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Monday, May 19, 2008

One More Great Video, Then I Gotta Get Stuff Done

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A reader writes:
My wife has been blessed with a job offering from our diocese as a youth ministry co-director. The only stipulation is that she earn a master's of theology degree via distance ed as she works. We're having trouble finding a solid Catholic school that offers a distance theology degree. Might you or your readers know any school we could look into?

I think Franciscan University at Steubenville does distance learning. Anybody know of anything else?

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Reasonable Questions for our Manichaean-in-Chief

And for Catholic citizens inclined to Manicheeism.

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Two Cool and Wholly Unrelated Videos



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Aimee Milburn Rocks the House

Friend of the Blog Aimee Milburn just graduated from the Augustine Institute! Even better: she was the class valedictorian! You go, girl!

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Party of Death Eating its Own

Since both parties are now pledging fealty to the Culture of Death in one way or another, I'm thinking about renaming them the Stupid Evil Party and the Evil Stupid party.

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Fifty Worst Album Covers

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Gene Robinson: St. Narcissus Award-Winner
“Just as surely as Jesus called to his friend Lazarus to ‘Come out!’ of his tomb, Jesus called me to come out of my tomb of guilt and shame, to accept and love that part of me that he already accepted and loved.”

The Exodus story, he said, is “one of the greatest coming-out stories in the history of the world”.

Because everything is all about him all the time.

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Dawn Eden's Visit

Well, Dawn has come and gone and we had a jolly time while she was here. I managed to screw up meeting her at the airport and so, when I didn't turn up where she was waiting, she sensibly called Fr. Phil Bloom, who came to her rescue. (Rescuing damsels in distress is par for the course for one of the best priests in Seattle.) Eventually (after getting lost down in Tukwila somewhere) I found my way to Fr. Phil's parish out in West Seattle (Holy Family) and we caught up with each other.

Then it was off to the Chesterton Guest Speaker dinner (a happy custom of the Chesterton Society) where she got a little taste of Seattle seafood cuisine at Anthony's, near Shilshole. After that, we zipped off to Seattle Pacific University and Dawn talked with the crowd from 7:30 till around 9:00. It would have gone longer cuz there were plenty more questions, but the pizza was cooling down and we didn't want to starve the student more than they are normally starved. I thought it went very well and so did Dawn.

Happily, Fr. Sean Raftis (a terrific Jesuit from Seattle University whom I had the pleasure of meeting) was heading south after the gig, so he kindly gave Dawn a ride home.

Next day, we went to lunch (more seafood! yay!) down at Ivar's on the waterfront with Fr. Sean and Fr. Phil. We all got to know each other a bit better (I know Fr. Phil, but didn't know Fr. Steve at all and everybody was still meeting Dawn.)

Then on Saturday, the Beloved Cow and my daughter-in-law Tasha (who is married to Luke, not Cow, lest you get confused) mosied off with me around 9 AM and we took Dawn on the Nickel Tour of Seattle. Nickel Tours are my speciality!

As it happened, out of the various places you can go on a gorgeous May morning in Seattle, Dawn made the sensible choice of the Pike Place Market, which is a good place for getting a huge dose of Seattle culture, as well as your choice of practically any breakfast you could want. She wanted both, so we snagged a baguette and then wandered the Market, watching the fishmongers, and the guys with pet cockatoos, and the jewelry sellers, and the bikers, Goths, duffers, tourists, locals, and everybody in the world savoring a very fine morning.

Dawn and Tasha discovered the Bathroom from Hell, with stall that have only half-doors so that (up aide) they are inconvenient for drug users and (down side) everybody in the world who is female can watch you do your business. Dawn said it was something she'd actually had nightmares about in the past. I don't know what that means. Analyze it as you will.

After that, we met Dave the Cool Bookstore Guy, who explained to us why the Bathrooms from Hell were designed as they were in a sort of strange vaguely Middle Eastern accent. He looked to be of Arab descent and when we asked where he was from he explained he was from mysterious land older than Time Itself. We all said, "Oooooooh!" Then he reverted to the flat tones of Washington and said, "Actually, I'm from Seattle but I suffer from multiple accent disorder." We were impressed.

