At The Turn of the Tide

Fire the 41

2012-11-06T23:00:00.000-08:00

For new blog posts, scroll down. This one's staying up till the election.

The Senate has officially lost it. Evidence:

"Offered to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal 2012 (S.1867), amendment No. 1274 would have allowed the U.S. government to detain an American citizen indefinitely, even after they had been tried and found not guilty, until Congress declares an end to the war on terror."

Sponsored by Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama. Voted for by 41 members of the US Senate, including two Democrats, one Independent, and the rest Republicans.

My slogan for the next year: Fire the 41.

For a list of names and more information, see 41 Senators Need to Lose the Next Election.

Gorgeousness

2012-02-09T13:00:00.000-08:00

Social Justice Catholics: A Call to Action

2012-02-08T18:53:00.001-08:00

Michael Sean Winters for the win. Excerpts:

...The administration’s logic seems to be that when a poor person comes to a Catholic soup kitchen, we should not ask if he is hungry, we should ask if he is Catholic. Sorry, but that is not how we conceive of our Catholic mission and social justice Catholics should be the first to recognize this instead of shamefully making apologies for the administration or bashing the bishops or shifting the conversation away from these first principles into a defense of contraception...

Make no mistake about it - those who support denying Catholic institutions a more robust exemption have placed their commitment to pro-choice orthodoxy above their commitment to health care reform. Is that progressive? Is that something progressive Catholics, who fought so hard to pass the ACA, want to defend? It is time for so-called progressive Catholics to stop serving as chaplains to the political status quo and recognize a first principle when they see one. It is time for Catholics to insist that a conscience exemption that only applies to religion on Sunday and no help for the poor unless they are also Catholic is no conscience exemption at all. And, if the White House doesn't see it that way, let them pay the political price for it. This isn't a neighborhood bridge game. It is politics.

Religious Freedom Condemned to Die

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

A powerful homily.

The USCCB's 6 Things About The HHS Regulation

2012-02-07T20:48:00.000-08:00

What you need to know. Excerpted:

1. The mandate does not exempt Catholic charities, schools, universities, or hospitals. These institutions are vital to the mission of the Church, but HHS does not deem them "religious employers" worthy of conscience protection, because they do not "serve primarily persons who share the[ir] religious tenets." HHS denies these organizations religious freedom precisely because their purpose is to serve the common good of society—a purpose that government should encourage, not punish.

2. The mandate forces these institutions and others, against their conscience, to pay for things they consider immoral. Under the mandate, the government forces religious insurers to write policies that violate their beliefs; forces religious employers and schools to sponsor and subsidize coverage that violates their beliefs; and forces religious employees and students to purchase coverage that violates their beliefs.

3. The mandate forces coverage of sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs and devices as well as contraception. Though commonly called the "contraceptive mandate," HHS's mandate also forces employers to sponsor and subsidize coverage of sterilization. And, by including all drugs approved by the FDA for use as contraceptives, the HHS mandate includes drugs that can induce abortion, such as "Ella," a close cousin of the abortion pill RU-486.

4. Catholics of all political persuasions are unified in their opposition to the mandate. Catholics who have long supported this Administration and its healthcare policies have publicly criticized HHS's decision, including columnists E.J. Dionne, Mark Shields, and Michael Sean Winters; college presidents Father John Jenkins and Arturo Chavez; and Daughter of Charity Sister Carol Keehan, president and chief executive officer of the Catholic Health Association of the United States.

5. Many other religious and secular people and groups have spoken out strongly against the mandate. Many recognize this as an assault on the broader principle of religious liberty, even if they disagree with the Church on the underlying moral question. For example, Protestant Christian, Orthodox Christian, and Orthodox Jewish groups--none of which oppose contraception--have issued statements against the decision. The Washington Post, USA Today, N.Y. Daily News, Detroit News, and other secular outlets, columnists, and bloggers have editorialized against it.

6. The federal mandate is much stricter than existing state mandates. HHS chose the narrowest state-level religious exemption as the model for its own. That exemption was drafted by the ACLU and exists in only 3 states (New York, California, Oregon). Even without a religious exemption, religious employers can already avoid the contraceptive mandates in 28 states by self-insuring their prescription drug coverage, dropping that coverage altogether, or opting for regulation under a federal law (ERISA) that pre-empts state law. The HHS mandate closes off all these avenues of relief.

Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan on HHS Conscience Regulation from Rocco Palmo on Vimeo.

Corrupt Popes? We Know, We Know...

2012-02-07T13:00:00.001-08:00

So sometimes people seem shocked that Catholics can follow the Pope, even though there have been many sinful pontiffs. To which Catholics can answer--um, yeah?

Excerpts:

Considering the fact that they are elected to lead people in prayer, mission and good works, surprisingly few popes have been beatified or canonized, especially in the last 500 years.

From St. Peter to Pope Benedict XVI, there have been 265 popes; 78 of them are saints, and Pope John Paul II's beatification brought to 11 the number of popes known as blessed...

We've had saints and sinners hold the chair of Peter down through the years. The papacy has had high points and low, but all must be seen in light of its first occupant. St. Peter was a sinner, called by Jesus to a unique place, and transformed by the fire of the Holy Spirit, just as all saints must be. It is the person who dwells in the presence and the power of God who become supernaturalized, a partaker in the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4).

