Wheat & Weeds

Nothing Can Be Done

2013-05-11T20:02:00.001-05:00

By Ramirez, shamelessly pinched from here.

The country appears to be imploding.

The IRS has had to apologize for targeting Conservative groups for auditing (though it's not being forthcoming about how high-level the policy was).
David Stockman predicts doom and while many of his specific policy recommendations are somewhat rubbish, there's this:

These policies have brought America to an end-stage metastasis. The way out would be so radical it can’t happen. It would necessitate a sweeping divorce of the state and the market economy. It would require a renunciation of crony capitalism and its first cousin: Keynesian economics in all its forms. The state would need to get out of the business of imperial hubris, economic uplift and social insurance and shift its focus to managing and financing an effective, affordable, means-tested safety net.
....
It would require, finally, benching the Fed’s central planners, and restoring the central bank’s original mission: to provide liquidity in times of crisis but never to buy government debt or try to micromanage the economy. Getting the Fed out of the financial markets is the only way to put free markets and genuine wealth creation back into capitalism.

That, of course, will never happen because there are trillions of dollars of assets, from Shanghai skyscrapers to Fortune 1000 stocks to the latest housing market “recovery,” artificially propped up by the Fed’s interest-rate repression. The United States is broke — fiscally, morally, intellectually — and the Fed has incited a global currency war (Japan just signed up, the Brazilians and Chinese are angry, and the German-dominated euro zone is crumbling) that will soon overwhelm it. When the latest bubble pops, there will be nothing to stop the collapse. If this sounds like advice to get out of the markets and hide out in cash, it is.

Even Harry Reid has figured out that Obamacare is "a train wreck." Meanwhile, the HHS Secretary who brought us Obamacare's death panels doesn't understand how they work . Update: Sen. Baucus retiring because of Obamacare.
Kermit Gosnell, a particularly gruesome abortionist, is on trial for murdering babies born alive and criminal neglect of a woman that led to her death. In testimony that is too gruesome to read, his staffers have testified that he or they "snipped" (meaning, killed with scissors after they were born alive) hundreds of babies over the years. He also didn't sterilize instruments and thus spread STDs to patients, refused anesthesia to minority clients, and forced women with second thoughts into abortions. ABC's Terry Moran called him (in a tweet) the "most successful mass murderer in American history," but the press can't be bothered to tell the story. Well....now they are, a little, after pro-lifers campaigned relentlessly. But the story is yucky, and everyone knows the reason the press doesn't cover it is because it's a little too much like every other abortion clinic. As Senator Boxer recently admitted, scoring against her own goal.
Pro-immigration Republicans are joining in the Left's crucifixion of an honest researcher.
And the press has finally discovered Benghazi (when you lose ABC.....) -- a shameful episode in which through utter incompetence the State Dept. allowed a fine public servant and his security team to die needlessly and then callously lied about it and tried to discredit the chief whistle blower. Even the Washington Post now outright says the White House explanation is a lie. In a free and functioning America, that would be impeachment bait, but no one is going to impeach the first black president, especially not when he has "President Joe Biden" as an ace in the hole.

Nothing can be done. Which leads me to The Official Cartoonist's latest, w/ apologies to Lew, Stept & Tobias. Here's a taste, and then click over to sing the whole thing to yourself.

Come Solyndra, I can guarantee a loan
Comes the Beltway, I can criticize the tone
Come Benghazi? Nothing could be done.
Come vacation, Michelle. can take a separate plane
Come Joe Biden, I can leave him on the train
Come Benghazi, Nothing could be done.

Stand down Brother.
What difference does it make?
I’ll blame u-tube
While I campaign at your wake.

Brian Terry? There’s privilege to invoke
Eat a canine? I can always make a joke.
Come Benghazi? Nothing could be done.

Heroes & Traitors

2013-05-04T17:12:00.003-05:00

Steve Pickering as Wallenstein, Shakespeare Theater, Scott Suchman photo

While they're still playing, just wanted to put in a quick plug for Wallenstein & Coriolanus, in rotating rep at the Shakespeare Theater through the end of the month. The theater thinks the two plays are related because each features a great military hero who, betrayed by his country, then turns on it. They're calling it the traitor-hero series. Who's a hero: you be the judge?

They're just well done. Wallenstein is a Schiller play I knew nothing about prior to seeing this production, and I gather it's been rather loosely translated, though very skillfully: the language is elegant and sharp. Directed by Michael Kahn (whom I always maintain is the nation's best director for the stage -- he really knows how to bring the best out of actors), this a solid piece of work all around, very fresh.

Patrick Page as Coriolanus, Scott Suchman Photo

I'm not quite as sold on the partner production, Coriolanus, mostly because the actor who plays Coriolanus' foil, Aufidius, is somewhat weak and that mars things. But Patrick Page is a fabulous Coriolanus -- this is the same fellow who maybe ten years ago now portrayed a Iago so subtly menacing he made the audience hiss: just a tremendous actor.

He has the guts to play Coriolanus as something of an SOB, which I think is called for in the text. The last couple of productions of the play I've seen, Coriolanus seemed entirely noble and his refusal to show his wounds in public humble, such that the people seemed genuinely to have wronged him and he was almost a martyr. This production doesn't make that mistake --there's a far more interesting question posed about what Coriolanus deserves.

