Against The Grain

'Against The Grain' has moved!

2009-12-15T01:03:00.002-05:00

At long last, Against The Grain has relocated to a new blog address: christopherblosser.blogspot.com

The move was occasioned in part by Haloscan's announcement that they had been bought by JS-KIT and that they were giving all users two weeks to either pay for an "upgrade" [or] download their comments, subject as they were to impending deletion.

Some are taking the news rather badly. As for myself, while I certainly don't fault a company for trying to survive (there's no such thing as a free lunch, and Haloscan couldn't survive indefinitely as a free host) I think JS-KIT was a tad overbearing with today's ~~threat~~ notification.

Personally, I don't need all the bells and whistles of JS-KIT and it's ability to "turn my static pages into a real-time stream of diggs, tweets, comments, and more. " A basic commenting system is enough for me, so I've taken this as an opportunity to graduate my 'classic' template to the New Blogger.

Hopefully y'all -- what few readers I have -- will understand.

'Nuff said.

2009-12-13T20:56:00.002-05:00

Matt Talbot, Vox Nova:

I wish Catholic priests and laity would stand up more often against this sort of thing.

Kurt (in response):

I really have better things to do that stand up against the fact I could drive around in a densely populated urban area and see my country’s flag every five minutes.

First anniversary of the passing of Avery Dulles

2009-12-12T13:09:00.004-05:00

Fr. John Zuhlsdorf reminds us:

It is a long tradition to pray for the dead on the 3rd day after death, 30th day and 1st year.
Say a prayer for the late Avery Card. Dulles, who died one year ago today.

Related

Remembering Avery Dulles, by Robert P. Imbelli (Commonweal)

Which is scarier?

2009-12-10T01:19:00.001-05:00

How much has really changed over the years?

2009-12-09T02:09:00.001-05:00

Never before in the history of the world was there so much knowledge; and never before so little coming to the knowledge of the Truth. Never before so much straining for life; never before so many unhappy lives. Never before so much science; never before was it used so for the destruction of human life.

-- Bishop Fulton Sheen, 1933.

Wanted: Part-Time Work

2009-12-09T00:00:00.000-05:00

So here's the deal -- my financial situation is somewhat tight at the moment (much like, well, 90% of the country?). Donations would be appreciated, but I'm really not the type to bleg for handouts w/o offering something in return, and given my technical skills I'd like to contribute something to the exchange.

I do web design and am fluent w/ HTML, CSS and Photoshop. I love to build blogs and/or websites -- you can see the examples of a few by the banners in the margin, and of course there's the Pope Benedict XVI Fan Club. Most of these blogs I've turned out in the space of 2-3 days.

If you're looking for help w/ a website and/or would like somebody to fix you up with a blog (Blogger or Wordpress), with graphics customized to your taste, or if you just need a blog-header or banner advertisement, I'm your man. Rates are negotiable.

Interested? -- Email me at blostopher "at" gmail.com.

New Online Journal: "The New Jesuit Review"

2009-12-06T14:47:00.002-05:00

[From the website]: The New Jesuit Review has as its goals the recovery of Jesuit spirituality from its authentic sources and reflection by contemporary Jesuits on its significance for their lives. The writings of St. Ignatius and the First Companions, the lives of Jesuit saints and martyrs, and classics of Jesuit spirituality are examined in the spirit of Perfectae Caritatis, the Decree on the Adaptation and Renewal of Religious Life of the Second Vatican Council:

It redounds to the good of the Church that institutes have their own particular characteristics and work. Therefore let their founders' spirit and special aims they set before them as well as their sound traditions -- all of which make up the patrimony of each institute -- be faithfully held in honor. (Perfectae Caritatis, 2)

2009-12-05T15:03:00.002-05:00

"Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments will hum about my ears and sometimes voices."
The Savage's face lit up with a sudden pleasure. "Have you read it too?" he asked. "I thought nobody knew about that book here, in England."
"Almost nobody. I'm one of the very few. It's prohibited, you see. But as I make the laws here, I can also break them. With impunity, Mr. Marx," he added, turning to Bernard. "Which I'm afraid you can't do."
Bernard sank into a yet more hopeless misery.
"But why is it prohibited?" asked the Savage. In the excitement of meeting a man who had read Shakespeare he had momentarily forgotten everything else.
The Controller shrugged his shoulders. "Because it's old; that's the chief reason. We haven't any use for old things here."
"Even when they're beautiful?"
"Particularly when they're beautiful. Beauty's attractive, and we don't want people to be attracted by old things. We want them to like the new ones."

