Covering Their Tracks

So, what's up with Chris West's Theology of the Body Institute?
Strange things are going on there.

1. Archbishop Chaput quietly disappears from the list of episcopal advisors - no announcement, no fanfare, just POOF! and he's gone. The man who was responsible for West's first (inappropriate) imprimatur and upon whose reputation Chris West built his own reputation is suddenly and mysteriously out of the picture. Why did he leave?
2. Chris West himself takes the trouble of setting up the first national conference sponsored by his TOB Institute, but then suddenly takes a six-month "sabbatical," timed in such a way that he can't show up at his own first national conference. Can anyone imagine why a publicity-hound like Chris West would set himself up for that kind of hole in his own speaking schedule? It defies belief.
3. And now the tobinstitute.com URL has been dropped, with a new URL substituted - toboncampus.com. Why on earth would anyone throw away Google pagerank on an existing URL? After all, when an URL is dropped, Google not only resets your pagerank to ZERO, it erases all the cached pages to your domain, so you can't access the old content anymore.... Hmmm... And the old URL seems to have expired three weeks before West went on "sabbatical." ... Hmmm.....
   

Like the Stalinists of old, Matt Pinto, Chris West and the gang at the TOB Institute seem to be in the process of re-writing at least some of their history.

Stay tuned.
I'm sure this gets MUCH more interesting in the next few months.

Honoring The Ides of Christ

"What Would Jesus Do?"

"You need to act more like Christ."

"You are being DIVISIVE and RENDING the Body of Christ!"

Yada, yada, yada.
Blech.

It's hard to take people who make these comments very seriously. After all, God's prophets were not known for their sweetness and light. People tend to forget the jeremiad was named after Jeremiah. Isaiah promised quite a diverse number of really nasty punishments to his listeners. John the Baptist's favorite question was, "Who told YOU that you could escape the coming destruction?!?"

Jesus was no less serious about getting in people's faces. Remember these Golden Oldies?

"You blind guides!...
You blind fools!...
You hypocrites!....
You snakes!...
You brood of vipers!...
You whitewashed sepulchres, pleasing to look at on the outside but filled with filth and charnel on the inside!...
You make your disciples TWICE the sons of hell that YOU are yourselves!...
How will you escape hell?" (Matthew 23)

He called one woman a dog ("It is not right to give the children's food to dogs": Matthew 15:26), and made His own special whip of cords in order to whip the money changers out of the Temple, turn over their tables and make a general mess inside (John 2).

Jesus cursed a fig tree so furiously it died on the spot. (Matthew 21:18-22)

He insisted that He had not come to bring peace. Quite the opposite:

"Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s enemies will be the members of his household. (Matthew 10:34).

When an apostle lifted up two swords and said, "Here, we have swords," Jesus didn't reply with, "Idiot - I don't condone violence." He also didn't say, "You fools. I don't mean actual swords." In short, He didn't start explaining His remarks as yet another parable. Instead He saw the apostles' two swords and merely said, "That's enough" (Luke 22:35-38).

When Peter uses his sword to strike off Malchus' ear, Jesus does not forbid the use of the sword entirely, He merely says it is not to be used now, during His Passion (Luke 22, John 18). Similarly, when soldiers came up to him asking for various things, He never told them to stop being soldiers - although He certainly did tell tax collectors that they were saved when they stopped being tax collectors (Luke 19:1-10). Instead, He simply warned the soldiers not to abuse their position.

Although God is Love and Jesus is God, so Jesus is Love, Jesus wasn't very nice.
He was, in fact, about the most confrontational, divisive figure you can imagine.

Indeed, the only time He didn't verbally upbraid the men who opposed Him was when those same religious and secular authorities began to beat, scourge, humiliate, crucify and kill Him. And notice that He didn't shut up as soon as the idea to do this entered their heads - the religious authorities were looking to kill Him from the moment He raised Lazarus from the dead.

No, He continued to energetically correct them until the time HE chose to go silent.

Alright, so His prophets were divisive and HE was divisive, but His apostles were terribly gentle men, weren't they?

Were they?

Read about Paul in Acts, or better yet, read what he wrote to the Galatians sometime.

In Acts, Paul gets thrown out of synagogue after synagogue because he keeps fighting with the Jews who reject Christ. In Galatians, he not only proudly recounts his fight with Peter over how to interact with the Gentile converts, he also mentions that he hopes the Judaizers will castrate themselves. (Galatians 5:12, 6:12-13, 6:15)

Paul is so divisive he gets beaten, with rods, thrown in jail and nearly stoned to death. That's the man who becomes all things to all men so that he might by all means have a chance to save some.

Peter was no better. He threatened Simon Magus with damnation (Acts 8:9-24) and struck Ananias and Sapphira stone cold dead (Acts 4). His work in Rome so thrilled Caesar that the Emperor had him crucified upside down.

Essentially every martyred Christian follows this example. That's why the saints got martyred, after all. You don't get martyred unless you really tick somebody off. At some point, the words and actions of every single one of the apostles managed to generate a murderous rage in their hearers.

What makes us think we are supposed to be different?
Are we smarter?
Holier?

So, when someone tells me to "act more like Christ" and "stop being so divisive!" what does that really mean?

Well, the short answer is simple - it's the coward's way of saying, "SHUT UP! I don't want to listen to you anymore!"

People who spew this "You are being DIVISIVE... NOT Christ-like!" phrase are not particularly Christian. They can't let their YES mean YES or their NO mean NO because they don't like being like Christ. They don't like getting in people's faces.

Instead, they call names - "YOU aren't like CHRIST!" - while pretending that they aren't calling names. They judge while retaining the false veneer of being non-judgemental and loving. They are white-washed tombs, pleasing to look at on the outside, but filled with venom and hatred on the inside.

They are like nothing so much as the pro-abort who says, "No one has the right to push their morality on others." Of course, if any pro-abort really believed such nonsense, she would remain silent, lest voicing this opinion render her a hypocrite as she forces on others her opinion about how morality should be handled.

As with the "Be more like Christ!" example, the phrase "Don't force your morality" really means, "SHUT THE HELL UP! I don't want to hear what you have to say." But by phrasing the sentiment as a moral judgement, the speaker gets to take the moral high ground and pretend to be holier than the one condemned by the phrase.

Of course, it should be noted that Jesus did command us to turn the other cheek, to give more than is asked of us, to care for one another. He did give us the greatest example of this when He opened not His mouth as He was led to destruction as a lamb led to the slaughter.

We must always remember that, after three years of incredibly divisive language and action, Jesus ended in silence.

Like the month of March, He came in like a lion, but left like a lamb. The ides of March fall on the 15th, the turning point of the month. It is the day Caesar was murdered, the day that Shakespeare has Marc Antony remark on the silent mouths of the knife wounds on Caesar's body that give testimony to his death.

So, for those of us who want to model our lives on Christ's, what is the take-away here?
We who follow Christ must honor the ides of Christ, honor and imitate every part of His life.

Jesus followed the law in all things, right down to the paying of the Temple tax.
As long as He had breath in His body, He fought injustice, hypocrisy and lies.
For three long years, He fought the good fight - divisive, in-your-face, brutal, but always the very essence of divine love.

Only at the end, as He allows human law to drag Him to His death, does He allow Himself to enter into His great silence. Although the breaking of the first six seals were accompanied by all kinds of calamity, the breaking of the seventh seal brought a long, great silence (Revelation 8:1).

