One to watch

There's a very interesting election to watch in the news: the initlal results are in, and New York voters have sent a shock wave through the Empire State's political and cultural landscape. And they may also have elected pro-marriage political newcomer David Storobin to their state's Senate.

The race in this heavily Democratic-registered district was supposed to be an easy one for Lew Fidler, a longtime progressive Democrat officeholder. But the National Organization for Marriage collaborated with the district's large Orthodox population to upset that supposition, focusing on the issue of redefining marriage to include same-sex unions. Fidler was for it; Storobin was against it.

According to NOM, as of yesterday, Storobin had scored a tremendous upset, but was ahead by fewer than 200 votes, with absentee ballots yet to be counted. And therein lies something else to watch.

If this election goes like so many others, the post-election numbers will slowly diminish Storobin's lead, and finally replace it with a slim lead for Fidler, and that result will quickly be ratified by state officials. Remember progressive Christine Grigoire's first run for governor of Washington? Her conservative challenger, Dino Rossi, held a slim lead, as I recall; but boxes and boxes of "forgotten" and "mislaid" ballots were suddenly found, heavily supporting Grigoire. That included some 500 provisional ballots showing City Hall as the resident's mailing address. Despite these -- what shall we call them? -- anomalies, Grigoire was declared the winner. Washington courts turned Rossi's challenges aside.

If something similar happens this time in New York, it will simply mark one more stage on our very own Road to Serfdom. If it doesn't -- well, then I guess we might be hearing the whisper of a turn in the tide.

Doonesbury goes mad

Seems that Gary Trudeau's using his Doonesbury comic strip this week to pillory the new Texas law that requires that women see an ultrasound of their unborn child before having him or her aborted. Apparently because this ultrasound is done with a vaginal probe, Trudeau is trumpeting the pro-abortion view that condemns the requirement as "state rape."

Isn't it a little weird that he's so outraged about this, when the abortion he so ardently hopes will follow the ultrasound will also involve inserting something? That that something will certainly be fatal for one person in the room, and quite possibly for the woman as well? And that he, while posing as a defender of women, would cheapen the very serious crime of rape by using the word in so twisted a sense?

Weird, yes. But unexpected from that side of the argument? Not in the least.

Foundations

I don't know much yet about the group that made this video, but it looks promising. However, the video gets one thing wrong, and although it isn't as important as the moral issues it raises, it's still important.

We're told that we need a President who will "create jobs." No, no, no! We need a President who will rein in the Federal government and make it easier for the people to create jobs.

For too long, what I might call "official" Catholic opinion has favored trying to form a more perfect society through giving more and more power to the Federal government. That is, through a soft form of socialism.

That's a terrible mistake, not least because it undermines the way the Church works, which is by preaching the Gospel in order to save immortal souls. Turns out that when you do that, individual moral decisions (such as those of employers and investors) get better. That leads to a better society, because it's based on the freely-chosen actions of those who take Christ as their model -- the best foundation a person, a neighborhood, a town, a state, or a country can ever have, this side of Heaven.

Which one ought to raise Elijah?

Whatever you think of Michelle Bachmann, she didn't deserve this underhanded "gotcha" at one of her book signings, perpetrated by a gay parent using her 8-year-old son as a tool:

Read about the incident here, and then tell me: in whose household would 8-year-old Elijah be raised better -- his manipulative mother's, or Michelle Bachmann's? If you need help, look at the big effort Ms. Bachmann makes to get close enough to Elijah to hear his tiny voice, and the patient, motherly expression on her face before the trap is sprung. Then examine the gloating that Elijah's mom indulges in, when she posts her video at HuffPo (link at site above).

Well, THAT's a relief!

To the question of whether Advent is a penitential season, one Fr. Reginald Martin in Our Sunday Visitor offers this answer:

The violet-colored vestments worn during Advent may give an impression that the days before Christmas, like those of Lent, are a time of penance. In fact, they are a time of anticipation and preparation. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states, “the liturgy of Advent each year … makes present this ancient expectation of the Messiah” (No. 524), and the subdued colors of the season symbolize the darkness we must endure as we await the light and warmth that Jesus’s birth will bring into the world.