[Aldous Huxley, Brave New World]

Saul Alinsky and Jacques Maritain

2009-12-02T01:32:00.006-05:00

Following the manifold scandals involving the Catholic Campaign for Human Development comes a twofold discussion by the blog Cosmos, Liturgy, Sex -- the first getting to the root of the problem, the second on the "spiritual paternity" of Saul Alinsky and Jacques Maritain (the latter post engaging Alinsky's son in the comments). An excerpt:

... But herein lies the troubling question of Maritain’s Catholic alliance with Alinsky, which would serve as a model for the post-conciliar Church in the U.S. and which should call the whole socio-political strategy of the post-conciliar Church in America into question. How could Maritain not have seen that Alinsky’s community organizations, his “buffers,” were in fact ordered to becoming functionaries of the State, its repressive arms of authority? Like all American agitators whose work operates in the trajectory of Marx’s nihilism, Alinsky awaited the day when a fully socialist political power would reign in the nation’s capitol. That day has now come, of course, as Saul Alinsky’s spiritual grandchild, and his heir to control of the community organizations in Chicago, Barack Hussein Obama, has now ascended to the presidency of the United States. Community organizations and “buffers,” such as SEIU, have now become potential instruments of governmental coercion.
Maritain could not see that Alinsky’s “community organizations” were always meant to be substitute churches which were ordered by their very essence to the derogation of the proper authority of the most important of the natural and supernatural mediating societies, namely, the natural family and the Catholic Church. Maritain could only see in Alinsky’s work the coming-into-being of new guilds, along the lines of the medieval guilds, that could put a check on the greed and radical individualism that underlies so much of the practice of free market capitalism. He thought that these organizations could embody the Catholic principle of subsidiarity, so that the grave social injustices of capitalism could be held in control without tyranical federal intervention. But he failed to realize that these organizations were in fact meant by Alinsky to be stepping-stones to the advent of, and eventual workers for, a centralized power structure that would coercively bring about his dreary, ugly, a-religious concept of social justice. Maritain seems to have failed, in other words, to recognize that it is perilous indeed to make common cause with those who have rejected the religious essence of man. Social justice without a truly Christian, religious foundation is a perversion of social justice.
And Maritain’s naivete in this regard is nothing if not representative of the attitude of most of the hierarchy of the Catholic Church in the post-conciliar age.

Kierkegaard on Luther

2009-12-01T03:50:00.000-05:00

Lutheranism is a corrective, but a corrective made into the norm, the whole, is eo ipso confusing in the next generation (when that which it was meant to correct no longer exists). And as long as this continues things get worse with every generation, until in the end the corrective produces the exact opposite of what was originally intended

And later:

Luther: your responsibility is great indeed, for the closer I look the more clearly do I see that you overthrew the Pope and set the public on the throne[!]

-- Journals of the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard

"The Debate is about Authority"

2009-12-01T03:31:00.008-05:00

Witnessing the continued implosion of the Anglicans and the ELCA over matters of Christian morality, I am intrigued by the way present circumstances have inspired renewed consideration of tradition, authority and obedience.

As I wrote a few months ago ("On the troubles within the ELCA" American Catholic September 7, 2009): "What is interesting, at least from this Catholic perspective, is the extent to which the critics of recent decisions recognize the seeds of their present troubles woven into the very fabric of their tradition."

In a recent post to First Things' "On the Square", Rusty Reno described the crisis of those experiencing "the agony of mainline Protestantism" thus:

One either recommits oneself to the troubled world of mainline Protestantism with articulate criticisms, but also with a spirit of sacrifice, as he so powerfully evokes. Or one stumbles forward-who can see in advance by what uncertain steps?-and abandons oneself, not to “orthodoxy” or “true doctrine” or “good theology,” but to the tender care of Mother Church.

