Inconvenient Question

According to electoral-vote.com, Barack Obama is up by 11% in Pennsylvania.
According to Zogby, Barack Obama is up by 11.4% in Pennsylvania.
Muhlenburg and Temple has him up by 13% and 9% respectively.

So, if he has a double-digit lead in Pennsylvania 7 days out, why is he still campaigning there?

Vietnam All Over Again

In 1968, the Vietcong launched the Tet offensive.
Designed to destroy the power of the United States military in Vietnam, the Tet offensive instead turned into a slaughterhouse of Vietcong soldiers, as their regular troops died by the thousands without gaining a single piece of territory.

What was won on the battlefield was lost in the newspapers.
This unmitigated victory was portrayed as a sound trouncing of US troops.
The newsies turned the course of Vietnam from military triumph to disaster.


Things haven't changed much in forty years.

London Sunday Times assessment of the War in Iraq
August 8th, 2008

London Sunday Times assessment of the War in Iraq

The Investor’s Business Daily editorial board ask, “What would happen if the U.S. won a war but the media didn’t tell the American public? Apparently, we have to rely on a British newspaper for the news that we’ve defeated the last remnants of al-Qaida in Iraq .”

London’s Sunday Times called it “the culmination of one of the most spectacular victories of the war on terror.” A terrorist force that once numbered more than 12,000, with strongholds in the west and central regions of Iraq, has over two years been reduced to a mere 1,200 fighters, backed against the wall in the northern city of Mosul.

The destruction of al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI) is one of the most unlikely and unforeseen events in the long history of American warfare. We can thank President Bush’s surge strategy, in which he bucked both Republican and Democratic leaders in Washington by increasing our forces there instead of surrendering.

We can also thank the leadership of the new general he placed in charge there, David Petraeus, who may be the foremost expert in the world on counter-insurgency warfare. And we can thank those serving in our military in Iraq who engaged local Iraqi tribal leaders and convinced them America was their friend and AQI their enemy.

Al-Qaida’s loss of the hearts and minds of ordinary Iraqis began in Anbar Province , which had been written off as a basket case, and spread out from there.

Now, in Operation Lion’s Roar the Iraqi army and the U.S. 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment is destroying the fraction of terrorists who are left. More than 1,000 AQI operatives have already been apprehended.

Sunday T imes reporter Marie Colvin, traveling with Iraqi forces in Mosul, found little AQI presence even in bullet-ridden residential areas that were once insurgency strongholds, and reported that the terrorists have lost control of its Mosul urban base, with what is left of the organization having fled south into the countryside.

Meanwhile, the State Department reports that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government has achieved “satisfactory” progress on 15 of the 18 political benchmarks — a big change for the better from a year ago.

Things are going so well that Maliki has even for the first time floated the idea of a timetable for withdrawal of American forces.. He did so while visiting the United Arab Emirates, which over the weekend announced that it was forgiving almost $7 billion of debt owed by Baghdad — an impressive vote of confidence from a fellow Arab state in the future of a free Iraq.

But where are the headlines and the front-page stories about all this good news? As the Media Research Center pointed out last week, “the CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News and CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 were silent Tuesday night about the benchmarks” that signaled political progress.

The war in Iraq has been turned around 180 degrees both militarily and politically because the president stuck to his guns. Yet apart from IBD, Fox News Channel and parts of the foreign press, the media don’t seem to consider this historic event a big story.

Captain Nemo

Below is a list of items requested and the Obama campaign's responses...

1. Occidental College records -- Not released

2. Columbia College records -- Not released

3. Columbia Thesis paper -- "not available"

4. Harvard College records -- Not released

5. Selective Service Registration -- Not released

6. Medical records -- Not released

7. Illinois State Senate schedule -- "not available"

8. Law practice client list -- Not released

9. Certified Copy of original Birth certificate - - Not released

10. Embossed, signed paper Certification of Live Birth

Not released

11. Harvard Law Review articles published -- None

12. University of Chicago scholarly articles -- None

13. Your Record of baptism-- Not released or "not available"

14. Your Illinois State Senate records--"not available"

He's the original Captain Nemo.

Here's A Thought

So, I'm looking at the Obama website,
and it suddenly occurs to me
like a flash - a burning vision out of the heavens.

McCain/Palin supporters can help Barack Obama.

Just go to: http://my.barackobama.com/modules/votercontact/login_signup.php

Sign up to help.
Call the voters they give you to target.
Convince those voters to vote for McCain/Palin.

If they vet their callers like they vet their on-line donations, this should work beautifully.

Help Obama spread his wealth around a bit, and help those who have fallen behind: John McCain and Sarah Palin.

Remind them of one of the 101 reasons not to vote for Barack Obama.

Or this:


Hit the economic points especially hard.

Citizens Against Government Waste say that Obama has an 18% rating, McCain is rated 88%. Senator Biden is rated the worst with 0%: http://sayanythingblog.com/entry/citizens_against_government_waste_obama_isnt_the_worst_senator_on_waste_bid/

Barack Obama criticized Hillary Clinton for her financial ties to Wal-Mart, while conveniently failing to mention his own wife’s ties to Wal-Mart: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1551441/Obama-called-hypocrite-for-wife

Obama implied he was poor and grew up on food stamps; Obama grew up mostly with his grandparents, who were upper middle-class bankers in Hawaii. Food stamps weren’t available in Hawaii until the seventies: http://sweetness-light.com/archive/when-was-obamas-mom-on-food-stamps

Obama claims to not accept oil money, but in fact he has accepted more than $213,000 from individuals who work for companies in the oil and gas industry and their spouses. Two of

Obama's bundlers are top executives at oil companies and are listed on his Web site as raising between $50,000 and $100,000 for him: http://www.newsweek.com/id/129895

Obama claims to have no ties to lobbyists, but several registered lobbyists have raised over a million dollars for his campaign, sometimes having their wives write the check to conceal his ties to them: http://americandigest.org/mt-archives/bad_americans/hows_that_obama.php

Obama has no executive experience. He has never run a business or done a pay roll etc..
He himself has admitted that he does not have the experience to be the President of the United States: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BnLozS-TnM&feature=related

His running mate Senator Biden charged that Obama lacked the experience to be President: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lknTPvH1wSg

Senator Obama voted against his own economic package. Sen. Wayne Allard (R-CO) combed through Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-IL) many campaign promises and compiled a list of 188 new spending proposals that he then packaged together and offered as an amendment to the Fiscal 2009 budget plan. Allard calculated that for the 111 proposals for which cost estimated were possible, Obama’s promises would cost the American taxpayer $300 billion per year and $1.4 trillion over five years. Allard released a floor statement highlighting the size of this spending package, including:

• The $300 billion is more than the $294 billion the U.S. spent on imported oil last year.
• Obama’s current tax raise proposal would cover only $225 billion over 5 years … far short of the $1.4 trillion in spending.
• To finance just the first year of $300 billion in spending, Congress would have to raise taxes on the top 1% of tax payers by 57%.

