Elections sure do have consequences

Many Catholics voted for Barack Obama despite his support for abortion-on-demand. After all, they told us, he's so good on Social Justice issues.

Many Catholics voted for Democratic senatorial candidates despite their support for abortion-on-demand. After all, they told us, they're so good on Social Justice issues.

Having predicted the end of the world a few years ago if Republicans altered the Senate's filibuster rules to allow President Bush's bench nominees to be confirmed, Democrats did exactly that last month, when faced with filibusters or threats thereof against President Obama's nominees. Republicans backed away from this so-called "nuclear option" in 2005. Democrats welcomed it in 2013.

The Catholics who re-elected President Obama enabled him to nominate the astonishingly pro-abortion Cornelia Pillard to the District of Columbia's Circuit Court. arguably the most influential Federal Court of Appeal in the country, since cases which concern the White House and the federal bureaucracy get heard there first. Little issues, like the HHS mandate, for example.

Then those Senators whom Catholics elected despite their pro-abortion record changed the Senate rules and confirmed Ms. Pillard with a bare majority of 51 votes, when it would formerly have taken 60.

So now, you good Catholics, we all have a new lifetime judge among whose milder pronouncements is this:

Antiabortion laws and other restraints on reproductive freedom not only enforce women’s incubation of unwanted pregnancies, but also prescribe a “vision of the woman’s role” as mother and caretaker of children in a way that is at odds with equal protection. Renewed attacks on abortion have turned attention to how the Equal Protection Clause, and the right to sex equality more generally, might advance reproductive self-determination.

She's also completely opposed to abstinence-based sex ed.

The abstinence-only approach is permeated with stereotyped messages and sex-based double standards about acceptable male and female sexual behavior and appropriate social roles. Public school teaching of gender stereotypes violates the constitutional bar against sex stereotyping and is vulnerable to equal protection challenge...

Catholics might want to remember that abstaining from sexual relations is exactly the Catholic Church's teaching on preventing unwanted pregnancy. Too bad that there's now a majority on the D.C. Circuit (it used to be evenly split between Democrats and Republicans) that thinks the Church's teaching is an affront to human rights.

And so the red tide of abortion will roll on, at a million dead children each year in the United States alone.

But I'll bet Ms. Pillard is so good on Social Justice issues...

Still waiting...

Six years ago, I asked in this blog why Nancy Pelosi had still not been denied the Eucharist for her public, clear, and defiant persistence in supporting abortion in her congressional votes. Back then, we Catholics were told to be patient because the then-Archbishop of San Francisco was taking a "pastoral" approach to her correction.

Six years on, and Ms. Pelosi is still flaunting her leadership against even the slightest limitation upon abortion. No statement condemning her behavior has been forthcoming. No statement noting her self-excommunication under Canon Law and consequent inability to receive the Eucharist has been forthcoming. No repentance. Not even an acknowledgement that her actions are in contradiction to Church doctrine.

How long, O Lord, how long?

My JFK thoughts

I thought I'd wait until most of the noise surrounding the 50th anniversary of President Kennedy's assassination had dissipated, before adding my own reflections.

Most reminiscences from us Boomers start with where we were when we heard the news. But I don't have many strong memories of that day; just a bewildering announcement on our car's radio. What I do remember much more vividly are two incidents from the autumn of 1960, during the campaign.

The first memory is a conversation with a couple of neighbor boys I was playing with. They solemnly informed me that their public school teacher had told them that if Kennedy were to be elected, all Americans would be forced to convert to Catholicism. Despite the grudging respect that the Church had earned in 20th-century America by raising up great men like Fulton Sheen, that's the kind of casual Protestant anti-Catholicism that Kennedy, and all of us, still had to live with.

The second memory is being allowed to accompany my mom to a Kennedy campaign rally in Long Beach, California. I don't remember anything about his speech — not surprising, I guess, for a 10-year-old —but I do recall how tanned his face was, and how broad and sincere his smile looked. Our seats were only about 50 yards away from him. Closer than the sniper in Dallas.