As Joe Carter (First Things) noted, as with the Anglicans, so a faction of Lutherans have chosen a third route -- forming a new Lutheran church body separate from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

Meanwhile, it appears that the homosexuality debate is fanning faculty and student protests at Calvin College -- the furor instigated by a memo reminding faculty that they were bound to the confessional documents of the Christian Reformed Church:

[F]rom an historical point of view, there was nothing in the least bit controversial about the trustees' memo. It merely reminded the faculty of their confessional commitments to a traditional Christian and Reformed understanding of sexuality and marriage, commitments that had been in place for centuries and are, in some quarters of the Church being challenged.
Of course, that wasn't how the Calvin faculty or the students received the memo. They viewed it as an assault on academic freedom, as a trampling of due process—the faculty senate had not been consulted—and as a pronouncement having a chilling effect on, as Christianity Today put it, "Calvin's tradition of vibrant Christian inquiry."
They, in effect, said that despite more than two thousand years of agreement in the Church on sexuality and marriage, college faculty and students get to make up their own minds as to what Scripture says and what obedience to God looks like today.
"To me," remarked a trustee at another evangelical Christian college, "academic freedom means I can interpret Scripture in any way I see fit."

As author Jim Tonkowich observes:

Just as the debate in the Protestant mainline are emphatically not about homosexuality, the debate at Calvin and at other evangelical schools is not about homosexuality either. The debate is about authority. And that debate goes back to the roots of Protestantism.

InsideCatholic's Double Standard

2009-12-01T02:18:00.001-05:00

InsideCatholic readers are well aware of their standard guidelines for commenting, clearly posted a the bottom of every article:

1. No name calling or personal attacks; stick to the argument, not the individual.
2. Assume the goodwill of the other person, especially when you disagree.
3. Don't make judgments about the other person's sinfulness or salvation. You are not the Inquisition. ...

One has to wonder why certain authors themselves are exempt from such rules?

Abortion, capital punishment and war -- One of these things is not like the other.

2009-11-28T22:00:00.000-05:00

[Cross-posted to The American Catholic]

Ed Stoddard of Reuters' religion blog Faithworld carries a roundup of the skirmish between Congressman Patrick Kennedy, the son of the late Senator Edward Kennedy, has claimed that Rhode Island Bishop Thomas Tobin.

In conclusion, Stoddard asks:

This leads to a question about the consistency of views in the U.S. Catholic Church leadership. The Church opposes abortion and therefore liberal politicians who support abortion rights risk being refused communion. The Church supports a healthcare overhaul that would make the system more equitable. So does a conservative Catholic politician who opposes this reform risk being denied communion for ignoring the Catholic social teaching that justifies it?
How about support for capital punishment, which the Vatican says is unjustified in almost all possible cases, or for war? In the build-up to the Iraq war, Pope John Paul was so opposed to the plan that he sent a personal envoy to Washington to argue against it. Did bishops threaten any measures against Catholic politicians who energetically supported that war despite Vatican opposition?

The author's questions reveal an elementary ignorance concerning the moral issues in question and their relationship to varying levels of Church teaching. While I am disappointed by his answer (Faithworld is generally one of the better and more educational "religion blogs" in the secular media), it is understandable -- as even many Catholics find themselves confused on this matter.

The basic difference between abortion and capital punishment (or the waging of armed force) is that the Church has firmly and explicitly taught that the former is an intrinsic evil: the direct taking of innocent human life to be opposed everywhere and at all times, while the moral worth of the latter two measures are contigent upon specific criteria and circumstance.

In the case of capital punishment, see the Catechism of the Catholic Church's discussion of the fifth commandment, specifically the matter of "legitimate defense" (sections #2263-2267); on the matter of the waging of armed force, the Catholic tradition's criteria for a "just war" (sections #2307-2317).