We wandered down to Golden Age Collectible, where kids transition into libido-driven adolescents without using a clutch (since all the memorabilia was either comics/Star Wars/scifi stuff with a PG rating, or else rather nasty titillation for overblown and hypersexualized adolescent.

After that, the women did girly girl stuff like buy scarves while we looked at various geegaw and trinkets. Then we wandered down to the park north of the Market and took a couple of photos (one of which you see here!)




Then it was time to head back to the house, which we did after the hike up the 45 degree angle hill from the Market to our car.




Jan was having a lovely morning, meanwhile, puttering about the garden while the two younger guys were on Scout campout (a whole 'nother story). When we got back to the house around noon she whipped up a salad (Crab! More seafood! Yay!) and we savored the goodness of it all! We hung around the house till around 2:00 chatting. Dawn had this brainwave for a "Theology on Tap" sort of coffee house called "Java Lupe" which I hope she follow up on. Then, as Dawn had a TV interview with an Australian morning show (Sunday morning in Sydney is 3:00 PM Saturday in Seattle), we prayed for her and drove with her (Tasha, Cow and I) down to the KOMO studio where, as I hoped, they let us all come up to the production booth to watch her shoot her live satellite feed).
The tech guy there was great. He's a Korean (I think)-American named Billy Oh. Long pony tail. Easy-going, friendly, Seattle Art Institute grad who also studied media stuff down in California. He was very interested in the fact that Luke is studying animation and said there were lots of jobs for animators (good to hear!). Dawn did the interview and did very well. It was a friendly interview, but when it was over the Aussie interviewer on the other hand was overheard to say something like, "Oooookayyyyy! Well! Moving right along...."
Heh! Nothing is more delightfully counter-cultural than simply living as a faithful Catholic. You get all the fun of belonging to a subversive counter-insurgency without any of the weird diseases, nasty power grabs, destructive egoism, or bizarre philosophy.

Billy was very intrigued by Dawn's presentation (turns out he's Catholic). And since he liked us, he took us round to various other sets in the studio. So we got to take cool pictures like this one (which is sort of the Mission Control Brain Center for KOMO).










Cooler still though, was this.
All in all, a fine weekend!

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Scratch a Rad Trad, Find an Anti-Semite

Not all Traditionalists are Rad Trads. Many are quite lovely people. But I've never met a Rad Trad who wasn't weirdly hostile to Jews. To wit, a reader writes:
Help, please! I've been reading the blog of Jeremiah, a.k.a. Paleocrat, fairly regularly since he was received into the Catholic Church last year. Now I find to my great dismay that he and his chums are quite hostile to Judaism.

I feel a bit out of my depth here (and also have too much work to do to be drawn into this debate right now). I've pointed to Nostra Aetate, which he seems determined to read in a perverse way.

May I beg you to send in some reinforcements?

I command nobody so I have no reinforcements to send. However, I post this on the off chance some readers feel like trying to respond.

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Sounds Good to Me
Dear Friends:

Please join us in an interfaith prayer during religious services the weekend of June 6-8 to observe the first full weekend of Torture Awareness Month.

Two months ago, President Bush vetoed legislation that would have banned the use of torture by US intelligence services. We worked hard to win passage of that legislation by both houses of Congress. This June we will publicly recommit ourselves, as people of faith, to continuing the struggle to end US-sponsored torture.

NRCAT is organizing a number of ways that you and your congregation can mark Torture Awareness Month. More than 150 congregations across the country have already committed to displaying a banner as part of our Banners Across America project. By June 1, we will have bumper stickers available for purchase on our website.

In addition, we are collaborating with Rabbis for Human Rights to encourage faith communities to incorporate a Prayer of Recommitment into religious services during the weekend of June 6-8 (and throughout the month). Offering a prayer is a simple but very important way to ask God to help us be faithful in this work, to raise awareness within our congregations and to join our voices with others all across the country. We offer this prayer as our government continues to assert the right to use interrogation tactics that torture other human beings.

