Nineteen years ago, President George H.W. Bush put everything aside to call personally numerous conservative and pro-life leaders around the country. That he lavished such attention on them was unusual, but Bush had campaigned vigorously as a pro-life candidate to succeed President Ronald Reagan in 1988, and the retirement of Justice William Brennan gave him his first opportunity to fill a seat on the Supreme Court.
The fact that it was Brennan’s seat conferred a special significance on the vacancy. After all, Dwight Eisenhower had appointed Brennan by mistake, one which he later lamented. Early in Ike’s first term, his Attorney General, Herbert Brownell, had seen Brennan give a speech to a legal convention. Brownell came back to Washington and told Ike that Brennan was quite a conservative. The only problem: Brownell did not know at the time that speechmaker Brennan was standing in for New Jersey Supreme Court Chief Justice Vanderbilt, who was ill – and that Brennan was reading the text that had been written by Vanderbilt. Ike was looking for a conservative Irish Democrat to help him in the 1956 election, so Brennan got the nod.
Brennan was one of eight children of Irish Catholic immigrants, but he became an ardent champion of abortion – and an effective advocate of Roe v Wade, in which he voted with the majority. Curiously, when he died in 1997, his funeral was not held in his home diocese of Arlington, Virginia. Instead, in spite of protests of chagrin and outrage from the laity, the Archdiocese of Washington allowed him a Catholic burial, and Brennan’s funeral took place in Saint Matthew’s Cathedral in Washington.
Justice David Souter delivered the eulogy.
“Trust Me”
When Brennan retired, pro-lifers naturally expected President Bush to keep his word and nominate a strict constructionist to the court. That’s why Bush was busily making passionate calls all over the country. “Trust me on this one,” he repeatedly told conservative leaders. Alas, most of them did, some in spite of their better judgment, others ignoring danger signals like the strong support for Souter shown by his friend from New Hampshire, the notoriously pro-abortion Senator Warren Rudman. In the Senate Republican cloakroom, Rudman assured Senators Grassley (R – Ia.) and Helms (R – N.C.), “Chuck, Jesse, David Souter is just as conservative as you are.” (It is clear now that Rudman was either very dumb or a liar. Over the years before and since, he has paraded around Washington, invariably acting as though he were the smartest guy in the room. Draw your own conclusions). Meanwhile, Edith Jones, a young, brilliant, and constitutional judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, was waiting in the wings as the most solid conservative choice. But Bush’s chief of Staff, John Sununu, was also from New Hampshire. Ignorant in principle but a skilled tactician, he successfully short-circuited the selection process, with crafty assistance from Rudman, and Souter got the nod.
Enter Howard Phillips, founder and longtime president of the Conservative Caucus. Phillips had battle-tested experience with faux conservatives in Republican administrations who put the stiletto in the back of constitutional initiatives at the critical moment. Their number is legion. And so he alone, of all the conservative and pro-life leaders who had worked so closely and loyally with President Reagan, took the bull by the horns and went to the Senate Judiciary Committee to testify in opposition to Souter’s confirmation.
If He Walks Like A Duck …
It required a sense of bravery, as well as conviction, for Phillips to make his case. After all, the National Organization of Women had testified against Souter the day before, because Souter’s support of abortion was not sufficiently brazen for them. Furthermore, Phillips knew that this was the very same committee, still dominated by Democrats and chaired by Joe Biden, that had savaged Judge Robert Bork when President Reagan nominated him to the Supreme Court in 1987. (Pennsylvania Republican, now Democrat, Senator Arlen Specter was indispensable in that assault).
Phillips began his testimony where he always has in the forty years and more that I have known and admired him: “The Declaration of Independence asserted that ‘we are endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights,’” he told the committee, “and that, ‘among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’ The Declaration rested on the assumption that there exists ‘the laws of nature and of nature’s God,’” he continued. “Our law system is necessarily rooted in and legitimated by that fundamental recognition of higher authority.”
Based on that bedrock preamble of principle (after all, the truths that Mr. Phillips cited are supposed to be “self-evident”), Phillips zeroed in on the critical issue:
“One moment of truth for Mr. Souter came in February 1973, when, as a member of the board of trustees of Concord Hospital, he participated in a unanimous decision that abortions be performed at that hospital,” Phillips recounted. “It is one thing to intellectually rationalize the case for permitting legal abortions, while still opposing the exercise of such legal authority. It is quite another—something far more invidious, morally—to actually join in a real world decision to cause abortions to be performed, routinely, at a particular hospital.”
For Souter, The Self-evident Truth Isn’t True
But didn’t Roe v. Wade, issued just the month before Souter’s assent to abortions in the Concord Hospital vote, require him to “follow the law”? No way, said Phillips:
“Those abortions whose performance was authorized by David Souter were not mandated by law or court opinion. In fact, laws have remained to this day [1990, 17 years later] on the books in New Hampshire which provide criminal penalties for any ‘attempt to procure miscarriage’ or ‘intent to destroy quick child.’ Indeed, section 585:14 of the New Hampshire Criminal Code establishes the charge of second degree murder for the death of a pregnant woman in consequence of an attempted abortion. Nor were those abortions which Mr. Souter authorized performed merely to save the life of the mother, nor were they limited to cases of rape or incest.”
But might Souter’s Concord vote just have been an isolated mistake? No way. “Similarly, Dartmouth Hitchcock Hospital, which is associated with the Dartmouth Medical School, of which Judge Souter has been an overseer, has performed abortions up to the end of the second trimester,” Phillips testified.
