shall sound.

[From the British Coronation Ceremony, June 2, 1953]

One of my favorite bumper stickers of all time appeared in 1960, when Barry Goldwater first sought the Republican nomination:

“Kennedy for King, Goldwater for President!”

The lavish love-fest of the media with Jack Kennedy back then was so smarmy that it was laughable. So was “Camelot.” But those poseurs were on to something -- there is something special about the royals. They are exempt from criticism, above the fray, and respected by all as a symbol of the unity of the realm.

That might go a long way to explain the magical portrayal of Obama that his handlers have projected to the world, courtesy of a swooning popular culture and a media in sheer rapture. There are some distinctions, of course: while Elizabeth’s coronation was followed by an Anglican Mass, Obama’s secular coronation was acclaimed by the masses on the Mall. But religious symbols fairly oozed around him: ministers anointed the Capitol doors; Oprah produced an elaborate YouTube video, featuring a Hollywood cast of thousands, chanting in unison, “I pledge, to be a servant to our president, and all mankind.”

This is nothing new in our collapsing culture, where secularism has long vied to displace religion not only in practice and principle, but in symbol. Why else would John F. Kennedy’s grave boast an “eternal flame” (probably the only one he ever had), than to anoint him as a secular saint, even a martyr?

These Manichees know what they are doing. Why else did George Washington, who could easily have been acclaimed king of the liberated colonies had he so desired, reject all trappings of royalty and serve only two terms in office? Our Founding Fathers believed that a republican government had no place for royalty. It was our Constitution that was revered – if we obeyed it. But Obama adroitly stakes his majestic claim by pretending to rise above politics: “we simply cannot afford the same old gridlock and partisan posturing in Washington.” In the past, these tired words were just pleasant banalities; but Obama, who is a cross between a secular savior and Lady Di, employs them to make his “change” not only irreversible, but unassailable – by secular divine right.

Hence, thou shalt not defy Our Dear Leader. However, if you want to deify him, no problem! On the Left, the full-court press is well under way. At New York University, a medieval literature professor urges her students to consider who is the most likely person in our time to receive the stigmata: it is Obama, she assures them. At George Mason University in Virginia, a history teacher surprises the students in her “Introduction To American History” course. “You’ve probably studied all this in high school, so we’re going to concentrate on Obama this semester,” she coos. Quiz at eleven.

The message is plain: Obama’s pedestal is so high that to criticize him is tantamount to a secular sin against the civil society that he so benevolently deigns to save and to rule. That is what “change” is really all about.

Maya Angelou is a laughable poet, but she has a zealot’s grip on the secular scripture: “We needed him. We the race needed him. We the American people, we needed him. And out of that great need, I believe he came. Barack Obama, Senator Barack Obama came,” she told the BBC.

Obama came. Oprah and Maya are his prophets. This is what we’re up against.

Tell It To The Judge

“Thou Shalt Not Steal. The Government Hates Competition”

[Sign in Dr. Ron Paul’s Congressional Office]

“The [ethical] bar that we set is the highest that any administration in the country has ever set,” says Obama’s White House, echoing Bill Clinton’s unforgettable promise to produce “the most ethical administration in history.” In order to fulfill that pledge, Obama has apparently hired every Clinton retread still living -- but it hasn’t helped.

“The problem with socialism,” Maggie Thatcher once said, “is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.” Well, Obama’s administration wants socialism, all right, but they sure don’t want to pay for it with their money. The ethical bloom has come off the royal rose as one leading Democrat after another has suddenly discovered, to his surprise, that, they simply forgot to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars of back taxes that they owed.

Among this veritable multitude, three deserve particular notice.

Obama’s nominee for Treasury, Timothy Geithner, apologized, then apologized deeply, for his “careless mistake” of not paying the IRS tens of thousands of dollars, and was then confirmed, thus putting a successful tax cheat in charge of the IRS. Even more reprehensible are Chris Dodd and Tom Daschle, who deserve a category all their own. Dodd, the Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, got a secret sweetheart deal worth $75,000 from a bank that he bailed out. Because he is a pro-abortion Catholic Democrat, the media have not called it a bribe. He will continue to be in charge of handing out taxpayer money to some banks, but not others.

Then there’s “Catholic” Tom Daschle. Twenty years ago he dumped his first wife and married a young Washington lobbyist. In 2003, when his bishop told him to stop identifying himself as a Catholic, Senator Daschle (who lost his bid for re-election in 2004), took to the Senate floor to denounce his bishop as a member of the ‘religious right.’ Since 2004, he has made five million dollars as a Washington insider. He just forgot to pay taxes on a lot of it.

None of these frauds will go to jail, of course. Meanwhile, one Randall Bradley Jones, who ran six houses of prostitution in Houston (which means that he is in a similar line of business), faces five years in federal prison. His crime? Not paying his income taxes.

Losers Claim Victory

Conservatism is up for grabs these days, and so is the GOP. So now appears a crowd of “experts” who support a “broader” Republican Party (Nelson Rockefeller, call your office). That new, improved party needs the thirty million or so votes that pro-family forces have delivered in the past, of course but it suggests that, well, maybe we can just shut up about our principles, because, well, that’s why we lost.

Not surprisingly, the touted “reformers” are actually the same crowd that advocated the worldwide crusade for democracy abroad and “big government” conservatism at home that brought the GOP crashing to defeat in 2006 and disaster in 2008. Life has never been their priority, but during the Bush years they held their nose and put up with us. Now, through a constant barrage of “broadening,” they want us to believe that a pro-life GOP would just be too “narrow” to win. They have a lot of support in the media and, naturally, among Democrats, since their success would condemn the GOP to permanent minority status.

Can You Hate Your Dictator (And Still Go To Heaven)

2009-04-27T20:02:00.000-07:00

Can You Hate Your Dictator?

Did the Russians hate Stalin? Did the Germans hate Hitler?

Let’s be more specific: did the 13 million killed in the Nazi camps hate Hitler? How about Stalin’s twenty million? Mao’s tens of millions? Castro’s? Pol Pot’s? Kim Il Sung’s?

And what about tyranny’s Catholic victims? When we read about the martyrs, we marvel at the way they forgive their torturers. But they were saints. What should we run-of-the-mill, uncanonizable Catholics do when tyranny closes in?

Not everybody thinks – or lives, or loves -- with the Catholic mind. In fact, hate seems to be getting more popular in recent years. “Evil currently stalks the earth because there isn't enough hate,” writes Shmuley Boteach on a conservative website (Boteach has been called “one of the world's most prominent rabbis”). Upon hearing that Yassir Arafat had died, when President Bush said “God bless his soul,” conservative columnist Jeff Jacoby countered, “God, I am quite sure, will damn him for eternity." And in a long-winded article in First Things, Rabbi Meir Y. Soloveichik celebrates “The Virtue of Hate” – grounded, apparently, in the Talmud, not the New Testament.

The Catholic call to love and forgiveness does not resonate universally. Of course, it’s not always easy for Catholics, either. Yes, we are taught to hate the sin but love the sinner. But aren’t we sometimes sorely tempted to hate not only the diktat, but the dictator? As George Orwell’s 1984 brilliantly reveals, loving Big Brother is a tall order. Yet, in the past few years our country has been brought to the brink of ruin by a band of profligates. The blame game is in high gear. At the moment, our attention is drawn by the media and politicians to the bankers and financiers as the villains who have brought on this collapse. But just as much ire could be directed at the politicians who pursued their private priorities, at home and abroad, instead of serving the common good and honestly administering the laws and the government to protect the common man. Their number could be legion. What they do is hateful. Are they?

“It Can’t Happen Here”

Riots are currently plaguing in the capitals of various European countries with troubled economies. Will they find their way to our own streets? An uncomfortable number of my neighbors in rural Virginia are not taking any chances. They are buying ammunition -- by the case, not the box. If past is prologue, in the case of insurrection (of which Jefferson was a big fan), our political leaders are not likely to come out on the balcony of the presidential palace like Romania’s Nicolae Ceauşescu and get taken to the wall by a firing squad. No, they will call out the troops to “restore order,” pass ever-larger “stimulus” bills to rob anyone who still has any money, and waste it on their politically-connected friends and supporters. After all, virtually every other country in the world has experienced such convulsions. Why not us?

This is the way of the world. We Americans have, in fact, been miraculously spared from many (but certainly not all) of the effects of domestic corruption in our brief history. Worldwide, corruption is the rule, not the exception. I have lived in corrupt countries. There the sun still comes up in the east, and the basics of life can go on -- you just have to bribe everybody to get anything done. And if you pay your prescribed taxes, you are certifiably insane, since the corrupt politicians will take everything you have if you let them.

When I was growing up in Cold War America, children often heard, “it can’t happen here” – a stern and possibly Pollyanna assertion, given that the most educated population in Europe in the early twentieth century was Germany’s. The “it” referred to the revolutionary devastation that was then convulsing the world. It couldn’t “happen here,” we were told, because we were protected by our traditions, our history, our common faith, and the Constitution.

Today, more than fifty years later, it’s fair to ask, why can’t it happen here? Faith, tradition, history, and the Constitution have been tossed in the back seat, and eventually thrown out the window, by the regnant ideology that now predominates in both political parties, the intelligentsia, and the permanent (and ever-expanding) government. The Obama government leans so hard to the left that the Catholic Church, Catholic institutions, and Catholic families are in real danger: they could come under attack at the drop of an Executive Order. So Catholics have to ask, “what is to be done?”

Over the past 30 years or so, many Catholics have been loyal defenders of the GOP because it became increasingly identified as the pro-life party. That might have been true of the Republican Party of the past, but it is true no longer. Today, both parties are trapped in the mire of socialism. The more ignorant they are of the dire circumstances our country faces, the more power they reflexively accrue to themselves. The Culture of Life is not high on either party’s agenda, alas. The economic decline and rampant inflation that the government’s latest “rescue” measures virtually guarantee will challenge Catholics for decades to come. Young families will have to make major sacrifices if they want to conform to Humanae Vitae in such hard times – if they want to be saints! One need only recall that the average Russian woman in the USSR had eight abortions during her lifetime. Ever since the publication of Humanae Vitae in 1968, American bishops have been reluctant to preach this dimension of the Gospel of Life. Will harder times make them more vocal? Or even more silent?

Change We Can Believe In

The Catholic approach to politics has changed before in American history, and it will soon have to change again. Recent trends are curious: while the people in the pews have gravitated towards the GOP, our bishops have gravitated towards the Democrats, and have drifted effortlessly with them to the left. We should declare both of these alliances obsolete. Today, neither party is the “Catholic” party. As Catholics, we must sunder our party ties and regain the independence from government which we have not enjoyed for over 100 years.

Catholics must abjure our past loyalty oaths to the party of our choice. The worst politicians prosper and the best throw in the towel. Yes, we must render unto Caesar, but we don’t have to canonize him. Nor must we submit to a shotgun marriage with his regime. Catholics are called on now to take a firm stand, independent of the state, and reject the state’s attempts at bribery (with other people’s money, of course) that has muzzled the Catholic Church’s voice on the most important moral issues that confront our country.

If the Church begins sounding a firm and certain trumpet, we cannot expect politicians to repent and change their ways. In fact, many are likely to become hostile to the Church that they have, up until now, been able to con. Assume, for instance, that a couple of dozen of the most prominent Catholic politicians who support abortion rights are formally excommunicated. Don’t expect them to fall on their knees and repent like Henry at Canossa. No, expect them to react like Senator Patrick Leahy, who has “always thought also that those bishops and archbishops who for decades hid pederasts … should be indicted.” Even harder times are coming.

Government Charity Is An Oxymoron

2009-04-27T20:01:00.001-07:00

Charity Under Fire

Obama’s planned tax hikes that will target the “wealthy” (that is, the top 5% of wage-earners who already pay over 60% of federal income taxes) also pose a lethal threat to religious charities that depend on voluntary donations (and I am not aware of any that don’t). Obama intends not only to raise the to tax rate on those top-tier taxpayers, but also to limit the amount of charitable deductions that those taxpayers will be allowed to deduct on their income-tax returns. Well, as the old saying goes, “if you tax something, you get less of it,” so Obama should not be surprised if charities suffer even more lost donations than the dismal economy has already caused.

In fact, Obama not only anticipates just such a decline – he has apparently already planned for it. According to the American Spectator, “Obama is telling charities, ‘Don't worry about the tax increase on your donors, government will be here to make up the difference if you have a down year because of my policies.’” The Spectator cites Capitol Hill staffers who are actually writing the legislation, who warn that if a charity receives any compensation from the “federal fund to offset charitable losses,” the money will come with strings firmly attached. “If, say, a Catholic hospital sought and received those funds, it would be required to adhere to federal polices on issues like abortion. Or the hospital could simply not seek the funds to make up the difference,” the staffer tells the Spectator.

This attempt at intimidation puts the Catholic Church in a very tight spot. Our bishops already receive billions a year in government aid for Catholic Charities alone. Catholic hospitals and universities get billions more. In Washington, there is always a quid pro quo. If the Church takes the quid, what quo are we giving in return? Could it be the silence of countless bishops regarding pro-abortion Catholic politicians? Or the mush-laden “guidance” that gave 55% of Catholic voters the USCCB’s imprimatur to vote for Obama? Whatever we’ve paid so far, Obama wants more. He is targeting all voluntary charity, discouraging charitable contributions from Catholic donors, and putting a gun at the head of submissive charities, forcing them to buckle under to the onerous anti-life regulations that the Obama Administration announces daily. It constitutes a nationalization of charity, pure and simple.

For Pope Benedict, deus caritas est. For Obama, it’s Caesar caritas est.

The End of the Affair?

For many years our bishops have traditionally been Democrat-friendly, but many are finally waking up to the aggressive war on the Church that is being waged by the core constituencies that control the Obama-Clinton Democratic party – the feminists, the pro-abortionists, and the homosexual activists. In California, even liberal bishops were shocked at the vulgar hostility directed at the Church and other supporters of Proposition Eight, the successful constitutional amendment that confirmed the traditional legal principle that marriage is between a man and a woman. Now, in Connecticut, two rabidly pro-homosexual legislators, State Sen. Andrew McDonald and State Rep. Michael Lawlor, have directed a shot across the Church’s bow with legislation that essentially demands that the Church hands over its administrative functions to the state. Admittedly, this is just one more incidence of petulant outrage from vexed “gay rights” types, but as of this writing the state legislature has not censured these malefactors or expelled them for their blatant bigotry, even though the sole target of their legislation was Catholic parishes (as of this writing, the legislation has been withdrawn for review by the state attorney general).

Ironically, while the sponsors claim that the legislation aims to avoid mismanagement of funds, they are silent on the most egregious case of church management in the state, perpetrated by the gay pastor of the most wealthy parish in the Bridgeport Diocese. The priest, the affable (and now former) Father Michael Fay, flaunted his flaming homosexuality for years, parish regulars tell the Wanderer, and is now serving time in state prison for stealing and spending hundreds of thousands of church funds on his New York boyfriend. Another Bridgeport Diocese pastor, Father Michael Moynihan, has since been removed for stealing hundreds of thousands from his parish for his New York boyfriend in a case strikingly similar to that of Fay).

Bridgeport Bishop William Lori condemned the McDonald-Lawlor bill, which he called “a thinly-veiled attempt to silence the Catholic Church on the important issues of the day, such as same-sex marriage.” His observation represents a great step forward – finally, an important Church leader has recognized that a rogue government will vindictively punish those who disagree with it. Now if only our bishops recognized that the billions they receive might be a reward from a rogue government for their silence -- a silence on which Nancy Pelosi, Chris Dodd, Ted Kennedy, Patrick Leahy, Dick Durbin, and countless other pro-abortion legislators depend every time they identify themselves as Catholics and present themselves to receive the Eucharist.

Silent Knights

The late Avery Cardinal Dulles once observed that, in these troubled times, while the Church required “extraordinary” bishops, most of our bishops were “ordinary” men. In this age of the laity, one would expect that extraordinary laymen and laywomen would step forward to sustain our shepherds, and undoubtedly many have. However, if the bishops were to look for guidance from lay leaders, they might be distressed at how uncertain is the trumpet’s sound.

Consider the challenges confronting Archbishop Donald Wuerl of Washington, D.C. Since he arrived in the nation’s capital, he has been confronted with pro-abortion Nancy Pelosi’s “Inaugural Mass” at Trinity College, the host of pro-abortion legislators who regularly receive the Eucharist in his archdiocese, and, most recently, the nomination to Obama’s cabinet of Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius, whose archbishop has publicly barred her from receiving the Eucharist. Now comes news of the nomination of the former Mayor of Washington, abortion-rights supporter Anthony Williams, to be a Knight of Malta.

