An Army of One

With all the excitement on the right over the Palin pick today, I almost hate to go back and reference the Democratic National Convention and its closing ceremonies--er, acceptance speech by Barack Obama.

But among the many thoughts I had while skimming through a tape of the event and an online transcript, one lingered that I'd like to address.

Obama himself, and many of the speakers who preceded him on the nights leading up to his speech, used the phrase "an army of teachers..." Here's how Obama put it:

"I'll invest in early childhood education. I'll recruit an army of new teachers, and pay them higher salaries, and give them more support. And in exchange, I'll ask for higher standards and more accountability. "

Now, I know that our public schools aren't all doing well. I know that there are problems with crumbling schools, safety, lack of resources, and so on. I know that some parents have no educational resources other than the public schools and the public education system.

But not all of us are looking for government promises or government handouts when it comes to education. Though Barack Obama doesn't mention the matter at all on his campaign website, some of us choose to homeschool our children. Over a million children are being homeschooled right now, if the statistics are accurate.

And each of us, every homeschooling parent in America, is an army of one.

We don't need regulations or restrictions interfering with our right to teach our children in the manner we see fit, using the materials and methods we select. We demand the right to determine for ourselves, free from governmental oversight, the best way of achieving our educational goals for our families. Some of us may, at times, appreciate the support of local schools, but none of us are willing to trade our freedom to educate our children at home for the strings that are sometimes attached to that support.

We expect that we won't be harassed by government agencies or made to prove by some arbitrary criteria that we are qualified to instruct our own children. We will never accept the imposition of mandatory curricula for our home educational ventures; we will not teach our children things that conflict with our deeply held values in the name of "safety" or "diversity."

I have my doubts about an army of new teachers transforming the public schools; they are, in many ways, fighting a losing cultural battle that stems more from absentee parents than from lack of qualified teachers or a dearth of materials or supplies. So long as the underlying cultural rot spreading forth from the sexual revolution reaches its decaying influence into the classrooms of America there is little hope for a positive metamorphosis; if Johnny can't read, it has more to do with the fact that Johnny's mother is on her fourth boyfriend since her second marriage of which Johnny was the result and that his chaotic and sometimes violent home life leaves little incentive and no environment for scholarly application than it does with the notion that our current teachers are somehow unequal to the task, and that an army of new recruits will whip the old guard into shape.

But my army of one is doing just fine teaching my children what they need in order to follow Christ, live in the world without being "of the world," and preparing them for whatever glorious call our Heavenly Commander issues to them when they're old enough to answer that call. So whatever else Obama means by his "army of teachers" talk, I certainly hope he's not planning to interfere with my little army, or all the little armies educating their own children one lesson at a time. Because it doesn't take an army of teachers to change the world, or even a village of them: it just takes a family.

Should Mothers Be Vice Presidents?

An interesting bit of discussion is going on among some homeschooling moms and others here, about whether or not the fact that Sarah Palin still has two young children (among her five) is something that more traditional-minded moms should support, or frown upon, in terms of her new role as the candidate for the vice-presidency for the GOP.

This may seem trivial, but the question is already being asked by some liberal opponents of McCain/Palin: will the Evangelical members of their base rally around one of their own, who is not modeling what they hold up as the Biblical model of wifehood/motherhood? Sarah Palin has nearly always worked, even if some of the work she did was in her husband's commercial fishing company; she's also a member of Feminists for Life. Is she really going to appeal to the stay-at-home moms, the homeschooling moms, the moms who reject feminism, even its Christian variations?

The first thing that springs to mind is that most moms of many I know would find a job like the vice presidency relatively restful, compared to the logistics of running a home, cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, and meeting the basic needs of five (or more) children. I'm fairly sure this 9,000 plus square foot home employs a good-sized staff to take care of the chores, which would give the average mom plenty of time to do vice-presidential tasks, raise the children, and probably some extra leisure time to boot. I mean, how much more could you get done in a day if somebody else was doing all the cooking, cleaning, and laundry? Heck, maybe more moms should be running for public office.

The second is that I see a vast difference between a wife helping out with a family business, and then getting involved with the PTA, and only then answering the call to public office when it became clear that the city council was a wreck and needed somebody to come in and yell at them to pick up their dirty socks and put the toilet seat down, for heaven's sake, than I do with somebody who places career above family obligations. The Palin children are 19 (Track, the son who is in the Army) Bristol who is 17, Willow who is 13, Piper who is 7 and the baby, Trig, who was born in April of this year. So by the time Gov. Palin started getting involved in politics, the older children weren't babies, and the younger two hadn't even been born.

And since Piper and Trig came along, Gov. Palin hasn't been an absentee mother. Piper accompanied her mother to work, just as Trig does now.

I think there's a big difference between what is sometimes called "Christian Feminism" and the other sort of feminism. The Christian variety is focused on making sure that the dignity and worth of women is seen in its reality, that women are never objectified or denied education or other opportunities based on their gender, and that real accomodations are made so that if a female governor happens to give birth while in office, she can be a nursing mommy and a governor at the same time. The Christian idea of feminism isn't that different, I think, from what the late Pope John Paul II was saying in Mulieris Dignitatem when he wrote:

In every age and in every country we find many "perfect" women (cf. Prov. 31:10) who, despite persecution, difficulties and discrimination, have shared in the Church's mission. It suffices to mention: Monica, the mother of Augustine, Macrina, Olga of Kiev, Matilda of Tuscany, Hedwig of Silesia, Jadwiga of Cracow, Elizabeth of Thuringia, Birgitta of Sweden, Joan of Arc, Rose of Lima, Elizabeth Ann Seton and Mary Ward.

The witness and the achievements of Christian women have had a significant impact on the life of the Church as well as of society. Even in the face of serious social discrimination, holy women have acted "freely", strengthened by their union with Christ. Such union and freedom rooted in God explain, for example, the great work of Saint Catherine of Siena in the life of the Church, and the work of Saint Teresa of Jesus in the monastic life.

In our own days too the Church is constantly enriched by the witness of the many women who fulfil their vocation to holiness. Holy women are an incarnation of the feminine ideal; they are also a model for all Christians, a model of the "sequela Christi", an example of how the Bride must respond with love to the love of the Bridegroom.

In some ages, it is sufficient for married Christian women to witness to Christ by focusing solely on the task of raising and educating their children to follow Him; in all ages, this is the most important witness a Christian wife and mother can give. But sometimes it is possible, without neglecting our tasks to our families, to share those gifts God has given us as His daughters with the wider community. And it's up to each of us to consider whether He is calling us to do that, and to what degree it's possible for us to do that without neglecting our primary obligation to our husbands and children.

Gov. Palin is the only person who knows whether she can fulfill her role as mother while also serving as this country's vice-president. But I don't think we can say that being a mother automatically disqualifies a person from such service. The powerful witness to the value of innocent human life made present by her children, especially baby Trig, is hard to ignore in this culture that values slick notions of perfection and hides away or aborts or euthanizes those we deem less than perfect. And the angry feminism that pits mothers against their children might benefit from seeing an example of how it is possible to take an active role in the world without neglecting the most important role of all, that of motherhood.

Should mothers be vice-presidents? Maybe some should. We are all called to serve in the wider community, though the details and opportunities and skills and possibilities will vary. But the Scripture passage Pope John Paul II referenced reminds us that our role as wives and mothers is important, and may involve many different responsibilities:

When one finds a worthy wife, her value is far beyond pearls.

11

Her husband, entrusting his heart to her, has an unfailing prize.

12

¹ She brings him good, and not evil, all the days of her life.

13

She obtains wool and flax and makes cloth with skillful hands.

14

² Like merchant ships, she secures her provisions from afar.

15

She rises while it is still night, and distributes food to her household.

16

She picks out a field to purchase; out of her earnings she plants a vineyard.

17

She is girt about with strength, and sturdy are her arms.

18

³ She enjoys the success of her dealings; at night her lamp is undimmed.

19

She puts her hands to the distaff, and her fingers ply the spindle.

20

She reaches out her hands to the poor, and extends her arms to the needy.

21

She fears not the snow for her household; all her charges are doubly clothed.

22

She makes her own coverlets; fine linen and purple are her clothing.

23

Her husband is prominent at the city gates as he sits with the elders of the land.

24

She makes garments and sells them, and stocks the merchants with belts.

25

⁴ She is clothed with strength and dignity, and she laughs at the days to come.

26

She opens her mouth in wisdom, and on her tongue is kindly counsel.

27

She watches the conduct of her household, and eats not her food in idleness.

28

Her children rise up and praise her; her husband, too, extols her:

29

"Many are the women of proven worth, but you have excelled them all."

30

⁵ Charm is deceptive and beauty fleeting; the woman who fears the LORD is to be praised.

31

Give her a reward of her labors, and let her works praise her at the city gates.

The Palin Pick

Okay. I've had time to process this morning's news; I've had time to read a few opinions and mull things over; most importantly, I've had time for plenty of strong black tea.

And none of that reasoned, sober attempt at thoughtful analysis is wiping the stupid grin off of my face.

I think Rod Dreher put it pretty well when he said, "Suddenly, I have a new reason to be interested in this campaign. My Derbyshirian gloom has been ever so slightly ameliorated by a ray of Alaska sunshine." I'd have to agree; up until this morning I didn't think I could vote for McCain at all. Now--it's at least a possibility, and even if I still vote for a third-party candidate over big government/big war concerns, I won't be surprised or disappointed if the McCain/Palin team locks the Texas vote up tighter than a Dan Rather camera head shot back in the day.

I realize that a few concerns about Palin are being raised. One, of course, is her experience level, but in a race where the Democratic opponent is a single-term U.S. Senator who had a single-term in the Illinois Senate prior to that, it's going to be pretty hard to take such concerns all that seriously.

Another thing I've been hearing whispers about is that she might be a bit "soft" on gay issues. But her record of opposition to same-sex marriage seems pretty straightforward, and if "soft" translates to "treating same-sex afflicted people with the human dignity all people deserve," then Catholics are supposed to be equally "soft." The funny thing is that should it transpire that Gov. Palin is actually in favor of some things the Church opposes, like partner benefits, I get the idea that she'd listen to people like me as to why we oppose those things; she comes across as a straight shooter.

Against such things, which haven't even materialized, we see her strong pro-life stance, her beautiful family, her reputation for integrity and effective leadership, her high approval rating among her Alaskan constituents, and her incredible bio, which includes a second place finish in the Miss Alaska contest, a college degree with a major in journalism and a minor in politics, and a stint as a sports reporter at the same time she was working with her husband, her high school sweetheart, in the commercial fishing industry. Her political record is equally impressive, given her commitment to reducing corruption everywhere she's been; and through it all she's been the kind of mom who took her nursing infants to work with her, most especially her two youngest, who have accompanied her to work in the governor's mansion.

Down to earth, genuine, adventurous, with boundless energy and determination, strong values and integrity, a leader who still manages to be there for her five children, Sarah Palin reminds me of lots of women I admire, some of whom are relatives of mine (and I think you know who you are).

And if it was even possible to inject some energy and enthusiasm into what was starting to seem like a moribund and lackluster campaign, the choice of Sarah Palin for vice president seems brilliantly inspired.

The two names most discussed yesterday, Pawlenty and Romney, were safer picks (though some readers have shared good details about Pawlenty). But even if the Pawlenty pick would have been a good thing generally, there's no way it could have compared to the message McCain's pick of Palin sends to social conservatives and to those who care more about reforming corrupt politics on both sides of the aisle than on maintinging one party or the other's status quo. Obama, for instance, has talked quite a bit about reforming Washington, but unlike Palin he is a Washington insider who has never actually reformed government. Palin has an actual record of rooting out corruption, and hasn't been hamstrung by the inside-the-Beltway myopia that soon afflicts the most Mr. Smith-ian of reform congressmen or women.

Can we reform government? Sarah Palin seems to ask. Yes, we can. Only in her case, it's more than words.

A Real Dilemma

Okay. Never mind voting. Never mind partisan politics. Never mind all the issues of this campaign (just for a moment).

I've got a real dilemma on my hands.

I like singing in our new parish choir. I consider the woman running things a friend. I want to be nice and get along, hoping to be a positive influence in the general direction of more traditional music as time goes by. If I've learned one thing from the past it's that marching in with a "my way or the highway" attitude doesn't really change hearts or open minds to the beautiful traditional music of the Church's past. And so occasionally I'll sing a newer, lesser song with no complaints, but reserving the right to make my opinions about the piece known.

But this week she's scheduled "Gather Us In." No, really, the Wreck of the Edumund Fitzgerald of liturgical music, the dreck by which other dreck is measured, the tritest and most "let's celebrate us" piece of non-worship jangling, the piece which makes me want to gag, and only because it's preferable to completing the actual involutary digestive response that this piece provokes in me every single time I hear it.

I want to express my strong dislike of the piece without hurting feelings. I don't want to be unkind or disruptive, or try to take on myself a role that properly belongs to the new pastor (who, alas, might just like this kind of song for all I know). But I don't want to just sit there and sing it with no expression of my unhappiness whatsoever.

What should I do? What would you do?

Practice is tonight. I'll update later.

UPDATE: I ended up doing pretty much what Mary suggested below, just talking after practice about what I saw as the problem with the song and getting enthusiastic about the prospect of us "Vatican II Catholics" getting to rediscover/reconnect with our liturgical roots. Which is what I really believe.

One thing--for those who mentioned this, I was always planning to sing the song, despite my dislike for it. When I got involved in choir last year I decided beforehand that I would have to be capable of singing anything that was scheduled as a precondition for joining. And it was the fact that the first choir I joined would also sing lovely traditional pieces to counterbalance the less beautiful ones, a practice that continues with this new choir, that drew me back into singing in the first place, so I do see positive signs here. Obedience and humility are good things to practice along with singing--and I figure that a couple of verses of "Gather Us In" sung with a reluctant heart should shave a few minutes off of my purgatory, as well as the purgatory of everyone else who dislikes this song (for excellent reasons!) but listens to it without a grouchy or angry heart anyway. :)

The Dream

It appears that the infamous columns are not Greek temple-denoting or Brandenburg gate echoes, but a mock-up of the Lincoln memorial where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke forty-five years ago:

The Illinois Democrat will officially become the nation's first black major party presidential nominee when he accepts the Democratic Party's nomination Thursday night at a Denver football stadium in front of an expected 80,000 people.

Adding to this historic symbolism, Obama's accomplishment arrives on the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech and march on Washington.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not denying that this nation of ours has come a long way on racial issues in the forty-five years since King's "Dream" speech. And I don't want to suggest that Barack Obama has never experienced racism during his years in America. In some sense the nomination of a biracial man whose white mother seems to have been a sixties radical and whose father was a man from Kenya who may have still been married to his Kenyan wife when Stanley Ann and Barack Sr. were together is still an amazing thing, given the knee-jerk prejudice of many of our nations' people against anyone whose skin color is darker than theirs.

But there's a slightly "off" feeling about tying Barack Obama's nomination to King's speech. If I really think about it, I think it's because Dr. King was speaking to all Americans, regardless of party affiliation or level of political involvement; the civil rights movement transcended politics, and brought many Americans together to overcome the dehumanizing racism of the past. But Obama's speech tonight is, in one way, the apex of partisan politics: the moment when one party's nominee stands up to say why he, and not the other fellow, should be elected. Am I wrong to think that any conscious, deliberate attempt to tie Obama's speech to King's only cheapens the dream?

Veepstakes, Republican Edition

As the nation prepares for Barack Obama's nomination to be the presidential candidate for the Democratic Party, as news writers search in vain for a good synonym for "historic," all eyes have been deflected, briefly, in McCain's direction as he gets ready to announce his vice-presidential pick tomorrow:

The Arizona senator will appear with his No. 2 at an Ohio rally on Friday, aides said, though they provided no details on who McCain had picked.

Without explanation, Pawlenty called off an Associated Press interview at the last minute, as well as other media interviews in Denver, site of the Democratic National Convention.

Others believed to be in contention for the No. 2 slot on the GOP ticket included former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who was meeting with donors throughout California, and Democrat-turned-independent Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, who was vacationing on New York's Long Island.

Former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge, too, was still a possibility, as was the idea that McCain would choose a dark horse from any number of names that have circulated.

McCain, however, was uncharacteristically silent.

Why is this so unexciting?

I think it's because no matter who McCain picks, it's unlikely to be someone around whom strong social conservatives will rally. I could be wrong, and would very much like to be wrong, but realistically I know that few of the names, even the long-shot-dark-horse ones circulated, are all that exciting to a pro-life Catholic voter.

I know people have said good things about Gov. Pawlenty, for instance, but as a "raised Catholic but converted to Evangelical Christianity" candidate he's not exactly inspiring to the "Catholics Against Joe Biden" conglomerate. It's not that I don't have sympathy for ex-Catholics, and I find them to be more honest than current Catholics like Pelosi and Biden who don't seem to believe much of what the Church actually teaches but claim membership anyway. But he wouldn't be my favorite pick.

The trouble is that unless McCain were to select Ron Paul as his running mate, I find the whole bunch pretty uninspiring. And if McCain picks a pro-choice candidate I'll stop flirting with the idea that the Republicans could win, and return to focusing on why the Democrats should lose, because if McCain picks a pro-choice veep we all lose, anyway.

Wow.

Just read this:

The 2008 Republican Platform Committee has finally reached the finish line, but before it crossed it tripped up on the issue of stem-cell research. When the committee reached the stem-cell language, North Carolina delegate Mary Summa offered what appeared on the surface to be a small change. Summa sought to change the sentence:

We call for a ban on human cloning and a ban on the creation of and experimentation on human embryos for research purposes.

to read:

We call for a ban on human cloning and a ban on the creation of or experimentation on human embryos for research purposes.

thus severing experimentation on human embryos from their creation for that purpose. It's just one word, but it has huge implications. It is a call for a total ban on embryonic stem-cell research, including privately funded research using frozen embryos from in-vitro fertilization (IVF) clinics. By contrast, the 2004 platform was in accord with President Bush's policy at the time, which made limited federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research available for the first time.

In introducing her amendment, Summa gave an emotional speech in which she said, "I want my five children to live in a world where the weak are protected from the strong. I want them to live in a world where all life is protected." [...]

Bopp then offered his own amendment to Summa's amendment. At this point Burr broke it up. He instructed Summa, Bopp and Kobach to confer until they had come up with a single amendment on stem-cells. The committee then moved on to other matters.

When the three of them returned, Summa's eyes were red and swollen. She re-submitted her original amendment, without modification. Burr called for a vote, and the motion passed.

The 2008 Republican Platform calls for a ban on all embryonic stem-cell research, public or private. [Emphasis added, EM.]

Now there's an encouraging new plank in what, just a few years ago, looked like a leaky platform as regards pro-life issues.

If nothing else comes of election 2008, this will be remembered as the election where pro-life voters finally made it clear that we're not going away, and the major parties ignore us at their peril.

Thank God for delegate Mary Summa.

Arthurian, Not Messianic

Rod Dreher weighs in on the Greek Temple Fiasco:

Is Team Obama crazy? Or do they have a Republican mole on the senior staff? I ask because they're going to have the Lightworker giving his acceptance speech in a football stadium, surrounded by Greek temple columns. Shazam! Straight from Olympus to bring word from on high to us mere mortals! Man, if I were making McCain's commercials, I would thank Zeus for this gift.

See, Obama supporters, this is why Republicans have so much to work with, making fun of his messianic image. The meme doesn't come from nowhere. Karl Rove isn't making these decisions, you know.

According to the article in the second link, though, Obama's motivations here may be more Arthurian than Messianic:

Politicians in past elections have typically spoken from the convention site itself, but the Obama campaign liked the idea of having their man speak to a larger, stadium-sized crowd not far from where the Democratic National Convention is being held, at the Denver pro basketball arena.

Obama was taking a page from the campaign book of John Kennedy in 1960 when the future president delivered his acceptance speech to 80,000 people in the Los Angeles Coliseum.

Once Obama speaks, confetti will rain down on him and fireworks will be fired off from locations around the stadium wall.

Hmm. John F. Kennedy, miniature Greek temple--wait. Is Obama going to have another shot at copying Kennedy's appearance at the Brandenburg Gate? After all, Michelle has been dressing like Jackie O. for some time now, and some have already made the connection.

I think that Barack Obama really wants a new Camelot, not a New Jerusalem. While his supporters--and critics--have focused on the messianic images and messages from his campaign, I suspect that his real mission has always been to be the second coming of JFK.

Let's see how many of the key phrases from this speech end up in Obama's acceptance speech. I'm betting we'll at least hear something that sounds an awful lot like this:

Today our concern must be with that future. For the world is changing. The old era is ending. The old ways will not do. [...]

It is time, in short -- It is time, in short for a new generation of leadership. All over the world, particularly in the newer nations, young men are coming to power, men who are not bound by the traditions of the past, men who are not blinded by the old fears and hates and rivalries-- young men who can cast off the old slogans and the old delusions. [...]

The New Frontier is here whether we seek it or not.

Beyond that frontier are uncharted areas of science and space, unsolved problems of peace and war, unconquered problems of ignorance and prejudice, unanswered questions of poverty and surplus. It would be easier to shrink from that new frontier, to look to the safe mediocrity of the past, to be lulled by good intentions and high rhetoric -- and those who prefer that course should not vote for me or the Democratic Party...

It might be a good idea to have a few Kennedy speeches in front of you while Obama is giving his acceptance speech. I have a feeling that everything he's going to say is a variation of something our parents or grandparents heard forty-eight years ago.

Catholics and the Death Penalty

If you haven't read it already, Mark Shea's article about Sr. Helen Prejean and some of her more outrageous recent statements is here, and worth reading.

The worst thing about activists like Sister Helen is that they end up doing their cause more harm than good, especially among those of us Catholics who are inclined to view such obvious leftism and heterodoxy with suspicion.

Indeed, it was because of activists like Sister Helen that it took me years to realize that the Church wasn't all that inclined to look positively on the nuclear arms race; and it's because of people like Sister Helen that it also took me years to tease out just what a Catholic ought to be thinking about in terms of the death penalty, too.

Because, of course, the death penalty isn't intrinsically evil. Unlike abortion which is never permissible, the just exercise of the death penalty by lawful civil authorities for the purpose of punishing the guilty has always been, and will always be, morally acceptable.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it this way:

2266 The efforts of the state to curb the spread of behavior harmful to people's rights and to the basic rules of civil society correspond to the requirement of safeguarding the common good. Legitimate public authority has the right and duty to inflict punishment proportionate to the gravity of the offense. Punishment has the primary aim of redressing the disorder introduced by the offense. When it is willingly accepted by the guilty party, it assumes the value of expiation. Punishment then, in addition to defending public order and protecting people's safety, has a medicinal purpose: as far as possible, it must contribute to the correction of the guilty party.67

2267 Assuming that the guilty party's identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor. If, however, nonlethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people's safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person. Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm - without definitely taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself - the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity are very rare, if not practically nonexistent.NT

Two things should be clear from reading the above: first, that Catholics are not required, and indeed are not able, to oppose the death penalty using the same philosophical guidelines as we do to oppose such grave evils as abortion, torture, contraception, and other intrinsic evils for the simple reason that the death penalty is not intrinsically evil; and second, that determining those circumstances where the death penalty might be appropriate is the prudential duty of lawful authority, and of a just society as well.