The inescapable verdict? “One must conclude that either Mr. Souter accepts the view that the life of the unborn child is of less value than the convenience and profit of those who collaborate in the killing of that child, or that, despite his recognition of the fact that each unborn child is human, a handiwork of God’s creation, he lacked the moral courage or discernment to help prevent the destruction of so many innocent human lives, when he had the authority, indeed the responsibility, to do so.”
In an ironic and ultimately malevolent way, the pro-abortion committee members were probably heartened by Mr. Phillips’s testimony. Yesterday’s confused and wayward harridans of NOW could not be sure that Souter was their man, but Mr. Phillips’s precise, logical presentation made that conclusion inescapable.
In the years since Roe v. Wade, support for abortion has been demanded of virtually every Democrat: now they are solidly entrenched throughout the government. Self-evident truths have not swayed them. Prayer can. “In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33)
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
It Hurts To Talk About It
Torture Hurts
Like a master jeweler who carefully studies the crystalline structure before cutting a beautiful diamond, Obama is applying stress to all the Republican fault lines. Meanwhile, the GOP “leadership” flops on the beach, supine, incapable of resuscitation, and all too willingly cooperating with its own vivisection.
Obama’s jiu jitsu is magnificent. Here we have the Democrats, notoriously and publicly advocating free abortion worldwide and free euthanasia as the calling card of government health care at home. Yet they have maneuvered events so that the Republicans are defending torture. But wait – can’t honest people differ? Well, that doesn’t matter, because the discussion we’re getting isn’t honest. It hardly touches on morality – in fact, it often mimics sheer buffoonery.
Now comes Dick Cheney, who was even more unpopular than George Bush as their second term ended, insisting that torture works, and demanding that secret documents be declassified to prove it! Torture is a sure loser for the dwindling number of Republicans still in office, but Cheney doesn’t care. Trotting Cheney out now is the kiss of death, so Democrats naturally welcome his histrionics. He is playing into Obama’s hands.
Republicans have by default allowed Obama to orchestrate an exquisite array of threatening scenarios – torture hearings run by Democrats? Special prosecutors? Perhaps a blue-ribbon torture commission? Meanwhile, Republicans are stuck defending the very Bush policies that destroyed their old majorities, when they should be busy building new ones. They hurl the usual catcalls – “witch-hunt” and “partisan politics” -- but all the public notices is desperate Republicans defending torture.
Last winter, George Bush told an interviewer that he hadn’t admitted mistakes during his presidency because it might have demoralized his people in a time of war. Well, could conservatives be any more demoralized than they are today? Maybe it’s time for the GOP to admit its mistakes after all. Conservatives should certainly admit the mistakes of those leaders we supported, for good or ill. But why do so many resist?
Conservatives are, well -- conservative. They seldom change their spots – or their leadership. Remember how Bill Clinton was on the ropes in 1996 and the GOP ran – Bob Dole? The groans in the Republican cloakroom were audible: “Well, it’s Bob’s turn,” the gloomy senators would mutter, shaking their heads. In 2000, the GOP went looking for a non-Clinton, and chose the scion of the very family that had betrayed Reaganism when it took over the White House in 1989. Again in 2008, the party went with another war-horse, John McCain, who split what was left of the coalition instead of uniting it. Admit mistakes? Get real. During the primaries, no Republican but Ron Paul would even mention George Bush, much less own up to his mistakes.
For years, many conservatives just couldn’t bring themselves to criticize President Bush when he was being unconservative. It wasn’t long ago that one David Keene, a long-time conservative operative and Beltway trough-dweller, threatened to fire Don Devine, who had been a high-ranking Reagan official, because Devine had the temerity to criticize Bush to columnist Robert Novak. Would Keene do so today, or would he finally be willing to face reality? No one knows -- and that ambivalence plagues the entire “conservative movement.” It represents the conflict between nostalgia and loyalty, on the one hand, and timeless principle, on the other.
And there’s an element of pride involved too. Some key Bush supporters have changed their mind, but it wasn’t easy. Ken Adelman, famous for predicting a “cakewalk” in Iraq, later turned savagely on Bush and Cheney as the war dragged on (they always blame somebody else). But true conservatives also bear a burden. Being betrayed by someone you trust is a humbling, often bitter experience. The long and short of it is that Obama has diagnosed this infirmity in the GOP and is making the most of it. Meanwhile, what he is bringing about has, in the past, been called a variety of names – fascism, national socialism, social democracy, democratic socialism – but whatever history calls it, it is bad news, and Republicans are powerless to stop it. The fault lies not in their stars, but in themselves. If the Barry Goldwater of 1960 reappeared on the scene today, the GOP would probably run him out of town.
“Catholics For Torture”?
Catholics believe in admitting our mistakes – we have to: why else do we go to Confession? But the torture fiasco has made troubling ripples in Catholic ranks. Perhaps it was predictable, but it is nonetheless deplorable. Karl Rove, President Bush’s political director, was very skilled technically, but principles were not his strong point. Early on, he put together several ethnic and religious coalitions -- of Jews, of Catholics, and of Evangelicals, among others – and smothered his selected leaders with face-time in the Oval Office and other political lollipops. As George Bush changed from an advocate of a humble foreign policy in 2000 to a crusader for international wars to bring democracy to the world in 2004, Rove expertly kept his lapdog Catholic and Christian “leadership” groups in line. Seldom did they complain publicly about the plight of Christians in the Middle East, abut the martyrdom of Catholic priests and prelates in Iraq, or the devastation of Christian Nazareth and Bethlehem in Israel. They defended Bush down the line.