Conversion of the Converted

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

A challenge to all religious people: take the next step and become a saint. Excerpts:

...The young abbot was speaking to his community one day, and he made a remark that shocked me on my first reading of it. "There are more people converted from mortal sin to grace, than there are religious converted from good to better." Over the years the more I have experienced of life and thought about this statement the more I have been convinced of its truth. Yet one may ask, what is so shocking about it?

Before responding to this question, it may be helpful to unpack the implications of this plain fact. What Bernard said of religious unfortunately is true in all states of life: bishops, priests, married men and women. Routine daily experience bears it out. Like any competent speaker, the saint wanted to be clear and direct, and so he spoke of the men in front of him. Yet we may wonder: what is shocking about this prosaic but seldom discussed truth?

Putting the saint's observation in simple contemporary terms may help. Bernard was saying that there are more men who give up serious alienation from God, mortal sin, than there are people who give up small wrongs, willed venial sins. And there are even fewer who grow into heroic virtue and live as saints live. If we are not saddened by this realization, we ought to be. We need to notice the title of this book: Deep Conversion/ Deep Prayer. The twice repeated adjective is important. Seldom explained, it is what we are about here...

Why Pray?

2012-02-06T13:00:00.000-08:00

Father Thomas Dubay, author of Prayer Primer : Igniting a Fire Within, says it brilliantly. Excerpts:

...Scripture says it best of all. With a charming invitation the Lord shouts "Oh, come to the water all you who are thirsty; though you have no money, come .... Why spend money on what is not bread, your wages on what fails to satisfy .... Pay attention, come to me; listen, and your soul will live" (Is 55:1-3, JB). Nothing less can bring us to life. And Isaiah himself keeps vigil through the night as his spirit yearns for his Lord (Is 26:9). He practices what he proclaims.

The psalmist is of like mind: his soul thirsts for the living God (Ps 42:2-3). Like a parched desert he pines for his Lord, for only in him does he find rest (Ps 63:1; 62:1). The inspired writer knows that God must be our consuming concern, for pursuing him, adoring him, loving him, being immersed in him can alone profoundly delight and fill us. Anything less than Everything is not enough.

The New Testament has the same message, for the Fountain has appeared in the flesh. He declares in the Sermon on the Mount that they are blessed who hunger and thirst after holiness (Mt 5:6), and his Mother proclaims in her Magnificat that the Lord fills the hungry with every good thing (Lk 1:53). Jesus explicitly invites all those who are thirsty to come to him for a quenching with living water (Jn 7:37). At the very end of both Testaments this same invitation is extended to everyone: let all the thirsty come forward to be forever quenched with the life-giving waters, that is, an eternal enthrallment in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit seen face to face (Rev 22:17).

Prayer life is therefore profoundly rooted in the needs of our human nature. Without it we are frustrated creatures. All the way from the beginnings in vocal prayer through meditation, which leads to the summit of contemplation, this prayerful immersion in the indwelling Trinity gradually transforms us from one glory to another as we are being turned into the divine image (2 Cor 3:18). Here alone do men and women become "perfect in beauty" (Ezek 16:13-14). We can understand why Henri de Lubac was prompted to say that man is truly man only when the light of God is reflected in a face upturned in prayer...

Why Thomists Disagree With Intelligent Design Theorists

2012-02-05T13:00:00.000-08:00

Dr. Stephen Barr, author of Modern Physics and Ancient Faith, lays out the crucial distinction in the understanding of creation which leads to the disagreement.

If Only We Studied History in America

2012-02-04T19:33:00.001-08:00

we would start to laugh when someone makes a claim like this:

Conservative religious groups, and in particular the Catholic Church, are outraged over President Obama’s decision to require secular institutions run by religious groups to abide by employment law...

Ah, yes. Schools and charitable organizations such as hospitals--those institutions which came into being out of sheerly secular motives and have always been sustained by the impeccably secular. Yes. Those institutions.

Why the HHS Regulations Are All About Religious Liberty

2012-02-04T15:28:00.000-08:00

First of all, here's a good overview of the issues. Excerpts:

...I wasn’t going to write about this, because E.J. Dionne and Michael Gerson have laid out many of the problems already — and when those two gentlemen agree, doesn’t that give the White House just a little pause?

Yet here we are, two weeks after the ruling, and I see no dawning appreciation that it’s time to respond any more meaningfully than this:

The White House posted a blog item on its Web site that answers the criticism by pointing out that “churches are exempt.” Yes, but church-run schools, hospitals and social service agencies are not. And that’s where the feed-the-hungry work goes on. As Obama so aptly noted at the prayer breakfast, that work is precisely what Jesus called us to do, time after time, in the Gospels.

(The coup de grace, though, is that only outfits that serve their own kind are exempt from the requirement. As retired Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of Washington has asked, are workers in soup kitchens supposed to start asking not “Are you hungry?” but “Are you Catholic?”)

The White House Web site also notes that “no one will be forced to buy or use birth control.” No, just to give it away, as part of employee health packages.
It notes, too, that “contraception is used by most women,” Catholics included. Again, true but not remotely the issue, which is the religious freedom guaranteed by the First Amendment...