It is true that generally speaking our use of the death penalty in America today doesn't always appear to meet the prudential guidelines outlined in the Catechism, which I'll summarize as follows:

1. The guilt of the person must be fully determined.
2. Non-lethal means must be insufficient to protect innocent people's lives from the convicted criminal.
3. The non-lethal means must include the opportunity for redemption.

Now, I think that the first criteria is setting a higher standard than our legal notions of "beyond reasonable doubt." That standard, after all, still allows the convicted person to appeal his case. I'm not sure at what point between "beyond reasonable doubt" and catching the criminal red-handed in the process of committing the crime, with the added weight of his own guilty confession, we would find "fully determined," but that's why these are prudential decisions to be applied on a case-by-case basis. However, it can't be overlooked that the death penalty today is too often disproportionately applied not to those whose evidence of guilt is the strongest, but to those who can least afford highly-skilled criminal lawyers to defend them, which is inherently unjust.

The second criteria is the one that many strident death penalty opponents focus on. Surely, surely in America in the twenty-first century our methods of incarceration are sufficient to protect society from those who pose a danger! But as this recent story reminds us, this is not always the case. Even given high-tech security measures and well-guarded prisons, it's possible for some prisoners to pose a threat to other inmates, to guards, and to the public. I recall the news when the so-called "Texas Seven" escaped; I remember reading about the police officer killed by them on Christmas Eve. Of the seven, two were supposed to be serving life sentences; in fact, the man supposed to be the group's leader was serving eighteen life sentences for his crimes. The duty to balance the potential public threat posed by those convicted of serious crimes against the criminal's right to be treated with the intrinsic dignity owed to all human beings is an important and weighty one.

The third point may seem strange at first glance. But consider for a moment the possibility that sometime in the future it might be seriously proposed to replace the death penalty with a life sentence that includes keeping the convicted criminal on some kind of prescription medication that will rob him of his free will and consciousness, making him docile, easily controlled, and no longer a threat to the public, his fellow prisoners or guards, and so on. It seems clear that the Church wouldn't consider this an acceptable alternative to the death penalty, at least not if the medication in question made it impossible for the prisoner to remember his crimes, learn to feel remorse, and seek God's forgiveness for them.

All of this means, of course, that opposition to the death penalty from a Catholic perspective isn't at all in the same category as opposition to abortion. They are not two different sleeves on the same seamless garment; and though at root both are connected to our appreciation of the inherent worth and dignity of all human life we don't do either issue any favor when we try to conflate two such dissimilar matters. Opposing abortion is the duty of all Catholics, who should work to end it and never to support it; opposing the death penalty in general because of our desire to see criminals repentant and working for their salvation as we hope for ours, and mindful of the Church's belief that it is not inherently wrong for the state to choose to impose this penalty under certain circumstances and that we may on occasion disagree with our fellow Catholics about specific criminal cases and whether these meet the criteria outlined above from a prudential standpoint, is also a duty, but a duty of a different sort and degree.

Unfortunately for many pro-life Catholics, the constant attempt to equate abortion and the death penalty as if they were of the same moral weight, or worse, the tendency by some leftist Catholics to oppose with great vigor the death penalty while insisting that their "personal" opposition to abortion should not be imposed upon society, weakens the effect of our efforts to promote the Gospel of Life. To put it in the simplest possible terms, abortion is always wrong, while the death penalty may or may not be wrong in an individual criminal case depending on certain prudential considerations which both justice and mercy compel us to consider.

A Little Break

No, not from blogging--not just now!

But let's have some fun with a Blogthings quiz--I haven't posted one in a while, and this one is entertaining:

You Are the Storyteller

You have a way with words, and you love hearing yourself talk. You are at your best when you have an audience, and you can carry on a conversation with anyone. You are light hearted and fun - a natural entertainer. It's a side of you that you can't really turn off. You thrive on attention (perhaps a little too much), and you love applause. When you allow yourself to be serious, you can be a moving and articulate speaker. Your words have power, and not just the power to make people laugh.

What Role Do You Play?

How about you? If you take the quiz, how do you come out?

I'll get back to some serious blogging later this afternoon--but somehow, after watching a bit too much of the DNC last night, all my thoughts seem to have taken on a grey dull pallor, and all I can really think to say is that Nancy Pelosi should really put a sock in it--which isn't the kind of thing I ought to be blogging.

An Evening With Hillary Clinton

"I knew she'd pick the salmon-colored one. Or, at least, it looks salmon-colored on our TV, " I said as Mr. M. and I prepared to watch Hillary Clinton's speech at the Democratic National Convention.

"What do you mean?"

"The pantsuit. Or is it a skirt-suit? She's behind the podium already..."

"It's a pantsuit," Mr. M. said. "I saw her come onto the stage."

Holding the buttered slice of banana bread from our late dinner that I'd decided to carry over to the couch, thus missing Hillary's pantsuited entrance, I sat down. "They were testing the pantsuits earlier. It was on Drudge," I said, biting into the bread. "There were four different pantsuits, and they were holding them up to see which color went best against the backdrop, and I had a feeling she'd pick..."

"Who was?"

"I don't know. Her handlers, I guess. At least the attack necklace is gone."

"Hmm?" he asked.

"The necklace. It's a nice little one. Do you remember during the primaries when Hillary kept appearing with those giant chunky necklaces that looked like they were attacking her neck? She's got a shortish neck, like me, and you just can't wear..."

I stopped talking as Hillary started.

"She's pretty boring," said Mr. M.

"I know. This feels like she's sleepwalking through it."

"It's the same old stuff."

"I wonder what the message is? She just said, "...fight for the future..." like Mark Warner. Do you think that's it?"

"I'm not sure they have a message," said Mr. M.

We got quiet again.

"Ha! Standing up for the invisible people. How 'bout the unborn, Hillary? They're pretty invisible..."

"Free health care for Puerto Rico? You've got to be kidding me..."

"Do you see Bill, mugging for the camera? The guy's a consummate actor."

"I wonder who picked out Michele's dress. I think it looks terrible! Way too shapeless..."

A few more minutes of listening.

"Man, this is boring."

"I know."

"Is Harriet Tubman..."

"Underground railroad. You know, the..."

"Yeah, I know. The last name just sounded weird for some reason."

"I hate it when that happens."

"Good Lord. We're going to talk about Suffragism now??"

"She's spent most of the speech talking about herself."

"Thank goodness it's over..."

"Wait. Did Brian Williams just say, '...that speech by President Clinton??"

"I guess Hillary's not the only one who's wishing for that..."

"I'm going to go see what people are saying about the speech. I'm pretty sure that will be much more interesting than the speech itself was..."

UPDATE: Wow. On the Internet that pantsuit looks light orange. I think we may need to start thinking about a new TV...

Bishops on a Roll

A funny thing is happening in our land just now. A political convention was started, and all of a sudden an episcopal synod broke out...

...okay, okay, not really. But in light of all the spine-tingling evidence of episcopal spines snapping to attention from sea to shining sea, which the Curt Jester is conveniently collecting, one can't help but smile. It's wonderful, your Excellencies; it's also about time, but we'll let that slide in the general aura of gratitude for this working of the Holy Spirit.

I know it's been difficult to be a politically conservative Catholic in the past forty years. For far too long, the USCCB has been jokingly--and not so jokingly--called "The Democratic Party at prayer." For far too long it seemed like the only political statements the bishops were willing to make took strong stances on prudential matters such as illegal immigration or the justice or injustice of a particular war, while maintaining a deafening silence on the biggest war of all, the war against the innocent unborn. Worse, when the abortion issue was mentioned it always seemed to be wrapped up so tight in the "seamless garment" that you couldn't see it at all, giving the impression to a whole generation of Catholics that so long as you opposed the death penalty the Church would give you a pass on your "pro-choice" beliefs.

Time, however, has passed. The newer American bishops aren't so inclined to parse and nuance when it comes to abortion. And they're starting to get annoyed, one suspects, with Democratic Catholic pro-choice senators and congresspeople who think they can redefine Catholic teaching to suit their own ends, and mislead the faithful in the process.

It's truly encouraging to see our bishops taking a stand and repeating what most of us know to be true: you can't be a practicing Catholic in good standing and vote in favor of abortion; you can't be Catholic and pro-choice.

Now that the bishops have started to make that clear, I'd love to see them seize this opportunity to take that message into every Catholic parish in each of their dioceses, to tell Catholic Americans once and for all that we are not permitted to be merely "personally opposed" to evil. A Catholic should strive to fight evil, not to make peace with it in order to make war on some other problem or trouble that might not rise to the level of intrinsic evil. And I'd love them instruct their priests to remind that everything they've said about abortion holds true for contraception, too: we can't remain true to our Catholic faith and seek to use contraception or to tolerate its use.

The Bishops are on a roll. If we give them a little push maybe they'll be able to keep on rollin'.

Memento Mori

I didn't watch the DNC convention last night. I have a low tolerance for political conventions, and the first night generally seems to contain all the substance of the first hour and a half of the Academy Awards, which is to say not very much at all.

And I didn't really trust myself to remain charitable during the Ted Kennedy tribute and speech. To me, there is much to pity but little to admire in Senator Kennedy's life and work, and while the advent of his serious illness and the high possibility his remaining days on earth will be few are a reminder to pray for him, there seems to be little of worth in the spectacle of a premature political canonization for a man whose earthly life has hardly been a model of morality and goodness.

God can do wonders, of course, and Ted Kennedy could be moved to a sincere repentance and heartfelt reconnection to the Church and her teachings. Given that he's still shilling for the slicing and dicing of embryos to be used to "cure" juvenile diabetes (and probably, if he were honest about it, brain cancer), one can only shake the head and fold the hands, and beg God to have mercy on him before he draws his final breath.

The heyday of the Kennedy political dynasty was before my time. I wasn't born yet when JFK was killed, and though I've read about this powerful Catholic family and their role in American politics it wasn't ever a part of my experience. Ted Kennedy was already a rather old senior senator by the time I ever heard of him, and while my occasional interest in books of the "true-crime" genre lead to my reading a pretty good analysis of the dreadful Chappaquiddick affair even that was already a past and mostly forgotten--or at least, seldom discussed--matter.

In a sense, what happened to the Kennedys is what happened to so many Catholic families of the age: they stopped fighting against the evils of the world and sought compromise with it, instead. From abortion and contraception to ESCR and the killing of the elderly and handicapped, the Kennedy family got on board the Culture of Death express, and now, decimated, ennervated, weak and tottering, they cast shadows of skeletal grandeur when all that might have been decent and noble and admirable has been stripped away, leaving only echoes of long-ago good sentiments and high ambitions.

I'm sure Ted Kennedy feels a little cheated by fate. This was supposed to be a grand moment of closure, when the Democratic party ushered in a new era of racial cooperation by nominating a black man to be the President of the United States. Senator Kennedy may have seen himself sharing the dais, approvingly handing over the crown, to a new generation of Democratic voters, the text-message kids who want to change the world and have ordained Barack Obama to do it for them. He was probably planning to work closely with an Obama administration from his position of power and prestige in the Senate.

Instead, the talking heads on PBS have just suggested that Hillary Clinton may become the new "lion of the Senate," replacing ol' Ted--and Senator Kennedy will have to watch from the wings for however long God spares him.

We build up our kingdoms, and our dynasties. We amass our fortunes and count our grain in its harvest. We rub our hands with glee at how important and powerful we are--and then with the suddenness of candle-light extinguishing, we are gone.

Last night, Ted Kennedy faced an adoring throng full of people who cheered him just for coming. One day soon he, like all of us, will face Our Lord, and give an accounting for his actions in this world, and the admiration and respect he garnered during his life will count for nothing.

Separation of Church and Conventions

While we Catholics focus on Biden and the problem of abortion-supporting Catholics, the Democratic Party has been trying to present themselves as a party of faith. From NPR:

For the first time ever, Democrats have planned "faith caucus meetings" led by an array of religious and spiritual leaders, including Christians, Muslims and Jews. Democrats want to convince voters that they are putting their faith in action — and show that Republicans haven't cornered the market on family values or faith.

"Everybody woke up after the last election and realized the Democratic Party had not done well dealing with religious voters," says Steven Waldman, founder of the online spiritual center beliefnet.com. [...]

"Republicans were able to use religion more effectively," says Jim Wallis, founder of faith-based Sojourners magazine.

The agenda of the religious community has changed, Wallis says. As recently as two years ago, many religious Americans were focused only on issues such as gay marriage and abortion.

The new generation of religious citizens "has a wider, deeper agenda that includes poverty, protecting the environment or 'creation care', war and peace, human trafficking and Darfur, for instance," he says.

This convention will try to juggle all of these concerns. "I believe in separation of church and state, and so does Barack Obama," says Wallis. "But that doesn't mean segregation of moral values from public life or the banishing of religious language from the public square. Dr. [Martin Luther] King invoked the prophets Jeremiah, Isaiah and Jesus. He spoke with a Bible in one hand and the constitution in the other."

This pernicious nonsense has got to stop at once.

What pernicious nonsense? Why, the idea that until yesterday the only "faith-based" voters were WASPs who cared primarily about stopping abortion (because they want to control women) and gay marriage (because they hate gays).

Because, you see, all deeply committed Christians are troglodytes like that. They want to burn the Constitution and impose the Christian version of sharia on America. They don't care about enlightened issues like Darfur and the environment and peace and human trafficking--genocide, Hummers, military stuff and cheap labor is meat and drink to these people, or at least most thinking people say so. They act like abortion is somehow actual evil as if such backward medieval notions as good and evil still mean anything in the age of HDTV and text messaging. And we're pretty sure that, living in Southern Gospel Utopia, they've never met a real-live gay person, because that's the only reason they could possibly want to keep gay people from exercising their God or Deity of Your Choice-given right to an abor...wait, wrong speech...marriage.

Thankfully for the Democratic party there's no shortage of spiritual or even downright religious people who will grasp at the opportunity to shill for the Party of Dead Babies. From the NPR piece:

Each evening of the convention will be punctuated by an invocation and a benediction by religious leaders, including a rabbi from Washington, D.C., a Catholic nun from Ohio and a Greek Orthodox archbishop from New York. There will be other faith-based panels, too, geared toward spiritual discussion. One is titled "Faith in 2009: How an Obama Administration will Engage People of Faith."

Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter spoke at an interfaith service on Sunday. The convention CEO, Leah D. Daughtry, is a preacher.

Now, in one sense I could understand a religious leader accepting an invitation to pray with the Democrats on the ground that the party needs prayer--heck, some of us think it just about needs an exorcism. But to take the appearance of so many religious figures at face value would be naive; the Democratic party hasn't changed. There may be an attempt by the party to get religion, but it's clear from their unwavering support for ESCR, abortion, gay marriage, and a whole host of other policies that the god Moloch still gets the lion's share of their worship efforts.

Maybe it's time that organized religions started instructing their leaders to turn down invitations to appear at national political conventions. The party of "separation of church and state" ought to reconsider the wisdom of attempting to blend church and convention, especially when you can only do so by defining "church" to exclude a large number of religious believers.

A Teaching Moment

As I said below, one of the dangers of having all these so-called "pro-choice Catholic" legislators run around working to promote and support and fund abortion (and contraception, N.B.) while still calling themselves Catholic, attending Mass, and receiving the Eucharist with the appearance given by some Catholic leaders that this is just fine is that those who are not Catholic, especially our separated brethren in various Protestant churches, are left with the impression that the Catholic hierarchy doesn't really take the issue of abortion all that seriously.

I firmly believe that nothing could be further from the truth; we have seen more bishops in the recent past speak out against abortion, join protesters at abortion clinics and lead prayers there, and otherwise provide witness to the truth that every abortion kills an innocent human being than we have for many years prior to the recent past. So I don't think the lack of episcopal action is always and everywhere proof of a lack of episcopal vertebrae, despite the temptation to believe that on occasion about specific prelates.

I don't know, but I suspect, that one thing which makes some bishops reluctant to force some kind of Eucharistic showdown with dissenting Catholic legislators and other public figures is the negative publicity that would probably result, and the harm that this might do to non-Catholics and their view of the Church--indeed, it might even create a backlash where people would threaten the Church for having dared to "interfere in politics," even though the interference would have nothing to do with politics aside from fostering the radical and controversial belief that even politicians have souls. No bishop, or priest, or other minister of Holy Communion, ordinary or otherwise, wants, I think, to create a situation where network news media personnel are camped out at Mass hoping to see a senator or congressperson given the smackdown at the communion rail (or in line, more often these days), yet in this day and age of cell phone cameras and YouTube videos such an act would be an instant media sensation.

But the reality is that the spectacle of the abortion-supporting Catholic politician attending Mass and receiving Communion is going to be an equally explosive matter for the Church to handle, and sooner or later someone will capture on a cell phone or other small camera Biden or another abortion-supporting politician receiving Holy Communion. News reports are already slipping in the fact that he went to Mass and received Communion this weekend, and it's only a matter of time before some kind of an incident takes place which will require explanation and clarification by the American hierarchy.

Rather than let things get that far, I think the Catholic faithful ought to ask some questions of our bishops. Why is someone's decades-long support for and aid to the "cause" of legalized abortion on demand not considered obstinate persistence in manifest grave sin as described in Canon 915? Are the Church's teachings on abortion and contraception really all that serious, constituting grave matter, or is one's acceptance or rejection of those teachings immaterial to one's self-identification as a Catholic? If the Church means what she says in regard to abortion being a matter of intrinsic evil, how do we explain the reluctance of the bishops to bar those cooperating seriously by their actions with that evil from the reception of Holy Communion (or, indeed, any of the Sacraments of the living?). Is it not true to say, and indeed to insist, that it is not possible to be "pro-choice" and Catholic?

I hope that our bishops will seize this opportunity to clarify these and other related matters. Not only is it important for the sake of Catholics, but for our friends in Protestant churches who are wondering why someone like Joe Biden can keep receiving the Eucharist with no problem despite his support for abortion on demand.

The "Pro-Choice Catholic" Problem

There have been some pretty brilliant musings about Joe Biden's Catholic problem over the weekend. This post by blogger Irenaeus is a must-read:

I'm beginning to think that it's not a case of Democrats reaching out to nominal, cultural liberal Catholics. Rather, I'm beginning to think it's a case of the Democrats trying to define Catholicism....[...]

I have often observed that for liberals, religion is great when exercised within the limits of liberalism alone and for liberal ends. Thus, if the church functions as a caucus supporting lefty issues and does good social justice things, then fine. If not, then libs raise hue and cry. Christian faith cannot have its own integrity and define its own ends; it's only one of many means to ends decided by other means.

And Patrick Archbold weighs in:

As with just about everything with Joe Biden, his religion is all about, you guessed it, Joe Biden. Take this classic line from the Senator, "I get comfort from carrying my rosary, going to mass every Sunday. It's my time alone."

So in a nutshell, the rosary is about his comfort and mass is his alone time. For alone time, I lock myself in the bathroom, Joe Biden goes to mass. One might be tempted to think that this is just verbal slip from the notoriously overweening and wordy pol. There is a whole lot more where that came from. Take this humdinger.

"My idea of self, of family, of community, of the wider world comes straight from my religion. It's not so much the Bible, the beatitudes, the Ten Commandments, the sacraments, or the prayers I learned. It's the culture."

Get it? His whole worldview comes straight from Catholicism, except for well ... all the Catholic stuff. Reread that paragraph again. Not the Bible, the beatitudes, the Ten commandments, or the sacraments. In short, everything that God has taught or given us in order to make us holy does not inform Biden's worldview. No not that stuff, the culture.

What does Biden mean by Culture? Well, unfortunately it means whatever Biden wants it to mean. His abortion support, while not in line with the formal teaching of the Church, is in line with his idea of his Catholic culture.

These brilliantly intelligent gentlemen have started to connect some pretty significant dots. It's been a while since I've played "dot to dot," but let me see if I can extrapolate the next point.

When Joe Biden calls himself a Catholic, he is telling the truth. Any baptized Catholic is a Catholic. Even if the baptized person leaves the Church he is still a Catholic. It takes a formal renunciation of the faith before one's status as a Catholic comes under any doubt.

However, when Joe Biden calls himself a Catholic, he is also telling a lie (objectivly speaking). This is because he is clearly not using the word in its most simplified form; he doesn't mean merely that he was baptized a Catholic and no longer practices the faith. He goes out of his way to present himself as a practicing, Mass-going, rosary praying, son of the Irish sort of Catholic. And--this is the important part--he says that his years of unwavering support for Roe v. Wade do not in any way interfere with his identification of himself as a faithful Catholic.

In other words, he, as well as Nancy Pelosi and other "pro-choice" Catholic legislators, are making a claim that isn't true: they are claiming that it is possible to be a practicing Catholic in good standing with the Church and still work to promote and preserve the principle of legalized abortion on demand for any woman who wants one.

The reality is a little different.

One may be many kinds of Catholic. One may be a strong Catholic or a weak one, a practicing Catholic or a lapsed one, a faithful Catholic or a "cafeteria" one, a Catholic who has no impediment to receiving the Eucharist or a Catholic who is in some way impeded from doing so. All of these people can identify themselves as Catholics, of course. But none of them can claim that each of these is identical with the other.

The Catholic who picks and chooses from among the Church's teachings can't claim that he is the same kind of Catholic as the one who simply holds up the Catechism and says, "I believe this--all of it." The Catholic who goes to Mass twice a year can't claim to be the same kind of Catholic as the one who is at Mass on all Sundays and Holy Days (and sometimes daily as well, though that's not a requirement). The Catholic who has divorced his Catholic spouse from a valid Catholic marriage and remarried outside of the Church isn't entitled to present himself to receive Communion without sincere repentance and a willingness to do whatever the Church requires in terms of his invalid marriage. And the Catholic legislator who by his actions promotes and encourages abortion and sees it as a "woman's right" in defiance of the Church's clearly taught doctrines to the contrary is obligated to refrain from receiving Communion until or unless he, too, repents, refuses to support so-called "abortion rights" anymore, and seeks the healing of the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

Because the culture of relativism has spread its infection into the Church here in America (and probably elsewhere, but I can only speak to the American situation) a particular kind of confusion arises. What does it mean to call oneself a "Catholic?" And who gets to decide? If Joe Biden feels like he's a good Catholic, well, isn't that good enough?

Those who reject relativism reject this. Being Catholic, especially as an adult, carries with it obligations as well as privileges. If our greatest privilege is our ability to partake of Our Lord in the Eucharist, our greatest obligations involve living our lives and practicing our faith in such a way that we do not do so unworthily. It's not that Catholics, even good ones who are sincerely trying to live their faith, can't fail at this from time to time; but there is a difference between neglecting to confess a serious sin before receiving the Eucharist, particularly if this act is followed by sincere contrition and an immediate recourse to sacramental confession, and living one's life in such a way that one is clearly not entitled to present oneself to receive Communion yet doing so anyway.