In recent weeks a considerable amount of evidence has emerged about the U.S. government’s use of torture during the past eight years. Even now, however, a rump core of Bush supporters nonetheless continue to defend his policies, including torture. This is not surprising, since a lot of careers are at stake, a lot of prestige, and, frankly, a lot of money. Maybe some of them really believe in torture. But what is distressing is the Catholics! A dwindling coterie of Catholics who stuck with Bush through thick and thin now find themselves trying to justify not only Bush, but torture! Suddenly torture is becoming an ingredient of Catholic “Just War” theory. Permissible in wartime only, of course – but wait: didn’t Dick Cheney say that the Global War on Terror would last through the lives of our grandchildren?
Meanwhile, as Americans are subjected to the public spectacle of these wayward Catholic Republican “leaders,” they might unfortunately have good reason to wonder, “if Republicans aren’t even serious about torture, are they really serious about abortion? Maybe those ‘Catholics for Obama’ were right after all.”
Black Eye For The Irish
One of those Catholics dazzled by Obama just got run over by reality. Father John Jenkins, C.S.C., thought he could use an award for a pro-life leader as cover for inviting Obama to Notre Dame’s graduation on May 17, but former Ambassador to the Holy See Mary Ann Glendon wasn’t buying. After being told she was to receive the prestigious Laetare Medal, Glendon learned that Notre Dame was trumpeting her appearance as a “balance” to Obama. No sale.
Admittedly, I was hoping that Glendon’s address at Notre Dame might have been as excruciating for Obama as Mother Teresa’s address to the National Prayer breakfast was for Bill and Hillary many years ago. But she did not like the odds: “"It is not the right place, nor is a brief acceptance speech the right vehicle, for engagement with the very serious problems raised by Notre Dames decision,” she wrote.
Jenkins has received hundreds of thousands of protests against the invitation, but this is the one that is most likely to help him come to his senses.
California Beauty, Notre Dame - Not
Pin The Tail On The Bigot
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty”
John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn
When the Culture of Death attacks the Catholic Faith, it attacks all of it. That every spear-carrier in the cultural death squads has his assignment was recently demonstrated in – of all places -- the recent Miss USA pageant.
Precedent does not encourage us to expect much of such endeavors. In 2007, a Miss Teen South Carolina was asked why some American schoolchildren could not locate the United States on a world map. Blonde Caitlin Upton was clueless, and came unglued:
I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because, uh, some people out there in our nation don't have maps, and, uh, I believe that our education like such as in South Africa and, uh, the Iraq everywhere like, such as and I believe that they should, our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S., er, should help South Africa and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries, so we will be able to build up our future for our children.
But they’re not all ditzes. In 2009 Miss California, Carrie Prejean was on track to win Miss USA until a judge noticed that she attended San Diego Christian College. So he asked her, ““Vermont recently became the fourth state to legalize same-sex marriage. Do you think every state should follow suit. Why or why not?”
Prejean did not fall prey to the South Carolina syndrome. Her answer was direct: “In my family, I think that … a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anybody out there, but that’s how I was raised and that’s how I think it should be -- between a man and a woman.”
Little did Miss Prejean know that her questioner was a “celebrity blogger.” In California that apparently means flaming homosexual -- in this case a Mr. Perez Hilton. And Hilton wasn’t Carrie’s only problem on the five-judge panel. “Holly Madison” is a Playboy bunny. Another judge, Alicia Jacobs, later admitted that Prejean would have won if she hadn’t forgotten that “at least two people on the judges panel are openly gay. Another judge has a sister in a gay marriage. Her very own state pageant director, Keith Lewis is an openly gay man.”
Phew! Well, Mr. Hilton later observed that Prejean’s answer had “offended millions of Americans,” so naturally MSNBC and CNN immediately invited him to pontificate further on her bigotry. He obliged, calling her a “dumb b***,” asserting that she had “half a brain,” and said he “would have stormed onto the stage and ripped off her tiara if she had won.” He topped off assorted vulgarities with this: “I don’t want her talking about Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, because that's offensive.”
After “celebrity” Perez’s performance, the “gay rights” crowd cheered him as a hero. Which brings to mind a few timely truths. First, Satan hates truth and beauty. Perez’s foul-mouthed “justifications” are reminiscent of the vile epithets channeled by the demon in The Exorcist through the possessed Regan MacNeil. Secondly, homosexuals are unusually violent in their relationships, according to medical personnel in gay communities; they are also petty and vindictive. This is not a “homophobic” observation, but a clinical acknowledgement of reality that Catholics (including bishops, alas) need to understand when confronting the “gay rights” crowd. One must bear in mind that, like other intrinsic evils that the bishops address with more frequency, sodomy has profound consequences. Third, “gays” are rank cowards. Perez later insisted that “Yes, I do expect Miss USA to be politically correct.” But Miss Prejean sees it differently. She told the Today show that “it's not about being politically correct; for me it was being biblically correct.”
Miss Prejean’s sentences more than parse. She is just the kind of woman that homosexuals hate: smart, beautiful, talented, grounded, and Christian. Perez’s routine is just the latest national outburst of gay cowardice. Miss Prejean, on the other hand, stood her ground. “This happened for a reason,” she said after the contest. “By having to answer that question in front of a national audience, God was testing my character and faith. I'm glad I stayed true to myself.”
Another Looming Threat Awaits The Bishops
As a generation of pro-abortion politicians who were raised Catholic approach old age, the prospect of death – memento mori! – rears its ugly head. And therewith arises a question that vexes even the most prudent prelate: where do we bury these people?