In the comments, you encounter statements such as this:

Sanchos_
12:07 PM EST
violate church teaching or violate the rights of Americans? What is a president to do? Enforce the church's teaching? Nobody's forcing Catholics to use birth control

And false dichotomy is rampantly on display!

Look--when you force the clergy of a particular religion to violate their church's teaching, you are actively violating the rights of Americans. Many Catholic priests in America are actually US citizens, guys, as are many of the bishops, nuns and sisters, religious priests and brothers, etc.

US citizens.

They have a right to the free practice of their religious faith. Part of that includes the bishops' belief that their role demands they be good stewards of the money and resources of the Church. Part of being good stewards is not paying for things that are, according to Church teaching, intrinsically evil.

As American citizens, their rights to freedom from state interference in the practice of their religion and forcing the churches to behave in ways contrary to Church teaching are just as real as the rights of any other American citizen.

Is there anything unclear about this?

Also--Evangelicals and Orthodox bishops stand with the Catholic Church on this issue.

If They Came for the Vegans

2012-02-04T13:00:00.000-08:00

what would you do? Excerpts:

...Shock! Utter shock!!! The Obama Administration has mandated that all food stores in the United States selling refrigerated goods, MUST sell beef!

There is an exemption for vegetarians who only employ, and sell their goods to, vegetarians; and, for vegans who only employ, and sell their goods to, vegans.

What are the vegetarian and vegan store business owners to do?

How long will it take for these businesses to go bankrupt if the owners refuse to violate their conscience by carrying beef in their stores? How many people from the area, meat eaters included, frequent and buy some of the excellent products sold at vegetarian/vegan owned shops? Are people forced to shop and work at these places, or is it a choice?

If the food shop owner happens to be a Jain, then this mandate would not only be expecting him to violate his conscience, but also would be an assault on his religious liberty.

Get it? Get it?

OK, so it's a satire - an example of what you might find in a place like, The Onion. Well, that has some similarities to what the Obama Administration wants to do to Catholic institutions with the HHS mandate (see combox discussion on this point). But, it doesn't just force Catholics and other people of faith with similar convictions to violate their conscience, it's a violation of religious liberty...

John C. Wright, Atheist Turned Catholic

2012-02-03T13:00:00.000-08:00

He was interviewed!

Coolness! For more on prayer, see here. For more on the path to God, check The Fulfillment of All Desire out. For more on evidence for the existence of God, see New Proofs for the Existence of God: Contributions of Contemporary Physics and Philosophy.

Secretary Sebelius "At War" Over Contraception

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

Wow. Well, all righty then:

....HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius last week renewed her declared “war” against the Catholic church in America and against faithful Catholics (as well as against other religious organizations and believers who share the Catholic opposition to contraceptives and/or abortifacients). Specifically, she announced that HHS, in implementing Obamacare, would require most health-insurance plans to include in the preventive services they cover all FDA-approved forms of contraception (including contraceptives that sometimes operate as abortifacients).

The HHS rule would allow (but not require) the HHS bureaucracy to establish exemptions from this mandate only for an extremely narrow category of “religious employers”: an organization qualifies as a “religious employer” only if its purpose is the “inculcation of religious values,” it “primarily employs persons who share the religious tenets of the organization,” and it “serves primarily persons who share the religious tenets of the organization.” As the head of Catholic Charities USA observed, “the ministry of Jesus Christ himself” would not qualify for the exemption. Nor will Catholic Charities, Catholic Relief Services, Catholic hospitals, food banks, homeless shelters, most Catholic schools, and even many or most diocesan offices, much less Catholic business owners who strive to conduct their businesses in accordance with their religious beliefs.

The HHS rule has properly aroused criticism across the political spectrum for its trampling of religious liberty, as this vehement “J’Accuse” essay by Michael Sean Winters, “a liberal and a Democrat,” illustrates. (For other examples, see the Washington Post’s house editorial and NRO’s.) Unlike Winters, I’m not at all surprised that, when President Obama goes beyond talk to action, he sides with his “friends at Planned Parenthood and NARAL” and “treat[s] shamefully those Catholics who went out on a limb to support” him.

What I do find remarkable—even amazing (to reprise Justice Kagan’s term)—is that the HHS mandate appears to be so clearly unlawful.

Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan on HHS Conscience Regulation from Rocco Palmo on Vimeo.

The Witch Hunts

2012-02-01T13:00:00.000-08:00

An interesting collection of Q & As on the European witch hunts by a women's studies professor at King's College in Pennsylvania. Among them:

#1. The Witch Hunts were an example of medieval cruelty and barbarism.

FACT: While frequently cruel, the Witch Hunts took place after the Middle Ages and were conducted by civilized people.

COMMENTARY: The key problem is the use of the word "medieval." First, historians usually consider the Middle Ages, which began after the fall of the western half of the Roman Empire around A.D. 500 to be over by A.D. 1500. At that time, changes in the economy with capitalism, in culture with the Renaissance and in religion with the Reformation, created the Early Modern Period. The Witch Hunts, however, were just then getting started, not ending until the 1700s.