Jesus was divisive in His words and in His actions.
But He was the most divisive of all in His silence.

It was in His incredibly provocative, contentious silence that Simon was forced to become God's co-worker and help carry the Cross.

It was in this divisive silence that eleven of His apostles broke and ran like water, leaving only one man, John, and a small group of women behind to watch silently with Him.

It was in this great silence that the tombs split open, the dead walked amongst the living, and the Temple curtain was torn in two.

It was in this great silence that the pagan soldier finally turned and spoke the unspeakable Truth: "Surely this man is the Son of God!"

So, yes, as Christians who want to model Christ, we have a right and a duty to fall silent before authority, to turn the other cheek, to give more than is asked of us.

But we have an equal right, and even a canonical duty, to make a great noise, a noise as reverential and gentle as the crack of a whip, before we enter that silence.

And whether we speak or we be silent, if we truly have the Spirit of God within us, then we will necessarily be a sword unto the world, no matter what we do. Even if we fall silent, especially when we fall silent and do the silent works of mercy and charity, we must do these things in a way that divides, separates, cleaves the sheep and the goats.

So, how now shall we live?
The answer is clear.

Go in like a lion, be led like a lamb, but always wield the two-edged sword that divides the people and brings judgement upon the nations. This honor is for all the faithful.

McChrystal Clear

According to the Rolling Stone magazine story, two things are McChrystal clear about the general who is attempting to win the fight in Afghanistan:

1. McChrystal voted for Obama, the community organizer, not for McCain, the Vietnam war hero,
   
2. McChrystal cannot get his own troops to buy into his counter-insurgency strategies. "This is the philosophical part that works with think tanks," McChrystal tries to joke. "But it doesn't get the same reception from infantry companies."
   

Think about these two facts for a minute.

Certainly McCain was no one's idea of a good candidate, but Obama was clearly a complete disaster waiting to happen. How could a military man NOT see the problems associated with Obama? The fact that he voted for BHO is a stunning indictment of his poor judgement.

Combine this with the fact that he's pushing a strategy his own infantry can't be convinced to follow. That's a recipe for disaster. No matter how good the theory may look, if the grunts who are supposed to execute that theory don't buy into it, it isn't going to work, if only because those same grunts won't implement your glorious theory.

As any industry exec can tell you, if you can't even convince your own paid employees that you have a decent product, you won't convince the customers those employees are supposed to be selling to. McChrystal's COIN strategy is already dead - he just doesn't know it yet.

But let's look a little deeper.

Rolling Stone paints a picture of a man who has enormous problems with authority, enormous empathy for the "little guys" out on the front line, but wants those same "little guys" to stay the hell away from the border where all the bad guys are, a man who adamantly endorses the use of the latest technology to advance his agenda, a man who voted for the wimp, and has a winning plan that ivory tower types like, but the grunt hates.

Hmmmm..... who does this sound like?

Let's put it this way: if that thumbnail description had been used to outline an Obama cover story in Rolling Stone, would a word of it have to be changed?

Well, no...no.... it wouldn't.

McChrystal is a user of people who outmaneuvered his President into giving him exactly what he wanted, but then found he couldn't deliver what he promised.

Again, who does this sound like? Does getting George Bush to hand over the initial TARP funds sound somewhat familiar?

Sure, McChrystal is excellent at organizing the Special Forces community as it assassinates Al Quaeda bad guys. But essentially, he's just an authority-hating, teflon general whose good at organizing specific kinds of communities, much as Obama organized the 'hood.

He's single-handedly managed to collect all power into his hands in Afghanistan: "McChrystal and his men are in indisputable command of all military aspects of the war, there is no equivalent position on the diplomatic or political side. " It's almost like he's set up a commission of czars that run rings around the rest of the government.

McChrystal is said to have enormous disdain for civilians.
Obama is known to have enormous disdain for anyone who doesn't think like him.

It is no wonder McChrystal was saddened when the community organizer he voted for ignored him. Like called to like across the deep, but one of the "likes" didn't really like him.

Is there anything to be concerned about here?
I don't see why.
What we have here is a liberal idiot firing another liberal idiot.

A New Kind of Rape

A new weapon has been brought into the sexual arena, a condom with teeth. Developed by a doctor who wanted to cut down on rape, the woman who uses such a device would be expected to insert this "female condom" when venturing into dangerous areas. The would-be assailant would find himself incapacitated by the device as it painfully latches onto his penis. According to reports, it could only be removed by a doctor.

All well and good, if used for the intended purpose.

But, as with so many items, who really believes it will be restricted to just that use?

What of the woman who is angry with her husband and/or lover, who wants him to suffer because he has inflicted upon her some slight, real or imagined, and she sees this as a marvelous way to strike back at him? As the doctor who developed the device says, the man so afflicted "cannot urinate or walk" after it has attached itself to him. What a delightful way to incapacitate a man!

Indeed, this painful new device could easily be used upon a man who is sleeping, drunk, high, or simply gulled into believing he has been invited to a night of pleasure, only to discover other things have been intended for him.

With this new device, women are now capable of the violent, painful rape of men.
It is impossible to see this "advance" as an unalloyed good.

It Could Be Worse

As we all know by now, Barack Obama's endorsement of political candidates is the kiss of death for their political careers. Every time he endorses someone, they lose.

As David Broder pointed out yesterday, Specter’s failure “showed the Obama White house once again to be a toothless tiger -- with its endorsements now having failed in Virginia, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania. No good news for the president there.”

Now, for some time, conservative political pundits have lamented the fact that Barack Obama constantly runs down the United States.

This is true.

But has anyone considered how much WORSE it would be if he endorsed America?

UPDATE:
Public Policy Polling took my advice and actually conducted a poll on this kind of question.

* 42 percent of the women surveyed said Obama's endorsement would make them less likely to vote for someone, with 36 percent of women viewing the president's support positively.

* 55 percent of men took a negative view of Obama's backing, while only 30 percent of men said the president's endorsement increased a candidate's chance of getting their votes.

* 54 percent of those identifying themselves as "independent" or "other," rather than Republican or Democrat, now view an Obama endorsement as a factor swaying them against voting for a candidate for office.

* Only 23 percent of such independent voters said his endorsement would make them more likely to support someone; the remaining 23 percent of independents said it didn't matter or they didn't know.

* A huge proportion of those independent voters -- 57 percent -- disapprove of the way the president is handling the ongoing BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, while only 27 percent approve.

* 44 percent of Hispanics said they would be less likely to vote for someone President Obama endorses, while only 33 percent were more likely. Among whites, the comparison was 55 percent to 27 percent. Blacks, however, were another story, with only 13 percent viewing an Obama endorsement dimly and 70 percent saying it would make them more likely to vote for someone. And 83 percent of blacks said they approved of Obama's handling of the Gulf oil disaster.

So, all the stereotypes are coming home to roost.

Marking Chris West

To my shock and delight, it seems Mark Shea has finally decided to skewer Christopher West. Given Mark's close association with Matt Pinto via Catholic Exchange (Mark is the senior editor, Matt is the unofficial publisher for Catholic Exchange), this is a remarkable turn of events. It is, perhaps, for reasons along this line that we see Shea's attack on West appear not on Catholic Exchange, but at Inside Catholic.

The distancing is all the more amazing when we see the bits of "business" Mark has inserted into the essay itself, subtle parodies of West's own errors.