I think he set a bad precedent in his famous apologia (to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association) for being a Catholic candidate, seeming to banish the Faith from the public square. This attitude of the Kennedy Democrats, after all, morphed into that of the Cuomo Democrats not long after, when Roe v. Wade was handed down: personally opposed to grave evil, but unwilling to "impose our morality" on others. At MercatorNet.com, Sheila Liaugminas quotes both Peggy Noonan and George Weigel at length about this; these will give you better background than I could.

Despite the many sins that drag down his legacy, he left behind many great statements that will always buoy it up. I'll just imitate Sheila, and close with this:

My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man. 

Finally, whether you are citizens of America or citizens of the world, ask of us the same high standards of strength and sacrifice which we ask of you. With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.

What to do now

There's a long road ahead of us. Time to remember Eliot's East Coker again, I guess:

There is only the fight to recover what has been lost 
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions 
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss. 
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.

Why not a Catholic Party?

Shortly before the election, a friend sent me a copy of a message her parish received from its pastor.

In the introductory paragraphs, the pastor wrote something to the effect that it's unreasonable to expect the platform of any political party to match up exactly to the teachings of the Catholic Church. And as long we think in terms of the Democratic, Republican, Green, Peace & Freedom, American Independent, etc., etc, parties, that's bound to be true.

But what if there were a political party whose entire purpose was to match up with the central Magisterial teachings of the Church?

It wouldn't even have to be a party in the sense of fielding candidates of its own. It could exist primarily to provide a single organization to which Catholics and others could attach themselves, knowing that this party would never compromise when examining the claims of other parties' candidates.

The original "Catholic Center Party" arose in Germany in 1871, to counter growing anti-Catholicism pressure, and soon persecution, by the triumphant secular state brought into being largely through the work of Otto von Bismarck.

As we face a similar situation today, which will only intensify in the near future, I think we need to give some serious consideration to following the example of 1871 -- and then act.

More on this, anon.

Words for the day after:

Mene, mene, tekel upharsin.

For those who may not recognize those words, they were the original "handwriting on the wall," traced by a ghostly hand on a palace wall in Babylon. For Belshazzar, their unfortunate addressee, they meant:

Mene: God has numbered the days of your reign, and brought them to an end.
Tekel: You have been weighed in the balance, and have been found wanting.
Upharsin: Your kingdom will be divided among [your enemies] the Medes and Persians.

I don't know where, but on some wall in America this morning, that same hand is scrawling a modern take on the old verdict...

Mene: America, God will soon bring the days of your world dominance to an end. Your people are now too foolish, too carelessly evil, to be trusted with such power as their nation now wields.
Tekel: You've been given two hundred years of freedom without precedent, and you've just used it to re-elect a mendacious tyrant to rule over you.
Upharsin: Your power will be divided up among your enemies -- China, Russia, the rising Islamic Caliphate. Your lands? We'll see.

Served us right

This program is from RealCatholicTV.com

Michael Voris' special report on Thursday's Supreme Court decision mentions a very telling and true sentiment from Chief Justice John Roberts' concurring opinion, which I hadn't heard elsewhere so far:

It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.

As Voris and many others have pointed out, approximately 54% of Catholics voted in 2008 to put Barack Obama into the White House, despite his dedication to the legalized murder that is abortion on demand. That's got to change this November, or when our generation of Catholics gets to our own Particular Judgements, we're gonna have a lotta splainin' to do.

In the wake of today's Supreme Court decision...

"The so-called Defense of Marriage Act"

That's how President Obama is reported to have referred to the Defense of Marriage Act while greeting gay-rights groups at the White House reception to celebrate LGBT Pride Month.

I don't know how the battle lines could be more definitively drawn. The President has made it very clear that he wants "marriage" to take on a new meaning that is radically opposed to the Catholic Church's teachings -- and to the common understanding of marriage that prevailed until quite recently. We in the Catholic Church, here and now, are the last line of defense of one of the pillars of civilization. As usual.

This must be our hour.

A Tale of Two Democrats

From MercatorNet.org comes this zinger called "How to be a Catholic Democrat," which concisely contrasts two very different ways to do just that -- exemplified by Nancy Pelosi and our present Ambassador to the Vatican, former Boston mayor Ray Flynn. Who got it right? One guess.