This is not a merely hypothetical question. Back when Joe Biden was running for president in 1988, he was lifting weights in the Senate gym and thought he had pulled a muscle. Fortuitously, his doctor discovered that Biden had suffered a near-fatal injury and was able to save him in the nick of time. Ditto Teddy Kennedy, who escaped an untimely death not once but twice – first, when Indiana Senator Birch Bayh pulled him from a fatal plane wreck in the wilds of Alaska in 1964, and then five years later, when Kennedy managed to free himself from a sinking automobile and make it safely ashore after a tragic accident in Massachusetts.
So the grim reaper haunts us all – and, when the roll is finally called up yonder for all the Catholic pro-aborts, what will the bishops do to -- shall we say -- address the question of the disposition of their remains?
Canon Law is clear on the subject: “Church funeral rites are to be denied to the following, unless they have given some sign of repentance … Apostates, heretics schismatics … [and] Other manifest sinners to whom a church funeral could not be granted without public scandal to the faithful.” [1184.1, .3].
On the one hand, public supporters of the “intrinsic evil” of abortion [USCCB, Faithful Citizenship, 2007] are certainly “manifest sinners to whom a church funeral could not be granted without public scandal to the faithful.”(Please note that the 1983 Code of Canon Law prudently adds the helpful phrase, “to the faithful” in order to distinguish Catholics who embrace the Magisterium from the editorial board of the New York Times, or the panel of judges at the Miss USA contest).
On the other hand, the death of some of these political luminaries might occasion a funeral so grandiose that bishops will be fighting for seats in the bleachers.
What to do? Again, we turn to Canon Law. “If any doubt occurs, the local ordinary is to be consulted and his judgment followed.” [1184.2].
Well, I think we’d all agree that that makes it perfectly clear.
Not Exactly Henry At Canossa
Notre Dame’s spokesman admits that the university owns its own jet, but assures me that University president John Jenkins, C.S.C., did not use it to fly to Washington on April 21 to meet with Obama at the White House. Rather, Fr. Jenkins was in town for a “development” meeting. However, other developments are not so innocuous. Bishop John M. D’Arcy, in whose Indiana diocese Notre Dame is located, has written a stern letter admonishing Father Jenkins to correct the errors which Fr. Jenkins distributed to the public regarding his justification for the invitation of Obama to the university’s commencement exercises. Moreover, the good bishop chides Fr. Jenkins for a “serious mistake” – specifically, in extending the invitation, Jenkins “fail[ed] to consult the local bishop who, whatever his unworthiness, is the teacher and law-giver in the diocese.”
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty”
John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn
When the Culture of Death attacks the Catholic Faith, it attacks all of it. That every spear-carrier in the cultural death squads has his assignment was recently demonstrated in – of all places -- the recent Miss USA pageant.
Precedent does not encourage us to expect much of such endeavors. In 2007, a Miss Teen South Carolina was asked why some American schoolchildren could not locate the United States on a world map. Blonde Caitlin Upton was clueless, and came unglued:
I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because, uh, some people out there in our nation don't have maps, and, uh, I believe that our education like such as in South Africa and, uh, the Iraq everywhere like, such as and I believe that they should, our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S., er, should help South Africa and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries, so we will be able to build up our future for our children.
But they’re not all ditzes. In 2009 Miss California, Carrie Prejean was on track to win Miss USA until a judge noticed that she attended San Diego Christian College. So he asked her, ““Vermont recently became the fourth state to legalize same-sex marriage. Do you think every state should follow suit. Why or why not?”
Prejean did not fall prey to the South Carolina syndrome. Her answer was direct: “In my family, I think that … a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anybody out there, but that’s how I was raised and that’s how I think it should be -- between a man and a woman.”
Little did Miss Prejean know that her questioner was a “celebrity blogger.” In California that apparently means flaming homosexual -- in this case a Mr. Perez Hilton. And Hilton wasn’t Carrie’s only problem on the five-judge panel. “Holly Madison” is a Playboy bunny. Another judge, Alicia Jacobs, later admitted that Prejean would have won if she hadn’t forgotten that “at least two people on the judges panel are openly gay. Another judge has a sister in a gay marriage. Her very own state pageant director, Keith Lewis is an openly gay man.”
Phew! Well, Mr. Hilton later observed that Prejean’s answer had “offended millions of Americans,” so naturally MSNBC and CNN immediately invited him to pontificate further on her bigotry. He obliged, calling her a “dumb b***,” asserting that she had “half a brain,” and said he “would have stormed onto the stage and ripped off her tiara if she had won.” He topped off assorted vulgarities with this: “I don’t want her talking about Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, because that's offensive.”
After “celebrity” Perez’s performance, the “gay rights” crowd cheered him as a hero. Which brings to mind a few timely truths. First, Satan hates truth and beauty. Perez’s foul-mouthed “justifications” are reminiscent of the vile epithets channeled by the demon in The Exorcist through the possessed Regan MacNeil. Secondly, homosexuals are unusually violent in their relationships, according to medical personnel in gay communities; they are also petty and vindictive. This is not a “homophobic” observation, but a clinical acknowledgement of reality that Catholics (including bishops, alas) need to understand when confronting the “gay rights” crowd. One must bear in mind that, like other intrinsic evils that the bishops address with more frequency, sodomy has profound consequences. Third, “gays” are rank cowards. Perez later insisted that “Yes, I do expect Miss USA to be politically correct.” But Miss Prejean sees it differently. She told the Today show that “it's not about being politically correct; for me it was being biblically correct.”