There are also some humorous moments deftly handled here. Diane D'Aquila makes a magnificent Volumnia, and she's wonderful in a scene where she pretends to let her grandson vanquish her as an enemy. And the people are shown to be what we might now call "low information voters" as a little relief from the tension of the main action. Quite well done.

Just Arrived

2013-05-03T19:40:00.001-05:00

Yay! And Mr. W. is generously (he might say, wisely) allowing me to read it first. Trying to read it through and resist the urge to turn right to the chapters on politics.

Tempting Child Protective Services

2013-05-01T20:00:00.001-05:00

When my kids were littler and I was a more paranoid mom, I saw this feature which showed that little children have no clear idea what a "stranger" is, with the result that one minute after moms instructed their offspring not to talk to strangers, the kids would do pretty much anything a stranger said. This was caught on camera -- to a little kid, a "stranger" looks scary like a monster or the bogeyman, so if the person looked nice, he was by definition not a stranger.

This terrified me, so I made a point not only of clarifying that a stranger might look nice, but also of testing the kids by driving by as they walked somewhere and role-playing their resisting my efforts to give them candy or have them help me find my missing puppy or whatever.

In retrospect this was a bit over the top on my part, especially for our neighborhood, but cut me some slack. They were my first kids. Now I'm a slacker mom who wouldn't even notice if the younger ones went missing.*

This has evolved into a running gag where if I happen to come home from work or from errands and see my kids coming home from school or the park, I slow down, roll down the window and offer them a lift home in my creepiest Creeper voice, "Hey, Little Boy, you want to get in my car? I'll give you some caaaandy."

(Hahahaha. I also wolf-whistle and cat-call Mr. W and he pretends to blush.)

Today I did this to Youngest Weed and a friend. His friend didn't get the joke and was somewhat put out that I didn't follow through with the candy.

And the Lord only knows what he told his parents.

*Attn CPS: that was a joke.

How I'm Observing Earth Day

2013-04-22T15:03:00.003-05:00

...by mocking it.

First there is this headline I've been seeing all day, wrongly assuming it was from the Onion: Earth Day leader killed, composted girlfriend.

I was going to remark at least he was consistent and composted, but when I finally clicked through, I found to my horror:

Inside the closet, police found Maddux's beaten and partially mummified body stuffed into a trunk that had also been packed with Styrofoam, air fresheners and newspapers.

Styrofoam and air fresheners? Those take much longer to biodegrade than the poor girlfriend.

And treat yourself to 13 Worst Predictions Made on Earth Day, 1970, including these gems:

"It is already too late to avoid mass starvation" --Denis Hayes, Earth day organizer

The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years. If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age." — Kenneth Watt

Good Shepherd Sunday

2013-04-21T07:00:00.000-05:00

Shanghai artist Yu Jiade, The Good Shepherd,

Shamelessly pinched from here.

Curtsy: Fr. Dennis Brown's facebook page.

Not To Diminish The First Responders, But....

2013-04-20T06:58:00.000-05:00

Isn't the REAL hero of Boston a smoker? Scroll WAY the heck down in this quite good account of the manhunt in Watertown and you find this:

A resident in his 60s, believed to be called David Hanneberry, reportedly went outside to smoke and saw the tarpaulin cover of his boat was disturbed off the top.

One lone smoker out-performed all those surveillance cameras and cops! Curtsy to my Spy in New York.

Fred Phelps Is A Democrat

2013-04-18T08:30:00.000-05:00

The money quote in this story about one of the Westboro Baptist girls leaving the cult and becoming a gay rights activist is this:

In the old days, Gramps was a Democrat and a civil rights lawyer. He ran for governor in the ’80s. I remember driving around in his red truck in parades, throwing candy and stuff. We would have these big barbecues in the backyard. Al Gore came to my house for a fund-raiser once.

Naturally. You've gotta be Progressive to hate like that.

Through, The Roofers

2013-04-17T15:06:00.005-05:00

The United Union of Roofers, Waterproofers & Allied Workers officially calls for repeal of Obamacare. Whoa, Nellie!

One of the concerns for the union is the cap on “lifetime medical bill payouts.” Currently, the roofers’ plan guarantees that active members won’t pay more than $2 million over the course of their lives for medical bills (it’s $50,000 for retired members). The ACA mandates that plans remove these caps. It also requires that all plans offer minimum benefits, and the union’s coverage would have to become more expensive to fulfill that requirement. Pile on a new fee charged to every enrollee and an excise tax that will hit some plans in 2018, and you have a union running for the hills as fast as it can.

Now that they're finding out what's in it....

Eggcellent

2013-04-17T08:19:00.004-05:00

Picasso & Dali Painting the Same Egg

Shamelessly pinched from this random spot on the 'net.

Awwwww

2013-04-16T14:54:00.000-05:00

Margaret Laura "Mila" Hager w/ her grandparents.

Shamelessly pinched from here.

The New Boston Massacre

2013-04-16T14:44:00.002-05:00

Via National Catholic Register.

The New Pheidippides*

by Edward Mulholland

Martin Richard bleeds like Boston

Blood red socks strewn on the ground

Massacred like Crispus Attucks

Hardly time to hear the sound

Bombs, ball-bearings, flying razors

Slashed the crowd on Boylston Street

Police, officials, random strangers

Drank death’s whiskey served up neat

Missing teeth at First Communion

Martin’s smile on my TV

Tears from neighbors missing Martin

Wordless, senseless tragedy

Too young to have seen the Towers

Crumble that September blue

Not too young to take, a victim,

Shrapnel meant for me and you

Now a family’s torn asunder

Flags half staff, as Ashmont weeps,

Face the Pesky Pole at Fenway,

Silently while Martin sleeps.