As religious people, we must recommit ourselves to the important work of healing the soul of our nation and healing the wounds inflicted on those who have been tortured.

Please plan to join faith communities across the country in this important witness during the weekend of June 6-8.

Sincerely,

Linda Gustitus, President
Rev. Richard Killmer, Executive Director

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Fr. Rob Handles Liturgy Stuff So I Don't Have to

Happily fulfilling my belief that liturgy is best left to those competent to do it, the liturgically competent Fr. Rob writes:
I know you're not big into liturgical nitpickiness, but I have a new post up at my blog titled "Beauty, Subjectivism, and Liturgical Music", in which I discuss the tendency to turn liturgy into something subjective, and the contention that one kind of music in the liturgy is as good as any other.

I think this may be of interest to you and your readers - if you like it, please quote it and link it at CAEI!

Also, for your enjoyment, and as a practical illustration of true Catholic cultural renewal, I have a recording up at my blog of the kids at my parish school singing Gloria VIII at a recent school Mass.

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My friend Bao Tran writes of his film Bookie:
I'm back in Seattle now after a fun ride at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival. We didn't win the Golden Reel Best Short Award, but our screening was packed and a lot of people are now enthusiastic fans of the movie. I want to thank especially those who sent us kind words, well wishes, and congratulations for the nomination.

The next big news is that BOOKIE will be screening this year at the Seattle International Film Festival. We're very excited because SIFF is a huge festival that runs for 25 days where 170 short films have been accepted from 69 countries. What's even better is that most of us are near enough to attend. We are eligible for the Golden Space Needle Audience Award, where YOU get to vote for the best short film of the festival!

So if you're in the Pacific Northwest (or BC), come see it again (or for the first time), and invite all the friends and family that you've been talking the movie up to. The screenings are a ways away in June, but consider it an early notice for you to save the date. I'll be sending some reminder emails as we get closer as well.

When:
Sunday June 8, 2008 9:15PM
Tuesday June 10, 2008 9:15PM

Where:
Harvard Exit Theater
807 E Roy St
Seattle, WA 98102

You can buy tickets online or at the box office (we are playing in front of the feature film "THE END" so you will be buying tickets to that):

--
Persistence of Vision Films
Bookie

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Friday, May 16, 2008

Okay. Gotta jet. Lunch with Dawn and Fr. Phil

See youse Monday! Put down that bean!!!!

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Commander Craig is On the Air!



Where are the Lost Planet Airmen?

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Peter Sean Bradley, Who Practices Law in California, Looks at What's Next

Polygamy is just part of it. Why (says Peter Singer) does "person" have to only refer to a member of the species Homo Sapiens (and who says all homo sapiens are persons).

In the Dictatorship of Relativism, things *must* dissolve into an atomized individualism where things are whatever we say they are. Our sole criteria for a relationship is "mutual consent". Gender doesn't matter. Age will soon not matter (good news for NAMBLA!). Number of participants doesn't matter. Manner in which the relationship is lived out doesn't matter (happy news for the manufacturers of whips and chains). If you feel good about it, then who is anybody to say you are wrong?

So this is simply the next step, not the last one.

Of course, a society cannot function for long as a chaotic mass of atomized individuals. Original sin will see to that. Once the Big Laws have been dissolved in the acid bath of relativism you will get chaos and, after that, the Strong Man with the Small Laws.

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A reader writes:
We have some friends we know through my husband's work. We've known them for over a decade. They are not married, but have lived together for about 25 years and they have four children, 3 of whom are now grown up. The "wife" has left her family to go live with a man under additionally scandalous circumstances (a doctor/patient thing). Suffice to say, the family are absolutely devastated. The "husband" - a rugged, Aussie outdoorsy bloke and normally happy-go-lucky - told my husband that he has cried every day for the last nine weeks since she left.