But is it not true that the Church has explicitly opposed contemporary instances of capital punishment or war? -- If so, why have the Bishops not sought to impose similar restrictions on communion on those officials in public life favoring the use of capital punishment, or expressing their support of U.S. foreign policy in Iraq -- a conflict on which both Pope John Paul II and even our present Pope (then-Cardinal Ratzinger) made their opposition known? Aren't such figures not in open dissent and in a state of obstinate sin against the Church as well?

It seems to me that the response lies in the following teaching of the Catechism on the delineation of responsibility:

With regards to the determination of moral criteria, the Catechism maintains "The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good."

As to the nature of "prudential judgement", Russell Shaw -- himself a vehement critic and opponent of the Iraq War -- provided the following explanation in "Iraq, Weigel and the Pope" (Catholic Exchange. March 31, 2003 -- defending the 'Catholic neocons' legitimate right to disagree with John Paul II):

The notion of prudential judgment may need explaining. “Prudential” refers to prudence, and prudence these days has a bad name with people for whom it signifies lack of courage and failure of nerve. In the tradition, however, prudence is one of the cardinal virtues upon which other virtues depend. The function of prudence in this sense is to keep us in touch with morally relevant facts.
Given the limits of human knowledge, even prudential judgments by prudent people can be mistaken. In the present instance, the pope and Catholics who differed with him — conscientious and informed people like Novak, Weigel and Hudson — based their stands on an assessment of likely consequences of different courses of action. Since the assessments of what was more or less likely to happen in the future were different, so were the conclusions about what course of action to take.
To disagree with the pope in this manner is not dissent. It's not as if Pope John Paul II had taught a definitive moral principle (e.g., direct attacks on noncombatants are ruled out) which the disagreeing Catholics rejected. They agreed with the principle. They disagreed about something contingent and by no means certain: what the future outcome of complex, competing scenarios was likely to be.

I believe that such an exercise of prudential judgement could equally be made in the exercise of capital punishment -- where, for example, a Catholic public prosecutor might be compelled to respectfully disagree with a bishop on the means required in legitimate defense of society.

It is presumed that in such cases those who disagreed with the Pope on the justness of the Iraq war or the exercise of capital punishment were not disputing Catholic principles governing the dispute. George Weigel or the late Father Neuhaus, for example, while differing with the U.S. Bishops' reading and application of just war criteria, could not be described as seeking to challenge or dismiss the criteria altogether. Likewise, as Avery Cardinal Dulles pointed out in his response to Justice Scalia, John Paul II's opposition to capital punishment was prudential in nature and should not be construed as an overturning of 2,000 years of Catholic tradition.

Contrast this with Rep. Kennedy's disparaging remarks about the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops for their recent letter to the House of Representatives, reminding them of the Catholic Church's opposition to any legislation in health-care reform that would include funding for abortions or fail to include conscience-protections for health-care providers -- a position which he explicitly ridiculed (warranting Bishop Tobin's response). In such a case, the words and oftentimes legislative actions of Kennedy (or like-minded figures as Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden or Kathleen Sebelius, to name a few) stand in clear and direct opposition, in what is aptly described by Tobin as an obstinate rejection of Church teaching on abortion.

As then-Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict, put it succinctly in a 2004 letter to the U.S. Bishops articulating "general principles" on the distribution of communion:

Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia. For example, if a Catholic were to be at odds with the Holy Father on the application of capital punishment or on the decision to wage war, he would not for that reason be considered unworthy to present himself to receive Holy Communion. While the Church exhorts civil authorities to seek peace, not war, and to exercise discretion and mercy in imposing punishment on criminals, it may still be permissible to take up arms to repel an aggressor or to have recourse to capital punishment. There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia.
4. Apart from an individuals’s judgement about his worthiness to present himself to receive the Holy Eucharist, the minister of Holy Communion may find himself in the situation where he must refuse to distribute Holy Communion to someone, such as in cases of a declared excommunication, a declared interdict, or an obstinate persistence in manifest grave sin (cf. can. 915).
5. Regarding the grave sin of abortion or euthanasia, when a person’s formal cooperation becomes manifest (understood, in the case of a Catholic politician, as his consistently campaigning and voting for permissive abortion and euthanasia laws), his Pastor should meet with him, instructing him about the Church’s teaching, informing him that he is not to present himself for Holy Communion until he brings to an end the objective situation of sin, and warning him that he will otherwise be denied the Eucharist.