Second, the Middle Ages is often used in popular parlance to denigrate something as inferior and ignorant. In my opinion, this exaggerates the worst aspects of medieval times (religious fanaticism, primitive laws which readily apply violence, non-scientific thought, poor economic levels, and strict social hierarchies) to the disadvantage of its noble characteristics (an emphasis on faith, codes of conduct like chivalry, technological innovation, mutual obligations of social classes).
And as Western Civilization in the 20th Century has carried on World Wars (with their trench warfare, strategic bombing, submarine warfare, poison gas, and propaganda), colonial imperialism (with its slave-like exploitation of labor, disparities between rich and poor, and cultural destruction), or totalitarian communism (with its collectivization, gulags, and secret police), it has no real right to criticize the Middle Ages as "barbaric."

In any case, the most highly-educated, literate, well-trained, urban elites conducted most of the hunts. All the advantages of Western Civilization created the Witch Hunts and must assume responsibility for them.

#2. The Church was to blame for the Witch Hunts.

FACT: While Christianity clearly created the framework for the Witch Hunts, no single "Church" was to blame, and many secular governments hunted witches for essentially non-religious reasons.

COMMENTARY: When the Witch Hunts first began to intensify, in the 1400s, one church hierarchy, what I call the Latin Catholic Church, dominated Western Civilization. Even within that one church, however, uniformity in all matters of faith and belief had not been fully imposed.

During the Middle Ages, the predominant Christian view of witchcraft was that it was an illusion. People might think they were witches, but they were fooling themselves, or the Devil was fooling them. Most authorities thought that witchcraft could do no serious harm, because it was not real. It took the arguments of theologians, a number of inquisitors manuals, and a series of papal bulls (written letters of judgment and command) to contradict that traditional Christian idea, and identify witchcraft with a dangerous heresy. Ultimately in 1484, Pope Innocent VIII, in his bull Summis desiderantes, let the Inquisition pursue witches.
There is some legitimate historical debate, though, about how far the bull applied throughout the church, and how many church authorities really believed that witches were a serious danger. In any case, just about at that time the "Church" broke apart because of the Reformation. While Roman Catholicism redefined itself under a papal magisterium, Lutheranism, Calvinism and Anglicanism asserted other sources for divine authority.

Surprisingly, the Protestant reformers often agreed with Rome, that witches were a clear and present danger. All four of the major western Christian "churches" (Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Calvinist, Anglican) persecuted witches to some degree or another. (Eastern Christian, or Orthodox Churches carried out almost no witch hunting).

None of these persecutions could have been carried out without the permission and cooperation of secular governments. In only a few small regions, like the Papal States and various Prince-Bishoprics in Germany, were religious and temporal government leaders one and the same. But in all the rest of Western Europe, secular princes ultimately decided whether or not witches were hunted. Still, religious leaders carry a large share of the blame for the hunts, since secular princes often hunted witches on the advice of the clergy. Princes hunted witches because Church leaders taught them that witches were disturbers of the peace, destructors of property, and killers of animals and people.

#3. The Witch Hunts specifically targeted women.

FACT: While many witch hunters explicitly went after women, very often men fell victim to the witch hunts.

COMMENTARY: Through most of recorded history, in most civilizations, until the last hundred years or so, women have been subordinated to men. Many witch hunters, particularly the authors of the Malleus Maleficarum, held that women were far more susceptible to temptation by the Devil, and thus more frequently became witches. Some witch hunts did almost exclusively target women, in percentages as high as 95% of the victims. Another interesting point is that the members of the legal system its "judges, ministers, priests, constables, jailers, judges, doctors, prickers, torturers, jurors, executioners" were nearly 100 percent male (Anne L. Barstow, Witchcraze: A New History of the European Witch Hunts: Our Legacy of Violence Against Women (San Francisco: Pandora/Harper Collins, 1994), 142).

Nonetheless, men were often accused of being witches, and executed for it. (The frequent use of "warlock" to describe a male witch is largely based on Hollywood scriptwriters, especially for the 1958 movie Bell, Book, and Candle or the 1960s sitcom, Bewitched.) In some areas, like Russia, the large majority of victims were male. Further, women did participate in the system, as accusers, witnesses, and sometimes as examiners, prickers, food providers, and jail personnel.

There are reasons why we should look at some aspects of the witch hunt as a crime against women, yet we should not go too far to make it only about women. I agree with Christine Larner who states that "Witchcraft was not sex-specific, but it was sex-related..."

#7. People condemned during the Witch Hunts were burned at the stake.

FACT: While indeed governments did burn many witches at the stake, most were executed by other means.

COMMENTARY: The favorite neo-pagan term for the period of the Witch Hunts is "the Burning Times." The most common form of execution, though, was hanging. Admittedly, burning was important in many of these cases also, since to further protect against any malevolence from the dead witch, authorities often burned the remains afterward. Other popular forms of execution for witches included beheading, drowning, and breaking on the wheel. Witches were rarely buried alive, boiled alive, impaled, sawed in two, flayed, drawn and quartered, or disemboweled, as other contemporary criminals were. Other punishments inflicted on convicted witches included mutilating (cutting off of a hand or ear for example), branding, whipping, dunking, locking in the the stocks, jailing, fining, banishing, or selling into slavery.

A notoriously common myth is that the alleged witches at Salem in colonial Massachusetts were burned. All of the convicted during the Salem Witch Hunt in 1692 died by hanging. Others died by natural causes before conviction or execution, and Giles Corey was pressed to death. In fact, no witches were executed by burning in the English colonies of North America. English law did not permit it.