For instance, in the opening paragraphs, Mark deliberately misrepresents the facts on the "Adamites", in an apparent parody of West's constant distortion of the theological facts surrounding John Paul II's Theology of the Body.

Mark places the Adamites and similar theological nudist movements in post-Reformation, post-Enlightenment, technologically advanced 20th century climate-controlled countries, despite the fact that a simple Google search or a quick perusal of the Catholic Encyclopedia clearly reveals that the Adamite nudists were a 2nd, 3rd, and 4th century heresy.

Why would Shea make such an obvious and easily debunked historical error? Well, we should remember that one of West's central errors, the idea that the Paschal candle is a phallic symbol of some kind, is also an insupportably anachronistic error, the exact reverse of the Adamite error Shea "makes."

Whereas Shea takes an ancient sect and pretends it is thoroughly and only modern, West took a modern heresy - the idea that the Paschal candle is somehow a phallic symbol - and pretended it was thoroughly ancient.

In fact, despite the unsupported statements of people like Christopher West, Janet Smith and Michael Waldstein, no one has produced ANY evidence that the Paschal candle was ever given West's phallic meaning in the first 1800 years of the Church.

Instead, quite the opposite is the case. Due to Dawn Eden's masterful research on the subject, we know that the "Easter candle as phallic symbol" concept was actually developed by one of Nietsche's professors and was popularized by anti-Catholic students of Carl Jung. Eden reminds us that Father Dominic Serra has already described how the fathers of the Second Vatican Council specifically rejected the phallic symbol interpretation West foolishly uses.

But Mark Shea doesn't stop there. He then goes on to an extended discussion of the verb "nake." The parody here is that Mark takes chunks of his own discussion straight from C.S. Lewis' well-known chapter on Eros in The Four Loves without any attribution whatsoever.

This, of course, is a subtle reference to West's habit of taking material like the "Easter candle-phallic symbol" analogy from other modern, copyrighted sources without making any attributions whatsoever, deliberately passing off other people's work as his own. As a senior editor at Catholic Exchange, Mark is fully aware of the need to attribute work, so it's clear that he's making a point about West's unwillingness to do so.

Whereas Mark's unattributed source is the redoubtable C.S. Lewis, West's unattributed sources, at least in reference to the phallic Easter candle, are a series of anti-Catholic Protestants and atheists. Mark thereby quietly reminds the reader of Chesterton's hilarious debunk of the atheist's idea that a church steeple is a phallic symbol.

And Mark uses all of this in a concentrated attack against the memes promoted by West and his acolytes:

This is, of course, what gives the lie to the notion that the account in Genesis is somehow the cause of a Religion of Shame about the Body, and all the rest of the recent rubbish blaming Judaism and Christianity for failing to celebrate unnatural polymorphous perversity and unfettered sexual license....

...As a general rule, the command to clothe the naked is concerned, primarily, not with the need for human warmth as the need for human dignity. Both the Puritan and the Libertine tend to forget this. The Puritan forgets by putting some arbitrary rule above the person's healthy sense of modesty in relation to his culture. The Libertine forgets it by denying that a culture (usually his own) has any language by which virtue or vice is spoken through clothes.

This, of course, is one of the central complaints made about Chris West. When he insists, as he frequently has, that a pure and moral Catholic should be able to look at a naked woman, even someone else's wife, without sin, he has taken up the Libertine's language. Mark Shea neatly skewers West not only through the subtle parody of Westian "scholarship" but also through this overt attack on West's obsession with "Puritanism." Similarly, Shea uses the theme of modesty to skewer West's understanding of the related virtue of continence:

Great fun can be had with all these cultural differences, and Puritans and Libertines have a wonderful time dogmatizing about and ignoring completely the complex interplay of aesthetics, common sense, and morality as they jockey to either raise a fashion to a granite truth of Sinai, or else eradicate the very possibility that modesty is a virtue.

Of course, continence, the virtue by which an engaged couple realizes they should not spend extended periods of time alone prior to marriage, is ridiculed by West as not being a virtue at all. Indeed, West has not only lied about the Catholic doctrine concerning the virtue of continence, he has even gone so far as to pretend Aquinas and JP II agree with him, even though both explicitly state that continence is, in fact, virtuous.

But the modesty and humility that is embodied in continence is precisely what Shea holds up as a virtue here. Indeed, Shea not only holds it up as a virtue, he condemns as "Libertine" those who would eradicate the virtues, as West has tried to do. West has long been chastised for refusing to acknowledge "the complex interplay of ... common sense and morality" and now Mark Shea adds himself to the list of those who take issue with West's approach.

By imitating and thereby parodying Westian errors and plagiarism, by interweaving Westian obsessions into his essay and soundly refuting them, Mark Shea has done a masterful and uncharacteristically subtle job of repudiating the theology of the man who has made millions by distorting Catholic theology.

My hat is off to Mark Shea.

UPDATE: Mark indicates that he didn't have Chris West in mind when he wrote the essay. He claims complete and utter ignorance of what West has to say.

This is kind of sad, since that means he really didn't know the Adamites were an early heresy, not a late one (thus seriously undermining part of his thesis), nor does this senior editor at Catholic Exchange seem to see a problem with lifting C.S. Lewis without attribution. So, while he is ignorant of West's teaching, he is sympatico in his use of research techniques.

In any case, although his comments are, like those of the High Priest, unintentional, they are completely on target. Even in his ignorance, Mark Shea demonstrates that West's "naked without shame" theology is absurd, so that portion of the essay stands. My apologies for incorrectly portraying Mark in a more positive light than he deserves.

Every Cloud Has A Silver Lining

Every cloud has a silver lining.

Every FDR wannabee recognizes that high unemployment, high business closure and high home foreclosure is good for the Democrats.

President Barack Obama muses:

"I had one side of the aisle just sit on the sidelines as the crisis unfolded," Obama said. "And if we had taken that position, just thinking about what was good for my politics, millions more Americans would have lost their jobs and their businesses and their homes."

Now, let's ignore the fact that the "one side of the aisle" he complains about was actually not happy with the amount of money he was spending or the amount of taxation that his spendthrift habits will generate.

Let's just look at what Barack Hussein Obama said:

"If we... [were] just thinking about what was good for my politics, millions more Americans would have lost their jobs and their businesses and their homes. "

He publicly admits that Democrats make hay while the storm blows.

His party, according to him, is the party of doom and gloom that advances only when Americans lose.

Which is exactly what conservatives have been saying for the last ten years.

It's always nice when he brings people together, nicht wahr?

To Bomb or Not To Bomb

The great thing about liberals is, they aren't just spineless cowards, they are stupid spineless cowards.

Take for instance, Comedy Central . Why it was just a week ago that the creators of South Park dressed Mohammed up in a bear suit and had him prance around on the animated set as the main characters tried out various comedic lines (well, not really comedic, except to a five-year old... this is South Park, after all).

Much to the writers' chagrin, Comedy Central decided to ban the episode, lest Muslims be offended and blow them up. A subsequent episode had all references to Mohammed bleeped out.

Following this, a West Coast blogger and artist proposed a "Let's All Draw Mohammed Day" and then immediately withdrew the proposal as it went viral, lest she be blown up as well.

Their concerns were not without foundation.

Within days of the events, a massive car bomb was found scant feet from the headquarters of Viacom in New York's Times Square.