Obama voted against his own platform and the measure was defeated 97-0.
http://blog.heritage.org/2008/03/14/obama-votes-against-his-own-platform/

In his campaign speeches he has claimed to want to renegotiate NAFTA. At the same time he sent an advisor to Canada to reassure Canadians that this was just politics and wasn’t true: http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN0338038720080303

Obama got more kickback money from Fannie Mae in less time than any other senator.
Obama counts rich, fat-cat billionaires as his advisors - people who made money by lying (Bill Gates) or ignoring small business (Warren Buffett).
Obama also counted former Fannie May advisors as campaign members.

The Rights of the Church

The recent letter from the Catholic bishops of North Texas has raised considerable discussion over whether churches have a right to explicitly endorse or repudiate specific policies. Indeed, certain policies are so deeply identified with specific candidates that the endorsement or repudiation of a policy can seem to be an endorsement or repudiation of a candidate.

For instance, for some reason Barack Obama appears to be synonymous with legal abortion, even the right to infanticide, while John McCain is identified with an infant's right to life.

"By what right," demands the irate citizen, "do these Catholic bishops dare to tell Americans what policies or candidates are to be endorsed or repudiated? I am an American, and no one may tell me how to vote!"

Oddly enough, the Catholic Church does not necessarily disagree. According to the principle of subsidiarity, a higher power should not interfere in the functioning of a lower power if it is at all possible to avoid such interference.

A Catholic who has properly formed his conscience in the teachings of the Church, a Catholic who therefore knows how to live the moral life under every circumstance, has no need to be instructed by the Church in what is to be endorsed or repudiated. Such a Catholic already knows the right course of action, judges the situation rightly, acts on that judgement and everyone goes on about their business.

But what happens if the Catholic in question does not have a properly formed conscience? What if Catholics are influenced not by Christ, but by Chrysler, what if their Messiah is MTV and Oprah is their prophet, what if they pay more attention to the Dow then to the one Who died for them?

In that situation, the Catholic bishops have an obligation to properly form the consciences of the Christian faithful. They have to re-teach them the basic tenets, the bedrock principles, by which a Catholic is to judge how to act in the public sphere.

If Catholics fail to follow that instruction, the bishops have a duty to tell the Catholics precisely who to vote for and the Catholic has a duty to follow that instruction.

"But that's illegal!" shout the even more irate citizens, "That's against the Constitution!"

Actually, it is not. The Constitution gives no one the right to regulate this kind of instruction. In fact, the Constitution specifically says it has no power to regulate religion at all. That is why the state cannot tax religious institutions - the state has no power to regulate religion. The Constitution may be the supreme law of the nation, but it recognizes religion, religious belief and religious instruction as being in some sense extra-national and beyond its proper authority.

Consequently, the Constitution implicitly recognizes that every citizen who belongs to a church belongs to an authority which the Constitution does not and expressly cannot speak to. Just as Europeans have a right to express their opinion about who should be the next president and instruct each other and America in why one choice is superior to another - without being subject to US taxation or regulation - so do members of religious institutions have the same right with the same freedom from regulation or taxation and for exactly the same reasons.

Lyndon Baines Johnson managed to pass a law in 1954 which pretends otherwise. That law is not constitutional, and insofar as it impedes the Constitutionally-recognized power, the divinely ordained power, of the church to regulate its own affairs and its own instructions, no one has a duty to obey it.

I'm Just Askin'

The Bishops of Fort Worth and Dallas have written a joint letter on the duties of faithful citizens that is simply superb. I've never seen the teaching on how a Catholic is required to vote laid out more clearly.

That having been said, one sentence stood out: "To vote for a candidate who supports the intrinsic evil of abortion or 'abortion rights' when there is a morally acceptable alternative would be to cooperate in the evil - and, therefore, morally impermissible."

Now, it is commonly accepted that abortion is the ultimate form of child abuse.

According to the USCCB guidelines, anyone who participates in child abuse is to be immediately removed from ministry.

Consequently, it would seem that anyone who votes for Barack Obama would be subject to immediate dismissal from whatever parish or diocesan position they hold, for they would, by their vote, be cooperating in the worst form of child molestation.

I only hope that all of the bishops who have taught so well on the issue of voting and abortion not only teach, but also link their words and their actions, immediately dismissing every parish or diocesan employee who participates in child molestation via their vote.

Now, you may argue that no one knows how anyone will vote.
I agree.

But if we made the question a condition of employment - as we already do make similar unverifiable questions ("Do you attend Mass regularly? Are you actively practicing the Faith?") and similar intensely private questions ("Have you ever been accused of child molestation? When you supply references, we will also ask them if they have any knowledge of your predilictions towards children.") conditions for employment - we will necessarily change the culture at the parish.

It doesn't matter if people lie to get hired. They will know they had better not promote their child molestation agenda (i.e., abortion rights politics) or they will be subject to immediate dismissal. Indeed, parishes that implemented the policy of asking candidates:

1. if they were aware of Church teaching on voting and,
2. who they voted for in the last presidential election

would undoubtedly find that the pool of unsavoury candidates has dried up, as people realize that heretical Catholics really aren't welcome.

There is no law that says you have to hire people who support the Party of Death.

Now, you may further argue that voting is a personal issue that the Church has no right to interfere in.
If you were to raise this argument, I would merely point out that you are wrong.

The Church has the right to teach on faith and morals.
She teaches us how to avoid sin.
The bishop is responsible for that teaching.
Thus, the bishop has a responsibility to tell us how to avoid sin when we vote.
If we refuse to follow his teaching, then we have ignored a teaching on faith and morals.

The state has no right to tell us how to live our religious life.
The Church, on the other hand, has EVERY right to tell us how to live our religious values in the public square and in our political activities.
That's the whole reason She exists, for heaven's sake.

So, yes, the Church has the right and the duty to tell us how to vote.

She did it for the Catholics in Nazi Germany when She warned the faithful about Hitler and his party of death through the promulgation of Mit Brennende Sorge.

In 2007, She told the Catholics of Portugal they would be excommunicate if they voted in favor of abortion in a national referendum

She can certainly tell us how to vote.
Who can disagree?

John ACORN must die

Let's see...

What is the common thread between the 2008 voter fraud in Michigan, Indiana, Nevada, Ohio, New Mexico, Florida, Colorado, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Virgini?

I would say, but I can't, since connecting the dots is, apparently, racist.

An Interesting Dilemma

Well, well, well, I think we will soon discover how strong the convictions against the Extraordinary Form of the Mass really are.

The coming economic collapse means that parish collection plates will dry up. Pastors are going to have interesting times ahead as they try various ways to snag parishioners.

Currently, the most popular format for snagging parishioners is to snag the children and hope the parents' hearts and wallets follow. Even though the Vatican has just announced that the Eucharistic prayer for the Children's Liturgy will be abolished (thank God), the "youth Mass" still reigns supreme as the way to increase the parish population and "stay relevant."

But how long will that last?

Youth Masses are all well and good, but youth don't have any money. The collections at those kinds of Masses - when anyone bothers to try - are pathetic. The pastor who creates these things is counting on parents to stick with the parish their children are being "fed" in. He's also counting on the same mystique Apple computer counted on - if you get them young, they'll stay with you for life.

It isn't clear that either strategy is all that effective.

Consider the second idea first: the idea that getting them young means lifelong loyalty.

IBM harbored no such long term strategy. They went directly for the deep pockets of the corporate executives, the Jesuit strategy that says if you convert the leaders, the rest have to follow because they have no choice. That strategy allowed IBM to kick Apple's assets up and down the block for decades, because IBM targeted a group with money while Apple targeted a group with no money.