No One Expects the Spanish Inquisition!

2012-01-31T13:00:00.000-08:00

BBC/A&E did a documentary on the Spanish Inquisition in the mid-90s. Very interesting.

Soros on the Future

2012-01-30T13:00:00.000-08:00

Well, isn't he a little bundle of joy. Excerpts:

“At times like these, survival is the most important thing,” he says, peering through his owlish glasses and brushing wisps of gray hair off his forehead. He doesn’t just mean it’s time to protect your assets. He means it’s time to stave off disaster. As he sees it, the world faces one of the most dangerous periods of modern history—a period of “evil.” Europe is confronting a descent into chaos and conflict. In America he predicts riots on the streets that will lead to a brutal clampdown that will dramatically curtail civil liberties. The global economic system could even collapse altogether.

“I am not here to cheer you up. The situation is about as serious and difficult as I’ve experienced in my career,” Soros tells Newsweek. “We are facing an extremely difficult time, comparable in many ways to the 1930s, the Great Depression. We are facing now a general retrenchment in the developed world, which threatens to put us in a decade of more stagnation, or worse. The best-case scenario is a deflationary environment. The worst-case scenario is a collapse of the financial system.”...

Soros draws on his past to argue that the global economic crisis is as significant, and unpredictable, as the end of communism. “The collapse of the Soviet system was a pretty extraordinary event, and we are currently experiencing something similar in the developed world, without fully realizing what’s happening.” To Soros, the spectacular debunking of the credo of efficient markets—the notion that markets are rational and can regulate themselves to avert disaster—“is comparable to the collapse of Marxism as a political system. The prevailing interpretation has turned out to be very misleading. It assumes perfect knowledge, which is very far removed from reality. We need to move from the Age of Reason to the Age of Fallibility in order to have a proper understanding of the problems...”

Soros insists the key to avoiding cataclysm in 2012 is not to let the crises of 2011 go to waste. “In the crisis period, the impossible becomes possible. The European Union could regain its luster. I’m hopeful that the United States, as a political entity, will pass a very severe test and actually strengthen the institution.” Nor has he quite given up hope that the central bankers and prime ministers gathering in Davos this week have got what it takes to rally round and prove him wrong. This time, being wrong would make him happy indeed.

Gee. He sounds a lot like this guy.

Life and Love

2012-01-29T13:00:00.000-08:00

The value of sidewalk counseling--literally measured in lives saved. Excerpts:

...After a 10-year hiatus born of frustration and too many encounters with ugliness, Yanta decided in January of 2011 to return to sidewalk counseling. She prayed, "Okay Lord, I have a better perspective now, and I'm going to go back out there for you now—I'm not expecting warm fuzzies like I did years ago, because I know I'm not going to get them—but I want to do this for you."

Going out to the sidewalk on a brutally cold day, bundled up against the snow, she felt that ugliness return. She thought, "Oh man, I didn't know I would feel this way again, I hate this place—I don't want to be here! Lord, you are going to have to help me, because anything that comes out of my mouth is going to be wrong, and I feel totally inept. Empty me out, and fill me up so that anyone who drives in here will see you—not me, and everything will be okay."

As the first couple drove up she felt, as she described it, a "whoosh of joy" filling her up that she could only explain as being from the Lord. She smiled at them, and felt truly happy to see them. Yanta signaled for them to roll down their window, and then handed the driver—the boyfriend—a model of a 12-week old fetus. He passed it to his girlfriend, who gasped: her baby was twelve weeks along.

At that point, Yanta introduced to the audience this young woman and her sweet little 3-month-old daughter...

The Reality of Fallen Human Nature

2012-01-28T13:00:00.000-08:00

Get ready for Lent! Excerpts:

...As I mentioned earlier, in my youth as I reviled those in opposition to the truth, my Father would give gratitude for the mercy of God. I have learned many things as I have aged, chief among them is that there is nary a sin conceived in the mind of the devil of which I would not be capable were it not for the mercy of a good God. I need that mercy.

So I understand my father now, when he prayed to be forgiven as he forgave, he knew what that meant. He, like me, was a sinner in need of a mercy he could not merit.

So what have I learned in all these years? I have learned what the dumbest phrase in the English language is…

“I would never do that.”

Mercy.

Abortion Disproportionately Kills Black People

2012-01-27T13:00:00.000-08:00

Some really screwed up statistics. Excerpts:

...It was supposed to be a country of greater equality; it became a country in which the fantasies of those who believed that America was for white Anglo-Saxon Protestants only, with emphasis on “white,” were realized beyond the wildest imaginings of the most crazed racists and eugenicists of the 1920s.

These hard truths have too often been hidden, especially where abortion is widely prevalent. Thus it is to the immense credit of the New York-based Chiaroscuro Foundation that it has compelled the New York City Department of Health to itemize separately abortion and pregnancy statistics in its annual reports. The 2010 numbers, just released, would make both the Psalmist and Ezekiel blanch:

Of the 208,541 pregnancies in New York City in 2010, 83,750 were terminated by abortion: 4 in 10. Among non-Hispanic blacks, there were 38,574 abortions and 26,635 live births: thus for every 1,000 African-American babies born, 1,448 were aborted. Those numbers were even more chilling among non-Hispanic black teenagers: for every 1,000 African-American babies born to teenagers, 2,630 were aborted. The overall teenage abortion rate was 63 percent in a city where 16 percent of all pregnancies were teen pregnancies...