Viacom is the HQ for Comedy Central.

So, the brilliant minds at Comedy Central have now proposed to lampoon Jesus Christ.

Smooth move, Ex-Lax.

• Do these jokers realize that Muslims consider Jesus Christ the third holiest prophet in history, second only to Abraham and Mohammed himself?
• Do they understand that they consider him born of a virgin, and sinless his whole life (along with his mother), a true Muslim who lived the Muslim faith perfectly, just as Mohammed did?
• Do they recognize that Jesus Christ is, according to Muslim theology, the one who will judge everyone on the Last Day?
• Does anyone at Comedy Central read the news? Or read, period? Have they discovered how well Egypt tolerated Elton John's recent remarks about Jesus? Elton should thank his lucky stars he was banned. If he had gone to Egypt, he never would have gotten out alive.

So, YO!

Comedy Central freaks!

How do you think the Muslims will react to you making fun of the Muslim prophet Jesus?

That's right, friend.

They gonna blow you up.

Confirmation Problem

I recently received a question about how a homeschooler might deal with a parish confirmation program that really, really stunk.

Are there any options other than a parish based program to Confirm our children? Our parish does not allow parents to homeschool any of the sacramental years including Confirmation (2 year program). 
My son Lucas detests going to class because it is a class of all boys that he describes as a bunch of crazed monkeys. They disrupt the class the entire 2 hours and it's very hard for him to concentrate. I realize that they all are 12 and 13 and this is normal. But Lucas is very mature for his age thinks it's silly for them to act this way. 
He's asking us why he has to go through this? He could learn all this material at home without all the distraction. It's hard to argue with that logic. We've spoken with our priest and with the director of the Religious Ed program. Both have emphasized the need to be apart of the church "community" and just stick it out. Being part of this particular community (his class) would mean acting like a crazed monkey! So you can see our dilemma. Please send any thoughts and/or suggestions.

This was my response:

You have several options. 

All involve pain.   

1) Once someone is baptized, they may approach ANY legitimate minister of the other sacraments in order to receive those other sacraments. All that is necessary to receive a sacrament is 

(a) the recipient knows what it will do to him/her 

(b) the recipient wants that change to happen and 

(c) the recipient knows enough about the liturgy to successfully move through it.   

That's it.   

So, you could go to ANY PARISH IN THE WORLD in order to get your child confirmed. Any bishop, indeed, any priest whose bishop has given him authority to confirm, can do this for your child. Thus, you are quite within your rights to check out other parishes/dioceses for alternatives. Hispanic children, for example, commonly go to a grandmother's house in Mexico to get confirmed over the summer and avoid the gringo stupidity that you are presently encountering.  

2) You can fight the priest. The documents are QUITE clear on this point. The Rite of Confirmation #3 even says: 

“The initiation of children into the sacramental life is ordinarily the responsibility and concern of Christian parents. They are to form and gradually increase a spirit of faith in the children and, at times with the help of catechism classes, prepare them for the fruitful reception of the sacraments of confirmation and the eucharist.” 
Articles 2220-2225 of the CCC re-state the parental duty/right in slightly different language. CCC 2225 says "Parents should initiate their children at an early age into the mysteries of faith." The phrase "mysteries of faith" is a technical theological term that refers to the sacraments (Part II of the CCC is called "The Mystery of Faith" and it discusses sacraments and liturgy).   The parents are the primary educators of their own children and no pastor, no bishop, no DRE, no deacon, NO ONE can interfere in your right and your duty to prepare your own children for the sacraments. I have a couple of chapters on this in my book, Designed to Fail: Catholic Education in America. 

If you bone up on the Magisterial documents and approach the pastor, making it clear that you know what you're talking about and you will take it to the bishop if he doesn't allow you to prepare your child at home, most pastors will back down because they know they have no ground to stand on.   If you run into a stupid pastor who really wants to fight on this issue, then after talking with him, take it to the bishop. 

Bishops know perfectly well that they can't force you through the parish program. He may or may not bluster and try to bully you into it, but if you stand your ground, he will relent, if only because he wouldn't want you to take it to the papal nuncio, which you should make clear you are willing to do.   

The most common objection is that the parish is supposed to participate in the child's preparation for confirmation. Yes, well, you are part of the parish, so you represent the parish to the child. The parish exists to support the family, not vice versa. Families got along without parishes for the first 1000 years of the Church just fine. Parishes don't exist without families. Parishes must support the parents. Anything else is a violation of the principle of subsidiarity.   

3) You can go into the class with your child, as is your right, and loudly correct any error the confirmation instructors try to bring forward, i.e., make a real nuisance of yourself. It works best if you get ALL the homeschooling parents to do this en masse. Facing a large-scale revolt, the pastor will quickly find an alternative way to deal with homeschoolers.  

The only reason he's been able to ram this down your throats so far is you haven't all gotten together and had a come-to-Jesus meeting with him. If he sees 20 or 30 families all ticked off and all ready to head to the bishop and sit on the bishop's doorstep, the pastor will back down and accommodate you.   Familiaris Consortio (#69-72) recommends that parents form associations to work together for their common good. In this day and age, that means you need to band together against your pastor, break green lumber over his head in order to get his attention, then tell him what he needs to do to fix his ignorance, and his insulting attitude towards the parents in his parish.  

He'll hate you for taking option #3, but that's ok. He'll get over it. And he will cave, guaranteed. Pastors hate parish insurrections. A big insurrection reduces the likelihood that the bishop will give the pastor a cushy parish next time he has to pass through the spring "pastor roulette" when bishop transfers pastors.   

Now, that having been said, bishops don't like noise either, because it looks bad on their vitae if the noise reaches Rome. Given the internet, most noise reaches Rome nowadays. So, #3 is really going to tick off the bishop as well (although Rome won't mind) and it will give homeschoolers a generally bad name with him. I just mention it because it DOES work, if nothing else does.   

4) Skip confirmation for the moment. Yes, I know it's a sacrament, and yes I know it sounds wrong, but if he just waits until he's 18 or 19 to get confirmed, then all of this juvenile behaviour from the pastor and the deacon magically falls away. 

Typically, most parishes have a "catch-up" program for adults who missed confirmation in their youth (which is not uncommon). The adult program is much less onerous, typically only a couple of weeks, and the level of discourse does not involve crazed monkeys.   

It should be noted that, for purposes of receiving a sacrament, canon law recognizes the age of 8 as being an adult. So, technically, an adult prep program for your child is perfectly within his rights if he's 8 years old or older. Now, nobody is going to let your twelve-year old into an adult confirmation program, and I wouldn't argue that you should try, but since your child is unlikely to fall away from the Faith UNLESS he participates in the parish confirmation nonsense, it is actually a prudent decision on your part to simply delay the sacrament until such time as either the boy or the pastor grows up.   

Since the former is more likely to happen than the latter, I don't think it unreasonable to wait until he's 19 for confirmation if you can't avoid the near occasion of sin in the parish program any other way.   Again, #4 is not the best choice, but I throw it out as an option that I think can legitimately be considered if you don't want to pursue the other courses of action. 

What Is Maureen Dowd Missing?

In Maureen Dowd's latest column, she claims the Catholic Church is just as oppressive as Islam.

Yes, indeed, I must admit it, we are.

That's why we cut off Maureen's clitoris when she was five.

Without benefit of anesthesia.

Just like the Muslims do.