Pheidippides gasped out his message

“We have won a victory”

Fell to earth. His death for many

Seeming contradictory.

May Martin’s death inspire many

Fighting terror to fight on

So that freedom reign forever

Faneuil Hall to Marathon!

* I needed reminding.

Kim Jong Un Inspires Poetry

2013-04-14T16:22:00.001-05:00

I know NorKo's threats are no laughing matter, and that it's closer than we once thought to being able to hurt us, but I can't help it; every time a Kim rattles his saber it calls to mind a bit of doggerel composed by the late Dean Walter, an associate pastor at the little church I was raised in.

He shot a rocket in the air,
It fell to earth in Delaware.
Which isn't bad (but just between us?
He thought he had it aimed at Venus).

Make Them Cover The Gosnell Story

2013-04-12T14:06:00.001-05:00

The media are curiously uninterested in the trial of Kermit Gosnell. To his credit, Conor Friedersdorf of the Atlantic is an exception. Why Dr. Kermit Gosnell's Trial Should Be A Front Page Story.

As he reports:

The grand jury report in the case of Dr. Kermit Gosnell, 72, is among the most horrifying I've read. "This case is about a doctor who killed babies and endangered women. What we mean is that he regularly and illegally delivered live, viable babies in the third trimester of pregnancy - and then murdered these newborns by severing their spinal cords with scissors," it states. "The medical practice by which he carried out this business was a filthy fraud in which he overdosed his patients with dangerous drugs, spread venereal disease among them with infected instruments, perforated their wombs and bowels - and, on at least two occasions, caused their deaths."

Dr. Gosnell is now on trial for 7 counts of murder, but his actual body count is in the hundreds. For years, in filthy conditions, he outright killed live babies -- and when he couldn't, he paid non-medical staff to do so in his stead.

From the Grand Jury report:

When you perform late-term "abortions" by inducing labor, you get babies. Live, breathing, squirming babies. By 24 weeks, most babies born prematurely will survive if they receive appropriate medical care. But that was not what the Women's Medical Society was about. Gosnell had a simple solution for the unwanted babies he delivered: he killed them. He didn't call it that. He called it "ensuring fetal demise." The way he ensured fetal demise was by sticking scissors into the back of the baby's neck and cutting the spinal cord. He called that "snipping."

Over the years, there were hundreds of "snippings." Sometimes, if Gosnell was unavailable, the "snipping" was done by one of his fake doctors, or even by one of the administrative staff.

But all the employees of the Women's Medical Society knew. Everyone there acted as if it wasn't murder at all. Most of these acts cannot be prosecuted, because Gosnell destroyed the files. Among the relatively few cases that could be specifically documented, one was Baby Boy A. His 17-year-old mother was almost 30 weeks pregnant - seven and a half months - when labor was induced. An employee estimated his birth weight as approaching six pounds. He was breathing and moving when Dr. Gosnell severed his spine and put the body in a plastic shoebox for disposal. The doctor joked that this baby was so big he could "walk me to the bus stop." Another, Baby Boy B, whose body was found at the clinic frozen in a one-gallon spring-water bottle, was at least 28 weeks of gestational age when he was killed. Baby C was moving and breathing for 20 minutes before an assistant came in and cut the spinal cord, just the way she had seen Gosnell do it so many times. And these were not even the worst cases.

As Friedersdorf notes in his subtitle, there are SO many angles to this story about a filthy unregulated abortion clinic in the inner city of Philadelphia:

Dead babies. The exploited women. The racism. The numerous governmental failings. It just is insanely newsworthy.

And yet here is a picture of the space reserved for media at the trial.

Shamelessly pinched from here

I pinched the picture from a go-get-'em post at Get Religion at which blogger Mollie asked some reporters why they aren't covering the story the same way they would any OTHER story featuring a mass murderer preying on minority women and children.

Particularly excellent is the Washington Post's reporter's claim that she's a policy person and doesn't cover local crime. Riggghht. Like the Post hasn't covered local shootings in Aurora and Newtown. Or OJ Simpson's local stabbing of his wife.

Rightly does Mark Steyn refer to the conditions at this clinic as the Government's Back Alley -- because everyone knows that Dr. Gosnell's clinic is not a one-off, but will force us to take a hard look at what "safe" means in the expression that abortion should be "safe, legal and rare."

For that matter, what does "choice" mean when no one wants to shine a light on this aspect of Gosnell's behavior:

FIFTEEN-YEAR-OLD Robyn Reid didn't want an abortion. But when her grandmother forcibly took her to an abortion clinic one wintry day in 1998, Reid figured she'd just tell the doctor her wishes and then sneak away.
Instead, Kermit Gosnell barked: "I don't have time for this!" He then ripped off her clothes, spanked her, wrestled her onto a dirty surgical stretcher, tied her flailing arms and legs down and pumped sedatives into her until she quit screaming and lost consciousness, she told the Daily News yesterday.
Nicole Gaither got an abortion from Gosnell in 2001. After four days, she said, the pain was so bad she could barely walk. She returned to the clinic, where, she said Gosnell blithely told her he'd left fetal remains in her.