Founded in the eleventh century, the Order of Malta is older than most of the religious orders in the world. Its members are drawn from the ranks of the influential, the wealthy, and the accomplished. Its members perform remarkable corporal and spiritual works of mercy. Among them are many of Cardinal Dulles’s “extraordinary men” who also provide substantial financial support to the Church. But if Archbishop Wuerl looked to these leaders for a sententia laicorum communis to inform his priorities, we could not blame him if he concluded that the Culture of Life was not very high on their list – even though the Church expects the laity to take the lead in issues regarding secular government and legislation (Can. 212§3).

Most Reverend Thomas Welsh, R.I.P.

Bishop Thomas Welsh, the founding bishop of the Arlington Diocese, was buried last week. A modest, holy, and very effective man, he is the reason I first moved to Arlington almost thirty years ago. His new diocese was created both to reflect the growth of Virginia’s Washington suburbs (“We’re the bedroom of Washington,” he told me in 1977), and to separate out northern Virginia from the very liberal Diocese of Richmond, which until then had encompassed the entire Commonwealth (when Virginia’s population was four percent Catholic). Bishop Welsh attracted many wonderful priests and encouraged the founding of many vibrant apostolates in the diocese, and laid a solid foundation for an orthodoxy that has survived the vicissitudes of the passing years, by the grace of God. May he rest in peace.

Write Christopher Manion and discuss (or criticize) his Wanderer articles at the Catholic Guys Internet blog (http://thecatholicguys.blogspot.com).

The Rule of Law and The Suggestion Of Force

2009-04-27T19:58:00.001-07:00

About Those “Special Relationships”

Ever since World War II, American diplomacy has taken on an informal tone, simply ignoring technicalities like the Constitution. At Yalta, FDR secretly gave away Eastern Europe and its fifty million Christians to our ally, Josef Stalin. In similar fashion, with the “Kennedy- Khrushchev Accords” JFK secretly agreed with the Soviets to allow Castro to remain in power in Cuba.

The courts have determined that all of these agreements, legally termed “executive compacts,” have the same status as treaties, and are thus recognized as part of the “Supreme Law of the Land” -- even if their content is never revealed to the public. Thus my consternation when I read the London Telegraph headline: “Obama reaffirms belief in the special relationship with Britain.” The “relationship” referred to is one so special that it has never been articulated, much less incorporated into a treaty that is publicized and debated in the senate, where it must be consented to by two-thirds of the senators present and voting.

On the third of March, British Prime Minister Gordon visited the Obama White House. Brown, the successor to Tony Blair, is a failing politician in charge of an even more quickly failing state once known as the British Empire (which has retreated from most of her imperial colonies, save those stolen from Argentina, Ireland, and Spain -- all three of which, by sheer coincidence, are Catholic). Mr. Brown brought to America a lofty new goal to share with his “special” friends: as the London Times reports, “The prime minister will borrow from the rhetoric of Franklin Roosevelt, who introduced the government-financed New Deal to tackle the US Depression of the 1930s. He will argue that his 21st century ‘global new deal’ will also require public spending on a huge world-wide scale.” Mr. Brown himself described the goal of this undertaking as “a more stable world where we defeat not only global terrorism but global poverty, hunger and disease.”

A noble cause indeed – why, it might take two terms! But, as our favorite congressman used to shout from the back benches, “Where are we going to get the money?” That’s a good question, and you will not be pleased to hear the answer, because, since Britain is broke, the money is going to come from us. Mr. Brown faces dismal electoral prospects at home, and is obviously looking to stay in office by every possible means. Why not do it with our money? So he promises to lead “a genuinely new era of international partnership” -- which we will pay for.

Now of course all this is preposterous leftish blather, even for a Brit. But while Mr. Brown tries to pick our pocket, we hear nary a word from our elected representatives. After all, we have that “special relationship.” Consider: according to the World Bank, there are two billion people in the world who live on less than two dollars a day. With a mere two billion from the U.S. taxpayer, Mr. Brown can double their living standard -- only for a day, of course, assuming that the bureaucrats passing out the money will work for free. But lifting them out of poverty for an entire year will only cost us an additional seven trillion! And that’s only ten percent of all the liabilities, funded and unfunded, of the U.S. Government. So, Mr. Brown, why not go for ten years? It will only double our debt, and think of all the good it will do!

Because these “special relationships” have the power of treaties, they are not only very secret, but also very dangerous. And they can cost much more than money: we have a similar unwritten “special relationship” with Israel, whose government Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has promised to support “forever.” Perhaps she overlooked the fact that the U.S. Senate has never debated a security treaty with Israel, much less consented to one. Yet our security responsibilities to that country, as well as to Iraq, Pakistan, Mexico, and countless other governments with whom we have no valid security treaties, are as immense as they are hidden.

“Get In Their Face”

That’s what Obama told his supporters to do, and he’s off to a flying start. The latest provocation arrived with the selection of Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius as the new Secretary of Health and Human Services. Briefly described, she will be in charge of advancing domestically the Culture of Death in America for Obama.

Mrs. Sebelius is one of those Catholics who has a real bishop – in this case, Archbishop John Naumann of Kansas City. The Kansas City Star, irate that it does not dictate Church policy, insists that the archbishop is interfering with “good government” because he has publicly advised Sebelius not to receive the Eucharist. But the good archbishop is the shepherd of souls, not pols, and calmly explains his action this way: “ if an individual persistently acts publicly in a manner that is inconsistent with fundamental moral teachings of the church and continues to receive Holy Communion, a bishop may feel obliged to intervene for the good of the individual and to protect others from being misled.”

The archbishop goes on to say that Sebelius’s actions are scandalous, and explains why: “"To give scandal means more than to cause other people to be shocked or upset by what one does. Rather, one's action leads someone else to sin. Scandal is an attitude or behavior which leads another to do evil. The person who gives scandal becomes his neighbor's tempter.” In that regard, the archbishop explains that his action was based on Sebelius’s “30-year history of advocating and acting in support of legalized abortion.”

As advertised, Obama’s shock troops have gone into action. One front group called “Catholics United” (Hmmmm … I must remind the Pope to trademark that word “Catholic”) accuses Archbishop Naumann of “being more interested in trying to score political points against the governor than in crafting effective abortion policy within the reality of politics.” This outburst follows the pattern of pro-abortion politician who want to be identified as “Catholics.” They accuse the Church of “using the Eucharist as a weapon” a revealing charge, because to this crowd all life is political. Hence, those responsible for our salvation should cool it.

Obama’s supporters insist that Sebelius’s cabinet appointment represents the triumph of “good government,” Do we need more proof that Obama’s government is bad? Isn’t it unwise for our bishops to continue accepting billions of taxpayer dollars a year from such a government?

Travelers Advisory

A U.S. customs officer at the Canadian border recently pepper-sprayed a driver who had offended the officer by asking him politely to say “please.” The Customs spokesman explained to me that officers are trained to do so when a driver is “noncompliant to an order (in this case, ‘turn off your car’) in a dangerous situation.”
The message here is straightforward: you should treat every encounter you have with the government as a “dangerous situation.” Is the Child Protection Services coming to take your kids because your homeschool curriculum does not include "diversity-based sex education"? Is the ATF coming to take your guns because Obama says only the government (and criminals, of course) should have guns? Does "Social Services" want to inspect your house before you are allowed to care for your ailing spouse at home?
Well, now. Here's what not to tell them as they break down your door: “Say 'please'!”

Write Christopher Manion and discuss (or criticize) his Wanderer articles at the Catholic Guys Internet blog (http://thecatholicguys.blogspot.com).
[3-05-09]

Obama's Hymn Book and the NY Times's Chorus

2009-04-27T19:53:00.000-07:00

As The Smoke (And Mirrors) Clear

With every passing day, President Obama’s true priorities -- as opposed to those he expressed during the campaign -- come more clearly into focus. As far as “change” is concerned, a lot of things haven’t changed that much at all. In foreign policy, U.S. combat forces will remain in Iraq until all areas there are “secure”; U.S. troop numbers in Afghanistan will continue to increase; Latin America moves ever further left, ignored as usual by administrations of both parties; Mexico continues to collapse, with barely a shrug from the U.S. Economically, Obama’s “big government socialism” just puts George Bush’s careening “big government conservatism” into high gear, with a sharp jerk to the left: more of everything -- welfare, government, deficits, taxes, and corruption. The endless bailouts feature the same cast of politicians and corporate leaders, still fighting over how they will spend more of our money, while the budget deficits and the national debt continue to rise, just like before.

There is, however, one critical area of government policy that has changed plenty – and for the worse: The Obama Administration has declared an all-out war on the Culture of Life, and the pace of his offensive is simply breathtaking. Not only has Obama rushed to reverse by executive order every pro-life policy within reach; he has also made sure that every single appointment in his administration goes to seasoned, cunning, and committed veterans of the Culture of Death. Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, and Kathleen Sebelius are only the most prominent diehard pro-aborts on the Obama team. The president is making sure that every appointee throughout the administration and the federal courts toes the line when it comes to denying life at every possible stage. This is a major league litmus test, and everybody has to pass it.

But doesn’t every administration do the same thing ? Didn’t Ronald Reagan appoint only conservatives? Well, in the vaunted language of indignant politicians, “nothing could be further from the truth.” Sure, Ronald Reagan was a conservative. But when he chose Bush the elder as his vice-president, the sharp elbows began their work. And once Bush’s former campaign manager, James Baker, became Reagan’s White House Chief of Staff, the gloves came off.

A president can name some three thousand appointees to the executive branch. There they manage a couple of million entrenched bureaucrats. Unfortunately, those couple of million folks are usually inclined to be liberals (witness the agendas of their unions, which are among the most left-wing – and powerful -- in the country). So when a Democrat is in the White House, his appointees will only be making sure that the bureaucracy is doing what comes naturally – that is, acting liberal. But when the president is a Republican, then every presidential appointee is facing a hostile work environment from day one – and the primary source of that hostility is the bureaucrats who are supposed to be working for him.

From Ronald Reagan’s White House, Jim Baker did everything he could to undermine the president’s conservative instincts. “Personnel is policy” was the mantra of the true believers who pursued conservative principles in those days. Well, Jim Baker made sure that he controlled the personnel. Yes, Ed Meese, Judge Bill Clark, and other stalwarts had their say, but Baker was the master manipulator, unencumbered by the principles that occupied most of the attention of the good guys. Baker proved his point with a vengeance when Vice President Bush finally succeeded Reagan in the White House. Baker’s first order of business was to cleanse the entire executive branch of any “Reaganaut” holdovers – and he was as thorough as Bill Clinton was when he fired all the U.S. attorneys in the country (except Michael Chertoff) on his first day in office.

That pitched battle goes a long way to explain how the record of the Reagan Administration was not so conservative as Reagan was. No such problem will plague the Obama team. These guys are all singing from the same hymn book, and the worst is yet to come.

The Poison Peanut Gallery Chimes In

The New York Times might be shrinking rapidly, but when it comes to bashing pro-lifers, it’s never been a shrinking violet. Its premier Sunday columnist Frank Rich often flaunts his contempt for religion and the right, but now he’s written our obituary. “The family-values dinosaurs that once stalked the earth — Falwell, Robertson, Dobson and Reed — are now either dead, retired or disgraced,” he chortles. In these hard times, “Culture wars are a luxury the country — the G.O.P. included — can no longer afford.”

So the war is over, and the Times won. Well, that was easy. For proof, Rich gloats that even “the two antiabortion Kansas Republicans in the Senate, Sam Brownback and Pat Roberts, both endorsed [Governor Kathleen] Sebelius” to be Obama’s Secretary of Health and Human Services. But Rich ignores Sebelius’s Archbishop, Joseph, Naumann, who has publicly barred her from the Eucharist over her support for abortion. And Rich also ignores that most heinous of “family-values dinosaurs,” the Catholic Church, which (tremble) is vastly more popular even than the New York Times.

Will the “religious right” ever have a comeback? Well, “history is cyclical,” writes Rich – but there his predictive powers fail him. As Catholics know, history is headed only in one direction, and at its end lie only the Four Last Things. And the Times, alas, will not be one of them.

NYT Or CNS – Which is Worse?
When Archbishop Raymond Burke recently criticized the Catholic News Service (Rubble, February 19, 2009), he was on to something. A recent CNS article on Pope Benedict’s lifting of the excommunications of four SSPX bishops is a case in point. CNS cites “miscues at the Vatican” that prompted an “overwhelmingly negative reaction.” Whence came that thunderous outcry? The CNS author is silent. We must look to the New York Times to fill in the blank. There, Times Rome Bureau Chief Rachel Donadio identifies the source of the “overwhelmingly negative reaction.” Not surprisingly, it came from “Jewish groups and liberal Catholics.” Are you chagrined? Ms. Donadio pretends to be: “the pope is increasingly focused on internal doctrinal issues and seemingly unaware of how they might resonate in the larger world,” she frets.
While the Times trumps CNS on this story, it does not come off clean. Ms. Donadio calls the SSPX the “ultra-conservative Society of St. Pius X.” Well, a search of the Times archives reveals that its stories employ the term “ultra-conservative” approximately three times as often as the term “ultra-liberal.” Moreover, while “ultra-liberal” usually appears in a quote from a conservative who is complaining about a liberal personality or policy, “ultra-conservative” is routinely used by the Times writers themselves to describe anything or anyone they disagree with.
Now He Tells Us
Constitutional Law Professor Doug Kmiec played a prominent role in Obama’s campaign, and helped deliver a majority of the Catholic vote to the Democrat. On Saint Patrick’s Day, Kmiec who has Parkinson’s Disease, wrote to oppose Obama’s reversal of President Bush’s policy regarding embryonic stem-cell research. “To avoid cooperating with an intrinsic evil,” he declared, “this trembling hand is not to take hold of any medicine or participate in any medical treatment advanced by research involving the destruction of a human embryo.”

When I shared Kmiec’s article with a prominent pro-life leader, he replied simply: “Sanctimonious bull. He should have thought of this before he endorsed Obama.” I concur.

Write Christopher Manion and discuss (or criticize) his Wanderer articles at the Catholic Guys Internet blog (http://thecatholicguys.blogspot.com).

By Popular Demand ...

2009-04-27T19:49:00.000-07:00

I'll be posting some of my old Wanderer columns here a couple of weeks after they hit the streets. Here's the first from mid-April on Notre Dame and Obama

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What’s In A Name?

What is a “brand” name? It’s the name of a commercial product or service that its owners want to drill into your head with so much advertising that the name is literally “branded” into your brain. Think Coke, Sony, or Nike. These companies trademark their brand names and carefully protect them, because they are among their most valuable assets.

A brand name can be worth billions. Fifty years ago, I went to school with one of the Maytag boys from Newton, Iowa, where the Maytags had made washing machines since 1907. Over the years, the picture of “Ol’ Lonely,” that smiling Maytag repairman who never had any work to do, was pounded into our subconscious by a phenomenal ad campaign combined with a superb product. By 2006, unfortunately, Maytag realized that it couldn’t keep up with its competitors, who had outsourced most of their production to cheaper foreign labor. The Maytag company couldn’t keep going, but the Maytag name was a household word, beloved by millions. What to do?

Along came the Whirlpool Corporation, a Maytag competitor. They bought Maytag for over a billion dollars, and kept right on making “Maytags,” relying on the famous name’s sterling reputation. But there was just one problem: the new Maytags didn’t work. They caught fire, flooded, caused mildew, and kept breaking down. The brand plummeted when outraged customers realized that they weren’t getting the fabled old Maytags from Newton, Iowa. Meanwhile, poor “Ol’ Lonely” was quietly retired.

When businesses are bought out, they don’t always inform their customers. In fact, preserving brand loyalty often requires that the original, popular product image be perpetuated -- and for good reason. As the new owners adjust to new market realities, the quality that made the product famous when it was part of a family enterprise often suffers. A few companies, like Wal-Mart, prosper by bragging about the savings their customers can reap by buying cheap Chinese goods, but most are not so ostentatious – especially those who have built up strong brand loyalty over the years.

A corporation normally assigns a dollar amount on its balance sheet to the accumulated value of its reputation and the brand names it owns. For instance, Procter and Gamble’s balance sheet reports assets of $93 billion in line items reflecting “Goodwill” and “Intangibles.” That staggering figure represents the value of the solid reputation of the company and of its brands, which include Crest, Herbal Essences, Pampers, and Tide. P&G relentlessly maintains high product quality and spends millions protecting its brands from being pirated or misrepresented.

