The Nobel Peace Prize has jumped the shark. So a bureaucrat who tried to play politics with our last election and who has been lenient in his approach in dealing with the Iranian muclear program is suppose to have contributed to peace?
Category:
Punditry
A number of readers have asked whether I will be responding to Garry Wills’ long article in the New York Review of Books (October 6) claiming that a few friends and I are manipulating the Vatican and the White House to create what he calls government by “the fringes.” When the pope and the president of the United States are the fringes, one might well wonder where the center is. Mr. Wills’ answer, of course, is that the center is Garry Wills, and, he would have us believe, the great majority of the American people who agree with him. I do not intend to make an extensive response to his strange article (Where would one begin?),… [Fr Neuhaus]
That is just what I though when I unfortunately read through Will’s article? Not only where would you start, but a good general principle is "Life is too short to fisk Gary Wills." Luckily his article now on the you have to pay for it first part section.
Mark Shea has been using the term "Thinking Catholic™" to describe progressive Catholics and here is an article proving his point.
Being a modern-day thinking Catholic, I am angered, confused and frustrated with the leadership of our Archdiocese.
Wow a thinking Catholic! I never tried that myself since I just blindly follow whatever the Church would have me do without mucking about with intellectual reasons for following them. A mind is a terrible thing to use. I prefer to keep mine pristine and in unused condition like a comic book or Star War figure encased in the original packaging. But not only is she a thinking Catholic but a modern-day one. Of course every Catholic in history was also a modern-day Catholic at the time.
Calling yourself a "thinking Catholic" reminds me of atheists who call themselves "freethinkers" or "brights." That you somehow make your arguments better by using an intelligence related noun . Hey maybe I can join in. I am a "Super-genius-bow-before-my-stunning-intellect Catholic."
Given the sexual abuse cover-ups both locally & nationally, the closure of several solvent churches against the wishes of their parishioners and the recent closure of an elementary school in Brighton one week before the start of school; I have to ask myself, “Is this the Catholic Church where Jesus would want to be?”
Where is due process? Where is the kindness and forgiveness extended to others? Why would the Archdiocese take this man of God, a hard-working staff and the parishioners and turn their church community upside down? What and who is next? [Source]
Of course this is the same Fr. Cuenin who openly dissents from Church teaching on contraception, supports divorce and remarriage, supports gay-rights initiatives, supports women’s ordination and testified in the State House against a bill to save traditional marriage, and is involved in the heterodox VOTF. The question is not why the diocese removed this "Man of God", but why it took so long. You could only hope that Fr. Cuenin’s supporters ar victims of Stockholm Syndrome instead of going to that parish just for his take on Christianity.
For a group that has repeatedly argued that the religious practice of judicial nominees has no bearing on their confirmation, conservatives suddenly have discovered a lot of interest in the evangelical outlook of Harriet Miers. [Captain Ed]
I was thinking along the same lines today as I heard the defense of Miers’ on the various talk shows. First we complain if someone like a Chuck Shumer asks a question aimed at someone’s religious beliefs and then defend the type of justice somebody would make based on their religious belief. So which is it? I found it to be generally good news to hear that Justice Robert’s wife was heavily involved in the pro-life movement and was also pleased to hear that Harriet Miers seems to be be a committed Evangelical, but this alone did not squelch any qualms. Justice O’Connor was suppose to be pro-life, but she found a way to have a judicial hallucination about abortion in the Constitution. This is why the issue of judicial temperament is so important. It is good if she believes that abortion is wrong, but does she believe that Roe v. Wade was decided wrongly based on Constitutional arguments? This is someone we won’t know till a case comes up that she votes on. The nomination hearings will more than likely shed no light on these questions since the hearings have become a form of judicial dodge ball. If we want a judge to vote against abortion because they are pro-life aren’t we advocating a form of judicial activism? A good judge (unlike a politician) should put the merits of the law forefront over personal beliefs. If a law truly is immoral and someone can not in uphold it then they should step down and not try to give it a judicial overwrite.