Canon 915, which Ed Peters discusses in regards to Biden here, directs ministers of Holy Communion not to give the Eucharist to those "who obstinately persist in manifest grave sin." Some people try to argue that this can't be used to deny the Eucharist to pro-abort or "pro-choice" Catholic politicians since we can't know the state of their souls, but the Canon only mentions persisting in manifest grave sin; whether the person in question is meeting the three conditions necessary for the commission of a mortal sin is for his or her confessor to determine. Still, just as a priest might tell a couple whose marriage is invalid that he can't give them Communion until or unless they regularize the situation, so may a priest tell a politician who votes in favor of legalized abortion that he must not receive Communion until he stops doing so. The couple may sincerely, if erroneously, believe that their civil marriage was "valid enough," and the politician may sincerely, if erroneously, believe that voting pro-life will not help stop abortions. But it is still the case that objectively speaking the people in my example (assuming the couple are living together as husband and wife) are persisting in manifest grave sin regardless of their personal thoughts, or level of moral culpability.

So it doesn't really matter if Joe Biden feels like a good Catholic, or if Joe Biden sincerely believes that he can be Catholic and pro-choice. The objective reality is that no good Catholic can ever do anything that in any way supports and promotes abortion while failing to protect the intrinsic worth of every human being from conception to natural death. It is the Church's duty first to remind Biden of that fact, and then, if he fails to repent, to determine whether he ought to be barred from the reception of Communion under Canon 915.

The fact that so many "pro-choice" Catholic legislators exist at all is a sincere problem: if the Church in America were properly carrying out her role as catechist this wouldn't be such a widespread phenomenon. But as each election cycle passes the Church has an opportunity to teach the truth about this issue, to make it clear to all the faithful that we may not select for ourselves which of the Church's teachings to follow and which to disregard, all while considering ourselves "good practicing Catholics." The urgency of the need for the Church to teach with firm clarity and unwavering charity about this grows each time the issue of "pro-choice Catholics" comes up; many souls could be in danger of being lost if they continue to believe that "pro-choice Catholic" is a viable option instead of a meaningless oxymoron.

And the fact that continued inaction on the "pro-choice Catholic" problem by the Church's leaders will add to the impression given among the wider community that the Church isn't all that sincere in her own teachings about abortion is a grave danger as well; but more about that later.

Check Out This New Blog

I don't think I've ever posted this much on a Saturday before. :)

But before I quit for the night, check out this new blog: Catholics Against Joe Biden, which I've added to my blogroll on the sidebar. It's being run by Steve Dillard, Christopher Blosser, and Jay Anderson, all Catholic converts with impressive blogging credentials. They're doing exactly what needs to be done, here: highlighting Joe Biden's "personally opposed" take on abortion, zeroing in on the notion that it's possible to be "moderately" in favor of killing unborn humans, and taking a look at Biden's record on life issues, including such sour notes as his decision to vote against the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, which surely should have been a no-brainer for a Catholic to vote for if there ever was one. More, Biden has done all of this while claiming to be totally in line with Catholic teaching.

If that's in line with Catholic teaching, then Mark Shea is a Rad-Trad. I'm just sayin'.

So visit this new blog, support these gentlemen as they shine the bright light of truth in Biden's general direction, and pray for the unborn, abandoned by Catholic legislators on both sides of the aisle.

You Can't Make This Stuff Up

From a blog post from the LA Times about Biden's speech today:

So which stumble at today's Democratic lovefest in Springfield, Ill., will live on the longest -- Barack Obama introducing his running mate pick as "the next president," or the Joe Biden crack about his wife that has not been universally well received?

If it's the latter, at least Biden gets a pass on it from the highest-ranking women in the history of U.S. politics -- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Here's what Biden had said in his debut as the presumptive Democratic vice presidential nominee:

"Ladies and gentlemen, my wife Jill, who you'll meet soon, is drop dead gorgeous. My wife Jill, who you'll meet soon, she also has her doctorate degree, which is a problem. But all kidding aside ..."

Pelosi, who had spent much of the lunch depicting an America in dire straits after eight years of a Republican administration, didn't miss a beat: "Lighten up," she said. "We've got a planet to save."

She added that if Biden found his wife beautiful, "That's A-OK."

But what about the PhD part of Biden's comment? That's what sparked reaction in the blogosphere, including an item by Adele Stan on Huffington Post headlined: "Careful Joe! 'Smart Women" Jokes a Dicey Game."

I don't know what's more precious here: the new presumptive veep nominee dissing intelligence in women, or Nancy Pelosi--Nancy Pelosi!--telling angry feminists to "lighten up."

This is gonna be a blast, kids. Wait until the Democrats start attacking "political correctness" once ol' Joe really starts to let loose.

Biden's Bishop

There are going to be lots of people doing in-depth analysis of Joe Biden and his experience over the next few days; I'm not even remotely qualified to be one of them.

But on one matter I'm qualified to speak: Joe Biden's status as a Catholic now needs to be clarified by his bishop, Bishop Michael Saltarelli.

According to this article, Bishop Saltarelli is a strong defender of the rights of the unborn:

Bishop Saltarelli denounced the notion that politicians can 'personally oppose' abortion, but refuse to pass laws protecting the unborn.

'No one today would accept this statement from any public servant: 'I am personally opposed to human slavery and racism but will not impose my personal conviction in the legislative arena.' Likewise, none of us should accept this statement from any public servant: 'I am personally opposed to abortion but will not impose my personal conviction in the legislative arena,' said Bishop Saltarelli.

In fact, Bishop Saltarelli made clear that pro-abortion Catholic politicians should refrain from receiving the Eucharist.

'The promotion of abortion by any Catholic is a grave and serious matter. Objectively, according to the constant teaching of the Scriptures and the Church, it would be more spiritually beneficial for such a person to refrain from receiving the Body and Blood of Christ. I ask Catholics in this position to have the integrity to respect the Eucharist, Catholic teaching and the Catholic faithful.'

Now that Joe Biden is the presumptive nominee to be the Democratic candidate for the vice-presidency of the United States of America, Bishop Saltarelli might need to address this matter publicly and specifically. Senator Biden should be informed, as Gov. Sibelius was, that he can't continue to receive communion as long as he holds so-called "pro-choice" positions which favor legal abortion and deny to unborn humans the right to live. Catholic voters deserve clarity from the Church before Biden claims to be a Catholic in good standing.

Update: Apparently, Wilmington has a new bishop-elect since last month, Bishop William Malooly. Does anyone know whether he's likely to take a strong stand on the matter of Joe Biden's reception of communion? I'm looking into it, but can't seem to find much about him.

Cute...Not

ABC's political blog has some interesting info about that ill-fated text message:

The long-awaited text message announcing Obama-Biden '08 arrived in cell phones and inboxes just after 3 a.m. ET on Saturday. The 3 a.m. timing may evoke memories of an attack ad run by Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., questioning whether Obama would be ready to lead in the event of a 3 a.m. phone call.

In the end however, Obama supporters got a 3 a.m. cell phone text message and e-mail about Biden, rather than Clinton.

3 a.m. Were they trying to be cute?

If the time was selected deliberately, it would seem so. The excuse that the campaign wanted the message to go out after newspaper publishing deadlines so the Saturday headlines wouldn't be about the Biden pick is telling, too--they obviously wanted to dominate Sunday paper coverage instead of the leading the news the one day of the week when many Americans don't see the paper.

But newspaper deadlines aside, there's no doubt that this was targeted at Hillary's infamous "3 a.m." ad suggesting that Barack Obama was too inexperienced to be the person answering the White House phone at 3 a.m. when some crisis or emergency calls thepresident out of bed in the middle of the night. Barack Obama won't just be answering calls at 3 a.m., this time frame choice for the veep announcement suggests.

And there's confirmation in the ABC post of my theory as to who the Obama campaign is targeting in all of this:

Asked how they kept Obama's vp pick a secret for almost a week and why they announced Obama's V.P. pick in the dead of night, Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs told "Good Morning America Weekend Edition" co-anchor Kate Snow, "We weren't trying to hide anything. We're pretty good at keeping secrets. ... I have a feeling that most of the people who normally text were probably up and got it." (Emphasis added, EM.)

See? The old geezers, the tragically unhip technophobes, the poor who don't rountinely text each other because they don't have cell phones or text devices or wireless service--they weren't the ones this message was being aimed at. It was the young cool Friday-night-partygoing set who were still partying hard at 3 a.m. that Obama wanted to reach, the foot soldiers in his own personal cultural revolution.

There's just one thing Barack Obama is forgetting. People who party hard all weekend are inclined to spend much of Monday and Tuesday in a fog--and last I checked, national elections weren't held on Friday nights. The old geezers, tragically unhip technophobes, poor, and others who didn't find this stunt amusing--they'll be the ones at the voting booths, bright and early on a crisp morning in November.

UPDATE: Commenter "Mick" says below, "So that was the motivation for 3 a.m.! I just assumed he wanted to get the message out to his European friends, bright and early."

That's really good thinking! Mr. "Citizen of the World" didn't want to be American-centric in terms of time zones!!

:)

It's Not Official...

...but it's close enough, and it's getting late, even for me.

Biden? Really. Hmmm.

(No, I'm not joining in the cackles of maniacal laughter emanating from the penumbras of the Republican Party Platform. I am personally opposed to cackles of maniacal laughter over what has to be the best possible choice Obama could have made--from the Republican perspective. I may be grinning a bit--but I won't admit to more than that.)

I'm going to have a lot to say about this once it is official, but like I said, it's late.

And out of respect for the countless frustrated, disappointed, angry Democrats who will not be getting that ultra-special celebrity text message before they hear the news, after all, which makes them feel a bit like the jilted prom date as she watches her guy march in to the school gym with the head of the cheerleading squad on his arm, I'll save my yammering on the matter for some time tomorrow.

Unless, of course, this is yet another fake-out. In which case Obama not only isn't Mr. Darcy; he's becoming perilously close to being Maxwell Smart.

Dog Places "Undue Burden" on Teenage Mom

Or, at least, that's how Barack Obama would explain this CNN story:

A dog sheltered a newborn baby abandoned by its 14-year-old mother in a field in rural Argentina until the boy was rescued, a doctor said Friday.

A resident of a rural area outside La Plata called police late Wednesday night to say that he had heard the baby crying in a field behind his house.

The man went outside and found the infant lying beside the dog and its six newborn puppies, Daniel Salcedo, chief of police of the Province of Buenos Aires, told CNN.

The temperature was a chilly 37 degrees, Salcedo said.

The dog had apparently carried the baby some 50 meters from where his mother had abandoned him to where the puppies were huddled, police said.

"She took it like a puppy and rescued it," Salcedo said. "The doctors told us if she hadn't done this, he would have died."

"The dog is a hero to us."

The mother is getting psychological treatment, and the baby is in a hospital.

To pro-choicers, the tragedy of this situation is that this young mother couldn't quietly kill her baby son sometime before birth. To Barack Obama, I suspect, the tragedy of the situation is that the dog interfered with the mother's decision and placed an undue burden on her by saving the baby's life (and without even calling a second doctor! Let alone a first one!).

I think what could have been a really tragic situation was made less tragic by the survival of the baby; certainly the teen mother's mental health and eventual healing will be better if she doesn't lay awake nights imagining the horror of her child's death on top of all the pain and guilt she already carries. But then, I agree that the dog was a hero, so what do I know?

To Whomever Keeps Searching for "Abortion Tea"

Twice in as many days someone has found this blog through a Google search for the phrase "Abortion" and "Tea." This person, and I'm assuming she is female, appears to be looking for some kind of tea or herbal remedy that will "naturally" induce an abortion.

Whoever you are, I know the minute you get here you can tell I'm not in favor of abortion at all. Won't you please consider contacting your local crisis pregnancy center? I know they can help you.

If you need help finding one, my email address is on this page. Please don't hesitate to contact me. Just to be clear, I won't in any way help you get an abortion, but if you want your baby to live and need help finding the people in your area who can help you in this time of need, let me know, and I'll do whatever I can.

God bless you.

The Subtext

As I write this, Barack Obama has not yet named his running mate, and some people are starting to say that this delay's going to cost him, as the average American is heading or soon will be heading home from work and has a busy weekend ahead of him--Obama will have to wait until Monday to capture people's attention.

In one sense this is true; Obama's text message will now only excite three groups of people:

-his die-hard supporters who are on the text list,
-professional journalists who will be biting their nails all evening
-political junkies who through accidents of fate aren't professional journalists (like yrs. trly.)

Some would say there's a fourth group, Obama's opponents, but aside from waiting to pounce on whoever it is with negatives, I'd say the Republicans aren't as eager as the first three. By now, they have reams of paper full of focused hard-hitting talking points about all of Obama's possible running mates, and the only momentary excitement, if you can call it that, will be making sure they grab the correct sheaves before heading for the phone or microphone.

But in another sense, the text-message stunt is doing what it's designed to do: create a buzz, make this vice presidency pick seem much more momentous and important than it really is, and add a complicated aura to the Obama campaign, in which the medium becomes the message, and directs the same level of attention to the Obama vice presidency announcement as is usually reserved for American Idol or Survivor (back in the day) results, with possibly just a hint of Oscar night drama.

Who will be the Best Supporting Actor, Presidential Edition? Whose phone rang with a terse message ("You're fired!) just before the all-important text was sent? Who got voted off of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue before he (or she) ever really had a chance? Who ended up paralleling the blowout success of Kelly Clarkson, and who was Sanjaya, the crowd favorite whose charm wasn't enough to seal the deal?

And, of course, that message is aimed at the texting crowd: the young voters, that elusive group who are always supposed to change the course of an election and who seldom actually show up in numbers sizable enough to do so on election night.

Obama's been targeting young voters from the get-go, as Democrats are often wont to do. So much of the "superstar" motif has been designed to appeal to their generation; so many young Obama supporters have said things about how this will be their time, this will be their moment, this is their candidate of change. This is The One. They don't even realize they're being messianic when they talk that way; their "messiahs" so far have been rap stars and actors and sports phenoms, Neo of The Matrix or Anakin of Star Wars. So it makes perfect sense to them that Obama would treat his selection of the vice presidency in a way designed to maximize the buzz and minimize the yawns.

But the subtext here is that anyone who doesn't appreciate this is really too old, conservative, or out-of-touch to be an Obama voter; anyone who doesn't own a pager or cell phone, or who doesn't pay to receive text messages, is not the kind of person Obama's campaign is really reaching out to. The elderly, the poor, the kind of people who think that creating this garish spectacle out of one of what is usually only a mildly interesting moment in a presidential campaign--these are not (forgive me) the droids he's looking for.

But Obama can't come right out and say that, and neither can his campaign. There are a sizable number of voters who don't own cell phones or Blackberrys, or who would find them frustrating to operate if they did. There are groups of voters who would find the underlying unseriousness of this way of announcing Obama's running mate to be offputting, to say the least. There has to be a balance between the superstar buzz and the serious man of the people, the two competing images Obama's been trying to project.

And that's why the McCain "Celebrity!" ads threatened the Obama campaign as much as they did, because for a hideous moment it seemed like the whole country might actually catch on to all of this. But as breathless journalists camp around their phones and computers and televisions tonight, as rumors about iffy bumper-stickers swirl, as young hip Democrat voters make sure their text device of choice is fully charged and operational, I suppose Obama can breathe a sigh of relief--who cares if the label "celebrity" is a negative, so long as Americans are inclined to get enthusiastic about the latest greatest newest hottest craze in the election game.

A Better Alternative

Please read Kathryn Lopez's terrific article in the WSJ about the difference between the "womynpriest" types and healthy religious orders (Hat Tip: Creative Minority Report). I especially liked this part:

The same weekend as the "ordinations," I joined 30 fellow lay Catholics gathered in Birmingham, Ala., for a sold-out retreat at the Casa Maria convent. The retreat is run by a group of Dominican-Franciscan (they follow both saintly models) religious sisters. Now in their 18th year as an order, the Sister Servants of the Eternal Word are as far away as one can imagine from that scene in Boston.

"As an active woman religious working in the field of retreats and catechesis in the Bible Belt South, I have to say that I am far too busy . . . to feel slighted by the fact that the priesthood is not open to women," insists Sister Louise Marie, a member of the order. She suggests that if Catholics and non-Catholics understood what a "powerful role women religious have," they would never "feel sorry for [us]."

I could write about how much I agree with Sister Louise Marie and ultimately with Kathryn Lopez about how being a busy, happy, faithful Catholic woman doesn't leave you much time for disgruntled speculations about how Our Lord would have ordained women if Constantine and the Council of Trent and Dan Brown and Leonardo da Vinci and Tom Hanks hadn't formed their cabalistic conspiracy to keep Him from doing so (wait...have I got that right?). But I've got to brag about family, first: one of my younger sisters is a nun at Casa Maria! I can tell you that Ms. Lopez is right about them, too: they're a vibrant young order of happy orthodox sisters who care way more about doing God's work than engaging in a tired old Marxist-feminist power struggle over the priesthood, which doesn't really respect God's plan or the Church's laws or the ancient ties to the sacrificial nature of the priesthood or anything else except the feminists' own peeved sense that somehow, somewhere, some man is doing something that women don't get to do.

I hope Ms. Lopez is right in saying that the womenpriest movement may be dying out; certainly, the average ages of those faces behind the tie-dyed chasubles would support that theory. But I've got an idea of how the Church can approach these ladies to bring them back into the fold: we can let them start their own religious order. No, they can't be priests or offer the Mass; but the order will allow them fifteen minutes a day to complain about the unfairness of it all in between doing good works and caring for the poor, sick, and needy. They can be called the Sisters of Persistent Grievances, or something; but that fifteen minute daily limit will have to be strictly enforced, lest they spend more time complaining than actually doing the Lord's work.

Please Join In!

If you haven't already seen this post at Creative Minority Report or clicked on the link to the right under the heading "Urgent," I'd like to ask you to consider joining in the petition effort to support the University of San Diego for their decision not to hire known Catholic dissenter Rosemary Radford Ruether to teach theology.

I think the effort to gather the signatures of as many supporters as possible to offset the signatures of those signing opposing positions is a very good one. Please consider joining in this effort to raise many signatures of support for the University to commend them for NOT hiring someone who dissents from Church teaching to a theology chair position. This website will take you to a page where you can add your name to an e-mail petition of support. You only need to provide your name and an e-mail address for verification.

Surely this is an effort that all faithful Catholics can support! So often we divide ourselves into opposing categories that make it hard to see our unity, but on this matter any Catholic faithful to the Magisterium should be happy to see a Catholic university standing up for Catholic teaching. We want such efforts to be rewarded, not punished--so please consider visiting the website and signing the petition if you haven't already done so.

More on Obama and Abortion

I've been focusing in on Barack Obama's radical pro-abortion stances, and in particular on his denial of support for the Illinois Born Alive Infant Protection Act. It's amazing to me that this late into the campaign some of these details are still coming forward, but hopefully now that the media has noted some of his inconsistency and denials in this arena we'll see more attention paid to the abortion issue and Barack Obama; at the very least, if the MSM ignores it, we can count on various right-wing media outlets to do the one thing they do really well by picking up the slack.

But let's take a look for a moment at some of the other positions Barack Obama has taken on abortion. Bear in mind that this is not a "personally opposed" Kerryesque figure; this man has made it abundantly clear that for all his talk about fostering good will and so forth that he wholeheartedly, enthusiastically, completely supports abortion. There is no abortion anywhere in America that Barack Obama would ban, no matter how late in gestation or how gruesome the procedure. Here's a look at some details:

Barack Obama voted against banning Partial Birth Abortions. (Link goes to NRLC black and white drawing; it's not as graphic as a photo but senstitve people might want to avoid it anyway.)

Barack Obama supports federally-funded embryonic stem cell research.

Barack Obama voted against extending SCHIP health insurance eligibility to unborn children. (The argument I've heard from pro-abortion Democrats is that coverage for "pregnant women" is adequate, and we don't want people to think of unborn children as "patients" because that might undermine Roe v. Wade.)

Barack Obama voted against stopping minors from crossing state lines to get abortions in other states. (So if your state has parental notification laws the underage pregnant girls in your state can travel elsewhere to avoid those, and that's fine with Barack.)

Barack Obama voted against parents being notified that their minor children have crossed state lines to obtain an abortion. (So not only can minor girls get abortions without telling their parents, nobody else is allowed to tell them either.)

And, as we already know, Barack Obama voted against the Illinois Born Alive Infant Protection Act.

Barack Obama is not even remotely opposed to abortion, personally or otherwise. He is radically pro-abortion to a level that ought to disturb anyone who doesn't share those radical views. He has successfully presented himself as a typical "moderate" on the abortion issue, but moderates don't tend to get 100% approval ratings from the group that changed its former more truthful name as the National Abortion Rights Action League. "Naral Pro-Choice America" is about as "pro-choice" as Barack Obama; they're only in favor of choice when the choice results in a dead baby.

A Bit Of Good News

Sometimes in the midst of all the big world issues, it's nice to remember that the small stories of ordinary people averting tragedy are a more real moment of contact with God's presence than all the headline-grabbing politics and doomsday scenarios. Exhibit A:

Frank Devaull is normally working each mid-day, but on Thursday the 60-year-old handy man came home to cool off for a short while.

The elderly woman living next door in the 5500 block of Geddes Avenue was glad he did.

Luella Crosby, 90, came over and quietly asked if he could lend a hand.

There was smoke inside her house and she wanted to get her husband, Alfred, outside. The couple had lived in the west-side home near Lake Como since 1944. [...]

But 92-year-old Alfred, a double-leg amputee with other medical problems, was stuck in a hospital bed. [...]

Devaull could finally get Alfred out of the door, but that was tough, too.

"He's an amputee, but he's not a small man," Devaull said. "But he never hollered and he never cried. I don't think he ever got scared." [...]

"I'm just glad Frank was at home," Luella said later, surrounded by loved ones. "My husband would have burned because I couldn't get him out.

"Frank -- he's all right."

But Devaull declined to take credit

"Every morning," he said, "when I say my prayers, I say 'God, please give me the strength to help somebody, if I ever come across somebody in that position.'

"Well, today he did."

When we say the right sort of prayers, God always answers them, doesn't He? If you have time, read the whole article; it's good to remember that the Franks and Alfreds and Luellas in our life will always mean more to us than the McCains and Obamas, and that the little stories of everyday miracles can uplift us more than a dozen campaign speeches or clever candidate ads.

A Plague On Both Their Houses

John McCain is in the news today for not knowing how many houses he and his second wife Cindy own; naturally, the Obama campaign is seizing the moment to divert attention from the devastatingly accurate ads McCain's been making about Obama's unearned celebrity status:

Campaigning in Chester, Va., Obama told voters, "I guess if you think being rich means you've got to make $5 million and if you don't know how many houses you have, it's not surprising you might think the economy is fundamentally strong." He returned to the McCain remark later, saying of teachers: "Most teachers hold themselves accountable. They didn't go into teaching to make money. They don't have seven houses."

The Obama campaign also announced 16 campaign events across the country to highlight the comment and try to turn the tables on McCain's effort to cast him as an elitist.

Of course, as the Associated Press writer points out, these days it's risky business for one presidential candidate to start calling the other rich; neither of them are close to middle class:

McCain's tax returns showed a total income of $405,409 in 2007. According to her 2006 tax returns, Cindy McCain had a total income of $6 million. Her wealth is estimated by some at $100 million, based on her late father's Arizona beer distributorship. She has not released her 2007 returns, which she files separately from her husband.

Obama and his wife, Michelle, reported making $4.2 million in 2007.

So the couple making $4.2 million a year is trash-talking the couple making $6.4 million a year on the grounds that the second couple is wealthy and out-of-touch. I guess closing that $2.2 million dollar income gap between the wealthy and the even-more-wealthy is a big issue in politics these days for all but the super rich, to whom mere millions are chump change.