For decades, every tube of Crest Toothpaste has borne a seal of approval from the American Dental Association. But if Procter and Gamble started pushing shoddy products – if the ADA announced that “Look, Mom! No cavities!” was false advertising – the company would suddenly be worth $93 billion less, without losing one tube of toothpaste, one office building, or one manufacturing plant. “Goodwill” and other invisible “intangibles” are that valuable.

“Welcome To Fighting Humanist U”

All this comes to mind as I read that Bishop Thomas G. Doran, of Rockford, Illinois, has written a letter to university president Father John Jenkins, C.S.C., in which he recommends that Notre Dame change its name to “The Humanist University of Northwest Indiana.” Bishop Doran has a point. Now more than ever, The University of Notre Dame is a secular business, a corporation – and a very rich one. Its administrators recognize that they have inherited valuable brand names which were dear to millions of Catholics when the university was run by a family – the priests of the Holy Cross. But after the 1960s, when they sold out to a competitor – the popular culture -- their product began to decline in quality. But the price did not decline. Why not? Brand loyalty. Long after Whirlpool bought out Maytag, long-time Maytag owners were still recommending them. My wife’s mother loved hers, and that’s why we got ours, years ago. I would heartily recommend it today, if I hadn’t read about the precipitous decline in quality since then.

So the lay board of trustees that now owns and runs Notre Dame inherited several valuable assets. Josef Pieper points out in his Guide to Saint Thomas Aquinas that the very word universitas appears for the first time in a papal document during the reign of Pope Innocent III in the early thirteenth century. As to “Notre Dame,” Bishop Doran advises Father Jenkins that “it is truly obscene for you to take such decisions as you have done in a university named for our Blessed Lady, whom the Second Vatican Council called the Mother of the Church.”

Truth In Advertising?

So “The University of Notre Dame” inherits her entire name and title from the loving hands of Holy Mother Church. But in 1967, Notre Dame formally divorced itself from the Catholic Church with the Land’O Lakes statement. Its new lay board, comprising several very sharp businessmen, did not junk the valuable brand names – “Catholic” and “Notre Dame” and all the trimmings. They wanted to pretend that their product represented the same orthodox, faithful brand. They knew what the market wanted to hear. So Notre Dame kept the gold on the dome, the Grotto, and the Log Chapel – valuable trademarks that used to symbolize doctrinal reality -- but they put new toothpaste in the tube. Now, the ADA’s experts would become quite upset if Procter & Gamble started replacing its toothpaste with Twinkie’s sugar filling, and dentists everywhere would quickly take notice. But what if the experts and the dentists went along with the deception? After all, spiritual decline in the education of souls is harder to detect than a cavity. Moreover, the Day of Reckoning for the soul stuffed with counterfeit teaching comes only in the afterlife – “beyond the bottom line,” so to speak.”

Notre Dame has divorced the Catholic Church, but, in biblical terms, it has “put her away quietly” (viz. Matt. 1:20). Oh, and it forgot to tell its students and alumni. In fact, many Catholics are under the impression that they’re still married. No bishop has issued an annulment, after all. In fact, Cardinal Francis George, Archbishop of Chicago and the President of the USCCB, has sharply criticized the Obama invitation, but says that “the bishops don’t run Notre Dame.” Immediately, the brass-knuckled bag-man of the Chicago Democrat Machine, William E. Daley, accused Cardinal George (but not Father Jenkins) of “mixing religion and politics.” Whereupon Notre Dame’s limping light of heterodoxy, Father Richard McBrien, chimed in, telling the New York Times “This crowd are [sic] simply Republicans who are upset that Obama won the election — and they want to pick a fight.”

As Sherlock Holmes said to Dr. Watson, “Watson, when I say you are instructive, I mean I learn from your mistakes.” Father McBrien has let the cat out of the bag. For those supporting the Obama invitation, it’s all about politics. By reputation a theologian (a valuable brand, however abused these days), McBrien simply sees no moral problem with Obama at all.

A friend recently noted a troubling contradiction in McBrien’s approach to priorities. When shopping for a wide-screen TV, he’ll undoubtedly look for the sharpest picture he can find. But when it comes to morality, he will use every means possible to blur every distinction, every revealed truth. Well, when it comes his students at Notre Dame, we can only hope that they will learn from his mistakes.

Write Chris Manion and discuss (or criticize) his Wanderer articles at the Catholic Guys Internet blog (http://thecatholicguys.blogspot.com).

I Love the Wanderer!

2009-04-23T14:54:00.000-07:00

The Wanderer has been a staple in my mailbox for years, and while I was reading the April 16th issue today (which arrived with the April 23rd issue thanks to the efficiency of the USPS) I read about a bill in Congress that should make every woman in America furious. Remember when the pro-abortion community defined unwanted pregnancy as a sexually transmitted disease? Well now motherhood is a danger to women's mental health requiring government screening and treatment. (Excuse my cynicism, but I smell a pharmaceutical rat here. Makes you wonder which of the big drug companies are filling the campaign coffers of these politicians.)

HR 20 (S 324 in the Senate) is the "Melanie Blocker Stokes Mom's Opportunity to Access Health, Education, Research, and Support for Postpartum Depression Act." (Whew! You got that? Note that this is an "opportunity" not an intrusion.) This bill authorizes HHS to research post partum depression and the mental health of moms. It also authorizes "home-based health and support services" and calls for evaluating the benefits of screening all new mothers.

Now I don't know about you, but I find this chilling. In comes the white-coated government agent to the young mom. "Are you worried? Are you depressed? Are you anxious? (What brand new mom couldn't say yes to all of these questions?) Are you having problems sleeping? (No, I'm just up with the baby every two hours, idiot!) Well, have no fear, Mom. Have we got a pill for you!"

Evelyn Pringle, an investigative reporter, says "the true goal of the promoters of this act is to transform women of childbearing age into lifelong consumers of psychiatric treatment by screening women for a whole list of 'mood' and 'anxiety' disorders and not simply postpartum depression."

Well, the government covers the gamut for moms. Unwanted pregnancies are a "sexually transmitted disease" to be treated by abortion. (Money for the Tillers of this world who invest big bucks in politicians like Sibelius.) Motherhood is a disease requiring anti-anxiety and mood changing drugs and on-going psychiatric treatment. (More money to be shared with concerned politicians.) And for the kids we'll screen for hyperactivity and depression and prescribe ritalin and anti-depressants. (With government calling for mandatory screening of children in school for depression and other psychiatric problems. And, of course, more donations for the politicians.) Aren't we blessed to have the government and their big pharmacy donors so johnny-on-the-spot with cures for whatever ails you?

Only one question: Who will cure us of our intrusive and abusive government? If you don't subscribe to The Wanderer you should. What a wealth of information -- not to mention Chris Manion's great column!

Dark Clouds, Silver Linings at Notre Dame

2009-04-09T12:45:00.000-07:00

The Cloud Over The Dome

In 1974, I attended a meeting designed to probe the possibilities of rescuing Catholic education from the nebulous but ubiquitous “spirit of Vatican II.” At lunch, I joined Father Christopher O’Toole, C.S.C., and my own bishop, Leo Pursley, D.D., who had confirmed me years before. Why were these two luminaries interested in supporting efforts to preserve orthodox education for the next generation of college students? Their answer was blunt. “I’m doing penance,” said Father O’Toole, somberly. And Bishop Pursley nodded in agreement.

Penance for what? Well, Father O’Toole explained, as the Superior General of the Congregation of the Holy Cross throughout the 1960s, he had not done enough to prevent the secularization of Notre Dame during that fateful decade. Bishop Pursley, who had presided over the Diocese of Fort Wayne – South Bend for almost twenty years, also admitted that he had not been forceful enough with the university. That afternoon, both men agreed that, as far as Notre Dame was concerned, they had failed.

That conversation came to mind during the uproar that followed the recent announcement by Father John Jenkins, C.S.C., President of Notre Dame, that Barack Obama would address the Class of 2009 at commencement in May. This decision was shocking, yes -- but it was based on a fundamental error that goes back forty years.

In1967, a group of Catholic educators, led by Notre Dame President Theodore M. Hesburgh, met at Land’O Lakes, Wisconsin, and formally declared their independence from the Catholic Church. Alas, their motives were less than noble. Just two years before, LBJ’s Omnibus Education Act had opened the floodgates to federal funding of higher education, and Catholic colleges wanted a place at the trough. Notre Dame quickly adopted a lay board of trustees so it could receive federal money, and only a year later the other shoe fell when numerous Notre Dame faculty and religious roundly denounced Humanae Vitae.

In a 2007 Wanderer interview, Archbishop Raymond Burke zeroed in on Land’O Lakes as a central catalyst of decline in Catholic education. “So much was undone,” he said, “and there’s a mentality [that] entered into the universities by which those people who dedicated their lives to Catholic education believe that they could not be an excellent university and at the same time be faithful to the Church’s teaching and discipline. That is a fundamental error, and it takes a lot to undo it.”

Shaking Down The Thunder

Since announcing Obama’s acceptance, Father Jenkins has been deluged with phone calls, emails, and letters denouncing his decision and requesting that he rescind the invitation. Within days, 150,000 people signed an online petition at notredamescandal.com, and Notre Dame students began planning a series of events addressing Obamas’s policies that have already proven him to be the most pro-death president in U.S. history.

Not that any of this will bother Father Jenkins. Notre Dame’s administration these days is thoroughly intimidated by the increasingly left-wing and non-Catholic faculty, which apparently expects to be running the school within a generation. The reasons are simple. Consider the C.S.C.’s: the Catholic News Service incorrectly reports that Notre Dame is “run by the Congregation of Holy Cross.” Sorry, that ended forty years ago, when federal money required that the Congregation not run the school. Moreover, vocations to the C.S.C.’s are dwindling to the point that, in forty more years, priests on the faculty will be a rare anachronism. But won’t outraged alumni stop donating? No problem! NBC Sports has an exclusive multi-year contract to broadcast Notre Dame’s home football games. University spokesman Dennis Brown cannot reveal the amount the school receives from NBC, but a source in NBC’s New York headquarters says that Notre Dame receives more from NBC than it receives from all alumni giving. And what about that federal money? Mr. Brown tells the Wanderer that, in a typical year, Notre Dame receives about eighty million dollars in federal grants.

In brief, Notre Dame’s institutional priorities have moved since the 1960s from the principles of the faith to money and power. And what has been the engine of that change? Ralph McInerny, who retires this year after teaching philosophy at Notre Dame for fifty-four years, blames it on the university’s “truly vulgar lust to be welcomed into secular society.”

In short, from the point of view of Notre Dame’s first priority since 1967 – money – the Obama invitation is a win-win situation. The uproar delights the faculty: their status rises in the eyes of their secular counterparts who sit on the “peer review” committees that approve federal grants. So does their prestige, since being a Catholic who actually embraces Church teaching is a ticket to nowhere among any university’s faculty nowadays.

The Silver Lining

Two opportunities emerge here. First, in brushing off the avalanche of criticism, Father Jenkins, at the end of some blather celebrating Obama’s appearance, said that “we see his visit as a basis for further positive engagement.” Well, a number Notre Dame students have taken him seriously. Already, several organizations have banded together -- first, to repudiate the invitation, and second, to organize a series of events that will reveal whether Father Jenkins is as good as his word. Does Obama really want engagement? Does he really want to discuss embryonic stem-cell research beyond the blithe pleasantries he offered at his press conference on March 24th? How about the ten billion condoms that the U.S. has sent to poor countries around the world? Would Obama care to compare his views on African AIDS with those of Pope Benedict? And, if the president is “personally opposed” to abortion, will students have a chance to ask him why he is personally opposed? What is it about abortion that is so gruesome that he would personally oppose it, when so many of his ardent supporters are pro-abortion zealots?

The second opportunity lies with the real authority here -- diocesan Bishop John D’Arcy. Canon Law gives the Ordinary, not the university, the right and the duty to bestow and to remove the name “Catholic” from any institution or endeavor in his diocese (C216). There is recent precedent. Last fall, Arlington Bishop Paul S. Loverde announced “that Notre Dame Academy can no longer identify itself as a Catholic school.” The academy, founded in Middleburg, Virginia by the Sisters of Notre Dame 45 years ago, is now governed by a lay board of trustees who no longer want to uphold the teachings of the Church. Bishop Loverde thus announced that “the school will no longer have the Blessed Sacrament reserved in its chapel and the diocese will not be able to guarantee the quality or authenticity of religious or other instruction.”

Bishop Loverde saves the best ‘til last: “I have strongly suggested to [the Chairman] that the Board of Trustees consider changing the name of the school. The title ‘Notre Dame’ (Our Lady) is so closely associated with our Catholic faith that continued use of the name would undoubtedly be a cause of confusion to potential students and their families.”

Bishop D’Arcy wrote that “President Obama has recently reaffirmed, and has now placed in public policy, his long-stated unwillingness to hold human life as sacred,” the bishop wrote, announcing that he would not attend the ceremony.

But he can do more. Let us pray that Bishop D’Arcy doesn’t someday lament that, when it came to Notre Dame, he was not forceful enough.
Contact Bishop John D’Arcy at P.O. Box 390, Fort Wayne, Indiana 46801.
Write Chris Manion and discuss (or criticize) his Wanderer articles at the Catholic Guys Internet blog (http://thecatholicguys.blogspot.com).

The Wanderer, April 9, 2009

Notre Dame, Our Lady, and The Price Of Prestige

2009-04-09T12:41:00.000-07:00

The Visitation Versus The Visit

And whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?
For, lo, as soon as the voice of thy salutation sounded in mine ears, the babe leaped in my womb for joy. (Luke 1:43-44).

During the recent Octave of the Feast of Annunciation, we contemplated Mary, who “arose in those days, and went into the hill country with haste,” to visit her kinswoman Elizabeth. Elizabeth and her unborn child were so thrilled -- they were “filled with the Holy Ghost.” Some of the most beautiful prayers of the Church flow from that joyous visit.

Our Lady visits Elizabeth – and us -- bearing the Word, the Messiah, Truth itself – the fulfillment of God’s promise to His people. In pondering the Second Joyful Mystery, who would not jump for joy like John the Baptist?

Well, apparently not everybody. Today the roles are reversed. Sure, the Notre Dame administration looks with nostalgic fondness to Our Lady, high on the Golden Dome. Mary, the Christ-Bearer, the Truth-Bearer, offers them the joyous promise of salvation in her Divine Son – but at a price. They pause. The price is high: Orthodoxy. Ridicule as a “Catholic backwater.” Permanent minor-league status.

And then, casting their eyes down towards the darkness, Notre Dame senses the awesome, majestic power that flows from the audacious messenger of earth-bound hope and the dynamic of the dialectic. In his presence, the teeming cauldron of unbridled passions is stirred -- honor, power, prestige, envy, superbia vitae. But the Fighting Irish nostrils tremble at the scent: could this secular savior actually reek of the stench of death? Is that aroma the cost of prestige?

Truth versus death. Who could hesitate at that choice? Only the clouded intellect would falter when meeting the ultimate supernatural object of its natural longing. But didn’t Pontius Pilate dither? And there he was, staring Truth in the face.

Not long ago, Notre Dame had to choose between the light and Plato’s cave. After centuries of prayer and sacrifice by generations of Christians who built Christendom and laid the intellectual and spiritual foundations for university life -- after a century of labor and prayer on the part of countless priests, brothers, and sisters of the Holy Cross, Notre Dame chose, a long generation ago, to turn its back on Holy Mother Church, who is inseparable from Christ, who is the Truth. And that choice has had consequences, although some of them took decades to come into view.

In declaring its independence from the Holy Spirit in favor of the Spirit of the Age, what did Notre Dame turn towards? Why, the future! After all, didn’t Harvard, Yale, and Columbia begin as seminaries? And didn’t those institutions eventually choose “excellence,” shedding the shackles of darkness and dogma to embrace the “search for truth,” unencumbered by the nagging nabobs of tradition? For the Apostles of Progress, faith was a ball-and-chain that imprisoned them in the ignorance of the past. In sundering their foul fetters, they leaped away from Christ and towards the future, full of the audacity of hope. In the 1960s, Notre Dame decided it wanted to play in that league, and acted accordingly.