"Stand up! It don't hurt that bad!" he yelled at her, she said, before suctioning - without any medication - her insides.
In 2001, Davida Johnson changed her mind about aborting her 6-month fetus after seeing Gosnell's dazed, bloodied patients in his recovery room, she said. But in the treatment room, Gosnell's staffers ignored her protests, smacked her, tied her arms down and sedated her into unconsciousness, she said. She awoke no longer pregnant.
Weeks later, she said, she was diagnosed with a venereal disease that she believes she contracted from unsterilized equipment Gosnell used. Now, she can't carry a baby to term and said she has miscarried four times since her abortion.

Dr. Gosnell, with his sadism and penchant for keeping the feet of the babies he killed in jars. is a particularly disgusting abortionist, but his is by no means the only unregulated, unclean clinic running a cash/volume business while preying on blacks and latinos in the inner city. And most women who go in for abortions report being pressured into it by boyfriends or parents.

Planned Parenthood clinics won't report sex trafficking, they'll help pimps exploit young girls brought here from other countries. Here's undercover video to prove it.
Dr. Leo Carhart killed a woman in his Montgomery County, MD clinic last February.
Delaware abortion clinic botches 5 abortions in as many weeks. A former employee testifies:
Jayne Mitchell-Werbrich, former employee said, "It was just unsafe. I couldn't tell you how ridiculously unsafe it was." Werbrich alleges conditions inside the facility were unsanitary. "He didn't wear gloves," said Werbrich.

In New Jersey in February, a botched abortion that nearly killed a girl led a trail to an abortion clinic where health officials reported these conditions:

the botched abortion caused so many medical complications that Newark Beth Israel Medical Center filed a complaint with state officials. The Department of Health and Senior Services investigated the abortion facility and found dirty forceps, rusty crochet hooks used to remove IUDs, and a quarter-inch of dirt and debris under an examining table.

Why is this so hard? Why do we hear no "choice" advocates condemning Gosnell and distancing themselves from him?

There is no "choice," there is no "safe," at 1.5 million per year and a multi-million dollar industry, there is no "rare."

There is "legal," though. Shouldn't we ask ourselves why? (Hint: forget about honest disagreement over when a human life deserves legal protections. Follow the money.)

But who the hell cares? It's only women.

**********
Update: Today was a "tweetfest" in which participants were to use the hashtag #Gosnell to shame the media into covering the story. And, lo, slowly, it is working -- tho' so far only among journalists we already knew were rational.

Terry Moran of ABC News tweeted earlier today that "Kermit Gosnell is probably the most successful serial killer in the history of the world."

Jake Tapper covered the story on his show at 4:00 pm.

Megan McCardle: Why I didn't write about Gosnell's Trial -- and why I should have:

I knew about the Gosnell case, and I wish I had followed it more closely, even though I'd rather not. In fact, those of us who are pro-choice should be especially interested. The whole point of legal abortion is to prevent what happened in Philadelphia: to make it safer and more humane. Somehow that ideal went terribly, horribly awry. We should demand to know why.

What happened in Philadelphia should never happen again, and all of us--not just the Philadelphia police--should be asking how we make sure it doesn't. I don't know the answer to that yet, because I still don't understand what happened in Pennsylvania. But I'll be working to figure it out.

But WaPo still can't be bothered to mention it -- except offhandedly in paragraph 20 of a story about a clinic regulation bill in VA.

Dispatch from Oz

2013-04-11T10:24:00.004-05:00

About a month ago intrepid correspondent Brett McS, reporting then- live from my Emergency Back-up Country (which is looking better and better BTW), sent me this interesting election result from Western Australia, which he describes as sort of Oz's Texas: three times the size of the Lone Star state, dynamic, growing economy, with a bit of a "wild West" flavor. I think he wanted to cheer me up with a bit of optimistic news.

He notes:

I like the direction of the Green vote.

Yes, that is interesting. I asked him what accounts for that and here's his speculation. Essentially the Labor party has drifted Leftward -- too Leftward as it turns out, leaving an opening for conservative politicians.

Labor has crept leftwards over the years under the influence of Chardonnay Socialists (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chardonnay_socialist), only accelerated by the rise of the former (?) Marxist who is our current PM. (Sound familiar?) That accounts for Labor’s disastrous alliance with The Greens, which they are scrambling away from unconvincingly as we speak. The traditional Labor voters are working class people who have no time for enviro-weenies, so they have been left without a home. That’s where the Conservatives under John Howard, and now Tony Abbott, have stepped up to provide an option.

And the secret to Abbott's success? The common touch (among other things of course):

The Howards and Abbotts spend a lot of time on Talk Radio where they find out what are the concerns of typical Aussies – often presented quite bluntly, even to a serving Prime Minister. (Gillard’s recent attempt at Connecting With The People, on the other hand, was hilariously inept and great Tim Blair fodder. Shades of Obama there, I would think).

...Being interesting, humble, willing to listen, handling often hostile questions without being evasive or going into Lecture Mode or filibustering... I could imagine Scott Walker being successful (he strikes me as an American John Howard). Ted Cruz would be a ratings magnet. John McCain, not so much.

So, the Australian conservative’s recent success has been due to keeping in touch with the concerns of what would be, predominantly, the “white working class” demographic... in your country. As far as I can tell that demographic has been largely ignored by Wall Street Republicans (and tragi-comically so by David Cameron’s Tories in the UK).