Of course when it came to Roe v. Wade there was no there there. That is why nominees are questioned so much about precedents. All of the legal meat is in the precedent and none of it is in the Constitution in this case. We always hear about the defense of precedents, but never hear the arguments made in the original precedent advanced. This is a tacit admission by defenders of Roe v. Wade that the arguments made were out of whole cloth. The whole question about Stare Decisis (Which as Feddie says is fo’ Suckas!) is a red (or should I say blue) herring thrown out by defenders of abortion. When the Supreme Court decisionLawrence and Garner v. Texas overturned the precedent set by Bowers v. Hardwick only 17 years earlier there was zero outcry by liberals bemoaning that a precedent had been overturned.
There has been talk of the two camps of the Coalition of the Chillin’ and the Coalition of the Illin’. I am part of the coalition of the annoyed but hopeful. I would love to buy in to the arguments of my favorite talk show host Hugh Hewitt in support of Miers. Hugh though is a pollyanna-conservative and has put a smiley face on many things over the last couple of years. He has ended up being right the majority of the time. Sen Spectre was not quite the disaster that was forecast as far as being the head of the judiciary committee, just as Hugh said. Sen Spectre made some noises and asked the typical questions but he did get the nominees through. Hugh is involved in a bit of grade inflation when he gave her pick a B+. Any pick that divides the Presidents base more than the opposition can not be a B+. Possibly a solid B, but why couldn’t we have the A list like Luttig and McConnell? The issues of the day are too important than just a solid pick. The nomination should have knocked one out of the park instead of just bunting. With 1.6 million people a year being killed by abortion do you go with someone who is capable and just might practice an originalist judicial philosophy or do you go with someone who has a proven track record in this regard? If the President was seeking a heart surgeon would he go with someone recognized as the best by their piers or take the recommendation by somebody that they think a doctor would make a good heart surgeon? Unfortunately there is a life and death seriousness when it comes to the Supreme Court. What the President doesn’t seem to understand is that he has taken a chance when no chance needed to be taken. Sure she might become a great justice, but when a pick for the Supreme Court is announced we shouldn’t have to invoke faith or hope.
Update: Syndey at Aggressive Conservative is thinking along the same lines (in fact used the same post title).
Oswald Sobrino says I Trust an Evangelical Nominee More Than a Catholic Nominee. Well he has got a point. When was the last time you heard an Evangelical politician say "I am personally opposed, but…"?
Fr. Rob Johansen is finally back with a good post on the Miers’ nomination and some of the Chicken Little attitude that has occured.
Jimmy Akin blogs about the "Don’t ask, don’t tell" aspect of nominations. What we need to need the most is precisely what we won’t find out. The judicial Catch-22.
Professor Bainbridge The Case Against Harriet Miers: The Baseball Analogy
One of the annoying things I have find in news stories on what the Pope has said is that they are spoon-feed to us in excerpted form. Especially the Wednesday Audiences which are normally fairly short and I would rather read the whole thing in context. Now eventually the Vatican does put the texts up but there normally slow in doing so. For example was the Holy Father’s last homily on 21 Aug 2005? I really wish that these articles would either publish the whole text or provide a link to them. That being said AsiaNews.it has done it right by first giving some background and then a synopses from Pope Benedict XVI’s opening Mass for the Synod and at the end reproduced the whole text. [Via Amy Welborn]
“The reading taken from the prophet Isaiah and today’s Gospel bring before our eyes one of the great images of Holy Scripture: the images of life. In the Holy Scripture, the bread represents all that man needs for his daily life. Water makes the earth fertile: it is the fundamental gift, which makes life possible. Wine, meanwhile, expresses the exquisiteness of creation and gives us the feast in which we go beyond everyday limits: wine “gladdens the heart”. Thus wine and together with it, the grapevine, have become images also of the gift of love, in which we can somehow experience and savour the Divine. And thus the reading of the prophet, which we have just heard, starts as a canticle of love: God created a vineyard – an image, this, of his love story with mankind, of his love for Israel, which He chose. The first concept of the readings of today is this: in man, created in his image, God instilled the ability of loving and hence the capacity of loving also Himself, his Creator. With the canticle of love of the prophet Isaiah, God wants to talk to the heart of his people – and also to each one of us. “I created you in my image and likeness,” he tells us. “I myself am love, and you are my image to the extent that the splendour of love shines in you, to the extent that you respond to me with love”. God is waiting for us. He wants to be loved by us: should not such an appeal touch our heart? Right in this hour in which we celebrate the Eucharist, in which we launch the Synod of the Eucharist, He comes to meet us, comes to meet me. Will he find a response? Or will the same happen to us as with the vine, of which God told Isaiah: “He expected it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes”? Isn’t our Christian life often more vinegar than wine? Self-pity, conflict, indifference?