Meanwhile, there are approximately 36 million Americans living below the poverty line, which means an annual income of about $20,000 for a family of four. I guess they can take comfort in the fact that both the McCain and Obama campaigns will probably spend that much in the time it takes to read the AP article, as they squabble over which of them will better represent the needs of the poor.

Why Catholics Shouldn't Vote For Obama

You have to hear this: it's audio of Obama discussing the "burden" of trying to save the life of a child born alive during an abortion (Hat Tip: Kathryn Jean Lopez at The Corner).

The important quote is as follows (unofficial transcript):

"...and that essentially adding an additional doctor who then has to be called in an emergency situation to come in and make these assessments is really designed simply to burden the original decision of the woman and the physician to induce labor and perform an abortion." Barack Obama on the Born Alive Infants Protection Act

Bear in mind the following:

The "emergency situation" is that the child has survived the induction abortion--he or she has emerged from the womb alive despite the efforts taken to kill him or her.

The "assessments" referred to means noting whether the child is still alive.

The "original decision" is the woman's decision to kill her baby.

In other words, the baby, by living, places an undue burden on his or her mother because he or she didn't get the memo and came into the world alive; rather than summon an additional doctor, whisk the baby to the neonatal intensive care unit and try to save his or her life, Obama thinks the abortionist should get to carry out the abortion by neglect after the child has entered the world.

Make no mistake. What this man supports and stands for is evil in its rawest and most diabolical form. Though I recognize that others may disagree, I honestly see no way whatsoever that a Catholic in good conscience could lend his support to someone who so openly, blatantly, coldly and determinedly fought for the "right" of women undergoing an induction abortion to continue the "abortion" and achieve the death of the child after the child's birth.

You think McCain will get us into wars and engage in unjust empire-building? Possibly. But Barack Obama has shown beyond any shadow of a doubt that he has no respect for the intrinsic value of a human life, and it is from such men that dictators are made.

Catholics and the Fall

Now, I'm not talking about the Fall of Man, at least not yet; just the season, particularly the upcoming election season, which has gone through the pre-pre-primary phase, the pre-primary phase, the primary phase, the post-primary phase, the pre-convention phase and is approaching the convention phase. But once the convention phase has ended we can hang on to our hats as we cruise into the most exciting of all: the pre-election phase!

Sorry about that. It's so hard to avoid being swept up in all the non-excitement.

But as fall, or autumn if you prefer, approaches, it's probably the case that more good bright intelligent Catholic people will be avidly selecting their fantasy football teams than selecting their candidate for the presidency. Catholics right now seem to fall in about five distinct categories on this election:

1. Catholics for McCain, because though he's a war-monger at least he doesn't support baby-butchering;

2. Catholics for Obama, ostensibly because he's not a war-monger even if he does support baby-butchering, but really because they're tired of being excluded by all the cool people like celebrities and media pundits who are swooning over Obama and think anybody who votes for McCain is a fuddy-duddy;

3. Catholics who are Undecided, because McCain's a war-monger and Obama supports baby-butchering and they'll probably pick one or the other but don't ask yet;

4. Catholics for Neither, who rightly reject the idea that not voting for a candidate isn't the same as voting for the candidate's opponent, but who sometimes convey an ethereal, other-worldly, fatalist attitude that seems to be almost, if you'll forgive the phrase, "More Catholic than the Vote;"

5. Catholics for Some Obscure Third-Party Guy Who May Not Even Be Running But They'll Vote For Him Anyway Because If the CFR and the Bildeburgers Didn't Rig The Elections Every Single Time Then Their Boy Would Win, Baby.

There is just a tiny chance that I'm exaggerating these positions a wee bit.

As I consider these options, I'm struck by the fact that there's only one of them for which I have no sympathy: number two.

I just can't see it. I just can't see a Catholic in good conscience deciding that Obama's views on abortion can be overlooked on the assumption that he will do a better job of bringing about a swift end to the current war in Iraq, and avoid entangling us in any of the other hot spots popping up around the world.

It's not as though Obama is a senior statesman with years of experience in the settling of international crises, after all. We have no evidence that he'll know what to do or how to do it, whether we're talking about the Iraq situation or any future conflicts. Catholics who choose to vote for him are setting aside his pro-abortion extremism which must be repulsive to any serious Catholic in exchange for a vague sense that he'll be able to deliver in regards to ending war without any solid proof that that will happen. They are giving up key Supreme Court appointments in exchange for the unfounded hope that Obama will bring about some undefined "change."

Now, I'm not saying it's a given that McCain's SCOTUS appointees will be perfect; Republicans have put some disastrous frights on the Supreme Court, and can do so again. But with Obama you know that there will be a litmus test, and no one who fails to share his pro-abortion extremism need apply. If one were really contemplating a vote for either of the major party candidates I think one would have to be acutely aware of that in regard to Barack Obama and the way that his pro-abort views will shape public policy.

It's one thing for weakly pro-choice Catholics to vote for Obama; they may not admit it, but they share at least some of his views on the issue of abortion, even if they have to play the "Well, the Vatican isn't in charge of US policy, and non-Catholic women should be free to follow their conciences so I shouldn't vote against abortion" game with themselves to justify it all. And strongly pro-choice "Catholics" will vote for Obama; heck, they'd vote for Moloch if he were to run. But for Catholics who take life issues seriously, how is a vote for Obama even a possibility?

Although my descriptions of the possiblities above are tongue-in-cheek, I wonder to what extent pro-life Catholic Obama supporters have managed to get caught up in the hype. There's no denying that McCain's about as exciting as a Mueslix (tm) commercial, and while Ronald Reagan may have been disparagingly called "the geezer" by his opponents, I suspect that McCain gets called something similar by his supporters, who can't quite get excited about the man. Compared to McCain, Obama may seem at first glance like the much more interesting candidate, and he has managed so far to talk a good game. Some Catholics may find themselves emotionally drawn to him, and searching for the justifications that will allow them to ignore the fact that this man once coldly ignored pictures of babies left to die while insisting that the Born Alive Infants Protection Act of Illinois placed an "undue burden" on women seeking abortions, not to mention his comment to the effect that he wouldn't want one of his daughters "punished with a baby" should she make mistakes in her life.

There's just no way you can reconcile Obama's view of the unborn with Catholic teachings. Catholics who support him are left with the "Yes, but..." approach to justify their votes. I can't quite fathom it myself, as I said; that Catholics should be eagerly lining up to vote for the most pro-abortion candidate who has ever run for public office is astounding. Then again, overlooking evil in the quest to justify doing exactly what we want to do is something that's been part of human behavior since...oh, you knew I'd end up back here, didn't you?

Abortion and Truth

I've got to admit, this recent article from Time about McCain and Obama on the abortion issue had me smiling--wryly, but smiling. It's either that or cry, when you read stuff like this:

Which is why McCain's much cleaner answer may come back to haunt him. It's not just that a majority of Americans favor at least limited access to legal abortion. (I've seen polls suggesting that a substantial minority of Americans thinks McCain himself is pro-choice, which is a natural mistake given his maverick image. Will independents like him less when they learn more?) McCain's construction that life begins "at the moment of conception" opens a whole new set of questions. There is a world of mystery in what transpires between the moment when egg meets sperm and the point of implantation, when that fertilized egg nestles into the uterus and begins to grow. [...]

Consider the obvious implications if rights attain the moment the egg and sperm meet: all kinds of embryo research become questionable, starting with the stem-cell research McCain says he favors. Couples who undergo in vitro fertilization and then choose not to implant all the embryos are surely violating the rights of those that are discarded or frozen. Some forms of contraception, such as IUDs and the morning-after pill, would presumably be illegal if they affect the ability of an egg to implant. Abortion opponents contend that the birth control pill itself, while designed to prevent ovulation so no egg is fertilized in the first place, may also have the effect of blocking implantation of any egg that sneaks through. Suddenly, a whole range of reproductive choices comes into question.

To that second paragraph there is only one proper response--but how can I phrase it politely? Um, no digestive system waste product, Famous Arthur Conan Doyle character? ;)

That's the whole point, silly pro-choicers. Reproduction involves the creation of new life. Making choices before engaging in the act likely to lead to reproduction is morally permissible, provided that the choices are moral (pre-marital abstinence, marital use of NFP or other morally permissible means of spacing children, marital acceptance of and love and care for the children who naturally result) and not immoral (sex outside marriage, contraception, serial divorce with its impact on children, etc.).

But making "reproductive choices" when reproduction is already a fait accompli is just code for "killing the unborn child we weren't prepared to accept despite the fact that we were engaging in the act known to lead to reproduction." And making "reproductive choices" that involve IFV and embryo manipulation will always be immoral, because the child is deprived of his/her natural right to come into being as a result of his/her parent's marital embrace, instead being objectified and manufactured in a lab as if he/she were a merely material product with no inherent rights or dignity of his/her own.

And it's that, the objectification of the unborn human, treating the child as if he is his mother's property to kill or not as she chooses, or to manufacture, or to avoid artificially through contraception, which has always been the motivation behind pro-life objections to abortion. We do oppose abortifacient birth control methods (and non-abortifacient, too, though for different reasons). We do oppose IVF. We oppose any so-called "reproductive choice" that directly and intentionally ends the life of a developing human being in the womb. And we always have.

Perhaps these new public discussions of life issues will bring a moment of clarity to those who are vaguely "pro-choice" who have never examined the moral incoherence of their position, and the firm consistency of ours. If we don't begin with the premise that all human beings are worthy of life from conception to natural death, we end with mushy relativism--and relativism is always surprised to discover the existence of truth.

Images of Perfection

Never give a relativistic generation digital cameras:

REMOVING her ex-husband from more than a decade of memories may take a lifetime for Laura Horn, a police emergency dispatcher in Rochester. But removing him from a dozen years of vacation photographs took only hours, with some deft mouse work from a willing friend who was proficient in Photoshop, the popular digital-image editing program.

“In my own reality, I know that these things did happen,” Ms. Horn said. But “without him in them, I can display them. I can look at those pictures and think of the laughter we were sharing, the places we went to.”

“This new reality,” she added, “is a lot more pleasant.” [...]

Such manipulations represent “a new coping mechanism for us,” said Heather Downs, a visiting assistant professor of sociology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who has studied the role photographs play in families. Idealized images , she said, can give people “a new script for dealing with problems families have always had: family members who don’t get along, divorce.”

“If you can’t have the perfect family,” she added, “at least you can Photoshop it.”

To a certain extent, photographs have always represented not-quite-reality. Those old black and white pictures of stern ancestors in their best clothes can't possibly reveal Great-great Uncle Byron's wicked sense of humor, Great-great Aunt Sylvia's habit of pursing her lips when she was irritated, or the mischief or manners of long-dead distant cousins, removed or not. But at least they weren't removed from the photograph; if a "black sheep" disgraced the family enough to be cut out you'd end up seeing the scissor marks, and knowing that something tragic had occurred.

Not today. Today we can play with our faces and features, make it look like we really did lose those twenty pounds before the family reunion, or add a hint of a mustache and some ugly wrinkles to a much-disliked relative just for spite, or to a much-loved one for a joke. We can blur our defects and bold our assets and leave future generations with the notion that we were practically perfect in every way; we can edit out the blemishes and add vanity to vanity in every picture we take.

It used to be that snapshots were funny, blurred things taken by amateurs that really did reflect some aspect of our reality; the handful of pictures that survived someone's whole life became priceless treasures when they were no longer with us. Now, though, huge files of digital images and the ability to manipulate them to our hearts' content may make photographs say less about our families and more about the world we live in, where the temptation to reflect illusions of perfection in every aspect of our lives becomes overwhelming, and robs us of that connection with the past that photos once ensured.

Sogginess

British newspapers are way more fun than American ones.

Consider exhibit A, from a series on, I kid you not, improbable research in the Guardian:

Many people, of a morning, wonder why their breakfast cereal becomes soggy. Thanks to a study published in 1994, the answer can be read over morning coffee.

A Study of the Effects of Water Content on the Compaction Behaviour of Breakfast Cereal Flakes, by DMR Georget, Roger Parker and Andrew Smith of the Institute of Food Research in Norwich, looks at the basic physics of the matter. The scientists rigorously analyse how crunchiness declines in the presence of a soggifying liquid. [...]

Once they knew what was known and what was not, Georget, Parker and Smith had at the cereal. They did experiments. They did calculations. They plotted plots and graphed graphs. Ultimately, they made substantial progress in solving the puzzle.

They soaked some flakes in water, then dropped them into a cylinder, and then stuck a thingy down into the cylinder to compress the flakes. They measured how much and how rapidly the flakes compressed. For thoroughness, they repeated the process again and again, each time using slightly soggier flakes.

They discovered that, up to a point, as a flake takes on liquid it retains much of its youthful firmness. Beyond that point, though, the flake goes suddenly limp.

One can express this in formal language: the Heckel deformation stress becomes increasingly sensitive to the particle density as the water content increases - which may seem obvious now, but at the time came as a revelation.

I'm eagerly awaiting the article on how long it takes for a cup of tea to go from "mouth-blisteringly hot" to "disappointingly tepid." Though I suppose, given that the ambient temperature here in Texas is likely to vary quite a bit from whatever temperature European researchers will be experiencing, it will be necessary to adjust the mathematical calculations before any practical application can be enjoyed from such research.

Meanwhile, one wonders if the cereal experiment will ever be repeated using milk instead of water; does the 12 to 18 percent absorption level and its correlation to sogginess remain true in milk? The mind boggles.

Of course, if the researchers really wanted to change the world, they could study how much liberalism a political candidate has to absorb before he becomes soggy; but given that such a study would probably expose the researchers themselves to dangerously high levels of liberalism it's probably best to keep that particular question in the realm of the theoretical.

Childhood

Slacker. That's me, today. I've sat down dozens of times to blog today (no, really!) but got interrupted or had a chore to do or had something else to do. In fact, between typing the words "to" and "do" just now I did some laundry, talked to Mr. M. as he rushed home and rushed back out to attend a homeowners' meeting, dished up dinner for the girls, and...

...oops. Wait. I forgot to start the next load of laundry. Hang on.

Okay. I'm back. :)

Motherhood, my wise sister always says, is a series of interruptions. Even when we count on having a certain slice of time to ourselves, things can happen. I usually get some time in the early-to-midafternoon to do some blogging or chatting or letter-writing, but all it takes is one well-placed interruption before that time vanishes like smoke from an unlikely hookah in a far-too-detailed desert mirage; I realize that it's time to do something I have to do, and that I'll have to put off the thing I just want to do until later.

Which is pretty much the human condition, of course, but it's also why a mild-mannered mother can don the cape of Super Testy when the children start to complain about having to pick up a handful of assorted toys or books after spending most of the day playing. "Why do we have to do all this work?" they mutter; and if they're really unwary, they may throw in a stomp for good measure.

We'd like to tell them that this is life. We'd like to explain to them that never again in their journey across this planet will they experience a time so free, so unfettered, so liberated as their childhood. We'll never be able to convey to them the sheer luxury involved in having one's play or reading or leisure measured in hours, and one's chores or duties measured in minutes. Sometimes we try, but no matter how measured our words or moderated our tone the children hear nagging, and we know they do.

The joys of childhood can really only be measured in retrospect; looking back across the years to that shaded valley, we wonder why we didn't have the maturity to appreciate it all then: meals prepared, laundry folded, naps on a schedule, and so much time to be free. But that's one of the mysteries of childhood; we don't appreciate it until it is behind us, and then our wistful memories can cloud out those things we didn't like all that much at the time, or make them seem small and trivial compared to the troubles or sorrows we've known since then.

But we have to hold on, just a little, to that childhood. We have to find, in the midst of our daily tasks and random interruptions, that one most precious thing, the ability to become lost in a dream, or a book, or a toy, or a rainbow appearing like a magic paintbox in the sky: the fine and childish art of contemplation. Our Lord said we'd need to be like little children to enter the Kingdom, and sometimes I think that most of all, it's that gift of timeless wondering absorption in mystery that He meant.

Labels

I've been thinking about Mark Shea's Inside Catholic piece from last week about angry traditionalists, especially given today's post following things up.

It's not that he doesn't have a point. I've encountered angry traditionalists, too, though clearly not as many as Mark has (and not as potentially violent, either). I've also encountered smug traditionalists, supercilious traditionalists, Novus-Ordo-trash-talking traditionalists, and almost-more-Catholic-than-the-pope traditionalists (though never more Catholic than the pope; those would be the sedevacantists).

But I know plenty of nice traditionalists, sane traditionalists, happy traditionalists, part-time-Novus-Ordo-attending traditionalists, peaceful traditionalists, and kind traditionalists.

In other words, the very word "traditionalist" doesn't necessarily conjure up images in my head of wild-eyed firebreathers ready to fight to the death over the number of inches of lace mandatory for the sleeve of a surplice, or of people who insist with a straight face that St. Peter prayed the Tridentine Mass, or of irrational types who really believe "their" Mass is better than "our" Mass, and who won't even take communion at Mass if there's any chance it was not consecrated by the TLM priest, but reserved from the earlier Novus Ordo Mass. It may mean any of those things, or it may mean none of them; it will depend on more information than the word alone gives me.

Because to me, the word "traditionalist," while descriptive, isn't a pejorative label.

I'm not going to say we shouldn't use labels in discussing people. We do it all the time. We refer to people by their relationship to us, by their religion, by their sports-team preferences, by their voting proclivities, by their reading habits, by their chosen way of life, and by so many other qualities that I can't possibly list them all. Labels are a kind of shorthand, a quick way to form a connection with someone or at least to understand where they're coming from. And most of the time in casual conversation, "Catholic" is one of those labels, as in, "My friend's cousin, you know, the Catholic Republican Yankees fan who reads philosophy books for fun and lives a block away from the Carmelite monastery--you know, the one with the funny glasses, who hates bean sprouts..."

And all of that is fine.

But what isn't fine, what troubles me, is that sometimes these labels seem to be used as a wall to keep us from seeing the humanity of the people on the other side of the words. I do it myself, on occasion. I say "Democrats," a bit sneeringly, though if I'm talking strictly of the party's operatives I hope I can be forgiven; but if I mean voters, then I mean people. And some of them, sure, are every bad thing I mean when I sneer: pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage, pro-government and heavy taxation party affiliates who hate unborn babies and the handicapped and traditional families and want America to be at the mercy of foreign governments and who think open borders is the answer to immigration and...but many, perhaps even most, of them aren't. Some of them pull that "D" lever because their family has always voted Democrat, and that's that. Some of them disagree strongly with the social issues but feel despair at the thought of voting Republican; some of them don't really understand the social issues, or believe they can ignore them in good conscience for some erroneous reason. And all of them, even the caricature ones, are people, immortal souls created in the image and likeness of God and for whom Christ would have died had they been the only ones on Earth.

And someone says "Angry traditionalists," maybe not sneeringly at all, but still in such a way that the words become a wall behind which the humanity of the Other is completely obscured; and someone else says "Happy-clappy N.O. Catholics" and the wall goes up again, until we can't see each other as fellow human souls at all, but walking billboards plastered with ugly labels that tell us Everything We Need to Know about the person on the other side.

Except they don't.

We don't know that the angry traditionalist is really still angry over the Scandal such that he can't set foot in a Novus Ordo parish without seeing in his mind's eye the horror of the abuse of children he knew by a guitar-playing priest he used to serve at the altar; we don't know that the Happy-Clappy N.O. Catholic almost had a nervous breakdown when she used to direct the choir, because the weekly fights over the music selection tore her down inside and made her feel diminished, as if her failure to realize that some song or other was going to be seen as an evil-heretical-agenda choice by a vocal group of parishioners somehow made her less than human, and less than worthy of God's love. We don't know from the labels that the woman who insists on chapel veils and looks down at women who won't wear them almost left her husband; we don't know that he doesn't know that, either, and that her radical submission to him on the matter of the veils is a symbol of the suffering she carries silently in a loveless marriage. We can't tell from the words that the man who closes his eyes and weeps a little whenever the priest uses Eucharistic Prayer Two is remembering his deceased child, who always loved the "easy to read" Canon in his little Mass-book, treasured by his father who misses him so much.

When we use labels to identify people, that's one thing. But when we use them to stop thinking of the people as people, that's something else entirely. The one helps us focus on the individual; the other shuts out individuality and shrouds people in the suffocating packaging marked "People We're Allowed to Despise."

Post Number 500

According to Blogger, this is my 500th post.

Which sounds pretty good, until I realize that in the two guest-blogging stints I've done at Crunchy Cons of a little over a week each, I wrote a total of 106 posts.

So either there's something in the air over there, or I need to pick up the pace.

:)

My Question For Obama

And speaking of Obama and Saddleback, let's just get this out there: if there's one thing Obama's answer about human rights (which he turned into a question about when life begins) makes brilliantly, scintillatingly clear, it is this: there is simply no excuse to pretend that there is ever any moral justification whatsoever for abortion.

None. Zero, zilch, nada.

Notice the actual question and answer:

WARREN: Now let's deal with abortion. 40 million abortions since Roe v. Wade. You know, as a pastor, I deal with this all the time All of the pain and all of the conflicts. I know this is a very complex issue. 40 million abortions. At what point does a baby get human rights in your view?

OBAMA: Well, I think that whether you are looking at it from a theological perspective or a scientific perspective, answering that with specificity, you know, is above my pay grade. But let me just speak more generally about the issue of abortion because this is something obviously the country wrestles with. One thing that I'm absolutely convinced of it there is a more and ethical content to this issue. So I think that anybody who tries to deny the moral difficulties and gravity of the abortion issue, I think is not paying attention. So that would be point number one. But, point number two, I am pro-choice. I believe in Roe v. Wade and come to that conclusion not because I am pro-abortion, but because ultimately, I don't think women make these decisions casually. They wrestle with these things in a profound way. In consultation with their pastors or spouses or their doctors and their family members. And so for me, the goal right now should be -- and this is where we can find some common ground, and by the way I have now inserted into the Democrat Party platform -- is how do we reduce the number of abortions, because the fact is that abortions over the last eight years have not gone down.

Look for a moment at what Obama says, broken down into points:

a) I'm not a theologian or a scientist.
b) The country wrestles with abortion from a moral and ethical standpoint.
c) I am pro-choice.
d) I don't think women make "these decisions" casually.
e) We should reduce the number of abortions.

It's glaringly obvious, first of all, that he didn't answer the question in the least; we don't know when Obama thinks a human baby should have rights. In fact, he seems to think that it would take either a theologian or a scientist to answer what is clearly a legal question--but he is a lawyer, so that's terribly disingenuous.

But then look at the rest: standard "personally opposed" boilerplate, only without the personal opposition. But what does any of that actually mean? Why should Obama, the country, women and their various advisers, or anyone else care about abortion? Why should we reduce the number of abortions? Why, indeed, is there even a moral or ethical dimension to abortion?

The only way that a moral or ethical dimension exists in regard to abortion is if we recognize that abortion ends a human life. The only way that women would "wrestle" with this decision is if they're not all that comfortable with the notion of killing their own unborn babies. The only way that pastors would ever have to offer help to women considering abortion is if abortion involves doing something that is immoral in the first place (and woe be to those "Christian" pastors who sheepishly don wolves' clothing and do the devil's work for him by telling women it's fine for them to murder the life that grows inside them).