During Advent we do not use the Gloria at Mass, and this, too, may seem penitential. However, the Gloria is the hymn the angels sang to announce the birth of Jesus, so we simply lay it aside until we celebrate Christ’s birth at Christmas. In the meantime, however, we continue to sing the Alleluia.

The General Instruction of the Roman Missal (GIRM) mentions that Advent should be marked by a moderation suited to the character of the season without expressing prematurely the full joy of the Nativity of the Lord. This is an excellent summary of our belief: the happiness and joy of Christmas are not fully realized, so we observe the days of Advent with moderation and sobriety.

Moderation and sobriety? You mean like buying the 8' tree instead of the 10' one, and not getting too hammered at the office Christmas Holiday Party?

Fr. Martin seems to imply that hearing an overall theme of repenting for our sins would be bad for us, and would get in the way of preparing ourselves for the Incarnation. I admit that he could be right -- if the big problem in the Church today was an excess of penitence. If, say, Catholics were mobbing the confessionals like a Black Friday sale at Walmart, and drowning out the Mass every Sunday with uncontrollable wails of sorrow.

But of course our real problem is exactly the opposite. We're altogether way too satisfied with ourselves, way too confident that whatever we do in life, heck, we deserve forgiveness and the joys of Heaven when we die.

And for forty years, most of our clergy have been encouraging us to stay smug and put repentance aside. Guys, that's not what we need. Tell us how repentance fits into the task of preparation for Christmas. Don't pretend it doesn't have a role to play. 

Michael Crichton hits the mark

At the end of his 2004 novel about deadly games played to advance the cause of global warming alarm, State of Fear, the late Michael Crichton provided a very interesting appendix, titled "Why Politicized Science is Dangerous." He first described two 20th-century instances of such science: eugenics (wildly popular among European and U.S. intellectuals until World War II ended), and Lysenko's pseudo-genetic scam in Soviet Russia (avidly pushed by Stalin, with disastrous results).

Then he made these unsettling points about global warming / climate change:

Now we are engaged in a great new theory, that once again has drawn the support of politicians, scientists, and celebrities around the world. Once again, the theory is promoted by major foundations. Once again, the research is carried out at prestigious universities. Once again, legislation is passed and social programs are urged in its name. Once again, critics are few and harshly dealt with.

Once again, the measures being urged have little basis in fact or science. Once again, groups with other agendas are hiding behind a movement that appears high-minded. Once again, claims of moral superiority are used to justify extreme actions. Once again, the fact that some people are hurt is shrugged off because an abstract cause is said to be greater than any human consequences. Once again, terms like sustainability and generational justice -- terms that have no agreed definition -- are employed in the service of a new crisis. ...

And I would add one more thought: once again, we are pushed toward abandoning more control over our lives to an ever-more-powerful government. And power's the real stake in this game -- and the earlier ones, too.

You can always get them back

How perennial sin is! The more history I read, the more it seems that there's hardly any evil in our modern world that the Church hasn't had to tackle many times already, in its past.

One of the most telling moments in C. S. Lewis' Narnia books comes in Prince Caspian, when a ghostly old woman hears the Narnians refer to the White Witch, who appeared to have been killed at the end of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. She scoffs: "[W]ho ever heard of a witch that really died? You can always get them back."

And we do.

"There's a syncretism here..."

Our Sunday Visitor offers a story out of the Southwest.

"There's a syncretism here..." says Fr. Jamison. No kidding! And it's not a good thing. The worship of creation and the worship of the Creator can't be reconciled. It is no kindness to Native Americans to pretend that it can. Unless Sr. Clissene and Fr. Jamison were very, very sure that those doing the crown dance were not worshipping nature, they should not have associated themselves with it.

As for Christianity being part of their oppression -- yes, it was certainly invoked by many Europeans to justify their sins. But Native Americans need to understand that Christian principles -- especially the thought of Las Casas, Vitoria, and other Catholic philosophers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries -- also led to the establishment of the reservation system, which for all its ills, recognized their status as human beings having a culture of their own and deserving a chance to preserve it. Those principles protected them from the obliteration of their culture, or even their annihilation, which two options have been the usual lot of conquered peoples throughout history.

