To Hell With Who?

Pittsburgh's bishop Zubek has famously declared that Barack Hussein Obama is telling Catholics "to hell with you!"

In possibly the only united political front the USCCB has presented on any subject in over forty years, America's episcopate has universally decided to fight Kathleen Sebelius' ruling that all Catholic organizations have to pay for employee's contraceptives in their insurance coverage.

There isn't a single dissenting voice.
It's remarkable.
It's almost like they were all ... Catholic bishops.

As Michael Voris points out, it is also kind of sad and pathetic, but that's not the point of this essay.





While Michael Voris is dead on accurate, he hasn't yet pointed out the logical conclusion.

The 2012 Elections
That's right, they're coming this year.
Who knew?

And what happens if, despite the fears of conservatives across the nation, Barack Hussein Obama is re-elected?

You see, the bishops have not publicly excommunicated a sitting politician since the civil rights movements of the 1960s. Since the media disliked discrimination, violence against blacks was judged a mortal sin, but since the media didn't dislike sexual misadventures, contracepting or killing children in the womb was just a social faux pas that could be overlooked in the pursuit of greater political harmony.

So, for the last fifty years, the bishops haven't yet declared a single politician excommunicate over issues of contraception or abortion. Indeed, as I document, they have gone out of their way to say they don't have the right to do such a thing. But it's not for want of candidates.

Since today is the kick-off for Catholic Schools Week across the nation, let us pause and meditate on the glory that is the Catholic school. Barack Hussein Obama, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Senator Kerry, Mario Cuomo, the thankfully deceased Ted Kennedy, and countless other pro-contraceptive, pro-abortion politicians were all taught in Catholic schools. In his entire career, Barack has gotten only one honorary degree, and that one from Notre Dame. Huzzah for Catholic schools!

Because of Despite their sterling Catholic education, most of the members of that previous list are definitely candidates for eventual excommunication. By their actions, they have already objectively chosen hell.

The question is, given that he is clearly not going to change his policy, if Obama is re-elected will the bishops be compelled to eventually point out the possibility of excommunication to any of the Obama-bot CINO's in a more formal way?

In short, when do the bishops formally excommunicate these fine products of conception Catholic education, informing them that they are, objectively speaking, going to hell?

There is no telling, of course.
I will only note in passing that the winter has been unusually mild.

Copyright RIP

ZDNet has an interesting article on the problems with trying to preserve copyright provoked, no doubt, by the recent SOPA/PIPA controversy.

As an author and publisher, I have some small interest in the problem.
Unfortunately, I think we are coming to the end of the copyright age.

The world has seen three great revolutions in the dissemination of knowledge:
1) the transition from oral to written language
2) the transition from written language to the printing press
3) the transition from the printing press to the Internet

Each transition changed the way authorship was viewed.

Socrates and Plato were famously placed on either side of the oral-written transition. Socrates wrote nothing, everything he taught was orally transmitted. It fell to Plato to make use of the new writing technology to record Socrates' thoughts.  There was no such thing as copyright law.

Indeed, although the written word became a normal means of communication, copyright law did not naturally follow the development of writing. Literacy was self-controlling because it was a very expensive hobby in terms of training, material and technique. External controls were largely unnecessary.

As a result, most literate societies did not recognize copyright law or anything like it. Pretty much anyone who was literate could make copies of anything they could lay their hands on. When most literate people spent good portions of their time hand-copying works so as to make them available to other literate people, authorship was not highly prized and the concept of publishing was a non sequitor.

The Rise of the Author and His Copyright
It was only with the rapid dissemination of information and of literacy made possible by the printing press that ideas like authorship, publishing and copyright began to make a lot of sense. The printing press drove down the cost of literacy, placing it within reach of a much larger segment of the population.

The ability to rapidly spread printed works meant that literate people could actually take time to savor previously unknown  authors. That is, it was actually possible for a staggeringly large number of authors to make names for themselves by their writings alone. In fact, it wasn't until the 1650's that Athanasius Kircher, a priest renowned in his time for his learning, became the first man to be able to support himself through book sales alone.

Both kings and the Church recognized that the ability to print material contained within it the ability to rapidly spread treasonous or unorthodox ideas. Furthermore, since printers required presses, it was fairly easy to find and regulate the spread of ideas at the point of production - at the printer. Thus, both kings and the Church had good reason to implement printing and copyright laws.

The printing press was invented in 1453.

By 1500, Pope Alexander VI had issued his first bull against the unlicensed printing of books, and the Index of Forbidden Books followed by 1559. Most European countries had instituted some kind of copyright law about the same time that the Pope was issuing his bull. 

450 years later, the cost of printing and the dissemination of books had become so inexpensive, that the Church saw the handwriting on the wall. The Index was abolished June 14, 1966.

By 1966, the Church had realized there was no real way to control the production or the consumption of books. While the nihil obstat and imprimatur still remain as remnants of this attempt at content and production control, both are now pro forma exercises in marketing without any real expectations of doctrinal utility or applicability. The only reason a publisher seeks them today is to appeal to a certain niche market - they are now marketing tools.

The End of the Author and Copyright
It is interesting that the Index was abolished just thirty years before the next revolution in communications technology smashed the old printing model to smithereens. Today, the Internet makes the spread of ideas almost instantaneous. Whether for good or ill, however, there is no way to regulate the spread of ideas.

And when I say there is no way, I don't mean, "there is no good way."
I mean:    There. Is. No. Way.
It cannot be done.

If it is in electronic format, anyone can copy anything for any reason anywhere. Everyone with a PC, heck, everyone with a cell phone, can be a point of copy and redistribution. Today, cell phones can carry 32 GB  or more of memory - more than enough to hold several full-length movies. This capacity will only increase with time.

As a result, I strongly doubt that copyright law is very much longer for this world.

Laws against adultery and fornication fell when contraception made both so prevalent and so socially acceptable that it was no longer possible to maintain the facade that the laws served a purpose. If society embraces contraception, it cannot hold onto the idea that fornication or adultery should be outlawed.  Indeed, it cannot hold onto the idea that homosexuality, necrophilia, bestiality or pedophilia should be outlawed. The first has already been legalized, the rest soon will be.

Similarly, if society embraces the rapid spread of ideas which computers make possible, it will no longer be able to hold onto the idea of copyright.

Computer geeks like to say "information wants to be free."

They are correct. People want information more than they want food. The Internet is turning large swaths of information into a commodity like electricity or running water. The best anyone can hope for is to meter usage (thus, the fee to connect to the Internet). Beyond that, I can no more control how you choose to use information than I can control how you use the electricity or water that is piped into your home.

If I can figure out a way to take tap water or my electrical outlet and turn what pours from it into cash, you cannot stop me. The same will be true for the Internet and the information that pours in through that portal. Information used to be attached to personalities, but that connection will only become more tenuous with time.

If the 1960's gave birth to the Free Love generation, the 2010's will give birth to the Free Information generation.