It's time to start asking a different question, and it's one that I think must be asked:

Senator Obama, you have said that you are pro-choice on abortion, meaning you think it should be legal. You support Roe v. Wade. Yet you believe that there is a "moral dimension" to abortion. Senator, if abortion is not the killing of a human being, why is there any more moral dimension to it than to, say, an appendectomy? If abortion is a "health decision" that only involves a woman, why should women wrestle with it, consult their pastors, and so on? And why do you think it takes a theologian or a scientist to determine at what point a human life is no longer disposable?

Somebody ask him that. Please.

Back in the Saddle, Again

The one lasting thing that may come out of the Saddleback interviews (besides a noun, n. saddleback, an interview of little substance where easy questions are delivered in a non-confrontational manner, example, "I thought my performance review would be difficult but it was a saddleback") is some renewed interest in just how extreme Obama's views on abortion really are, and that's a good thing for John McCain. The glee from Republican observers has been pretty palpable; their boy did well, and to a certain extent they can be forgiven for thinking that he "won" the Saddleback event.

This, however, overlooks three things:

First, McCain only won to the extent that Obama lost. If you're expected to win a bronze medal but end up with the gold because your opponent fell off the balance beam, it's not all that solid a win; getting cocky about it at this point would be highly premature.

Second, straining the Olympic metaphor past the breaking point, they haven't had the floor exercises yet. Conventions are just around the corner, and while behind the scenes the Democratic National Convention may be a study in green, the "historic" elements will be played up for the consumption of the average viewer to the point that the very nomination of Barack Obama will sound like the blow that single-handedly shatters the shackles of racism in the twenty-first century. Compared to all of that, the RNC is going to seem like the sort of geezerfest you'd encounter if you accidentally wandered into a secret meeting at Fred Flinstone's lodge--unless, of course, the Republican vice presidential nomination manages to steal the show.

Third, we really can't say that McCain "won" Saddleback; it wasn't a debate, and while McCain may have ended up looking better than Obama there was only one clear winner: Rick Warren. He'll probably get a new book out of the deal (suggested working title: The Purpose Driven Vote--Looking for God in American Politics).

Still, it's nice to see the Republicans smile for a moment. There haven't been this many long dreary pre-election faces on the Republican side of things since the Year of Bob Dole.

The Purpose-Driven Wife

At Saddleback Church tonight, Rick Warren asked each candidate who his "wise men" were:

Asked to name three wise people they would listen to, Obama named his wife, Michelle; his maternal grandmother, who lives in Hawaii; and, not limiting himself to only a third, named several Democratic and Republican lawmakers.

McCain named Gen. David Petreaus, head of U.S. troops in Iraq; U.S. Rep. and veteran civil rights leader John Lewis, D-Ga.; and former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, a top adviser to his campaign.

He lauded Whitman for turning a five-person business into a billion-dollar piece of the economy. "It's one of these great economic success stories," McCain said.

Jake Tapper takes a closer look at Obama's answer to that question:

"Who are the three wisest people you know in your life and who are you going to rely on heavily in your administration?" Warren asked.

Obama joked that obviously the question would have to exempt Warren himself, then mentioned his wife Michelle, "who is not only wise but she's honest. And one of the things you need -- I think any leader needs is somebody who can get up in your face and say, boy, you really screwed that one up. You really blew that."

"Your wife's like that, too?" Warren joked.

Look at the question again: it's not about people you admire, or respect--it's about "...who are you going to rely on heavily in your administration?"

And Obama's answer includes his wife? (Not to mention his maternal grandmother??)

Haven't we been down this road before?

And why does it suddenly feel like 1992 again?

Pure but Pricey Fashion?

If you're a mom of daughters, like me, sooner or later you're going to hear about Pure Fashion. The cute, upbeat website, the mission to promote modesty in dress while still incorporating today's looks, the focus on God--what's not to like?

Pure Fashion is, of course, an apostolate of Regnum Christi, which itself is an offshoot of the Legion of Christ. The website doesn't hide the connection like some other Regnum Christi-associated groups or publications have sometimes done; to be fair, even apostolates like Kids for Jesus (K4J), the Catholic VBS program, now put the Regnum Christi "label" on their websites, where of a couple of years ago I had to dig a bit to discover the connection. So perhaps the openness of Pure Fashion's association with Regnum Christi is part of a new policy by that organization to identify more clearly the groups which are linked to it, which is a good thing.

I have a few problems with RC, and indeed with the Legion of Christ. Since the details involve a family member I won't disclose them publicly; suffice it to say that the family member experienced some of the negatives of Legion life as described at this website, though certainly not the more horrific elements. I have known others who have spoken about their association with either LC or RC in similar terms: the association of the Legion and its goals with the Church, the difficulty in voicing any complaints, however legitimate; the difficulty in leaving the group even when one has made one's intentions in that regard quite clear.

And one of the troubling aspects of LC/RC efforts is the focus on money.

I'm not saying that religious orders shouldn't solicit donations, or charge a fair price for their programs and materials. But take a look at this post from an ex-RC blogger who has looked at the prices involved in the Pure Fashion shows:

In Atlanta, there were 60 models, each of which had to pay $450 to participate. Additionally, each young woman had to raise $1000 in sponsorship from friends, family and businesses. Then each participant was responsible for selling 20 tickets to the fashion show at $40/each.

Thus we have each girl bringing in $1000 + $450 + $800 = $2250 x 60 for a net total of $135,000.

Now what does that money go for?

The clothes are donated.
The accessories are donated.
The hair-styles are donated.
The venues for meetings are free (i.e. Pinecrest).
The speakers are in house, meaning volunteers.
The photography for the event is donated (and if participants want pictures, they are purchased separately).

The $40 ticket price ostensibly covers the venue. So we'll separate out that money to conclude that the Legion walks away with $87,000 each year.

And that's for one fashion show. There seem to be 29 cities participating in the Pure Fashion program; while model training fees seem to vary (anywhere from $250 to $350 plus application fees from what I saw) I'm not sure from the ex-RC website whether the "$450" the model is supposed to pay to participate includes that sum, or is separate from these model training fees.

Just looking at it as a mother of daughters, though, I have to consider the fact that for my girls and I merely to go to one of these shows it would be pretty expensive. The Dallas show's prices, for instance, for this past year were $55 for "elite seating" near the runway or $45 for general seating. So even if Mr. M. didn't want to come (and who would blame him?) the girls and I would be looking at $180 to attend the event, not including such things as parking etc. That sum represents a little more than 1/3 of the cost of our educational materials for the next school year, to put it in a little "family budget" context. For us to spend anywhere near $200 for an afternoon's entertainment I think something like this would have to be playing; but for a fashion show?

To be honest, I'm starting to wonder a little about this whole enterprise. Many girls do enjoy fashion, and there's certainly nothing wrong with directing their innate love of beauty into something that strives not only for modesty but for God, reminding them that the things of this earth are not lasting, and that expensive clothes and finery will not really make them happy. But I have to question whether an apostolate like "Pure Fashion" doesn't end up undermining that second part a bit, parading exquisitely-coiffed and expensively-dressed girls down a runway in front of people in the community who have paid $40 to $50 a person to see them there. Modest clothing, after all, isn't meant to be a luxury of the rich; and vanity is a temptation to nearly every woman who has ever encountered a mirror.

Ominous Clouds

I'm late writing about the homeschooling victory in California, but I'm glad, in a way; this recently-written Time article takes a look at the situation, and shows some potential future problems:

On Aug. 8, however, the same judges made an equally surprising reversal of this decision. Judge H. Walter Croskey, presiding over the Second District Court of Appeal in Los Angeles, wrote that as long as parents declare their home to be a private school, they may continue to homeschool their children, even if the parents do not have credentials. [...]

Yet, this may not be the last California hears of homeschooling. In reviewing the case, Judge Croskey said that this cloudy territory is in desperate need of guidelines. "California impliedly allows parents to homeschool as a private school but has provided no enforcement mechanism. ... Given the state's compelling interest in educating all of its children ... and the absence of an express statutory and regulatory framework for homeschooling in California, additional clarity in this area of the law would be helpful," he said.

Rachel F. Moran, who teaches a course called "Education and the Law" at the University of California, Berkeley, says this series of rulings does indeed provoke some uneasy questions. Right now, all parents have to do is file paperwork stating they are a private school. No one checks in on the students to make sure they are logging in a certain number of hours or passing certain benchmarks. While homeschooling is a "wonderful alternative," Moran says, there is a need for checks and balances. "We want parents to have the freedom to homeschool, but we don't want children to become captives in a homeschool that doesn't prepare them for work or civic engagement as a functioning adult," she says.

California, of course, is a "gay marriage" state. So when a university professor uses a phrase like "prepare them for...civic engagement" all the mental alarm bells a social conservative has in place should start jangling as if a four-alarm fire has been spotted.

It's bad enough that Moran thinks that logging a certain number of hours ought to be a part of homeschooling. I was talking with a young man who provides some of the music for our choir yesterday; he's entering his junior year in high school, and isn't looking forward to it. The public school he attends may be fine, but he finds the sheer amount of time wasted daily to be a huge detriment to his educational process. There would be no surer way to "kill" homeschooling than to demand that homeschooled students spend six or seven hours per day engaged in seatwork; that unreasonable and inefficient style of education is one of the many things homeschoolers tend to reject for our students in the first place.

But that pales in comparison to the other agendas of "homeschool regulation." The real reason so many believe that homeschoolers should be under some sort of regulatory agency has nothing to do with learning, and everything to do with making sure that all children are equally indoctrinated into the social mores and civic reality of the wreckage of the sexual revolution. They want our kids to be exposed to, and to accept regardless of our beliefs, such things as contraception, abortion, divorce, cohabitation, gay marriage and other "alternative lifestyles," and a whole host of similar depravities.

So while I'm happy for the current status of homeschooling in California, I can't help but see the ominous clouds of government intervention in homeschooling on the horizon. We need to stay alert, because the freedom to educate our children without having the state look over our shoulders to make sure we're indoctrinating our children in their values, instead of teaching them ours, is at stake.

Misconceptions about Mary

Happy Feast of the Assumption, everybody!

(And happy anniversary to a couple 'o crazy kids. You know who you are!)

Sometimes, as a Catholic, I'm tempted to think that the many Protestant misconceptions about what we believe in regards to Mary are overstated. Protestants don't really think we worship her, or think of her as a goddess, or believe that she's got all sorts of special cosmic-superhero powers, right?

But then I'll stumble across a website written by a fundamentalist Protestant where exactly those sorts of things are being said. I won't link to them, but they're out there--and by out there I really mean "out there," if you get my drift.

Many, and maybe most, Protestants don't share these more wild misconceptions; while they may disagree with us about Mary's special role in salvation history they do actually understand what we believe. They know that we don't worship Mary or "pray to" her in the sense of thinking that she can help us on her own; they know that our honor of her is linked to our worship of her Son and our desire to please Him by appreciating the gift of His Mother which He gave to the entire Church when He was on the Cross; they also know that we see Mary as the prefigurement of the glory to which we are all called, and that even this solemnity, wherein we celebrate our belief that Mary was assumed body and soul into Heaven, points to the future to which all Christian souls are called, that glorious resurrection of the dead when we, too, will resume our physical (but glorified) bodies and remain in Heaven forever, united with God for all eternity as Mary already is.

But it's easy to see why some misconceptions about Mary may remain. Catholics, and indeed once all Christians, were united in honoring her, in spreading devotion to her, and in turning to her in confident love and trust to beg her, who is so closely united to her Son, to intercede for us, to pray for us, to ask Him to bless us with all good things, to ask Him to protect us and to be with us as He is with her. And sometimes, some of those devotions--simple and heartfelt as they were--might have blurred the distinctions between Mary and her Son just a bit, especially when practiced among simple people.

I once heard a funny story, for example, about a mission priest who was quite worried that the native population among whom he was working had some incorrect ideas about both Jesus and Mary; though they had embraced the Christian faith wholeheartedly, they sometimes seemed more superstitious than reverent in their devotions. So when, during a drought, they asked Father for a picture of Jesus, he wanted to know why. Their answer, that they wanted to process and pray through their dying fields and ask God to send rain, seemed correct, so Father let them have the picture from the church.

A few days later the region was inundated with drenching rains and flooding, and the crops were ruined. The priest was happy that the people seemed to accept this, too, as God's will--until they asked to borrow the picture of Mary from the church. "Why do you want it?" Father asked.

The leader of the people responded sternly, "So we can process around our fields and show the Lady what her Son did!"

Though that story always makes me smile, I think it's an example of the sort of thing that so often led to misconceptions in the past; Mary always points to her Son, but sometimes in some places and among some peoples, that has been overlooked just a bit.

But no one wants us to avoid misunderstanding her role more than Mary herself. Her words at the wedding at Cana in Galilee, "Do whatever He tells you," are spoken to each of us. Mary is our model and example of the Christian, the one who is blessed because she has heard the word of God and believed it, because she has heard God's will and answered, "Fiat," because in all ways and in all things she radiates the presence of God, reflecting the glory of her Son as the moon reflects the light of the sun. This feast day reminds us to persevere in Christian hope, that we, too, may one day take up our bodily presence in Heaven, and join with Mary in praising God for all eternity.

A Good Idea

It's always a good idea to pray for peace. A movement is afoot to dedicate tomorrow's Feast of the Assumption to this intention, for peace in our troubled world. Go here and here for the details.

Any bloggers who want to join in helping to get the word out, please do!

Mary, Queen of Peace, pray for us.

Like a Horse and Carriage

Danielle Bean's talking Love and Marriage at the Faith and Family blog, asking people for three bits of advice they're about to give the soon-to-be married. Patrick Archbold does everything but hand you the grain of salt you're supposed to take his three things with, but still has a commenter ask, doubtfully, whether he's trying to be funny.

I have only one piece of advice for those teetering on the brink of matrimony:

Don't listen to anybody else's advice.

That's it. Really.

Before Mr. M. and I were married, we spent some time with a couple who'd just returned from their first vacation alone together in a good while. They had four or five children, I believe; but anyway, the advice they gave us, over and over, was to find time for ourselves, to make time for ourselves, to hire babysitters, to go away for weekends if family would watch our hypothetical future children, to do whatever we could to still do the romantic "date" things we liked to do (in our case, antique store browsing, used book hunting and things like that) without the kids. It would be crucial, they assured us.

Our girls were all born in the first four years of our marriage. When the oldest was 2 and a half I had our third. We had no idea they'd come so close together, or that we would then have such a long time without adding a new one.

But from the beginning we enjoyed their company. Oh, sure, there were times when they were *really* little when we wouldn't have minded an evening out, but at least one of them was still nursing at the time, and if I was going to have to nurse a baby anyway...And we did get a brief time where we lived in the same town with my mom and dad, during which we could leave the girls for a bit; but it always felt a little strange, and I was the typical over-concerned mom the whole time we'd be gone.

And as far as the antique/used book thing? We took them with us. We took them with us to estate sales, even. And for the little time we tried to sell antiques ourselves at a tiny space in a old, crumbling building in downtown Fort Worth, the girls came too, helping us at ages 5, 4, and 2 to fix price tags on interesting knickknacks and clustering close to us if a strange grownup came by.

They're much older, now; they enjoy the somewhat more occasional incursion to the antique stores, and the very regular trips we make, as a homeschooling family, to the local used book store as we relieve said store of a significant portion of their inventory (at least, it seems that way!). They sing in choir with us, and in general we'd still rather do things as a family than go out for an evening alone, though we've accepted the occasional offer from relatives for an evening of babysitting. I can't really imagine leaving them for a whole weekend, let alone a whole week, as the couple of long-ago assured us would be absolutely necessary to our sanity. The thing is, we like our kids, and would rather have them with us than not most of the time.

But would I tell other married couples that this is how it will go for them? Nah.

And the same is true for lots of other advice, like "Always go to bed together," or "Learn how to make your husband's favorite dish and make it often." For a morning person married to a night person, that first will never work, and for a man whose favorite dish is Lobster Newburgh the second may well not be affordable. Those who shiver at conflict may say, "Never raise your voices at each other!" but those who find a good argument clears the air may say, "Never give each other the silent treatment!" and mean it just as sincerely.

Young couples about to marry, you'll hear lots of advice from lots of people. Some of it may be good, general advice which common sense has already taught you during the course of your engagement, but the more specific the advice gets, the less helpful it may be to you. Why? Because you are two unique, special people coming together to form a unique, special family. And maybe in your family the toilet seat being left up won't matter, and socks on the floor will be your idea of a good stretching exercise first thing in the A.M. Maybe in your family your husband is the chatty one and you're the strong, silent type. Maybe in your family who prepares the meals, and what kind of food it is, is way less important than who loads the dishwasher.

It may take time to figure all of that out, and too many people telling you things have to be a certain way because that's how it works for them, or for your parents, or for Great Aunt Sophie whose marriage lasted 76 years owing to her clever way of keeping Great Uncle George healthy by sneaking cod liver oil into his morning orange juice--but the marriage story you're about to write is all your own. You'll fill up the blank pages with years and memories, joys and sorrow, hopes, dreams, and even failures, and so long as your commitment to each other and acceptance of God's presence in your marriage are as rock-solid as your love and devotion are today, you don't really need people telling you to "count 10" or "say you're sorry even if it's not your fault." Those things may work for some people, but not all; and in your story the unique things that make life better have yet to be revealed.

Silly; Don't Read

So, today, Mark Shea takes on Rad-Trads at Inside Catholic.

And Patrick Archbold has a very good response.

I have nothing but tomfoolery to offer; the first about Rad-Trads, and the second a "repeat" of a poem I wrote over in Mark's comboxes a year or so ago when the "neo-Cath" faction of traditionalist N.O. types who are suspicious of Protestant converts were being discussed over there.

I have many apologies to Gilbert and Sullivan; but I hope no one will find these as anything other than silliness. They're not meant to offend:

I am the Very Model of a Modern Rad-Traditional

I am the very model of a modern Rad-Traditional
I've information Latin and liturgic-inquisitional
I know the work of Modernists and people even sillier
And can recite the names of forty bishops, pre-Conciliar
I'm very well acquainted too, with matters Mass-grammatical
I'll tell you why the words "for all" require a sabbatical,
As to the bad new music I posses the means to measure it
With special focus on the dreck of the St. Louis Jesuits

I'm very good at sniffing out indifference and irreverence
And punishing the bad with all the force of social severance
In short, in matters Latin and liturgic-inquisitional
I am the very model of a modern Rad-Tradtional!

[...]

In fact, when I know what is meant by "agape" and "caritas"
When I can judge between bad innovations and "varietas"
When Jewish domination I no longer in each theory see
And when I know precisely why it's nuts to say, conspiracy
When I discover that the Novus Ordo Mass is still the Mass
When I can give a nervous server's errors a forgiving pass
In short, when I remember that it's not my job to judge them all
You'll say a more reformed Rad-Trad has truly never heard the call

For my charitable impulse, though I'm expert in validity
Has suffered just a bit in the degree of its timidity,
But still in matters Latin and liturgic-inquisitional
I am the very model of a modern Rad Traditional!

I Am a Neo-Cath

Oh, better far to live and die,
Under the Papal Flag I fly;
Than to play a sanctimonious part,
With a Protestant Convert's graceless heart.
Away to the Gay New World go you
To float in the Spirit of Vatican II...
But I'll stand firm, on the St. Blog's Path,
And live and die...a NeoCath!

For I am a NeoCath!
(He is! Hurrah for the NeoCath!)
And it is a felt-banner burning thing
To be a NeoCath!
I am a NeoCath!
(You are! Hurrah for the NeoCath!)
And it is a great gobsmacking thing
To be a NeoCath!
(It is! Hurrah for the NeoCath; hurrah for the NeoCath!)

When I sally forth in polemical way,
To enter a great blog-combox fray,
I encounter other Catholics there,
Who have all the wit of a Haugen air;
But even those who are on my side,
If they show too much ex-Protestant pride,
Can count on me, to take up the slack:
Then turn and stab them in the back!

For I am a NeoCath!
(He is! Hurrah for the NeoCath!)
And it is a truly righteous thing
To be a NeoCath!
I am a NeoCath!
(You are! Hurrah for the NeoCath!)
And it is a rather fluid thing
To be a NeoCath!
(It is! Hurrah for the NeoCath; hurrah for the NeoCath!)

A Plank In Their Eyes

From the New York Times' Opinionator blog, a look at the new language o' death--er, excuse me, the new wording of the Democrat's All Abortion All the Time plank:

Pro-life liberals and the Democratic platform: Steven Waldman, the editor-in-chief of Beliefnet, is disappointed by the abortion plank in the draft Democratic platform.

“The key linguistic debate has been whether to ‘reduce the number of abortions’ or ‘reduce the need for abortions,’” Waldman writes on his Beliefnet blog. “Pro-life folks favored the former. Pro-choice folks favored the latter. The pro-choice folks won. In fact, the 2004 platform said abortion ‘should be safe, legal and rare’ — language [that] casts abortion reduction as morally preferable, something this platform does not.”

While the draft platform “includes — for the first time — language specifically designed to reduce the need for abortions,” Waldman says that religious Democrats wanted it to go further, with “moral language casting abortion as a morally inferior choice.” ...

The thing is, we all know the Democrats can't do that.

Let anyone, anywhere, start to suggest that there's anything morally wrong with abortion, and the whole dirty house of feticidal cards collapses in a pile of illogic and moral indefensibility. How can a mere "medical procedure" be wrong? How can a "reproductive choice" be wrong? How can there be any moral questions over "a woman's right to choose?"

Simple: because a woman doesn't have the right to "choose" to kill her child. She doesn't have the right to end his or her developing life. She can't morally hire someone else to butcher, slaughter, poison, or otherwise execute the tiny human child growing inside of her.

So abortion isn't a "morally inferior" choice; it's a completely immoral one. Barbaric, even, in that it pits mother against child and rips apart the most sacred human bond of all.

In this election season, some squishy Catholics have tried to say that Republican policies that favor the rich will be a big contributing factor in the number of abortions overall. But while they squint their eyes to see the specks of abortion-encouragement, however hidden or indirect, in the Republican party's platform, they're pretty well ignoring the major plank in their own.

Dowd, Denmark and Denver

When I wrote about Maureen Dowd's comparison of Obama to Mr. Darcy, I facetiously suggested she'd be turning to Shakespeare next. I was right, though I picked the wrong plays:

Now they’ve made Barry’s convention all about them — their dissatisfaction and revisionism and barely disguised desire to see him fail. Whatever insincere words of support the Clintons muster, their primal scream gets louder: He can’t win! He can’t close the deal! We told you so!

Hillary’s orchestrating a play within the play in Denver. Just as Hamlet used the device to show that his stepfather murdered his father, Hillary will try to show the Democrats they chose the wrong savior. [...]

Bill continues to howl at the moon — and any reporters in the vicinity — about Obama; he’s starting to make King Lear look like Ryan Seacrest.

The way the Clintons see it, there’s nothing wrong with a couple making plans for their future, is there? That’s the American way and, as their pal Mark Penn pointed out, they have American roots while Obama “is not at his center fundamentally American in his thinking and in his values.”