This is the GOP's weakness -- not that its ideas are inherently bad, but it has no idea how to connect with workers -- the kind of person who doesn't think of himself as an entrepreneur.

Weary of Lectures

2013-04-10T18:12:00.000-05:00

Oh, dear me, Yes, Betty Duffy:

I have lost interest in reading or writing prescriptive articles on Christian living, as though I need only tweak this or that area of my life to be a spiritual success story.

What's especially difficult for me is being patient when the conversation turns to such things (or spiritual self-help books or how the raise the perfect holy saint child books) and not just being an old crank about it. There was a time when I was younger when that sort of article helped me and filled a need. But now it all seems semi-Pelagian and formulaic to me. I'd like to think I've grown more liberal in the best sense and more tolerant. But it's more likely I'm just bored and grumpy with a different set of people.

Happy Feast of the Annunciation (Transferred)

2013-04-08T21:29:00.001-05:00

Almost forgot I've been saving this for today!

The Annunciation, Mikhail Nesterov, 1901

Someone Should Have Said It Aloud 5 Times Fast First

2013-04-08T16:37:00.002-05:00

Really, McDonald's? (Though it sort of follows from this I suppose.)

The Lady Not For Turning

2013-04-08T10:14:00.002-05:00

I love Steve Hayward's tribute to Lady Thatcher at Powerline.

When Leo Strauss received the news that Winston Churchill had died in January 1965, he made the following spontaneous remarks in his classroom at the University of Chicago on the lessons of Churchill’s life—lessons that apply just as well to Margaret Thatcher. His conclusion:

The death of Churchill reminds us . . . of our duty. We have no higher duty, and no more pressing duty, than to remind ourselves and our students, of political greatness, human greatness, of the peaks of human excellence. For we are supposed to train ourselves and others in seeing things as they are, and this means above all in seeing their greatness and their misery, their excellence and their vileness, their nobility and their triumphs, and therefore never to mistake mediocrity, however brilliant, for true greatness.

Update: Three items.

The Argentine pope pays tribute to Lady Thatcher:

"His Holiness Pope Francis was saddened to learn of the death of Baroness Margaret Thatcher," the papal message stated. "He recalls with appreciation the Christian values which underpinned her commitment to public service and to the promotion of freedom among the family of nations. Entrusting her soul to the mercy of God, and assuring her family and the British people of a remembrance in his prayers, the Holy Father invokes upon all whose lives she touched God’s abundant blessings."

Fun footage of Baronness Thatcher's last debate in Parliament below, but first an anecdote.

One of the chefs where I work (a great, robust, bass-voiced Turk) has lasting affection for Baroness Thatcher because he was on duty in the kitchen of some hotel in Colorado where she and Dennis were attending some conference or summit or some such thing. In the morning she came into the kitchen and the chef offered to make her breakfast, but she refused, saying she always made her husband's breakfast for him herself.

Now this. Wait til the end where she says she's enjoying herself.

Go, Bergoglio!

2013-04-07T07:46:00.000-05:00

Listening to or reading my co-religionists' inter-religious debates about everything from politics to the virtues of raw milk, I've become increasingly alarmed that most orthodox Catholics --at least in the English-speaking world-- are hamstrung by a kind of neo-Pelagianism that reduces every question to an argument from authority and the obligation to will the "right" solution to every problem.

I've written about this a lot (chiefly here, I suppose) because it's my current and recurring bugaboo. Sometimes it comes up in a discussion of the virtue of prudence in political matters, and sometimes as a lament for the stupid arguments people make as they try to engage non-believers, and sometimes I see good and serious people torturing themselves with heavy burdens they think are essential to being good Catholics that are not essential in any way and that crush the joy out of life in Christ and make people frighteningly susceptible to being scandalized by their own and others' failings. "A saint sad is a sad saint" as St. Teresa used to say, and I see a lot of sad saints, because they are focused on not screwing up rather than on living life united to Jesus. It's heart-breaking because life could be so much more joyful and beautiful if people could only see it.

Naturally therefore I read this with interest and pleasure -- in an article about Pope Francis' forthcoming book co-written with a rabbi.

Bergoglio posits that this type of rigid religiosity “disguises itself with doctrines that pretend to give justifications, but really deprive people of freedom and will not allow them to grow.”

“Fundamentalism is not what God wants,” Bergoglio says.

He believes that as a result of this religiosity, people are not prepared to overcome the crises of life, the failings one has, the injustices one commits. “They do not have tools to recognize or understand the mercy of God,” he says.

I suppose both fearful Conservatives and self-justifying Liberals will misread him to mean doctrine doesn't matter. But given what he says in the same article about abortion and same-sex marriage, I'm confident he means no such thing, but rather that Christianity cannot be reduced to a set of rules and formulae we look up in a handbook and try never to violate -- as if Christian perfection were something we can simply will rather than an action of grace -- a relationship with Jesus who is alive, and a progressive growth into the freedom and joy of the sons of God.

And there was this in his chrism mass:

It is not in soul-searching or constant introspection that we encounter the Lord: self-help courses can be useful in life, but to live by going from one course to another, from one method to another, leads us to become pelagians and to minimize the power of grace, which comes alive and flourishes to the extent that we, in faith, go out and give ourselves and the Gospel to others, giving what little ointment we have to those who have nothing, nothing at all.

