The Curt Jester
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The Curt Jester

"It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it." GKC

Other

Book burning

by Jeffrey Miller May 21, 2008
written by Jeffrey Miller

In the decades immediately following the close of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), we witnessed an alarming deemphasis of doctrinal teaching in religious education in favor of an overly experiential approach. The result of this catechetical malfeasance was a generation-make that two generations-of poorly formed Catholics.

So while the feminists burned their bras and draft-dodgers burned their flags, catechists and pastors burned their Baltimore Catechisms, proclaiming liberation from the rote memorization of doctrinal formulas. But were we better off because of it? What were the fruits of the catechetical novelties of the 60s and 70s? Surely not practicing Catholics who know and love the Catholic faith.

Leon Suprenant goes on with the necessary caveats about memorization without a relationship with Christ and then quotes Church documents on the subject.

Archbishop Dolan tells the story of somebody he grew up with who was saved by the Baltimore Catechism. This man had become seriously drug addicted and the person he was with decided that they might as well just overdose themselves if they had no reason to go on living. That .unless he could come up with any reason to go on living he would just fix up an overdose. After some thought Dolan’s school friend replied "God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him for ever in heaven." This was enough to deter both of them.

Now I wonder how many people’s lives were saved by a felt banner?

May 21, 2008 8 comments
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News

Not condemnation CondomUnitedNations

by Jeffrey Miller May 21, 2008
written by Jeffrey Miller

Bangkok – The United Nations will send nearly a quarter of a million condoms into cyclone-hit Myanmar to help needy survivors with no access to contraceptives, a UN official says.

So far, the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) said it had sent 72 800 condoms to survivors struggling to maintain their family planning after the storm hit in early May.

A total of 218 400 condoms would be delivered, UNFPA aid advisor Chaiyos Kunanusont said.

"We don’t want regular use of contraception disrupted. An emergency usually damages the health system, so people don’t have access to condoms and contraceptives," said Chaiyos.

Flights were also carrying reproductive health kits, which included razors for cutting umbilical cords, clean sheets for delivering babies and enough contraceptive pills and injections to last 3 390 women three months.

Article Via The Anchoress

This is the same basic trend just as in Africa where they have a surplus of condoms given to them but basic medicines are totally lacking. The contraceptive culture is a sickness where the first response to the immensity of so many lives lost is to prevent more lives.

May 21, 2008 11 comments
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Politics

Behold! A great dragon in a pantsuit

by Jeffrey Miller May 21, 2008
written by Jeffrey Miller

The Beginning of the Gospel of Barack Obama, the Son of God (According to Mark Shea)

In other news Jill Stanek has a fundraiser letter by Michelle Obama saying the partial-birth abortion ban is unconstitutional.

In other Obama news.

From CNN to the New York Times, the media hyped Barack Obama’s Portland, Oregon rally on Sunday, some comparing him to a rock star.

Unmentioned in national reporting was the fact that Obama was preceded by a rare, 45-minute free concert by actual rock stars The Decemberists. The Portland-based band has drawn rave reviews from Rolling Stone magazine, which gave their 2005 album Picaresque four and a half stars (out of five), and another four and a half stars for 2007’s The Crane Wife.

How many of the people showed up to hear Obama, and how many to hear the band?

Hugh Hewitt also mentions that the Decemberists normally start of their set playing the Soviet National Anthem. Whether it happened in this case is not currently known, but it would be appropriate. It is though an interesting question on how many showed up for Decemberists specifically. I grew up in Portland which has more "Free Tibet" and liberal bumper stickers per capita than anywhere else I have seen so I would not be surprised at the large turnout if it was mainly for Obama. It is just interesting that the press failed to mention this at all.

May 21, 2008 5 comments
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Vocations

Burke's efforts lead to biggest Catholic ordination class in decades

by Jeffrey Miller May 20, 2008
written by Jeffrey Miller

A nice story on Archbishop Burke and the Kenrick-Glennon Seminary.

"The walks," as the seminarians call them, are opportunities for young men to have heart-to-hearts with a man who regularly meets with the pope, a heady prospect for a young priest-in-training. The conversations are usually casual, and the seminarians get to see a more personal, human side of Burke – like when he gets a little skittish around off-leash dogs.

Kenrick officials organize the walks using time sheets. When the sheets are posted, there’s a rush to sign on.