Much as I relish Dowd's delicious takedown of America's Dysfunctional Former First Couple, I can't help but notice that the shredding is coming from a set of hardly-disinterested claws. Though Dowd can sometimes be an equal opportunity scold, I suspect that her particular interest in Obama has contributed mightily to the tone of this piece.

In fact, the two opening paragraphs, where Dowd seems to be chiding Obama for going to the movies and gadding about at silly Hawaiian-themed fundraisers instead of thwarting Hillary's dark designs to make the convention All About Her pretty much give it away; only real trepidation could cause Dowd to criticize Mr. Darcy in public like this.

And her fears may be well placed. Has anyone, anywhere in America ever expected the Clintons to fade quietly into retirement, a set of political has-beens whose former spheres of influence shrink until even the rounds of Sunday talk shows become a distant memory? Has anyone ever really thought they'd age gracefully, content for a cameo here and there in some dry PBS documentary about their Washington years?

Considering that Bill couldn't even let Hillary's campaign be about Hillary, it's not very likely, is it?

But I'm surprised that Dowd thinks the goal of this convention-stealing performance is focused simply on letting Hillary be the nominee in 2012. The Clintons are nothing if not contingency planners, and while I'm sure they're prepared to capitalize on an Obama defeat, making trembling-lip appearances on TV to say that, well, if only the Democrats hadn't been too sexist to choose Their Girl, etc., I'm equally sure that they're angling for at least a cabinet slot in the Obama administration, if not the coveted vice presidency.

In fact, they may already realize that Obama's unlikely to offer the veep slot; no one can take the measure of an arrogant histrionic time-bomb quite like another one can. But I'm betting they see Hillary heading up some Cabinet department or other, and it's possible that their convention speeches will give us a clue as to which.

So, whether something's rotten in the state of Denmark or of Denver remains to be seen; but I suspect that Hillary will emerge from the convention as the media's clear choice to head the Department of Something-Or-Other. Which a few months ago would probably have seemed like an inadequate consolation prize to the Clintons; but their pragmatic streak probably accepts the reality, and their spin machines are already whirring to cast whatever comes of it as a victory for Hillary, and for America.

How Do You Say "Milli Vanilli" in Chinese?

You've probably already heard about this:

When Lin Miaoke, 9, belted out "I Sing for My Country" as the Chinese flag entered the national stadium, she became an instant celebrity and was quickly dubbed a "smiling angel." The image of her dressed in a pretty red dress appeared around the world.

But she apparently wasn't the one singing. Chen Qigang, the ceremony's music director, told state broadcaster CCTV that the voice hundreds of millions of people heard was that of 7-year-old Yang Peiyi. Yang had the voice and was supposed to perform but was yanked at the last minute because she had crooked teeth.

"It was for the national interest," Chen told CCTV. "The child on camera should be flawless in image, internal feelings and expression."

And apparently the fireworks were rigged, too:

Another sleight of hand involved the massive fireworks display that exploded the length of Beijing at the culmination of the ceremony. The display was real, involving 29 pyrotechnic "footprints" exploded sequentially from Tiananmen Square to the Olympic Village.

But the 55-second version that most TV viewers saw was an animated three-dimensional studio re-creation, Gao Xiaolong, visual-effects team leader at the Crystal Stone animation company, told the Beijing Times. Only the last "footprint" closest to the stadium known as the Bird's Nest was filmed in real time.

"Most viewers thought these were live shots, so our work achieved its effect," Gao said proudly.

Gao said planners earlier decided that capturing all 29 "footprints" on camera would be too difficult. So the studio spent nearly a year crafting the clip, which was inserted into the live coverage.

To make it as seamless as possible, Crystal consulted with the weather bureau to re-create Beijing haze at night, Gao told the newspaper, and included a slight shaking to simulate shooting from a helicopter. The company declined to comment today.

I'd like to say this is a disgrace. I'd like to say that this sort of thing shouldn't be done. I'd like to say that parading photogenic faces and putting other people's words in those camera-ready mouths, that creating an atmosphere of "live" excitement and spectacle that is actually pre-recorded, pre-programmed, and carefully crafted to produce a certain effect, is dishonest and disingenuous.

I'd like to. But then, we haven't yet seen either the Republican or the Democratic National Conventions.

Modesty, Charity, and NFP

It must be the season.

First we had a debate over breastfeeding modestly in public, then a debate over NFP and responsible and generous parenthood, and now it's apparently time to tackle the subject of modesty in dress again.

I've been over the modesty debate before. I don't need to dredge up my thoughts on the matter again, and am not planning to get into the specifics. Of course, I reserve the right to change my mind. :)

But in reading the linked post and especially the comments thread that followed, I had a thought that I wanted to share.

In last week's NFP/Responsible and Generous debate, people kept saying one thing over and over again. I'll sum it up here:

We have to be very careful when talking about responsible parenthood. We have to be especially careful not to mention any hypotheticals, even in the abstract, lest we hurt people. We can say, very generally, that financial matters (which we mustn't define) may (though not necessarily) sometimes (though not always) be among the reasons (but not prominent among them) for individual couples (though probably nobody we know) to choose to use moral means to postpone temporarily adding to their family (though this isn't at all the only choice or the best choice and if they choose otherwise we should call them humble and heroic and then shut up already). Anything more specific than that, even in the abstract, is really just an excuse to bash poor people or suggest they shouldn't have children.

It's possible that the above is just a wee bit hyperbolic.

But what I want to know is this: why is it unjust, unkind, and uncharitable to mention any specifics, even completely hypothetical abstract what-if ones, when discussing prudential concerns and NFP--but it is never seen that way when we're talking about modesty?

After all, we could just as easily insist that the only thing good Catholics may say about modesty is: Catholics ought to practice modesty in dress out of respect for God's creation of their bodies and out of charity toward others. Period. End of sentence, end of discussion, end of debate.

But that's not how it is, is it? People feel completely free to declare whole categories of clothing to be always and everywhere off-limits. People don't hesitate to label clothing styles in the abstract as immodest, and to cast aspersions on those who choose them. A call to be charitable in that realm is seen as mushy relativism, as if charitably suggesting some people may not know better, or indeed, may not own other clothing, is just condoning the dangerous immorality of the world, and failing to warn our brothers and sisters (mostly, our sisters) just how close to Hell that blouse with the sleeves four whole inches above the elbow is dragging them.

Nobody ever says that sneering at crude tee-shirts or faded jeans is tantamount to beating up on the poorly-dressed.

In fact, there's this notion out there that the things Pope Pius XII or Saint Pio said about modesty rise to the level of infallible Catholic teaching, and that only the hardest hearts would disagree. There's this idea that measuring our neighbor's sleeve-length and skirt-length with our eyes is a morally necessary act. There's the idea that "two fingers below the collarbone" is the gold standard for a woman when she's buying shirts or blouses, and that she's bound under pain of sin to wear nothing that dips any lower.

[My objection to that has to do with my very small hands. Whose "fingers" set the standard? If I use my fingers to measure the space below my collarbone and shop accordingly, I'd be stuck wearing turtlenecks most of the time. Which give me a headache, can't be worn 11.5 months out of twelve here in Texas, and would still get me in trouble with the modesty police because my somewhat well-endowed figure would be pretty apparent in the fabrics turtlenecks are usually made of. But I digress.]

In fact, in most of these debates about various aspects of moral living, people feel extremely free to discuss the hypothetical and the not-so-hypothetical. I recall the breastfeeding debate, where the questions, "Is it possible to breastfeed in public modestly? If so, how? Is breastfeeding at Mass by definition immodest?" etc. went off into all sorts of very specific tangents about what sort of covering ought to be used, when the mother should remove herself from the presence of others, and how it was sometimes the case that even if the mother was wearing a nursing dress, draped in a shawl, covered in a blanket, seated behind a strategically positioned pillar, and swathed in gauzy ribbons held at a distance by blind volunteers from the Knights of Columbus, she still couldn't nurse modestly at Mass because somewhere in church some man would know what she was doing and what body part was involved and would probably sin in thinking about it all.

If charity compels us to keep these sorts of debates in the abstract, maybe it's time to retire the modesty debates once and for all. We'll just agree to say, "We should dress modestly," and leave the details up to the individual properly-formed conscience, the person's spiritual adviser, and the person's spouse/mother/other close friend who can be trusted to tell the person if he/she is venturing out dressed like a gigolo/tart.

Anybody out there agree?

Something to Watch

This could get very interesting:

A delegation of Episcopal priests from Fort Worth paid a visit to Catholic Bishop Kevin Vann earlier this summer, asking for guidance on how their highly conservative diocese might come into "full communion" with the Catholic Church.

Whether that portends a serious move to turn Fort Worth Episcopalians and their churches into Catholics and Catholic churches is a matter of dispute.

The Rev. William Crary, senior rector of the Fort Worth diocese, confirmed that on June 16 he and three other priests met with Bishop Vann, leader of the Fort Worth Catholic diocese, and presented him a document that is highly critical of the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion.

The document states that the overwhelming majority of Episcopal clergy in the Fort Worth diocese favor pursuing an "active plan" to bring the diocese into full communion with the Catholic Church.

There's some debate over what this all actually means, with some Fort Worth Episcopalians suggesting that the intention is to become fully Catholic, while others are disagreeing and insist that the churches will remain Episcopalian. Despite the article, it's hard to know just what is happening, and it may be that any speculation is premature.

Nevertheless, the extremely conservative Episcopalians of Fort Worth must be in considerable pain over the recent developments within ECUSA, and any movement toward communion with Rome would be most welcome to the Catholics of Fort Worth.

I think prayer is in order, that God's will may be done, and that some good may come from the troubles and tribulations conservative Episcopalians have been suffering for so long now.

The Broad Side of the Barn

Sir Walter Scott is reputed to have said, "If a farmer fills his barn with grain, he gets mice. If he leaves it empty, he gets actors."

And if he leaves the outside unpainted, he attracts Democratic presidential candidates:

Signs in front yards and stickers on car bumpers are apparently no longer enough -- Barack Obama wants his name emblazoned in huge letters on barns across rural Ohio.

The Democrat's White House campaign said Monday its volunteers were fanning out across the pivotal state -- which handed victory to President George W. Bush in 2004 -- to help supportive farmers paint their barns in his colors. [...]

Logan's barn was shown in a new campaign video undergoing a political makeover in time-lapse photography, emerging with Obama's red, white and blue horizon logo and name in huge lettering on its side.

So, Barack Obama wants his name in huge letters on barns across Ohio. Somehow that doesn't seem to fit Maureen Dowd's description of him as Mr. Darcy, does it?

Of course, Obama's supporters would say he's not vain at all. All that Obama/Messiah stuff? Embarrassing, probably created by overzealous supporters. Why, shucks darn, Obama's just a humble, simple man o' the people (get a corndog in his hand!).

And this humble, simple man of the people is upset at John McCain. Why? For, of all things, casting Obama as a celebrity:

In a presidential campaign freighted with war, recession and energy woes, a jibe featuring Paris Hilton, of all things, seems to have struck a nerve in Democrat Barack Obama. For the second time in two weeks, he aired a TV ad Monday rebutting Republican John McCain's claim that Obama is little more than a celebrity, like the blonde hotel heiress.

The first time, Obama dismissed the assertion as "baloney." On Monday, Obama took a different tack with a commercial that says McCain, not he, is "Washington's biggest celebrity."

Of course, all of this is a big waste of voters' time and attention, when much more serious issues demand our national attention, such as which candidate has better office Feng Shui:

With a few simple changes in their Senate offices, both presidential candidates could improve their health, relationships and maybe even get a few more votes, says Taylor Vance, a Feng Shui consultant. [...]

Feng Shui is an ancient Chinese philosophy that examines how a person's environment affects his life. [...]

There's one suggestion Vance thinks both candidates would benefit from — adding a small fountain in the back left corner of their offices, the area that relates to money and opportunities.

"That would help bring in more campaign contributions," Vance said.

I can't imagine that a real, live, paid journalist wrote the above story. I would say that it's the sort of piece that belongs in the National Enquirer, except that these days that would be an insult to the Enquirer.

Posing for Holy Cards

If I've learned one thing about last week's "responsible and generous parenthood" brouhaha, it's that people really don't like it when their ox is the one being gored.

Not an especially new phenomenon in human behavior, I know. But when the ox is the notion that one type of Catholic family, one style of Catholic family life, is somehow sacrosanct, above even completely abstract discussion if that discussion has the remote possibility of offending the type of family in question, the goring can get pretty--well, gory, for lack of a better word.

Because we all know that large Catholic families are the right sort of Catholic family. We all know that all large Catholic families are holy, the same way that skirt-wearers are holy and veil-donners are holy and homeschoolers are holy and secular Franciscans are holy and daily-Mass-goers are holy and daily-rosary-sayers are holy and soup-kitchen volunteers are holy and students at [fill-in-the-blank] Catholic college are holy and...

You know where this is going, right?

I know some wonderful large Catholic families (and some wonderful smaller ones, too). And one of the things that makes them so wonderful is that if I ever suggested out loud that the circumstances of their lives make them models of holiness they'd slap me down, or at least grumble something about a particular devil taking up the flank position.

Because holiness isn't about externals. It never is. It never was. It never will be.

Some of the things in my list are special calls. Some are things any of us could do, if the circumstances permitted. All of them are ways of living or habits or practices that, if God works with us, may help lead us along in the right direction toward holiness, a goal toward which we should all be striving each day of our lives.

But not one of them is proof of holiness. Not one of them permits us to look at the people in question and say, admiringly, "Wow, you must really be holy." Not one of them absolves the people who are doing or living this way from the duty to work out their salvation in fear and trembling, as we must all do in this earthly vale of tears.

We might be tempted sometimes to think, for instance, that a mom we know who is expecting her twelfth child is really, really holy--but we don't know if she is or not; and if she is trying to reach holiness, the closer she gets, the more she, like all who approach sainthood, will see all her little tiny faults magnified as huge obstacles to Our Lord's presence, and spend more time in prayer and penance the closer she gets to God. The last thing she wants to hear is that we think she's holy, especially that we think so based solely on the number of children she has borne.

We might also be tempted to think that a veil and skirt wearer is holy, or a daily Mass attendee, etc. just because of how they appear to us. But none of those things, good though they may be, is proof of holiness, which is a quality of the interior soul, not the exterior life.

If you read about a young nun, for instance, who followed the rule of her convent but slowly became dissatisfied, wishing for reform, to become part of a movement of reform that was then becoming an ever more prevalent voice sweeping through Christendom, you might almost be tempted in your mental image of this unknown lady to start posing her for holy cards. That is, until you realized that the woman you were reading about was Katharina von Bora, who ran away from her convent and became the wife of the Protestant leader Martin Luther. On externals alone we can't judge; indeed, there's nothing to stop us from praying that both Katharina and her husband drank of God's mercy by the time of their deaths, and that their souls have not been lost. But it's easy to start reading the story of a young nun and automatically supply the halo, gilt border, and prayer on the back, so to speak, before you've even gotten to the third sentence on the page.

The dangerous part is that we tend to think this is a good thing, this premature canonization of all those whose lives meet or display certain external criteria. But it isn't. We don't help each other grow in holiness if we keep insisting that some among us need no further growth in this life, and we don't do people any favors by building little shrines and lighting candles in their general direction instead of joining hands in prayer with them, understanding that they, too, struggle to be good, and ceasing to value the externals of their lives so very disproportionately.

We can admire and respect those who tackle difficult challenges cheerfully, or show by their unfailing charity, example of inoffensive mildness, and unwavering love how we, too, may be. But it's a bit much to set up a camera and start asking them to pose for holy cards; those out there whose holiness would astound us if we knew of it seldom advertise this interior reality to the world.

A Mom Rhyme

We're having company today
Our house is at its best.
We've swept and scrubbed and tidied
To get ready for our guests.
It still looks like a family house--
It's not all that pristine...
But just for once, and all at once
The whole darned thing is clean!

Please Pray

There was a terrible bus wreck this morning in the Sherman, TX area. The passengers were Vietnamese Catholics on an annual pilgrimage; fifteen people have died:

The death toll now stands at 15 in the crash of a charter bus that skidded off a freeway north of Dallas. [...]

More than a dozen victims were reported in critical condition. The bus was operating illegally when it blew a tire, smashed into a guardrail and tipped over. [...]

Most of the passengers were from the Vietnamese Martyrs Church and two other mostly Vietnamese congregations in Houston. They were on their way to Carthage, Mo., for an annual open-air festival honoring the Virgin Mary.

The Marian Days pilgrimage, begun in the late 1970s, attracts thousands of Catholics of Vietnamese descent and includes a large outdoor Mass each day, entertainment and camping at night.

"Please pray for us," said Holly Nguyen, a 38-year-old church member who was following behind the bus in a car but did not see the wreck. She anxiously awaited word of her father, who was on the bus when it ran off the road about 65 miles north of Dallas, close to the Oklahoma line. [...]

The Rev. Joseph Vu, a priest at the Vietnamese Martyrs Church and vicar for the 30,000 to 35,000 Vietnamese Catholics in the region, was not on the trip but arrived at a relief station set up for victims' families at a church in nearby Denison.

"I'm going to tell people we don't blame anybody," he said. "This happened like Katrina, like Challenger. What we can do is pray." He added: "God will comfort them. Tell people to keep trusting in God. Do not blame anybody. Do not ask why. Now we just help each other to get through this."

I will be offering my rosary tonight for the victims and their families, for the injured survivors, and for all those impacted by this deadly crash. Please join me; if you wish to mention in the comment box what prayers you will say or Masses you will attend in the next few days for this intention please feel free to do so.

Heavenly Father, we commend to your care all the souls of the faithful departed, especially today the victims of this accident. Please grant eternal rest to them, and grant to the sorrowing left behind swift healing and comfort in their time of grief. Amen.

Responsible and Generous

Okay.

I really didn't think I'd have to be wading back into this discussion, and since I've got company coming over Sunday I'd sort of counted on being able to toss together a light post or two in between tossing pasta salad and tossing junk mail. But clearly, more is needed, and I'm not one to look the other way when the Catholic parenthood debate threatens to pull a World War III in my comboxes.

The thing to remember is this: married couples are called to be responsible and generous in their call to parenthood.

Responsible and generous.

It's not an either/or, people. It's not like you can say, "Oh, I'm being responsible, which means I can't be generous just now, and add lots more children to my family without regard to circumstances," or "Oh, I'm being generous, and the Church doesn't demand that I be responsible--that's just a fiction created by the selfish money-grubbing lot that sees dollar signs as more important than babies."

We are to be both. All the time. Whether we're led in a responsible and generous way to have another baby or in a responsible and generous way to postpone for a brief time, a long time, or even in the most serious of circumstances for a prolonged and possibly permanent time.

I've seen Danielle's latest and agree with about 3.75 of her four things. The .25 I disagree with has to do with the notion that that Church never requires us to use NFP. The reason it's only a fraction of a disagreement is this: the Church is never going to require us to use a specific type of abstinence to avoid adding to our families--but the Church can indeed let us know, through her priests, if we are in one of those "morally obligating" situations that demands some sort of abstinence.

In fact, one of those circumstances that gets talked about is that where one spouse, and only one, is discovered to be HIV positive. To protect the uninfected spouse and to negate the possibility of an innocent child being subjected to the disease the Church sometimes demands that husband and wife live as brother and sister--total abstinence, not NFP, not any other periodic abstinence method. So the Church does have the power to oblige us, even married couples, to abstain from marital relations.

I realize this is not what Danielle is saying and not what she's talking about, but the reason I bring it up is this: we can't say that the Church can't require us, us specifically, us personally, to abstain either partially or completely from the marital embrace, and with that, from adding to our families in the ordinary way for a time. The Church most certainly can, and while some think this is rare there are couples who have been told in confidence in the confessional or elsewhere by a priest/adviser that they are indeed morally obligated for the good of their families to avoid adding a child at a specific time for some specific and usually rather dire reason.

This is important, because we hear all the time that the "default" setting is not "use NFP unless you're sure you can have another." That is true. But it is also true that the "default" setting is not "have every child you can physically bear even if your fertility is the sort that lets you have three children under three, four under four, five under five and so on unless you have one of those dire morally obligating reasons as a factor," because that's an equally wrong, equally limited way of looking at the Church's call for us to be responsible and generous.

So what is the default setting?

Guess what? There is no default setting. There are only people, individuals, married Catholic couples, each striving toward Heaven, each answering the call to holiness every day, each seeking to follow God's will in this as they do in every other area of their lives, by listening with open ears and a joyful heart to the teachings of the Church and making prudential decisions based on these teachings.

And when we talk about responsibility for a bit, focusing on those things couples might take into consideration as they determine God's will for their families, that doesn't mean that we're ignoring the "generous" part, just as we can talk about generosity without ignoring the "responsible" part.

But what we cannot do, what we must not do, is say that the Church's teachings in the area of responsibility are in any way analogous to the evil family planning policies of Communist China or of Planned Parenthood or of any other such group. Because the Church knows that our duty to our children is a most serious and solemn obligation, and that our ability to meet our children's basic physical and spiritual needs as we aid them to grow in holiness and toward Heaven is not a callous concern for finances, but an extremely important part of the vocation of marriage.

Well, This Is A First

A "married" gay man has fled the country illegally with "his" son, although it was his "husband" who had custody:

Hyett, 37, bolted with the child on Sunday after a year of ugly sparring with his estranged spouse over custody. According to Hyett, the two men last spoke nearly a year ago, and his ex-partner Joshua Glazer ignored 200 messages about the deteriorating situation since then.

Glazer, left behind with boxes of toys and an empty bed in the Manhattan apartment he shared with the boy, called Hyett a "highly manipulative person" and "a pathological liar."

Police sources said it was the first New York abduction case involving a married gay couple in memory.

If you read the article, it says that the boy's mother was a "surrogate." But other accounts say the mother was a friend of the men who let them adopt her son. One can't help but wonder, because if the mom really was a "surrogate" then one of these two men may be the biological father--but which?

And, of course, nobody who's covering this story is referring to this embarrassing Boston Globe puff piece about the men, who were "married" the first day Massachusetts allowed gay marriage:

Now, it was 9 a.m. and Eric and Josh, the 41st couple in line that morning, were waiting their turn at the town clerk's counter. They wore dark suits with new blue ties, a gift from Brian. Their lapels carried red boutonnieres selected by Barbara.

At 9:15, as they stepped up to the clerk's counter, Joan Glazer wiped away tears. "I guess I think it's real now," she said.

Eric and Josh carried a doctor's note that pronounced them syphilis free, a state requirement for all marriages. For identification, they had passports and the lease for the apartment in Norman and Maxine's Winthrop home. They swore they knew of no legal impediment to their marriage.

And, after handing over $35, they walked out to cheers, carrying a certificate stating their intent to wed and listing the residence in Winthrop.

Under a warm morning sun, the couple and their extended family marched 150 yards across the street to municipal court, where they asked a judge to waive the state's three-day waiting period.

"I grew up here," Eric told the judge. "I went to Brookline High. My mom resides here."

After a two-minute hearing, they had their waiver.

And after a speedy return trip to Brookline clerk's counter, they walked away with their license to marry as their families cheered.

As they left for the synagogue, they passed a poster board in the town hall lobby labeled "An Historic Day of Inclusion."

On it, other couples had scrawled: "It's About Time!" or "May Love Prevail!"