We are in shock and are heart-broken. Not only that, but this is not necessarily a straightforward case of a terrible sin, but the wife's mental health is seriously in question (according to their friend, who is a psychiatrist) so she also may need proper medical treatment and care. She does also need to come to her senses and repent, but the psychiatric issue may need to be addressed as well.

Please, please pray.

Lord, hear our prayer!

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Kennedy, Nixon and Reagan: Appeasers

They talked with enemies! They are no better than Neville Chamberlain! It's forever 1939! All our enemies are Hitler!

Political wisdom from our Elected Manichee.

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Speaking of which...

Our Robed Masters in California (Republicans all, by the way) have, like Republican appointees Blackmun, Souter, Kennedy and O'Connor delivered themselves of yet another fundamental assault on immemorial human common sense and decided that marriage is whatever the hell they say it is. By the miracle of judicial fiat the notion of marriage as between one man and woman has been found "unconstitutional" (since, as we know, the drafters of the California constitution were absolutely committed to gay marriage in the 1850s, but felt they needed to roll that plan out slowly).

And so, the seventh largest economy in the world begins the "What Could it Hurt?" phase of human history. Only slowly will it dawn on people that the reason a civilization husbands its limited resources to help the essential building block of society--the family--is that those resources are *limited*. Meanwhile, we will be agitpropped into celebrating this Great Leap Forward and critics will be duly mau-maued as enemies of Progress till, a generation or two from now, somebody notices the immense wreckage that will proceed from treating the traditional family as an evil and proposes.... some further stupid idea that will compound the problem, perhaps marriage to animal companions who do not impose their values on us.

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The Abortion Industry: Finishing What Hitler Started

Israel, being basically a western secular democracy, is doing what western secular democracies do: destroying its future by aborting itself out of existence. "Choice" culture will inevitably face Israel with the choice between being a Jewish state or being a democracy. I hope they wise up, but it appears that only states in the midst of disastrous population collapse (like Russia) finally get desperate enough to start rewarding marriage and families.

If babies are God's way of saying the world should continue, the abortion/contraceptive culture of the West is our way of saying it should end. Sin is fundamentally suicidal.

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New Puritan Reichsministers of Health Lay Plans for Fat Re-Education Camps

Big Brother is coming to do me good! I love Big Brother!

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Doug Kmiec is Apparently Denied Communion

If true, I think the guy who denied him communion is way out of line. Canonist Ed Peter thinks so too.

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Quick note, then back later

Things went very well yesterday with Dawn's talk. She's a real trooper, speaking well and fielding questions directly after an exhausting flight and a fine dinner in a pool of warm sunshine. If it were me, I'd be lapsing into a coma.

I reckon if you check her blog today, she'll have her version of events at some point.

Meantime, I'm outta here again and will be back in a couple of hours cuz I've got Dr. Tom Curran's radio show "Sound Insight" to do at 8:00 AM PDT. You can stream it here.

80 degrees predicted for this weekend! Winter appears to be over--so far.

Oh! And I'm having lunch with Dawn and good Fr. Phil Bloom round noon. So posting will be a bit spotty today. Ciao, dudes and dudettes! Put thou not beans up thy noses whilst I am a-Maying.

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Thursday, May 15, 2008

Basically running around today

I've got a bunch of stuff to write/edit today, followed by a trip out to SeaTac to pick up Dawn Eden, ferry her to her digs, hang around with Fr. Bloom, take Dawn to the Seattle Chesterton Society dinner and her talk, ferry her back to her digs (in the distant land of West Seattle, far, far way from my home in the North) and return home weary but pleased with a jorb well done.

All of which is a windy way of saying, "If I don't see you at Chesterton tonight, I'll see you here tomorrow!"

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Republicans: Out of Ideas, Out of Gas, Soon to be Out of Office

The self-immolation of the Party of War, Torture, Occasionally Pretending to Care About Human Life, Deeply Caring about Money and Power and Precious Little Else continues. Weirdest part: McCain's opposition to torture is part of what makes him suspicious looking to his highly fractious base. If ever a party was begging for a time in the wilderness till they got a freakin' clue about what America is supposed to mean...