Copyright was fun while we had it, but it's gone now.

Good-bye.

It's Starting

The Nuremberg Laws

---

The following month two measures were announced at the annual Party Rally in Nuremberg, becoming known as the Nuremberg Laws. Both measures were hastily improvised (there was even a shortage of drafting paper so that menu cards had to be used) and Jewish experts from the Ministry of the Interior were ordered to Nuremberg by plane.

The first law, The Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor, prohibited marriages and extra-marital intercourse between “Jews ” (the name was now officially used in place of “non-Aryans ”) and “Germans ” and also the employment of “German ” females under forty-five in Jewish households. The second law, The Reich Citizenship Law, stripped Jews of their German citizenship and introduced a new distinction between “Reich citizens ” and “nationals.”

The Nuremberg Laws by their general nature formalized the unofficial and particular measures taken against Jews up to 1935. The Nazi leaders made a point of stressing the consistency of this legislation with the Party program which demanded that Jews should be deprived of their rights as citizens.

 * * * * * * * *  * * * * * * * *  * * * * * * * *  * * * * * * * *  * * * * * * * *

"Now, on the heels of the NDAA, a new bill is making its way through Congress: the Enemy Expatriation Act that would make the controversy about the NDAA null and void by simply stripping Americans of their American citizenship, should they be accused of associating with government-deemed terrorist organizations. "

Note: just "accused".
Not convicted.
Accused.

It doesn't take long to create a dictatorship.

Not long at all. 

But For the Grace of God

So, now that a most excellent time-line has been produced on the RCTV and Micheal Voris situation, the question naturally arises:

Is canon lawyer Ed Peters getting paid to lie
or
Is he doing it on his own time?

Of course, he insists that the opinions expressed on his blog are just his own personal opinions.

Uh-huh.

Look, as Ed knows, all employment in a diocese is at-will employment by the bishop (or archbishop, in this case). Bishop can fire, or cause to be fired, anyone he wants at any time. This is most especially true of the faculty at his own seminary. This is even more especially true of lay employees.

The whole point of having lay diocesan employees is to provide CYA for the ordained men. If anything bad happens in the parish or diocese, you fire the closest lay person and claim little to no knowledge of the requisite shenanigans. Failing that, you claim the lay employee acted without proper episcopal authority. Either way, if a lay person can take the fall, s/he does.

Like every lay employee, Ed knows how the game is played.
He loses his phoney-baloney job at Sacred Heart Seminary if he doesn't follow the archbishop's directives.
He is unlikely to get hired anywhere else if he has a reputation for not backing his own bishop's plays.

So, if the archbishop directs him to flay someone alive, Ed's personal opinion is suddenly and spontaneously likely to be very antagonistic towards the intended victim.

Now, any analysis of Ed's articles shows he's been actively trying to obfuscate the Voris/RCTV issue. Throughout the entire RCTV/Voris affair, he has worked hard to cover the bishop's... ahem... assets.
It's almost as if he had a hand in formulating the pronouncements, or was called in and given a heads-up that this was coming out, so he better have some good support for what the ordained men had decided to do.

After all, he spends his first whole post saying "this is a matter of canon law", an implicit appeal to his own authority as a canon lawyer. Appeals to authority, by the way, are the weakest of all logical arguments. That's the best he has to open with, which says something right there.

Even more informative is his "analysis" - he never bothers to define the most important phrase in the dispute "competent ecclesial authority."

Why not?

Well, Abraham Lincoln tells the story of the man who had a green stump in his field. It was too big to pull out, too wet to burn out and too blessed hard to split. So, he solved the problem by plowing around it and pretending it wasn't there.

Ed's in the same fix. If he defined "competent ecclesial authority", we would immediately realize that the Archbishop of Detroit, his employer, is not competent to strip RCTV of the word "Catholic".  Ed can hardly point that out on his blog - he would have to look for a new job if he did - so he plows around it and hopes no one notices.

He essentially does the same thing in his second post. Even as he spends a lot of time pretending to discuss "competent ecclesial authority", you will notice that at NO POINT does he mention the fact that his boss is pronouncing on a business entity which is not in AOD diocese.

The Archbishop of Detroit trying to strip RCTV of the word "Catholic" is similar to the Archbishop of Detroit trying to strip Notre Dame of the word "Catholic."

At NO POINT does Ed mention the fact that in both cases, the archbishop of South Bend might (rightly) take issue with the attempt.

But, if cakes are to be taken, I think his third post is probably the piece de resistance. Ed goes on this extended tirade about the Internet... as if it matters.  Ed might as well have created an extended soliliquy concerning the difficulty of controlling the flow of books into various bookstores around the diocese. It's about as pointless. He knows perfectly well that it is the location of the publisher that is at issue, not the method by which the content is distributed.

So why does an otherwise intelligent man do this?
Well, as Ed also knows, if you can't awe them with brilliance, baffle them with bull.

God bless the man's chutzpah, he actually sends people to look for a non-existent canon on Internet distribution in a wonderfully veiled attempt to appeal to his own authority, or better, that of his boss.
It's a marvelous case of misdirection, and my hat is off to him for thinking it up.

Actually, of course, the Internet doesn't present any more difficulties to canon law than book distribution does. The Church solved the question of producers versus distributors several hundred years ago. Canon law deals with who produces the material, and doesn't spend a lot of time with how it is distributed, if only because the Church recognizes that She has no stinkin' control over how it is distributed and never will.

This, of course, goes double for the Internet.

So, if I, while living in Dallas, wrote a completely heretical book called "Catholic Interpretations of Scripture", and had a publisher in Tuscaloosa publish it, and if the publisher's name was "Incredibly Orthodox Catholic Books", the bishop of Dallas would still have no right to attempt to strip the name "Catholic" from my publisher's business because the publisher is in Tuscaloosa, not Dallas.

Even if the book showed up in Dallas bookstores, and even if I live in Dallas diocese, it still gives the bishop of Dallas no authority over a business in Tuscaloosa. Bishop of Dallas may have an opinion, of course, and it's lovely if he does, but that and a dollar won't get him a cup of coffee at Starbucks, no matter how much his canon lawyers insist otherwise.

And, of course, NO ONE is saying that either Michael Voris or RCTV has taught anything heretical.
They apparently take issue with it because it is (a) true and (b) not nice.

Newsflash:
The Truth is not Nice.
The Truth will set you free.

Now, I'm sure Ed Peters is honest in the majority of his dealings, and many of them probably involve canon law. But in this particular case, he deliberately misrepresents the law in order to (a) make his bishop look good and (b) keep his job.

Either that, or he is a complete idiot.
And I'm far too charitable to think Ed Peters is at all stupid.

I actually feel sorry for the man - he's been dealt a completely rotten hand by his archbishop, and he has to publicly prostitute himself in order to keep his job and make his mortgage payments. All the other canon lawyers in the nation are looking at him, shaking their heads glumly and saying, "There but for the grace of God, go I." And the poor man KNOWS it.