The Two Standards

In the fourth day of his Spiritual Exercises, Saint Ignatius confronts the sinner with the Two Standards – “The one of Christ, our Commander-in-Chief and Lord; the other of Lucifer, mortal enemy of our human nature.” For Ignatius, these are battle standards – because, as Saint Paul makes clear, we are at war: “Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” (Ephesians 11-12).

You’d think that the Fighting Irish would identify with Ignatius’s call to battle. But over forty years ago, they decided to do the impossible: to serve two masters – to wear both uniforms. After all, doesn’t the United States still have a “special relationship” with Great Britain, even though we declared our independence 233 years ago? Why can’t Notre Dame still be “Catholic” without having to be encumbered by the double albatross of Catholic discipline and doctrine?

Well, since I first went there in the 1960s, Notre Dame has certainly prospered, even progressed - in the physical sense, at least. Countless green lawns, fields, and pastures have been replaced with opulent structures, many bearing the names of prominent donors (a couple of them, rest their souls, were friends of mine. Pray for them, please, but do not blame them for believing the priestly palaver. When they went there, clericalism was admittedly prominent, but most of the priests lived up to their side of the bargain: they told -- and taught -- the truth).

I think the reason that the Obama invitation has caused so much turmoil is simply this: the “grace period” that Notre Dame received when it divorced the Church (“but we’re still friends”) is now limping to its natural end. The “decent interval” has turned -- first, indecent; finally, squalid. They cannot resuscitate the cadaver – nor do they want to.

Notre Dame’s lurid infatuation with the secular elites offends Catholic sensibilities of alumni as the wandering eye of the adulterer offends the chaste and faithful spouse. Each furtive flirtation, each pocketing of the wedding ring, is scandalous and boorish. But alea iacta est -- the die is cast. Notre Dame knows full well that Harvard cannot go back to its Puritan past (John Harvard, its founder, was a Puritan Minister), nor can Columbia return to its Episcopalian, or Dartmouth and Yale to their Congregational, roots. In fact, today’s Notre Dame cannot even go back to the control of the Congregation of the Holy Cross. Alas, virginity does not grow back. As my father told his Notre Dame Law students, beginning in 1922, “if you take the first bribe, you may as well take the rest.”

Give Us Barabbas!

Juan Donoso Cortés, a nineteenth century Spanish Catholic, writes that “liberalism can survive only in that moment that society decides – Christ, or Barabbas!” As history goes, forty years is the wink of an eye. In embracing with such alacrity the Commanding General of the Culture of Death, has Notre Dame finally declared which side it’s on?

Notre Dame’s president, Father John Jenkins, has gotten tons of mail condemning his decision. The shortest was probably the one from an alumnus faxed sent three words to Jenkins’s office: “Give Us Barabbas!” Jenkins can do better. Al Smith, the Catholic Governor of New York, lost the 1928 presidential election to Herbert Hoover. The Saturday after the election, a priest giving the invocation at a dinner of the Friendly Sons of Saint Patrick joked that, after the election, Smith had sent the shortest telegram in history to Pope Pius XI. It contained one word: “Unpack.”

Frosting on the Cake

Father Jenkins has just announced the appointment of a new dean of Notre Dame’s Law School, Ms. Nell Jessup Newton, whose accomplishments include a maximum donation to the presidential campaign of Barack Obama. The law faculty features a number of superb Catholic scholars, but university Provost Thomas Burish made it clear long ago that he, and not they, would choose the new dean. Burish represents the secular-power faction of the faculty. They will not be happy until Hillary Clinton succeeds Father Jenkins.

[The Wanderer, April 2, 2009, p. 3]

The Brits Still hate Catholics

2009-03-28T06:52:00.000-07:00

Prime Minister Brown insists that he will not even discuss the Malvinas islands when he meets with the president of Argentina this weekend.

Notice to Mr. Brown:

England has prudently withdrawn from all of her colonies -- except those she stole from Catholic Countries. Gibraltar, Northern Ireland, and the Malvinas represent her counter-intuitive perpetuation of colonialism, which brought England to her knees.

Fascinating that, in these three cases, England's hatred of Catholics -- cloaked by "democratic" mumbo-jumbo (what happened to the original inhabitants of the Malvinas, Mr. Brown? Ah, expelled by force by British conquest! Sorry, let's throw that down the memory hole!).

You gave Rhodesia and Hong Kong to the Communists, India and Pakistan to the Moslems and Hindus. The American Christians had to fight for their independence, and won fair and square. Can't you read the hateful writing on the wall, with this bigotry of Catholic-hatred?

To all rational Englanders: you have bowed to the Ayatollahs and the Imams, you allow Shariah at home, but your crown and government still hate Catholics -- anywhere. Please, pray that God will cleanse your country of this hatred, which will only bring your continued ruin.

Look about you! Crisis everywhere! Decline, penury, suffering. Stop the hatred of Christ on the Cross and bring your colonial occupation troops home in peace.

Bishop Morlino's Charitable Act

2009-03-23T13:55:00.001-07:00

He dismissed Ruth Kolpac, an avowed feminist, from a parish job when she refused to recant her opposition to Church doctrine. Hey, what about affirmative action and "diversity" in the Church?

To appreciate the heights of Ms. Kolpac's intellectual accomplishments, you are welcome to read her master's thesis here, and judge for yourself (hint: did a woman scorned write Second Isiah? Read on!)

Thanks to the ever-vigilant Diogenes for defending this act of charity on the part of the good bishop. Charity, that is, to Ms. Kolpac for his gently reminding her of the truths of the faith, and, especially, to the students who have been spared her meanderings in the theological wilderness.

The London Telegraph Is Just As Bad

2009-03-19T18:44:00.001-07:00

The Brits, who never invaded a Catholic territory they could leave, are having a field day creating an alternative universe where Pope Benedict is a flop.

Satan's scribes are doing their best, as usual.

Is there an honest Prot in England? Please stand up!

London Times As Bad As the BBC

2009-03-18T18:46:00.000-07:00

They both hate the Pope.

So what else is new?

Hey, I know! Teddy K is a knight now. So what if his armor isn't shining?

At least he knows the day and the hour, no matter how much his acceptance of this tawdry honorific offends true Catholics and Irishmen.

Leave It To The Brits

2009-03-18T18:25:00.000-07:00

The BBC simply can't understand why the Pope opposes artificial birth control! And the dour Brits certainly can't fathom why chastity, or abstinence outside of marriage, or simple modesty or purity might appeal to all those African savages.

No, instead the Brits give a knighthood to Teddy K ("He had'is arm around'er but he didn't mean to drown'er") -- Sir Teddy of Chappaquiddick. That's their idea of the virtues of chivalry.

And then they go ferret out anti-Catholic "Catholics" to feather their intellectually impoverished nest with a catch-quote.

How dare the Pope enunciate Catholic principles. Why, it's just not Cricket!

Missionary Returns Award to Protest Eluana's Murder

2009-02-18T11:25:00.000-08:00

In response to the cruel dehydration killing of Eluana Englaro, Father Aldo Trento, a missionary in Uraguay since 1989, returned the highest Italian honor a citizen can receive, Knight of the Order of the Star of Solidarity.

"How can I, an Italian citizen, receive such an honor from you, who, with your action, permitted the death of Eluana in the name of the Italian Republic?"

See ZENIT News: Cases Like Eluana's Can Have Happy Endings

Will Eluana Be Dehydrated to Death like Terri?

2009-02-08T13:15:00.001-08:00

The fight over the planned dehydration murder of Eluana Englaro, Italy's Terri Schiavo, is raging. The young woman, like Terri, is in a state of diminished consciousness NOT A COMA. Like Terri she has a simple feeding tube for nutrition and hydration, but is not hooked up to any other life support. Like Terri, a family member, in Terri's case her husband Michael and in this case Eluana's father, wants her dead. Terri was offered lifetime care by the Missionaries of Charity, Eluana was in a hospice run by nuns who wanted to go on making her a loving home. Both offers were refused. Eluana was transferred to a home in a town on the Adriatic, Udine in Northeast Italy. Terri was executed in the Florida Gulf city of Tampa. Terri and Eluana share being literally between the devil and the deep blue sea. But the devil, in both cases, was and is standing over their beds. In both cases he wears a smile, speaks in lies, and works to expand the killing.

Italy's Prime Minister continues to try to save Eluana like Jeb Bush tried to save Terri. The Archbishop of Udine, Pietro Brollo, unlike his American brother Bishop Robert Lynch who assisted Terri's killers, is calling for "the suspension of this tragic execution and the conversion of hearts."

Eluana at 38 is a little younger than Terri who was 41. Both young women were vivacious with dark brown hair and dancing eyes before the injuries that left them brain-damaged. Both are victims of the neo-Nazi belief that some lives are not worth living. Pray for Eluana and especially for her father, Beppino Englaro. The murder of your own child is no small event. It was a father's murder of his infant son that ushered in the German T4 euthanasia program. What exactly will the repeat of such a diabolical event usher in today?

For the latest update on Eluana see:
Berlusconi under fire over Italian right-to-die case

LifeSite News provided the contact information below. Please call and email your protest to the Italian embassy of your country:

EMBASSY OF ITALY IN THE UNITED STATES
3000 Whitehaven Street, NW - Washington, DC 20008
Tel (202) 612-4400 - Fax (202) 518-2154
Press and Public Affairs Office
Tel (202) 612-4444
Fax (202) 518-2154
e-mail: stampa.washington@esteri.it

EMBASSY OF ITALY IN CANADA
275 Slater Street, 21st Floor
Ottawa, Ontario K1P 5H9
CANADA
Tel +1.613.232.2401 - Fax +1.613.233.1484
ambasciata.ottawa@esteri.it
Press and Information
Tel: +1-613-232-2401
Fax: +1-613-233-1484
email: info.ottawa@esteri.it

EMBASSY OF ITALY IN LONDON
14, Three Kings Yard
London W1K 4EH
Tel.: +44 (0)20 73122200
Fax: +44 (0)20 73122230
ambasciata.londra@esteri.it
Gianluca Grandi, First Counsellor
Domestic Politics, EBRD
bers.amblondra@esteri.it

Other Italian Embassies:

http://www.esteri.it/MAE/Templates/SediTemplate.aspx?NRMODE=...

Isabella has two mommies - or so they say

2009-01-27T09:52:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow in Vermont Lisa Miller and Janet Jenkins, former lesbian lovers, duke it out once again over custody of Isabella. The breach occurred when Lisa (the biological mom) decided to leave the lesbian lifestyle and return to Virginia. This case could have been resolved if Virginia courts had upheld the Defense of Marriage Act, but they didn't. Please pray for this little girl who is the face of the homosexual wars. If she ends up with Janet who continues to live the lesbian lifestyle, God help this precious little one. You can read more at my Les Femmes blog.

The Nature of Law and FOCA (The Wanderer, January 15, 2009)

2009-01-25T10:21:00.001-08:00

Read it here.

Barry's Esteem for Roe v. Wade

2009-01-25T10:03:00.000-08:00

President Obama expresses his esteem for the legalization of murdering unborn children in this statement from January 22. Yours truly has taken the liberty of commenting on his statement.

On the 36th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, we are reminded that this decision not only protects women’s health and reproductive freedom, but stands for a broader principle: that government should not intrude on our most private family matters.

"Women's health" and "reproductive freedom?" Last time I checked, pregnancy wasn't a disease. Never more has the government intruded on "the most private family matters" as when the Supreme Court chose the path of the "privacy jurisprudence." Think about it. How much ink was spilled on the most intimate details of sex prior to the Griswold decision? The government has been more interested and involved in the most "intimate decisions" since inventing imagined "liberty interests."

I remain committed to protecting a woman’s right to choose.

Translation: "a woman's right to intentionally murder."

While this is a sensitive and often divisive issue, no matter what our views, we are united in our determination to prevent unintended pregnancies, reduce the need for abortion, and support women and families in the choices they make.

There is no need for abortion. I won't support women and families if the choice is to kill their unborn children. I guess we're not united, Barry!

To accomplish these goals, we must work to find common ground to expand access to affordable contraception, accurate health information, and preventative services.

There can be no common ground on an intrinsic evil such as contraception. Does "preventative services" include education for chastity?

On this anniversary, we must also recommit ourselves more broadly to ensuring that our daughters have the same rights and opportunities as our sons: the chance to attain a world-class education; to have fulfilling careers in any industry; to be treated fairly and paid equally for their work; and to have no limits on their dreams. That is what I want for women everywhere.

So the President has taken the position that the fact that women have wombs and can have babies gets in the way of women's opportunities and rights. Wow. So much for the dignity of women. Translation: women you must become a man in order to have "no limits on your dreams" and "to be treated fairly" and "paid equally."

Why "professional" news organizations are dying...

2009-01-18T07:37:00.000-08:00

They've been biased so long, no one believes them any more.

And they apparently keep on hiring idiots.

And homosexuals, of course. So it would be hard for even an AP reporter trying to tell the straight story to report (accurately) that the Vatican's efforts to stem homosexual behavior flow from the disaster that active homosexuals wrought for years, exposed in the scandals that have emerged since 2001.

A copy editor, a national desk -- somewhere in the news chain of command there sits a gay-friendly type who has no interest in the story, or the truth, but just wants to propound his propaganda. So we read that "experts on sex offenders say gays are no more likely than others to molest children."

Either the reporter/editors or the experts are lying.

Love those 'experts." Brian Clowes, of Human Life International, found that gay priests were hundreds of times more likely to abuse than heterosexual ones, according to the USCCB's own figures.

On the other hand, when you see "experts say," or "analysts agree" in a news story, brace yourself for the reporter/editor's personal ideological opinions.

Bush says goodbye ...

2009-01-15T19:07:00.001-08:00

... but were the last eight years really all about him?

Santorum: McCain Might Be Obama's Ace In The Hole

2009-01-15T09:27:00.001-08:00

Former Senator Rick Santorum never liked McCain, and, apparently, still doesn't trust him.

McCain had nothing but disdain (dare I say contempt?) for Ron Paul, who has been proven right on the financial meltdown and so much more. And Santorum's latest insight leads me to believe that McCain doesn't like the Republicans who (in his view) abandoned him, either (he is undoubtedly miffed that Sarah Palin was his Energizer Bunny long after he had run out of steam -- and money.)

Like Bush, McCain is interested in his own legacy - and he doesn't like being a loser. Would it be out of character for him to "cross over" with "bipartisan spirit" and become the dependable 60th vote the Democrats need to break any GOP filibusters?

Justice Kennedy loves being the swing vote on the Supreme Court; wouldn't McCain enjoy the limelight (oh so graciously provided by the usual media suspects) that would follow his "statesmanlike" maneuvers?

Even Scott McClellan Admits It ...

2009-01-15T08:26:00.000-08:00

Bush and Cheney might not admit their mistakes, but we have to ... or else conservatives will be powerless to assert principle in opposing Obama and reclaiming the right to lead the country in freedom and peace.

Of course, the pro-life movement will remain in the shadows if it stays tied to the GOP. As Phyllis Schlafly has long observed, we need to be a third force -- but not a third party.

Partisan Politics?

2009-01-15T06:05:00.000-08:00

Why do leftists like Dick Meyer of NPR assume that it would be "partisan politics" for Congress or the Justice Department (or both) to investigate the crimes of the Bush-Cheney Administration?

Many defenders of liberty, advocates of the Constitution, and even hard-core Republicans would support the pursuit of justice and a defense of the Constitution (as required in the president's oath of office, the only passage in the Constitution put in quotation marks, to make that duty perfectly clear).

Sure, many would wince as evidence emerges that the people they supported actually manipulated them, exploited them, robbed them, betrayed them, and wrought terrible damage to the country (and, for many, the party) they love. But people see those emotions in divorce courts every day. Why not in the political sphere?

Frankly, divorce is exactly what many GOP party hacks must embrace. Until the party is willing to acknowledge and condemn the disasters wrought by its leaders for the past eight years, it will never recover its unity or its reason for being. Until they swallow hard and do the right thing, they will be living a lie, and be impotent as a result.

Witness today's news that Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina thinks it's just fine that Mr. Geithner be confirmed in spite of his admitted shortfall of tens of thousands of dollars in his tax returns. Graham, morally emasculated by his support of Bush's crimes, must now embrace -- even celebrate --Geithner's nomination: "These are huge times. Now is not the time to think in small political terms," oozed Graham. He's only a petty thief, So put Geithner in charge of trillions of secret dollars!

Great job, Grahammy!! Because you supported "our" crooks, you now have to support theirs.

With this kind of leadership, the GOP is destined for oblivion -- and deserves it.