Again, given his repeated emphasis on Confession and the wiles of the devil in just the few short weeks of his papacy, I don't think the remark can be construed as a deprecation of traditional doctrines of sin and grace. He's telling us "Be ye perfect" is not a call to perfectionism, but an invitation to trust God and offer the gift of ourselves to others so that grace can work and love can grow.

Jeremy Irons Earns Two Minutes' Hate

2013-04-04T19:43:00.001-05:00

Jeremy Irons expressed doubts about gay marriage in a recent interview.

Poor thing. I'm sure the two minutes' internet hate has begun and he's probably already been bullied into an apology. Two things surprise me in this clip. 1) An actor thinking an issue through and expressing a little hesitation, however mildly (and ultimately incoherently). 2) That Jeremy Irons isn't gay.

Irons will certainly catch hell for comparing gay marriage to incest, but before anyone tells you that's crazy talk, I'll just point out a few items.

A Political Science Professor at Columbia is defending himself against incest charges not by innocence -- he admits a three year sexual relationship with his own daughter-- but on gay marriage grounds.

(Every time I think Columbia can't sink any lower I am wrong.)

Here are a few other links, posted without (much!) comment as simply signs of the times.

Remember a couple of decades ago when the APA said homosexuality wasn't a disorder? Many researchers taking a different view of pedophilia.Think that's an outlier? Pedophilia is a sexual orientation under CA bill.
Gay marriage activist: "The institution of marriage should not exist." Read why.

Gay Danish couples win right to marry in any Church in the country. Let's keep an eye on what happens to the 1/3 of priests & pastors who say they will under no circumstances perform such ceremonies.
In January a judge in New Jersey ruled it was unconstitutional for a Methodist church to refuse to perform same-sex weddings.
Gay students try to oust the Catholic Chaplain from GW University because he doesn't support homosexuality.

Legacy and Bergen say they are primarily upset about the counseling Shaffer offers. They say he urges students who have homosexual feelings to lead a life of celibacy.

Easter Silliness

2013-04-03T08:38:00.002-05:00

Apropos of nothing whatsoever, apart from it being the Octave of Easter and I am refusing to think about anything depressing for a few days, I agree with Dan Lord at Strangest of Wars that Pope Francis bears a purty good resemblance to Ed Wynn.

No wonder he loves to laugh!

Shamelessly pinched from here.

And thus does this become relevant to Easter week:

Blessed Easter!

2013-03-30T18:04:00.000-05:00

Good Shepherds Smell Like Sheep

2013-03-28T10:45:00.000-05:00

OMG, the Pope's Chrism Mass this morning! Mostly for priests of course, but this is relevant to laity too, and addresses what seems to me to afflict the Church in America terribly (that and we're anti-incarnational):

It is not in soul-searching or constant introspection that we encounter the Lord: self-help courses can be useful in life, but to live by going from one course to another, from one method to another, leads us to become pelagians and to minimize the power of grace, which comes alive and flourishes to the extent that we, in faith, go out and give ourselves and the Gospel to others, giving what little ointment we have to those who have nothing, nothing at all.

Love this, too, really making the same point -- that faith must be put into action or it dies, and that sometimes by "resting" we actually cut ourselves off from the source of grace and energy. This is something Benedict said over and over as well:

A priest who seldom goes out of himself, who anoints little – I won’t say “not at all” because, thank God, our people take our oil from us anyway – misses out on the best of our people, on what can stir the depths of his priestly heart. Those who do not go out of themselves, instead of being mediators, gradually become intermediaries, managers. We know the difference: the intermediary, the manager, “has already received his reward”, and since he doesn’t put his own skin and his own heart on the line, he never hears a warm, heartfelt word of thanks. This is precisely the reason why some priests grow dissatisfied, become sad priests, lose heart and become in some sense collectors of antiques or novelties – instead of being shepherds living with “the smell of the sheep”, shepherds in the midst of their flock, fishers of men. True enough, the so-called crisis of priestly identity threatens us all and adds to the broader cultural crisis; but if we can resist its onslaught, we will be able to put out in the name of the Lord and cast our nets. It is not a bad thing that reality itself forces us to “put out into the deep”, where what we are by grace is clearly seen as pure grace, out into the deep of the contemporary world, where the only thing that counts is “unction” – not function – and the nets which overflow with fish are those cast solely in the name of the One in whom we have put our trust: Jesus.

RTWT. Will leave it at that for the Triduum. Have a blessed and fruitful one. Back on Sunday.

"We Love You And We Want You To Be Happy": Scenes from the March for Marriage

2013-03-28T09:30:00.004-05:00

Before Triduum silence begins I wanted to post an eyewitness account of Tuesday's March for Marriage -- an effort to follow the French lead (I never thought we'd be taking moral lessons from the French -- at least not positive ones! ) and demonstrate support for traditional marriage. The timing coincided with oral argument at the Supreme Court over the constitutionality of California's Prop 8. The following day, Wednesday, the Court heard oral argument in a second marriage-related case -- this time about the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act.

Marchers gathered on the Mall in front of the National History Museum, marched up to the Court and past it, then came down the other side of the mall back to the original spot for a rally.

Marchers on the way to SCOTUS, shamelessly pinched from here.

I wasn't able to be there early enough to march. I arrived at the rally spot before the crowd returned from the Court, but friends I met up with told the same tale as described here: that marriage supporters vastly outnumbered the marriage re-definers.