Michael Voris hits the mark

RealCatholicTV points out the 800-lb. gorilla in the room: none of the liturgical garbage we've had to put up with for the past 50 years was mandated by Vatican II.

Now will you join me in taking our Church back?

Archbishop Dolan hits the mark

Archbishop Timothy Dolan has issued a remarkably clear and brief decree (PDF here) about same-sex marriage. It is all the more remarkable among the pronouncements of American Catholic bishops (not to mention that blather factory, the USCCB) in that it is clear, and it is brief. Here's the money quote:

(2) No Catholic facility or property, including but not limited to parishes, missions, chapels, meeting halls, Catholic educational, health, or charitable institutions or benevolent orders, or any place dedicated, consecrated, or used for Catholic worship may be used for the solemnization or consecration of same-sex marriages.

Bishop McGrath, can we hope for a similar decree from you?

Holy, Smart & Bold

What does the Church need now? What She has always needed: saints. And "holy, smart, and bold" is a darned good tagline.

Here we go again...

From the UK's The Independent comes this charming story about Weltbild, a publishing house in Germany, owned by -- you guessed it -- Catholic bishops:

Germany's biggest Catholic-owned publishing house has been rocked by disclosures that it has been selling thousands of pornographic novels with titles such as Sluts Boarding School and Lawyer's Whore with the full assent of the country's leading bishops.

According to the article, the German bishops defended themselves this way...

Catholic bishops responded with a statement claiming that "a filtering system failure" at the publishing house had allowed the books to stray on to the market. "We will put a stop to the distribution of possibly pornographic content in future," they said.

...and were chided, in turn, this way...

But Bernhard Müller, editor of the Catholic magazine PUR, dismissed the clerics' reaction as grossly hypocritical. He alleged that the pornography scandal at Weltbild had been going on for at least a decade with the Church's full knowledge. Mr Müller said that in 2008, a group of concerned Catholics had sent bishops a 70-page document containing irrefutable evidence that Weltbild published books that promoted pornography, Satanism and magic. They demanded that the publisher withdraw the titles.

But their protests appear to have been completely ignored. Writing in the Die Welt newspaper, Mr Müller said most of the bishops refused to respond to the charges. "The sudden proclaimed astonishment of many church leaders that pornographic material is being distributed by their publishing house, is play acting – bad play acting," Mr Müller said. "Believers have been complaining to their bishops about this for years."

It'll be interesting to hear how this story unfolds, and what the facts really are. At this point, it's completely possible that part or all of this apparent scandal is a frame-up. But given the dismal state of European Catholicism these days, the current narrative is all too believable.

Which means that even if the facts turn out to be far more kind to the bishops than what has been published so far, the initial story will stick in many, many minds as just another reason to ignore the Church and its teachings.

So glad to be back at St. Thomas!

I was in Sacramento for a couple of weekends recently, and so had to find a Mass on those Sundays. I wasn't too worried, because it had seemed to me that Sacramento was a lot saner, liturgically, than here near San Jose.

Boy, was I wrong.

Or maybe I ended up at those places so I could better appreciate the incredible gift we're enjoying at St. Thomas Aquinas.

DNC chairwoman: Catholics, your Church's beliefs are "extreme"

From the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, comes the news that one of our Church's core moral teachings is "extreme" and "divisive."

For self-described progressive Catholics, the choice is becoming too clear to paper over any longer: the left wing of the Democratic Party, or your Church.

Death, or life.

Cursing, or blessing.

Time's up. What's your final answer?

The weedy direction of the Arab Spring

Good news for all those folks (Al Gore and Joe Biden, for example) who were so ecstatic about the so-called Arab Spring: move to Tunisia and you'll soon be able to have four wives! For feminists, unfortunately, there's no word yet on how many husbands a woman will be able to have. Since the party rising to dominance in Tunisia has declared that Sharia will be the basis for Tunisian law in future, I'm guessing that the latter number will be 1 -- or more accurately, perhaps, one quarter.