Pray for him and his boss.

UPDATE:


Ed has taken another shot at the jurisdiction question, but again drives wide of the mark. I'm shocked, shocked, I tell you. 


I'll ignore his repeated appeal to his own authority and cut straight to the meat.
Well, what passes for meat.
To be honest, I can't believe he even ran this one up the flagpole, but here it is:

"Is it seriously to be contended that a local Church has no authority over local Catholics writing, editing, producing, and promoting extensive media programming copiously labeled as “Catholic” this and “Catholic” that, if the registered owner of the enterprise happens, conveniently, not to be Catholic?"

Well, yeah, Ed, that happens all the time. For instance, let's say a Roman Catholic is hired to work for an Anglican organization that calls itself Catholic - Anglicans do that, you know. They call themselves Catholic.

Maybe we should whip them or something?
I don't know.
Ask your archbishop.
I'm sure he'll have an opinion.

Anyway, the local archbishop may have something to say to that local Roman Catholic, but he has NOTHING to say to the company he works for that calls itself Catholic. Archbishop can't very well tell the company to stop using the word "Catholic" as archbishop has no jurisdiction the Anglicans recognize, even if those Anglicans live in Detroit.

But it gets worse.

You see, the last I heard, it wasn't a sin for a Roman Catholic to work for an Anglican Catholic, so I can't imagine what archbishop would have to say to his Roman Catholic subject... Attaboy! perhaps?
A compliment on the tie he wore to work might be in order.
But, as long as he isn't writing heresy.... what would such an archbishop say to such a Catholic?
And why would an archbishop waste time on this problem when he's got so many pro-abort politicians and parish staff members he could be correcting?

Ed, I don't have to tell you that the Code says:

"Can. 216 Since they participate in the mission of the Church, all the Christian faithful have the right to promote or sustain apostolic action even by their own undertakings, according to their own state and condition. Nevertheless, no undertaking is to claim the name Catholic without the consent of competent ecclesiastical authority."

Michael Voris didn't undertake to start RCTV, so he hasn't violated the canon.
South Bend has no complaints about RCTV, so they have obeyed their bishop and they're fine, too.
Which means Voris isn't working for a company that is under any bishop's jurisdictional ban.

Now, AOD is publicly ticked off at Voris, but that seems to be AOD's problem.
Unless AOD wants to pretend that it has power in South Bend?

Yeah, good luck with that.
Let me know how that works out.

By the way, has anyone else noticed how careful Ed was to stipulate that Fr. Pavone's organization was not technically under the bishop of Amarillo's full jurisdiction, but he keeps insisting that RCTV (whose connection to AOD via Voris is a lot more tenuous than Pavone's) is nevertheless under his own bishop's jurisdiction? I just find that incredibly humorous.

Anyway, Ed is still sad, because Ed still contemplates a terrible prospect.
Terrible, I tell you.

"For that matter, what if Brammer were to transfer his interest in RCTV to a non-Catholic, or to a conglomerate, maybe one overseas, or if he or another utilize(d) any of a half dozen id-masking options common in cyberspace?"

Oh, HORRORS!!!
Like that couldn't have been done a decade ago, or three decades ago or 50 years ago or even a century ago (apart from the ID-masking, which is no different from setting up a shell company).

How is any one of these, or even all of them together, a new problem, Ed?
Is canon law so fragile that it NEVER faced such a set of circumstances before?
Changed ownership of a company is a new one to you, is it?
Never heard of a shell company (Hint: it doesn't involve eggs. Really.)?

I averred before that Ed Peters is not a stupid man.
He obviously holds a somewhat lower opinion of the rest of us.

I would suggest to Ed that he get out more, but given how well his defense of AOD is going and how high unemployment is under this regime, that wouldn't be a nice thing to wish on anyone.

So, continue to pray for him.
The poor man seems to be running out of straws.

Bishop Ochoa's Honesty

When Bishop Ochoa was named Bishop of Fresno on Dec 1, 2011, the clock started ticking.
He had 60 days to canonically take possession of his new see.

Can. 418 §1. Upon certain notice of transfer, a bishop must claim the diocese to which he has been transferred (ad quam) and take canonical possession of it within two months. On the day that he takes possession of the new diocese, however, the diocese from which he has been transferred (a qua) is vacant.

On January 11, 2012, Bishop Ochoa decided to use the few remaining days he has, and use the powers of the diocesan administrator (notice: he does not appear to have the powers of the Bishop of El Paso any longer), to lay a civil lawsuit against Father Michael Rodriguez for misappropriation of funds.

In point 6 of his lawsuit, Bishop Ochoa claims standing by claiming that he is the Bishop of El Paso.

Can. 418 §2. Upon certain notice of transfer until the canonical possession of the new diocese, a transferred bishop in the diocese from which he has been transferred:
1/ obtains the power of a diocesan administrator and is bound by the obligations of the same; all power of the vicar general and episcopal vicar ceases, without prejudice to ⇒ can. 409, §2;

In Father Michael Rodriguez' January 12, 2012 reply, Fr. Rodriguez states:

It is unfortunate that Bishop Armando Ochoa, Administrator of the Diocese of El Paso and no longer our bishop, (emphasis added) has decided to pursue legal action against me.

Now, since Bishop Ochoa has not yet formally taken possession of Fresno, the see of El Paso is not considered a vacant see. But, Father Rodriguez seems to have a point in saying that technically, Ochoa is no longer Bishop of El Paso.

And, if Father Rodriguez is correct, Bishop Ochoa may have mis-represented himself in a public lawsuit.

Worse, Ochoa may well lose standing as a claimant in the lawsuit within the next two weeks, since he will no longer be part of the diocese.

Once Ochoa has formally left, the only power in the diocese will be that of the diocesan administrator, as El Paso waits for a new bishop. What power does a diocesan administrator have?

Can. 428 §1. When a see is vacant, nothing is to be altered.
§2. Those who temporarily care for the governance of the diocese are forbidden to do anything which can be prejudicial in some way to the diocese or episcopal rights. They, and consequently all others, are specifically prohibited, whether personally or through another, from removing or destroying any documents of the diocesan curia or from changing anything in them.

Clearly, Ochoa wanted to pursue Father Rodriguez in the few days left to him. But is beginning a civil legal action prejudicial to the episcopal rights of the as-yet-unnamed incoming bishop? Does Ochoa have the canonical power to lay this lawsuit?

A fascinating problem in El Paso, no question of it. 

Disrespect

Now, I'm not a fan of desecrating corpses.

But consider two cases:

1) US Troops urinate on the bodies of their enemies.

Once.

2) The Department of Defense dumps the cremated bodies of our soldiers in a landfill.

For ten years.


Question
Guess which one "top US officials moved swiftly" to correct?