Both sides of the debate were out in force, with Christian opponents easily outnumbering advocates for gay marriage.

The Daily Mail story focuses on one particularly strident gay marcher so as to make the demonstration seem violent and more colorful than it was, but folks on both sides were well-behaved -- though weirdos love a demonstration, don't they? I had this sickening thought Monday evening when trying to decide whether it was worthwhile to attend the March that Westboro Baptist (an anti-gay hate group for you non-Americans) would show up and the press would make it seem as if all the marriage defenders were of a piece with them. Well, they did show up, but fortunately the gay marriage protestors surrounded and isolated them from the rest, so their impact was minimal.

Tell you what? If you agree that Westboro Baptist is an outlier not representing the typical marriage defender, I'll agree that this guy doesn't speak for everyone on the other side.

AFP/Getty images, shamelessly pinched from here.

I had mixed feelings about the March for Marriage. It's important not to be cowed into silence on an issue of such importance for plain old civilization, and there's a place for public manifestations to stand for principles.

What left me uncomfortable was marching on the day of oral arguments. The premise of our constitutional order is that the Court is supposed to be relatively untouched by outside pressures -- so deliberately attempting to bring outside pressures to bear (even if there's not much pressure involved -- the justices are in court, not looking out their windows) strikes me as wrong-headed. Everyone now does it, but is participating just contributing to the further demise of constitutional order? Plus, by the time a question like this gets to the Court we're all in God's hands and there's nothing more anyone can do. The time for demonstrating and arguing was during the election cycle, not now, when nothing anyone says or does is going to change the minds of any of the justices. A good argument can be made that everyone on both sides was just making noise. (And the fact that this is Holy Week definitely contributed to my impression that all of the energy of the past two days has been just that: the unruly mob crying "Crucify Him, Crucify Him" and Christ looking with pity on us all and uttering, "Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.")

On the third hand, when people try to do a good thing and they're doing it against the zeitgeist, you stand with them, you don't nitpick all the things you would have done differently and better. The third hand argument won out in the end.

As I said, I arrived for the rally before the rally-ers returned. There was a Christian rock group playing and I snapped a few shots of people beginning to gather:

Then the marchers started to return, led by a TFP marching band:

And they started to fill in the rally space:

Note the little French group. When the French rallied a week or two ago in Paris, French citizens all over the world were invited to gather and send pictures of themselves in virtual support of marriage. That's what this was about -- a few Frenchies joining us and virtually joining their confreres. (I want to think more about why it is the French, for all their corruption, turn out to be better defenders of marriage than the anglos, whether Brit or American. Suspect it has something to do with Anglo puritanism and fear of the body -- we have a hang-up about the Incarnation. "Vive la difference" turns out to be a powerful cultural anchor. But that's too much for this post.)

There were between 10,000 & 15,000 pro-marriage demonstrators in the end.

Mixed feelings about the rally. I am glad it took place -- I participated for heaven's sake!-- and I am grateful to the organizers for putting it on. There's a risk at the start of a movement, when it is fragile, of being so critical you crush a tender plant and I don't want to be Negative Nellie. I liked the peaceful, prayerful, friendly spirit of the crowd. The rally was well-organized, nicely paced and they kept the tone positive.

On the other hand, this is a debate over CIVIL marriage -- and many of the speakers did not seem to understand that. They talk about biblical marriage and God's plan -- things I affirm, but which are not directly relevant to the civil law. It's quite difficult to make the case to our non-believing fellow citizens that we are not simply shoving our religion down their throats when most of the speakers at the rally had only religious arguments to offer.

While the crowd was welcoming, I'm not certain passers-by would have thought so. At one point, Bishop Harry Jackson, an important leader among the black churches, a man I admire and who is terrific in insisting that a marriage culture is the key to relieving most of the problems of the inner city -- the poverty, the crime, etc.-- He had us chant three times from a Psalm: "Let God arise and may his enemies be scattered!" The crowd knew from context that it was a prayer for the wisdom of the justices. But any gay person or persuadable person walking by would surely have thought we were calling on God to smite the homosexuals. Was that helpful when the Obama administration is arguing that the ONLY reason for not granting gay marriage is anti-gay animus: that traditional philosophical, rational humanist, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist thought is all out to get the gays and nothing more?

Moreover, most of the speakers talked about marriage as if most Americans are married and never divorced. Nothing hateful was said, but I didn't hear a lot of reaching out to persuade. Maybe that's not really the point of a rally, which is to strengthen troops, but it would be good to give people better arguments.

I have been shocked over the past year to see that no one understands civil marriage any longer -- which is why the past few days many, many of my Catholic and Christian friends on facebook have "come out" for gay marriage. They haven't necessarily changed their moral opinion of homosexuality (tho' many have); but they see it as a private religious opinion. What they've adopted is the libertarian view that marriage is an exclusively religious act and the law should stay out of it altogether. There is ZERO understanding of the legal chaos and the harm to children that will be done by the redefinition of marriage, or that marriage is a civil institution that pre-dates the Church. And there is ZERO understanding of the threat to religious liberty and federalism by the courts stepping into this matter -- libertarians should be horrified, not going along. (It felt like everyone on FB changed his avatar to those pink equals signs on a red field; then the marriage defenders started putting up crosses in the same colors...which I think actually makes the gay marriage case for them: this is not a civic issue, this is you imposing your religious belief on me. So I was just disheartened by EVERYONE yesterday. If we lose the cultural battle, it will be because of the stupidity of the marriage defenders, and the inability of anyone on either side to examine honestly the legal implications of the cases here. How many of the people who changed their avatars to equals signs or crosses yesterday could articulate the legal questions involved in either of the two marriage cases? Doubtful anyone could. Everyone was just enjoying the feeling of righteousness, whatever that happened to be for them.)