With this, we have automatically reached the second fundamental reflection of today’s readings. They talk above all about the goodness of God’s creation and about the great extent of the determination with which He searches for and loves me. But then they talk also of the history which unfolded later – of the failure of man. God had planted choice grapevines and all the same, wild grapes grew. What does this wild grape consist of? The good grape which God expected – says the prophet – would have consisted of justice and rectitude. The wild grape, on the other hand, would be violence, bloodshed and oppression, which cause men to groan under the yoke of injustice. In the Gospel, the image changes: the grapevines produce good grapes but the tenants keep them for themselves. They are not prepared to deliver them to the owner. They beat and kill his messengers and kill his Son. Their motivation is simple: they want to make themselves owners; they take over what does not belong to them. In the Old Testament, there is the charge of violation of social justice, of man’s scorn of man, in the forefront. In the background, however, it appears that when the Torah, the right given by God, is scorned, it is God himself who is scorned; one wants only to enjoy his power. This aspect is fully brought out in the parable of Jesus: the tenants do not want a master – and these tenants serve as a mirror for us too. We men to whom has been entrusted, so to speak, the running of creation, usurp it. We want to be masters in the first place and by ourselves. We want to possess the world and our own lives in an unlimited way. God is an encumbrance for us. We either pay devoted lip service to Him or deny Him completely; He is banished from public life, losing all meaning. A tolerance which acknowledges God, as it were, as a private opinion, but which refuses him any public domain, the reality of the world and of our life, is not tolerance but hypocrisy. Where man makes himself the only master of the world and master of himself, justice cannot exist. There only the arbiter of power and of interests can dominate. Certainly, the Son can be chased out of the vineyard and killed, so one can selfishly savour all the fruits of the earth alone. But soon the vineyard will turn into uncultivated terrain trampled by wild boars, as the Responsorial Psalm tells us (cf. Ps 79:14).
Thus we reach the third element in today’s reading. The Lord, in the Old and New Testament alike, pronounces judgement upon the unfaithful vineyard. The judgement that Isaiah foresees comes about in great wars and exile at the hands of the Assyrians and the Babylonians. The judgement announced by the Lord Jesus refers above all to the destruction of Jerusalem in the year 70. But the threat of judgement regards us too, the Church in Europe, Europe and the West in general. With this Gospel, the Lord is shouting into our ears the same words he told the Church of Ephesus in the Apocalypse: “Unless you repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place.” (2,5). The light may be taken away from us too, and we would do well to allow this warning in all its gravity to resound in our soul, at the same time crying to the Lord: “Help us to convert! Give us all the grace of a true renewal! Do not allow your light among us to be extinguished! Reinforce our faith, our hope and our love, so we may bear good fruit!”
At this point, however, the question arises within us: “But is there no promise, no word of comfort in today’s reading and Gospel pages? Is a threat the last word?” No! The promise is there, and it is the final, essential word. We hear it in the versette of the Alleluia, taken from the Gospel of John: “I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit.” (Jn 15:5). With these words of the Lord, John shows us the final and true outcome of the story of God’s vineyard. God does not fail. At the end, He wins, love wins. A veiled allusion to this is found already in the words of the parable of the vineyard in today’s Gospel and in its concluding words. Even there, the death of the Son is not the end of the story, even if it is not directly recounted. Jesus conveys this death through a new image taken from the Psalm: “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone…” (Mt 21:42; Ps 117:22). Life sprang from the Son’s death, a new construction, a new vineyard is formed. He, who at Cana changed water into wine, changed his blood into wine of true love and in doing so he transformed wine into his blood. In the cenacle, he anticipated his death and transformed it into a gift of self in an act of radical love. His blood is a gift, it is love and for this it is the true wine which the Creator was waiting for. In this way, Christ himself becomes the grapevine, and this grapevine always bears good fruit: the presence of his love for us, which is indestructible.