Oh! Wait! It's also the Party of Gas tax holidays! Credit where credit is due!

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The Economy Goes South and Sends Postcards from the Edge

"Having a wonderful time. Wish you were."

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Two fun books

Answering the New Atheism: Dismantling Dawkins' Case Against God by Scott Hahn and Benjamin Wiker

Prediction: After cheering for several years for Dawkins, once he is made mincemeat of in some particularly embarrassing way, or else he self-immolates by doing something extremely bizarre, his former acolytes will, like Communists after the fall of the Soviet Union, simply announce that he wasn't *really* a *true* atheist. I ran into the same thing after publishing By What Authority. I was constantly told that I had never encountered *real* Protestants who *truly* understood sola scriptura, so it was no wonder I had rejected the pathetic watered-down version of bible-based Christianity I had encountered. Now (they promised) they would show me the Real Thing (if I was truly open to grace, of course). When I evinced the same difficulties with their Shiny New Truly Bible-Only Protestantism as I had shown previous editions, I would then be berated for "not getting it" or "being closed to grace" or otherwise uninitiate in the Inner Mysteries. Atheists often seem to me to have this same curious tendency to eat their weakest members for the crime of badly defending incoherent ideas.

Not that it will happen with *this* particular book, I fancy (though I would very much enjoy watching Dawkins go up against the relentless Hahn. That would be hilarious). This book will simply be shouted down. It will be necessary for him to do something particularly weird and insulting and semi-deranged on national TV for the tide to turn. And the way he's going that could happen sooner than you might think. Dawkins is pursuing the course of most vain men: he is surrounding himself with sycophants and starting to believe his opponents are all as stupid as he says they are. That result in embarrassment when you then put yourself in the ring with a heavyweight and show off for the fans.

Speaking of Benjamin Wiker, he's got a new book out too called 10 Books That Screwed Up the World: And 5 Others That Didn't Help by Benjamin Wiker. Check out the wonderful cover:



Who could not love that?

Wiker co-authored a very useful book called
Architects of the Culture of Death which I found very useful in my research for Behold Your Mother. Not cheering reading, but invaluable for anybody asking "How in hell did we get here?" The first trick to repenting, after all, is knowing the way back to where you took the wrong turning.

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Vancouver Coffee Art

Cool beans!

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Kids! Become a Cutting Edge Academic in Seconds with the Postmodern Deconstructionist Thesis Generator!

Create highly regarded and utterly impenetrable works of prose with scarcely a movement of the grey matter! Fool your friends! Bamboozle your students! Impress professors! Commit grave sins against the intellect without feeling a thing!

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The Bacon Flow Chart

Yum!

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Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Fear of the Incarnation and Its Discontents

In which we watch a Truly Reformed guy try to herd the cats of Protestantism, all unaware that his real fear is not abandonment of sola scriptura, but of the Incarnation of the Son of God and its sacramental extension through history.

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Can you Imagine Actually Reading This Piece of Chloroform in Print?

A One-Man Show? The Construction and Deconstruction of a Patriarchal Image in the Reagan Era: Reading the Audio-Visual Poetics of Miami Vice by John-Paul Trutnau

Race/Class/Gender Deconstructionist BS is, pound for pound, more unreadable (and far less meaningful) than the Tax Code.

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The Register on Obama's Unbending Zealotry for Sacrament of Abortion and Infanticide

The man fights to murder children. That's what it comes down to in plain speech. Catholics like Doug Kmiec who make excuses for and defend this are just more consequentists defending intrinsically immoral acts. How do they sleep at night?

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Hey Seattle! Dawn Eden's Speaking here tomorrow!

Dear Friends of the Seattle G. K. Chesterton Society,

We wish to remind you of the Society's upcoming meeting this Thursday, May 15. Please see the announcement below.