And we married her to a forty year old man when she was seven.

She lost her virginity to him that same year.

Just like the Muslims do.

In fact, they learned all that from Catholics.

Betch'a didn't know that, eh?

Maureen knows.

She's brilliant.

She works for the New York Times.

They're all so brilliant at the New York Times.

We wish that we wish we would be like them, but we can't wish it because we are so everlastingly "patriarchal" (that means "stupid," I think. I'm not sure. I don't work for the New York Times. Big Sigh).

In any case, Maureen, who (along with Dan Brown) has revealed these hidden secrets, has obviously never recovered from the shock of what happened to her.

Sadly, she escaped and we failed to recapture her, cut off her ears and nose, and stone her to death, as is only proper. Another thing the Muslims learned from us. The Muslims learned all the bad things from us, like blowing themselves up and stuff. We had classes for them, back in the day, but we had to stop when the smart people invented the New York Times. Another Big Sigh.

The failure to recapture her and properly punish her is the Pope's fault.

He changed canon law on us in 1983, so when we petitioned to have her caught and at least a hand cut off or something, we lost the argument.

As you can see, we had to just settle for the frontal lobotomy.

It's all the law would allow.

We apologize to America for allowing her to inflict herself on you all.

We hope you can forgive us.

Is the Times a-changing?

Shockingly enough, Newsweek, The New York Times and ABC all show signs of backing off the Catholic aspect of the sexual abuse story.

I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't read it myself, but here are excerpts from each organizations' coverage. This is incredible:

Newsweek:

Ernie Allen of national Center for Missing and Exploited Children denies that Catholics have a special or unusual abuse problem....Since the 1980’s, when insurance companies started issuing policies, they have not charged Catholics higher premiums...

The more youth formation programs you have, the more abuse you have – premiums are a function of number of youth programs, not denomination. Catholic Church has by far the largest school network in the nation...Catholics are also the single largest denomination in the nation and the second largest in the world (behind Islam).

Of 110,000 priests active 1950-1992, only 4% have had complaints (about 4400).

4392 priests complained about from 10,667 victims.149 priests responsible for 25,000 cases 75% of abuse comes from families and friends.

Since the mid-1980s, insurance companies have offered sexual misconduct coverage as a rider on liability insurance, and their own studies indicate that Catholic churches are not higher risk than other congregations.

As the report notes, insurance companies don't charge Catholics higher premiums than other faiths, because Catholic priests are not at special risk of offending. Premium rates are pegged to the number of youth programs a church has - nothing else. The more youth programs you run, the more claims there are, and therefore the higher the premiums. Catholics have the largest private school program in the nation.

As a side note to Newsweek's coverage, I again refer back to the Shakeshaft report, one of the most damning and one of the most completely ignored stories of the first decade of the 21st century.

When Shakeshaft's report on public school education from 1990-2000 is compared to the John Jay report on Catholic priest abuse, a remarkable thing emerges. In the five decades from 1950 to 2000, we saw 11,000 abuse allegations against roughly 6700 priests. 6700 were substantiated, 1000 were unsubstantiated, the rest were moot as the priest had died. 78% of the Catholic priest victims were between the ages of 11 and 17, while 6% were 7 or younger.
4.5 million versus 11,000.

One decade versus 5 decades.

Hmmm.....

That means 450,000 abuse cases from the public schools each year versus 220 abuse cases per year from Catholic priests. A difference of 2000 percent.

Perhaps this is why school teachers were, at one time, required by law to be single and they were forbidden to date while they were teachers. Vows of celibacy apparently protect against abuse. And even early 20th-century Protestants knew it.

The New York Times confirms this:

If the rate of abuse among Catholic priests stands (per the John Jay data) at roughly 4 percent, that’s less than half the rate that Allen cites for the population as a whole. And the Jay study covers the sweep of the last 50 years; if you compare the rate of accusations against priests now (as opposed to during the crisis of the 1960s and 1970s) to Allen’s 10 percent figure, it looks like Catholic clergy currently abuse children and teenagers at about one-fifth the rate of the male population as a whole.

In this same week, ABC News followed up with a report on sexual abuse in athletic and fast food venues. It seems some USA Swimming coaches were routinely photographing and abusing the swimmers they trained.

USA Swimming's response?

The executive director of USA Swimming, Chuck Wielgus, acknowledged the problem, but said "It's "It's not nearly as serious in USA Swimming as it might be in the rest of society."
"I don't want to be the one to sit here and say 36 is not too many, one is too many, but this is not just a problem that's isolated to one sport," said Wielgus.

In some cases, the swimming coaches found to have been sexual predators were able to move from town to town, one step ahead of police and angry victims and their parents.

"We have a system that does not encourage the reporting," said Bob Allard, a San Jose, CA lawyer representing sex abuse victims suing USA Swimming....

Asked if he had apologized to any of the young teen victims, Wielgus responded, "You feel I need to apologize to them?"
He added, "I think it's unfair for you to ask me whether individually or me as the representative of an organization to apologize for something when all we are trying to do is everything we possibly can to create a safe and healthy environment for kids who are participating in our particular activity."

But ABC wasn't done. It then continued with a segment on Starbucks and other fast food venues. When it was demonstrated that employees were sexually abused by supervisors:

Starbucks executives declined to be interviewed but in a statement the company said, "These two employees concealed their relationship from Starbucks, which violated company policy. We are confident that the case will ultimately be resolved in finding that Starbucks is not at fault."

...The case turned ugly as the Starbucks law firm, Akin Gump, used hard ball tactics to defend their client, including successfully seeking to make public the young woman's sexual history once it learned she had been interviewed for "20/20."

"They are trying to defend themselves by calling me a slut," she told "20/20." "It's intimidation. It's harassing to sit though deposition and just be re-victimized."

Federal judge Andrew J. Guilford agreed with Starbucks lawyers and ordered the information unsealed because of the company's need "to defend themselves" and "level the playing field."

Starbucks disclosed in court papers that the woman has had sexual encounters with 12 men other than Horton, seven of them before she met Horton.

Starbucks says it does have a strict policy against sexual harassment and managers dating baristas, but there is nothing specific about relationships with teens under the age of 18.

McDonalds and Taco Bell also have lawsuits pending against them, and those lawsuits likewise involve statutory rape by supervisors.

And, of course, NO ONE wants to talk about the sleeping elephant of Islam, where child marriage is perfectly in accord with Muslim morality, indeed, it is praised as a way to emulate the prophet Mohammed.

“In God’s eyes legal, but in laws of the country (Malaysia) not legal,” said the Kijang state assemblywoman when questioned on the legality of child marriages [in Islam]....

Section 8 of the Kelantan Muslim Family Law Enactment (2000) states that any girl below 16 cannot marry, except with written permission from the Syariah Court.

When questioned on what criteria would merit such consent, Ubaidah replied that in cases where a girl and her partner are “madly in love beyond control”, the court would grant them permission to marry. A father who wishes to marry the girl off to a rich man may also receive similar authorisation from the court.

Although Ubaidah said that a girl’s consent and understanding is needed before marrying her off, she said: “Silence is consent”. If a girl is married off without her consent, she can seek help from her relatives or approach the religious department herself, Ubaidah added.

Now, this is just one story about sharia law in Malaysia.