Thus, these parables ultimately flow into the mystery of the Eucharist in which the Lord gives us the bread of life and the wine of his love and invites us to the feast of eternal love. We celebrate the Eucharist in the knowledge that its price was death of the Son – the sacrifice of his life which remains present therein. Each time we eat of this bread and drink of this chalice, we announce the death of the Lord until He comes, says St Paul (cf. 1 Cor 11:26). But we know too that from this death flows life, because Jesus transformed it in a gesture of offering, in an act of love, thus changing it profoundly: love has won over death. In the holy Eucharist, He draws all to himself from the cross (Jn 12:32) and he makes us become shoots of the grapevine which is Himself. If we remain united in Him, then we will also bear fruit and no longer will the vinegar of self-sufficiency, of discontent with God and his creation flow from us; rather there will be good wine of rejoicing in God and of love towards our neighbour. We pray that the Lord gives us his grace, so that in the three weeks of the Synod which we are starting, we will not only say nice things about the Eucharist, but above all we will draw life from its power. We invoke this gift through Mary, dear Fathers of the Synod, who I greet with much affection, together with the many Communities from which you come and which you represent, so that obedient to the movements of the Holy Spirit, we can help the world to become, in Christ and with Christ, the fertile grapevine of God. Amen.
Again I am awestruck at the power of the Holy Father’s words. This reminds me of his now-famous "dictatorship of relativism" homily preached before the cardinal-electors. Can there be any doubt that this synod will do more then to "only say nice things about the Eucharist" and that not only will it preach the thunderous beauty of the Eucharist, but our response before it. "Isn’t our Christian life often more vinegar than wine." Arggh! being a pundit blogger that hit a little too close to home. I try to both praise the good and ridicule the ridiculous as a good Chestertonian would do, but it is always a good thing to look at your own production of vinegar and to work to excising the wild grapes that have sprouted up in your soul.
It is easy to predict that by far the following will elicit the most coverage by the press. "He is banished from public life, losing all meaning. A tolerance which acknowledges God, as it were, as a private opinion, but which refuses him any public domain, the reality of the world and of our life, is not tolerance but hypocrisy." That this will be seen as an arrow shot at the "personally opposed, but…" mind-set of Catholics in public life. Not that this connection is mistaken. It is obvious that the synods working document Intrumentem Laboris definitely addressed this problem and that this will certainly be a topic at the synod. But all of us are guilty to some degree of this hypocrisy. How many of us are embarrassed to say a blessing when eating out publicly before a meal or to speak up in a conversation at work that approaches gossip? Hypocrisy is the measure between what we believe and what we do. Only Jesus and Mary had a hypocrisy quotient of 0. Our growth in holiness is to increasingly reduce our own hypocrisy quotient to as close to zero as possible. And as the saints discovered they did this by concentrating on their own hypocrisy quotient over others.
"We either pay devoted lip service to Him or deny Him completely;" Now I am not sure if the translation has done this phrase justice, but I am intrigued by the use of the words "devoted lip service" since it sounds like that even us believers are often giving God’s will only lip service even as we praise his name.
Gen X Revert points to this story about a Catholic School on Long Island.
"School administrators, reacting to what they called a "sick" prom culture that was out of control, announced in a letter this month to parents that senior prom was canceled.
"Basically, it has become an event in American culture that has all the trappings of excess," said school principal Brother Kenneth Hoagland. "It is not consistent with our philosophy as a Catholic school."
Last year, the school appealed to parents and stopped 46 Kellenberg seniors from spending $20,000 to rent a house for a post-prom weekend in the Hamptons"
"Hoagland said they have invited students to come up with alternate ideas for a school-sponsored event that are consistent with the goals of a Christian education."
He also point to a couple letters on their Kellenberg Memorial High School’s site in reference to the Prom and the September one is full of common sense, Christian perspective, and an indictment of the prom culture. [Evil PDF]
KMHS is willing to sponsor a prom, but not an orgy.
and
Some ask about a “compromise.” What is there to compromise? Sanity, proportion,modesty, common sense?
Bravo to Father Philip K. Eichner, S.M.
and Brother Kenneth M. Hoagland, S.M. for telling the truth with such clarity and for offering truly a Christian education.
So often if we were to play the game of match the headline to the article we would be unable to find the necessary connections. Case in point this headline Sony provokes wrath of the Holy See in regards to the advertisement of a man with what looks like a crown a thorns but is actually symbols from a Playstation. So what it the wrath of the Holy See?