In light of which, it would appear that Thomas Tobin was fulfilling his obligations as a Bishop of the Catholic Church in responding to Senator Kennedy in such a manner.

Addendum

The criteria for distribution of communion is spelled out at greater length by Archbishop Raymond Burke's (now Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, a position equivalent to that of Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court) magisterial study of the matter: "Canon 915: The Discipline Regarding the Denial of Holy Communion to Those Obstinately Persevering in Manifest Grave Sin".
A valuable explanation of the development of the Church's teaching on the death penalty (and the place of prudential judgement) can be found in Dr. Jeff Mirus' Capital Punishment: Drawing the Line Between Doctrine and Opinion (CatholicCulture.org June 7, 2004).

Paul J. Griffiths on Rowan Williams and "Ecumenical Obedience"

2009-11-28T11:03:00.001-05:00

Catholic theologian Paul J. Griffiths pens a good response to Rowan Williams on the Catholic-Anglican divide:

This past Thursday (19 November 2009), Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, gave an address at the Gregorian University in Rome as part of an event celebrating the centenary of the birth of Cardinal Willebrands, the first President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. In it, he made a distinction between first-order theological understandings of the Church, on which he thinks that there has been considerable convergence between Anglicans and Catholics since the Second Vatican Council; and second-order questions, the answers to which still divide, but consensus about which, he thinks, is not as “vital for its [the Church's] health and integrity” as is that about first-order questions.
He distinguishes three putative second-order topics: the question of authority in the Church; the question of Petrine primacy; and the question of the relations between local churches and the universal Church. And he notes that the fundamental issue is the importance of these (and perhaps others), because it is about them that Anglicans and Catholics are divided. How can we, he asks, “properly tell the difference between ’second order’ and ‘first order’ issues”?
This is the right question. Williams clearly thinks that the three divisive topics he identifies are second-order, and that in light of agreement about the first-order theology of the Church differences about them should not remain a barrier to (some form of) sacramental unity. He asks of those who disagree with him that we provide a theological account of why what he thinks are second-order questions have sufficient theological importance that they ought to remain church-dividing.
I think he is wrong. ... [More]

See Also

Why Rowan Williams is Wrong: Priesthood as a First-Order Issue, by Fr. Jeffrey Steel (De Cura Animarum).

Here and There

2009-11-28T10:34:00.002-05:00

An eclectic mix of posts and articles that captured my attention recently -- perhaps yours as well?

"What? Me Pray?" - A commentator by the name of "unagidon" @ Commonweal:
If you have a group of Catholics over for a dinner party, and they’ve stayed a bit too late but you don’t want to be rude by pointedly winding the alarm clock in front of them, one thing that always works to clear the room is to bring up in conversation the efficacy of prayer and people’s individual prayer lives. We all believe that people should pray and we may even believe that everyone does pray. And probably no one would deny that the question of opening channels of communication to God is “a very important thing”. But nothing makes people start looking at their watches faster than bringing up prayer in conversation.
For those of you who have stayed with me to the end to the end of the last paragraph, let me try to tantalize you with this. For a full 35 years, I didn’t think that I could pray. This changed a few years ago. [More]
Hollywood's Favorite Cowboy - The Wall Street Journal interviews Cormac McCarthy, 76, talked about love, religion, his 11-year-old son, the end of the world and the movie based on his novel 'The Road.' (I read so little fiction these days, but this may be an exception).
WSJ: What kind of things make you worry?
CM: If you think about some of the things that are being talked about by thoughtful, intelligent scientists, you realize that in 100 years the human race won't even be recognizable. We may indeed be part machine and we may have computers implanted. It's more than theoretically possible to implant a chip in the brain that would contain all the information in all the libraries in the world. As people who have talked about this say, it's just a matter of figuring out the wiring. Now there's a problem you can take to bed with you at night.
Macln Horton (Light on Dark Water) comes across a striking observation from Belloc
Maverick Philosopher, "on forming societies at faint provocation".
American Catholic's Chris Burgwald, responding to the ongoing controversy involving the Catholic Campaign for Human Development's contributions to morally-questionable causes:
One of the many unfortunate aspects of “cafeteria Catholicism” in our country today is that the Church’s social teaching has become virtually synonymous with liberal, quasi- or outright-heterodox forms of our faith. This should not be. The social doctrine of the Church is part and parcel of the deposit of faith, and those of us who embrace the truth of Catholicism must stop ourselves from assigning guilt by association with regard to social doctrine merely because its loudest proponents are very picky in the cafeteria line.
On the CCHD's scandals, see this wrap-up from Deal Hudson.
Zach @ American Catholic asks: "Would a Catholic political party be a good thing?"
"Is philosophy bullshit?"
Almost Chosen People is a new blog, "dedicated to American History up to the time of Reconstruction" -- featuring contributions from Don McClarey (American Catholic), Dale Price (Dyspeptic Mutterings) and a number of others.