Update:

This is Allen West's take:

“I have sat back and assessed the incident with the video of our Marines urinating on Taliban corpses. I do not recall any self-righteous indignation when our Delta snipers Shugart and Gordon had their bodies dragged through Mogadishu. Neither do I recall media outrage and condemnation of our Blackwater security contractors being killed, their bodies burned, and hung from a bridge in Fallujah.

“All these over-emotional pundits and armchair quarterbacks need to chill. Does anyone remember the two Soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division who were beheaded and gutted in Iraq?

“The Marines were wrong. Give them a maximum punishment under field grade level Article 15 (non-judicial punishment), place a General Officer level letter of reprimand in their personnel file, and have them in full dress uniform stand before their Battalion, each personally apologize to God, Country, and Corps videotaped and conclude by singing the full US Marine Corps Hymn without a teleprompter.

“As for everyone else, unless you have been shot at by the Taliban, shut your mouth, war is hell.”

This is also why I like Allen West.

Are YOU a Real Catholic?

Three cases:


1) About a decade ago, Bishop Bruskewitz excommunicated a whole bunch of people. Specifically he legislated that anyone who was a member of: Call to Action, Planned Parenthood, Catholics for Free Choice, Hemlock Society, the SSPX and the Freemasons was subject to automatic excommunication.

His decision was appealed to Rome and upheld (and this despite the fact that Rome has repeatedly held members of the SSPX as NOT being excommunicate).

Despite this confirmation of his authority, no other bishop has followed his lead, nor has any other American bishop publicly withheld the Eucharist from members of these groups.

Indeed, although Bruskewitz has publicly said he would refuse the Eucharist to pro-abortion politicians, other bishops have publicly disputed the wisdom of taking such a course of action.



2) The Bishop of Amarillo has asked his brother bishops not to provide any support for Fr. Frank Pavone's ministry.

Again, other bishops in the US have not only not supported Amarillo, they have actively come out and supported Pavone, despite the fact that the Bishop of Amarillo would appear to have pretty clear authority over Pavone (his very own diocesan priest) and Pavone's ministry, at least to the extent that Pavone is head of the organization and subject to episcopal authority.


3) Recently, the Archbishop of Detroit publicly states that he doesn't think Michael Voris' RealCatholicTV should be using the word "Catholic" in it's title.

Yet again, no other bishop has followed the good Archbishop's lead.

There may be a reason for this.

As the Archdiocese of Detroit (AOD) itself admits, it doesn't really have jurisdiction.

In 2006, Voris petitioned for diocesan approval of his media and his own non-profit organization (St. Michael's Media).

Apparently, AOD dillied, dallied, ooohhhed and ahhhhed so long that Voris got tired of it. By 2008, Voris had started working for a different organization (RealCatholicTV).

Now, St. Michael's Media provided RCTV with content and with Voris - but that's all it provided.  RCTV is NOT the same as St. Michael's Media. In fact, RCTV isn't even domiciled in the same state, much less the same diocese. RCTV is a DBA for Greenstar Enterprises, a for-profit corporation headed by Marc Brammer who lives in South Bend, Indiana.

So, to sum up the business side:
St. Michael's Media is non-profit and based in Ferndale, Michigan.
Greenstar Enterprises, DBA RCTV, is for-profit and based in South Bend, Indiana.

These are two entirely different business entities,
in two entirely different dioceses
in two entirely different states.

And, as AOD admits, RCTV never attempted to get anything from AOD.
Which makes sense, since RCTV has NO relationship to St. Michael's Media and is not under AOD's jurisdiction to begin with.

In short, RCTV is really none of AOD's business.

So, to sum up the archbishop's case:
AOD ruled on a five-year old request initiated by a completely different business. The archbishop attempted to apply his rule to a business which has zero ties to AOD, which had never petitioned AOD for anything, and was never under AOD's jurisdiction.


Conclusion
What are good Catholics to make of this?

Well, I'm sure canon lawyers can blather on about what should or shouldn't happen, but the facts are these:

• The Church has made no clear ruling on how to handle the Internet and it's work,
• The Internet issue actually has little to nothing to do with RCTV and Voris in this instance,
• The opinion of one Archbishop is interesting but irrelevant, 
• Because the Archbishop is apparently running his mouth about a business entity which is not under his jurisdiction.

Canon lawyers can write lots and lots of blog posts discussing the niceties of what the Church might eventually rule or even what they think the Church should eventually rule, but that and a dollar still won't get you coffee at Starbucks.

Now, if I were being cynical, given the facts on the ground, I would say Sacred Heart Seminary - which is, by purest coincidence, domiciled in AOD - and AOD's employee, canon lawyer Peters, seem to be very interested in brown-nosing AOD's archbishop by snarking about all kinds of nonsense which makes zero actual sense. Especially since Peters may well have contributed to AOD's weird decree.

But since I'm not that cynical, I would clearly never say such a thing.

Keep dancing, Ed.
I'm sure we're all entertained.

UPDATE:
You know, it occurs to me that there was a similar dust-up in South Bend a couple of years ago, involving the priestly president of Notre Dame and the gift of an honorary law degree to some baby-killing yokel or other. Seems to me a lot of bishops (that is, more than the one Archbishop we have here) also pronounced, without invitation, their public disgust about the situation in South Bend. And, as I recall, there were ZERO repercussions for ND's good Father Jenkins in that scenario.

Now, why would that be?

Well, because the bishop of South Bend chose not to impose any penalty on Father Jenkins.
No other bishop imposed any penalty because... wait for it... they had no jurisdiction to do so.
And, if I recall correctly, Rome said exactly nothing about any of it.

With RCTV, we have an organization which not only hasn't killed a baby, it hasn't even advocated the death of anyone's baby. RCTV hasn't disobeyed their own bishop. Instead, someone else's bishop is upset with them.

For people who blather about how you are supposed to obey your own bishop, RCTV has obeyed theirs, so what's your beef, exactly?

Having Sex With Dogs In Heaven

"Is there sexual intercourse in Heaven? ... Intercourse on earth is a shadow or symbol of intercourse in Heaven. Could we speculate about what that could be? It could certainly be spiritual intercourse ... this spiritual intercourse would mean something more specific than universal charity. It would be special communion with the sexually complementary; something a man can have only with a woman and a woman only with a man ... The relationship may not extend to all persons of the opposite sex, at least not in the same way or degree. ... I think there must be some special "kindred souls" in Heaven that we are designed to feel a special sexual love for. ... But would it ever take the form of physical sexual intercourse? Since there are bodies in Heaven, able to eat and be touched, like Christ's resurrection body, there is the possibility of physical intercourse"  

This is Peter Kreeft's opinion, and now that he has given up Catholicism in favor of Westianism, we should pay attention to what Kreeft has to say. This is the wave of the future, after all. 

“Are there animals in Heaven? The simplest answer is: Why not? How irrational is the prejudice that would allow plants (green fields and flowers), but not animals into Heaven.” Regarding pets, he writes: “Would the same animals be in Heaven as on earth? ‘Is my dead cat in Heaven?’ Again, why not? God can raise up the very grass; why not cats? Though the blessed have better things to do than play with pets, the better does not exclude the lesser.”