Apple is only making money now because they switched their product line to dirt cheap music and cell phones - the two things a teenager will reliably invest in. True, teens aren't buying iPhones in droves yet, but the switch to music is what made the iPhone development possible. It's what drove their sales for the last ten years. Apple finally started marketing the right product to the generation they've been trying to buy all these years.

They could, and probably will, sell off their computer line in the next few years because it's a losing proposition. In fact, you could argue that they already have, as they now put Intel chips in Apple machines.

And, when we consider that between 60% and 80% of evangelical churches are made up of fallen-away Catholics, it's pretty clear that the "get 'em young" strategy doesn't work all that well.

Well, but certainly targeting the kids in order to snag the adults works, doesn't it? Yes and no.
Sure, it gets the adults who don't particularly care about the Mass and don't know much about the Catholic doctrine they claim to espouse, but those are exactly the parents who don't contribute a whole lot to begin with.

We would be much better off to target the parents of young children with a liturgy that appeals to the parents. After all, good parents will want their children to worship the same way they do. Parents who understand the Mass don't send their children out for a "children's liturgy of the word" because they want their children to grow into adults. Children become adults by being treated like adults. Speaking down to them helps no one.

So where is all of this going?

Well, it is no secret (to anyone paying attention) that the population with the highest net worth and disposable income are the elderly. While it is true that many are impoverished, as a rule of thumb, the older the person, the more likely that person is to be (a) a regular Mass goer and (b) well-off enough to tithe, or to at least approach the idea and wave in its general direction.

It's a simple case of non-presence. People who aren't at Mass don't give money at Mass. Conversely, people who attend Mass frequently are more likely to put money in the collection plate, if only because they see it more often.

Now, who attends Mass most religiously (pun intended)?

That would be the men and women who follow the Extraordinary Form.

The Extraordinary Form tends to attract two populations: the elderly and parents with young children. Both groups are very serious about the Faith and will give whatever they can to keep the Extraordinary Form going.

However, most priests are unwilling to offer the Extraordinary Form.

But most priests will also be looking desperately for new revenue streams in the very near future.

So, whichever priest in a region is the first to overcome his scruples, break ranks and actually offer an Extraordinary Form Mass, even on a once-a-month basis, is going to absorb all the EF adherents from the surrounding parishes. His revenues will go up, the orthodoxy of his parish will go up, the average unruliness of the child population will drop - in short, it's a win-win situation for the parish that does it first.

So, an economic crash may turn out to be God's way of spreading the Extraordinary Form throughout the world.

I Can't Believe We're Losing to This Guy

Ok, let me see if I have this straight.

Barack Obama is currently faced with a federal lawsuit alleging that he is not a natural-born US citizen. Instead of simply producing the documents necessary to demonstrate that he is (and suing the litigant for defamation of character), the Obama camp moved to dismiss the lawsuit. This month (October 2008) the dismissal attempt was denied by the judge. It looks like Obama may have to produce the documents. One would think that if he could, he would have already done so. He hasn't.

Bill Ayers, best known for starting the Weather Underground, which specialized in killing police officers and blowing up buildings, was also famous for telling children to kill their parents to help foment the revolution. He also desecrated a flag in 2000 for a magazine photo op.

Ayers gave Obama his political start by hosting a political fund-raiser in his own living room. He was praised by Michelle Obama for his knowledge of children's issues (which I suppose they got their issues from killing their parents??? but I digress). Now the Obama camp is denying that Barack had any knowledge whatsoever that Ayers was ever a terrorist.

We have the Reverend Jeremiah Wright who famously taught Black Panther socialist philosophy, married the Obamas, baptized their children and gave Barack the name of one of his two books. Barack sat in his church for 20 years, but never heard any of the sermons, except for that little snippet he used to title his book.

Jeremiah Wright was also on the board of directors of the organization that owned Christ Hospital, the facility which specialized in killing children after they survived abortions. When nurse Jill Stanek blew the whistle on them, she did so in part by testifying before both Illinois Senate and the US Congress - she was an eyewitness to the fact that Christ Hospital policy was to throw unwanted infants into soiled utility rooms until they died hours later.

Barack essentially called Stanek a liar, denying this ever happened, and asserting that if it did, then it must be allowed to continue in order to protect abortion rights. He voted in favor of keeping infanticide legal four times.

Barack campaigned in Africa in support of his cousin, the leader of the Kenyan Orange Democratic Movement opposition leader, Raila Odinga, who has fomented a civil war after losing an election there.

Barack's half-brother, George, is homeless in that same country. Barack has not sent a penny to help his own brother.

Barack was also one of the lead lawyers for ACORN, the organization that helped pressure several administrations into supplying bad loans to unqualified borrowers. He got more kickback money in less time from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac than any other US Senator in history (true, Dodd and Kerry got more money in total, but Obama had served far less time in the Senate than either of them, though his "inexperience" didn't seem to affect his bottom-line). His work, and the work of the organizations he supports, helped create the housing crisis that spread, through the sale of bad mortgages, throughout the world so as to become what is now a world-wide banking crisis.


So, we have a presidential candidate who:

• is not a natural-born US citizen,
• got his political start in the living room of his friend, a known and unrepentant terrorist,
• was spiritually mentored by a demagogue,
• supports infanticide,
• supports and is related to socialist revolutionaries,
• refuses to help the poorest of the poor, even when it's his own brother,
• helped create the current US and arguably the current world-wide economic crisis.

And he's winning?

I can't believe we're losing to this guy.

Update: Mr. infanticide's Foreign Policy Expert in Action

I'm Bored

I don't know abuot the rest of you, but the whole talk of financial meltdown has me bored.
Seriously.

How many "the sky is falling!" diatribes have we heard from the press in the last few years? Since the non-event of the Y2K computer disaster we've been told that the earth is getting too warm, too cold, too oily, too wet, too dry, too few species, too many humans, yada, yada, yada, I don't care anymore.

I'm tired of having a bunch of news yahoos running around trying to scare me into buying their mouth.

We aren't looking at a Great Depression.
That's just crap.

If anyone recalls, the 1929 stock market crash was followed by a pretty good economic year. The market ended up tanking in the 1930's because the country (a) was on the gold standard, (b) was trying to inflate Britain's currency to help her get back on the gold standard, thereby putting our own currency at risk (c) suffered the catastrophic weather pattern which caused the Dustbowl and (d) was run by a clueless Democrat, namely FDR, whose stupidity prolonged the problems.

I know the "clueless Democrat" point is kind of redundant, but bear with me.

Today, we aren't in a depression.
We aren't in a recession.
We haven't had a percentage loss on the market anywhere near where the 1929 stock crash went.
The weather hasn't destroyed our food prices.
Oil prices are actually pretty low, given where they have been over the course of the last twelve months.

One of the non-economic reasons for the Great Depression was a lack of consumer confidence in the government, driven in part by the fact that the USSR - which was economically cut off from the rest of the world - suffered no serious consequences from the event. As a result, a lot of people thought the US should follow socialism and dump the whole capitalist mindset.