Miss Prejean’s sentences more than parse. She is just the kind of woman that homosexuals hate: smart, beautiful, talented, grounded, and Christian. Perez’s routine is just the latest national outburst of gay cowardice. Miss Prejean, on the other hand, stood her ground. “This happened for a reason,” she said after the contest. “By having to answer that question in front of a national audience, God was testing my character and faith. I'm glad I stayed true to myself.”
Another Looming Threat Awaits The Bishops
As a generation of pro-abortion politicians who were raised Catholic approach old age, the prospect of death – memento mori! – rears its ugly head. And therewith arises a question that vexes even the most prudent prelate: where do we bury these people?
This is not a merely hypothetical question. Back when Joe Biden was running for president in 1988, he was lifting weights in the Senate gym and thought he had pulled a muscle. Fortuitously, his doctor discovered that Biden had suffered a near-fatal injury and was able to save him in the nick of time. Ditto Teddy Kennedy, who escaped an untimely death not once but twice – first, when Indiana Senator Birch Bayh pulled him from a fatal plane wreck in the wilds of Alaska in 1964, and then five years later, when Kennedy managed to free himself from a sinking automobile and make it safely ashore after a tragic accident in Massachusetts.
So the grim reaper haunts us all – and, when the roll is finally called up yonder for all the Catholic pro-aborts, what will the bishops do to -- shall we say -- address the question of the disposition of their remains?
Canon Law is clear on the subject: “Church funeral rites are to be denied to the following, unless they have given some sign of repentance … Apostates, heretics schismatics … [and] Other manifest sinners to whom a church funeral could not be granted without public scandal to the faithful.” [1184.1, .3].
On the one hand, public supporters of the “intrinsic evil” of abortion [USCCB, Faithful Citizenship, 2007] are certainly “manifest sinners to whom a church funeral could not be granted without public scandal to the faithful.”(Please note that the 1983 Code of Canon Law prudently adds the helpful phrase, “to the faithful” in order to distinguish Catholics who embrace the Magisterium from the editorial board of the New York Times, or the panel of judges at the Miss USA contest).
On the other hand, the death of some of these political luminaries might occasion a funeral so grandiose that bishops will be fighting for seats in the bleachers.
What to do? Again, we turn to Canon Law. “If any doubt occurs, the local ordinary is to be consulted and his judgment followed.” [1184.2].
Well, I think we’d all agree that that makes it perfectly clear.
Not Exactly Henry At Canossa
Notre Dame’s spokesman admits that the university owns its own jet, but assures me that University president John Jenkins, C.S.C., did not use it to fly to Washington on April 21 to meet with Obama at the White House. Rather, Fr. Jenkins was in town for a “development” meeting. However, other developments are not so innocuous. Bishop John M. D’Arcy, in whose Indiana diocese Notre Dame is located, has written a stern letter admonishing Father Jenkins to correct the errors which Fr. Jenkins distributed to the public regarding his justification for the invitation of Obama to the university’s commencement exercises. Moreover, the good bishop chides Fr. Jenkins for a “serious mistake” – specifically, in extending the invitation, Jenkins “fail[ed] to consult the local bishop who, whatever his unworthiness, is the teacher and law-giver in the diocese.”
Monday, May 4, 2009
Faith Of Our Fathers
Is The Faith Of Our Fathers Not Ours?
On his recent trip to Europe, Barack Obama boasted to Turkish President Abdullah Gul that “one of the great strengths of the United States [is that ] …we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation, a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation. We consider ourselves a nation of citizens.”
For Obama, speaking for all of us in the Jacobin language of the French Revolution, Americans are merely creatures of the state. But is he right? Enter Dr. John Howard, decorated veteran of World War II, longtime college president, and one of the first American cultural critics who rallied to defend the family as a key to the survival of a free society when the traditional, natural family first came under attack over thirty years ago.
The enemies of the family have mounted a second front attacking Christianity, an attack in which Obama serves as a powerful adjutant. To dispel Obama’s pathetic obituary of a Christian America, Dr. Howard has responded with an important book whose title is as clear and forthright as its author: Christianity: Lifeblood of America’s Free Society (1620-1945) [Summit Press: (719) 685-9103, www.summit.org). With a keen eye for the golden thread that binds our freedoms, Dr. Howard illuminates the Christian preambles that are indispensable to American liberty. From the first words of the Mayflower Compact – “In the Name of God. Amen,” America has been a religious nation, a fact confirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1892. And whatever religious faith that individual Americans might profess, it is Christianity that supplied the vital traditions, principles, and “Self-Evident Truths” without which we would be not only a nation of mere citizens, but a nation of sheep.
Dr. Howard’s little gem offers a clear and concise roadmap of our liberties since Plymouth Rock. It reflects years of wisdom and research, unearthing countless pearls of Christian wisdom long ignored by secular historians. The frosting on the cake are the wonderful quotes from each period that Dr. Howard has assembled at the end of each chapter. It is a bright light in a dark landscape, and is an especially commendable resource for home-schooling families.
Ruminations Amidst the Ruins
As the country sinks into a socialist swoon, liberal commentators are having a field day laughing at Republicans. The party is in disarray, its is floundering, it is hypocritical, it is bereft of principles, it is bereft of leaders and leadership – in brief, it is in ruins. Their conclusion? Obama gets to do whatever he wants.