So, the obvious question arises. Do we have sex with dogs in heaven?

"Wait!" I hear you cry, "That's disgusting!"

Oh, you unenlightened non-Westians who haven't entered the higher knowledge are all alike, aren't you? Always ready to condemn things you don't understand!

Don't mock the good Dr. Kreeft.

He recognizes there is no marriage and no procreation in heaven.

He simply argues that physical intercourse is a possibility.

Not a big stretch, right?

Obviously, physical intercourse with other "kindred souls" (plural) can only be possible in heaven, if there is no such thing as illicit sex in heaven. And there can be no illicit act in heaven, because everything in heaven is lawful.

Sex with one woman not your wife is not fornication, because there is no marriage in heaven. 

Sex with multiple women isn't polygamy.

This is all holy, according to Kreeft, so this kind of polyamory is fine, perfectly licit, nothing wrong with it.

Now, part of Kreeft's argument rests on the obvious fact that we retain our bodies and therefore our genitalia. Obviously heavenly dogs would likewise retain their genitalia. 

Another part of his argument is that sexual union is just a full participation in universal charity. You can't argue against charitable sex, right? 

Of course, if sex is merely one great way to express universal charity, and if everything in heaven participates in the universal charity of God, then dogs would certainly participate in universal charity, right?

So, to paraphrase Dr. Peter Kreeft, "How irrational is the prejudice that would allow me to have sex with other men, women and children but not to have sex with dogs, cats and sheep?" 

Simple. 

Logical.

Inarguable.

Islam Rising

Is it just me, or, does Kreeft's heaven begin to approach the Muslim view of heaven?

Specifically, isn't it interesting how male Westians endorse boinking lots of heavenly women or engaging in some kind of group sex thing?

I mean, ladies, do you find it enticing to think that you can have sex with dozens, hundreds or thousands of men, women, dogs and cats in heaven?

Perhaps I'm prejudiced from excessive study of Islam and rejection of Westianism, but this is a pretty male version of heaven. I'm not sure women would really be "up" for it, if you get my drift.

Is their precedent for Kreeft's unique vision?

Well, yes, there is.

Back in the 8th and 9th century, Muslim armies were constantly besieging Christian Constantinople. 

Now, it should be noted that Muslims hate iconography, the depiction of people in artwork. They see it as an offense against God.

So, it was no coincidence that during this very period, the Christian rulers of Constantinople fell into the heresy of iconoclasm. During this heresy, Byzantine Christians destroyed thousands of icons and statues of saints, the Blessed Virgin Mary and even a legendary statue of Jesus himself. 

Monks, nuns and other religious who opposed this attack on sacred images were cruelly oppressed and tortured. Their tongues were torn out, their eyes were pierced or torn from their sockets. The iconoclasts beheaded - notice the beheading - the Patriarch himself for daring to oppose this wanton destruction. 

"The iconoclast movement never spread to largely illiterate Western Europe; its madness consumed only the segment of Christendom that boasted the highest literacy rate. Artists fled for their lives from Byzantium, heading for the western court of Charlemagne whose largely illiterate courtiers welcomed them with open arms." 

It is worthwhile to note that nearly all the heretics of Christianity were learned men. Martin Luther, who also adopted many of the Muslim views expressed by the Islamic armies besieging Europe, was not only an ordained Augustinian priest, he had a Ph.D. in theology. Luther was not unique in this - most heretics were priests or bishops. 

Likewise, it is worthwhile to remember that the Christian faithful of Ephesus were the heroes of that Council. It was their prayers, their parades, their constant invocation of Mary, Mother of God that helped the bishops of that Council recognize that Archbishop Nestorius, the Archbishop of Constantinople, was a heretic for denying Mary's true maternity of God. For the whole of his life, even after being exiled to a monastery like Maciel, Archbishop Nestorius insisted that he was orthodox.

Dr. Peter Kreeft's teaching is not found in the writings of the Fathers or Doctors of the Church.

His is a teaching of Islam, not of Christianity.

Kreeft, of course, is now a valued instructor at the Theology of the Body Institute, along with Dr. Janet Smith and the notorious Chris West, all vigorously sponsored by Matt Pinto's Ascension Press.

This is where Westianism leads you.

Do you really want to go there?

UPDATE:
I had a further thought about this.


If we are supposed to have sex with everyone in heaven, will women, especially nuns, have to stay in Purgatory until they accept the idea?


Is morality on earth different than morality in heaven?


And what of the 144,000 virgins who sing the song to the Lamb in Revelations 14:1-4? 
Is that verse just wrong, or are they singing because they are finally going to get laid?


"Krazy as a Kreeft" may become a watchword among Catholics.
Now I'm going to have to pull his endorsement of my TOB book, or write a disclaimer pointing out that he endorsed it before he went publicly insane. 
This is depressing. 

That's It For 2012

Well, now that the 2012 Presidential election is over, we can look back with longing on what might have been.

Of course, no one wanted Obama.
Mitt Romney was just Barack in white face.
And Rick Santorum sold out a pro-life Republican (Toomey) to Arlen Specter, the pro-death convert to the Democrats, one of the slimiest pieces of trash in Congress. To add insult to injury, not only couldn't we trust Santorum to stand by his pro-life values when the going got rough, he also turned out to be the biggest idiot on the Republican stage when it comes to economic policy. With Ron Paul in the race, that said something.


Obama, Romney or Santorum.

Larry, Moe or Curly.

Was there any reason to vote in 2012?

Even now, years later, as we languish under Obama's iron fist, I'm still hard pressed to think of one.

It's just as well that we don't have to worry our pretty little heads about voting any more.

The choices had become a farce anyway.

The Betting Window Is Open

Just three months after Bishop Ochoa, formerly of El Paso, publicly rebuked one of his own priests for daring to promulgate the Church's teaching on homosexuality, he finds himself moved to Fresno.

What a coincidence!

Those outside the Church and/or those not familiar with Church politics might say this move is a reward to Ochoa for his years of service. After all, Bishop Ochoa has old ties to California, having been consecrated by Cardinal Mahoney and serving as one of his auxiliaries for nearly a decade prior to his elevation to El Paso. Fresno is also a larger diocese than El Paso, so an argument can be made that Bishop Ochoa is finally being allowed to return to where his heart lies.

But is that really what is going on?

A bishop is generally moved to a new diocese because he is seen as having a set of skills which match the difficulties of the diocese to which he is being moved. That is, a bishop is generally placed in a diocese in such a way that he can make a difference.

Now, making a difference takes time. Bishop Ochoa, for instance, is replacing a man who reigned as Fresno's bishop for over twenty years. Ochoa himself reigned in El Paso from June 1996 to Dec 1, 2011,  a period of over 15 years.