Nigel Farage

2012-01-26T13:00:00.000-08:00

No matter what you might think of the man, he gives a heck of a show on the floor of the Europarliament.

What Cost an iDevice?

2012-01-25T08:44:00.000-08:00

A high cost, indeed. Excerpts:

...the low prices of our iPhones and iPads — and the super-high profit margins of Apple — are only possible because our iPhones and iPads are made with labor practices that would be illegal in the United States.

...Last week, PRI's "This American Life" did a special on Apple's manufacturing. The show featured (among others) the reporting of Mike Daisey, the man who does the one-man stage show "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs," and The NYT's Nicholas Kristof, whose wife's family is from China.

You can read a transcript of the whole show here. Here are some details:

The State of the Union and Religious Freedom

2012-01-24T21:11:00.000-08:00

What is the connection between this:

and this:

Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan on HHS Conscience Regulation from Rocco Palmo on Vimeo.

Answer: There are Catholics in both pieces of media. Vice President Joe Biden and Speaker of the House John Boehner are both Catholic, while Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York (now Cardinal-designate Dolan) is the President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

The 2012 State of the Union focused on unity, on an America of liberty and equality for all. Yet on Friday, the Department of Health and Human Services announced a set of regulations that cuts directly against the First Amendment guarantees of religious freedom in ways that will directly impact almost all Catholic organizations in America--regulations announced by HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, also a Catholic. That was last week, just before the State of the Union Address. Monday was the 2012 March for Life, an event that is, once again, mostly ignored by the press.

This has got to be one of the most schizophrenic sorts of sidelining an unwanted class of people in the history of humanity. Here are Catholics announcing and implementing the regulations that will strike directly at the free operation of our Church in this country, Catholics holding some of the highest positions in the land sitting behind the President who, as Cardinal Mahoney said, must have known and been personally involved in the decision, at a speech where he reiterated a message of unity, common cause, and caring for the least among us.

Congressman Boehner and Archbishop Dolan addressed the March for Life crowds. Vice President Biden and Secretary Sebelius did not. The one issue which can reliably bring together Catholics across the political spectrum is abortion. The one issue which caused unprecedented fragmentation in Catholic life in America was contraception. The current challenge to religious freedom focuses not on the first, but on the second. Perhaps the fact that it is Catholics who are closest to the President under whom these decisions are being taken indicates that they chose their target in light of such considerations. Ignore the March for Life. Drop the issue of FOCA, or pass a healthcare bill whose implementation by the states may pave the way for state-by-state versions of FOCA. Instead, aim at the apparent weakest link of contemporary Catholic teaching--at contraception.

What the heck are we doing to ourselves?

Catholic Bishops, Presidential Election, and Contraception Mandate

2012-01-21T11:58:00.000-08:00

There's so much going on right now, it feels like somebody just sounded the starting pistol. A round up:

Exhibit A: The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) speaks more forcefully than I have ever heard in response to an Health and Human Services ruling that will, according to the bishops, "continue to demand that sterilization, abortifacients and contraception be included in virtually all health plans."

Here is USCCB President Archbishop Timothy Dolan on the decision:

Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan on HHS Conscience Regulation from Rocco Palmo on Vimeo.

Exhibit B: Cardinal Roger Mahoney and the National Catholic Reporter publicly voice their opposition to the HHS decision (alongside many others, of course, but focus here for a moment.).

Cardinal Mahoney:

...This decision from the Department of Health and Human Services [HHS] is from the highest level of Federal government, and I cannot imagine that this decision was released without the explicit knowledge and approval of President Barack Obama.

And I cannot imagine a more direct and frontal attack on freedom of conscience than this ruling today. This decision must be fought against with all the energies the Catholic Community can muster...

For me there is no other fundamental issue as important as this one as we enter into the Presidential and Congressional campaigns. Every candidate must be pressed to declare his/her position on all of the fundamental life issues, especially the role of government to determine what conscience decision must be followed: either the person's own moral and conscience decision, or that dictated/enforced by the Federal govenment. For me the answer is clear: we stand with our moral principles and heritage over the centuries, not what a particular Federal govenrment agency determines.

As Bishops we do not recommend candidates for any elected office. For me personally, I intend to vote on November 6, 2012, for the candidate for President of the United States and members of Congress who intend to recognize the full spectrum of rights under the many conscience clauses of morality and public polcy. If any candidate refuses to acknowlege and to promote those rights, then that canddiate will not receive my vote.

This is a sad moment in the life of our country where religious freedom and freedom of conscience led to the formation of this new Nation under God.

Let us all pray that the power of the Holy Sirit will come upon all elected offcials of our country, and that all will make decisions based upon God's revealed truth.

Now Cardinal Mahoney is not known as a rock-ribbed conservative. Far from it.

Nor, in fact, is NCR:

...To say that news of the decision by President Obama not to expand the conscience exemption for church-affiliated institutions who do not wish to cover birth control is a disaster would be a gross understatement...