The lack of confidence in the system was driven by the Kremlin, a shining city on a hill. Sure, that city was built on the bloodied corpses of millions, but when did that ever stop America from wanting to follow the almighty dollar (cf. the modern abortion industry)? If the USSR was economically successful with socialism, then we should follow suit. That was 1930's-style thinking. The economic malaise was driven in no small part by a lack of clear or coherent vision.

Today, as pointed out above, NONE of the necessary pieces are in place for a repeat of the Great Depression.

We aren't on a gold standard, so we have very little economic reason to suffer a depression. Inflation, sure, but not depression.

There is no alternate economic choice. Does anyone really want to follow Russia's economic policies? How about Venezuala? Saudi Arabia? Timbuktu?

Please.

Now, here's an alternative.

Has anyone considered that maybe we have too many banking institutions?
Maybe a lot of them they need to fail.

And, given the differences in the economy between 1930 and 2008, there is no necessary correlation between the number of brick-and-mortar banks and the rest of the economy.

In 1930, no one would have dreamed that a big city might have just one dominant newspaper. Now, it's quite easy to conceive of a town that has no newspapers at all.

In 1970, no one would dream of a television with more than three stations. I got rid of mine because there are too stinking many channels.

Why can't the same be true about banks?

The internet allows a lot more initiatives in wholesaling, retailing and banking then was ever possible during the 1930s. We have a different economy, a different currency, different economic conditions, even the weather is different.

If this were truly a serious crisis, Nancy Pelosi wouldn't have made a five minute speech designed to piss off the opposition. If this were truly a serious crisis, the Democrats should have been able to pass the bailout bill on a party-line vote.

But this isn't a serious crisis. It's a load of bull.
Where did the 700 billion bailout number come from?
According to Forbes Magazine, it was picked out of a hat.

"In fact, some of the most basic details, including the $700 billion figure Treasury would use to buy up bad debt, are fuzzy.

"It's not based on any particular data point," a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. "We just wanted to choose a really large number.""

Who wants the $700 billion? The same homosexual lobby who has been fronting for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for the last five years: Barney Frank and the dancing Democrats.

As early as the CArter administration, the banks were ordered by the Democrats to give money to people with lousy credit. By Clinton's administration, they had to do it or go out of business.

By this century, the banks found the business lucrative, both Democrat and Republican Congresses covered the bad investments with insurance and then got kickbacks from those same banks to keep the game going.

Now, our Congress - being good little pimps - want to make sure they provide the financial insurance that the banks paid all those decades of protection money for (like some Nevada prostitutes, after Congress forced them into the trade, the banks decided they liked it), so the Congressional pimps cook up this government bailout and scream about the sky falling if their little racket doesn't get it.

Too bad.
Fail.

"But Steve, this isn't local! European banks are also going under! This is worldwide!"

Honey, I've got news for you.

European banks have been cracking for years. They will crack regardless of what we do or fail to do. Europeans don't have the population growth or the immigration growth necessary to sustain their economies and they haven't for years. That's why they are slowly dying. If the Muslims weren't wiping them out, someone else would be. The failure of their economy isn't exactly news.

Ultimately, this latest news story is the result of a protection racket gone bad, a racket that created a lot of businesses that don't need to exist, and it isn't going to cause that much of a ripple in the economy when they go away, because they weren't necessary to begin with.

Fail.
Get it over with and let the rest of us get on with our lives.

When Voting is a Mortal Sin

The promotion of the culture of life should be the highest priority in our societies... If the right to life is not defended decisively as a condition for all other rights of the person, all other references to human rights remain deceitful and illusory.
~Pope John Paul II

A well-formed Christian conscience does not permit one to vote for a political program or an individual law which contradicts the fundamental contents of faith and morals.
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Doctrinal Notes On Some Questions Regarding The Participation Of Catholics In Political Life

[A]bortion and euthanasia are crimes which no human law can claim to legitimize. There is no obligation in conscience to obey such laws; instead there is a grave and clear obligation to oppose them by conscientious objection. In the case of an intrinsically unjust law, such as a law permitting abortion or euthanasia, it is therefore never licit to obey it, or to ‘take part in a propaganda campaign in favor of such a law, or vote for it.
Pope John Paul II, The Gospel of Life, #73

[C]ooperation [in evil] occurs when an action, either by its very nature or by the form it takes in a concrete situation, can be defined as a direct participation in an act against innocent human life or a sharing in the immoral intention of the person committing it. This cooperation can never be justified either by invoking respect for the freedom of others or by appealing to the fact that civil law permits it or requires it. Each individual in fact has moral responsibility for the acts which he personally performs; no one can be exempted from this responsibility, and on the basis of it everyone will be judged by God himself. (cf. Rom 2:6; 14:12).
Pope John Paul II, The Gospel of Life, #74

A Catholic would be guilty of formal cooperation in evil, and so unworthy to present himself for Holy Communion, if he were to deliberately vote for a candidate precisely because of the candidate’s permissive stand on abortion and/or euthanasia. When a Catholic does not share a candidate’s stand in favor of abortion and/or euthanasia, but votes for that candidate for other reasons, it is considered remote material cooperation, which can be permitted in the presence of proportionate reasons.
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Worthiness to Receive Holy Communion

Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia [...] While the Church exhorts civil authorities to seek peace, not war, and to exercise discretion and mercy in imposing punishment on criminals, it may still be permissible to take up arms to repel an aggressor or to have recourse to capital punishment. There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia.
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Worthiness to Receive Holy Communion

When we were working on the document 'Faithful Citizenship', and the issue of whether or not a person's adamant pro-abortion position was a disqualifying condition, the general sense was 'yes that is a disqualifying condition'.
Bishop Vasa, Diocese of Baker, Oregon, describing US bishops’ deliberations

We are blessed in the 21st century with crystal-clear photographs and action films of the living realities within their pregnant mothers. No one with the slightest measure of integrity or honor could fail to know what these marvelous beings manifestly, clearly, and obviously are, as they smile and wave into the world outside the womb. In simplest terms, they are human beings with an inalienable right to live, a right that the Speaker of the House of Representatives is bound to defend at all costs for the most basic of ethical reasons. They are not parts of their mothers, and what they are depends not at all upon the opinions of theologians of any faith. Anyone who dares to defend that they may be legitimately killed because another human being “chooses” to do so or for any other equally ridiculous reason should not be providing leadership in a civilized democracy worthy of the name.
Edward Cardinal Egan, Archbishop of New York, Statement on Nancy Pelosi

Personal opposition to evil cannot be reconciled with willing cooperation in its acts… The purpose of civil law is to defend the common good; the common good cannot be defended by legislating what is evil. To defend the legality of abortion, one must either deny – in the face of divine revelation, the consistent teaching of the Church, the natural law, and scientific evidence – that abortion is an evil, or admit to cooperating with the evil it represents.
Bishop Walker Nickless, Diocese of Sioux City, Statement on Senator Joseph Biden 

Proportionate Reasons

Any politics of human dignity must seriously address issues of racism, poverty, hunger, employment, education, housing, and health care. Therefore, Catholics should eagerly involve themselves as advocates for the weak and marginalized in all these areas... But being 'right' in such matters can never excuse a wrong choice regarding attacks on innocent human life. Indeed, the failure to protect life in its most vulnerable stages renders suspect any claims to the 'rightness' of positions in other matters affecting the poorest and least powerful of the human community.
US Conference of Catholic Bishops, Living the Gospel of Life, #23(emphasis in the original)