But Bishop Ochoa is now 68 years old, just a few months shy of his 69th birthday (April 3, 1943). If a bishop doesn't make any changes in his first year in a new diocese (and most don't), that leaves Ochoa with roughly five years to work before he has to hand in his resignation. That's not a lot of time to accomplish anything.

And it's not like he accomplished that much in El Paso:

During the eleven year span between 1999 and 2009, there were only two ordinations to the priesthood for the Diocese of El Paso.

A bishop whose lived example and teaching is such that he manages to lead only two men to the priesthood in a decade isn't typically rewarded with a larger see. So, why would Rome move what would appear to be a barely competent bishop to a see like Fresno?

There's a question, eh?

Typically, an incompetent bishop is allowed to quietly die in his own diocese so that, at least, he doesn't harm anyone else. Bishop Ochoa was not granted that grace.


And the good Bishop himself seems rather deeply ticked off about the move. After all, when was the last time you heard a departing bishop speak dismissively of the diocese he himself has headed for the last decade? Yet that's exactly what Bishop Ochoa did on his way out of El Paso:

Bishop Ochoa likes to snow ski, and cycle. On his days off he'll ride 40 miles a week. In addition, he's happy to leave some of the west Texas ways behind. 

Bishop Ochoa: "After fifteen years, with all do (sic) respect, even though I have my Tony Lama boots and my Stetson hat, I'm never getting into country western or whatever they call it."

Hmmm... That's a little peevish from someone who is getting his heart's desire, isn't it?
Again we ask, is this a reward or a punishment and public disgrace?

Before you answer, notice how the chips fell - for there has been at least some (self-inflicted) collateral damage among other American bishops.

Fr. Michael Rodriguez, a diocesan priest of El Paso, had long fought against El Paso's City Council's attempt to impose homosexual "marriage" on the city against the express will of the voters. It is to be noted that many members of the City Council, including the mayor, claim to be "Catholic." An example of Father Michael's work can be seen here:


Of course, orthodox teaching could not be allowed to interfere with the City Council's work.
By August 2011, Bishop Ochoa publicly repudiated Magisterial Church teaching as a peculiar personal opinion of an outcast priest:

“I would like to state that previous columns claiming to speak for Catholic Doctrine were the personal opinions of individuals and do not necessarily express the belief of the Catholic Church,” 

Worse (at least from Bishop Ochoa's point of view), the Magisterium was not in conformance with the bishop's expert interpretation of IRS regulations (while the bishop has no formal training in the tax code, he is a very quick study).

2011's summer discussion of homosexual marriage in El Paso became nationally known. As Catholic blogs quickly lined up to opine on the situation, RealCatholicTV stepped in to produce not one, but two videos highlighting the wonders of Catholic teaching under Bishop Ochoa's reign in El Paso.






Now, those two videos came out in late October.

Which was just in time for another amazing coincidence.

Just over a month after Voris' twin videos highlighted the barely credible competence of Bishop Ochoa in regards not just to Fr. Michael Rodriguez but also in regards to the gross heresy permitted at the Tepeyac Institute of El Paso, RealCatholicTV got its reward.

On December 23, 2011 the Archdiocese of Detroit decided to give a special Christmas present to RealCatholicTV - Archbishop Vigneron decreed that Voris' organization be stripped of the word "Catholic" for having failed to teach in a way Vigneron considered to be in conformance with Catholic Faith.

The problem, of course, is that RealCatholicTV is not Voris' organization. Although Voris lives in Detroit, the organization is actually based in South Bend diocese. Which means Archbishop Vigneron is not competent to make such a decree. And Bishop Kevin Rhoades, who is competent to make such a decree, has remained conspicuously silent.

So, it looks for all the world as if Bishop Ochoa were being moved out of El Paso for lack of competency in general and for failing to take a stand against homosexual marriage in particular. He would appear to be the laughingstock of the American episcopacy.

Archbishop Vigneron then attempted to punish some of the people responsible for highlighting Ochoa's incompetence, but instead apparently made himself look even more foolish than Ochoa, which at this point, took some real work.

In the combat between the bishops and the Holy Spirit, we make the score God 2, Bishops 0.

Hello America's bishops!
Would anyone else like to take sides on this one?
The betting window is open...

Postscript
Now, as a final aside, what lesson can the lay faithful take away from this?
The lesson, ladies and gentlemen, is this.
Keep your smart phones at hand.
Record homilies, liturgies, teachings - visual or just audio, whatever suits you.
Record everything.
Make copies of the good and of the bad and send those copies, with appropriate remarks, up the chain of command.

First, send a copy to the priest, thanking him for good teaching, asking him to explain less than good teaching.
If the teaching is good, copy the bishop - he should know who his good men are.

But if the teaching is confusing, and the priest does not respond appropriately within an appropriate time frame (say a month or so), then take copies of his (non) response and send both the original communications and the priest's response to the bishop, asking for the bishop to explain the confusing teaching.

If the bishop doesn't respond within a couple of months, or responds inappropriately, take it to the papal nuncio.
After that, take it to the appropriate congregation in Rome.

Record everything.
Did I mention you should record everything?
We want good priests, good teaching and good liturgy highlighted and properly rewarded.
We want confusing priests, teaching and liturgy highlighted and properly rewarded.
Record everything.
Hold fast to those recordings.

And pray for El Paso's new bishop, that he may have 
the steely spine of the Spirit, 
the loving heart of Christ, and 
the mind of God the Father.

Obama's Obituary

A thought from Vaclav Havel:

The post-totalitarian system touches people at every step, but it does so with its ideological gloves on. This is why life in the system is so thoroughly permeated with hypocrisy and lies: government by bureaucracy is called popular government; the working class is enslaved in the name of the working class; the complete degradation of the individual is presented as his ultimate liberation; depriving people of information is called making it available; the use of power to manipulate is called the public control of power, and the arbitrary abuse of power is called observing the legal code; the repression of culture is called its development; the expansion of imperial influence is presented as support for the oppressed; the lack of free expression becomes the highest form of freedom; farcical elections become the highest form of democracy; banning independent thought becomes the most scientific of world views; military occupation becomes fraternal assistance. Because the regime is captive to its own lies, it must falsify everything. It falsifies the past. It falsifies the present, and it falsifies the future. It falsifies statistics. It pretends not to possess an omnipotent and unprincipled police apparatus. It pretends to respect human rights. It pretends to persecute no one. It pretends to fear nothing. It pretends to pretend nothing.

What A Coincidence!

One of the tenets of Muslim belief is that non-Muslims living within Muslim society must feel themselves oppressed. The infidel must be made to understand that he is a second-class citizen, inferior to the infinitely superior Muslim who is his overloard.

When the infidel pays the jizya tax, the Muslim who collects that tax is supposed to strike him on the back of the neck, to remind him that he is paying ransom for his life - he could very well be killed for refusing to convert to Islam.

All of this comes to mind every time I hear another story about the TSA and the way that new, Obama-ready organization intimidates and humiliates American air travellers.