Now the liberals have good reason to distract us from their malevolent crowd behind the curtain. Their two most prominent governors have been forced from office for malfeasance. The scandals in the Obama Administration are quickly acquiring Clintonian proportions, with a cavalier attitude (“We don’t have to pay taxes because we’re raising yours!”) as brazen as that of an entrenched tinhorn dictator. Moreover, Obama has betrayed millions of his antiwar supporters without whom he would never have been nominated, much less elected. And, lest we forget, he has betrayed those credulous Catholics who thought (or pretended to think) that he really meant it when he said he wanted to reduce abortions.
Obama’s approach is matter-of-fact: the unborn cannot vote. The aborted never will. But his Peanut Gallery nonetheless realizes that the best defense is a good offense, so they raise the cry defending his spending against his Republican critics: “So’s yer old man!”
Long ago, when clocks had hands and went “tick-tock,” we had a saying: “Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.” And once in a blue moon (that was another oldie but goodie), the liberals, whose clock stopped long ago in the mire of smug collectivism, stumble onto truth. And right now, unfortunately, they are correct about the GOP.
This liberal epiphany should not surprise us. For centuries, the method of leftism has been the “total critique” – the destruction (these days termed “deconstruction”) of history, tradition, and truth under the withering fire of ideological scrutiny. Karl Marx was a hopeless ideologue, to be sure, but he also rendered brilliant sociological observations (his description of society as a beehive in Das Kapital is a revelatory case in point). Liberals are often very good at moralizing. It’s the morals that fail them.
So it is painful for conservatives to watch the Left mock Republicans – accurately -- for their profligate spending during the Bush years. But then follows the granddaddy of non sequiturs – that we therefore have no grounds on which to object to the wholesale bankrupting of the country by Obamanomics.
Republicans are slowly coming around. Even the once-revered Heritage Foundation is awakening from its eight-year slumber, sponsoring a colloquium entitled “Getting Off Track: How Government Actions and Interventions Caused, Prolonged, and Worsened the Financial Crisis.” The day will undoubtedly come when Heritage is willing to have the same conversation about foreign interventions. After that sobering conversation, the GOP might have a shot at revival.
Even George Bush finally admitted his role in destroying the GOP’s congressional majorities. Last winter he recounted that he had been besieged by congressional Republicans in 2006 to announce the drawdown of the unpopular war in Iraq. He refused, and the Democrats swept into power on Capitol Hill that year and ruined pro-lifers’ hopes for dozens of appointments to the federal courts. By 2008, Bush’s administration was so drained of principle that it embraced the trillion-dollar bailouts that Obama has been glad to perpetuate and to enlarge. Thus, the GOP gave the Left all the ammunition it needed to needle Republicans endlessly.
A Lesson For Conservatives and Pro-Lifers
If there is a primordial lesson here for conservatives and pro-lifers amidst the ruins, it is this: we should never again abandon our principles to please or to promote the fortunes of a political party or personality. It is only the truth that will make us free. Look at Congressman Ron Paul: he was the only Republican in the 2008 primaries who was willing publicly to criticize President Bush. Had John McCain stopped rolling his eyes long enough to embrace Dr. Paul’s criticism of the Federal Reserve (forget his support of the crazed Armageddonites), McCain would be president today.
During the Bush years, The Wanderer often observed that profligacy at home and Wilsonian Wars abroad would bring in their wake collapse and calamity. Some Catholic neocons who had found favor with Bush – recruited by Karl Rove and masterfully stroked in Oval Office love-fests – resented that realism and said as much. Truth be told, they had, to put it bluntly, allowed their principles to be drowned by the cult of personality. Today the wreckage wrought by their misguided zeal now surrounds us all.
Unlike the Catholics they manipulated, the core neocons – that is, the secular leftists of the 60s who later became anti-Communists but not conservatives -- are consistently more loyal to their private agendas than they are to any American party. Witnessing the success of this very effective minority faction, conservatives and pro-lifers – especially those who once were wooed by their siren song -- should take note, and resolve to maintain our principled political independence from this day forward. The neocons today trash President Bush, now that they have safely abandoned the ship they have scuttled. In Washington it’s called the “If Only He Had Listened To Me!” syndrome.
Of this we can be sure: the neocons will never apologize. And they will always blame somebody else.
On his recent trip to Europe, Barack Obama boasted to Turkish President Abdullah Gul that “one of the great strengths of the United States [is that ] …we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation, a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation. We consider ourselves a nation of citizens.”
For Obama, speaking for all of us in the Jacobin language of the French Revolution, Americans are merely creatures of the state. But is he right? Enter Dr. John Howard, decorated veteran of World War II, longtime college president, and one of the first American cultural critics who rallied to defend the family as a key to the survival of a free society when the traditional, natural family first came under attack over thirty years ago.
The enemies of the family have mounted a second front attacking Christianity, an attack in which Obama serves as a powerful adjutant. To dispel Obama’s pathetic obituary of a Christian America, Dr. Howard has responded with an important book whose title is as clear and forthright as its author: Christianity: Lifeblood of America’s Free Society (1620-1945) [Summit Press: (719) 685-9103, www.summit.org). With a keen eye for the golden thread that binds our freedoms, Dr. Howard illuminates the Christian preambles that are indispensable to American liberty. From the first words of the Mayflower Compact – “In the Name of God. Amen,” America has been a religious nation, a fact confirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1892. And whatever religious faith that individual Americans might profess, it is Christianity that supplied the vital traditions, principles, and “Self-Evident Truths” without which we would be not only a nation of mere citizens, but a nation of sheep.