Medved Mess It Up ...

2009-01-15T05:39:00.001-08:00

He asserts (argument is absent) that, because things in Iraq are so rosy, Bush should be acclaimed as a success.

Apparently,Mr. Medved is ignorant of metaphysics and the Constitution.

Altho his analysis is profoundly flawed (Says Sam Huntington), if Medved were correct he would still be the victim of consequentialism – that is, asserting that doing something wrong wrought something right.

Only God can bring good out of evil. Bush didn’t, and Medved can’t.

Helen Thomas Has It Right on Bush ...

2009-01-15T05:11:00.000-08:00

She's right on -- but will that door swing both ways?

Conservative critics of Bush have been willing to apply the same critical analysis to liberal presidents too. Is Helen?

By the way, because we opposed the war on Constitutional grounds, we principled conservatives have been called “left-wingers” (Richer Perle), “anti-Semites” (Jacoby), and “Bush-haters” (Bush WH flaks).

These guys were hijackers indeed. But will Helen and her liberal colleagues tar us true conservatives – who opposed the hijackers as strongly (or more) than Helen did -- with their brush in the future? Will Helen admit that, say, Ron Paul was the most prescient and accurate of the GOP presidential candidates?

We await he balanced views.

Father Neuhaus, RIP

2009-01-08T13:24:00.000-08:00

Father Richard John Neuhaus, founder of First Things and long-time editor of the Religion and Society Report of the Rockford Institute (my alma mater) has died.

Father Neuhaus was a good friend of Christendom College and drew a good crowd whenever he visited here. He sometimes differed with the Wanderer, but admired it, he told me in a welcome letter, which I was surprised to receive just last summer.

May he rest in peace, and may First Things continue to serve Holy Mother Church.

Fight FOCA - a strategy for success

2008-12-19T09:34:00.000-08:00

The bishops' plan to fight FOCA includes a postcard campaign, which is fine, but there is a much more effective way to get the attention of Capitol Hill and it has an impressive history of success. Visit Bishops Plan to Fight FOCA and pass the word around. A plan coordinated by the shepherds of the Church undergirded by prayer has to succeed. "Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of thy faithful and enkindle in them the power of thy love." See that word "POWER!" The gates of hell cannot withstand the power of the Church. We could describe Obama's connections to the homosexual and aborticide communities as "Obama-gate." So, all you soldiers out there, put on the armor of Christ and assault those gates.

Has the Legion lost it?

2008-12-01T15:42:00.000-08:00

Matt Abbott seems to echo the sentiment of Fr. Thomas Euteneuer, President of Human Life International, and Fr. James Farfaglia in reaction to an editorial in the LC-run National Catholic Register. See both items here and here.

Mr. Hoopes, unfortunately, seems to be infected with "The Kmiec Syndrome." Pathetic.

Dr. Charles E. Rice's ND Observer Column December 2, 2008

2008-12-01T11:11:00.000-08:00

DrCharles E. Rice
Right or Wrong?
December 2, 2008

Each Christmas Day, the Pope delivers a message "Urbi et Orbi"--to the City and the World. Last year, Benedict XVI said that at Christmas, "the great hope that brings happiness entered the world." Perhaps in his Urbi et Orbi this year, Benedict will sound again the Christmas note of hope. It would be familiar to the American people who have just elected a President who promises "change" through "the audacity of hope." That political hope, however, is different from the hope Benedict sees in the Christmas event.

In his 2007 annual Christmas address to Rome’s university students, the Pope urged them to reflect on "the hope of the modern age" as described in his encyclical Spe Salvi ("In hope we were saved."). From the 17th century on, he said, "human progress" was seen as the work only of "science and technology." Reason and freedom were separated from God so as to construct the "kingdom of man... in opposition to the kingdom of God." In this "materialistic concept...changing the economic and political structures...could finally bring about a just society where peace, freedom and equality reign." The "fundamental error" in this, said Benedict, is that man is not merely the product of economic and social conditions. "[W]ithout ethical principles science, technology and politics can be used, as...still happens...for...the harm of individuals and humanity."

Some changes promised by our president-elect could serve as Exhibit A for the truth of that last comment. Barack Obama not only pledges that "the first thing I’d do as President is sign the Freedom of Choice Act," which would remove all restrictions on the "fundamental right" to abortion. He also strongly supports, and co-sponsored as a Senator, federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research (ESCR) beyond the limited funding allowed heretofore. Each embryo is a living human being. In ESCR, human embryos are produced, by cloning or otherwise, for the purpose of killing them by removing their stem cells which are then used for biomedical research. This is not only wrong in itself. It opens the door to the mass production of human beings as objects of science, the creation of "designer" human beings, etc.

In his 2002 book, God and the World, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Benedict XVI, discussed the description in Genesis 3 of the posting of angels east of Eden with flaming swords to keep man, after the Fall, from eating of the Tree of Life. After the Fall, man was forbidden to eat of that tree which gave immortality, "since to be immortal in this [fallen] condition would...be perdition." People are now, Ratzinger said, "starting to pick from the tree of life and make themselves lords of life and death, to reassemble life." "[P]recisely what man was supposed to be protected from is now actually happening: he is crossing the final boundary.... [M]an makes other men his own artifacts. Man no longer originates in the mystery of love, by...conception and birth...but is produced industrially, like any other product."

This is serious business, indeed. "[W]e can," said Ratzinger, "be certain of this: God will take action to counter an ultimate crime, an ultimate act of self-destruction, on the part of man. He will take action against the attempt to demean mankind by the production of slave-beings. There are indeed final boundaries we cannot cross without turning into the agents of the destruction of creation itself, without going far beyond the original sin and the first Fall and all its negative consequences."

In this presidential interregnum we already know that the "hope" offered by our political messiah includes the utilitarian abuses described above. In that "hope," man can be treated as an object and the intentional killing of the innocent is an optional problem solving technique. Perhaps some Catholics, especially in the professoriate, will come to reconsider the enormity--and frivolity--of their voting into power a politician committed to the implementation of such a "hope."

Christmas tells a different story. Christmas overturned "the world-view of that time, which...has become fashionable...again today. It is not...the laws of matter and of evolution that have the final say, but reason, will, love—a Person...who in Jesus has revealed himself as Love." Spe Salvi (SS), no. 5.

The smart guys of the media, the academy, and the political world can’t tell you where you came from, where you are going and how you get there. But "Christians... have a future: it is not that they know the details of what awaits them, but they know in general terms that their life will not end in emptiness. Only when the future is certain as a positive reality [is it] possible to live the present as well." SS, no. 2. We know this by experience. We ask ourselves, "What’s it all for?" We look for answers here but we know there has to be more. "[W]e need," said SS, "the greater and lesser hopes that keep us going day by day." But "anyone who does not know God, even though he may entertain all kinds of hopes, is ultimately without hope, without the great hope that sustains the whole of life." SS, no. 27.

So what is the lesson of Christmas? As Pope Benedict said last year, it gives us the "great hope" that is true. That hope transcends political counterfeits because the Person born at Christmas is, himself, Truth with a capital T. In him we "have a future." Merry Christmas.

Professor Emeritus Rice is on the law school faculty. He may be reached at 633-4415 or rice.1@nd.edu.

Margaret Sanger, an American Adolf Hitler

2008-11-29T08:29:00.001-08:00

Margaret Sanger was one of the most dangerous and damaging women ever to live in the United States. See the ALL video at my blog and read a little bit about the history of this evil woman.

What Does "The Common Good" Really Mean?

2008-11-22T11:13:00.001-08:00

Bill Luckey has the solid answer, from a timeless Catholic perspective.

In Italy's Terri Schiavo Case, Hospice nuns refuse to kill Eluana!

2008-11-18T15:27:00.000-08:00

The nuns caring for Eluana Englaro in an Italian hospice have refused to carry out a recent court order allowing her father to starve and dehydrate the young woman to death. Eluana has been in a state of minimal consciousness since an auto accident in 1992. The highest Italian court recently gave her father the right to kill her the same way Terri Schiavo was murdered in a Florida hospice in 2005. Read more here. The nuns want to continue to care for Eluano. Will the woman's father let them do it or will he insist, like Michael Schiavo, that his daughter would be better off dead? Pray that the dear sisters, who love her like a family member (let me rephrase that), who love her like a member of God's family, may succeed in taking on the guardianship of Eluana -- not only for her own sake, but for her father's. There is something particularly evil about a father, who should be willing to lay down his life for his child, wanting to kill her instead. But that's the way of the world in the culture of death.

Pious Catholics: Sentire cum Ecclesia!

2008-11-06T13:22:00.000-08:00

My friend, colleague, and proprietor of this blog, Mr. Christopher Manion, has written well--as is his custom--in the November 6, 2008 edition of The Wanderer. In his weekly column, "From Under the Rubble..." he starts where all thought should start: with first principles. As if knowing that the election would turn out the way it did, Manion, in Sheen-like fashion, dissected the essential worldview of the Marxist and the principles from which he operates. A solid knowledge of the vocabulary of the Marxist is essential to deal with the upcoming administration and its policies. Why? Am I being paranoid? Is this just a knee-jerk reaction to right-wing talk radio? Certainly not. Obama has been very candid about his affinity for Marxists, the left-leaning professoriate, structural feminists, etc. Now more than ever is it essential for Catholics to intellectually engage our culture and elected officials and combat those philosophies and governmental policies that are contrary to Christ and his Church.

The Catholic can only do that effectively if he knows how to think rightly--about God and everything else. It is troubling to me that there are many "faithful Catholics" whose theology is as unclear as their public statements. I make no judgement as to the state of their souls nor to their motives, however, based upon their statements and lack of precision, one must wonder at the true health of the faithful. What occasioned this thought was a recent posting on Fumare which called for prayers through the intercession of aborted children. The author of the post claimed to have received this message during prayer from "the Heavenly Father." He then claims that there "has been a great deal of confirmation that God is asking us to pray through these aborted babies." What confirmation? From whom? The author then claims that it is "a powerful prayer." How does he know? Whence his authority? There seemed to be a great deal of support as indicated in the comment boxes. Likewise, there were some dissenters questioning the whole effort.

The true Catholic position was that of the dissenters. While praying to aborted babies may be emotionally satisfying, it is intellectual sloth and leading others into error and of dubious efficacy. The Church has flatly stated that we entrust infants who have died without baptism to the mercy of God and that there are good reasons to hope that they are with God. Any more than that is incorrect. This is not "hard-hearted" it is honestly adhering to the Magisterium. In the end, I am confident that the purported message to pray through the intercession of these children came from someone other than God. Perhaps the well-intentioned interlocutor.

The point of all this is that if we plan on changing the culture and winning the war for the souls of our neighbors and fellow Americans, we must know first principles. We must know the basic tenets of our faith and know how to communicate them effectively. Saccharine spirtituality and pseudo-mysticism does much to undermine the Church and her reasonableness and credibility. Catholics must start thinking rather than feeling. For Catholics, true pious practices are essential along with the intellectual life. There are no greater examples than John Paul II and Benedict XVI of those who truly live(d) this.

Color of Skin or Content of Character?

2008-11-06T13:14:00.000-08:00

Diogenes brings us this gem from an Archbishop in this country:

Archbishop Gregory, who in 2001 became the first African American to head the US Bishops Conference, serving for three years, said that the election of Mr Obama was "a great step forward for humanity and a sign that in the United States the problem of racial discrimination has been overcome".

A great step forward for humanity? Racial discrimination overcome? Tell that to the unborn black kids who will not live to see the world outside the womb.

And so it begins...

2008-11-05T17:35:00.001-08:00

Barack Obama wasted no time in naming a radical pro-abort as extreme as himself to serve as his chief of staff. Rahm Emanuel, representative from Illinois, has a zero rating on pro-life legislation. He favors taxpayer funding of abortion and supports Planned Parenthood, he voted to fund the U.N. agency involved in China's forced abortion program. He opposes parental consent/notification before a minor's abortion and wants to force military hospitals to commit abortions. Like his extremist crony he supports partial birth abortion. No surprise really. Murdering babies is the mantra and the defining characteristic of this new era and Obama is wasting no time in rubbing America's nose in it. He will do what he promised -- sign the Freedom of Choice Act to revoke every shred of protection to the babies. And the crowds will cheer their leader as long as they get their tax cut.

The day after the election we heard all about how Obama will bring us together as a nation. How is that possible? Can pro-life Christians take the bloody hands of a modern-day Hitler who embraces the genocide of the "unwanted" unborn? I certainly cannot. Nor can I congratulate him on his win like Archbishop Wuerhl and Cardinal George. America chose a tyrant. Did Cardinal von Galen congratulate the Nazis on their win? I seriously doubt it. I cannot wish Obama well; I pray for his conversion. He does not bring "change" but bloody business as usual and more of it. As for "hope," what hope is there in the mangled dead body of an innocent baby and the mutilated body of his mother?

As Joshua said to the Israelites, "Choose this day whom you will serve...as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. I recommit to the battle to defend the unborn. I urge all to put on the armor of God and be determined to fight and not grow weary. Become informed and be an effective footsoldier for the Blessed Mother with a rosary in one hand and the sword of the spirit, the word of God, in the other.

A Model for Engaging the Culture War

2008-11-02T07:49:00.000-08:00

Remarkable! But, yes, the LA Times blog "Babylon and Beyond" recently profiled Fr. Paul Shaughnessy, S.J. A good look into a tough priest, the likes of which we need in these troubling times. It is especially appropriate to call to mind the good and essential work done by our military chaplains as today is All Souls Day. The military chaplain, oftentimes, is the last person that a young man will see before meeting Christ. (Hat tip: Some Wear Clerics)

Some may also remember Fr. Shaughnessy's essay from the November 2000 issue of Catholic World Report entitled "The Gay Priest Problem." Priests like Fr. Shaughnessy are a reminder to Catholics--especially Catholic men--of the duty to wage and win the culture war. Part of that duty is having courage to go to the front lines of the battle.

Archbishop Claims Government is Corrupt!

2008-10-30T06:37:00.000-07:00

... and a politician cries, "sedition!"

Unfortunately, it's another country. But it sets a good precedent!

Could our bishops do the same? Or would they fear losing billions of dollars in federal taxpayer subsidies? And an investigation of the bishops' coverup of the abuse scandals?

Who's Behind the Mask?

2008-10-27T17:27:00.000-07:00

What do bad guys do when they rob a bank? They put on a mask. Well, there are some bad guys trying to rob real Catholics of the truth. Frances Kissling of Catholics (sic) for a Free Choice [CFFC] was an early pioneer. Her organization, which pretended to represent Catholics but later admitted it had no members, was funded by those who hated Catholic truth. According to the website DiscoverTheNetworks.org, "Between 1996 and 2000, [CFFC] raised approximately $15 million, more than 70 percent of which came from five sources that have never contributed to an officially recognized Catholic nonprofit: the Buffett Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, and the Ford Foundation (which gave a total of $4.4 million). All five of these foundations have supported Planned Parenthood, the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League, and the National Organization for Women. Other funders of CFFC include the Open Society Institute of George Soros, the Summit Charitable Foundation, the Scherman Foundation, the Compton Foundation; and the Turner Foundation."

This election cycle some copycat robbers are going after the Catholic vote. Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good and Catholics United are shilling for Obama claiming Catholics can, in good conscience, vote for the most pro-abortion, pro-infanticide candidate in history. So...who's funding these groups which are connected? George Soros for one. LifeSiteNews recently did an article exposing the connection between the anti-Catholic Soros and these bandit groups. Bill Donohue of The Catholic League told LifeSite, “The reason Soros funds the Catholic Left is the same reason he lavishly funds Catholics for Choice, the pro-abortion group that has twice been condemned as a fraud by Catholic bishops: they all service his agenda, [which includes making] "support for abortion rights a respectable Catholic position."

There's a great scene in the movie, The Hiding Place, a film that tells the true story of holocaust survivor Corrie Ten Boom and her family. When Corrie tries to get a Lutheran pastor to hide a little baby on his farm outside the city of Haarlem, Holland where they live, he responds, "Risk all for one Jewish baby?" After the pastor leaves, Corrie fumes until her elderly father says, "Corrie, just because the mouse is in the cookie jar, doesn't make him a cookie." There are a lot of rodents in the Church these days masquerading as Catholics. Expose them for what they are: masked bandits trying to rob the faithful of the truth.

Could a Terrorist become Top Teacher?