Certainly policies on welfare, national security, the war in Iraq, Social Security or taxes, taken singly or in any combination, do not provide a proportionate reason to vote for a pro-abortion candidate.
Archbishop John J Myer, A Voter's Guide

When we have someone who [supports legal abortion] then the other issues, in many ways, do not matter because they are already wrong on that absolutely fundamental issue. [Perhaps] If we had a candidate in favor of a war in Iraq in which we decimate the entire population and we kill as many civilians to impose as much terror on everybody as possible to make sure . . . but we don't have that issue with capital punishment, with the war in Iraq, [or] with the present Administration.
Bishop Vasa, Diocese of Baker, Oregon, describing US bishops’ deliberations

Abortion is a foundational issue; it is not an issue like housing policy or the price of foreign oil. It always involves the intentional killing of an innocent life, and it is always, grievously wrong. If, as Sen. Biden said, "I'm prepared as a matter of faith to accept that life begins at the moment of conception," then he is not merely wrong about the science of new life; he also fails to defend the innocent life he already knows is there…. his strong support for the 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade and the false "right" to abortion it enshrines, can't be excused by any serious Catholic.
Archbishop Charles Chaput, Archdiocese of Denver and Auxiliary Bishop James D. Conley, Archdiocese of Denver, Correcting Senator Biden

Could a voter’s preference for the candidate’s positions on the pursuit of peace, economic policies benefiting the poor, support for universal health care, a more just immigration policy, etc. overcome a candidate’s support for legalized abortion? In such a case, the Catholic voter must ask and answer the question: What could possibly be a proportionate reason for the more than 45 million children killed by abortion in the past 35 years? Personally, we cannot conceive of such a proportionate reason.
Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann, Kansas City, KS; Bishop Robert Flinn of Kansas City, MO, On Moral Responsibility

MORTAL SIN Due to Action

For a sin to be mortal, three conditions must together be met: "Mortal sin is sin whose (1) object is grave matter and which is also committed with (2) full knowledge and (3) deliberate consent."
Catechism of the Catholic Church, #1857 (emphasis in the original document).

[M]an can never obey a law which is in itself immoral, and such is the case of a law which would admit in principle the liceity of abortion. Nor can he take part in a propaganda campaign in favor of such a law, or vote for it.
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Declaration on Procured Abortion, #22

[I]t is a correct judgment of conscience that we would commit moral evil if we were to vote for a candidate who takes a permissive stand on those actions that are intrinsically evil when there is a morally-acceptable alternative.
Kansas Catholic Conference of Bishops, Moral Principles for Catholic Voters

In the United States in 2008, abortion is an acceptable form of homicide… If you vote this way [for a candidate that supports or promotes abortion], are you cooperating in evil? And if you know you are cooperating in evil, should you go to confession? The answer is yes…
Archbishop Charles Chaput, Group of Bishops Opposed to Kerry

Senator Joseph Biden has been told not to approach the Eucharist in the Archdiocese of Denver and the Diocese of Scranton, Pennsylvania because of his stance on life issues. Subsequently, fifty-five (55) United States Catholic Bishops have publicly denounced Vice Presidential Candidate Senator Joseph Biden for his anti-life stance.

Catholics who support pro-abortion candidates participate in a grave evil. They must show a change of heart and be sacramentally reconciled or refrain from receiving Holy Communion.
Archbishop Raymond Burke, Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura, Pastoral Letter to Address Church Teachings on Voting

The Competition

UPDATE II

"Mark Penn (Ex-strategist for Bill Clinton): Well, no, I think the people themselves saw unfair media coverage of Senator Clinton. I think if you go back, the polls reflected very clearly what "Saturday Night Live" crystallized in one of their mock debates about what was happening with the press.

I think here the media is on very dangerous ground. I think that when you see them going through every single expense report that Governor Palin ever filed, if they don't do that for all four of the candidates, they're on very dangerous ground. I think the media so far has been the biggest loser in this race. And they continue to have growing credibility problems.

And I think that that's a real problem growing out of this election. The media now, all of the media — not just Fox News, that was perceived as highly partisan — but all of the media is now being viewed as partisan in one way or another. And that is an unfortunate development."

Not from McCain's point of view, of course.
It's part of his election strategy.

UPDATE:
It seems my interpretation (below) of McCain's motives were not entirely without foundation.
See here and here.
--------------------------------------------------------------

I should begin this discussion by declaring a small bias.
If it weren't for the fact that we're both already married, I might very well propose to Sarah Palin.

It is so incredibly refreshing to see her in the VP slot.
It would be even better if she were running for President, but that's certain to happen in four or eight years, so I will wait patiently for that particular joy.

But my enthusiasm over Sarah is not the point of this essay.

As I watched her speech at the Republican National Convention last night, I realized a couple of things.

First, we finally have one of us in a position of power, and by "one of us," I don't mean just a pro-lifer. Sarah Palin has the common touch because she is common people. Five years ago, she was a PTA mom. She is not an Ivy Leaguer; she thinks Skull and Bones (the secret club at Yale which boasted both George Bush and John Kerry as members) is what you find in when you stumble on a wolf-pack kill. Not since Andrew Jackson - the man who destroyed the National Bank - and Abe Lincoln have we had a person so highly placed who came from such humble background, and even they don't compare, because both served in Congress before entering high office.

What does this mean? It means, if she is successful, that the Ivy Leaguers are washed up. You don't need a degree from a high-falutin' university to be great. This is the harbinger of a much greater change.

Many people have commented on how the Internet is a great equalizer. On the Internet, nobody knows if you are a dog. On-line courses can be taken from anywhere, by anyone, offered by anyone to anyone. I have written elsewhere on how the computer is destroying the great publishing houses; the former glorious gateways to publishing are slowly coming apart. A similar movement may be in store for the Ivy League.

For the last century, the large universities have been the gatekeepers to political power.
Unless you graduated from the right school, where you met the right people and were brainwashed with the right values, you could not attain high office.

The universities have been the political version of the Mafia, they are gangsters who had to be paid off, they get kick-backs in the form of government loans. For the professors and the policy wonks, it is La Cosa Nostra - Our Little Thing.

But that may be changing, and to the extent that it does, Sarah Palin is the face of that change.

But can this really be accomplished?
That's my second point.

Sarah is in a race against the clock.

Serious pro-lifers have never made it this high precisely because the vetting process kept us out. In the lower 48, the leftist news media have regularly destroyed the reputations of any moral person whom they cannot first subvert. We all know the stories: Jesse Jackson, Al Gore, Dick Gephardt, Ted Kennedy, Bill Clinton, and many more: these politicians all began their careers with pro-life sentiments, but the news and political machines ground them all down. The vetting process subverted them, it demonized and destroyed anyone who clung to pro-life principles. You have to agree to kill children if you want real political power in this country.

Even those who made it through the process with some semblance of pro-life sentiment came out battered and bruised. There was a reason Ronald Reagan and the two Bush men never appeared at a DC pro-life anniversary march. They didn't want to be seen in public with us. When Pawlenty, governor of Minnesota, was held out as a favorite for the McCain pick, he responded by refusing to make his usual appearance at a pro-life event in Minnesota. When suddenly faced with the possibility of being President of the Seant, Pawlenty, for the first time, found himself unavoidably detained at a city council meeting twenty minutes away.