In careful script, Eric left a message of his own:

"Two families -- coming together. One new family begins. Eric Hyett & Josh Glazer. Married. May 17, 2004."

And now, just four years later, one of them has fled the country with an innocent child the two men adopted to raise together.

Tell me again how gay marriage is going to be so much better than straight marriage. Tell me again how the gays are going to prove to us all that they're practically perfect compared to the rest of us, who've been slowly destroying marriage since around the time of Henry VIII.

Tell me. I'm listening.

A Clarification

Danielle Bean believes that I have misrepresented her on the subject of NFP. She writes that she has always included the use of NFP in the phrase "open to life" and that when she writes about the hypothetical heroic mother she is not excluding the possibility of the use of NFP.

For the record, I didn't think Danielle would disagree with the use of NFP; she has written before on the topic. I was intending to discuss the fact that in the context of the post the phrase is unclear, and leads one to expect that both the humility and the heroism come from not attempting to limit one's family size even when one is already choosing between food for the family and the baby's prescription. If I misunderstood her point or misread it, I apologize.

I do, however, disagree with this paragraph from the post:

We need to be very careful when we talk about “responsible parenthood.” All too often, this phrase leads to the idea of preventing pregnancy as the default mode for Catholic marriages. In this way of thinking, couples must meet certain criteria, financial or otherwise, before they are “allowed” to have children. I can think of many words to describe this kind of thinking, but not one of them is “Catholic.”

The Church herself speaks of "responsible parenthood." The Church also speaks of "generous parenthood." In fact, balancing the demands of responsibility and generosity are what make the prudential decisions difficult at times for individual couples and families.

But nobody ever says we need to be "careful" when we speak about "generous parenthood." Nobody ever says we must guard against hurting the feelings of the infertile, of those who are prevented by medical conditions or mental conditions or financial conditions from adding to their families, whether temporarily or permanently. Nobody warns against creating the false impression that striving to achieve every physically possible pregnancy is the default setting for a good Catholic marriage and that only the most dire of circumstances will be acceptable before the couple is "allowed" to use NFP.

Nobody says there's anything wrong with presenting all large families as "humble and heroic" while whispering that small families are "contraceptive-mentality and selfish" without knowing the circumstances of either; nobody seems to find any impropriety in demanding the most personal details from those with small families as "proof" that they're not using NFP "contraceptively" while insisting that large families should never be burdened by even a discussion of general principles relating to finances and the acceptance of government aid (which, to be fair, has nothing to do with family size; there are rich people with twelve children and impoverished families with two, after all).

So again, Danielle, I'm sorry if I misunderstood. I disagree with the notion that anything the Church teaches us is off limits for discussion, however, or needs to be addressed "very carefully," provided no one is judging individual couples whatever the circumstances.

And on the subject of responsible and generous parenthood, that goes for both sides.

Taking Things Too Personally

I'm noticing something disturbing going on in the conversations about responsible parenthood.

Apparently, some people seem to think that discussing the Church's teaching on the subject at all, mentioning that the Church expects us to provide food, clothing, shelter, and education for each of our children, and raising the questions of prudent considerations when families face various difficulties whether physical, mental, emotional or financial, is the same thing as looking down our noses at all those people having babies.

This saddens me.

I've stressed over and over again that to talk about this subject does not mean judging others. Two women, both with five children, both facing the same financial problems, may reach two completely different decisions about seeking to add baby number six to the family, and that's nobody's business to judge but their own, in conjunction with their husbands and, if necessary, their spiritual advisers. Like all prudential decisions we're supposed to communicate, pray for the guidance of the Holy Spirit, make our decision, and then be at peace in the knowledge that we have sought God's will and done our best to determine it and to carry it out. The rest is just details.

But those details can be interesting and informative--not our personal details, which are, again, nobody's business but our own, but general principles by which we can seek to know God's will and to serve Him.

If we read a book about how wonderful a devotion to the daily rosary is, is the author judging everyone who doesn't pray the rosary daily?

If a priest preaches a homily about the Precepts of the Church, and mentions some ways that we can fulfill the fifth one (contributing to the support of the Church), is he demanding that every single person in the congregation give a certain percent of their incomes, and judging those who can't do so?

If a conference speaker talks about the joys of homeschooling, and how beneficial this is for Catholic families and the spiritual lives of the children, is every person there who does not homeschool being judged for not making this choice in their lives?

Circumstances, opportunities, graces, calls and our ability to respond to these will all vary widely from person to person, couple to couple and family to family. But we don't get very far if we clamp down and refuse to discuss things like prayer life, tithing, methods of educating our children and the like because we are afraid that somewhere in the details of these things lurks a general statement that some person or group of people are likely to take as a personal insult.

The Church is pretty clear about our duties in regards to responsible parenthood, as far as the general principles go. The details can be important for each family to consider carefully, but no one is expecting or demanding that all families everywhere must make identical choices all of the time, or face the scorn of the smaller families on the one hand or the scoffing of the larger families on the other. Frankly, the considerations about prudence rarely have anything to do with family size: a family of four may not be able to put food on the table, while a family of twelve may be comparatively wealthy and be able to afford an Ivy-league education for each child. But not one of us is absolved from the duty to consider what we owe our children--we promise when we marry to take seriously our obligation toward our eventual children, and that means learning about and understanding what the Church has said and written about both the blessings and the responsibilities of parenthood.

Dowd and Darcy

Maureen Dowd has completely lost it:

In The Wall Street Journal, Amy Chozick wrote that Hillary supporters — who loved their heroine’s admission that she was on Weight Watchers — were put off by Obama’s svelte, zero-body-fat figure.

“He needs to put some meat on his bones,” said Diana Koenig, a 42-year-old Texas housewife. Another Clinton voter sniffed on a Yahoo message board: “I won’t vote for any beanpole guy.”

The odd thing is that Obama bears a distinct resemblance to the most cherished hero in chick-lit history. The senator is a modern incarnation of the clever, haughty, reserved and fastidious Mr. Darcy.

Like the leading man of Jane Austen and Bridget Jones, Obama can, as Austen wrote, draw “the attention of the room by his fine, tall person, handsome features, noble mien. ...he was looked at with great admiration for about half the evening, till his manners gave a disgust which turned the tide of his popularity; for he was discovered to be proud, to be above his company, and above being pleased.”

The master of Pemberley “had yet to learn to be laught at,” and this sometimes caused “a deeper shade of hauteur” to “overspread his features.”

The New Hampshire debate incident in which Obama condescendingly said, “You’re likable enough, Hillary,” was reminiscent of that early scene in “Pride and Prejudice” when Darcy coldly refuses to dance with Elizabeth Bennet, noting, “She is tolerable; but not handsome enough to tempt me.”

Pardon me while I, whilst laughing, choke to death on my own salivary secretions.

Barack Obama? Mr. Darcy????

Oh, snort, chuckle, snark, breathe. Ok. I'm good now.

There is a time in a woman's life when, having encountered the sublime wit and sparkling intelligence of an Austen novel for the first time, she experiences an effect nearly as surreal and dizzying as her first sip of champagne will also feel; the world of the drab and everyday seems to whirl like a forbidden waltz in Regency England, as the romance and power of Austen's words work their intoxicating magic. She begins to imagine herself in the role of this heroine and that, and correspondingly places the men in her life into the part of this or that Austen hero, losing herself in a cloud of sweet propriety and alluring imagination--and the favorite pairing for this pretty game is to see oneself as Eliza Bennet, and one's hero as Mr. Darcy.

She's usually about fifteen at the time.

Maureen Dowd is not fifteen, but clearly she has been badly smitten by her would-be hero of an early twenty-first century romance.

I can forgive the average fifteen-year-old girl for wanting to be Eliza; she's one of Austen's most powerful and charming heroines, who combines intelligence with wisdom, a rare feat. And I can forgive these young girls for correspondingly choosing Mr. Darcy, with whom I've never had any sympathy at all. I know that's heretical for an English major to say, but there it is: I don't admire Mr. Darcy, and never did very much.

Still, I know he's popular; but he certainly bears no resemblance at all, not even the slightest, to an opportunistic Chicago politician who is more megalomaniacal than proud.

That doesn't matter, to Dowd, who honestly seems to be using this extremely strained comparison as a way of talking about how racial prejudice will keep people from voting for Obama. The left has already decided that the only reason anyone could possibly have not to vote for Obama is prejudice; somehow severe disagreement with his policies doesn't make the list.

But what this "Mr. Darcy" incident really illustrates with wearisome familiarity is just how silly the press has become over Obama. When I wrote, a while back, that the tone of so many Obama pieces made it seem as though the journalists were writing Obama fanfic in their spare time, I really didn't think that these fanfics were set in Regency England, or that Obama-as-Mr. Darcy would be a leitmotif. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised; the only question is how long it will be before some journalistic genius decides that Obama is really Romeo, and that the Montague-Capulet feud symbolizes our red state-blue state divide.

The Church and Responsible Parenthood

I really, really, really hate to have to disagree with Danielle Bean on the subject that arose yesterday about prudence and parenthood. But I have to.

I don't want to go through her post point by point, but there's one thing she wrote that I must address specifically:

It is not selfish for a poor mother of many to remain open to life. It’s heroic.

A woman who places her trust in God and accepts new life under less than ideal circumstances is being as generous to God, to her family, and to her community as she possibly can be.

Someone else, who has never had to decide between paying for a baby’s prescription and buying food for her family, might not understand this kind of humble heroism.

But Mary does. (Emphases added, EM).

I have bolded the one phrase above because it is here that my main area of disagreement arises. It cannot be said too many times that the prudent use of NFP to postpone the birth of the family's next child, especially in dire financial circumstances or serious medical needs, is most emphatically a way of remaining open to life.

It is simply presumed far too often that using NFP in accordance with God's will and in a deep and humble spirit of following all of the Church's many teachings on the subject of responsible parenthood is somehow not being "open to life." It is also presumed that continuing to add babies into one's family is always the act of humble, generous, selfless parental love, and that choosing not to add to one's family using the morally acceptable means the Church allows and even encourages some of the time is at its core an act of failure to trust God to provide for one no matter what one's circumstances may be.

But this is not true.

The Church does teach about parenthood and responsibility. The phrase "responsible parenthood" is not even remotely the same as the secular understanding of "Planned Parenthood" and all that that evil organization represents. The Church in her wisdom and love understands that parenthood carries with it very serious obligations, and that parents must be ready to accept those obligations on behalf of each and every one of their children.

In fact, Catholic writer William May in his book Contraception, Abstinence, and Responsible Parenthood writes the following:

The debate is "not" over the need to regulate the conception and birth of children. Parties to both sides of the debate recognize that there can be valid, indeed morally obligating reasons, for avoiding a pregnancy. It could be irresponsible for a married couple to allow, through their own free choice, a child to be conceived, not because the conception of a child is an evil--far from it--but because the parents could not, for various reasons, give this child the care and love it needs and to which it has a right, or because the pregnancy might be a serious threat to the life of the mother.

Now, what are the primary obligations parents have toward their children? What are those things which parents owe their children, and which they must provide, or be prepared to provide?

The answer is pretty simple: food, clothing, shelter, and education.

By food, of course, is simply meant adequate nutrition. Parents do not have the obligation to provide fancy gourmet meals or expensive ingredients. They do, however have the obligation to meet their growing children's nutritional requirements. If their children are underfed, miss meals on a regular basis due to an inability to afford food, or are otherwise suffering from lack of nutrition, the parents are not meeting this obligation. Please note: I'm not discussing the morality of the situation, here. War, famine, catastrophic crises and so forth may temporarily or even for a prolonged period deprive people of food, and parents do not carry any blame when circumstances beyond their control do not allow them to feed each of their children properly. But the important phrase there is "beyond their control."

Again, in terms of clothing, we are speaking of the basics. No closets crammed with designer togs are required, but a sufficient level of clean and modest garments, even used ones, are necessary. Mother Teresa's nuns each have two saris, after all--one to wear and one to wash. Parents should do at least this much for each child in their homes. The inability to provide each child with sufficient clothing, then, would also be a failure of parental obligation (again, simply objectively, not in the sense of making a moral judgment).

Shelter doesn't mean a McMansion in the best zip code in town--it doesn't even mean home ownership. Basic requirements would be for a roof over the heads of the family and protection from the elements. Renting is fine, though one shouldn't lie to a landlord about the number of people who will be living in the apartment or dwelling as a means of getting cheaper rent, say, in an effort to house a family of eight in a one-bedroom loft. Most of the regulations in that regard are in place for safety concerns, not to keep large families from renting tiny apartments. If one cannot afford to put a roof over the heads of one's children, or must sleep in a car, or must, as a homeschooling family I once met did, go from hotel to hotel and sneak out into the night without ever paying the bills, then one is not meeting one's obligation to provide shelter for one's children (and no, the hotel does not owe you lodging in exchange for your "heroic" witness as part of the culture of life).

Now, on the subject of education we get into something different from the secular world's understanding of the phrase: we are to educate our children in the faith, and ensure their correct spiritual and moral development as Catholics and as future citizens of Heaven. We want them to get to Heaven, and that's the primary focus of our education of them. So the Church certainly isn't saying that all parents must provide twelve years of institutional schooling with another four, six, eight, etc. after that. We can meet our obligation to educate our children with the aid of public schools, parochial schools, or at home; if we homeschool there's no requirement to use one specific method or even to buy our materials, if we can educate sufficiently with what is available in the public library and elsewhere for free.

But one of the ways we educate our children is by our example to them. Families large and small do this; it's not the sole province of large families to lead by example. And families, whether large, small, or in between, whether rich, poor, or middling, teach their children all sorts of values by the way in which they meet the other three obligations listed above.

The rich, of course, have to guard against their children thinking that money is the solution to everything and that mom and dad owe them every luxury available. But the poor have a responsibility here, too, to avoid bringing their children up to believe that it is the obligation of society at large to be the ordinary means by which the family may fulfill their primary obligations to their children.

Some have pointed out that we all pay taxes and we all reap the various benefits. To a certain extent this is true, and in a just society it will always be important for some things to be a shared responsibility. Roads, schools, libraries, and the like are things everyone can use; in addition, people qualify for aid at various times simply because of their age (e.g. Social Security) or their veteran status (e.g., the VA loan program).

But the type of aid which helps families meet their obligations to their children is intended to be short-term, temporary, "safety-net" aid, which people may draw from in cases of need, but which does not replace the underlying duty of parents to provide for their children's basic needs as outlined above. When it is viewed instead as a permanent addition to the family's means of support, I believe that it may have deleterious consequences that are not only financial but spiritual as well. That is probably a topic for another time; but it's not really true that just because some types of "aid" are available to all, that it is necessarily the best or most prudent thing to come to rely permanently on aid which is specifically designed for the economically disadvantaged.

As I wrote yesterday, the decision about whether and when to accept government aid, in conjunction with the decision whether and when to postpone adding to one's family, is going to be an extremely personal one for each family. I can't tell any individual family what to do in this regard; the only proper person to turn to for advice on this sort of thing is a good spiritual director.

However, I think the questions that might be helpful to those struggling in prudence to make the best decisions for their family on the subject might be as follows:

1. Are we already, even without adding to our family, failing on occasion or in a serious way to meet the basic primary obligations toward the children we already have?
2. Will the addition of another child right now directly cause us to fail to meet the basic primary obligations toward the children we already have?
3. Are we already relying on one or more government aid programs specifically designed for the economically disadvantaged (e.g., not public schools/public libraries/etc.) in order to meet any of the basic primary obligations toward the children we already have?
4. Will we have to rely for an extended period of time on a program as described above in order to meet our family's basic needs should we add to our family right now?
5. (And this is possibly the most serious:) If we are already relying on the type of government aid described, will changes to our eligibility seriously impact our ability to provide for our children's basic needs even before we add to our family?

I think "5" is the most serious of these questions, because people tend to forget that these programs and their funding change all the time. Too many people "signing up," for instance, can drain the money and cause the income threshold to be raised, so relying on these programs as if they'll always be available may not be the most prudent thing.

To sum up: being "open to life" and practicing "responsible parenthood" are not mutually exclusive goals. While each family will have to make specific prudential decisions that are properly speaking their own business to decide, it is not the case that parents may indiscriminately add to their families children for whom they can't provide those things which parents are morally obligated to provide for their children, just as parents may not indiscriminately postpone having children in the absence of just reasons or with a contraceptive mindset. The acceptance of government aid during times of hardship, for temporary reasons, or because of unforeseen economic catastrophes is not imprudent, but coming to rely on some types of government aid permanently or for extremely prolonged periods may sometimes be less than prudent. We are not to judge families whose circumstances are different from ours, but we should take care not to brush aside prudential concerns about parental responsibility as if these very serious obligations which the Church insists we have are somehow unimportant.

Matters of Life and Death

Jose Medellin is scheduled to be executed tonight.

If you don't know about him, you can read this article--but I'll warn you: the details of his and several other gang members' vicious and deadly attack on two innocent girls who happened to walk past the wrong place at the wrong time is not for the weak of stomach. Medellin admits to his role in the crimes, the savage gang-rape and murders of two very young women.

I know that as Catholics we have to consider seriously the words of the late Pope John Paul II on the matter of the death penalty. It is, indeed, often indiscriminately and unjustly applied; innocent people have been put to death when governments allow too widespread a use of it, and there is always the danger that societies which take pride in their use of the death penalty will forget that God is the author of life, and the proper authority in the matter of death, as well.

When we look at the details of this case, though, it's easy to make the argument that this ought to be one of the exceptions, one of the rare circumstances even JPII believed existed which would make the death penalty a correct punishment on some occasions. There is no question of Medellin's guilt. There is no question that he and the others with him inflicted the most terrible agonies on their young victims, for no reason at all: a brutal, senseless, damnable crime.

It's easy to make the case that Medellin should be executed, and much harder to argue that he should not be. I'm not going to argue either way, just now, except to say that although I have sympathy with both points of view I'm more sympathetic at this juncture with those who think the death penalty is the appropriate response to a crime of this magnitude.

But I have to admit that one of the reasons I think so is because we don't make life in prison all that difficult for prisoners. A sentence of life in prison may seem, and may even be, horrible enough--but when prisons boast all the latest amenities, when prisoners in America live better than many honest people in third-world countries, when prisoners are provided with luxuries and expected to provide little in return, then putting someone like Medellin in prison for life--even without the possibility of parole--seems like a life of comfort and goodness compared to the horrible deaths to which he and his gang condemned those two innocent girls.

If Catholics are going to take the stance that the death penalty is almost never justified, if our moral theology is increasingly ill-at-ease with leaving this power in the hands of governments (even as we admit that the Church has always seen this power as properly belonging only to governments, and never to individuals), then we have to step up to the plate and start insisting that our most-secure prisons for our worst offenders, the prisons which really are intended to hold those who will never again be permitted to walk freely among free men and women, should be a reflection of the notion of punishment. This does not mean that prisoners should be stripped of the dignity proper to all men and women, of course. But it does mean that a life sentence should really be that, that some productive work should be expected of those incarcerated, and that there should be few if any luxuries permitted to people like Medellin whose actions are a so great a stain on society.

As it is now, a "life sentence" for most prisoners means eventual release, and not such a bad life in the meantime. If we're going to end the death penalty in America, we need to make sure that the sentence of "life in prison without possibility of parole" really means that, and that this sentence will be almost as feared and hated by those in danger of receiving it as the death penalty is now. And we have a long way to go, to get to that point.

Prudence and Parenthood

Danielle Bean is a brave woman. Every Tuesday she puts an open thread on her blog for commenters to use as they wish. Subjects from potty-training to NFP to attachment parenting to budgets to homeschooling issues to serious marital concerns have been raised over there, and the conversations can get a bit dizzying.

Today, a matter came up which has come up before, and though it looks like the subject is dying down as a topic of conversation, I wanted to use the opportunity to address it. The question has to do with responsible parenthood, and particularly asks is it prudent to continue adding to one's family if one is already accepting government assistance to care for one's existing family?

There is, as you might imagine, a wide divergence of opinion on the subject among Catholic families. Some people believe that the Church's teaching on responsible parenthood means that while one may certainly accept government aid in cases of dire need or in some particular circumstances, relying on such programs as free children's or maternal health insurance, WIC nutrition programs, and the like as part of one's ordinary means of support for one's family is not the action of responsible parents. Others believe that the Church has a "preferential option" in favor of continued procreation and the creation of large Catholic families, and that these families are therefore entitled to the support of the wider community, including the support of taxpayer dollars to aid in the financial support and raising of the children.

The first group of people are likely to point out that government programs aren't really "free." We all must pay higher and higher taxes in order to fill the coffers out of which these programs are funded; and while the government certainly wastes a lot of money on things much less necessary than infant nutrition or health insurance programs, there's no denying that these programs are costly, and that as the costs associated with them continue to rise so will the level of taxation on the rest of us. Instead of being a "safety net" to protect vulnerable children while their parents endure a period of hardship, seeking self-sufficiency as a goal, these programs begin to become an ordinary means of support for more and more people, forcing those families who do believe they are called to be responsible for meeting the immediate needs of their own children to bear the increased costs and be pushed closer and closer to needing this "safety net" themselves, just to make ends meet. Of course, the more people who need the program, the more it will cost--and a vicious cycle of confiscatory taxation and growing reliance on government aid from an ever wider sector of the public will be the result.

But the second group of people will argue that we're already living in a society structured in favor of the two-income, two child family, and that large single-income Catholic families are already so far behind the economic curve that there's no way for them to exist at all if government-funded programs don't make up the family income shortfall. We don't, after all, believe that only the wealthy should have large families, do we? And we certainly don't think that large Catholic families should put their kids in daycare and public schools so both mom and dad can work in a fruitless attempt to make ends meet. So what's wrong with accepting the help that's available? Granted, our ancestors were highly unlikely, even during the Depression, to seek government handouts as a way of life--they had more pride than that. But was it a false pride? And isn't it true that things are much, much harder for a traditional family today than they were even thirty years ago, as the two-income family has risen to ascendancy and made having even four or five children virtually impossible for the average middle-class family on one income?

These are complicated questions. I don't pretend to have all the answers, either. My family has never been in a position where we've needed government aid, but that doesn't mean it could never happen. Like many Americans, we live paycheck to paycheck, and save what we can, but we don't kid ourselves that we'd be able to go for very long if Mr. M. didn't have a job all of a sudden--a fact of life in our so-called 'global' economy.

Like so many questions relating to responsible parenthood, NFP, and Catholic family life, though, I think this is a question that can only be answered by each individual married couple, who may seek recourse from a good spiritual adviser if necessary. The extremes on either end, of a Catholic family on the one hand being determined to have college funds for each child, and of a Catholic family on the other hand living in government housing and accepting all sorts of welfare in order to add to their already-numerous family, tend to be more uncharitable caricatures than actual reality. Most of us fall somewhere in the middle, and whether we're called by prudence to refrain from adding to our families for a time in order to improve basic financial stability, or by prudence to consider accepting aid in some area to meet our families' needs, is going to depend so much on individual circumstance and so little on carved-in-stone ideas about what Catholic families ought or ought not to do that offering general principles for consideration becomes an extremely tricky business.

God alone knows our hearts, and He alone knows the specific way in which He is calling our families to be. Prudence in parenthood does demand that we carefully consider these sorts of things as they pertain to us; but charity toward others demands that we not seek to judge them for decisions they may make which are different from our own.