Self-Indulgent Scott Hahn Rage-Fest!!!

2009-11-28T03:07:00.000-05:00

Arturo Vasquez is seething, SEETHING! -- the author positively enraged over "paying $10, being told to park in an unconvenient/borderline unsafe location, and sitting in bleachers all to be in the wonderful presence of Scott Hahn and sit through a 'Catholicism is Scriptural, now let’s all cheer ourselves' pep rally."

As a commentator pointed out:

I wouldn’t expect Hahn to lecture on the nuances of Aristotelian metaphysics re. Transubstantiation, to what is essentially a lay audience. You really need to relax, this type of even was not meant for people like you. Why you went there to begin with is beyond me. He has much more serious "events" like the “Letter & Spirit Summer Institute."

Eliot on Pascal

2009-11-27T19:13:00.000-05:00

"The majority of mankind is lazy-minded, incurious, absorbed in vanities, and tepid in emotion, and is therefore incapable of either much doubt or much faith; and when the ordinary man calls himself a skeptic or unbeliever, that is ordinarily a simple pose, cloaking a disinclination to think anything out to conclusion. Pascal's disillusioned analysis of human bondage is sometimes interpreted to mean that Pascal was really and finally an unbeliever, who, in his despair, was incapable of enduring reality and enjoying the heroic satisfaction of the free man's worship of nothing. His despair, his disillusion, are, however, no illustration of personal weakness; they are perfectly objective, because they are essential moments in the progress of an intellectual soul; and for the type of Pascal they are the analogue of the drought, the dark night, which is an essential stage in the progress of the Christian mystic. A similar despair, when it is arrived at by a diseased character or an impure soul, may issue in the most disastrous consequences though with the most superb manifestations; and thus we get Gulliver's Travels; but in Pascal we find no such distortion; his despair is in itself more terrible than Swift's, because our heart tells us that it corresponds exactly to the facts and cannot be dismissed as mental disease; but it was also a despair which was a necessary prelude to, and element in, the joy of faith.

-T.S. Eliot (introduction to Pascal's Pensées)

Fr. James V. Schall on reading "Great Books"

2009-11-27T11:30:00.000-05:00

I have no doubt that what are called the “great books” should be read. I read Plato and Aristotle every semester with increasing awe.
But the reading of great books does not do the trick, if I might call it that. What does the trick are books that tell the truth. And usually these books are very difficult for a student to come by. They are “notes from the underground,” to steal a phrase from Dostoyevsky.
Thus, Another Sort of Learning contains many book lists. Most of the works recommended are relatively short. It is not all that difficult to get at the truth, once you know where to begin. Universities are not a total waste of time, but most graduates earn degrees while remaining confused about the ultimate things. About these latter things, little is to be found in most universities. Still, graduates have their whole lives ahead of them, if they can read.

Fr. James V. Schall on "Another Sort of Learning" (The Catholic Thing October 9, 2009 )

"Biggest Shopping Day of the Year"

2009-11-27T06:00:00.000-05:00

"It's not enough.

I need more.

Nothing seems to satisfy."