2008-10-25T08:02:00.000-07:00

Phyllis Schlafly, one of my heroes, has an insightful article about the scary possibilities for education in an Obama presidency. Consider former terrorist William Ayers as Secretary of Education. He has, after all, shifted careers from bombing buildings to brainwashing children, a much more effective way of destroying America.

"From his prestigious and safe university position," Phyllis writes, "Ayers has been teaching teachers and students in rebellion against American capitalism and what he calls 'imperialism' and 'oppression.' The code words for the Ayers curriculum are 'social justice,' a 'transformative' vision, 'critical pedagogy,' 'liberation,' 'capitalist injustices,' 'critical race theory,' 'queer theory,' and of course multiculturalism and feminism."

The impact of brainwashing a generation is already apparent in the growing acceptance of homosexuality as normal. What's miraculous is that after all these years, abortion continues to defy the evil left's efforts at acceptance. Most Americans still oppose most abortions.

Could an Obama presidency with Ayers as the top teacher change that? Let's hope we don't have to find out.

Obama and Same-Sex Marriage: One More Reason to "Just Say NObama"

2008-10-24T07:27:00.001-07:00

If Obama's extreme advocacy of abortion and infanticide isn't enough to revolt you, consider his position on same-sex marriage. Terence Hall writing at Townhall.com says, "In June, Obama sent a letter to the San Francisco-based Alice B. Toklas Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Democratic Club. It was...reprinted in full in the July 2 edition of the San Francisco Chronicle under the headline 'Obama opposes proposed ban on gay marriage.'....[I]n this letter. He also declared that he opposes all state constitutional amendments that limit marriage to a man and a woman, that he opposes a federal amendment that would prevent states from being forced to recognize same-sex marriages, that he wants to repeal the federal Defense of Marriage Act, and that he wants to fully open the military to gays.

"'I want to congratulate all of you who have shown your love for each other by getting married these last few weeks,' Obama wrote. 'I support extending fully equal rights and benefits to same sex couples under both state and federal law. That is why I support repealing the Defense of Marriage Act and the 'Don't Ask Don't Tell' policy, and the passage of laws to protect LGBT Americans from hate crimes and employment discrimination. And that is why I oppose the divisive and discriminatory efforts to amend the California Constitution, and similar efforts to amend the U.S. Constitution or those of other states.'

"To make clear that he wants no distinction in law between traditional married couples and same-sex couples -- including in laws regarding the adoption of babies -- Obama sent a second letter Aug. 1 to the Family Equality Council, a group that says it envisions 'a country that celebrates a diversity of family constellations.'

"'We also have to do more to support and strengthen LGBT families,' Obama told this council. 'And that's why we have to extend equal treatment in our family and adoption laws.'

"The federal Defense of Marriage Act that Obama wants repealed does two things. It defines marriage for federal purposes as the union of a man and a woman, and it says states will not be forced to recognize same-sex marriages contracted in other states, as they ordinarily would under the Constitution's 'Full Faith and Credit Clause.'

"The Full Faith and Credit Clause requires all states to recognize the judicial acts of other states but says, 'Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof.'

"If the policies Obama supports come to pass, California will have same-sex marriage, and the federal law protecting other states from recognizing California's same-sex marriages will be repealed.

"Then it would be up to the sort of federal judges Obama would appoint to decide whether the Full Faith and Credit Clause -- barring an act of Congress saying otherwise -- would require every other state in the union to accept California's marriage law as their own."

If you want to see what Same-sex marriage laws mean to your family go here and here. And pray that Obama loses on November 4th.

Should Israel Vet Proposed Catholic Canonizations?

2008-10-23T09:17:00.000-07:00

Isaac Herzog, Israel’s Minister of Welfare and Social Services and Minister of the Diaspora, Society, and the Fight Against Antisemitism, has announced his opposition to the possible beatification of Pope Pius XII.

‘The intent to turn Pius XII into a saint is unacceptable,’ said Mr. Herzog, who is the son of the late Israeli President Chaim Herzog.

He is apparently the head of the ministry against ThoughtCrime.

By the way, the term "unacceptable" is coming into vogue on the part of the Bush Administration too, usually with regard to events over which is has no control (but wishes it did). Perhaps that's where Isaac is getting his talking points.

Wisdom

2008-10-22T14:33:00.000-07:00

From Milton Friedman:

"We do not write these things and do these things because we think that we will ultimately be able to persuade the other side; we do them because we know that when the other side fails and finally there are no other options left, we will be there with the solutions that are true and that will work."

A round of applause please

2008-10-22T08:30:00.000-07:00

Bishop Joseph Martino interrupted a parish forum on Sunday that one of the panelists described as "giving cover" to pro-abortion candidates. The Wayne Independent covered the story describing the bishop's statement to the forum:

"Martino, who arrived while the panelists were stating their viewpoints, took issue with the USCCB statement, which was handed out to everyone at the meeting, and also that his letter was not mentioned once at the forum 'No USCCB document is relevant in this diocese...The USCCB doesn’t speak for me....The only relevant document ... is my letter....There is one teacher in this diocese, and these points are not debatable....Health care, education, economic security, immigration, and taxes are very important concerns. Neglect of any one of them has dire consequences as the recent financial crisis demonstrates. However, the solutions to problems in these areas do not usually involve a rejection of the sanctity of human life in the way that abortion does.... 'Another argument goes like this: "As wrong as abortion is, I don't think it is the only relevant ‘life’ issue that should be considered when deciding for whom to vote." This reasoning is sound only if other issues carry the same moral weight as abortion does, such as in the case of euthanasia and destruction of embryos for research purposes. ... National Right to Life reports that 48.5 million abortions have been performed since 1973. One would be too many. No war, no natural disaster, no illness or disability has claimed so great a price.' The letter also states that Catholic public officials who 'persist in public support for abortion' should 'not partake in or be admitted to the sacrament of Holy Communion.'"

If you'd like to thank Bishop Martino here's his contact information:
Diocese of Scranton
300 Wyoming Avenue
Scranton, PA 18503
Main Chancery Number: 570-207-2238
Fax Number: 570-207-2236

Dim and Dimmer

2008-10-21T18:40:00.000-07:00

Dimwits, that is. Some fellow named "Do Good" (ok, perhaps it is a con job) insists that it's a long-accepted fact that "socialist" is a codeword for "Black" (Or apparently "coloured," or "Negro," if it's been very long accepted).

This fellow would be dumfounded to meet Mably and Meslier, or the Left Hegelians, or Lenin, the Menscheviki ... and all those other self-described socialists who were really denominating themselves as ... well, you know.

"Everything's up to date in Kansas City," the song goes -- except this doofus. But he serves the Obamic purpose, which is his wont, I suppose.

"They're baaaaaack" - CCHD wants your money to promote liberalism

2008-10-20T10:39:00.000-07:00

For forty years the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) has been picking the pockets of Catholics in the pew and funnelling buckets of it into liberal community organizing groups like ACORN and the Industrial Areas Foundation.

The collection will be taken up this year on November 22-23 in most dioceses in the United States. Check out the Catholic Media Coalition website to read up on the connection between CCHD and the Obama campaign. If the most pro-abortion candidate in the history of the country is elected in November you can thank the Catholic bishops and their annual collection for advancing him and his liberal brethren. BOYCOTT CCHD! Pass it on.

'Twas Ever Thus

2008-10-19T05:59:00.001-07:00

The WashPost has a story today describing how the South African ANC, once derided and persecuted by the colonial government there, is now rent by factions and self-dealers.

My, My, what a surprise.

When the ANC was dangerously unpopular, nobody wanted to join. When it finally came to power, all the manipulators and hucksters jumped on board.

It's exactly what happened to the conservative movement. In the 60s, we were "kooks." By the 80s, even lefties like Jim Baker signed on to cash in.

And by 2001, the Trotskyite neocons left the Democrats behind and jumped into the trough.

And they killed the conservative and pro-life movements and the GOP. Heckuva job, guys!!

Time to start over.

Michael Reagan Doesn't Know The Half Of It

2008-10-18T06:39:00.000-07:00

From his latest column:

"Unless John McCain understands what is at stake here, Nov. 5 is going to resemble the smoking rubble of Dresden in the wake of the Allied firebombing of that city. The Republican Party is going to be in shambles."

Not quite the same, Michael: the thousands of civilians deliberately killed in Dresden were innocent.

Slow-Mo Joe

2008-10-18T04:39:00.001-07:00

Joe Biden readily admits he's too dumb to be a federal judge, but he's smart enough to tell a bad one (pro-lifers need not apply) when he's voting on the Judiciary Committee, which he chaired for many years.

Now Joe declares that everybody in the USA just loves America.

"We all love this country," he brays... yes, even Farrakhan, Reverend Wright, Bill Ayers and "Bernadette the Bomber" Dohrn, not to mention the Mexican drug and smuggling gangs that are taking over our southwest border ...

"Catholic" Joe loves abortion, too (Augustine would call that a "disordered" love), and he loves to talk, plagiarize, and to be a crashing bore (on the Foreign Relations Committee, when Chairman Joe begins to talk, even the Democrats start reading their newspaper clips).

Last in his class in law school, and no class. That's Joe.

Why the World Won't Be Free Until the '60s Kids Die

2008-10-01T20:14:00.000-07:00

Hat tip to Uncle Di, for this one.

Maureen's (Bad) Memory

2008-10-01T06:18:00.001-07:00

This morning Maureen Dowd pretends to write about Paul Newman (RIP), but uses him as a foil:

>>At a moment when America feels angry and betrayed, when our leaders have forfeited our trust and jeopardized our future, we lost an American icon who stood for traits that have been in short supply in the Bush administration: shrewdness, humility, decency, generosity, class.<<

Uh, say.... Mo??!!

**Bush’s** administration?

Have you forgotten all of the 1990s?

shrewdness – Hillary Health Care?

humility, -- Oh such humble people, condemning the decade of greed – NOT the 90s (Howell Raines, OMB director, call your office at Fannie Mae, where you raped and pillaged for tens of millions, James Johnson -- ditto!!)

decency -- Gennifer Flowers? Juanitta Brodderick? Bill and "decency" are, well, not acquainted.

generosity -- they deducted donating their USED UNDERWEAR from their taxes !!!!

class. ....

class .....

Class? Hey Monica, how do you spell it?

There is not enough room in my barn and pastures for this fertilizer.

Get a Load of This!

2008-09-30T10:06:00.000-07:00

The Wall Street Journal has been skidding and sliding and, finaly, coasting downhill for several years, but now it has outdone itself in farce.

This morning, in an interview with Father Ted Hesburgh, longtime president of Notre Dame, the journal's twit frames a "balanced" question:

"WSJ: In your day, the Church produced figures such as Bishop Sheen and Father Drinan and Pope John XXIII. Who are the Catholic leaders today of their caliber? Are there any?"

Father Drinan, the proud pro-abortion congressman who had to leave Congress in disgrace (or leave the Jesuits), is sandwiched into a trinity with two giants of the Church. Why, doesn't he come to **everybody's** mind? (oops, we forgot Teddy Kennedy!)

Talk about a loaded question! Or maybe just a load.

Dr. Charles E. Rice's ND Observer Column 24 September 2008

2008-09-29T10:14:00.000-07:00

Charles E. Rice
Right or Wrong?
September 24, 2008

Are you "pro-life" but tired of the way abortion becomes a political football every four years? The politicians make their points on one side or the other. And then they forget it—for another four years.

If you are looking for a positive and non-political approach, consider the 40 Days for Life, an interfaith initiative which began "right here in River City" on September 24th and will run until November 2nd. The campaign, organized by local residents, is part of a rapidly growing national effort. It includes Notre Dame students, faculty and staff who have joined it.

First, let’s take a look at how the 40 Days for Life campaign works. It has three components. If you can’t do them all, do what you can:

1. Most important: Personal prayer and fasting for an end to abortion. Decide for yourself how to do this. You can pray anywhere, anytime. Fasting can be of the Lenten sort, giving up something for forty days, even something as big as chocolate.

2. Peaceful, lawful witness for life, 24/7, outside the Women’s Pavilion at 2010 Ironwood Circle, South Bend, between Edison and Rte. 23. This constant vigil is neither a demonstration nor a protest. It is primarily a prayer, reminding ourselves and the community that the legalized execution of the innocent is an evil that cannot be overcome by politics as usual but indispensably through the grace of God. You can sign up for a particular time but you don’t have to. Just come when you can, if only for a few minutes. You will make a difference.

3. Community outreach, taking a positive pro-life message to individuals and the community in every constructive way we can.

The national 40 Days for Life began as a local event in 2004 in College Station, home of Texas A & M. It was organized in a few weeks but enlisted over one thousand participants. One result was a 28 percent reduction in abortions in that community. In 2005 and 2006, the campaign spread to a half-dozen other cities, with positive results including the closing of abortuaries or reduction of their "business" hours. In 2007 the program went national and began to take off, with campaigns in the fall of 2007 and spring of 2008 in 139 cities in 43 states. More than 150 thousand participated, with 35 thousand in the prayer vigils at abortuaries. The fall 2008 campaign is the largest yet, with 40 Days for Life in 173 cities in 45 states as well as the national capitals of Washington and Ottowa.

Why take part in this unique testimony for life? Because the stark reality of legalized abortion requires each of us to take a personal stand. Evasions won’t work. When Louise Brown, the first "test-tube baby" was born in 1978, the whole world knew exactly when her life began—at the union of the sperm and the ovum in the in vitro fertilization process. To deny this reality of another human life inside the mother, at every stage from that fertilization, can today be the product only of ignorance or willful denial. "In simplest terms," said Cardinal Edward Egan of New York, "they are human beings with an inalienable right to live."

The new technology of morning-after pills and other early abortifacients is making abortion a private matter beyond the effective reach of the law. Surgical abortions, such as those performed at Ironwood Circle, are decreasing in frequency. The 40 Days for Life vigil at Ironwood is not therefore to infer that the existence of such execution centers is the only problem. Rather, the abortuary on Ironwood is one sign of a malignant culture in which the intentional infliction of death on the innocent is accepted as an optional problem-solving technique. The "greatest destroyer of peace today," said Mother Teresa at the 1994 Prayer Breakfast in Washington, "is abortion, because it is a war against the child, a direct killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself. And if we accept that a mother can kill her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another?" We were appalled at the random killings at Columbine, Virginia Tech and elsewhere. But, except for the age and visibility of the victims, how were those murders essentially different from the thousands more that are legally committed each day in abortuaries throughout the land?

The prayer and witness components of the 40 Days for Life are more than a reminder of the reality of every abortion, whether surgical or chemical. Abortion, now moving beyond the reach of the law, is the first sacrament of the militant, agnostic secularism which is our dominant public religion. The only remedy for abortion is the voluntary reconversion of the American people to the conviction that every human life is precious because it is a gift from God. The 40 Days for Life campaign is a positive way of asking for the grace of increasing that conviction in the minds and hearts of all of us.

For more information contact ndjusvitae[at]gmail[dot]com or www.40daysforlife.com/southben. Or call Dr. Tom Akre and Mary Akre at 574-933-1835.

Charles E. Rice is Professor Emeritus at the law school. He may be reached at (574) 633-4415 or rice.1[at]nd[dot]edu.

Tom Monaghan is a Madman Who Must be Shunned

2008-09-25T12:48:00.000-07:00

Here's the latest from AveWatch and another post at Fumare.

This saga has been going on for quite awhile now. No time here to recount the specifics. (Check the archives of AveWatch and Fumare for the details.)

Suffice it to say, "Friends don't let friends go to Ave Maria [University] [School of Law] [Town]." Even more, "Friends don't let friends take ANYTHING from Tom Monaghan."

A Good Bishop

2008-09-21T18:31:00.000-07:00

Kansas City-St. Joseph Bishop Robert Finn delivered an excellent homily for the Red Mass in his diocese. (hat tip to Fr. Z)

It is good to see the return of real men to the episcopacy in the United States.