Dr. Howard’s little gem offers a clear and concise roadmap of our liberties since Plymouth Rock. It reflects years of wisdom and research, unearthing countless pearls of Christian wisdom long ignored by secular historians. The frosting on the cake are the wonderful quotes from each period that Dr. Howard has assembled at the end of each chapter. It is a bright light in a dark landscape, and is an especially commendable resource for home-schooling families.
Ruminations Amidst the Ruins
As the country sinks into a socialist swoon, liberal commentators are having a field day laughing at Republicans. The party is in disarray, its is floundering, it is hypocritical, it is bereft of principles, it is bereft of leaders and leadership – in brief, it is in ruins. Their conclusion? Obama gets to do whatever he wants.
Now the liberals have good reason to distract us from their malevolent crowd behind the curtain. Their two most prominent governors have been forced from office for malfeasance. The scandals in the Obama Administration are quickly acquiring Clintonian proportions, with a cavalier attitude (“We don’t have to pay taxes because we’re raising yours!”) as brazen as that of an entrenched tinhorn dictator. Moreover, Obama has betrayed millions of his antiwar supporters without whom he would never have been nominated, much less elected. And, lest we forget, he has betrayed those credulous Catholics who thought (or pretended to think) that he really meant it when he said he wanted to reduce abortions.
Obama’s approach is matter-of-fact: the unborn cannot vote. The aborted never will. But his Peanut Gallery nonetheless realizes that the best defense is a good offense, so they raise the cry defending his spending against his Republican critics: “So’s yer old man!”
Long ago, when clocks had hands and went “tick-tock,” we had a saying: “Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.” And once in a blue moon (that was another oldie but goodie), the liberals, whose clock stopped long ago in the mire of smug collectivism, stumble onto truth. And right now, unfortunately, they are correct about the GOP.
This liberal epiphany should not surprise us. For centuries, the method of leftism has been the “total critique” – the destruction (these days termed “deconstruction”) of history, tradition, and truth under the withering fire of ideological scrutiny. Karl Marx was a hopeless ideologue, to be sure, but he also rendered brilliant sociological observations (his description of society as a beehive in Das Kapital is a revelatory case in point). Liberals are often very good at moralizing. It’s the morals that fail them.
So it is painful for conservatives to watch the Left mock Republicans – accurately -- for their profligate spending during the Bush years. But then follows the granddaddy of non sequiturs – that we therefore have no grounds on which to object to the wholesale bankrupting of the country by Obamanomics.
Republicans are slowly coming around. Even the once-revered Heritage Foundation is awakening from its eight-year slumber, sponsoring a colloquium entitled “Getting Off Track: How Government Actions and Interventions Caused, Prolonged, and Worsened the Financial Crisis.” The day will undoubtedly come when Heritage is willing to have the same conversation about foreign interventions. After that sobering conversation, the GOP might have a shot at revival.
Even George Bush finally admitted his role in destroying the GOP’s congressional majorities. Last winter he recounted that he had been besieged by congressional Republicans in 2006 to announce the drawdown of the unpopular war in Iraq. He refused, and the Democrats swept into power on Capitol Hill that year and ruined pro-lifers’ hopes for dozens of appointments to the federal courts. By 2008, Bush’s administration was so drained of principle that it embraced the trillion-dollar bailouts that Obama has been glad to perpetuate and to enlarge. Thus, the GOP gave the Left all the ammunition it needed to needle Republicans endlessly.
A Lesson For Conservatives and Pro-Lifers
If there is a primordial lesson here for conservatives and pro-lifers amidst the ruins, it is this: we should never again abandon our principles to please or to promote the fortunes of a political party or personality. It is only the truth that will make us free. Look at Congressman Ron Paul: he was the only Republican in the 2008 primaries who was willing publicly to criticize President Bush. Had John McCain stopped rolling his eyes long enough to embrace Dr. Paul’s criticism of the Federal Reserve (forget his support of the crazed Armageddonites), McCain would be president today.
During the Bush years, The Wanderer often observed that profligacy at home and Wilsonian Wars abroad would bring in their wake collapse and calamity. Some Catholic neocons who had found favor with Bush – recruited by Karl Rove and masterfully stroked in Oval Office love-fests – resented that realism and said as much. Truth be told, they had, to put it bluntly, allowed their principles to be drowned by the cult of personality. Today the wreckage wrought by their misguided zeal now surrounds us all.
Unlike the Catholics they manipulated, the core neocons – that is, the secular leftists of the 60s who later became anti-Communists but not conservatives -- are consistently more loyal to their private agendas than they are to any American party. Witnessing the success of this very effective minority faction, conservatives and pro-lifers – especially those who once were wooed by their siren song -- should take note, and resolve to maintain our principled political independence from this day forward. The neocons today trash President Bush, now that they have safely abandoned the ship they have scuttled. In Washington it’s called the “If Only He Had Listened To Me!” syndrome.
Of this we can be sure: the neocons will never apologize. And they will always blame somebody else.
Beauty And The Beasts
Pin The Tail On The Bigot
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty”
John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn
When the Culture of Death attacks the Catholic Faith, it attacks all of it. That every spear-carrier in the cultural death squads has his assignment was recently demonstrated in – of all places -- the recent Miss USA pageant.
Precedent does not encourage us to expect much of such endeavors. In 2007, a Miss Teen South Carolina was asked why some American schoolchildren could not locate the United States on a world map. Blonde Caitlin Upton was clueless, and came unglued:
I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because, uh, some people out there in our nation don't have maps, and, uh, I believe that our education like such as in South Africa and, uh, the Iraq everywhere like, such as and I believe that they should, our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S., er, should help South Africa and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries, so we will be able to build up our future for our children.