"It’s like when you throw pellets at the Japanese fish at the Botanical Gardens," said seminarian Edward Nemeth, 26. "Guys falling over each other to get their names on the list."

On Saturday, Nemeth and eight of his colleagues at Kenrick will be ordained as priests in the St. Louis Archdiocese – the largest St. Louis ordination class in 25 years and one of the largest in the U.S. It’s also the same number of ordinations in St. Louis as the last three years combined.

Since the 1980s, declining interest in the priesthood has been a growing crisis for the Roman Catholic church in the U.S., a situation that was compounded by the clergy sex-abuse scandal earlier this decade. One church study suggested that 80 percent of parents whose sons are considering the priesthood try to dissuade them, fearing their child is entering a life of loneliness and unhappiness.

Burke is credited for helping to address such concerns at Kenrick. He is active in recruiting priests and knows the seminarians, their names, their life stories, their joys and their fears. He’s also a frequent visitor to the seminary, sometimes dropping by unannounced for lunch with the students.

"He’s the center and the core of this whole thing," said the Rev. Michael Butler, the vocations director for the archdiocese.

The student body at Kenrick-Glennon, which includes the undergraduate Cardinal Glennon College and graduate-level Kenrick Theological Seminary, is 112 students, the largest enrollment in two decades and a 50 percent increase over last year.

May 20, 2008 15 comments
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News

Catholic Scams Online

by Jeffrey Miller May 20, 2008
written by Jeffrey Miller

Here is what appears to be the sad story of Michael Galloway the founder of Catholic Online and multiple other sites who is currently in court because a lot of money has dissapeared.

May 20, 2008 4 comments
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Pro-life

Only Moloch is more pro-abortion than Obama

by Jeffrey Miller May 19, 2008
written by Jeffrey Miller

Listening to the Hugh Hewitt show he was playing back clips from a speech that Sen. Obama gave before the Planned Parenthood Action Fund on July 17, 2007. Theblog here has the complete transcript.

Thanks to all of you at Planned Parenthood for all the work that you are doing for women all across the country and for families all across the country, and for men, who have enough sense to realize you are helping them, all across the country.

I guess I am glad to be senseless enough to not equate murdering children in the womb with helping me. Yes the great work they are doing for "families" I guess even when it comes to abortion they are doing it for the children.

And as I look out over these crowds and they are a wonderful cross-section of the country, male, female, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, disabled, gay, straight, old, young what I’m heartened to see is particularly the young people who are getting their first chance to be part of a larger movement of Americans. I see young women who are Ariana’s age and younger, and I think about my own two daughters, Sasha and Malia, and sometimes it makes me stop and makes me wonder: what kind of America will our daughters grow up in?

What kind of America will our daughters grow up in?

Of course looking out in the audience he did not see any of the the 49 million people killed since Roe v. Wade. Plus just try to imagine a world where your daughters couldn’t abort your grandchildren. Oh the horror! Of course this year Obama went on to say about his daughters "I don’t want them punished with a baby." So I guess one of his themes is worryingly that his daughters can’t get abortions. He goes on to talk about the Supreme Court’s Gonzales versus Casey.

With one more vacancy on the Court, we could be looking at a majority hostile to a woman’s fundamental right to choose for the first time since Roe versus Wade and that is what is at stake in this election. The only thing more disturbing than the decision was the rationale of the majority. Without any hard evidence, Justice Kennedy proclaimed, It is self-evident that a woman would regret her choice. He cited medical uncertainty about the need to protect the health of pregnant women. Even though the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists found no such uncertainty. Justice Kennedy knows many things, my understanding is he does not know how to be a doctor.

When I read the supposed quote from Justice Kennedy I knew immediately it wasn’t real. I wish he had ever said such a thing, but he certainly did not write this or anything like it in the actual opinion. And if you Google the quote it only shows up in reference to Obama’s speech. But I guess I am just one of those bitter Americans who actually reads the text of the decision. After all he is only a lawyer and taught Constitutional law so we can’t expect him to correctly quote a decision.

Sen. Obama also does not mention that the American Medical Association testified that a partial-birth abortion bore no relevance to any measure needed to advance the health of any woman. The AMA also wrote Sen. Santorum and said "Thank you for the opportunity to work with you towards restricting a procedure we all agree is not good medicine."