They have punched Sr. Carol Keehan and Fr. Jenkins and many other Catholics who have taken shots for this Administration in the nose. They have jumped over the First Amendment to coerce religious organizations to do something we find morally objectionable. They have given people who loved the Affordable Care Act reason for pause, great pause. They have given the Republicans a huge battering ram with which to beat swing voting Catholics over the head.

I say “they,” but the full responsibility for this decision rests with the President. NCR has learned that the President called Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan, president of the U.S. bishops' conference, this morning to tell him the news. Wouldn’t you have liked to be on an extension to listen in on that conversation. The president looked Dolan in the eye in November and said he would be pleased with his decision. I am guessing that Dolan is not pleased. He is not alone...

In other words, the Catholic left might decide not to vote for the Democratic incumbent to the presidency this year. Which would be a sea-change of massive proportions within the Catholic Church.

Exhibit C: Rocco Palmo notes a curious coincidence:

In quickly-breaking news of conspicuous timing -- read: with Monday's March for Life in Washington just around the corner -- both the AP and Washington Post are reporting that the Obama administration has turned back calls for a wider conscience exemption, which would've allowed religious groups to opt out of funding contraceptives and sterilization procedures for their employees under the new Federal health-care law.

In the words of Captain Jack Sparrow, "That is interesting."

Exhibit D: Some of the Bishops of the United States were in Rome this week for their ad limina visits to the Pope. He addressed them on the issue of religious freedom:

...For her part, the Church in the United States is called, in season and out of season, to proclaim a Gospel which not only proposes unchanging moral truths but proposes them precisely as the key to human happiness and social prospering (cf. Gaudium et Spes, 10). To the extent that some current cultural trends contain elements that would curtail the proclamation of these truths, whether constricting it within the limits of a merely scientific rationality, or suppressing it in the name of political power or majority rule, they represent a threat not just to Christian faith, but also to humanity itself and to the deepest truth about our being and ultimate vocation, our relationship to God. When a culture attempts to suppress the dimension of ultimate mystery, and to close the doors to transcendent truth, it inevitably becomes impoverished and falls prey, as the late Pope John Paul II so clearly saw, to reductionist and totalitarian readings of the human person and the nature of society...

In the light of these considerations, it is imperative that the entire Catholic community in the United States come to realize the grave threats to the Church’s public moral witness presented by a radical secularism which finds increasing expression in the political and cultural spheres. The seriousness of these threats needs to be clearly appreciated at every level of ecclesial life. Of particular concern are certain attempts being made to limit that most cherished of American freedoms, the freedom of religion. Many of you have pointed out that concerted efforts have been made to deny the right of conscientious objection on the part of Catholic individuals and institutions with regard to cooperation in intrinsically evil practices. Others have spoken to me of a worrying tendency to reduce religious freedom to mere freedom of worship without guarantees of respect for freedom of conscience.

Here once more we see the need for an engaged, articulate and well-formed Catholic laity endowed with a strong critical sense vis-à-vis the dominant culture and with the courage to counter a reductive secularism which would delegitimize the Church’s participation in public debate about the issues which are determining the future of American society. The preparation of committed lay leaders and the presentation of a convincing articulation of the Christian vision of man and society remain a primary task of the Church in your country; as essential components of the new evangelization, these concerns must shape the vision and goals of catechetical programs at every level....

Talk about timely.

Exhibit E: A Marriage Equality bill is being discussed in the Washington State legislature. The implications for religions in the state could be severe.

Excerpts:

...What churches could be forced to allow gay weddings?

Does the public ever use your facilities? If you ever allow non-members to use your sanctuary for a wedding you could NOT deny a gay couple from using your sanctuary.

Do you have a pop machine or sell coffee?

Do you sometimes have fundraisers where you sell cookies or popcorn for consumption at the church?

Have you ever allowed your church to be used by another Christian organization for which they paid you a fee?

All of those actions would open the door to a civil rights lawsuit and severe penalties if you failed to allow a gay couple to use your facility to have their wedding.

The laws covering discrimination create a wide net to include any place “… where food or beverages of any kind are sold for consumption on the premises,” Discrimination also includes places with “schools of special instruction, or nursery schools, or day care centers or children’s camps” Those provisions alone include thousands of Washington churches. Since the marriage laws of Washington have never referenced discrimination before, this so-called “Gay Marriage Equality” bill will change everything...

The bishops of Washington State have taken a public stand.

Whew. That's a lot. What does it mean?

The Catholic left and right look likely to come together on this issue in a way we haven't seen in a very long time.
The implications for electoral politics are liable to be remarkably interesting.
The March for Life--well, please, everyone, keep a lid on tempers, emotions, etc. Be careful. Behave well and carefully. Don't say or do anything stupid. Love your neighbor, love of humanity as Christ loved them.
The Church is in dire need of serious catechesis and evangelization on these issues, because a lot of Catholics still aren't ready for all this.

I Need A Hero!

2012-01-19T07:36:00.001-08:00

And lo--they exist!

Saint Gaetano Catanoso

2012-01-16T13:47:00.000-08:00

For more, see here.

A Thing Of Beauty

2012-01-12T07:58:00.001-08:00

and a joy forever:

Judge Orders Forced Abortion

2012-01-02T13:00:00.000-08:00

Thankfully, the ruling has been overturned, but for Pete's sake! Excerpts:

...Moe, who suffers from schizophrenia and bipolar mood disorder, was being treated in a Massachusetts hospital. When she became pregnant, doctors were purportedly concerned that her medications could harm the unborn child. So they recommended an abortion.