Politicians are afraid of being tarred by the media and the university policy wonks as pro-life whackos.

But Sarah Palin did not go through the process. She didn't go through the Ivy League nuthouse. She lives in Alaska, she came out of nowhere and beat the system in a state the media had never paid much attention to. Thus, she never had to accomodate the fruitcakes on Meet the Press or the homosexuals who run the New York Times front page. She was never taught to be afraid of them.

The media hate Christians because Christians - good Christians - aren't afraid of them. As Christians know, perfect love casts out fear. As Christians know, we are not to fear the one who can take our lives, rather, we fear only the loss of our souls. If they can't make us fear them, they can't control us, and it's all about control.

A woman who can disembowel a moose does not fear a prancing man with a microphone.

So, now Sarah is racing to get to the American people before the American media and machine politics can destroy her.

And this is the third point.

Sarah's speech last night merely confirmed something I've been ruminating on since she was chosen. John McCain chose Sarah Palin not only because he's a maverick, but also because he's a maverick who likes to get revenge. He's got a mean streak in him a mile wide, and I have a certain respect for that. Being mean can, under certain circumstances, be just.

The media dumped John McCain for Barack Obama, and he wanted to get even.
So he picked Sarah Palin.

He knew full well what Sarah Palin would do to the news rooms. The Sarah Palin pick wasn't just meant to pick up Hillary supporters, it was meant to tear the news rooms apart. He intended to ignite a civil war. Either the newsies would tear each other apart as feminists fought the Obaminationists, or the newsies - by heaping contempt on Sarah Palin - would dig their own grave with us, the public who employs them through our purchase of their mindless chatter.

The Internet had already begun to knock the supports out from under the MSM, or this tactic wouldn't have been possible. But because they are already weakened, because they no longer fully control the channel, McCain's plan will work. He's flooding the channel with more reality than they can process, more reality than they can chew up and spew out.

The Sarah Palin pick was meant to destroy them.

We identify with Sarah Palin. When they spit in her eye, they spit in our eye. And this particular cat fight is not being held in a dark corner of a small town where the politicos and the newsies abide over it like a dark fog, this fight is in the middle of the American national rodeo coursing through channels that are no longer fully controlled.

So, here's the question: can Sarah Palin get out in front of the people often enough? Can she make her natural resonance with us grow strong enough to out-pace the drumbeat against her?

If she can, then the world is changed, and for a very simple reason.
Sarah Palin is a normal, pro-life woman.
Once the nation gets a taste of normal, I don't think we'll settle for any more plastic men.

Correcting Speaker Pelosi

When asked on Aug. 24 edition of Meet the Press, “When does life begin?” Speaker Pelosi replied:

…as an ardent, practicing Catholic, this is an issue that I have studied for a long time. And what I know is, over the centuries, the doctors of the church have not been able to make that definition …. St. Augustine said at three months. We don't know.

Speaker Pelosi is in error. Pagan Roman society used contraception, abortion and infanticide quite freely. Under Roman law, the father of the household had the right to kill any infant in his household for whatever reason he wanted. He could require his wife or concubine to abort. Any child born with a defect, such as the defect of being female, could be abandoned. In theory, the father was placing the child on the road for anyone to pick up. In fact, the children almost uniformly died. Infanticide was so common that we still unearth ancient Roman sewers clogged with the bones of discarded infants. Infanticide and abortion killed so many women that it heavily skewed the sex ratio: Roman society could not reproduce. By the time of Christ, the Roman government was paying families to have children, and was forced to import immigrants from outside the boundaries of Empire in order to fill jobs. The population was unable to replace itself.

Christians were unusual in that they uniformly condemned contraception, abortion and infanticide. In fact, part of the reason Christians were considered wretched heretics is that they rescued exposed children, inventing orphanages to care for them. We knew the image and likeness of God was formed in the mother’s womb. All Christians agreed the fetus had a soul from the earliest moment of existence.

But when it came to contraception or abortion, it didn’t matter to the early Christians how that technical theological question was answered. Precisely because Christians didn’t know which it was, we had to treat the unborn as a fully human being. Making use of either contraception or abortion was acting against God’s life-giving work in the womb.

Thus, in his work On Marriage and Lust, Augustine condemned both abortion and contraception as immoral. St. Basil the Great, writing just a few years before Augustine, puts the ensoulment issue in proper perspective: “The hairsplitting difference between formed and unformed [ensouled and unensouled fetus] makes no difference to us. Whoever deliberately commits abortion is subject to the penalty for homicide.” No early Christian commentator can be found who held a contrary position. The Catholic Church has always known and taught that contraception and procured abortion is gravely evil.

Pelosi: The point is, is that it shouldn't have an impact on the woman's right to choose. Roe v. Wade talks about very clear definitions of [trimesters]...

As a Catholic, Speaker Pelosi should know that no one has a right to choose to kill an innocent person.

Pelosi: And so I don't think anybody can tell you when life begins, human life begins.

Ask any embryologist. Life begins at conception. As George Weigel points out in Newsweek, the widely used medical embryology text, The Developing Human, states: "Human development begins at fertilization when a male gamete or sperm (spermatozoon) unites with a female gamete or oocyte (ovum) to produce a single cell—a zygote. This highly specialized, totipotent cell marked the beginning of each of us as a unique individual." Embryologists specialize in studying the human embryo. While those who specialize in disciplines that do not study the embryo may pretend otherwise, the science of embryology agrees with the Church on this point: life begins at conception.

Question: Doesn’t the Church teach life begins at conception?

Pelosi: This is like maybe 50 years or something like that. So again, over the history of the church, this is an issue of controversy. But it is, it is also true that God has given us, each of us, a free will and a responsibility to answer for our actions. And we want abortions to be safe, rare, and reduce the number of abortions. That's why we have this fight in Congress over contraception. My Republican colleagues do not support contraception. If you want to reduce the number of abortions, and we all do, we must--it would behoove you to support family planning and, and contraception, you would think. But that is not the case.

Speaker Pelosi fails to recognize the reality. As the use of contraception has increased, it has, paradoxically, increased the rate of surgical abortion, just as Pope Paul VI predicted it would. Worse, every hormonal contraceptive acts, in part, by thinning the lining of the uterus, making it impossible for the embryonic child to implant correctly. Thus, every hormonal contraceptive causes chemical abortion.

Even if we discuss only barrier methods, it is the case that the promotion of contraception leads inexorably to more abortions, more STDs, more deaths because it dramatically increases the rate of promiscuity. Uganda, the only country in Africa that has steadily reduced its rate of AIDS infection, did so through a campaign that promoted abstinence. Every other African country promoted condoms. Every other African country saw AIDS increase.

Catholics cannot use or support the use of contraception. Nancy Pelosi is a baptized Catholic. She has a duty to become informed about why the Church teaches as She does on contraception.