Italian Cardinal Ersilio Tonini was among the first to speak out, calling it "an irreverent mockery".
"The advert displays a lack of taste which conceals a lack of respect. Kids shouldn’t be induced into believing that the passion of Christ is a game," Tonini was quoted as saying Friday.
Wrath just isn’t what it use to be. Of course Cardinal Tonini is the Archbishop Emeritus of Ravenna-Cervia, Italy which I would think that makes him not even part of the Holy See.
Sony has pulled the ad and said that it had been "misunderstood." Wow, what an original defense. A man wearing what appears to be a crown of thorns with the subtitle "Ten Years of Passion" should never have been misinterpreted in relating to the passion of Christ in the first place – an obvious misunderstanding.
SOUTH BEND — NewGroup Media, a South Bend communications company, will produce a documentary based on Dan Brown’s best-selling novel "The Da Vinci Code" for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.
"Jesus De-coded: Catholic Perspective on the ‘Da Vinci Code,’ " scheduled to air nationally in April 2006 on NBC — just before release of the Ron Howard-directed studio film starring Tom Hanks — will look at the Roman Catholic Church’s position on issues raised in the novel.
"We feel sometimes that the material (in the book) is presented in a way that is speculative about the life of Jesus," says Manis Calco, director of communications for the USCCB in Washington, DC. "This certainly is a chance for us to put forth our own teachings."[Source]
And here is just another example of a spokesman saying mushy things. "We feel sometimes that the material (in the book) is presented in a way that is speculative about the life of Jesus," Feel? Sometimes? Denying the Divinity of Jesus, claiming he had children with Mary Madeline, and claiming that the Catholic Church is not only a hoax but that it burned 5,000 women at the stake only invokes feelings sometimes about the speculative nature?
As for the film I hope that they might get people like Carl E. Olson, Sandra Miesel, or Amy Welborn involved in the project to ensure that the truth is presented with clarity.
WESTBOROUGH, Mass. –A Catholic priest in this town was temporarily pulled from the pulpit after refusing to support the state bishops’ drive against gay marriage.
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The Rev. George Lange of St. Luke the Evangelist was replaced last weekend by Bishop Robert McManus of the Worcester Diocese, who led the Saturday evening Mass and the Sunday morning Mass at the church.
The move came after Lange and his associate pastor, the Rev. Stephen Labaire, posted an item in the Sept. 11 church bulletin stating their opposition to a proposed Constitutional amendment that would ban on gay marriage. The state’s Catholic bishops are leading a signature drive to get the amendment on the 2008 ballot.
The bulletin item read: "The priests of this parish do not feel that they can support this amendment. They do not see any value to it and they see it as an attack upon certain people in our parish, namely those who are gay."
A spokesman for McManus, Raymond Delisle, told the MetroWest Daily News of Framingham that Lange and Labaire remain in place at the church.
Delisle said the bishop’s intention was not to rebuke the priests, but to "present the church’s teaching on the subject."
But parishioner Cindy Hodgdon said her church leaders’ "hands were slapped very publicly."
"Bishop McManus told us that Father George ‘made a mistake’ and ‘should not have done that,’" she said. [Source]
Most of the time that I hear statements from bishop’s spokesman I hope that they are just trying to put a happy face on what their bishop really said. And when did rebuke become a dirty word? Rebuke comes before the word repent in the dictionary and in life as well.
Pittsburgh (KDKA) An organization of Catholic priests is hoping that optional celibacy and allowing women to become ministers will boost the number of priests around the US and the world.
At a press conference today, the Association of Pittsburgh Priests said they would like Bishop Donald Wuerl to carry their ideas to a Synod on the Eucharist in Rome, next month. [Source]
Just for once I would like to see a news story where a group of priests issue a statement asking for people to spend more time in front of the Blessed Sacrament praying for vocations or that their diocese look to emulate diocese that have increasing vocations. Why is it that a discipline like priestly celibacy always gets combined with women’s ordination. If we can’t expect them to get a teaching that is to be held definitively and that belongs to the deposit of faith, why should we listen to their prudential advice on optional celibacy? As I have quipped before what they really want is optional orthodoxy.