In Muslim countries, external signs of other religions are forbidden.
Recently, of course, Obama tried to impose a 15-cent "Christmas tree tax" on every Christmas tree sale. When that didn't fly, Obama flew instead.

That's right, he flew into New York City on the same day that the Rockefeller Center did its annual tree-lighting ceremony. Obama's visit shut down the NYC traffic grid, making it impossible to get into or out of Rockefeller Center. It was, in the words of many New Yorkers, a nightmare.

Now, I'm sure this is also just a coincidence.
Just like the time back in September when Obama tried to stage an address to Congress at the same time  a televised Republican debate was planned to take place.

I'm sure no one named Hussein has any intention of humiliating Christians.

It's just that the man is so incidental to so many important things, that he's become coincidental to everything.

Occupy Monasteries!

You know, that would have been the title of the occupy movement 500 years ago.

Monasteries were immensely wealthy, they created, disseminated and advanced technology throughout the Middle Ages and right through into the Renaissance. They were the entrepreneurs of the ancients.

The Romans may have known about the water wheel, but they simply never employed it on the scale that Benedictine monasteries did. The horse collar, the three-field system, the iron plow, the mechanical clock, corned gunpowder and the gun, and a host of other inventions were developed or spread by monastic communities across Europe.

By the late middle ages, those same monastic communities were also incredibly wealthy by dint of generations of renting out the land that the monks had cleared. Today's modern corporations, the ones we complain about for their unparalleled greed, are matched in medieval times by the monastic orders, as no less a wag than Chaucer readily attests.

What Marx never understood is today accepted as a simple fact. The top 1% of any culture owns between 40% and 50% of the wealth of the culture they occupy. This was true during pagan Roman times, it was true during medieval European times and it is true today.

It is a constant of human history, not because the secret cabal of conspirators would have it so, but because that's how any human culture based on a monetary system seems to arrange itself.

Furthermore, as the total wealth of a culture increases, the possibility of greater wealth inequality expands.

Let us assume I have two dollars and you have ten dollars. The total system has only twelve dollars in it, and you have a wealth five times greater than mine.

But let us assume that we both work hard during the year and manage to expand our wealth so that I now have twenty dollars while you have 200 dollars. Now you have ten times as much wealth as I have, but I am not the worse off for it. Indeed, I am better off.

That's exactly what happens to the poor in any industrial society. They may not have much cash in hand. Perhaps their percentage share of the cash in hand has actually dropped as dramatically as my share did in the previous example. But these poor now have access to goods they didn't have before. They have access to automobiles, air conditioning, penicillin, laparoscopy, and really cheap computers. And, even as a poor person in that society, they have more money now than they did a generation previously.

So, even if their cash in hand cannot purchase them all the goods that are available, they now have a much wider choice of goods than their fathers did, and they definitely benefit from the fact that these goods exist. Food can be transported to them even if they don't personally own cars. A hospital may accept and treat them with new techniques even if they have not sufficient money to pay.

What was extraordinary luxury yesterday is simply the lifestyle to be expected for even the poorest among us tomorrow. The prisoners we punish in our jails arguably live more richly than Henry VIII did at the height of his syphilitic reign.

And Henry, remember, was the one who crushed the English monastic system, giving away the lands and killing or exiling all the monks. By so doing, he killed the technological powerhouses of England.

In other words, Henry was the first Occupy protester.

The major difference is, he actually managed to make the Occupy movement permanent, at least in regard to the wealthy monastic communities of his age.

And England was the worse for it.

So, Occupiers, be careful what you wish for.
Like any good father, God often finds it useful to punish us by giving us exactly what we ask.

The Economics of Scripture

Are the rich oppressing the poor in America?
The answer is not quite so clear as some people would have it.

Now, Scripture is quite clear-cut on the need to have a "preferential option for the poor". The problem, of course, is determining exactly what that phrase means. To people without a decent understanding of basic economics, things get pretty confused pretty quickly.

Interpreting Scripture is Tricky
To see why Scripture is being twisted today in the realm of economics, we should study another clear example of misinterpreted Scripture - the flat geocentric earth.  As Templeton Prize winner Father Stanley Jaki liked to point out, Scripture literally describes a flat earth beneath a whirling firmament of planets and stars, complete with supporting pillars, a hemispherical sky with waters above, and doors that opened and closed to produce rain and drought.

Around 1611 AD, a man named Galileo used his improved telescope, along with work by a Polish canon lawyer (and probable priest) Copernicus, to point out that the Bible could not be taken literally in its description. Jesuit priests who had long studied astronomy greeted Galileo's evidence with tremendous enthusiasm, throwing parties for Galileo and heaping accolades on him.

But, secular university professors who envied Galileo's new-found fame, and who feared that his work would overthrow their own importance, conspired against him. Professor Columbe formed the League of the Dove and in 1614 paid off a priest, Tommaso Caccini to begin preaching against Galileo's theories at Mass. The priest essentially accused Galileo of perverting Scripture. This began the long conflict between the university professors and Galileo which ended in two different trials and Galileo being found "vehemently suspect of heresy."

Scripture says a lot of things, but we must recognize that when it comes to reconciling science with faith, there can be no contradiction between the two. If there appears to be a contradiction, we must interpret Scripture in such a way that it does not contradict the facts described by the other sciences. We must also recognize that dividing men and women up into the evil rich and the good poor is an essentially false view of the world:

“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” ― Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago: 1918-1956

When it comes to economics, Catholics might need to double-check their interpretations of Scripture against economic realities, and think about how best to interpret the Scriptures in light of our new knowledge. Wealth is no longer measured in gold coins. Money is now an electronic cipher, a twist of electrons in the bowels of a computer. Work and the fruits of honest work can now be disseminated in ways that simply weren't possible before.

Just as our understanding of what usury is has changed because money has changed, we have to understand the Scriptural commands about the poor in light of what wealth has morphed into.

Capitalism: Problem and Solution
Now, I have written endlessly against the problems entailed in capitalism. There's no question that pure capitalism, the mindless accumulation of wealth, necessarily directs itself to destroying families and human life in general.

But, that having been said, we must also recognize that capitalism has lifted more people out of poverty than any other system on earth. And this isn't just a bromide on my part, but a cold, hard fact.


We can wail about the way corporations dispose of people, but we must recognize that corporations don't do any of that.

People do.

Corporations don't exist in any moral sense, corporations aren't morally responsible for anything. Only individual people exist in a moral sense, only individual people are morally responsible.

After World War II, the Catholic Church formally condemned the idea that any people, Germans, Jews, anyone, can carry a corporate guilt. The only corporate guilt that men carry is original sin. We carry that lack of grace only because our first father, Adam, incurred that debt of grace and passed that impoverishment onto us, his children.

There is no other corporate guilt.
There can be no other corporate guilt.

We can't hold "corporations" responsible for mis-treating the poor. If the poor aren't treated well, that's my fault. It's the fault of the Church of which I am a member. But I can't assign blame to a group of people, of whom, coincidentally, I never happen to be a part.