But they’re not all ditzes. In 2009 Miss California, Carrie Prejean was on track to win Miss USA until a judge noticed that she attended San Diego Christian College. So he asked her, ““Vermont recently became the fourth state to legalize same-sex marriage. Do you think every state should follow suit. Why or why not?”
Prejean did not fall prey to the South Carolina syndrome. Her answer was direct: “In my family, I think that … a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anybody out there, but that’s how I was raised and that’s how I think it should be -- between a man and a woman.”
Little did Miss Prejean know that her questioner was a “celebrity blogger.” In California that apparently means flaming homosexual -- in this case a Mr. Perez Hilton. And Hilton wasn’t Carrie’s only problem on the five-judge panel. “Holly Madison” is a Playboy bunny. Another judge, Alicia Jacobs, later admitted that Prejean would have won if she hadn’t forgotten that “at least two people on the judges panel are openly gay. Another judge has a sister in a gay marriage. Her very own state pageant director, Keith Lewis is an openly gay man.”
Phew! Well, Mr. Hilton later observed that Prejean’s answer had “offended millions of Americans,” so naturally MSNBC and CNN immediately invited him to pontificate further on her bigotry. He obliged, calling her a “dumb b***,” asserting that she had “half a brain,” and said he “would have stormed onto the stage and ripped off her tiara if she had won.” He topped off assorted vulgarities with this: “I don’t want her talking about Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, because that's offensive.”
After “celebrity” Perez’s performance, the “gay rights” crowd cheered him as a hero. Which brings to mind a few timely truths. First, Satan hates truth and beauty. Perez’s foul-mouthed “justifications” are reminiscent of the vile epithets channeled by the demon in The Exorcist through the possessed Regan MacNeil. Secondly, homosexuals are unusually violent in their relationships, according to medical personnel in gay communities; they are also petty and vindictive. This is not a “homophobic” observation, but a clinical acknowledgement of reality that Catholics (including bishops, alas) need to understand when confronting the “gay rights” crowd. One must bear in mind that, like other intrinsic evils that the bishops address with more frequency, sodomy has profound consequences. Third, “gays” are rank cowards. Perez later insisted that “Yes, I do expect Miss USA to be politically correct.” But Miss Prejean sees it differently. She told the Today show that “it's not about being politically correct; for me it was being biblically correct.”
Miss Prejean’s sentences more than parse. She is just the kind of woman that homosexuals hate: smart, beautiful, talented, grounded, and Christian. Perez’s routine is just the latest national outburst of gay cowardice. Miss Prejean, on the other hand, stood her ground. “This happened for a reason,” she said after the contest. “By having to answer that question in front of a national audience, God was testing my character and faith. I'm glad I stayed true to myself.”
Another Looming Threat Awaits The Bishops
As a generation of pro-abortion politicians who were raised Catholic approach old age, the prospect of death – memento mori! – rears its ugly head. And therewith arises a question that vexes even the most prudent prelate: where do we bury these people?
This is not a merely hypothetical question. Back when Joe Biden was running for president in 1988, he was lifting weights in the Senate gym and thought he had pulled a muscle. Fortuitously, his doctor discovered that Biden had suffered a near-fatal injury and was able to save him in the nick of time. Ditto Teddy Kennedy, who escaped an untimely death not once but twice – first, when Indiana Senator Birch Bayh pulled him from a fatal plane wreck in the wilds of Alaska in 1964, and then five years later, when Kennedy managed to free himself from a sinking automobile and make it safely ashore after a tragic accident in Massachusetts.
So the grim reaper haunts us all – and, when the roll is finally called up yonder for all the Catholic pro-aborts, what will the bishops do to -- shall we say -- address the question of the disposition of their remains?
Canon Law is clear on the subject: “Church funeral rites are to be denied to the following, unless they have given some sign of repentance … Apostates, heretics schismatics … [and] Other manifest sinners to whom a church funeral could not be granted without public scandal to the faithful.” [1184.1, .3].
On the one hand, public supporters of the “intrinsic evil” of abortion [USCCB, Faithful Citizenship, 2007] are certainly “manifest sinners to whom a church funeral could not be granted without public scandal to the faithful.”(Please note that the 1983 Code of Canon Law prudently adds the helpful phrase, “to the faithful” in order to distinguish Catholics who embrace the Magisterium from the editorial board of the New York Times, or the panel of judges at the Miss USA contest).
On the other hand, the death of some of these political luminaries might occasion a funeral so grandiose that bishops will be fighting for seats in the bleachers.
What to do? Again, we turn to Canon Law. “If any doubt occurs, the local ordinary is to be consulted and his judgment followed.” [1184.2].
Well, I think we’d all agree that that makes it perfectly clear.
Not Exactly Henry At Canossa
Notre Dame’s spokesman admits that the university owns its own jet, but assures me that University president John Jenkins, C.S.C., did not use it to fly to Washington on April 21 to meet with Obama at the White House. Rather, Fr. Jenkins was in town for a “development” meeting. However, other developments are not so innocuous. Bishop John M. D’Arcy, in whose Indiana diocese Notre Dame is located, has written a stern letter admonishing Father Jenkins to correct the errors which Fr. Jenkins distributed to the public regarding his justification for the invitation of Obama to the university’s commencement exercises. Moreover, the good bishop chides Fr. Jenkins for a “serious mistake” – specifically, in extending the invitation, Jenkins “fail[ed] to consult the local bishop who, whatever his unworthiness, is the teacher and law-giver in the diocese.”
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