"The Manhattan Declaration"

2009-11-27T02:36:00.002-05:00

Joe Carter (First Things) - What is "The Manhattan Declaration"?:

The Manhattan Declaration is a 4,732-word statement signed by a movement of Orthodox, Catholic and evangelical Christian leaders who are collaborating around moral issues of great concern. Its signers affirm the sanctity of human life, marriage as defined by the union of one man and one woman, and religious liberty and freedom of conscience. The Manhattan Declaration endorses civil disobedience under certain circumstances.

You can read the document here; you can append your signature here.

Related

The "Manhattan Declaration": The Manifesto That's Shaking America, by Sandro Magister (Chiesa). "It's been endorsed by Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox leaders, united in defending life and the family. With the White House in the crosshairs. In Europe, they would've branded it political "interference" by the Church."

"ClimateGate"

2009-11-26T18:18:00.006-05:00

Global WarmingGate: What Does It Mean?, by Charlie Martin (PajamasMedia November 22, 2009):

Late on the night of of November 19, news broke on PJM and elsewhere that a large amount of data had been stolen from one of the major climate research institutions by an unknown hacker and made available on the Internet. The institution is the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit, home institution for Dr Phil Jones and one of the world’s centers of research into anthropogenic global warming (AGW), or “climate change.”
The hackers released about 172 megabytes of data, and we can be sure examining it closely will take some time. But after a few days, certain things are beginning to become clear.
The data appears to be largely, perhaps entirely, authentic.
The emails are incendiary.
The implications shake the scientific basis for AGW, and the scientific reputations of some of AGW’s major proponents, to their roots

What? -- Manipulating data in wholesale subservience to their political agenda? I thought scientists were beyond such things!

Further Discussion

The Climate E-mails and the Politics of Science, by Ivan Kenneally. The New Atlantis
“Climategate” and the Social Validation of Knowledge, by Ilya Somin The Volokh Conspiracy
Climate of Fraud: What do hacked e-mails tell us about global-warming research? A National Review Symposium.
Global Warming With the Lid Off Wall Street Journal November 24, 2009.
(Via Donald R. McClarey, the blogger Watts Up With That on the news that of yet another case of fudging the data by proponents of global warming:
The New Zealand Government’s chief climate advisory unit NIWA is under fire for allegedly massaging raw climate data to show a global warming trend that wasn’t there.
The scandal breaks as fears grow worldwide that corruption of climate science is not confined to just Britain’s CRU climate research centre.
DarwinCatholic on "Programmer Smack Talk and Global Warming"
Eduardo Zorita, a researcher on past temperature trends at the Institute for Coastal Research in Germany, is calling for prominent Climategate reseachers, Phil Jones, Michael Mann, and Stefan Rahmstorf, to be banned from any future work on the Intergrovernmental Panel on Climate Change's reports.

Great News for Fans of "Bloom County"

2009-11-26T15:26:00.003-05:00

Not subscribing to a newspaper I rarely have occasion to read the comics these days -- but my childhood and teenage years were spent devouring "Calvin and Hobbes", Trudeau's "Doonesbury" and Berkley Breathed's "Bloom County" (circa 1980-1989). For those who don't recognize the latter, IDW Publishing has announced the launch of The Bloom County Complete Library -- "a five volume collection featuring every daily and Sunday strip in chronological order, many reprinted for the first time."

The Bloom County Library will also contain a series of "Context Pages" sprinkled throughout the volumes, providing perspective for the reader and presenting a variety of real-life events and personalities that were contemporary at the time of original publication.

In a recent interview with Los Angeles Times' "Hero Complex", Breathed describes the circumstances that led to his decision to relenquish cartooning:

“When you’re young, you miss things, you just don’t see them,” said the 52-year-old Breathed, who walked away from comic strips last year because the Digital Age had eroded his newsprint audience and, worse, his artistic vigor and sense of whimsy. [...]
“Not to sound like someone swinging their cane, but in the 1980s there weren’t a thousand other voices screaming to be heard at the same time,” Breathed said of the decade when his “Bloom County” was featured in more than 1,200 newspapers and he won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning. “There was a quiet in the room that made being a commentator very exciting. There was no Web, there was barely any cable TV. If you were looking for humorous topical commentary, you would go to the Johnny Carson monologue, ‘Saturday Night Live’ and ‘Doonesbury.’ That was it. After you have the silence of that room, you get really weary with the screaming it takes today. There’s also this bitterness in the public square now that is difficult to avoid. I never did an angry strip, but in recent years I saw that sneaking in.”