Brendan Daly, a spokesman for Pelosi, said in a statement defending [Pelosi’s] remarks that she "fully appreciates the sanctity of family" and based her views on conception on the "views of Saint Augustine, who said, ‘The law does not provide that the act (abortion) pertains to homicide, for there cannot yet be said to be a live soul in a body that lacks sensation.’ "

If Speaker Pelosi had based her views on a full reading of St. Augustine, she would abhor contraception and abortion as intrinsically evil. This is what Augustine said about both:

Sometimes, indeed, this lustful cruelty, or if you please, cruel lust, resorts to such extravagant methods as to use poisonous drugs to secure barrenness; or else, if unsuccessful in this, to destroy the conceived seed by some means previous to birth, preferring that its offspring should rather perish than receive vitality; or if it was advancing to life within the womb, should be slain before it was born. (De Nube et Concupiscentia 1.17 [15])

Brendan Daly implies, and many people believe, that since the Church imposed different penalties for abortion at different periods, the Church has not had a consistent teaching on abortion or contraception.

It is true that Church penalties have varied over time as the Church has tried different methods to wean Her flock away from these enormous evils. In 1588, for example, Pope Sixtus V even tried to discourage abortion by reserving confession and absolution to the Holy See alone, a restriction used for only the most heinous sins. But this proved too impractical, and he soon resumed allowing local bishops the permission to absolve this sin. Today, the sin is so common even priests can absolve it.

By using different penalties for abortion performed prior to the perception of movement in the womb versus abortion performed after the perception of movement in the womb, the Church recognized that a woman who killed the child she felt moving in her womb was acting in an even more wicked manner than someone who had not yet been taught by the movement of life inside her about the sacred gift she carried. Church teaching has been consistent: abortion and contraception are always gravely evil.

So what do you do if you have used or encouraged the use of contraception or abortion? First, make a good confession. Refrain from receiving the Eucharist until you have a chance to receive absolution. Thank God for the gift of repentance, and ask the saints, most especially your guardian angel, to assist you in avoiding this sin in the future. Learn more about the teachings of the Church so that you may grow in holiness before God, our Creator and Father. And praise God always for His goodness and the life He gives us.

*I can create a one-page (back and front) PDF of this and make it available for download if anyone is interested.

Game Over

Well, Joe Biden must be pleased.
There wasn't time for him to torpedo Barack Obama's presidential hopes.
Nancy Pelosi seems to have killed him quite nicely.

There's now a half-dozen Catholic bishops condemning her comments:
Cardinals Rigali and Egan
Archbishops Wuerl and Chaput
Bishop Lori
Auxiliary Bishop James Conley

In addition, Joe Biden's Bishop, Bishop Saltarelli, has forbidden Biden the use of all Catholic facilities:

And Archbishop Chaput has told Biden not to come forward for the Eucharist in Denver archdiocese.

The silence from CNN and Yahoo is deafening, but it doesn't matter now.
Drudge is shooting him full of holes.

Barack Obama is going to get zero bounce out of this convention.
He will have to count himself lucky if he doesn't drop further.


I noticed back in March that Drudge seemed to purposely build Barack Obama up to Hillary's detriment. I couldn't figure out why. Drudge has always been solidly pro-life, and Obama was an active supporter of infanticide.

Now I know why - Drudge knew he could impale Obama on a stick anytime he wanted to.
As the convention approached, he kept ratcheting up the discontent among the Democrats.

And then Pelosi committed hari kari on Meet the Press.

It really isn't Pelosi's fault - someone among the Democrats was going to say something stupid. Pelosi just happened to get there first.

In any case, the Democrats are paying for having chosen Denver instead of San Francisco or Los Angeles. Smart people don't play in their opponent's back yard.

The solid bishops are tired of the games and they're taking the opportunity to cut off pro-abort Catholics at the knees. They've got solid support in the Curia, in the form of Archbishop Burke (who will probably make cardinal before Wuerl does). And when even Archbishop (note: not yet Cardinal) Wuerl piles on, you know the error was egregious.

On a sidenote, Wuerl's entry into the chorus is quite interesting. Bishops of Washington DC are traditionally elevated to the cardinalate, but Wuerl - who publicly said he wasn't going to excommunicate anyone - was pointedly NOT raised to the cardinalate.

Perhaps he has caught a clue and finally figured out that Benedict isn't interested in having cardinals who aren't willing to be crucified. Archbishop Wuerl has to prove himself worthy of the red hat by axing a pro-abort politician. And now that the sharp edge of his halberd has begun to clear the scabbard, the need for public consistency may well keep him interested in paying more attention to this problem.

In any case, the political game is now done.
The Catholic bishops are sniping the candidates in full earnest and this ten full weeks before the election.

Not all Catholics listen to their bishops, but enough will. Pennsylvania is history (note: Archbishop Wuerl's previous post was Bishop of Pittsburgh) - the Catholics who chucked Santorum out on his ear for simply supporting Arlen Specter are certainly not going to hand over to pro-aborts like Biden and Obama. With the solid bishops in full-throated chorus chasing down Catholic pro-abort leaders, and the bishops sympathetic to Obama and co. unwilling to unveil themselves, the Democrats have nowhere to go but down.

Welcome to the White House, President McCain.
Please take a lesson from your opponent's hemorrhage.


Update 8/27/2008:
Another county heard from.
Bishop Ferrell of Dallas has just joined in.

Somehow, I don't think he's going to be the last.

Update 8/28/2008
He wasn't.

Pittsburgh Bishop David Zubik issued a response yesterday afternoon: Pelosi, D-Calif., "stepped out of her political role and completely misrepresented the teaching of the Catholic Church in regard to abortion."

What Must We Do?

Because my company, Bridegroom Press, produces the Calendar of Indulgences every year, I get the following kind of question all the time:

If there is an indulgence attached to a devotional prayer (i.e. Rosary, DMC, Mass,) if one is praying fervently, is he required to ask for the indulgence or is it “automatic”?

Answer:
You only have to have the "general intention" to receive an indulgence.
You don't have to specifically intend to receive the indulgence, but just generally intend it.

What does this mean? As long as you are doing the work in order to draw closer to God or in order to heal the world, then that is sufficient intention to win an indulgence.

You don't have to think "I'm doing an indulgence now" in order to receive it.

Keep in mind, however, that while this "general intention" works well for partial indulgences, the numerous conditions attached to a plenary indulgence would be hard to fulfill without actually thinking about them and "checking them off" one by one, as it were.

It could happen, I suppose, but it would be the unusual Catholic who has the kind of habit of prayer that would normally fulfill all the conditions for a plenary every time they prayed.

On the other hand, you could easily argue that the Church is asking us to build precisely that kind of habit of prayer, and encourages us to do this by giving us the "general intention" condition instead of asking us to have the specific intention.

The conditions for a plenary indulgence:

• Be in a state of grace when doing the work,
• Go to confession within twenty (20) days of the indulgenced act, either before or after. One confession can stand for several indulgences.
• Receive the Eucharist once for each plenary indulgence. It is best to receive on the same day the indulgenced work is perform, but the reception can be on another day if necessary.
• Pray for the Holy Father's intentions - an Our Father and a Hail Mary is generally sufficient.
• Have no attachment to sin, even the most venial. People think this is the most difficult condition, but it isn't as bad as it sounds. We aren't expected to be immune from concupiscence. After all, even baptism doesn't wash away concupiscence, so it would be ridiculous to expect us to have no concupiscence in order to win a plenary. A movement of the flesh to desire something is not the same as attachment to sin. In order to have no attachment to sin, an act of the will is sufficient, e.g., praying, "Lord, I do not desire anything or anyone except Yourself" or "Lord, I reject all sin and all attachment to the things of this world; I cling to the things of heaven, most especially the Beauty and Glory of Yourself."
• Only one plenary indulgence may be won each day, but there is no limit to the number of partial indulgences which may be won on any given day.
  