He dismissed as mere preferences the reasoned judgments of the nation’s doctors. We’ve seen time after time these last few years when the president says otherwise, when the science is inconvenient, when the facts don’t match up with the ideology, they are cast aside. Well, it’s time for us to change that. It is time for a different attitude in the White House. It is time for a different attitude in the Supreme Court. It is time to turn the page and write a new chapter in American history.

Let me see if I can flesh this out about the science of a partial-birth abortion. From the court opinion. "The main difference between the two procedures is that in intact D&E a doctor extracts the fetus intact or largely intact with only a few passes, pulling out its entire body instead of ripping it apart. In order to allow the head to pass through the cervix, the doctor typically pierces or crushes the skull." So according to Sen. Obama a mothers life is more at risk if the baby is delivered normally than if the baby is killed as it is being delivered and then fully delivered. I guess the "science is inconvenient" that the only difference is that in one case a live baby is delivered and the other that a dead baby is delivered. Now you could ask Obama what is the difference between this in infanticide, but he doesn’t have a problem with that either. He then goes on to call abortion "most fundamental freedoms we have in this country" using the argument of equal rights where the idea is that if a women gets pregnant it destroys her career and keeps her from being equal to men. Ironically he also goes on to say about another court case " it’s an approach to the law that favors the powerful over the powerless." I wonder who is more powerless than an infant in the womb?

There will always be people, many of goodwill, who do not share my view on the issue of choice. On this fundamental issue, I will not yield and Planned Parenthood will not yield. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t find common ground. Because we know that what’s at stake is more than whether or not a woman can choose an abortion.

Then we get a bunch of typical Obama boilerplate about turning the page, moving on, change, hope, yada yada yada. Then he talks about the "tragedy" of teenagers becoming pregnant and then

Not even to the brave servicewomen fighting for our country who aren’t getting the support they need when they come home as veterans of the United States of America. [Applause] If they’re fighting for us, they should be getting the services that they deserve. It’s time to turn the page on a policies that provides almost 1.5 billion dollar to teach abstinence in our schools but refuses to teach basic science and basic contraception.

Yes the real problem is teaching abstinence and not a toxic culture that created the hook-up culture where "first base" is now sexual relations. A world where sex ed classes and increased sex among teenagers is never correlated and if only we dumped even more money into this kind of sex education we will have such a wonderful world.

There’s a moral component to prevention. And we shouldn’t be shy about acknowledging it. As parents, as family members, we need to encourage young people to show reverence toward sexuality and intimacy. We need to teach that not just to the young girls, we need to teach it to those young boys. [Applause] But [Applause] But even as we are teaching those lessons, we should never be willing to consign a teenage girl to a lifetime of struggle because of a lack of access to birth control or a lifetime of illness because she doesn’t understand how to protect herself. That’s just commonsense. There’s common ground on behalf of commonsense there we have an opportunity to move forward and agree.

Once again he views pregnancy very negatively and this time as causing a lifetime of struggle. The thing about liberals talking about abstinence is that it is always done with a "wink, wink" and Obama even says that it is the "ideal but often not the reality." "You know you shouldn’t be having sex at your age, but if you do here is a pile of contraceptives and a key to a hotel room along with some gas money." He then brags about his support for the Prevention First Act which is of course all about contraceptives. I guess when it comes to a "moral component to prevention" contraception isn’t included as a concern. He can’t even bring himself to say that they shouldn’t be having sex but that they should show a "reverence toward sexuality and intimacy" whatever that means. My sneaking suspicion is that it would be totally at odds with the Theology of the Body. More along the plot to Sex in the City.

The theme then once again returns to his daughters Sasha and Melia and that we must not " leave them in ignorance is potentially consigning them to illness, pregnancy, poverty and in some cases death and that’s absolutely unacceptable." Yes whenever I think of pregnancy I also think of illness and poverty. They just go together I guess if you are Barack Obama. Or really "Moloch" Obama the most pro-abortion presidential candidate ever and that says a lot. NARAL was quite happy to endorse him recently. While surely NARAL would have endorsed Sen. Clinton if she had been ahead, they are very happy that they truly have somebody exactly on the same page as them. And this is a page he won’t be turning.

May 19, 2008 15 comments
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News

USCCB in bed with Sun Myung Moon?

by Jeffrey Miller May 19, 2008
written by Jeffrey Miller

Joshua LeBlanc reports on the connection.