They Were Just Hiding

In the early days of his popular Dilbert comic strip, Scott Adams introduced some side characters: a family of dinosaurs, living in Dilbert's house. One of them explained that dinosaurs hadn't actually been extinct--they were only hiding.

I thought of that when I saw this article this morning. Excerpt:

An estimated 125,000 Western lowland gorillas are living in a swamp in equatorial Africa, researchers reported Tuesday, double the number of the endangered primates thought to survive worldwide.

"It's pretty astonishing," Hugo Rainey, one of the researchers who conducted the survey for the U.S.-based Wildlife Conservation Society, told CNN Tuesday.

The last census on the species, carried out during the 1980s, estimated that there were only 100,000 of the gorillas left worldwide. Since then, the researchers estimated, the numbers had been cut in half.

So researchers have been estimating that there were only about 50,000 of these gorillas left in the world--and there are probably more than twice as many in this particular swamp alone.

We approach the natural world with a lot of pride. We think, we moderns, that we've got it all figured out, or nearly all. We know the average rainfall of the Amazon basin, the life cycle of the monarch butterfly, the migratory patterns of Canada Geese, the preferred diet of the kinkaju, and the mating habits of any number of creatures, which we can read about or watch on those nature shows or otherwise document and record. We talk about ecology and environmental issues as if they are static and predictable instead of complex and highly iterative, and we rely on our tools and toys as if Nature no longer had any power over us at all.

But sometimes, Nature has a way of reminding us just Who is her author and master. Whether it's the somber reminder that death can sweep down the face of an icy and rarely-conquered peak without warning or the more joyful surprise that there are way more Western lowland gorillas than anybody thought there were, Nature points back to God to remind us to cultivate humility and remember that we are not the masters of the material universe--we have never been, and we never will be.

So when we take as Gospel truth the various dire predictions of science as to our ultimate earthly doom and how we should act at once to take control of the situation, it would be as well for us if we remembered that any control we seem to have over this planet and its resources is completely illusory. There is nothing wrong, and much that is commendable, about practicing responsible stewardship, about taking common-sense methods to reduce our consumerist impulses and live with less recourse to resources that can't be renewed. But when climate-change alarmists follow the path of so many before and start to claim that the only thing that will save the planet is for us to reduce the number of people they are not only not respecting God and Nature, but seeking to deny Him and control it.

The $64,000 Question

What would you do if you were the principal of a high school that had been rated as "academically unacceptable" for the 2007 school year?

One principal in Fort Worth decided to schedule an academic planning retreat for the staff. At the famous--and expensive--Gaylord Texan Resort and Convention Center. To the tune of $64,000 of federal education grant money.

Not to worry, though:

South Hills’ Principal Nancy Weisskopf said her campus followed grant guidelines in planning the retreat. She said the retreat will help build a strong academic program at the school, which the state rated "academically unacceptable" in 2007.

The school has also struggled to meet No Child Left Behind standards.

"Although Gaylord conjures up some feelings for some, when you look at it from a cost perspective, we are right within our guidelines," Weisskopf said.

Weisskopf said she hopes the community sees that the intention is to create a setting in which South Hills teachers can dig into solutions.

"I hope they understand that for schools to be successful, they need the time to plan," she said. "The whole point of this is to improve."

Isn't it a relief to know that federal guidelines were followed? I mean, we wouldn't want anyone spending money foolishly, now would we?

Let's face it: the problems with public education are legion, and they've proved resistant to such efforts as spending money carefully, spending money wildly, and spending money rampantly. So now we're thinking out of the box, insisting that educators spend money extravagantly and tangentially, in the hopes that finally money will be able in some miraculous way to solve the woes of institutional public schooling.

Of course, doing all these things ignores the fact that schools are a reflection of our communities, and as our communities become increasingly violent, sexualized, isolated, ill-mannered, unappreciative of education except in the most utilitarian way, and steeped in the dysfunctional nuclear breakdown of the nuclear family, it's hard to imagine that a little more money at a luxury resort will have any effect at all.

Why do educators continue to think that cash will solve what has become a societal problem? I think that's the $64,000 question.

Completely Missing the Point

From "The Politico" comes this example of how to miss a point so completely that people start to wonder about your grasp of reality:

If Barack Obama gave new meaning to the term “political celebrity,” then John McCain helped define it.

He emerged as the most popular Republican in Hollywood following his 2000 presidential primary defeat, winning more screen time than the rest of Congress combined. McCain made cameos in “Wedding Crashers” and “24,” saw his memoir turned into a popular biopic on A&E, and appeared more than 30 times on late night comedy shows.

So this week, when McCain cast Obama’s celebrity as a disqualifier, it seemed like a curious turn.

Just one day before McCain released an advertisement interspersing pictures of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears with footage of Obama addressing 200,000 people in Berlin, actor Jon Voight told Variety that McCain had “many great, intelligent, talented Academy-winning actors standing by, awaiting a major press conference to show their support.”

“[The ad] is a bit ironic given that McCain has been the most pop-culture savvy Republican candidate in quite some time,” said Ted Johnson, managing editor of Variety and editor of the blog Wilshire and Washington, which monitors the intersection of celebrity and politics.

I can't stop laughing.

Seriously, now. It may be true that McCain's mug has been on camera quite a bit, and that for a senator he's been rather comfortable on late-night TV. But how on earth could anybody miss the point so completely?

McCain's "celebrity" status, if you can call it that, came about because he spent years building up a reputation in Washington. Whether you think that reputation is deserved or not, and whether you think McCain's so-called level of fame is directly proportional to his career-long willingness to cross the aisle (or betray his colleagues, however you look at it) the fact of the matter is that he's been famous for doing things, not just for showing up and smiling for the cameras.

What is Obama famous for?

Anybody? Don't all raise your hands at once.

It's hard to imagine a bigger do-nothing candidate than Barack Obama. He has been a lawyer and community organizer, a professor, Illinois state senator, and is currently a less-than-one-term junior United States Senator representing Illinois. He has written a couple of autobiographies. He supported infanticide for babies who survived their mothers' attempts to abort them in Illinois, and takes a rather far left line in most of his political opinions.

If a major candidate chose a running mate with Obama's slight qualifications and unimpressive experience, there would be a media outcry: how could such a person be qualified to be a heartbeat away from the highest office in the land? But instead of even raising that question about a candidate for that highest office, the media fawns all over Obama, to the extent that Carrie Budoff Brown, a media professional, could write what is quite possibly the blondest excuse for an "I know you are, but what am I?" piece of journalistic juvenalia ever to grace the virtual pages of the Internet--and she's not even a blond.

Next thing you know, the media will be chiding McCain for pointing out the blatant messianism and unadulterated hubris of much of Obama's campaign by digging up old articles wherein McCain talks about his experiences as a POW, and attempting to compare Obama's “I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions,” to some decades-old quote from McCain about his faith in God, family, and country getting him through the POW years. Any attempt to point out that there's a bit of a difference will be brushed aside by our star-struck media, whose members continue to prove with every stroke of the virtual pen just how embarrassing their industry-wide crush on Barack the Superstar really is.

Buckles and Bows

Once upon a time, in a diocese far, far away, there lived a species of creature known as the Liturgical Nitpicker Catholic (LNC). The LNC was a sour faced, disgruntled person; he (though sometimes he was a she) lived for the joy of catching mistakes at Mass, and had a keen eye and powerful observation skills which aided his quest of perpetual fussiness about all things liturgical. Were the buckles on Father's shoes a shade too big? Did one of the requisite number of candles on the altar go out before the end of Mass, suffering from an untrimmed wick or a careless altar boy's lighting efforts? Did Father fail to bow deeply enough at each of the proper moments, or was there a shade of unseemly irreverent haste in Father's proclamation of the Last Gospel? Did Father fail to rein in a runaway choir, or was his Latin pronunciation painful to the ear?

The LNC would purse his lips at each transgression and make a mental note of it. Though he would die rather than admit it, he lived for the joy of collecting these errors of omission or commission and taking them to the pastor, or writing long and heavily detailed letters to the bishop on occasion if the pastor was the one at fault.

Does this seem like a fairy tale, like a mythical made-up creature with no basis in reality? I'm told that it isn't, that this person did indeed, and still does, exist. In fact, if he didn't exist we'd have a lot easier time of it when serious reasons for legitimate liturgical concerns arose; it's because of the LNC that another species of Catholic, the Legitimate Concern Raiser (LCR) can't get anywhere much of the time.

Because unlike the LNC, the LCR doesn't like to complain about things that go on at Mass. He (and again, he can be a she) doesn't go out of his way to notice minor mistakes, and is charitable about Father's use of "Eucharistic celebration" instead of "Mass" on occasion, or other similar things. He's always quite willing to believe that an error occurs either by mistake, or possibly by some small ignorance on the part of the celebrant or those assisting; he never likes to presume guilt, and will only approach the pastor or some other authority when no other option exists. He wrestles with his conscience on even big liturgical transgressions, wondering if others have already let the pastor know and wondering whether any good will be done by talking about the matter. Perhaps it won't be repeated, he thinks hopefully.

But then it is repeated, and the LCR is in a bind. Should he go to the pastor, or not? Worse, if it is the pastor who is responsible for what is rapidly becoming outright liturgical abuse, ought he write to the bishop, or not?

Catholic mothers understand the dilemma, because nearly all of us have been in the place of the pastor or the bishop. The situation unfolds like this:

Mother is seated at a desk, paying household bills or planning lessons. The children are playing in another room, when Mary Margaret Therese Grace (called "Dolly" for short) comes skipping in.

"Mother," she announces with a toss of her six-year-old head, "Origen isn't sharing his blocks. He won't let Innocent have any of them."

"Does Innocent want them, dear?"

"No, not yet, but he might, and Origen says he's making a really big tower. He's being selfish."

"Does anyone else want the blocks right now?"

"No, but..."

"Dolly, go play."

A few minutes later Dolly returns again. "Mother, Anne Elizabeth said 'brat.' I heard her, and..."

"Was she calling someone a brat, dear?"

"Well, no, but..."

"Then why did she say it?"

"She said she didn't like 'Bratz' dolls, but we're not supposed to say 'brat,' so I thought..."

"I don't like 'Bratz' dolls either. It's okay to say that. Now go play."

Dolly stomps off, frowning.

Moments later, Alexandra Sarah Anastasia, called "Sisi," enters the room. "Mom," she begins, "Innocent and Ambrose are fighting, and..."

Mother lays down her pen and takes a deep breath. "Sisi," she says, "I'm trying to get some work done. You children can get along with each other for five minutes while I finish! Now go play--or you're all going to get Quiet Time!"

Five minutes later, Mother will be giving her children one of their least favorite lectures: Why You Should Always Tell Mother When Someone's Nose Is Bleeding, and Why Daddy's Electric Toothbrush Won't Remove Blood From Grandmother's Heirloom Rug. Sisi will be grumpy--she tried to tell, but Mother wouldn't listen.

When we have a serious reason to contact a pastor or bishop about a truly egregious sort of liturgical abuse, we have to remember that they're much more used to encountering the LNC or "Dolly" sort of complainer. We have to be prepared to explain why this particular abuse is much more serious than the average failure to "Say the Black, Do the Red." We have to be calm, non-accusatory, and show how much in our words and demeanor we regret even having to mention it. Nevertheless, we should persevere, when the occasion really warrants it; the good pastors and good bishops do want to know about nosebleed-level abuses, and if the less good ones won't take action, we will have done all we can, and can turn to prayer for liturgical reverence with clear consciences.

A Catalog of Grievances

A quiet Saturday mainly at home--unusual for our family. But with temperatures rising to near 105 this afternoon, who wants to go out, anyway?

So we're doing a few chores, or digging out from underneath mountains of clutter, whichever you prefer. The clutter/organization battle is an ongoing one, but there are some things that make it easier.

For instance, as my dear Mr. M. began shredding the identifying information from far too many catalogs mailed to our home as a prelude to disposing of them (a good precaution in the days of pre-approved credit and identity theft), I got on line and started letting various stores know that we didn't really need them to send us large full-color glossy-printed trashcan fillers. I was doing it the hard way, too, using each company's contact information, until I remembered that a while ago somebody out here had mentioned a website called Catalog Choice.

Unlike some similar services, Catalog Choice doesn't charge a fee to let the catalog companies you contact know that you don't want their mailings. They don't eliminate other bulk mail, and you have to select the catalog by name and decline each one individually, but that still takes a lot less time than finding customer service contacts at each company and sending them a message requesting that they remove you from their catalog mailing lists. All in all, it seems like an excellent way to decrease the clutter, and help save some energy costs at the same time.

According to Catalog Choice's site, nineteen billion catalogs are mailed to American customers every year. I can easily believe that, since at any given time it seems like at least five hundred million of them have accumulated in my living room, but I know I'm probably overestimating a little. In any case, the real "kicker" for me in the website's environmental facts statistics is the amount of energy used to produce all these sleek mailings: enough to power 1.2 million homes per year. To put that statistic into perspective, it's about the same energy savings as you'd get if every home in America replaced an incandescent bulb with a CFL--but without the tricky mercury disposal problem afterward, or the flicker-migraines in the meantime.

Which illustrates a little theory I have about energy use: the individual American consumer can indeed take a conservation-minded approach to energy, but it won't have near the effect that large corporations could have if they decided to quit being such energy hogs.

According to one statistic I read, those 19 billion catalogs only produce about 7% of a company's actual sales. Even if that's not completely accurate, consider for a moment: are companies really happy with the notion of spending huge sums of money, huge amounts of energy, using over fifty million trees a year, and spending an incredible sum on the mailing, all for that approximately seven percent of sales?

So before Congress demands that we give up safe, clean incandescent bulbs, or mandates recycling of household goods, or otherwise intrudes into the lives of private citizens to maximize our energy efficiency, we ought to make sure that the giant corporations whose products and services require so much energy to produce, store, and sell are being held accountable for the energy they waste--because catalog production is only the tip of the iceberg.

In the meantime, I'm getting off as many catalog mailing lists as I can. Maybe if enough people do the same, we won't actually be forced to buy CFLs instead of incandescents--though I admit that's a long shot.

More of This, Please

Bravo.

Now, some would say this is just partisan politics as usual, etc. But I can't fault the Republicans, here, for wanting a vote on the offshore drilling matter. Whether I support or oppose offshore drilling is irrelevant--the point is that in a democratic government there shouldn't be a stony refusal by one side even to schedule a vote on a matter that some think will help with the current energy situation.

Oppose it, fairly. Vote against it, fairly. Vote for it and support it, fairly, too.

But the practice in Congress of secret back-room deals and handshakes and initiatives to keep votes like these even from being scheduled during an election campaign season is one of the worst things about Congress, and it doesn't matter whether it's Democrats or Republicans or both doing it.

So let's have that vote on offshore drilling, Pelosi. Otherwise all of Congress might as well be playing games in the dark.

Caveat Bloggers?

Both CMR and The Curt Jester are posting some warnings: apparently, people are using Google's "Flag Blog" button to shut down both Catholic and anti-Obama blogs at random, though whether this is somehow corporate censorship or just a bunch of assorted jerks taking advantage of Google's mechanism for reporting objectionable content remains to be seen.

I'm a bit surprised that this blog hasn't been hit, since I write quite a bit about Obama, and not in a flattering way. But I can guarantee that if I do get locked out, I'll probably move this blog to a censorship-free zone, as, I suspect, will many of those who are targeted in this way.

Blogger, and Google, ought to be proactive on this if they're not condoning it. They need to make it just a little bit harder for someone to freeze a blog--a single unverified report of possibly objectionable content shouldn't be enough automatically to remove an author's access to his/her writing. And if they don't want bloggers abandoning their service in droves in favor of Wordpress, Typepad, Vox, or any of the other available blog-hosting platforms out there, they need to get on this, pronto.

UPDATE: Please see this update at CMR.  Apparently, this is a widespread problem that Blogger is working to resolve.

Our Leaders, Ourselves

I'm sure you've already seen this WSJ piece, but it's worth taking a closer look at it, if only for the howlers:

Speaking to donors at a San Diego fund-raiser last month, Barack Obama reassured the crowd that he wouldn't give in to Republican tactics to throw his candidacy off track.

"Listen, I'm skinny but I'm tough," Sen. Obama said.

But in a nation in which 66% of the voting-age population is overweight and 32% is obese, could Sen. Obama's skinniness be a liability? Despite his visits to waffle houses, ice-cream parlors and greasy-spoon diners around the country, his slim physique just might have some Americans wondering whether he is truly like them. [...]

While most voters don't base their decision on physical appearance alone, a candidate's height, weight and overall look can play a big role in what Americans perceive as "presidential," says Thomas "Mack" McLarty, former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton.

Throw in the calories involved in a modern-day presidential campaign -- often compared to a beauty pageant and a competitive eating contest rolled into one -- and presidential candidates have an added challenge. [...]

Food faux pas have plagued presidential candidates in the past. On a 1976 visit to Texas, Gerald Ford bit into a tamale with the corn husk still on. He lost the election to Jimmy Carter. In 2003, Mass. Sen. John Kerry was labeled effete when he ordered a Philly cheesesteak with Swiss instead of the usual Cheez Whiz topping.

Sen. Obama's chief message strategist Robert Gibbs served as Sen. Kerry's press secretary during the cheesesteak debacle. A few days later at the Iowa State Fair, famous for its deep-fried Twinkies and beer booths, Mr. Gibbs noticed Sen. Kerry buying a $4 strawberry smoothie. He made a frantic call to campaign staffers: "Somebody get a f-ing corn dog in his hand -- now!"

Sen. Obama drew cringes on a campaign stop in Adel, Iowa, in July 2007, when he asked a crowd of farmers: "Anybody gone into a Whole Foods lately and seen what they charge for arugula?" The upscale supermarket specializing in organic food doesn't have a single store in Iowa.

Oh, boy.

There's so much to say here about food and weight and perceptions and elitism, about snobby gourmets and cliches and the near-pathological focus our nation has started to have on these issues.

But what I really notice, what I can't help but notice, is how unreal the presidency has become.

Maybe it started with little Grace Bedell, and her letter suggesting Mr. Lincoln really ought to grow some whiskers to disguise the thinness of his face. Maybe it started before that, or maybe it's been part of our national character all along, to want our highest office filled by someone who doesn't just lead, but who looks like a leader: strong jaw, firm handshake, clear gaze, trim--but not too trim--waistline, and all. Add to that, now, an apparent eagerness to sample the indigenous cuisine of every town and county in the land, even when that town or county is famous for its deep-fried candy bars, and you have a recipe for disaster--or at least, for presidential coronaries in later years.

Because, sooner or later, the demands end up competing with each other. Sooner or later we've created an impossible vision of the perfect leader, and everyone on the planet will come up short, because everyone on the planet is an actual human (well, maybe not Dennis Kucinich).

We want a president who has the easy social charm and grace of an A-list Hollywood actor, the deep sensitivity and sincerity of a trusted religious leader, the foreign policy savvy of a decorated military general, the domestic policy grasp of a Wall Street tycoon, and the tact and quiet reserve of an elderly society matron. And instead, too often, we get candidates with the easy social charm and grace of a decorated military general, the deep sensitivity and sincerity of a Wall Street tycoon, the foreign policy savvy of an elderly society matron, the domestic policy grasp of a trusted religious leader, and the tact and quiet reserve of an A-list Hollywood actor, especially one who has been drinking and who thinks the camera is off.

And the fault, dear Brutus, is not in our political stars. And it's certainly not lurking in the leaves of the overpriced arugula.

It's August First...

...do you know where your homeschooling materials are?

(Cue the dramatic prairie dog.)

I finally got around to ordering my books, between July 15 and July 20th. Homeschooling curricula providers hate people like me, who wait until their busiest season before placing relatively large and complicated book orders, and then pace by the door until the books start arriving. They tell you to order early, they advise you to order early, they beg you to order early--and you don't. Or maybe you do, but I don't, and I know I'm not alone, or this wouldn't be their busiest season.

Part of the problem is that when summer first begins, the last thing I want to think about is the next school year; but as summer rolls on, baking the residents of the great state of Texas in hundred-degree-plus heat, my motivation level stays pretty near rock-bottom. School? Decisions? Book orders? Mmmhmmm, sure, I'll do it, soon. Any minute now. Absolutely.

And then one day I look at the calendar, and it's the middle of July. True, that time spent guest-hosting at Crunchy Cons in late June did make that particular week or so a bad time to order books, but I have no excuse for the other weeks of June or the first two of July (and, really, I don't have an excuse for the guest-hosting week, either, not when The Crunchmeister Himself can work full-time at the Dallas Morning News, read tons of bristlingly intelligent books, announce that he's too busy for anything more than light posting and then toss off nine, count 'em, nine posts in a single afternoon, and still manage to attend to domestic chores). If I put up nine posts on my best day there it's one more than I remember, so clearly the only reason I didn't also manage to order a full year's worth of interesting and challenging books and supplies that week is that I was shirking.

To which I plead guilty.

The truth is that when the figurative bell rings on the last day of homeschooling for three whole months, I'm worse than the kids. My school shelves are still waiting to be cleared of last year's used workbooks, I haven't gone back through and made sure I've recorded all of last year's grades, and even though books have begun to arrive (despite my late orders, which really doesn't motivate me to order early for next year since things started showing up almost as fast as Wile E. Coyote's many ACME deliveries) I'm still puzzling over things I should have settled a long time ago.

Now, you might wonder why I mention all of this. Here's why: I really do love homeschooling.

That is, I love getting the privilege and the opportunity of teaching my three girls at home.

But I'm not a born teacher/type. I don't drool over fancy educational materials in pristine catalogs, I don't own a laminating machine (and don't know how to operate the ones you can use at stores--at least, I've been told that such machines exist), I don't skip happily (mentally speaking) while coming up with lesson plans to beat all lesson plans, I don't craft anything, I'm not innately organized or gifted with that special talent for making even dry, dull subjects seem infused with life and possibility, and there are aspects of doing this whole amazing whole darned thing that I don't really enjoy.

I'm telling you this for a reason. Too often, I see would-be homeschooling parents scared off by these sorts of things, by the notion that you have to be some kind of super-mom, super-teacher, super-super to teach your kids at home. I've heard parents say they'd love to, but...and the "but" is something trivial, something like "I don't enjoy fingerpaints" or "I wasn't ever any good at fifth grade math" or "I don't have a good enough memory to keep track of everything they're supposed to do."

Now, if you're someone who uses these excuses because you're not really interested in homeschooling and you're afraid the brightly enthusiastic homeschooling mom you're talking to at church or at a friend's house or wherever isn't really going to take "no" for an answer, fair enough. But if you're really afraid that, because you don't thrill with joy at the sound of a hole-punch or sigh over the prospect of decorating your living room in Early Cursive, you're not cut out for this, rest assured. Homeschooling moms come in all varieties. Some of us use Google Earth but never bought a globe; some of us shriek with delight at the prospect of buying a used and temperamental overhead projector on eBay but others would wonder where in heaven's name such a thing would be put in an already-crowded school room; some of us have a grudging fondness for a new pack of notebook paper or a brand-new college ruled spiral notebook, but have never placed posters illustrating the anatomy of a frog or listing helpful Latin verb conjugations in our dining rooms.

And some of us wait until August to order our books each year. Or almost.