We could also bring forward stories from Yemen, where a 13-year old girl died of bleeding from genital tears five days after her marriage to a 30 year-old man, or Saudi Arabia, where the shariah court refused to annul the marriage of an 8-year old to a man in his late 40's, or Pakistan, where girl children are married off to adult men to settle family feuds (swara), pay a debt, or as part of a deal to marry off an older sibling. A seven year old married to a 45-year old man with other living wives and children is absolutely common.

The list could go on, but why bother?

If reporting on sexual abuse were accurate, there would be five reports of Protestant, rabbinic or Eastern Orthodox sexual abuse for every one report of Catholic sexual abuse. There would be 200 reports of public school sexual abuse for every one report of Catholic sexual abuse. There would be thousands of reports of Muslim sexual abuse for every one report of Catholic sexual abuse.

Wherever there is sharia, there is what Westerners would call child sexual abuse. It is legal, moral and laudable. But no one goes after the imams for this, do they?

Who do they go after? Pope Benedict XVI, formerly known as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.

As for Cardinal Ratzinger's culpability, he was appointed head of the CDF in 1981. Take a close look at the chart from the John Jay report provided by the New York Times blogger:

Do you notice anything interesting? Do you see how that red line (number of cases) and that blue line (number of priests committing abuse) both begin a REALLY rapid descent? Well, if you look closely at the year when that rapid fall begins, that year would be 1981 - two years after John Paul II is elected Pope and the same year Ratzinger is picked to head the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Even though the CDF won't streamline the process and gain sole jurisdiction over abuse cases until 2001, the chart shows that the minute Ratzinger became the head of CDF, someone, somewhere started shutting these abusive priests down. By 1995, most of the rat holes had been closed.

The press didn't pick up on what was going on until AFTER Ratzinger or one of his confreres had already finished most of the work.

This chart is from a New York Times blogger, folks.

You want to make the MSM look silly?

Push this chart around.

UPDATE:
Shockingly enough USA Gymnastics is doing the same thing.

Of Pet Goats and Apologies

Reuters and other news sources have found a new way to milk their pet goat.

Reports indicate that several important Jewish men and women are very upset that the Pope's personal preacher mentioned the opinion of his Jewish friend during his Good Friday homily. Reading from a letter he had received, the preacher pointed out that - from his Jewish friend's perspective - the MSM attack on the Church was comparable to the anti-Semitism displayed in Europe in the early part of the 20th century.

By a rare coincidence, this year our Easter falls on the same week of the Jewish Passover which is the ancestor and matrix within which it was formed. This pushes us to direct a thought to our Jewish brothers. They know from experience what it means to be victims of collective violence and also because of this they are quick to recognize the recurring symptoms. I received in this week the letter of a Jewish friend and, with his permission, I share here a part of it.

He said: “I am following with indignation the violent and concentric attacks against the Church, the Pope and all the faithful by the whole world. The use of stereotypes, the passing from personal responsibility and guilt to a collective guilt remind me of the more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism. Therefore I desire to express to you personally, to the Pope and to the whole Church my solidarity as Jew of dialogue and of all those that in the Jewish world (and there are many) share these sentiments of brotherhood. Our Passover and yours are undoubtedly different, but we both live with Messianic hope that surely will reunite us in the love of our common Father. I wish you and all Catholics a Good Easter.”

And also we Catholics wish our Jewish brothers a Good Passover. We do so with the words of their ancient teacher Gamaliel, entered in the Jewish Passover Seder and from there passed into the most ancient Christian liturgy:

“He made us pass
From slavery to liberty,
From sadness to joy,
From mourning to celebration,
From darkness to light,
From servitude to redemption
Because of this before him we say: Alleluia.”

That's it. As with the non-existent Tea Party "N" word slur from a few days ago, there is no use of the "H" word (Holocaust) or "S" word (Shoah) for the simple reason that it is possible to discuss violence against the Jews without calling either to mind.

People may not realize it, but the Holocaust didn't start until well after World War II had begun. Nearly all the death camps are in Poland or Byelorussia - captured territory. Google it.

Personally, I'm a little tired of the Jews trying to claim the Holocaust as their own personal disaster. After all, the Roma (Gypsies) suffered, on a per capita basis, much more severely in the extermination camps then the Jews did. Indeed, almost none of the Gypsies survived the war, and they are still subject to enormous persecution. But the Roma don't have strong political pressure groups, so no one makes movies about what happened to them.

Furthermore, while 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust, so were 3 million Catholics. Twelve million people died. Auschwitz alone killed Catholics EXCLUSIVELY for the first 26 months of operation (actually, one Jew did die at Auschwitz during that time period, but you get the idea). However, Catholics haven't spent the last seventy years kvetching about it.

The Holocaust targeted Jews.

The Holocaust did NOT target JUST Jews.

Catholics have as much right to invoke the Holocaust as the Jews or the Roma.

But all of this is moot, since Fr. Cantalamessa didn't invoke the Holocaust.

Instead, he invoked pre-war anti-Semitism. Now, anti-Semitism was rife in Europe for decades before the Holocaust started killing Jews. Indeed, Hitler took power in 1933, and the MSM of the 1930's ran some absolutely scurrilous attacks on the Jews between 1933 and 1939. But, apart from a somewhat higher level of virulence, this MSM anti-Semitism was what most European countries had in their own newspapers between the Dreyfuss Affair and the beginning of WW II.

This is the violence that Cantalamessa and his friend were discussing.

So, to say that there is a correlation between:
(1) how the MSM in Europe treated the Jews in the 1920's and 30's and
(2) how the MSM today treats the Catholics is
(3) merely to speak aloud an historical fact.

Still, Elan Steinberg, vice-president of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants is upset. Rabbi Marvin Hier of Simon Wiesenthal Center is perturbed. A spokesman for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) is heartbroken. Rabbi James Rudin, senior interreligious adviser to the American Jewish Committee, is shocked.

Maybe they don't read history books.

In any case, there is a demand for a personal apology from the Pope.

Now, I would think it would be a lot more efficient if the people who are offended by this accursed Catholic-loving Jew went out, found Cantalamessa's Jewish friend and just beat on him until he started thinking like a "real Jew", or whatever it is they think themselves to be.

After all, if they're mad at him, why bring us into it?
Like the New York Times, we're just the messenger here.

But, OK.

Let's take the apology aspect of it seriously.
Soooo.........

..... exactly what is the Pope supposed to say?

"I'm sorry my preacher has Jewish friends"? That won't go over well.

How about, "I apologize for my preacher daring to portray Jews who disagree with other Jews - we all know they think as a monolithic block."? No, call me dense, but I can't see how that apology will help either.

What if he said, "We who are goy salute you!" It has a certain ring to it, but maybe not enough of an apology aspect.

Ok, ok, I got it... "Jews are only supposed to notice attacks on their people. We all know they have no sympathy or interest in how others suffer from attacks. I am grief-stricken that my preacher attempted to violate that stereotype." ....

No....., no, on second thought, I don't think that one will work either.

This is a real puzzler.

So, could all these offended individuals explain exactly how the Pope is supposed to apologize to the Jews for the remarks of a Jew?

Has anyone got suggestions?

PS - Has anyone noticed that this Pope gets in trouble not for what he himself says, but for telling us what other people said? First Regensburg and the quote an Eastern Emperor made about Muslims, now this. Maybe if he had gone to journalism school and got a union card, he wouldn't get so much grief. The boys in the biz hate scab labor.