May 19, 2008 4 comments
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Punditry

Tolerance

by Jeffrey Miller May 17, 2008
written by Jeffrey Miller

The Student Union at Queensland University have shown themselves to be opposed to differing opinion and free speech like many other secular universities around the world.The school’s Newman Society has been censored and threatened with disaffiliation from the student union because union leaders believed the group’s pro-woman and pro-pregnancy campaign took a stand against abortion.

The poster and leaflets, displayed on a booth outside the student cafe, did not mention abortion but featured a photograph of an eight week old child in the womb, and offered compassion and support for young women who might find themselves facing the difficult challenge of an unplanned pregnancy.

Elise Nally, third-year applied science student and Newman Society secretary, said in a report by The Australian that the union’s action was totalitarian and against free speech.

I’d like to know what laws we’ve broken, Nally said. The union is acting like a dictator.

Joshua Young, president of the student union, gave this explanation for the union’s actions against Catholics on campus: I know the Newman Society thinks the union is being heavy handed, but the student union voted in 1993 for free, safe abortion on demand so all women have a genuine choice when faced with unwanted pregnancy.

From a student body of 30,000, a total of approximately 3,500 voted in the 1993 referendum, with about 1900 in favor of abortion rights, 1400 against, and 200 abstaining.

When asked if the vote precludes other views being advocated in campus debate, Young said, It does.

Article

Once again choice does not mean choice but an overwhelming prejudice for abortion That you can’t even advertise for women to have a child and that you will help them if they do. Like I have said before when pro-choicers started to open up pregnancy centers to give assistance to women who find themselves in a difficult situation and need help, I will start to agree that choice isn’t just a rhetorical device.

May 17, 2008 26 comments
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Humor

Rosary Belts

by Jeffrey Miller May 16, 2008
written by Jeffrey Miller

I was listening to Leo Laporte’s Tech Guy podcast and one women called up about site advice and mentioned one of her websites called rosarybelts.com.

This has got to be one of the strangest image juxtapositions I have ever seen.

May 16, 2008 19 comments
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News

Bill Donahue meets with the Hagee's

by Jeffrey Miller May 15, 2008
written by Jeffrey Miller

Deal Hudson describes a meeting today that occurred between himself, Bill Donahue and Pastor Hagee and his wife that occurred at Catholic League headquarters in New York. The meeting was very positive and ended with Bill Donohue saying:

"Pastor, you are my friend from this point forward and nothing’s going to change that. We have our theological differences but we Catholics and Evangelicals need to work together — that is the liberals worse nightmare."

I thought this was pretty funny.

As we were leaving, a reporter from the San Antonio Express called Donohue for interview. Donohue did the interview as we stood there. It was obvious that Donohue’s report on the meeting was not what the reporter wanted to hear. When the reporter asked if Donohue was trying to help John McCain, I thought the answer was unassailable: "If I am trying to help John McCain why would I have called Rev. Hagee anti-Catholic in the first place?"

I think it is pretty cool that started out as something negative has developed into something positive, though the media isn’t going to like this happy ending since they much rather like the Hagee equals Wright meme.

Bishop Fulton Sheen once said:

There are not over a hundred people in the United States who hate the Catholic Church. There are millions, however, who hate what they wrongly believe to be the Catholic Church, which is, of course, quite a different thing.

The real dialogue that has gone on since Donohue original denouncement only proves this to be true.

May 15, 2008 5 comments
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About Me

Jeff Miller is a former atheist who after spending forty years in the wilderness finds himself with both astonishment and joy a member of the Catholic Church. This award-winning blog presents my hopefully humorous and sometimes serious take on things religious, political, and whatever else crosses my mind.

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About Me

Jeff Miller is a former atheist who after spending forty years in the wilderness finds himself with both astonishment and joy a member of the Catholic Church. This award winning blog presents my hopefully humorous and sometimes serious take on things religious, political, and whatever else crosses my mind.
My conversion story
  • The Curt Jester: Disturbingly Funny --Mark Shea
  • EX-cellent blog --Jimmy Akin
  • One wag has even posted a list of the Top Ten signs that someone is in the grip of "motu-mania," -- John Allen Jr.
  • Brilliance abounds --Victor Lams
  • The Curt Jester is a blog of wise-ass musings on the media, politics, and things "Papist." The Revealer

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