Christ commanded Christians to care for the poor - he didn't tell Caesar to do it, nor did he assign the task to the local fish-mongers' guild. Care for the poor is the Church's responsibility - the only morally existent corporation. Care for the poor is the Christian's concern - the individual's.  Attacking the government for something we are supposed to be doing is the height of hypocrisy.

Caring for the Poor
Now, what constitutes caring for the poor?

That's where things get sticky.

Take the example of Norman Borlaug.

Norman Borlaug fed more poor people than any Christian denomination ever did. It is literally possible that he fed more poor people than even the Catholic Church ever did. But I'm unaware of him entering into any protests against the government or giving a lot of money to charity. From what I understand, for most of his life, he didn't have very much money to give. He just worked. But that was enough.

"Greedy" corporations, like ConAgra, Monsanto, and Dupont, took his work and made it economically feasible to disseminate throughout the world. If those corporations hadn't been rich, and if the shareholders and directors hadn't been elated at the increased wealth Borlaug's work promised, Borlaug's work would have withered and died on the vine, unheralded, unadvertised, unused.

Millions, possibly billions, would have either never been born, or having been born, would have died a terrible death of disease and starvation.

Now, did all those corporations and Borlaug himself - did they become wealthier as a result?
Why, yes.
Yes they did.
And doesn't Scripture tell us that a workman is worth his wage?

I didn't agree with the bank bailouts then and I don't now.
I think it prudentially a bad decision that prolongs a necessary agony.
But that's a prudential decision.
And the prudentials of economics, what constitutes a good economic decision that will benefit millions (while also, perhaps, massively benefitting a few), is not outlined in Scripture.

Scripture tells us only what the final outcome should be, it doesn't describe the methods in any great detail.

We can quote Scripture and attack the nasty corporations, and some of things employees of corporations do are quite nasty. For instance, chopping up babies to grab their stem cells will not win anyone awards for moral action on this blog. But we have to recognize that helping the poor in the long-term might mean that certain sectors of the economy (corporations, for instance) must accumulate massive amounts of wealth in order to have the bankroll necessary to disseminate and popularize truly deserving work.

Now, will those same wells of wealth also bankroll the dissemination of schlock, or really evil work?Why, sure.

After all, the line between good and evil runs through the middle of every human heart.
Capitalism is designed to satisfy every heart's desire.
Whether that desire is good or bad, capitalism will try to slake the desire.

That's why we can look at capitalism, corporations, governments and find so much evil.
That's also why we can look at exactly the same troika and find so much good.

So, when we take righteous indignation at the corporations, even at corporations whose stock we don't happen to own, we should remember that we are really railing against our own inadequacies.
And it would help us realize this if we pointed this out in the essay somewhere.

You see, the problem lies not in the corporations, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.

Mexican Standoff

This story is interesting.

It appears that the Obama administration is knowingly shipping a lot more guns to Mexico than previously reported in any Fast and Furious scandal.

From 2008 to 2009, when President Obama entered office, Defense Department expenditures to Mexicohave increased from $12 million to $34,000,000 and State Department expenditures increased from $7.2 million to $356 million.

As the article points out, a lot of this support is in the form of arms to the Mexican military and government. This despite the fact that soldiers and government officials are exiting into drug cartel ranks en masse, and taking their guns with them.


It's almost as if the Obama administration were trying to destabilize the Mexican government.


Of course, if that were to happen, as social conditions broke down, hundreds of thousands of Mexican citizens would flee Mexico, headed for safer locations. 


Now, as the US economy has melted down, the number of illegals entering the country has dropped off.
Obama can't seem to get the economy going again - or, rather, seems interested in making sure the economy stays down for the count.


If you know the economy is in dire straits, why would you work to destabilize your neighbor's government?


So many questions, so few answers. 

The Catholic Barnum and Bailey

It appears that the Legionaries of Christ - a popular Catholic cult based on the work of a remarkably twisted, evil man - has a new contender for spiritual leader: Chris West.

The Legionaries of Christ is, of course, famous for being founded by Marcel Maciel, the man whose spirituality turned out to be based on having sex with anything that moved, and a few things that didn't.

Maciel is also notable for being one of only a handful of people who have been seriously reprimanded by the Pope himself, when Pope Benedict sent Maciel to perpetual occupation of a monastery cell. This allowed him to meditate on his sins and kept him away from other people's genitals. Blessed John Paul II would have done the same thing if only he hadn't been completely hoodwinked by Maciel and supporters. But even saints make mistakes sometimes.

And the idea that saints sometimes make mistakes is quite convenient for the members of the Legion, who still prefer to think of Maciel as a saint, rather than a monster.

Maciel was... well.... maybe not a saint, but at least saint-like, except for all those romps with all those girls and boys. Well, and the pregnancies. And the secret child support for the resulting progeny. And the larceny. Which we can overlook all of that, because he was just a wounded man, you see.

So Maciel is really a saint, just like Blessed John Paul II, because Blessed JP II liked Maciel right up until the end and you can always trust a saint, except when you can't. That should be proof enough for anyone!

Thus, it's no real surprise to see a Legionary priest compare Blessed Pope John Paul II to Maciel.

And it's no real surprise to see Chris West, who loves comparing John Paul II to Hugh Hefner, double down on the Legionary comparision. Chris generously points out that the LC cult could now hitch its wagon to his star, and help him promote the "theology of the body."

Now, sure, the LC wouldn't be promoting JP II's version, it would actually be promoting Chris West's version, and Chris's version is essentially heretical because it denies that Catholic virtue IS virtue.

But all of these persnickety details should slip right by the members of the Legion because they aren't really well-known for critical thinking when it comes to leadership.

Yep, that's EXACTLY who we want teaching Catholic theology, especially the theology of human love: untrained lay cult members who were spiritually formed by a sex maniac.

Of course, Chris was himself formed in a cult, a cult that had ALSO been suppressed (albeit, only by the local church), Chris has promoted other cult leaders in the past, Chris is surrounded by people who started or participated in other Catholic cults that the Church has expressed concern about, so it is hardly surprising that Chris now apparently wants to hitch his star to the Legion's cult.

Or vice versa.
Doesn't matter, really.
What matters is this.

Cults make TONS of money for the leaders.

Men like Chris West and his publisher, Matt Pinto.


So, if West can successfully promote himself into the leadership, or at least into a starring role in the Legion, everyone will make out like a bandit.

And John Paul II's minor work will be turned into a major spectacle.
Think Barnum and Bailey.

We Need New Rope

So, now a white woman is accusing a powerful black man of sexual assault.

That's SUCH a shocker.

You know, if you're going to perform a hi-tech lynching, couldn't you at least use new rope?

Not that it matters.
Cain has this nomination just about sewed up.

Romney can't get off 25%, and when Santorum, Bachman and Perry throw in the towel, all those voters are going to Cain, not Romney.