Noonan Doesn't Get It

In her most recent column, Peggy Noonan argues that the MSM tried very hard NOT to report on the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church. They were dragged kicking and screaming to the table, and they still get cold chills every time they run a story.

Peggy Noonan is simply wrong.

According to the Dept. of Education's own studies, the public schools produce victims at a rate 400 times higher in the course of ten years than the Catholic Church produced in 50 years.

If the news reporting were equitable across all lines, we would see 400 stories on public school sexual abuse for every one story we see on priest sexual abuse.

Similarly, the rates of sexual abuse among Protestant and Jewish denominations are also higher than that in the Catholic Church.

If the reporting were equal across all incidences, we would see two or three stories about other faith denominations' abuse for each Catholic priest story.

Finally, we must remember that child-marriage is not only NOT a sin in Islam, heterosexual pedophilia is considered a virtue, since the 50 year old man who consummates marriage with a nine-year old girl is simply emulating Mohammed (To be fair, this was not unusual in ancient times. Moses himself demands of the commanders of the army: “Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man” (Numbers 31).

Mohammed lived a sinless life, according to Muslim belief, so anyone who imitates him is living a virtuous life. Mohammed married Aisha when she was six and consummated the marriage when she was nine. He was 54. There is essentially NO reporting on this fact anywhere.

No one is calling for Islam to cleanse itself of the rot.

Peggy, how about a column about that?

But why not?

Aren't you and other news types willing to risk having your throat cut for criticizing Mohammed?

So, let's sum up a little more accurately than Peggy was able to do.

The MSM reporters went after the Catholic Church almost exclusively and certainly out of all proportion to the actual amount of abuse that occurred within the Church.

It ignored (in order of abusive importance) Jews, Protestants, secular public schools and Islam.

Noonan's attempt at MSM apologetics is simply pathetic.

Yes, the abuse happened, but no, the reporters didn't try to avoid attacking the Church.

They reveled in it, the focused on it, they intend to take the Church down.

The crescendo is designed to reach its peak during Holy Week.

End of story.

Peggy Noonan is either an idiot or a liar.

I've lost all respect for her.

Bad Popes

Bonnie Erbe of US News and World Report is in high dudgeon. The Pope was remiss in handling a sexually abuse priest!

Hang the Pope!

Yada, yada, yada.

Now, as a Catholic, I want to personally thank Bonnie and company for their close attention to the Catholic Church's trials and tribulations. After all, Bonnie is very concerned for Catholic welfare. She cares about Catholics in a way that she obviously doesn't care when it comes to any other group of people.

For instance, when Carol Shakeshaft reported on the level of sexual abuse in the American public school system (400x higher in the schools than in the Church) Bonnie was silent as a lamb. For every child abused by a priest, 400 were abused by the public schools. It's actually worse than that, because the Church abuse was spread over five decades, while the school abuse is just the estimate for the last decade.

Similarly, when Yemen found it impossible to outlaw child marriage, Bonnie saw no news. There is nothing wrong with Muslims who insist that child marriage is not only legal, but laudable, because they are Muslims, after all, and we can't expect them to be decent people.

And we won't even discuss how the ritual of Jewish circumcision passes on HIV to infants, nor will we mention the higher rates of sexual abuse in Jewish or Protestant communities.

The examples could be multipled, but why bother?

None of this is news.

Furthermore, we should also recognize that it is only purest coincidence that by piling onto the Pope, the MSM are simultaneously attacking Barack Obama's most formidable political opponent apart from the Republican Party and Barack himself.

So, why does Bonnie get upset with the Pope? Because Bonnie is interested in our welfare. She cares. It brings tears to my eyes to know that she cares.

But she needn't worry. Even if Pope Benedict is eventually found to have exercised the worst possible judgment in regard to priestly sexual abusers, it's not like he's the first or the worst of the Popes to have done that. Let's reminisce a bit, shall we?

Pope Stephen VI (896-897) had a grudge against his predecessor, Pope Formosus. In order to humiliate his memory, he had Formosus’ body dug up, placed on a throne, and tried for acting improperly as a bishop. The corpse was found guilty, its three blessing fingers were cut off, it was dressed as a layman, briefly re-buried, then exhumed again and the body thrown in the Tiber. All ordinations he had performed were declared null. In gratitude for this and other actions, Pope Stephen was shortly thereafter imprisoned and strangled to death.

Pope John XII (937-964) was accused by a synod of 50 Italian and German bishops (bishops, mind you, not scurvy little reporter-babes) of sacrilege, simony, perjury, murder, adultery and incest. The conflict between the Pope’s supporters and his opponents resulted in bloodshed in the streets of Rome, some of it directly inflicted by John XII himself. Cardinal-Deacon John had his right hand cut off, Bishop Orgar of Speyer was scourged, a high palatine official lost his nose and ears. Pope John died shortly after. According to rumor, he was stricken by paralysis in the act of adultery.

Pope Benedict IX (1032-1048) was a disgrace to the Chair of Peter. Placed on the throne at about the age of 20, he was driven from office by a faction in Rome and replaced by the anti-pope, Sylvester III. Benedict managed to return the favor, driving Sylvester from office and regaining the throne, but resigning the office and selling it a short time later for a large sum of money to Gregory VI. When he repented of that bargain and tried to regain the throne from Gregory VI, the Council of Sutri convinced Gregory that he had committed the sin of simony. Gregory resigned, and Clement II was elected. Clement died shortly thereafter and Benedict seized the throne a third time. He was driven from the throne again, and Damasus II was elected in his stead. He eventually repented of all his actions, resigned the throne permanently and lived a life of penance in the Abbey of Grottaferrata until his death.

In his third book of Dialogues, Pope Victor II referred to Benedict's "rapes, murders and other unspeakable acts. His life as a Pope so vile, so foul, so execrable, that I shudder to think of it." St. Peter Damian recorded that Benedict "feasted on immorality" and that he was "a demon from hell in the disguise of a priest." He accused Benedict IX of routine sodomy and bestiality and repeated the rumor that he was said to have sponsored orgies.

Pope Urban VI (1378-1389) treated the people around him so badly that several cardinals defected, fled Rome, and attempted to elect a different pope. This began the Great Western Schism, when two different lines of men both claimed to be pope, and each was backed by a saint and doctor of the Church. Urban himself was subject to at least two attempts to assassinate or depose him, both plots hatched by cardinals of the Church.

And these are just some of the finest examples of papal depravity that could be brought forward. There are more. If you insist on being scandalized by bad popes, or leaving the Church because of a bad pope, why on earth would you choose to balk at the present contender when so many better examples of great papal sinners are available?

So, we have had bad popes. Although the evidence is still by no means clear, let us grant, for the sake of argument, that this particular pope, Benedict XVI, could be numbered with them.

So what?

As Pope St. Leo the Great (440-461) declared, in his third homily for Christmas Day, "the dignity of Peter suffers no diminution even in an unworthy successor" (cujus dignitas etiam in indigno haerede non deficit).

Even by 450 AD, less than 70 years after the Church had become the official religion of the Roman Empire, the Church had already seen anti-popes and attacks on the popes that overshadow anything the 20th or 21st century has produced. The fact that people are outraged when some evil can be attributed to a priest, bishop or even Pope is merely a demonstration that everyone holds the Church in the highest regard.

What is barely newsworthy in reference to public school teachers, what is roundly ignored when it comes to other faiths, this same conduct is considered outrageous in Catholic Faith precisely because our Faith is true and none of the others are.