Step up and get your identity barcode!

The creepy idea of implanting some kind of ID device on every human being just keeps coming back, this time touted by a science fiction writer doing some "global thinking."

Sure, why not? What could possibly go wrong?

And I'll bet it won't hurt a bit. At least not at first.

h/t Bioedge.

Pelosi: Bishops don't speak for Church

The increasingly indescribable Nancy Pelosi has now informed us that in suing the Federal Government over the HHS/ObamaCare insurance mandate, the Catholic bishops of our country are not speaking for the Catholic Church.

As usual, words are important, because they are the framework for thought. Consider how that phrase "speaking for..." is used by sane people. When President Obama says something, he speaks for the executive branch of government. No one would say, "Yeah, but I talked to a guy in the EPA, and he disagrees, so Obama's not really speaking for the administration." We'd retort, "What you really mean is that not everyone in his administration agrees with him." That's because by virtue of the office that he holds, we all know that Mr. Obama can indeed speak for his administration, regardless of internal disagreements.

In a similar way, the bishops speak for the Catholic Church within their dioceses, and when gathered together under the constitution of the USCCB, they speak for the Catholic Church in the United States.

Nancy, please go home and spend what time you have left on this Earth enjoying your grandkids. And repenting for your longtime rebellion against the Church. And for your decades of complicity in the murder of millions of unborn children.

Paper, please

A news report I saw today asserts that the Labor Department recently ordered reporters to start using government-provided software and equipment to access data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Now, I can understand an agency in, say, the Defense Department or the State Department needing to be very careful about who sees what information, and actually needing to control the methods of access. But the Bureau of Labor Statistics? Are they afraid that WikiLeaks will get hold of scandalous facts about unemployment in Poughkeepsie?

Why would this be happening now? Oh, yeah. It's an election year, and job numbers will be important to political victory.

Personally, I sometimes yearn for the days when such information arrived on paper. Once the publication was in your hands, you only needed standard human software and equipment -- a brain and eyesight -- to have access to it permanently, and nobody could sneak around electronically and expunge potentially politically inconvenient information in it.

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).

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.

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 President on abortion

Here's President Obama's statement marking the 38th anniversary of Roe (my comments in bold):

Today marks the 38th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that protects women’s health and reproductive freedom, and affirms a fundamental principle: that government should not intrude on private family matters. [Never mind that the government employees at your local public school will be happy to help your teen daughter find a way to get an abortion without your knowledge, let alone consent. But of course, that's not really intruding on "private family matters"].

I am committed to protecting this constitutional right. [Yep, it's in there among the "penumbras" and "emanations." Really. You just gotta look hard.] I also remain committed to policies, initiatives, and programs that help prevent unintended pregnancies, support pregnant women and mothers, encourage healthy relationships, and promote adoption. organization [Note that he didn't mention efforts that would actually try to dissuade women from choosing to abort. That might help make abortion rare, which wouldn't be good for a certain big campaign-contributor organization that makes millions by providing abortions.]

And on this anniversary, I hope that we will recommit ourselves more broadly to ensuring that our daughters have the same rights, the same freedoms, and the same opportunities as our sons to fulfill their dreams. [In other words, the freedom to have sex just as irresponsibly as the crudest and most degenerate men. What a triumph for women that is! And you can fulfill your dreams just like men, too! You too can get right back on track to the Big Education that leads to the Big Career that leads to the Big Lifestyle -- and to the shattering Big Emptiness that comes at the end.]

Oh, but I forgot. The President's SO good on the social justice stuff! That trumps everything.

Walk for Life West Coast

Participated in the Walk for Life West Coast today. One darned big crowd! It took an hour for the tail of the parade to leave Justin Herman Plaza.

I saw only a handful of counter-demonstrators. The Sisters of Perpetual Whatever-It-Is had a couple of representatives, and there was a guy with a big sign reading "Pope John Paul II / Patron Saint of Pedophiles". Pretty pitiful.

I think they're getting discouraged. It's tough to have another team come into your house and bring in bigger crowds than you do!