There are a couple of special details connected with Thursday's meeting to which we call your attention:

First, a NEW LOCATION. The meeting will take place in Room 109, Otto Miller
Hall, on the SPU campus. Otto Miller Hall is directly across Third Avenue from the Pavilion in which we have had our meetings up to now. Please see Building 18 on the campus map that is available here. For any who may forget this
detail, we will endeavor to have both a sign and person directing attendees across the street to Otto Miller Hall!

Second, a CONTENT ADVISORY. The moral fallout of the Sexual Revolution is
an important theme of Miss Eden's presentation. Her presentation has been described as "not graphic, but stark."

If you would plan on bringing children younger than age 18, Miss Eden
respectfully requests that you view the following YouTube clip of her presentation and then decide whether it is appropriate:



Yours faithfully,

The Seattle G. K. Chesterton Society

Thursday, May 15, 2008, at 7:30 PM in Conference Room 109, Otto Miller Hall

"The Girl Who Was Thirsty: How G. K. Chesterton Led Me to Faith"

Dawn Eden
Author, editor and columnist

How did an agnostic, Jewish rock historian, who battled depression while living a dissipated lifestyle among New York's bohemia, become a cheerful Catholic chastity crusader? Dawn Eden, author of The Thrill of the Chaste and winner of the American Chesterton Society's 2007 Outline of Sanity Award, tells how an unexpected encounter with the work of Chesterton introduced her to the thrilling romance of orthodoxy.

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Beautiful!



Best part: the age of the people in the video. The future of the Church is so bright I gotta wear shades!

Aside from the Holy Spirit (obviously) I credit John Paul the Great.

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Stupid Party Too Stupid to See it Coming

Don't tell me: They are chins up and confident about November. They are the Party of Ideas like the gas tax holiday (Hey! Why not Midnight Basketball while they're at it!).

Boy, is Ronald Reagan dead. Meanwhile, Bush is back to "Vote Republican or you'll all die horribly in searing pain!!!!"

What a bleak election year.

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A Tale of Two Covenants, Part Four

In which we conclude the discussion of the relationship between the Old Covenant and the New.

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Inside Catholic on the Usual Blah from the Usual Organs of Liberal Blahdom
"Killing Jews isn't the only issue of concern to Germans; there are many other issues as well (Volkwagens, autobahns, the national economy, etc.); and when we weigh all these things together we see that Hitler's German quotient, despite not being perfectly correct on Jews, is much higher than that of any rival political party. And besides, Hitler views Jews as a 'profound moral challenge.'"

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This is pretty cool!

Tune In to Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN) today, Wednesday, May 14th - 8:30am PST / 11:30am EST

Wordnet will be featuring Tom Allen, President of Catholic Exchange and Executive Producer of the award-winning film Champions of Faith: Baseball Edition.

We at Catholic Exchange hail the success of our Supreme Maximum Leader!

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Bloggers Unite to Protect Iraqi Christians

One of the many things overlooked by our Grand End to Evil Geostrategists was the extreme likelihood that the Chaldean Church and other Christians would be driven to extinction in Iraq. Some people are taking serious action to help Christians who are inconvenient to the Big Plans of Big Planners.

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Making Mincemeat

So this little teapot tempest kicked up in the combox on this entry.

Neocon:
Here is Michael Novak's review of "God Is Not Great."

The disinterested reader can determine what he will about Piatak's intellectual integrity in reducing Novak's review to the headline. The only crime one can convict Novak of is a certain irenicism, of not returning Hitchens' contempt with contempt (though in this respect, Novak follows Mother Teresa herself, whose only known response to Hitchens's first attack on her was "we must pray for him.")

Indeed this excerpt of Novak's about Hitchens's book -- and it's far more representative of the review than than is the one word Piatak mentions -- has more or less been written by Mark Shea, and many others at St. Blogs:
But this time it is a bit disappointing to find so much hostility and so many — unusually many — intellectual missteps in his latest tirade (not his first) against religion, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. For something peculiar happens to Hitchens when he wrestles against God with murderous intent. Hitchens always loses (and may secretly suspect that). Preposterous as this seems, one senses he may fear that one day he will wake up and see it all plainly, right before his eyes. Otherwise, why year after year keep striking another stake in the heart of God?