The Magisterium of the Catholic Church is the sole source of moral Truth. When our leaders fail, it is a much greater failing.

"The latter are forgiven nothing", says De Maistre in his great work, Du Pape, "because everything is expected from them, wherefore the vices lightly passed over in a Louis XIV become most offensive and scandalous in an Alexander VI" (II, c. xiv).

Thanks for affirming what we already knew, Bonnie.

Would He?

According to ABC News, death threats have been made against Barack Obama on Twitter.

I am, of course, absolutely horrified... horrified, I tell you.. horrified, that anyone would have that attitude towards Our Beloved Leader.

But the contemplation of such an awful... awful, I tell you... awful sentiment sparked a musing.
No, a musing, not amusement. My muse sparkled into action. Sparkled, I say.

Now, ABC News gravely reminds us that it is a violation of federal law to threaten the life of the President.

Of course, in order to successfully prosecute the gentlemen involved, the President would have to establish that he is actually legally President.

He would have to produce a birth certificate.
No, not a certificate of live birth, an actual birth certificate.

If that checked out, he would have to explain how he fulfills the definition of "natural born citizen" given that his father was not an American citizen. Not a US citizen born in the United States, but a "natural born citizen."

There is, after all, a legal difference between being born a citizen of the United States and being a natural-born citizen of the United States.

The first requires EITHER American parents OR birth on American soil.
The second requires BOTH American parents AND birth on American soil.

So, all relevant evidence would have to be brought forward.
College transcripts and scholarships might even have to be examined.
All the documents that were never revealed would have to come out from under wraps.
All kinds of questions would have to be answered.

Yes, that's what would happen if these nefarious gentlemen... nefarious, I tell you!... nefarious gentlemen were prosecuted.

Somehow, I don't think these gentlemen will be prosecuted.

UPDATE 4/21/2010

My prophetic abilities remain intact.

1) In fact, after investigation by the Secret Service (who are required to investigate all threats against the President), neither one of the nefarious gentlemen have been prosecuted by the federal government, nor are they expected to be.

Toldja.

2) Despite Mark Shea's suggestions, the Secret Service has not even begun to hint that they will investigate me for having broken federal law.

Why would they investigate me?
Well, because Mark says I am complicit in violating federal law: conspiracy to assassinate a President!

Yes, MURDER MOST FOUL!!! (hisses....)

And I'm "coy" to boot.
I knew I was a goy, but I didn't realize I was coy.
Hmmmm.....

In any case, since Shea NEVER engages in hateful, malicious, totally absurd ad hominem attacks we know he must be right. Yet the Secret Service seems to dither.

Hmmm... again.

Could it be a.... conspiracy?

Are Secret Service agents conspiring with me against the President?
Tune in to Mark Shea's blog to find out more!
But bring your tinfoil hat, a set of earplugs, and a small towel to wipe away the spittle of his rage. He can be a "wet" speaker sometimes, if you know what I mean.

And, if you do drop by, don't forget to send him my thanks for his personal endorsement of me, "bitter writer" that I am, and two of my best-selling books!

Yes, he loved me once, before he hated me.

Or, to put it as only Ralph Waldo Emerson could, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesman and philosophers and divines."

Exactly!

Death Panels in the Bill

Were you happy that the death panels, at least, didn't make it into the Chicago Butcher's law? Well, think again. They're in there - you just have to realize how neatly it was done:

13. If you are a physician owner and you want to expand your hospital? Well, you can’t (Section 6001 (i) (1) (B). Unless, it is located in a county where, over the last five years, population growth has been 150% of what it has been in the state (Section 6601 (i) (3) ( E)). And then you cannot increase your capacity by more than 200% (Section 6001 (i) (3) (C)).

There it is.

How does that equate to a death panel, you ask?

Simple - think about how the Baby Boomer generation is aging out, where they are aging out, and how the demographics of population growth works.

Old people don't have kids. In fact, Americans overall are barely having two children per family on average. The only places which will see 150% population growth will be areas with high illegal immigration levels.

Geographic areas with large numbers of aging Baby Boomers aren't going to have high population growth, except through immigration. And older people tend not to move hundreds or thousands of miles. They like to stay in their circle of friends, in neighborhoods they are familiar with. They tend to lack the financial means to move. When they do move, they tend to move to where other older Americans already reside.

So, population growth in areas with high numbers of Baby Boomers is simply not going to happen. Now, it is true that Florida appears to be an exception to these rules, but keep in mind that Florida gains population growth only by drawing on an entire nation's worth of the wealthiest of older Americans.

Result? Essentially, no hospital expansions will be possible in any area which has a large number of older people. As the number of aged people in an area increase, the institutions to care for them won't be permitted to increase.

If you don't live in an area with high illegal immigration, you won't have any hospital expansion, even though your aging population requires it. According to the law, as the aged population increases, the relative number of hospital beds will shrink.

But it gets better:

15. The government will extract a fee of $2.3 billion annually from the pharmaceutical industry. If you are a pharmaceutical company what you will pay depends on the ratio of the number of brand-name drugs you sell to the total number of brand-name drugs sold in the U.S. So, if you sell 10% of the brand-name drugs in the U.S., what you pay will be 10% multiplied by $2.3 billion, or $230,000,000. (Under reconciliation, it starts at $2.55 billion, jumps to $3 billion in 2012, then to $3.5 billion in 2017 and $4.2 billion in 2018, before settling at $2.8 billion in 2019 (Section 1404)). Think you, as a pharmaceutical executive, know how to better use that money, say for research and development? Tough. (Section 9008 (b)).

16. The government will extract a fee of $2 billion annually from medical device makers. If you are a medical device maker what you will pay depends on your share of medical device sales in the U.S. So, if you sell 10% of the medical devices in the U.S., what you pay will be 10% multiplied by $2 billion, or $200,000,000. Think you, as a medical device maker, know how to better use that money, say for R&D? Tough. (Section 9009 (b)).

See? The cost of producing drugs and medical devices will rise in order to pay these taxes, but the hospitals won't be able to expand their size to help cushion and cover the cost increases. So, smaller hospitals with proportionately higher drug and medical device cost per patient will be forced out of business.

And, according to the law, no one will be able to replace those missing hospital beds. It will be illegal to replace those hospital beds. They're gone.

So, not only will the relative number of hospital beds not increase, the absolute number of hospital beds will decrease.

Precisely as the population in an area ages out, the facilities to care for them will disappear.

Islam stops Christian conversion in part by forbidding the construction of new churches or the maintenance of existing churches.

Barack Hussein Obama has taken a page from sharia law and applied it to the Baby Boomers. Wherever they live in large (and growing) numbers, the availability of hospital beds to care for them will shrink.

As the American population ages out, hospitals will become proportionally too small to care for the available hospital-needy population. This will hit small states, like Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, etc., the hardest, since their states are so small that geographic variations between county and state are very unlikely to have any cushioning effect.

Butcher Barack knows his business. You have to admit, his solution is possibly the neatest solution to killing old people that could have been developed.

And now it's the law.

Wave goodbye to the nice grandparents!

May 2015 UPDATE
Well, it's 2015 and everything is working according to plan.

August 2017 UPDATE
It's 2017, and at least a few people are starting to catch on

May 2023 UPDATE

It's taking a bit longer than expected, but now the hospitals are shutting down in droves.