The Pope's Political Vision: Natural Law

2008-09-21T15:50:00.000-07:00

The always insightful Sandro Magister of Chiesa comments on the politics of Papa Ratzinger. Magister nails it with the following insight into the foundation of the Holy Father's political vision:

A political theorist might object that the pope's ideas stray from the field of politics properly understood. But that's not how Benedict XVI sees it. He is convinced that societies, states, and the international community must rest on solid foundations. One of his intentions as pope is to preach a universal "grammar" founded on natural law, on the inviolable rights engraved on the conscience of every man, whatever his creed.
In his address to the United Nations on April 18, 2008, Benedict XVI emphasized part of this "grammar," "the principle of the responsibility to protect," meaning that "every state has the primary duty to protect its own population from grave and sustained violations of human rights." And he added that "If states are unable to guarantee such protection, the international community must intervene." But Pope Ratzinger did not stop there. He went to the foundation of this principle, without which the responsibility to protect would be at the mercy of conflicting interests. And he identified this ultimate foundation as the "the idea of the person as image of the Creator," with his innate "desire for the absolute and the essence of freedom."
Benedict XVI knows well that not everyone accepts this anchoring to transcendence. And it is rejected precisely by a culture that has its origin in the West. But he maintains that it is necessary to proclaim ceaselessly to world powers that "when God is eclipsed, our ability to recognize the natural order, purpose, and the 'good' begins to wane." Pope Ratzinger maintains that the "secular" formula proposed by Grotius on the basis of the coexistence of peoples is outdated: to live "etsi Deus non daretur," as if God did not exist. He proposes to all, including those who do not accept transcendence, the opposite wager: that of acting "etsi Deus daretur," as if God does exist. Because it is only in this way that the dignity of the person finds an unshakable foundation.

Magister also notes that the Holy Father's esteem for the United States derives from her founding principles which pay homage to the natural law. It is interesting that Holy Father speaks with more clarity regarding the foundation of our Republic than do our own politicians.

Ratzinger on Utopianism as a Threat to Law

2008-09-20T11:28:00.001-07:00

This insightful post from Fumare highlighting the continuing idiocy of Constitutional Law scholar and Catholic, Douglas Kmiec, brought to mind some reflections of then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in 1999. Entitled "Crises of Law," Ratzinger delievered this address upon the occasion of being conferred the degree of Doctor honoris causa by the Faculty of Juriprudence at Libera Università Maria SS. Assunta in Rome. In his address, Ratzinger speaks of two "current risks" to law: positivism and utopianism. His remarks on utopianism bear repeating, especially in light of the candidacy of Obama and the elite-driven aura of Messianism that surrounds him. It is also useful as an antidote to the muddled thinking of Prof. Kmiec and other Catholics like him who, as apologists for Obama, are, at best, acting with great imprudence.

Quoth Ratzinger in 1999:

There is also a second threat to law, which today seems to be less present than it was 10 years ago, but it can re-emerge at any moment and find a link with the theory of consensus. I am referring to the dissolution of law through the spirit of utopia, just as it assumed a systematic and practical form in Marxist thought. The point of departure was the conviction that the present world is evil--a world of oppression and lack of liberty; which must be substituted by a better way of planning and working. In this case, the real and ultimate source of law becomes the idea of the new society: which is moral, of juridical importance and useful to the advent of the future world. Based on this criteria, terrorism was articulated as a totally moral plan: killings and violence appeared like moral actions, because they were at the service of the great revolution, of the destruction of the present evil world and of the great ideal of the new society. Even here, the end of metaphysics is a given, whose place is taken in this case not by the consensus of contemporaries, but by the ideal model of the future world.
There is even a crypto-theological origin for this negation of law. Because of this, it can be understood why vast currents of theology--especially the various forms of liberation theology--were subject to these temptations. It is not possible for me to present these connections here because of their extent. I shall content myself with pointing out that a mistaken Pauline idea has rapidly given way to radical and even anarchic interpretations of Christianity. Not to speak of the Gnostic movements, in which these tendencies were initially developed, which together with the "no" to God the Creator included also a "no" to metaphysics, to a law of creatures and Natural Law.

Sounds like Ratzinger's warning about the "re-emergence" of this second threat to law has proved to be the candidacy of the Junior Senator from Illinois. If only Prof. Kmiec would recognize this.

Read the whole address here.

Catholics for War?

2008-09-18T09:31:00.000-07:00

Fumare has an excellent post today about the "wedging" of the Catholic vote, brought about by the Catholic neoocons who have replaced the Prince of Peace with the dogs of war.

It contains some very good insights, so sad but so true. The trouble with Weigel and Novak, both of whom i consider friends, might be the rush of adrenaline that comes with an invitation to the Oval Office, and the gushing of adulation, if not idolatry, that follows. The record shows that, once infected, it's very difficult to recover.

Superbia Vitae is the greatest sin of concupiscence because, unlike lust of the flesh or lust of the eyes (1 John 2:16), the lust for power is completely insatiable because it lusts after the infinite power of God Himself.

Tom Vander Woude's Funeral

2008-09-16T15:02:00.002-07:00

A glimpse into the family man whose family -- including his spiritual family, of course -- always came first. His son, pastor in the Diocese of Arlington, gave the homily.

In Tom we truly have a brother in Christ.

A Real Catholic Hero

2008-09-16T15:02:00.001-07:00

Tom Vander Woude, father of seven fine sons, died last week saving his youngest, who was drowning.

Tom was our volunteer athletic director and basketball coach at Christendom, and coached at Seton School for years as well. Here's the inspiring story.

Was Jesus a Communiy Organizer

2008-09-13T18:59:00.000-07:00

Christ is the head of the Mystical Body, and is inseparable from His Church. Now **there's** a community!

Worldly "community organizers" -- and Obama foremost among them -- agitate people to steal from the government, the taxpayer, their employer (if they work for a living, which is often not the case), and the Church (usually through coercion in South Chicago. It's a tradition maxed out by Jesse Jackson, who was a shakedown artist of the first order.

Both Hillary and Obama are scions of Saul Alinsky, who drove Mayor Daley (Sr.) nuts when i lived in Chicago forty years ago. Alinksy was a master provocateur, and his "Rules For Radicals" should be at the bedside of every traditional Catholic (as St. Ignatius says, "know the enemy better than he knows himself.") He was filled with hatred and a thoroughgoing leftist, but, like Lenin, he knew how to "organize":

Witness Lenin's tirades sent as telegrams to commissars in the towns he was visiting on the railroad line: "If I don't see a bourgeois hanging from every telegraph pole when I arrive, you will be hanging there when I leave."

That's Obama's "experience." Oh, that, plus twenty years of Reverend Wright's hatred of America -- which Michelle Obama managed to pick up in the pews, although Obama was apparently too fixated on maximizing his self-esteem to soak it all in.

This Week’s Wanderer ...

2008-09-12T14:33:00.000-07:00

... has a great retrospective on the GOP convention by Peggy Moen. It includes interviews with Wanderer-reader/delegates, with nuggets like this from Dr. John Willke, a founder of the pro- life movement and president of the Life Issues Institute, about Sarah Palin: “On a scale of one to ten, she’s a 20.”

Also check out Tom Roeser on how Sarah might actually help McCain climb the mountain, and Paul Likoudis’s fascinating history of the conflict in France between the revolutionaries and the Church – on the occasion of the visit today by His Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI.

Likoudis’s article indicates how insightful was the question of Otto von Habsburg of Chou En-Lai in 1934:

“What do you think of the French Revolution?” (asked von Habsburg, the heir to the throne of the Holy Roman Empire).

“It’s too soon to tell,” replied Chou En-Lai, Mao’s intellectual henchman – who, like von Habsburg, had studied in Paris.

(If the story sounds familiar, it’s because Henry Kissinger stole it and told it of himself, in his memoirs).

Lots of other good stuff – and my memories of the 1988 GOP vice-presidential selection, which augurs not so well for Sarah.

Peeling The Onion

2008-09-12T14:22:00.000-07:00

Our friends at goodjesuitbadjesuit.com have a very interesting story regarding how the bishops dealt with the abuse issue’s national review board after they fired Frank Keating for refusing to cover up for the bad apples. Looks like Judge Burke, Keating’s successor, didn’t want to either.

It’s a sad commentary because Cardinal George, whom Burke accuses outright of dishonesty, is the president of the USCCB, and his likely successor is also knee-deep in the abuse mire. That means that Phil Lawler is right – only a tiny minority of priests were guilty of abuse, but a vastly larger percentage of bishops covered up for them – and are running scared even today.

Dr. Charles E. Rice's September 8, 2008 ND Observer Column

2008-09-09T13:09:00.000-07:00

Charles E. Rice

Right or Wrong?

September 8, 2008

Since 1982, Kennesaw, an Atlanta suburb, has required every head of a household to own a gun and ammunition, with an exemption for those who conscientiously object. One effect of the enactment was the appearance of yard signs: "Never Mind the Dog—Beware of Owner." Another was that the Kennesaw crime rate dropped and remains well below the national average.

What brings Kennesaw to mind is District of Columbia v. Heller, decided last June, the Supreme Court's first in-depth examination of the Second Amendment. That amendment provides: "A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." The Court held, 5-4, that the District of Columbia's "ban on handgun possession in the home violates the Second Amendment, as does its prohibition against rendering any lawful firearm in the home operable for the purpose of immediate self-defense." The Heller ruling was hailed by many as a decisive victory for "gun rights." First impressions, however, can be misleading.

One lesson here is that saying too much can get you into trouble. The Second Amendment is the only one in the Bill of Rights with a prefatory clause stating its purpose. That "militia" clause, over the years, gave rise to endless debate, which the Court settled in Heller. In the majority opinion, written by Justice Antonin Scalia, the Court held that the amendment "protects an individual’s right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that firearm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home." The dissenters argued that the Amendment protects only the right to possess and carry a firearm in connection with militia service. The ruling, however, did not settle much beyond that point.

"[T]he Second Amendment," said the Court, "codified a pre-existing right" which developed in England as a protection against government. "[T]he Stuart Kings Charles II and James II," said Scalia, suppressed political dissent "in part by disarming their opponents. .... [T]he Catholic James II had ordered... disarmaments of [Protestant] regions." The English Bill of Rights of 1689, the predecessor of the Second Amendment, reacted by providing "That the subjects which are Protestants may have arms for their defense suitable to their conditions and as allowed by law." This was, said the Court, "clearly an individual right, having nothing whatever to do with service in a militia."

When the Second Amendment was adopted, the "militia," said the Court, consisted of "those who were male, able-bodied, and within a certain age range." The Amendment, wrote Scalia, "helped to secure the ideal of a citizen militia, which might be necessary to oppose an oppressive military force if the constitutional order broke down…. [T]he… prefatory clause announces the purpose for which the right was codified: to prevent elimination of the militia. [It] does not suggest that preserving the militia was the only reason Americans valued the ancient right; most undoubtedly thought it even more important for self-defense and hunting. But the threat that the new Federal Government would destroy the citizens’ militia by taking away their arms was the reason that right—unlike some other English rights—was codified in a written Constitution."

The law struck down in Heller totally forbade handgun possession in the home. It also required that any lawful firearm in the home be disassembled, or disabled by a trigger lock, at all times. But the ruling left the door open for restrictive regulation rather than prohibition. The Court said the Second Amendment "does not protect those weapons not typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes, such as short-barreled shotguns." The Court also noted approvingly the "longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms."

The gun issue is far from settled. The District of Columbia reacted to Heller by imposing a regulation practically as restrictive as the one the Court struck down. A new appeal is underway. The Supreme Court has held that most of the protections in the Bill of Rights are binding on the states and local governments as well as on the federal government. But in Heller the Court interpreted earlier cases to establish that “the Second Amendment applies only to the Federal Government.” Future litigation may turn on provisions in state constitutions comparable to that amendment. Justice Breyer’s dissent in Heller highlighted also the uncertainty that still surrounds the level of judicial scrutiny that must be applied in Second Amendment cases.

So what can we learn from Heller? It is far from a mandate that every American community become a Dodge City or even a Kennesaw. On Supreme Court decisions, and everything else, don’t jump to conclusions without reading the fine print.

Prof. Emeritus Rice is on the Law School faculty. He may be reached at 633-4415 or rice.1@nd.edu.

Mr. Alexander Gives a Not-So-Subtle Kick in the Seat of the Pants

2008-09-08T11:01:00.000-07:00

Thank you Mr. Alexander for your remarks (see the prior post's comments) which I will take in the most positive light and with the same charity that impelled you to make them. We are still getting the hang of this whole blog thing and we are doing our best to "keep up." Speaking for myself, I usually have a scotch on hand for my writing and as I have been out now for about 2 weeks, my offerings are not as frequent and certainly lacking the robustness that is usually found in the analysis. Chris is always on and doesn't need the Muse in the bottle as I do. In any event, we have been properly reprimanded.

Latin Quote for the Week

2008-08-31T16:13:00.000-07:00

"Non tam praeclarum est scire Latine, quam turpe nescire."
--Cicero, Brutus 37:140

("It is not so great a distinction to know Latin as it is disgraceful not to know it.")

Prof. Charles E. Rice on Humanae Vitae

2008-08-31T15:53:00.000-07:00

Charles E. Rice
Right or Wrong?
August 25, 2008

Notre Dame should, but probably won’t, commemorate this anniversary. Forty years ago, July 25, 1968, Pope Paul VI, in Humanae Vitae (HV), reaffirmed the traditional Christian position on contraception. Until 1930, no Christian denomination had ever said that contraception could ever be objectively right. Luther, Calvin, and Wesley rejected it.

The 1930 Anglican Lambeth Conference gave cautious approval to contraception. Pope Pius XI replied that “any use… of matrimony… in such a way that the act is deliberately frustrated in its natural power to generate life is an offense against the law of God and of nature… and a grave sin.”

When the Pill came on the market in the 1960s, the Catholic Church came under pressure to abandon its solitary stand against it. HV’s disapproval of the Pill brought a storm of dissent and ridicule on Paul VI, e.g., “he no play-a the game, he no make-a the rules.” Four decades later, nobody in his right mind is laughing.

Experience has validated the prediction of the Washington Post on March 22, 1931, that the approval of contraception “would sound the death knell of marriage as a holy institution by establishing degrading practices which would encourage indiscriminate immorality.”

Contraception deliberately separates sex from procreation by acting to make procreation impossible; it makes man, of both sexes, the arbiter of whether and when life will begin; and it prevents the total mutual self-donation that ought to characterize the conjugal act. It also accepts the idea that there is such a thing as a life not worth living, i.e., the life that might have resulted had not contraception prevented it. If, through contraception, man makes himself (or herself) the arbiter of whether and when life shall begin, he will predictably make himself the arbiter of when it shall end, as in abortion and euthanasia. John Paul II described abortion and contraception as “fruits of the same tree.”

In HV, Paul VI foretold three evils that would result from the acceptance of “artificial methods of birth control”:

1. “[C]onjugal infidelity and the general lowering of morality.” No. 17. One reason why sex should be reserved for marriage is that sex has something to do with babies. But if it is entirely up to man (of both sexes) whether sex will have any relation to procreation, why should it be reserved for marriage, why should marriage be permanent and why should marriage be heterosexual?

As Methodist Pastor Donald Sensing wrote in 2004, the legalization of “homosexual marriage” became inevitable when the Pill severed “[t]he causal relationships between sex, pregnancy and marriage.” A contraceptive culture will legitimize not only homosexual activity, but also promiscuity, pornography, divorce, in vitro fertilization, cloning, etc. President R. Albert Mohler, Jr., of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary said in 2005, “The … separation of sex from procreation may be one of the most important defining marks of our age—and one of the most ominous…. [T]he pill gave incredible license to everything from adultery and affairs to premarital sex.” From 1960 to 2000, the percentage of children born out of wedlock in the United States rose from 5% to 33%. Over half of all first marriages are now preceded by cohabitation. The 2008 Gallup Values and Beliefs poll showed that 61% of Americans approve of sex between an unmarried man and woman. And so on.

2. Woman as an object, so that the man considers the woman “as a mere instrument of selfish enjoyment, and no longer as his respected and beloved companion.” No. 17. The objectification of women is evident in the prevalence of pornography, especially on the Internet. Women are the big losers in the contraceptive culture. Francis Fukuyama, in “The Great Disruption,” said the pill and abortion liberated men from responsibility and put the burden on women, allowing “many… ordinary men… to live fantasy lives of hedonism and serial polygamy formerly reserved only for a tiny group of men at the very top of society.”

3. “[A] dangerous weapon would thus be placed in the hands of … public authorities.” No. 17. Since 1970 the federal government has promoted population control through contraception, with a focus on minorities and third world countries. Planned Parenthood and other publicly funded entities promote all forms of birth control among minorities to the extent that 37 percent of all abortions are on black women although blacks, at 36 million, are only 13 percent of the U.S. population. Since 1973, 10 to 13 million black babies have been aborted.

“Contraception,” said John Paul II, is “so profoundly unlawful as never to be, for any reason, justified.” That conclusion is not disturbed by the legitimacy of natural birth regulation. As HV put it, “If … there are serious motives to space out births… it is… licit to take into account the natural rhythms… for the use of marriage in the infecund periods only, and in this way to regulate birth without offending the moral principles.” No. 16.