Piatak:
Yes, neocon, I invite everyone to read Novak's review of Hitchens' book, and then compare that review to my own: http://www.takimag.com/site/arti...itchens_hubris/

You'll have no trouble discerning which reviewer is the neoconservative and which isn't. Hitchens does not deserve all the praise Novak pours on about his courage and stunning intellect, about how he is an exemplar of "moral heroism," about how he is "a public protagonist of solidarity and compassion," about how he is a "brave and good man." Would a "brave and good man" use sexual innuendo in the title of his book attacking Mother Teresa? Would a brave and good man say of Mother Teresa, "I wish there was a hell for the bitch to go to?" Would a "brave and good man" praise Lenin's murderous suppression of the Russian Orthodox Church?

The neocons are carrying water for Hitchens, and vice versa, because both have subordinated everything else in the politics to the absurd goal of spreading democracy in the Mideast by force, a goal that caused Novak to disregard the wise advice of John Paul II on Iraq and a goal that has already cost thousands of lives and billions of dollars and caused the displacement of up to one half of all Iraqi Christians.

Decision: Piatak:
Neocon: The disparity between Tom Piatak's initial criticism of Novak's review and your nuclear response against his "intellectual integrity," coupled with the glaring dishonesty of your defense of Novak -- and equivocation between Mother Teresa's charity and Novak's praise! -- is astonishing and disgusting.

Tom P: Excellent response.

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Hagee and Shoutin' Bill Make Nice

Under the 70 X 7 rule, we are, of course, bound to forgive and I do so willingly. The guy's comporting himself better than Wright, I must say.

Meanwhile, Beliefnet has an interview with Shoutin' Bill over here.

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Grant Irene Sendler to dwell in eternal light, Lord
Donning a Star of David armband used by the Nazis to mark out Jews, she passed incognito in the ghetto to organise the escape plans.

She was eventually arrested by the Gestapo, tortured and condemned to death.

But members of 20-strong secret organisation managed to bribe a guard so she could escape. She lived for another 65 years.

My apologies for the inflammatory wording of the news article. In keeping with current Administration policy and the usage of the right wing blogosphere, the text should say Sendler was "tortured" not tortured. Torture is not torture anymore but is instead "so-called 'torture'" or "enhanced interrogation", even when you die from it.

Always remember the wisdom of Victor Morton, Chief Catholic Liaison Officer for the Right Wing Blogospheric Ministry of Truth: "The word 'torture' is a classic example of what Ayn Rand called an 'anticoncept' -- meaning a term with no specific referent, except the speaker's disapproval."

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It turns out God made everything, not just Catholics

Therefore, if life turns up on other planets, it's not a problem for the Catholic Church. I've never understood how somebody could think that a religious tradition which already accepts the idea of non-human created intelligences (namely, angels and demons) would have a crisis if ET turned up. That's not to say he will. Along with Enrico Fermi, my main question to believers in the Billions of Civilization is "Where is everybody?"

But I think it would be hilarious if ET did turn up, was unfallen, and proceeded to instruct the secularists in search of the ET Eschaton that there is one God, the Father, the Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Alpha Centauri Prime. Of course, if there are unfallen creatures capable of space travel, they would probably, in their divine wisdom, stay far away from us. On the other hand, if ET turns out to be fallen like us and capable of interstellar flight, then I think it would be a fine time to re-read The War of the Worlds.

Alternatively, we could find that ET is here because he is a sort of unfallen pagan who saw a Star in the Gamma Quadrant 2000 of our earth years ago, and he seeks to meet the race Maleldil has so honored that he became one of us.