The problem is, Moe is a Catholic, who has expressed vocal opposition to abortion.

Since Moe planned to keep her baby, her parents, in conjunction with the doctors, filed a petition with the local courts, which would give them the power to force her to get an abortion.

Incredibly, Massachusetts justice Christina Harms not only granted the petition, she went a step further. She told Moe’s parents that it didn’t matter how they got Moe to have the abortion, even if it meant she had to be “coaxed, bribed, or even enticed … by ruse.”

Not only this, but she directed that whatever medical facility performed the abortion go ahead and sterilize Moe … without her permission.

According to recently released court documents, Harms simply asserted that “if Moe were competent, she ‘would not choose to be delusional,’ and therefore would opt for an abortion in order to benefit from medication that otherwise could not be administered due to its effect on the fetus.”

In other words, Justice Harms didn’t just assume that she knew what Moe was thinking. She assumed that she knew what Moe would be thinking if she wasn’t subject to a mental dysfunction. And on that basis, she was willing to not only mandate the killing of Moe’s unborn child, but the destruction of Moe’s reproductive system.

Fortunately for Moe (and her baby), the decision caused an uproar … and was overturned by the state appeals court. Appellate Justice Andrew Grainger openly questioned Harm’s reasoning pointing out that “no party requested this measure, none of the attendant procedural requirements has been met, and the judge appears to have simply produced the requirement out of thin air...”

The most positive side to this story may, in fact, be the extent of the controversy it has garnered. There was a time in this country, not very long ago, when mandating that a mentally ill woman be subjected to an involuntary abortion/sterilization would scarcely have raised an eyebrow. After all, our own Margaret Sanger was one of the world’s original eugenicists, recommending forced sterilizations for the improvement of the human species, in order to “cut down production of its least desirable members.” Forced sterilization was regularly practiced on racial minorities and those considered mentally unfit until embarrassingly recently (the last known forced sterilization in the United States took place in 1981).

We have made such leaps and bounds in this country when it comes to overall racial attitudes as well as attitudes towards those with disabilities. But cases like this one should serve as a warning: not all of the old bigotry and fear are gone. We must remain vigilant until these abhorrent practices are firmly and irrevocably buried in the past.

Mary, Mother of Christians

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

She is the Temple through whom God comes to man, from whose doors living waters flow. Excerpts:

...The mystery of theosis, it seems to me, is something we need to be reminded of today more than ever, at the end of a secular age in which so many have tried to live as though God did not exist. The vision of Mary, crowned with flowers on earth and with stars in heaven, is the one image of human destiny that can stand up against the hedonistic vision, the corrupted imagination twentieth century...

Mary is the heart of the Church of which we are the members. If the only fulfilment of nature is through grace, then she who is full of grace shows us the fulfilment of our own natures also. To her state we may also attain - even if only in the partial way appropriate to our less central position in the Mystical Body, and through a process of purification that for her is unnecessary. She does not have to struggle for sanctity, but she suffers with us in our struggle, and accompanies us, not in the useless way of a person who makes all the same mistakes, but in the helpful way that can support us with unfailing patience, compassion and wisdom...

In any case, Pope John Paul II, in his encyclicals and numerous weekly audiences on Mary, has shown that Mary's "state of royal freedom" flows precisely from her humility as handmaid, mother and sister.

...If Mary is, as the Catechism tells us in one of its headings, an eschatological icon of the Church, it is in the figure of the Virgin Mary, united with Christ in heaven, that our destiny and calling as human beings are most fully revealed to us. Mary is already the Church that we are summoned to become through repentance and purification. She is nature perfected in a single person, and transfigured by the grace to which she offers not the faintest shadow of resistance. It is the image of her "Coronation" or eschatological transfiguration that most fully expresses the final effects of grace on nature: the integration of human life with the life of the eternal and ever-blessed Trinity...

President Obama Signed the Indefinite Detention Bill

2011-12-31T23:47:00.000-08:00

Well, fun. Excerpts:

President Barack Obama on Saturday reluctantly signed a defense authorization bill, saying he was concerned about some in Congress who want to restrict options used by counterterrorism officials.

"I have signed this bill despite having serious reservations with certain provisions that regulate the detention, interrogation, and prosecution of suspected terrorists," he said of the $662 billion legislation.

The White House had lifted a veto threat against the bill after legislators made changes in language involving detainees.

In particular, the legislators added language to make clear that nothing in the bill requiring military custody of al Qaeda suspects would interfere with the ability of civilian law enforcement to carry out terrorism investigations and interrogations in the United States...

Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the legislation includes a "national security waiver" that allows the president to transfer a suspect from military to civilian custody if he chooses.

"I want to clarify that my administration will not authorize the indefinite military detention without trial of American citizens," Obama said in a statement Saturday. "Indeed, I believe that doing so would break with our most important traditions and values as a nation."

Obama said a section of the bill provides the "executive branch" with broad authority on military custody for non-citizen detainees...

Hm. He said "my administration will not authorize the indefinite military detention without trial of American citizens." He did not say his administration could not do this--merely that they would not.

Hm.