Breathe goes on to discuss Peanuts' Charles Schulz ("The major regret in my cartooning life is I didn’t get to know him"); Doonesbury's Garry Trudeu ("He came as close to a hero for me as I was going to have in the comics world") and Calvin & Hobbes' Bill Watterson ("Breathed’s fan, friend and rival").

Having departed from the world of comic-strips, Breathed now writes and illustrates children's books.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2009-11-26T11:55:00.005-05:00

Jay Anderson gives us a history lesson on "The First Thanksgiving":
Every gradeschool boy and girl in the U.S. will confidently tell you that their history books say that the very first Thanksgiving on American soil took place in Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1621 when the English Pilgrims who had arrived the year before and the Patuxet Indians shared the food from their respective harvests in one great big happy feast.
As is often the case, however, the history books are wrong on this account. ...
The Maverick Philosopher engages in a thanksgiving reflection:
We need spiritual exercises just as we need physical, mental, and moral exercises. A good spiritual exercise, and easy to boot, is daily recollection of just how good one has it, just how rich and full one's life is, just how much is going right despite annoyances and setbacks which for the most part are so petty as not to merit consideration. ...
How Private Property Saved the Pilgrims -- When the Pilgrims landed in 1620, they established a system of communal property. Within three years they had scrapped it, instituting private property instead. Hoover media fellow Tom Bethell shares some economic history.
News has it that President Obama's decision whether to pardon a turkey could come at any day now!
And it wouldn't be the celebration of another American holiday without a screed from the Catholic Anarchist (this time reaching the height of self-parody).

Capture most wanted terrorist -- Rewarded with a court martial?

2009-11-26T11:15:00.000-05:00

Navy SEALs Face Assault Charges for Capturing Most-Wanted Terrorist FoxNews November 25, 2009:

Navy SEALs have secretly captured one of the most wanted terrorists in Iraq — the alleged mastermind of the murder and mutilation of four Blackwater USA security guards in Fallujah in 2004. And three of the SEALs who captured him are now facing criminal charges, sources told FoxNews.com.
The three, all members of the Navy's elite commando unit, have refused non-judicial punishment — called a captain's mast — and have requested a trial by court-martial.
Ahmed Hashim Abed, whom the military code-named "Objective Amber," told investigators he was punched by his captors — and he had the bloody lip to prove it.

The Cult of Ayn Rand

2009-11-14T12:35:00.010-05:00

Neither God nor Devil -- Daniel J. Flynn (City Journal) reviews two revealing biographies of the founder of "Objectivism": Anne C. Heller's Ayn Rand and the World She Made (Nan A. Talese, October 2009), and Jennifer Burns' Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right Oxford UP, October 2009).:

The man most responsible for making the Objectivist movement adopt a cult of personality was Nathaniel Branden, so devoted to Objectivism that he incorporated Rand’s last name into his own. Libertarian moralizers, such as Branden, unconsciously adopted some of the uglier qualities of the extreme collectivists whom they railed against. While purporting to be the antitheses of Hitler and Stalin, Objectivists conducted star-chamber trials, demanded that followers denounce relatives, and imitated Rand’s aesthetic tastes (smoking, Mickey Spillaine: good; mustaches, Shakespeare: bad). “A slip of the tongue by an Objectivist who liked Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho or secretly didn’t like the paintings of one of her favorite . . . contemporary artists, Spanish surrealist Jose Menuel Capuletti, could bring accusations of mysticism, whim worship, malevolence, or an attitude of ‘anti-life,’” Heller notes. In a similar vein, Burns points out: “When Ayn and [husband] Frank purchased a new piece of furniture, the Objectivist dining table became all the rage.”

Related

A (brief) review of Atlas Shrugged by Paul Zummo (The Cranky Conservative)
Maclin Horton (Light on Dark Water) on "Ayn Rand, Crank" and what Ayn Rand got right.