HV was a defining event because Paul VI refused to follow an insane world over the cliff into an abyss of nihilism. He stood for the Truth of love and life. Conjugal love, he said, “is total … . a very special form of personal friendship, in which husband and wife generously share everything, without undue reservations or selfish calculations.” No. 10.

Members of the Notre Dame community could best commemorate HV by a prayerful consideration of its Truth.

Prof. Emeritus Rice is on the Law School faculty. He can be reached at rice.1@nd.edu or at (574) 633-4415.

Welcome Wanderer Readers!

2008-08-29T11:25:00.000-07:00

The Catholic Guys welcome your comments, criticism, recommendations, news, and convivial repartee.

Feel free to use our weekly Friday message (this one) to post your reactions and comments on our stories and commentaries.

Right now I'm looking for response to John McCain's savvy selection of Sarah Palin as his VP running-mate. One thing is already clear: the Left is apoplectic!

So have at it, thanks for coming, and stay in touch here with The Catholic Guys!

Chris Manion

Letter to a Pro-Obama Catholic Friend

2008-07-03T11:22:00.000-07:00

Dear [insert name of your misguided friend here],

Not a complete explicatio, but here goes.

Re: Obama on Abortion. The guy is the most pro-abortion candidate that this country has ever seen--radically so. He voted to allow children of botched abortions to die rather than be saved. There can be no compromise with the basic moral principle that an innocent life may not be intentionally terminated. That one issue IS more important than other issues of social justice. It is paramount and, from a moral perspective (and a sound philosophical one), cannot simply be one in a list of "other issues" whereby one weighs them and, on balance, other concerns outweigh the fact that the candidate is for murder. Murder can have no legitimacy in a civilized society. He is radically for murder. (He is consistent here.)

Re: Obama and Government Social Programs. Look to the Constitution. The founders set up a government of limited powers and based upon principles of federalism. I.e., the original design of the federal government is basically (and I am being terse here) to provide for a common defense of the states and to regulate mail roads. All other powers belong to the states. Subsequent to the Civil War and the adoption of the 14th Amendment we have a significantly changed constitutional structure. Significantly changed because the Supreme Court, in the early part of the 20th century, created the "incorporation doctrine" which applies the Bill of Rights to the states (illogical--and not the intent of the Founders!!!). Likewise, through an overbroad interpretation of the commerce clause, the Supreme Court--coupled with the influence of positivistic jurisprudence of the Holmesian version--has greatly expanded the power of the federal government that we see today. It is bad jurisprudence. It is wrong. And it is contrary to the Constitution. Thus, in addition to judicial activism which had no small role in creating the Leviathan, we have a federal government that encroaches into our lives more and more and regulates the states and individuals more and more. Unfortunately, it is the prevailing jurisprudence today.

The Founders, in their federalism, had a view of the government that was very much in keeping with the Catholic Principle of Subsidiarity, i.e., what can be handled at the lowest possible level, should be handled at the lowest possible level. Thus, I can spank and discipline my own kids when they get out of line--the city shouldn't do it, nor should the state, nor should the federal government. But what we see with the Hillary and Obama types is the "it takes a village" mentality. Their view is that the government should have the solution. The government should set policy. The government should be the answer. The government should tell me how to discipline my kids. (We see this already happening in CA.) Conservatives (as distinguished from Republicans) answer--"Government, get the hell out of my life. I know how to best govern myself and my family." This is not to say that there is no role for government, there is. But it is limited. It shouldn't extend to mandating health insurance or setting curricula in schools or disciplining somone's kids.

The Church and intermediary groups should be providing for social welfare. Good Catholics can differ on approach. I would challenge the pro-government-as-providing-social-welfare types to point to me one program that is a success! There are none. (Case in point: public schools.) They have all been abysmal failures. In fact, they are inimical to anyone wanting to live the culture of life. Let's take a few examples from Obama. Utilizing the power of the federal government he wishes to expand contraception, sign into law the Freedom of Choice Act, expand sex ed in the schools and further his radical agenda on "reproductive rights." (see here) (There are other things as well, but I am focusing on some paramount "cultural issues.")This all under a theory of government that says the government should do these things. This takes power away from the people and places it in the hands of the jackasses in Washington.

I will leave aside all of Obama's questionable associations with noted socialists, his esteem for the writings of communist Frantz Fanon and a number of others whose views are inimical to our country's traditions, and finally, his esteem for "critical legal studies" (the view that legal language is, in fact, a false discourse that perpetuates hierarchies-men over women, rich over poor, majorities over minorities whereas the object of law is to not merely determine "constitutionality" but force-feed "equality" whether the law requires it or not)as opposed to a sound jurisprudence.

For Catholics and those interested in common sense, there is nothing that can possibly commend this guy to gaining our vote. Creating further dependence upon government and making it more difficult for families to live as Catholics in an increasingly secular and regulated society is what Obama is all about. He's an arrogant socialist.

These discussions are better over drinks and cigars (if we can find a place to smoke them).

In Domino, etc.

Madison Priest Wants Altar BOYS ...

2008-06-28T12:42:00.000-07:00

... and the local secular-feminist reporter goes nuts.

But Father Z gets it right:

Let’s not forget the facts and underlying issues. Service at the altar is not a right. No priest can be forced to have altar girls or women serving. The custom of service by boys and men is to be given first priority and fostered.

Tragedy in Richmond

2008-06-28T12:12:00.000-07:00

Here is the article from The Wanderer (June 19, p. 3) on the Richmond case that caused a lot of ... shall we say, concern -- and spawned a lot of stories and a few investigations.

For those interested in reading more, here's the Washington Times follow-up.

Tragedy in Richmond

On April 29, Bishop Francis X. DiLorenzo of Richmond, Virginia, wrote a confidential letter to his brother bishops. He recounted how Catholic Charities of Richmond (CCR) was complicit in authorizing, procuring, and paying for an abortion on January 18, 2008. The victims were the mother, a minor immigrant, and her unborn child, who were both under the “protection” of Catholic Charities because the mother was in the country illegally. The bishop’s letter explains that the Committee on Migration (MRS) of the USCCB supplies “foster care support services to undocumented minors in U.S. custody” through an arrangement with two federal agencies. According to officials at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), such custodial duties are routinely assumed by Catholic, Lutheran, and Jewish welfare agencies.

Not only did CCR of Richmond arrange an abortion for the girl and deliver her to the abortionist, but also “one member of [CCR] staff signed the consent form necessary for the minor to have an abortion.” The letter goes on to say that “about two months prior to this abortion the minor had been assisted by CCR staff with [the] implantation of a contraceptive device.”

Two USCCB officials signed the letter with Bishop DiLorenzo. One, Bishop John C. Wester of Salt Lake City, is Chair[man] of the USCCB’s Committee on Migration. The other, Bishop Michael P. Driscoll, is Episcopal Liaison to Catholic Charities, USA.

According to their letter, the three bishops decided to write “because we felt the need to provide you [brother bishops] the information in this case so that you will not be caught by surprise should it be brought to your attention by other means…. It was, therefore, our desire to place this information before you proactively so that you can have confidence in the leadership and management that guides this work.”

In other word, damage control and saving face were paramount.

The bishops readily state that “the implantation of the contraceptive device and the abortion were contrary to basic teachings of the Catholic Church.” They state that they have “some responsibility” for the offices in which the “situation” occurred. “In addition,” the letter states, “ we are aware that this incident is a most regrettable stain on the record of excellence both of MRS and of Catholic Charities.”

First, The Murder; Then The Stonewall

I contacted the offices of all three bishops. Only Bishop DiLorenzo’s chancery responded. Anne Edwards, who is listed on the diocesan website as an advisor to the bishop, referred me to William Etherington, of the Richmond Law Firm of Beale, Davidson, Etherington & Morris. Mr. Etherington, who represents the diocese, confirmed that, once the incident came to Bishop DiLorenzo’s attention, neither the diocese nor CCR reported it to the Virginia Child Protection Services or to law enforcement authorities. Why not? In Mr. Etherington’s professional opinion, the incident did not constitute a crime in the Commonwealth of Virginia, nor was it covered by the USCCB’s Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People. When asked if abortion was murder or child abuse, Etherington replied, “I leave that to the philosophers and theologians. I am not a canonist and I am not a theologian. Listen, this is a big big mistake, and remedial steps have been taken to make sure it doesn’t happen again.” (Speaking of Canon Law, according to EWTN’s website, “Canon 1398 provides that, "a person who procures a successful abortion incurs an automatic [latae sententiae] excommunication.")

Since Mr. Etherington told me that the incident had not been reported, I tried to report it. After all, if abortion isn’t child abuse, what is? I called Maryjane Fuller, who is listed on the diocesan website as the Safe Environment Coordinator. It appears that CCR employees do not work for the diocese, they work for Catholic Charities. So Ms. Fuller told me that the CCR director, Joanne Natrass, should receive reports of sexual abuse regarding Catholic Charities employees. But I had already called Ms. Natrass. As soon as I mentioned the abortion, her secretary, Anita, said, “No Comment,” and hung up.

Ms. Fuller told me she had never heard of the incident. “This is horrible,” she said, and then, as we discussed it, she raised the question again: Does abortion even amount to “child abuse” under the Dallas Charter? Mr. Etherington, who is not a Catholic, had given his professional legal opinion, but Ms. Fuller sounded less certain. Whatever the answer, she emphasized that “the Diocese always stresses that you should report abuse not only because of the law, but because it’s the moral thing to do.”

Why The Coverup?

The Richmond Diocese website’s page for “reporting ‘ministry-related’ sexual abuse” lists telephone numbers for the County Department of Social Services, Child Protective Services Division; the Virginia Department of Social Service; and the Virginia State Police. On the advice of counsel, neither the diocese nor CCR reported the incident – the abuse of the mother and the murder of the child -- to any of them. Nor did they inform any of the other chancery officials and pastors in the diocese with whom I spoke. They were all shocked when I read to them about the incident from their bishop’s letter.

The bishops waited three months to inform their fellow members of the USCCB, and apparently told no one else. But what are they trying to hide? Haven’t our bishops learned that cover-ups don’t work? Wanderer readers might remember a similar pattern during the 1990s, as one abuse scandal after another broke into the secular press and into the criminal and civil courts in one diocese after another. The stonewalls never worked. In fact, they did great – even historic -- damage to the Church – not to mention to the victims, their families, and their communities, and to the Mystical Body of Christ.

The Richmond case represents a microcosm of the secular bureaucratic mentality that has plagued the American Church establishment for decades. Listen to the DiLorenzo letter: “Prior to the abortion, CCR, MRS’s Office of Children Services, and ORR/DUCS were in extensive dialogue regarding how to respond to the situation of the minor following her discovery in early January that she was pregnant.” In the maze of all these acronyms, did anybody call a priest? A bishop? Apparently not. They were too deeply mired in the bureaucratic swamp and haunted by the fear of losing federal government funding.

Bishop DiLorenzo plaintively laments that “some members of MRS staff were not sufficiently aware of Church teaching,” so they did not “take stronger and more appropriate action.” Well, whose fault is that? Doesn’t it sound all too familiar? For years, the Wanderer has warned that the USCCB and CCUSA bureaucrats are much closer to the pro-abortion crowd in Washington than they are to the faithful or to the Faith. After the scandals, we prayed that they might see the light. Instead, the bishops circled the wagons and stubbornly stuck with “business as usual.” The Richmond abortion case indicates that they merely ignored their own rules and relied on lawyers and secrecy instead. In the meantime, as we noted three weeks ago, Cardinal McCarrick made it perfectly clear in 2006 that the prospect of losing federal funding has profoundly influenced (read “silenced”) the bishops with regard to their dealings with prominent “Catholic” politicians who are champions of abortion, the paramount moral issue of our time.

One Catholic official in HHS put it bluntly: “It’s come to this. The U.S. Government can’t trust the Catholic Church to take care of children.” This story is not over.

Professor Douglas Kmiec: Off the Reservation

2008-06-17T09:50:00.000-07:00

Prominent Catholic legal scholar Douglas Kmiec shocked the Catholic legal world when he endorsed Barack Obama for President. Kmiec didn't just make this one statement, he also wrote a second piece where he again reaffirmed his endorsement and--in this author's opinion--naively believes that Obama will be more receptive to an authentically Catholic perspective on the moral issues of the day. But, not to be outdone, it seems that Kmiec again was revelling in the glow that is Obama yesterday.

Some have speculated on Kmiec's seeming overnight change from a political and cultural conservative to a supporter of Obama, arguably the most left-wing and most pro-abortion candidate that the United States has ever seen. Some have opined that he is acting like a woman scorned from betrayals from the Bush Administration over the War in Iraq. Others speculate that the seeming dulling of his exercise of practical prudence is a result of the onset of Parkinson's disease. Whatever the reason, it is clear that Kmiec is not reasoning well in his support for Obama. Consider the following from Kmiec's June 7, 2008 article on Catholic Online (referenced above):

The on-going intelligent and civil discussion also allows us to grasp how no candidate who merely checks a pro-life box in a superficial way should be permitted to blind us from the balance of Catholic social teaching, including the strengthening of the family with a family wage and tax structure that is responsive to the needs of the average family; the ending of an unjust and disproportionate war; the care and stewardship of the human environment; and the structuring of society to look after the most vulnerable among us, including especially the elderly, the poor, and of course those whose voice can only be heard through ours.

Kmiec sounds like a seamless garment kind of guy. "The balance of Catholic social teaching," in Kmiec's mind, seems ignore the very foundations of marriage and the family. While I agree with his comments on the family wage and tax structure, his comments on the other issues seem disturbing. The "ending of an unjust and disproportionate war" is a judgment and position that may be taken by a thoughtful Catholic, but other thoughtful Catholics may disagree and still remain Catholics in good standing. The "care and stewardship of the human environment," is a curious phrase. I'm not quite sure what the "human environment" is. Perhaps it is the family built on stable marriage? Finally, the "structuring of society...," is the most disturbing. "Structuring" or "Re-structuring society" is a favorite buzz-word of faculty lounge and coffee house Marxists. These types generally see big government as the answer and, in the process, they give short shrift to the Church's time-honored teaching of the Principle of Subsidiarity. Based upon his associations--aptly pointed out by Tom Roeser--it is not unfair to put Obama in this camp. Has Kmiec joined him?

Here are the facts:

Obama is pro-abortion; for expanding sex ed in public schools; for expanding access to contraception; for embryonic stem cell research.

Obama is on the record at a gathering of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund (June 17, 2007) as saying that the first thing he will do as President is sign the Freedom of Choice Act.

Obama is pro-same-sex unions, thus undermining the family built on stable marriage.

Professor Kmiec has yet to explain to us why Catholics should vote for Obama.

Oh wait...he has:

"Obama's conception of promoting the common good is situated in those regular but welcoming neighborhoods most of us call home—foreclosure aside. He intends to ask government and non-governmental entities—and you and me—to do our part. Frankly, it is more than a little exhilarating to be given that much faith and trust."

With all due respect, Prof. Kmiec, there is no such thing as a common good that includes the murder of the innocent and the undermining of marriage and the family.

Perhaps Chris Will Put This as The Description of This Blog

2008-06-05T10:46:00.000-07:00

"...[I]n some secular humanistic future, when the only sin will be pain, the only evil ill health; when childbearing will be looked upon as a disease, and terminal illnesses will not be tolerated; when it is just possible that the free, human beings will be forbidden to have a child, or a smoke, or a drink, save by prescription of the National Health; in that cold, clinical future, you will search in vain for the rebels save in the ranks of the Catholic Church."

--Archbishop John Murphy of Cardiff, Wales (d. 1995)

Perpetual Adolescence

2008-05-08T09:27:00.000-07:00

The ever perceptive Diogenes has provided us with another instance of the "progressive wing"of the Catholic Church. Pictures and videos speak volumes.

Compare this "progressive group" with another group in the Catholic Church--this one. Unlike the former group, this one holds fast to the truth and has the uncanny ability to sniff out a fake.

The paradox here is that the truly mature are and remain young, whereas those caught in a perpetual adolescence become increasingly old and irrelevant.

Welcome

2008-05-08T06:12:00.000-07:00

The Catholic guys welcome you to our ongoing conversations, observations, critiques, reviews, brawls, and links to anything and everything that might contribute to Holy Mother Church.

ad majorem dei gloriam!