Some of the speakers did understand this -- the "professional" marriage defenders like Jennifer Roback Morse of the Ruth Institute, for example. But I felt their message was drowned by the religious speakers. There were more state and local political leaders than clergy addressing the crowd, but their arguments were religious, not secular or legal -- and therefore not accessible to people who disagree.

The only speaker whose message and tone I thought was pitch-perfect was the very first one: Archbishop Cordileone, the RC bishops' point man for defense of marriage. Here's the text of his address.
He was the only one to my mind who:

made a civil case for marriage, showing that it is a public good that serves the unmarried and homosexuals as well
was loving to homosexuals
spoke within the real context of marriage in America -- where heterosexuals have already made mincemeat of the institution

A fine example, in other words, of how one begins to re-build a marriage culture in the midst of a people who have no idea what that is even in the cases where they support it! His opener:

I want begin with a word to those who disagree with us on this issue and may be watching us right now: we love you, we are your neighbors, and we want to be your friends, and we want you to be happy.
Please understand that we don’t hate you, and that we are not motivated by animus or bigotry; it is not our intention to offend anyone, and if we have, I apologize; please try to listen to us fairly, and calmly, and try to understand us and our position, as we will try to do the same for you.

And:

Why, really, are we here? One simple reason: marriage matters to kids. It’s the simple principle that children deserve a mother and a father, and that society needs an institution that connects children to their parents. What could be more beautiful, or even more sacred, than a man and a woman coming together to create new life? Marriage is the only institution that does this, that connects children to their parents and parents to their children and to each other.

Sometimes that isn’t possible, sometimes due to circumstances beyond people’s control the ideal doesn’t happen. Those parents, too, need and deserve our love and support. This isn’t about parenting skills, though; we know that sometimes kids can do well in less-than-ideal circumstances. Rather, it’s about rebuilding a marriage culture, which begins – certainly doesn’t end! – with preserving in the law the principle that children deserve a mother and a father, and that society should do everything it can, and offer all necessary support, to help insure that children get what they deserve. Only a man can be a father and only a woman can be a mother, and children need both, and no matter how happy their childhood may be, to grow up without one or the other is always a deprivation. This is not discrimination; on the contrary, marriage benefits everyone, including those of us who are not married and those who disagree with us.

That's how we have to talk, seems to me. And forgive me for saying so, but our Protestant brothers and sisters are not much help where rhetoric is concerned. Not trying to write anyone out of the movement - all hands on deck! And certainly Christians and other believers need to look inward and ask themselves some hard questions about how they themselves are living out their creed. It's appropriate for Christians to motivate Christians to give a better testimony. (See Msgr. Pope for a stern jeremiad, for example -- but he's talking to Christians about their Christianity, not making a public argument.) But you simply can't defend the civil institution of marriage by preaching about Christian matrimony. They are separate phenomena -- and conflating them actually hastens acceptance of gay marriage, because it further undermines understanding of the importance and value of civil marriage.

Then there was this footage of the 11-year-old girl testifying before the MN legislature, which played for the rally too. It's been making the rounds on social media and people seem to think it proves something. She asked the legislators: which don't I need -- my mom or my dad? It's a good question, but I can't decide whether this is an instance of being wise as serpents (fighting emotionalism w/ emotionalism) or our side stooping to be as manipulative as the other side. She's 11. Will she still be pro-marriage after college? What would we think if the other side used an 11-year old child of a same-sex marriage couple to complain that if her bio-parent died, the law would take her from her "other mommy"?

There were some young people in the crowd. Maybe 20%? And the organizers are young --it's their intiative. But the crowd skewed much older than, say, the March for Life and we are fooling ourselves if we think otherwise. It's heartening that the heads of all the pro-marriage groups are young (even the Gray Lady has noticed!), but there was a lot of gray hair and middle-aged spread in the crowd.

Not saying that to be a downer. Considering this was thrown together in about 6 weeks, it was an excellent first effort. I'm just saying we have to build, and we mustn't fool ourselves with pieties about the youth really being with us but the press won't cover it.

Some excellent links on this topic:

George Weigel at his best: on Reality and National Policy. He says better what I was getting at here.
Rich Lowry on how the court may create another Roe by circumventing the political process.
The Red Herring of Marriage Equality
Transcript of oral argument in U.S. v. Windsor (DOMA case)
Transcript of oral argument in Hollingsworth v Perry (Prop 8 case)
What is Marriage?

Update: See also Pushing Catholics Out the Door. Don't agree with it in every respect (the gay man's complaint that his mentors let him down is true and poignant, but it also says too much. It is asking too much of anyone that he never have a low moment, a thoughtless moment, a blind spot -- and his conclusion, that you can't rely on anyone but God is, properly understood, not a cause for disillusionment, but a purification of faith and an opportunity to be more loving and understanding of everyone -- rigid people are wounded and need love and understanding as much as homosexuals! ), but I completely agree with this:

The media has loved framing this as a Gays vs. Christians debate. I just don’t understand why Christians are so eager to frame it the same way.