The other First Amendment

Now that we've been treated to the news that a Tennessee school district (Tennessee, for cryin' out loud!) has cautioned public-school coaches and teachers not to bow their heads to join in student-led prayer, it's time to re-read Amendment 1 of the U.S. Constitution. All of it, this time.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Now, everyone refers to the first part part as "The Establishment Clause." They read to the first comma, and stop. Case closed. Chalk up another victory for removing Christianity from the public square.

But just beyond that comma is a very important counterbalance: "... or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

It's that balancing phrase that no one seems to remember these days. And we Christians ignore it at our peril.

I think our Founders understood very well that the sense of the first phrase could eventually be used to banish the practice of religion from the public square, although the danger must have seemed remote in that time of strong Christian consensus. But that consensus is no more, and many now seem to think that all religion is dangerous and suspect. It's a setup for repression.

So it's time for us to rename that clause, as a first step in reclaiming its central message. Can we please start referring to it as the "Free Exercise" clause?

And then exercise the freedom it recognizes, in public?

The Culture of Death gives the envelope another nudge

It's good to see the USCCB pushing back against the efforts of the Obama administration to force Catholic entities to pay for contraception and sterilization in their health insurance benefits. It's even better to see that our parish's bulletin contained the bishop's flyer about this issue.

Rather than cave in to this latest Progressive pressure -- if it succeeds, which it could well do -- Catholic employers should drop health insurance coverage out of their compensation packages. Give their employees the same money as was being paid for their insurance premiums (yes, I know it'll amount to less in total, because it'll be taxed), and have them secure their own insurance.

Some will argue that this will reduce the ability of Catholic organizations to compete with secular ones in attracting good job candidates. My question to them would be: exactly what constitutes a "good" candidate for a Catholic entity's jobs? One who has a nice shiny degree from Stanford or Harvard, for instance, but rejects most, if not all, of the Church's teachings?

More on Fr. Pavone

The always-cogent Phil Lawler has provided a good analysis of what's presently known about the dust-up between Fr. Pavone of Priests for Life and his bishop.

Fr. Pavone and Bishop Zurek

Today came the news of the suspension of Fr. Frank Pavone, of Priests for Life. Bishop Zurek of Amarillo, the diocese in which until recently PFL kept its offices under the aegis of a different bishop who was supportive, suspended him from his pro-life operations, with allusions to unspecified financial concerns, and recalled him to Amarillo. It's too early to tell what's going on here, but Fr. Pavone's response certainly is eloquent, obedient, yet resolute. We'll see.

The wrong side of WHAT history?

Via CNS comes this tidbit that should be of interest to Catholics:

Thirteen U.S. senators who oppose the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) participated in a video for the pro-homosexual “It Gets Better” project, in which they encourage lesbian and gay youth to persevere and be optimistic about the future. In discussing the release of the video on Wednesday, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said, “DOMA, folks, is on the wrong side of history.”

Would that be the history in which every society has defined marriage as the union of a man and a woman? The history in which homosexual behavior has almost never been encouraged, let alone honored with the mantle of marriage? The history of two thousand years of consistent teaching of the Catholic Church on homosexual behavior? In case you were actually wondering about that, the answers to those questions is No. The history they have in mind is the recent history they have themselves concocted, the history in which every shred of sexual restraint with which societies have shielded themselves must go, because it's -- well -- so old-fashioned.

The senators featured in the video are: Al Franken (D-Minn.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Mark Udall, (D-Colo.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.)

Please, all you Catholics who have cozied up to Democratic politicians because of their support for your favorite "social justice" issues, remember all those D's. No R's, only D's. And for fellow Californian Catholics, remember that, please, the next time Dianne Feinstein comes up for re-election.

A note for non-Catholics:

The Catholic Church does NOT teach that people with homosexual inclinations are worthless human beings who ought to kill themselves. It teaches that such people should do the same thing as everyone else who is tempted toward some evil (that is, all of us): just don't do it.

In contrast with this humane recognition of a transcendent worth in all human beings that's independent of their behavior, the suicides that are deplored in the Senators' video are just what's to be expected from a secular culture that ties people's entire identities to their sexuality. To these Senators and the millions who support them, gays aren't really people; they're labelled counters in a political game of power.

Just what you'd expect from the party whose leader doesn't want his daughters to be "punished" with an unexpected child who interferes with their plans.