ET: People of Earth! Our Oyarsa have told us that Maleldil, whom you call in your language by such names as "God" "Dios" Gott" "Dieu" "Allah" and so forth was actually born on your world as a member of your species! We come here full of wonder and seek to know you better. Our Oyarsa have told us not to assume too much from this fact and we shall try not to, but we must say that we eagerly anticipate getting to know you better since your race now stands by virtue of your peculiar relationship to Maleldil, as creatures who are higher than even the Oyarsa themselves!

So please, tell us of the mighty celebrations you held when Maleldil walked among you! Recount for us the worship and honors you crowned him with. Let us hear the wonderful stories of how you welcomed him!

Who among us would want the job of shifting uncomfortably in his seat, coughing, and with burning cheek having to explain to a technologically super-sophisticated alien with the innocence of a saintly child just how our race welcomed God in the flesh? The look of sheer horror on that alien face would be the worst indictment we ever face apart from the face of our Lord himself. Only the power of the Resurrection would over come it. The safest thing to bring with us to any encounter with an unfallen ET would be a Host. For we would have good reason to hope that, being unfallen, he would discern the Lord present there and find the power necessary to forgive us rather than vaporize us on the spot.

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Myths about the Middle Ages

The very term "Middle Ages" is agitprop designed by the Generation Narcissus types of the Endarkenment. Here are some fun mythoids:
  • The alleged fragments of the True Cross would have added up to a whole forest.
    In a truly obsessive piece of scholarship, Charles Rohault de Fleury's Memoire sur les instruments de la passion de N.-S. J.-C. (Paris, 1870) counted all the alleged fragments and showed they only added up to considerably less than one cross ... more
  • Vikings wore helmets with horns
    How would you know Hagar the Horrible was a Viking if he didn't have horns? ... the facts
  • An early medieval church council declared (or almost declared) that women have no souls.
    History of the error.
  • "In the times of St Thomas it [woman] was considered an essence as certainly defined as the somniferous virtue of the poppy ...St Thomas for his part pronounced woman to be an imperfect man"
    These claims are made in the introduction to Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex, one of the founding texts of feminism. Aquinas believes all humans have the same essence. Though not exactly a believer in the equality of men and women, he did not call women imperfect men. details.
  • Religious taboos prevented medical dissection of bodies
    Katherine Park's book on late medieval dissection
  • The medieval burning of witches.
    Medieval canon law officially did not believe in witches. There were very occasional individual witch trials in the Middle Ages, but the persecution of witches only became a mass phenomenon from around 1500. The height of persecution was in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries ... article; resources.

Speaking of myth-making we've been watching DVD's of the Beeb's Robin Hood series. It's a fun post-modern retelling, mostly because the guy who plays Robin is likeable and the guy who plays the Sheriff of Nottingham is having such a won-der-ful time being evil. Of course, this being the new Millennium, the writers have just about zero capacity to create characters who are remotely believable as actual medievals. Rather, like Kevin Costner's ridiculous costume drama, what you get instead are thoroughly contemporary actors in semi-medieval garb who stand around and spout PC pieties about multiculturalism (one of Robin's Merry Men is a Saracen girl whom he rescued from slavery and who has vast knowledge of chemistry), pacifism (Robin is a disillusioned Crusader) and, of course, wealth redistribution. Marian is this buff chick who knows martial arts. Everybody is impossibly clean, fit, and Euro-sexy. The Church basically does not exist except as the land-grabbing entity who is sending good young men like Robin off to fight in Crusades against Indigenous Peoples. (A nun does turn up once, but she turns out to be a fraud). When religion is mentioned it is basically to catechize the audience in the standard religious vision of contemporary UK Chattering Classes: namely, that all religions are equally superior to Christianity.

Mostly, Robin is a good room temperature UK Labor socialist who is clever and always defeats the cunning but ultimately chopfallen Sheriff by robbing from the rich and giving to the poor without any reference whatsoever to the sorts of ideas or pieties that would have animated an actual medieval. Anybody else seen it?

By the way, I had the great thrill of flying out of Robin Hood Airport near Nottinghamshire this past November when I left England for Ireland. How cool is that?

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