So, if you habitually go to confession about once a month, avoid serious sin, attend daily Mass and receive the Eucharist, routinely pray for the intentions of the Holy Father, and routinely make an act of the will to reject the world and accept only God, then you are probably winning indulgences left and right and don't even know it.

If not, then you will probably need the specific intention in order to win the plenary. On the bright side, whenever we fail to fulfill all the conditions for a plenary, we get a partial instead.

Why Joel Osteen Can Be President

This from a friend of mine who is brilliant:

I tell you this because it's fun to watch your head explode.

So, I never got to see any of the debates during primary season--I was busy. I've only now begun to catch Obama's rhetoric as his commercials begin to air. And I have realized something: Catholics will vote for Obama, and they will do so en masse, so to speak. Why? Because his "We are the people we've been waiting for" spiel is the exact same thing Catholics have been hearing from their hymnals every Sunday at least during my lifetime (and possibly yours). "I myself am the Bread of Life." "Christ has no hands but yours." "Let us build the city of God." Etc.

Worse yet, we've got so many Protestant hymns in the book now that subtly preach the "You've accepted Jesus as your lord and savior--Bob, tell him what he's won!" Gospel of Fabulosity. "I know that my redeemer lives, and he's up in Heaven getting me the goods." "I know that my Obama is in the White House, getting me change I can believe in." They won't vote for him because he's pro-choice. They won't vote for him because he's inexperienced and lacks substance (although some will vote for him because they think he has substance and they can't stomach McCain). No, they will vote for him because his campaign prayers are the same as their hymns, and what we're all lex orandi-ing, we're all lex credendi-ing, right? They will vote for him because, as far as they can tell, he shares their basic beliefs.

We are in deep trouble. And I have just realized why the Liturgy Wars matter.

Kate

Vocations

I recently had a conversation with a relative about vocations, specifically about losing vocations. She had definite opinions concerning the lifestyle of a man or a woman discerning a vocation to the priesthood or the religious life.

According to her theory, anyone who may have been dating or otherwise romantically interested in the person undergoing discernment should immediately cut off all contact with the one doing the discernment. Discernment requires solitude, prayer, spiritual direction. The things of the world distract from spiritual pursuits and interfere with the process of discernment.

Allowing these things in is precisely how vocations are lost, she said.

I disagreed.

Someone who is undergoing discernment about their proper state in life should certainly undertake experiences of solitude, constantly pray, and follow spiritual direction, sure.

But isn't marriage a vocation? Isn't that worthy of discernment as well?

In fact, isn't it possible that the insistence on shutting out conversations with the romantically interested is also a way of shutting down, a way of losing, a real vocation?

After all, what if the person undertaking discernment really is supposed to marry? Isn't continuing conversation with the future spouse likely to help bring out that vocation?

In centuries past, when nearly everyone either married or entered some kind of religious orders, there may have been some valid concerns about the need to avoid the call of marriage so as to better hear the call of orders.

But today, as marriage rates drop across the board pretty much everywhere in the world, is this still the right way to look at it?

Today, the marriage vocation is in as much danger as holy orders or religious orders. It is often pointed out that upwards of one in every four people living in medieval Europe were in some religious order. Read Chaucer's Canterbury Tales to see how well the orders fared during that period. One may argue the veracity of the popular perception, but the perception was precisely that religious orders were rife with drunken and fornicating monks and nuns.

Has it ever occurred to anyone that it is possible far too many vocations to marriage were lost during that period? After all, living the consecrated life of a religious order is laudable but it is not, by itself, a means of sanctifying grace. It is not a sacrament. Only the sacraments bring sanctifying grace, and living out marriage is a sacrament. Living in a monastery is not.

While Holy Orders is likewise a sacrament, it is not the first sacrament. Marriage is. The Eucharist is the heart of the sacramental life, but marriage is the form and foundation of that life.

In the order of sacraments, marriage came first. Through its fecundity holy orders are filled, through its example, monastic life takes its measure. It is the only sacrament called a sacrament in all of Scripture (Ephesians 5: "I speak of a great mystery..." - the word mysterion translates into Latin as sacramentum).

So should seminarians have conversations with women not their mothers or sisters while they are discerning their vocation, before they or ordained to transitional deacon?**

I don't see why not.

A seminarian who is talking with an old girlfriend, and through those conversations decides to become a husband and a father instead of a priest and a father is not "a lost vocation." The woman who woos him is not to be attacked for doing so.

It isn't a question of "losing a vocation", rather, it's a question of discerning the right vocation. For we must remember, both Holy Orders and Holy Matrimony are vocations.

He didn't lose his vocation.
He found it.


**After ordination, of course, the situation changes radically.

I'm voting for McCain

I absolutely hated the thought of voting for McCain.
I hated the thought of Obama worse.

But now that I've seen this, John McCain has got my vote.

Bianca Jagger?

Alright, I don't normally just link to other blogs, but this is incredible.

Bianca Jagger is petitioning in favor of the Latin Mass.

Yes, that's right.

The former wife of Mick Jagger.

Rather takes one's breath away, doesn't it?

War in a Cracker Box.

Last week, as my Friday radio show ended, I was discussing church architecture with my co-host and boss, Dave Palmer.

As we discussed how beautiful the old churches were, Dave mentioned that some of his friends found the Gregorian Mass boring because there were long stretches of complete silence, and they didn't know what to do during those long silences.

I thought, "Well, if you're in a beautiful church with lots of artwork, you contemplate the beauty of God."
But then I thought about our modern cracker-box churches.

They have no artwork, because they have no silences.
There's nothing to contemplate and no time to do it if you wanted to.

The Novus Ordo liturgy keeps us "busy" while the Gregorian rite does not.
The Gregorian rite architectures are "busy" while the Novus Ordo architectures are not.
The two rites show radically different understandings of what it means to actively participate in the liturgy.

The Gregorian rite expects you to be intellectually/spiritually active.
The Novus Ordo rite expects you to be physically/spiritually active.

Both kinds of activity can lead to spiritual engagement, but because they are ontologically different kinds of activity, they create very different kinds of spirituality.

We know the Church is hierarchical as is pretty much every aspect of her life.
So, the question is, is one kind of spirituality superior to another?
The Church has always held the contemplative life as the highest form of spiritual life.
But, the Benedictine motto is "work and pray", and Benedict's rule undergirds most of the Church's monastic life, so it isn't like physical and contemplative life are necessarily opposed.

I know the Novus Ordo is pretty screwed up, but I'm not entirely convinced that the Gregorian Mass has the solution to all liturgical problems.
After all, historically speaking, nearly all the heretics the Church has ever fought celebrated the Gregorian Mass in drop-dead beautiful churches.
Yeah, we have a lot of heretics today as well, but I'm not sure we wouldn't be in essentially the same boat even if we'd never had the Novus Ordo or cracker box churches.

If we have to have heretics, though, I would personally rather fight them from a Gothic cathedral with Gregorian chant than do so from a cracker box with Marty Haugen.